01-27-2016, 10:48 PM
Subsidies? The International Energy Agency noted that in 2014 fossil subsidies came to $490 billion worldwide compared to $112 billion for renewables, so that can’t be the answer. (Coal leases aren’t exactly a money spinner for the federal government either.)
The Real Reason Renewables Are Beating Fossil Fuels - Forbes
Renewables are distributed. Distributed, modular technologies invariably beat technologies that must rely on centralized projects. Just as it became easier to deploy desktop PCs in offices instead of mainframes, it’s far easier to put multiple, easily repeatable solar arrays on rooftops or landfills than it is to get the permits, manage the construction, and engineer the grid connections necessary for a large natural gas plant or a multi-gigawatt nuclear plant.
The Real Reason Renewables Are Beating Fossil Fuels - Forbes
Solar power installer SolarCity, the country’s largest provider of rooftop panels, has exited the Nevada market in the wake of the state’s rollback of the net metering fees paid to residential solar owners. The departure marks an escalation in the war over net metering that is roiling the industry.
A Big Victory for Utilities in the Net Metering Battle Over Rooftop Solar | MIT Technology Review
Solar panel prices dropped steadily in 2015. GTM Research calculated average total solar costs for a fixed-tilt utility-scale system at the end of the second quarter of 2015 at just $1.49 per watt DC, down from $1.58 per watt in the previous quarter. GTM Research forecasts solar prices falling steadily through 2020 and a global market of 135 gigawatts per year in the same year, up from 55 gigawatts installed in 2015. (That is enough to power approximately 10 million California homes.) This growth trend through 2020 constitutes about half (yes, half) of all projected new global electrical capacity in each year.
The Solar Singularity Is Getting Closer | Greentech Media
At $1.49 per watt and 25 percent net capacity factor, we get a levelized cost of electricity (the average cost over the 25-year life of the system) of about 7.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, which includes the 30 percent Investment Tax Credit and accelerated depreciation. This cost of solar power is highly competitive with fossil fuel and nuclear electricity. The Energy Information Administration calculates in its 2015 analysis that the average U.S. levelized cost for new natural-gas advanced combined cycle plants is 7.3 cents per kilowatt-hour -- the same as solar.
The Solar Singularity Is Getting Closer | Greentech Media
Clean energy investment surged in China, Africa, the US, Latin America and India in 2015, driving the world total to its highest ever figure, of $328.9bn, up 4% from 2014’s revised $315.9bn and beating the previous record, set in 2011 by 3%. The latest figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance show dollar investment globally growing in 2015 to nearly six times its 2004 total and a new record of one third of a trillion dollars (see chart on page 3), despite four influences that might have been expected to restrain it. These were: further declines in the cost of solar photovoltaics, meaning that more capacity could be installed for the same price; the strength of the US currency, reducing the dollar value of non-dollar investment; the continued weakness of the European economy, formerly the powerhouse of renewable energy investment; and perhaps most significantly, the plunge in fossil fuel commodity prices.
Europe has been supplanted by China as the new global giant pushing renewables forward. China spent a record $111 billion on deployment of clean energy infrastructure last year. That's 17 percent more than it spent the prior year, and almost as much as the U.S. and Europe combined. Spending in the U.S. rose 7.5 percent in 2015 to $56 billion, the most since federal stimulus spending peaked in 2011.
Solar and Wind Just Did the Unthinkable - Bloomberg Business