Cheap Solar will Help Climate Change
The era of cheap solar is at last at hand. And when solar gets cheap, fighting climate change gets a lot easier, says Vote Solar Initiative’s co-founder and executive director Adam Browning.
Last year, global manufacturing capacity was exceeding demand. With the reintroduction of competition, solar module prices have fallen 40 percent in the past six months alone.
Not only are prices going down but actual costs of production are too, which suggests that the recent price reductions are permanent and will continue. Prior to 2004, the price history of solar exhibited fairly consistent dynamics – for every doubling of demand, prices came down 20 percent, like clockwork. The fact that prices went up for the past four years means that there is latent capacity for significant price reductions – what we are seeing is readjustment back to the natural path.
cheaper solar will throw the door wide open on new solar markets and new scales of volume. Ask any advocate who has spent time trying to convince policymakers to establish a new solar program, and they'll tell you that the single most important barrier is price. Lower costs will make a state's investment in solar much more appealing.
For an in-depth view of what happens when solar gets within range of price-sensitive markets, check out Travis Bradford's presentation (PDF).
for more information, see Adam Browning / GreenTech Solar
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