Solar revolution
The case for solar, and the impact of the solar revolution
Download my full case against George Monbiot’s anti-solar articles here
Solar in the sustainable energy family
In 2008, for the first time, both the United States and the European Union added more power capacity from renewables than from conventional sources (including gas, coal, oil, and nuclear). At least 64 countries have policies to promote renewable power generation, and renewables policy targets have been set in at least 73 countries, including 45 countries and 18 states/provinces/territories with feed-in tariffs. These government market-enablement programmes are creating some of the fastest-growing industries in the world. Annual renewable energy investment was $120 billion in 2008, a fourfold increase in five years. In the four years from end-2004 to end-2008, total power capacity from new renewables increased 75 percent to 280 GW, including a sixfold increase in solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity to more than 16 GW. Solar heating capacity doubled to 145 gigawatts-thermal (GWth) in the same period. In 2008, grid-tied solar PV grew by 70 percent, and the capacity of utility-scale solar PV plants (larger than 200 kilowatts) tripled, to 3 GW. Global solar PV production increased by 90 percent to 6.9 GW. For more see “Renewables Global Status Report: 2009 Update”
Solar electricity cheaper than fossil and nuclear
Oil giants have also been owning up to an aversion to large-scale renewables lately. Both Shell and BP have decided wind and solar power are “not economic”. Investment analysts would disagree. Most forecast grid parity – the point where solar electricity costs the same as traditional electricity - earlier rather than later in the 2010s, in most markets. Even in cloudy Britain the UK PV Manufacturers Association – including my company Solarcentury – predicts residential grid parity between solar and conventional electricity within five years.
Solar investors
One way to guage whether BP is likely to be right, or the PV companies, might be to watch where the investment dollars go. Leading investors in Silicon Valley, for example, will tell you that there are more than 50 families of clean energy technology that interest them. In 2008, more than half all the venture capital invested in cleantech went into solar photovoltaics.
Examples of funds investing in solar and other renewables include Good Energies, Grupo Ecos, Vantage Point Venture Partners, and Zouk Ventures. All these funds invest in Solarcentury. All of them provide value of different sorts beyond the money that they have actually invested in the company: sales leads, coaching, strategic advice based on long-honed skills at “pattern recognition” in markets, for example. They all share some version of the solar vision that I do. They, like I, believe a solar revolution is beginning to unfold.
