Great news, everyone: Solar is cheap, easy and only going to improve in efficiency decade after decade, forever. That is unless we choose—against economics and reason—to dig deeper and deeper into the ground for less and less oil at greater cost decade over decade … an activity that will eventually choke us all to death.
So, which is it, folks … Option A or Option B?
The Opportunity
In a new book, Here Comes the Sun, longtime environmental advocate Bill McKibben lays out facts of the accomplished technological revolution in solar and wind power. While there are advantages and objections to them both, in this article, as McKibben does in his book, let us focus mostly on solar, because that is where the innovation curve has really taken off.
“Sometime in the early part of the 2020s we crossed an invisible line where the cost of producing energy from the sun dropped below the cost of fossil fuel,” writes McKibben. “We live on an earth where the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun; the second-cheapest is to let the breeze created by the sun’s heating turn the blade of a wind turbine.”
Famously, in these tariff-ridden times, China produces the majority of the world’s solar panels. After the hiccup in U.S. world leadership that was the 2008 global economic crisis, China took its own path away from fossil fuels toward clean energy. At first, the country’s mix of renewables doubled from 15% in 2008 to 30% in 2020, according to Marcotrends. Then it really took off. “In 2023, China commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022,” says the International Energy Agency.
China is the supplier of solar panels internationally as well. In smalling newly developing countries where the East Asian giant has established strong trade ties, the new low cost of solar energy means that countries like Zambia (92.1%), Tajikistan (93.3%), Costa Rica (99.4%) and Bhutan (100%—yay, Bhutan) are choosing to bypass the trap of fossil fuels’ historical low up-front cost and jump straight to solar and the gang. Not only is the infrastructure and management cheaper, but the long term hidden costs of fossil fuels can be avoided.
So that is the rest of the world. How are we doing here in the U.S., land of fossil fuel domination? Pretty great, it turns out, and not just in our little “bubble” of northern California.
In March of this year, the Texas powergrid (yes, Texas) set its weekly records for wind production (28,470 megawatts), solar production (24,818 megawatts) and battery discharge (4,833 megawatts). That last number, the amount of energy from batteries, nearly equaled the full output in the state from nuclear facilities. To repeat: Just the excess renewable energy storage in batteries and then used was equal to the nuclear energy generated in the great state of Texas.
That was March. Solar’s new record in Texas was set on Sept. 9, breaking the previous record from July. The peak of natural gas—the fossil fuel’s big bet on “cleaner energy”—was two years ago. One may look up these numbers at GridStatus.io. When having a tough day, browsing numbers in places like Kentucky, Texas and Florida might just lighten one’s mood.
In fact, according to McKibben, as of June 2023, the world has been installing “a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels on this planet every day.”
It is a story that gets buried under endless chaos and crisis reporting and trolling comments to social posts. Time to bring the good news to light. To do just that, groups around the world are organizing the 1st Annual Sun Day on the autumn equinox. Think Earth Day for cheap, clean power. (See sidebar for local events.)
Raise a Clamor
When McKibben delivered the keynote address to an enthralled audience at Green Music Center for Sonoma State’s Sustainability Days in 2016, we were inspired but not exactly hopeful. The path toward clean energy looked far too long, and the price of the technology was an ongoing barrier.
Now, the low cost of solar power is a lever for change. Own stock? If a company one invests in avoids adding cheaper clean energy to expand on more expensive fossil fuel infrastructure, that company is giving a competitive advantage to its competitor. Stock goes down. Might want to mention that on the next stock holders’ call. Or sell, quick.
Work for a company making that same mistake? One might want to pressure management to adopt cheap energy to protect jobs. School budgets constricting? Boys and Girls clubs needed to cut costs. One can make sure playgrounds and community centers have installed solar, and run a fundraiser to throw on some batteries.
Not interested in cost-cutting or economic arguments? How about energy resilience? Texas knows. The rapid expansion of solar in the state was essential for political survival of elected representatives after the onset of massive power outages across the infamously deregulated power grid.
Drawing attention to war-torn Ukraine, McKibben provides a powerful example of the security advantage of solar over coal in his book. According to Maxim Timchenko, an owner of both clean and traditional power plants, when a Russian rocket hits a coal plant, the repair and restart take months. When a solar plant of similar energy output is hit by a rocket, the facility is up and running at full capacity in seven days. Just swap out the panels and go. How about that for security?
Here’s the thing: Political parties have picked sides about cleaning up the environment. Although surveys suggest that 60% of the global population has a positive view of clean energy (compared with only roughly 20% for fossil fuels), the environmental arguments for the clean power transition have been fully politicized, arguments and claims buried in disingenuous rhetoric and confusing wonk. That was before. Now the real drivers of clean energy are economics and market competitiveness.
China is running with solar power. Developed countries like Germany and Norway (99.1%) are well on their way, and without having to take on the debt of massive fossil fuel infrastructure—shipping, deeper ports, petroleum safe railways, gas stations with (mostly) leak-free tanks—developing countries are eagerly skipping straight to electrical economies. Families and communities around the globe of every class are gaining cheap, distributed access to energy for refrigeration, entertainment, computation, AI interface, e-bikes.
And there is another benefit. “Energy above is fundamentally different than energy from below,” says McKibben, meaning that decentralized power generation for human activity looks very different from centralized energy under the control of forces outside of our communities and neighborhoods. For those “degrowth” minded people, like this writer, who want a simpler, less consumption driven world, McKibben asserts that distributed clean power will bend the arc in that direction.
There are legitimate concerns with the rollout of this new infrastructure, such as the need to mine massive amounts of material from the ground in what are certain to be horrible conditions in lithium and other mines in Africa and beyond. Mines that are already operating and supplying our phones, cars, laptops and much more. We have to insist that slave and forced labor end in all its forms, once and for all. Yes, 100%. And we have to mine the sh** out of lithium. Then we are done.
The more we use any technology, the more efficient it becomes. The same for the materials use. The copper from one solar panel in the ’80s can be recovered to supply five current generation panels. That same copper will go into a higher number of panels in the future.
This is not a hypothetical. Metals, like copper and lithium, are highly recyclable. However much we need for the current rollout of solar PV, we will need less per unit in each generation going forward. Less equals cheaper, and the long arc of innovation here bends unwitting toward justice, because where that arc leads is effectively free power. That is the great opportunity presented to the world economy.
As McKibben pointed out to me while discussing his book, “I think we have plenty of good reasons to be pessimistic; one to be optimistic shouldn’t hurt.”
SIDE BAR:
Sun Day Events in the North Bay
Freedom Singers Sun Day Sing-along
4:45pm, Sunday, Sept. 21 at Mill Valley Depot Cafe & Book Store, 87 Throckmorton.
It Floats: Visit Healdsburg’s Amazing Solar Array
10am, Thursday, Sept. 18 at Healdsburg Wastewater Treatment Plant, 340 Foreman Ln.
Enso Village Tour
11am, Saturday, Sept. 20 at Enso Village, 1801 Boxheart Dr., Healdsburg.
Clean Energy and Clean Air: A Free Screening of ‘Idle Threat’
6pm, Wednesday, Sept. 17 at Little Saint Second Story, 25 North St., Healdsburg.
Sun Day Celebration of Solar
11:30am, Sunday, Sept. 21 at Windsor Community United Methodist Church, 9451 Brooks Rd. S.
