{"id":200371,"date":"2021-04-28T20:12:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T01:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/04\/28\/insanely-cheap-huh\/"},"modified":"2021-04-28T20:12:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T01:12:00","slug":"insanely-cheap-huh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/04\/28\/insanely-cheap-huh\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Insanely Cheap,&#8221; Huh?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2021\/apr\/25\/insanely-cheap-energy-how-solar-power-continues-to-shock-the-world\">photovoltaic solar energy has gone from one of the most expensive electricity sources to one of the cheapest in the the past few years<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Rather unsurprisingly, there has been no such drop in the cost of nuclear power.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Increasingly, fossil fuel generators are not competitive, which should help with our climate change problem:<\/p>\n<p><span><span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\"><span><span>I<\/span><\/span><span>n the year 2000, the International <a data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/energy\">Energy<\/a> Agency (IEA) made a prediction that would come back to haunt it: by  2020, the world would have installed a grand total of 18 gigawatts of  photovoltaic solar capacity. Seven years later, the forecast would be  proven spectacularly wrong when roughly 18 gigawatts of solar capacity  were installed in a single year alone.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">\u201cWhen  I got this job in 2005, I thought maybe one day solar will supply 1% of  the world\u2019s electricity. Now it\u2019s 3%. Our official forecast is that it  will be 23% by 2050, but that\u2019s completely underestimated,\u201d Chase says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got to the point where solar is the cheapest source of energy in the world in most places. This means we\u2019ve been trying to model a situation where the grid looks totally different today.\u201d<br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">\u201cThe International Energy Agency now says solar is providing the cheapest energy the world has ever seen. But we\u2019re headed towards a future of insanely cheap energy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Inanely cheap energy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I like the sound of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that photovoltaic solar energy has gone from one of the most expensive electricity sources to one of the cheapest in the the past few years. Rather unsurprisingly, there has been no such drop in the cost of nuclear power.&nbsp; Increasingly, fossil fuel generators are not competitive, which should help with our climate &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1054,1135,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropogenic-climate-change","category-energy","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}