We Can Stop Searching For The Clean Energy Miracle. It’s Already Here.

[kristopher]

We Can Stop Searching For The Clean Energy Miracle. It’s Already Here.
BY JOE ROMM MAY 12, 2016 2:40 PM



CREDIT: JUSTIN PRITCHARD, AP
Key climate solutions have been advancing considerably faster than anyone expected just a few years ago thanks to aggressive market-based deployment efforts around the globe. These solutions include such core enabling technologies for a low-carbon world as solar, wind, efficiency, electric cars, and battery storage.

That’s a key reason almost everything you know about climate change solutions is probably outdated. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed other reasons. For instance, climate science and climate politics have moved unexpectedly quickly toward a broad understanding that we need to keep total human-caused global warming as far as possible below 2°C (3.6°F) — and ideally to no more than 1.5°C. But the media and commentariat generally have not kept up with the science or solutions and their utterly game-changing implications.

This post will focus on the light-speed changes in clean energy technology that have left even the most informed journalists and experts behind, which in turn means the public and policy-makers are receiving outdated information.

The Clean Energy Miracle Is Already Here
Consider solar power. In recent days, both the Council on Foreign Affairs and the New York Times have published claims that were literally out-of-date the instant they were put on the internet.

Last week, Varun Sivaram, a smart young physicist who has worked on advanced solar, wrote this on the Council on Foreign Relations’ “Energy, Security, and Climate” blog:

Indeed, just this week, a Saudi-backed consortium placed an astonishingly low bid to build a solar farm in Dubai for only 3¢/kWh, half the local price of power from natural gas. Existing technologies may surprise us, as Dr. Romm suggests, especially if this bid turns into a contract and Dubai’s prices can be replicated elsewhere in the world. (I am skeptical, though, of the latter possibility).

This was part of a response...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/12/3776728/climate-change-solutions/

[Binkie The Clown]

1. "Oooo. I want one," he says.

[kristopher]

2. And finally he'll get it.

Low-Cost Solar Brightens Lives in the Developing World (2012)


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/06/120606-low-cost-solar-in-the-developing-world/



SOLAR ENERGY SOLUTIONS FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD (2013)
Tiny lamps and clever financing may finally bring solar to the developing world.


http://ensia.com/features/solar-energy-solutions-for-the-developing-world/

40 Companies & Organizations Bringing Solar Power to the Developing World (2014)
Zachary Shahan

(Link to Bennu Solar's distribution - organized by region and country
http://bennu-solar.com/resources/by-region/ )

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/ugc/blogs/2014/11/40-companies-organizations-bringing-solar-power-to-the-developing-world.html

[Binkie The Clown]

3. Well played. A tip 'o the hat to you. :) n/t

[FBaggins]

4. A really strange photo

Sunlight streaming in through the windows while an LED camp lantern sits on the floor?

[kristopher]

5. I took it as a meeting about the solar lighting

Probably because I went to the article and read the caption:
A women's group meets in Mityana, Uganda to discuss deployment of low-cost solar lights in a program spearheaded by Solar Sister, a nonprofit that encourages renewable energy and local entrepreneurship. Below, a child studies by the light of a solar lamp from U.S.-based d.Light Design.

[kristopher]

6. “How much more miracle-y do you need your miracles to be"?

"...here are all the latest charts and facts"

You’ll Never Believe How Cheap New Solar Power Is
BY JOE ROMM JUL 18, 2016 9:29 AM

Solar energy has grown 100-fold in this country in the past decade. Globally, solar has doubled seven times since 2000, and Dubai received a bid recently for 800 megawatts of solar at a stunning “US 2.99 cents per kilowatt hour” —unsubsidized! For context, the average residential price for electricity in the United States is 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Solar energy has been advancing considerably faster than anyone expected just a few years ago thanks to aggressive market-based deployment efforts around the globe. Since it’s hard to keep up with the speed-of-light changes, and this is the fuel that will power more and more of the global economy in the near future, here are all the latest charts and facts to understand it.

If you are looking for one chart to sum up the whole solar energy miracle, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) Chairman Michael Liebreich has one from his keynote address at BNEF’s annual conference in April titled “In Search of the Miraculous”:

Solar’s exponentially declining costs and exponentially rising installations (the y-axis is a logarithmic scale).

Thanks to sustained long-term deployment programs, Liebreich explained, “We’ve seen the costs come down by a factor of 150 since 1975. We’ve seen volume up by 115,000.”

“How much more miracle-y do you need your miracles to be,” Liebreich added.

What that chart doesn’t reveal is that the price drop and the sales volume increase are directly linked....

Six more charts at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1127&pid=103504