{"id":13933,"date":"2023-09-28T06:57:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T12:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/?p=13933"},"modified":"2023-09-18T12:46:09","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T18:46:09","slug":"renewables-are-on-track-to-keep-getting-cheaper-and-cheaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/renewables-are-on-track-to-keep-getting-cheaper-and-cheaper\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewables are on track to keep getting cheaper and cheaper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new report says that ongoing improvements in renewables tech will keep driving steep cost declines that make them even more competitive against fossil fuels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canary Media<\/a> | Sept 2023 | Alison F. Takemura<\/a> | Renewables | Shield Insurance Blog<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canary Media\u2019s <\/em>chart of the week<\/em><\/a> translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renewable energy already beats fossil fuels on cost globally \u2014 and according to analysts, the gap is only going to grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2030, technology improvements could slash today\u2019s prices by a quarter for wind and by half for solar, according to the authors of a recent report<\/a> from clean energy think tank RMI. (Canary Media is an independent affiliate of RMI.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These remarkable and ongoing cost declines have made clean energy so attractive that it now outcompetes fossil fuels for new investment: 62 percent of global energy investment<\/a> is expected to flow to clean energy technologies this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That cash is helping push renewables to new heights. According to estimates from the International Energy Agency, global clean energy capacity is expected to jump a jaw-dropping 107 gigawatts to more than 440 gigawatts this year \u2014 its largest increase ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we\u2019re living in \u200b\u201cis an energy technology revolution,\u201d said report co-author Kingsmill Bond<\/a>, an energy strategist at RMI. It\u2019s obvious from the data, yet the point is often lost in \u200b\u201ca consistent drumbeat of counternarratives\u201d about how difficult it is, and will be, to leave fossil fuels behind, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cU.S. fossil-fuel demand peaked 15 years ago,\u201d Bond said. \u200b\u201cThis is happening; people have just missed it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renewable energy costs have fallen, and are projected to keep falling, because these technologies are riding \u200b\u201clearning curves\u201d<\/a>: For every cumulative doubling of the deployed tech, its cost declines by a quantifiable percentage that varies by technology. Learning curves are a robust phenomenon that\u2019s been observed for over 50<\/a> kinds of tech. Over the past 40 years, the average learning rate has been 20% for solar and 13% for wind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the underappreciated power of learning by doing; the more solar panels and turbines people make, the more they discover how to make them better, faster and cheaper. The RMI report\u2019s range of forecasted cost declines is based on both these long-term average learning rates and the higher rates observed in more recent years (30% for solar and 25% for wind).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fossil fuels, by contrast, have not gotten on empirical learning curves. For more than a century, fossil fuel prices have swung wildly without trending consistently downward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visit Canary Media<\/a> for the full story<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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