Paul Eastwood

The energy transition is often characterised by the falling costs of solar power and how it is increasingly cost competitive with fossil fuels. This overlooks that wind power has been cost competitive for a couple of decades now.

Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/figures/summary-for-policymakers/

#EnergyMastodon #EnergyTransition #RenewableEnergy

Figures: Summary for Policymakers

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Dec 26, 2022 at 10:44amWeb
Show threadFlorian AhrensDec 26, 2022
@pauleastwood although we can be happy about these costs, we shouldn’t forget that unit cost does not represent the cost of an energy system that runs entirely on renewable without demand side flexibility.
Show threadcopsewoodDec 26, 2022
@pauleastwood Intermittent #renewable generation including wind, solar and tidal have 2 costs per MWh. While being used as a replacement for fossil e.g. natural gas generation which remains as backup, it's reasonable to calculate system cost as currently. In future, that's not enough, due to the need for zero carbon generation without fossil backup to include storage, examples now including pumped and battery, and will need to include green hydrogen or synfuels.