I write about the climate and energy for a living and even I can’t quite wrap my head around how cheap low-carbon power technologies have gotten. The cost of onshore wind energy has dropped by 70% over just the last decade, and that of batteries and solar photovoltaic by a staggering 90%. Our World in Data points out that within a generation, solar power has gone from being one of the most expensive electricity sources to the cheapest in many countries—and it’s showing little signs of slowing down.

So where does this all end?

Back in the 1960s, the nuclear industry promised a future in which electricity was too cheap to meter. Decades later, the same vision seems to be on the horizon again, this time from solar. It seems, well, fantastic. Perhaps (almost) free renewable power leads to climate utopia. Then again, should we be careful what we wish for?

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The Road To Decarbonization Is Paved With Cheap Green Power

1. More renewables = less carbon. The math isn’t complicated. The faster we transition to clean energy, the less carbon dioxide we’re adding to the atmosphere and the fewer effects of global warming we will suffer.While humanity is still emitting more greenhouse gases than ever, the carbon intensity of electricity production has been dropping for well over a decade. Check out this illuminating global time-lapse from Our World in Data. But there’s a long, steep road ahead. Vaclav Smil, author of 50 books about energy, notes in his latest paper that we will have to grow solar and wind power by a factor of 17 by 2050 to hit net zero goals. The only way that happens is if they are much cheaper than the fossil fuels they are replacing. 

2. Cheap, clean power also unlocks humanitarian goals. Modern civilization rests on a foundation of electricity. Beyond its obvious uses in heating, cooling, cooking, lighting and data, electricity can decarbonize transportation, construction, services, water purification, and food production. Increasing the supply and reducing the cost of green electricity doesn’t just help the climate, it improves equity and quality of life for the world’s poorest. Stanford University has mapped out a path to provide universal electricity access to the unconnected by 2030, which will lean heavily on solar power and micro- and off-grid solutions. 

 3. Scrubbing the skies will take a lot of juice. Once we get emissions under control, it’s time to tackle the mess we’ve made of the atmosphere. Today’s direct air capture (DAC) systems use about two megawatt hours of electricity for every ton of CO2 plucked from fresh air. Scale that up to the 7 to 9 million tons we need to be removing annually in the US by 2030, according to the World Resources Institute, and you’re looking at about 0.5% of the country’s current energy generation. Scale it again to the nearly 1,000 billion tons the IPCC wants to sequester during the 21st century, and we’ll need every kilowatt of solar power available—the cheaper the better.

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Cheap Power Has Hidden Costs

1. Cheap technology doesn’t always mean cheap power. If solar cells are so damn cheap, why do electricity bills keep rising? One problem is that renewables are still just a fraction of the energy mix in most places, about 20% in the US and 30% globally. This recent report from think-tank Energy Innovation identifies volatility in natural gas costs and investments in uneconomic coal plants as big drivers for prices at the meter. Renewables will have to dominate the energy mix before retail prices can fall. 

And then there will always be challenges in moving power from where it’s made, to where it’s used. The Energy Innovation report also fingers disruption from wildfires, and transmission and distribution costs rising faster than inflation.

2. The cheaper the power, the more we’ll waste. Two cases in point: cryptocurrency mining and AI chat bots. Unless we make tough social and political decisions to fairly price carbon and promote climate action, the market will find its own uses for all the cheap green power we can generate. And they may not advance our climate goals one inch.

3. Centuries of petro-history to overcome. Cheap power alone can only get us so far. Even with EVs challenging gas cars, and heat pumps now outselling gas furnaces in the US, there is a monumental legacy of fossil fuel systems to dismantle. Getting 1.5 billion gas cars off the world’s roads will take generations, and such changes can have  enormous social costs. To help smooth the transition, the Center for American Progress suggests replacing annual revenue-sharing payments from coal, oil, and natural gas production with stable, permanent distributions for mining and oil communities, funded by federal oil and gas revenue payments.

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What To Keep An Eye On

1. Retail electricity tariffs. In Iran, gas costs less than 15 cents a gallon. The same is true in Libya and Venezuela. In consequence, the same petrostates have some of the world’s cheapest electricity prices. But nations such as Brazil and Norway, that generate at least 90% of their power using renewables, have electricity prices among the lowest in developed nations. Price shocks from the Ukraine invasion have prompted many nations to rethink their reliance on natural gas, which should (eventually) lead to lower prices.

2. Digging for climate victory. Solar is the poster child for low carbon power at scale but it’s far from an ideal solution worldwide. New geothermal plants, however, might deliver 24/7 power from almost anywhere on dry land. There are a number of startups making progress in digging deep enough holes at a low enough price to compete with the steady march of solar. 

3. Transmission revamps. The grid is suddenly hot news, as utilities scramble to bring solar and wind farms online in the face of aging infrastructure. “Reconductoring” power lines with new cables can almost double their capacity affordably, and with little in the way of red tape.

Top image ©Anthropocene Magazine