Turning point: solar power now cheaper than wind energy  

RNE has a look at the ever-decreasing cost of renewable energy - Turning point: solar power now cheaper than wind energy.

The BNEF’s accompanying chart, which shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 recently completed projects and/or auctions in places such as China, India, and Brazil suggests that the solar’s steep price drop since 2010 has caught up with wind – which has more or less held steady in the recent past.

“Solar investment has gone from nothing—literally nothing—like five years ago to quite a lot,” said Ethan Zindler, head of BNEF’s US policy analysis, who attributes “a huge part” of this to China, which has not only been rapidly expanding its own solar capacity but actively promoting and/or financing other countries to do the same. As the biggest manufacturer of solar panels in the world, there is a lot at stake in how fast solar capacity is installed beyond China’s own borders.

Heralding the new age of solar, BNEF’s colorful chairman Michael Liebreich declared, “Renewables are robustly entering the era of undercutting” fossil fuel prices. He said he was basing his statement on numerous solar projects completed in 2016 with more to follow in 2017. When the data are tallied for the year, it’s likely that the total solar PV capacity added globally in 2016 will exceed that of wind for the first time. The latest BNEF projections call for 70 GW of newly installed solar compared to 59 GW of wind for 2016. What is stunning about these figures is that both are significant, but solar appears to have overtaken wind. ...

The BNEF’s Liebreich acknowledges that, “… the overall shift to clean energy can be more expensive in wealthier nations, where electricity demand is flat or falling and new solar must compete with existing billion-dollar coal and gas plants,” adding, “But in countries that are adding new electricity capacity as quickly as possible, renewable energy will beat any other technology in most of the world without subsidies.”