Don't you have this feeling that it is becoming more and more queer to keep repeating the same old, stale sentence, "Renewable energy will never be able to replace fossil fuels"?
From The Telegraph
Global solar dominance in sight as science trumps fossil fuels
Solar power will slowly squeeze the revenues of petro-rentier regimes in
Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. They will have to find a new business
model, or fade into decline
There are already 19 regional markets
around the world in which PV solar panels can match or undercut local
electricity prices without subsidy Photo: Reuters
Solar power has won the global argument. Photovoltaic energy is already so
cheap that it competes with oil, diesel and liquefied natural gas in much of
Asia without subsidies.
Roughly 29pc of electricity capacity added in America last year came from
solar, rising to 100pc even in Massachusetts and Vermont. "More solar
has been installed in the US in the past 18 months than in 30 years,"
says the US Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). California's subsidy
pot is drying up but new solar has hardly missed a beat.
The technology is improving so fast - helped by the US military - that it has achieved a virtous circle. Michael Parker and Flora Chang, at Sanford Bernstein, say we entering a new order of "global energy deflation" that must ineluctably erode the viability of oil, gas and the fossil fuel nexus over time. In the 1980s solar development was stopped in its tracks by the slump in oil prices. By now it has surely crossed the threshold irreversibly.
The ratchet effect of energy deflation may be imperceptible at first since solar makes up just 0.17pc of the world's $5 trillion energy market, or 3pc of its electricity. The trend does not preclude cyclical oil booms along the way. Nor does it obviate the need for shale fracking as a stop-gap, for national security reasons or in Britain's case to curb a shocking current account deficit of 5.4pc of GDP.
But the technology momentum goes only one way. "Eventually solar will become so large that there will be consequences everywhere," they said. This remarkable overthrow of everthing we take for granted in world energy politics may occur within "the better part of a decade".
If the hypothesis is broadly correct, solar will slowly squeeze the revenues of petro-rentier regimes in Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, among others. Many already need oil prices near $100 a barrel to cover their welfare budgets and military spending. They will have to find a new business model, or fade into decline.
