The International Energy Agency (IEA) says the cost per megawatt to build solar plants is below fossil fuels worldwide for the first time.
Public success stories like Elon Musk’s solar and wind battery farm in Australia have helped move public sentiment.
All four IEA scenarios include a mix of renewables as well as nuclear and the world’s remaining fossil fuel plants.
In a new report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says solar is now the cheapest form of electricity for utility companies to build. That’s thanks to risk-reducing financial policies around the world, the agency says, and it applies to locations with both the most favorable policies and the easiest access to financing.
The report underlines how important these policies are to encouraging development of renewables and other environmentally forward technologies.
Carbon Brief (CB) summarizes the annual report with a lot of key details. The World Energy Outlook 2020 “offers four ‘pathways’ to 2040, all of which see a major rise in renewables,” CB says. “The IEA’s main scenario has 43 [percent] more solar output by 2040 than it expected in 2018, partly due to detailed new analysis showing that solar power is 20 [to] 50 [percent] cheaper than thought.”
The calculation depends on financing figures compared with the amount of output for solar projects. That means that at the same time panel technology gets more efficient and prices for basic panels continue to fall, investors are getting better and better financing deals. CB explains:
“Previously the IEA assumed a range of 7 [to] 8 [percent] for all technologies, varying according to each country’s stage of development. Now, the IEA has reviewed the evidence internationally and finds that for solar, the cost of capital is much lower, at 2.6 [to] 5.0 [percent] in Europe and the US, 4.4 [to] 5.5 [percent] in China and 8.8 [to] 10.0 [percent] in India.”
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