As the world goes through massive technological changes and innovations in its power supply systems, it is becoming increasingly clear that electricity from solar power will be the dominant force in the shift to renewable energy technologies. Coal, nuclear, and recently also natural gas are coming under increasing pressure from solar power due to a combination of incessantly decreasing costs for solar power, the fact that even very large solar power plants can be bult at a rapid pace, the high usefulness of solar power in decentralized energy systems and off-grid applications, and the decreasing cost of batteries for energy storage.
Long gone are the days when solar power was growing mainly due to progressive environmental policies in wealthy countries like Germany, Spain, and Italy. The main factor for solar becoming so popular a source for power production is now bare-bones market economy accounting: it often costs less than any other source, thus making it the go-to source for many power companies when they need to add new power to the grid. In many cases, solar power from pv(photovoltaic) systems has now reached or even surpassed cost parity with the cheapest of traditional power production sources. Although the cost reduction curve has slowed somewhat, it is expected to continue on its downwards curve, thanks to ever-increasing economies of scale and further technological innovation. This is true not just in industrialised nations, but also in developing nations.
As traditional fossil fuel corporations struggle to maintain market share in industrialized nations, their toughest prospects are in the global Sunbelt, inhabited by approximately 80% of the world’s population. Many of these countries are developing nations, where the largest future growth in energy consumption is expected. These nations are also often energy-starved nations, who must spend dearly on importing fossil fuels for energy generation. For them, solar power is a true gift and massive opportunity, as it allows them to increase electricity production while simultaneously reducing pollution and saving on fossil fuel imports, thus creating many new, local jobs and providing a future-proof source of abundant, clean, inexpensive energy.
Industrialized nations built their industries and economies on abundant, inexpensive amounts of energy from the burning of oil, coal, and natural gas. For the longest time, it seemed that developing nations would be forced to travel the same route. The problem for them, however, was that they often did not have easy access to the large amounts of cheap fossil fuels that drove the growth process in industrialised nations. Furthermore, if they went through a similar process of industrialisation, they would be suffocating their populations with pollution. Providing the infrastructure and resources for an industrialised economy based on fossil fuels would therefore involve huge economic and environmental costs for many developing nations, as their economies are often already hampered by dependence on expensive fuel imports and their large cities already suffer from serious pollution problems. Expanding traditional power production to keep up with burgeoning populations and rapidly growing economies thus seemed like an impossible task.
And then came, cheap, abundant solar power.
India, with its rapidly-growing population of over 1.3 billion, exemplifies how a developing nation stuck in a vicious cycle of energy shortage now has the opportunity to break that cycle, mainly due to the advent of cheap, solar power. It had to deal with large-scale, severe power outages from 2012 to 2015, primarily during the hottest months, when heavy use of air-conditioning caused a greater demand for power than was available and their large fleet of coal power plants could not keep up with daytime peak power usage. In the 20th Century, they would have had to overbuild coal plants just for the sake of keeping up with peak summer demand, which would have been prohibitively expensive and would have increased their dependency on imported fossil fuels.
To India’s good fortune, this power crisis was occurring at the same time that solar pv had become cost-competitive, with the additional advantage of solar power delivering power during the time of day when additional electricity was needed most. Instead of clinging to outdated ideas and systems, India’s government decided to move forward with renewable energy and, especially, with solar power.
India now has an ambitious plan to have 100 Gigawatts of solar power capacity installed by the year 2022. To put this into perspective, this would be double the entire solar power capacity installed by renewable energy powerhouse Germany since the year 2000. As of now, India has increased its electricity production from solar power for the grid approximately ten-fold since 2015. Furthermore, millions of solar-powered lamps, solar cooking ovens, and solar-powered street lamps have played a major role in combating energy poverty in areas of India where it has not yet been feasible to build an electricity grid. Whether India reaches its very ambitious goal of 100 GW of solar power capacity installed by 2022 remains to be seen, but it has become clear that solar power will be the dominant and most important source of energy there by mid-century and can potentially allow them to achieve high rates of economic growth and poverty-reduction while simultaneously reducing air pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases.
As can be seen in the case of India, the world’s Sunbelt nations have a clear choice ahead of them:
a. Attempt to meet growing power demands with heavily-polluting fossil fuel technologies and risk massive sunk investments or
b. leap-frog fossil fuels and go directly to meeting energy demand by utilizing increasingly inexpensive and technologically advanced renewable energy and clean technologies.
Pure cost analysis and market forces will very likely encourage more and more developing nations in the world’s Sunbelt to strongly shift to energy produced by renewable energy technologies, despite the vested interests of massive international corporations dedicated to fossil fuels. Since 80% of the world’s population resides in the global Sunbelt, this will lead to solar power becoming the critical and dominant force in global electricity production. World leaders would do well to recognize this reality and invest quickly and massively in renewables instead of sinking valuable resources into outdated, dirty, fossil fuel-powered electricity production.
Crossposted at Medium