Right in the Solar Plexus

While the United States still trails Japan, Italy, China and Germany in the absolute gigawatt output of its aggregate solar power generating capacity, the good news is that those are the only countries that produce more solar-generated electricity than we do. And according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the cost of “going solar” for a typical household has dropped from $90,000 in 1998 to less than $30,000 today, and the price keeps falling. The cost of solar panels from China (which has prioritized this form of energy-generation) is expected to fall from a dollar-per-watt-capacity today to as low as $0.42 in two or three years.

Counter-intuitively for most of us, electricity-generating solar panels work better in the cold than they do in hotter climates. Heat is the by-product in warmer climates, so if the sun is used directly to heat water, it works best in hot climates, but the opposite is true for electrical power units. We still have weakness in storage – our battery capacity is still bulky, costly and relatively inefficient – but that is one of the fields where both government and private sector dollars are pouring in to find the next generations of batteries. Expect solid solutions over the coming years.

Venture capital funding of solar-based research and development has doubled in one year according to MotherJones.com (November 10^th). Further, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, 74% of the new electrical power generation capacity installed in the first quarter of this year was solar! By comparison, new natural gas power-generation only accounted for 4% of that expansion.

While the cost per kilowatt from solar is still more expensive than ordinary from-the-grid power, taking the price of individual physical systems into consideration, with tax breaks, price drops and technology breakthroughs, we can expect solar to increase the commercial viability exponentially over the next few years.

With cyber security becoming increasingly the big issue, electrical power grids seem increasingly vulnerable to being attacked and shut down by malevolent forces overseas, from hostile governments to criminals with all kinds of reasons to want power off. Natural disasters can also play hob with centralized power generation as the tsunami devastation of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster illustrates. Neighborhood-level power generation through very small and radiation-safe cold-fusion power-generating facilities could also someday become feasible in the future, further decreasing reliance on central power-generation, which is particularly susceptible to such cyber-hacking. But the current big home run to sidestep these hacking risks remains solar.

Even in the United States, however, there are those who oppose benefits for solar panel households – from tax credits to requiring local utilities to buy excess electricity (“net-metering”) from homeowners with solar panels on their roofs – claiming that they unfairly place the burden of this new solar initiative on the backs of the vast majority of taxpayers/power consumers.

Utilities have become particularly hostile to this energy trend: “[U]tilities argue that net metering enables solar customers to benefit from a reliable electric grid without paying for its use. ‘It's not about lost revenue . . . We want to make sure the grid is maintained, that it can be enhanced, and that cost shifting does not occur,’ said David Owens, executive vice president of business operations at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a Washington, D.C.-based association that represents investor-owned utilities.” National Geographic, December 24, 2013. 

Efforts have been raised in many state legislatures to make solar users pay special fees to support the grid for everyone else. Such efforts have been successful in some venues, but there is a particular irony to states where abundant new fossil fuel extraction has created particularly lucrative new economies. For example, Oklahoma passed a law in April allowing a solar (and wind power) “surcharge” from utilities under the following analysis: “Oklahoma’s new law states that it is aiming to prevent the majority of utility customers from ‘subsidizing’ those with solar panels on their homes who offset the cost of electricity and grid maintenance costs by generating their own power and feeding it onto the grid and receiving credit for the power they generate.” ClimateCentral.org, April 22^nd. Net metering? Not in Oklahoma.

In the end, the sudden surge in American fossil fuel extraction, the drop in the price at the pump and the movement towards the United States’ becoming the number one generator of fossil fuel on earth are taking some of the “perception of necessity” out of the press for alternative energy. Climate deniers and those who are willing to let industry pollute without paying for the obvious social consequences – including an extreme degradation in our quality of life and our very health – see little or no need to encourage clean energy these days.

As storms devastate our lands, droughts parch our farms, fires rage even as elsewhere floods take their toll, it is indeed strange how so many priorities have changed. But sooner or later, whether it becomes about costs again or simply our overall economic and physical health, we will pay the price if we do not begin to deal with the issues surrounding reliance on fossil fuels – now!

I’m Peter Dekom, and we have a chance to create tons of jobs and solves mega-tons of problems with an acceleration of implementation of clean power alternatives.