The trouble is that fossil fuels continue to exert a stranglehold on the global economy. Coal and natural gas are still burned to produce most of the world’s electricity and run most of its factories, spewing carbon dioxide and other climate-warming gases into the atmosphere. And oil still fuels a majority of cars and trucks, as well as almost every single airplane and ship on the planet, further polluting the air. [...]
Part of the problem was that even as the cost of producing electricity from solar PV fell, the value of that electricity—the amount that a utility, for instance, was willing to pay for it to then send via the grid to meet the needs of homes and businesses—decreased even faster. The value diminished because a power source tied to unreliable sunshine quickly becomes a nuisance as it grows. PV panels produce power only when they receive sunlight, so even a passing cloud can sideline them. In California, for example, solar PV quickly rose to meet most of the state’s power needs around lunchtime, when the sun was overhead. But then, adding a new solar panel, no matter how cheap, was worthless because when the state needed power—at dinnertime—the sun was setting. As a result, the gently declining cost of existing silicon solar PV technology was soon overtaken by the swift erosion of the value of the power the panels could produce. [...]
The world may well be bound for the first of the two futures laid out here—and that’s terrifying. But there is cause for optimism: the second future is not science fiction, but rather still an achievable goal. To arrive at it, the world must address the many challenges of realizing solar energy’s sky-high potential—and that will require sharply increasing investment in innovation.
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