Will Solar Hit Grid Price Parity With Coal Sooner Than We Think?

Paul Krugman at the NYT says yes, we will, and very soon. He argues that the only reason we aren't gearing up to shift our power base away from the heavy polluting coal and gas is simply a case of big polluters corporate influence in politics in the USA. He looks at fracking, the highly controversial method of extracting fossil fuels via the injection of high-pressure fluid deep underground, and explains that this method is simply an absurd option when compared with solar.

In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal. 

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach?

A similar situation to America exists in Australia. The conservative powers are attempting to get fracking happening as other coal sources max out, while the potential of solar gets ignored. Will the recently approved carbon tax give solar a bump into mainstream base-load power, will it even need to?