Ivanpah in California is one of the world’s largest solar sites Michael Friberg
“WHEN I was a student in the mid-1980s,” says Harry Atwater, “there were only a few megawatts of solar deployed worldwide. Enough to power a supermarket or something. Now, solar technology has a global output of about 500 gigawatts.” That is enough to provide Manhattan with all the electricity it needs about 50 times over. And solar power is only just getting going.
Atwater, who is director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at the California Institute of Technology, has been working on photovoltaic technology for his entire career. He has seen it grow from a novelty found in only a few labs into a giant industry bigger than the flat-screen TV market. Some $131 billion was invested in solar in 2018 alone. But Atwater reckons the advances set to arrive in the next few years could leave that progress in the shade.
Solar power has become so cheap that before long, it will overtake fossil fuels as the world’s preferred source of electricity. And a lot of low-cost solar power will be crucial if we are to have any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
“It’s an incredibly exciting time,” says Jenny Chase, an analyst with Bloomberg NEF, which looks at the costs of clean energy. “I’ve been astonished by the progress solar has made.”
Financial company Lazard releases an annual report into the “levelised” cost of different energy sources – that is, the cost once you take into account the whole life cycle of …
