Thanks to better technology, panel design, and scale manufacturing, solar panels are becoming more affordable. In the last decade alone, their price per unit of generated energy has dropped by 85%, so many reports consider solar to be the cheapest energy ever.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), two-thirds of all wind, solar, and other renewable energy projects coming online by 2020 will be cheaper than the cheapest new fossil-fuel plants. fuel. That’s double the corresponding share for 2019.

This trend will only continue in the future, with the cost of renewables expected to drop significantly.

“The global weighted average cost of newly commissioned solar photovoltaics (PV), onshore and offshore wind power projects in 2021 has fallen. This is despite rising commodity prices and renewables equipment in 2021 because there is a significant lag before this cost increase is reflected in the total cost of the installed project; and significant performance improvement in 2021 increases the capacity factors , especially in onshore winds,” wrote the authors IRENA’s Renewable Electricity Generation Costs in 2021 report.

Compared to 2019, the cost of onshore wind fell by 13%, offshore wind decreased by 9%, and solar photovoltaics projects saw a 7% reduction in costs. New utility-scale solar PV projects commissioned in 2021 fell another 13% year-on-year, from USD 0.055/kWh to USD 0.048/kWh.

IRENA estimates that, given the current high energy prices, renewable power added in 2021 will save at least $55 billion from global energy production costs by 2022.

These findings are echoed in another report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA), known as the World Energy Outlook 2020, which concludes that “solar power is now the cheapest electricity in history”.

According to the IEA, PV technology is cheaper than coal and gas in most countries. In fact, the plunge in solar costs caught even the report’s authors by surprise, leading them to revise some of their earliest predictions.

The IEA presents four paths or scenarios of what the world’s energy generation will look like in 2040, all of which predict a large increase in renewables. The current most likely scenario, which is less optimistic, has 43% more solar output in 2040 than the IEA predicted earlier in 2018.

These advances are naturally good news, but they still fall short of the path to preventing the greatest threat to human existence: climate change.

Despite the decline in coal and other fossil fuels, the IEA and other research institutions are careful to declare that we have reached the peak of global oil use. In addition, the demand for gas is expected to increase by 30% by 2040, although the war in Ukraine has certainly changed this dynamic, at least in Europe.

We are not out of the woods yet, as far as our dependence on fossil fuels is concerned and more ambitious action is required of us. Keeping global warming below 1.5°C by achieving global net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 will involve, among other things, individual behavioral changes, such as working from home more less than three days a week and less meat consumption.

“Renewables are the cheapest form of power today,” said IRENA director-general Francesco La Camera. “Renewable power is freeing economies from volatile fossil fuel prices and imports, reducing energy costs and improving market stability – even more so if the current energy crunch continues,” he said. added.

As world leaders prepare for COP27 in Egypt in November, governments would be well-advised to take advantage of cheaper renewable energy and the vulnerabilities exposed by the energy crisis to accelerate their commitments and turn their climate promises into concrete action.