Imagine if this is actually true about renewables energy generation
We don’t say that this is true, nor that it isn’t. Rather, just consider what also is true if this is:
Huge and ongoing falls in the cost of renewable energy mean that it could replace fossil fuels for global electricity generation by 2035 and allow all energy production to emit zero carbon by 2050, according to a report.
The fossil fuel industry will be unable to compete with cheap wind and solar power, while millions of people in developing countries will have access for the first time to affordable and domestically produced electricity, according to the think tank Carbon Tracker.
The cost of solar power has fallen by an average of 18 per cent and wind power by 9 per cent a year since 2010, the report said.
As with the point that Bjorn Lomborg was making in the 1990s. Solar had been falling in cost by 20% a year, was likely to continue doing so and if it did then by the 2020s it would be the technology of choice purely upon cost grounds. There would still be minor issues over intermittency, to be sure, but the basic climate change problem would be solved. If, of course, there is that problem that needs to be solved.
Which does mean that if this report is true then the climate change problem is solved. Solved by the invention of cheaper than fossil fuels energy generation and all we need do is wait. As the current generation of installations wears out they will naturally be replaced by the lower cost alternative.
That is, we’re done. No need to abolish capitalism, uproot the global economic system, build back green or better. The process desired is already baked into the price system. Of course, for some, that non-uprooting and non-abolishing will be a missed chance but for the rest of us we can now proceed to dealing with some other problem on our little list.
The only reason this isn’t true is that the original insistence, that renewables are now and will be cheaper than fossil fuels, is incorrect.
If renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels then we’ve already solved climate change. So, why is everyone still shouting about it all?