Much of what has been spent fighting climate change has been wasted

As we’ve pointed out before if solar power really does become cheaper than fossil fuel powered electricity then we’ll all quite naturally switch and climate change will be dealt with. there is, after all, plenty of insolation out there to power an industrial society. Yes, problems with intermittency and all that but it’s all manageable if there’s enough cheap electricity to start with.

This being a point that Bjorn Lomborg was making 20 years ago of course. Solar then had been declining by 20% a year in price for some decades. That price reduction has continued these past two decades. It looks like it will continue again:

An Oxford-based solar technology firm hopes by the end of the year to begin manufacturing the world’s most efficient solar panels, and become the first to sell them to the public within the next year.

Oxford PV claims that the next-generation solar panels will be able to generate almost a third more electricity than traditional silicon-based solar panels by coating the panels with a thin layer of a crystal material called perovskite.

Start by agreeing to believe, for the same of argument, the climate change claims. There’s a problem, we’re causing it, something must be done and that something is non-fossil fuel energy generation. OK.

So, what do we want to do? Enforce the installation, at significant scale, of technologies we know are inefficient and expensive compared to next year’s? Oh, and make ourselves and everyone else poorer at the same time through having to pay the subsidies. Or rather wait until the effective and efficient technology is available and then gawp in wonder as everyone voluntarily installs it?

To frame the question that way - correctly - is to show that all that money spent on expanding solar installations, rather than research, has been wasted so far. But then some of us have been saying this for some time now.