Solen räddar världen

 

In one of his final budgets, President Jimmy Carter proposed funding to help America get 20 percent of its energy from the sun by 2000. 

But then his successor, Ronald Reagan, shut down that process, going so far as to rip the solar panels off the White House roof. 

The real difference between now and the 1980s is price. Back then, the solar cell capable of converting the sun’s energy into power was a relatively new invention, found mainly in calculators and wristwatches. 

Two decades later, wise policies in places like Germany and China touched off an engineering miracle that improved the technology and has lowered the cost of solar panels 99 percent since 1980. 

For the past three or four years we’ve lived on a planet where the cheapest way to generate energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.

Last year almost 96 percent of new electricity generation globally came from sun and wind technologies and batteries. 

India, where coal-fired power declined 3 percent in the first half of the year, announced on Monday that it had met its 2030 goal of providing half its electric capacity from renewables five years early. 

China installed almost 100 solar panels a second in May, smashing its record. 

Even Poland, the heart of the European lignite belt, got more of its electricity from renewables in May than from coal.

Bill McKibben New York Times 18 July 2025

Mr. McKibben is the author of the forthcoming book “Here Comes the Sun” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/opinion/clean-energy-solar-wind-power.html

 “Here Comes the Sun” 

https://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Sun-Climate-Civilization/dp/1324106239

The Economist: Solar Power An energy-rich future is within reach

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-economist-solar-power-energy-rich.html

Technology and markets are already solving the climate problem

”A global, irreversible, solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies,” concluded a recent paper by the World Bank and Europe’s leading universities.

China’s carbon emissions have either peaked already or will do this winter, seven years ahead of schedule. 

They may plateau for a year or two but will then go into exponential decline for mechanical and unstoppable reasons.

The country’s target of net zero by 2060 is likely to be achieved a decade earlier than previously assumed, and perhaps earlier than in Europe. 

This is a remarkable turn of events.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 27 November 2023

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/12/we-no-longer-need-cop-circus-technology.html