Like Shale Oil, Solar Power Is Shaking Up Global Energy

April 27th, 2015

Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in NZ.

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Unlike shale oil, however, solar power isn’t an unmitigated environmental disaster.

Via: Reuters:

One by one, Japan is turning off the lights at the giant oil-fired power plants that propelled it to the ranks of the world’s top industrialized nations. With nuclear power in the doldrums after the Fukushima disaster, it’s solar energy that is becoming the alternative.

Solar power is set to become profitable in Japan as early as this quarter, according to the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation (JREF), freeing it from the need for government subsidies and making it the last of the G7 economies where the technology has become economically viable.

Japan is now one of the world’s four largest markets for solar panels and a large number of power plants are coming onstream, including two giant arrays over water in Kato City and a $1.1 billion solar farm being built on a salt field in Okayama, both west of Osaka.

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Wood Mackenzie expects solar costs to fall more as “efficiencies are nowhere near their theoretical maximums.”

Solar is already well-entrenched in Europe and North America, but it is the expected boom in Asia that is lifting it out from its niche.

China’s new anti-pollution policies are making the big difference. Because of these policies, Beijing is seeking alternatives for coal, which makes up almost two-thirds of its energy consumption.

China’s 2014 solar capacity was 26.52 gigawatt (GW), less than 2 percent of its total capacity of 1,360 GW.

But the government wants to add 17.8 GW of solar power this year and added 5 GW in the first quarter alone, with plans to to boost capacity to 100 GW by 2020.

Posted in Economy, Energy, Environment, Technology | Top Of Page

One Response to “Like Shale Oil, Solar Power Is Shaking Up Global Energy”

  1. soothing hex says:
    May 4, 2015 at 9:14 am

    My projects don’t include PV panels so far. One reason is that the production process is very high tech. (and we all know about the inferiority-industrial complex issue.)

    + it seems a good part of it is done in China with environmental / health issues. If a massive shift towards PV panels happened, I suppose this would only get worse. Greener PV panels must be available though.

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