{"id":33036,"date":"2018-04-02T08:43:55","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T13:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33036"},"modified":"2018-04-02T08:44:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T13:44:11","slug":"stunning-drops-in-solar-wind-costs-mean-economic-case-for-coal-gas-is-crumbling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33036","title":{"rendered":"Stunning drops in solar, wind costs mean economic case for coal, gas is \u2018crumbling\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stunning drops in solar, wind costs mean economic case for coal, gas is \u2018crumbling\u2019<\/a><\/h3>\n

Things are only going to get tougher for gas and coal compared to renewables.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Solar<\/picture><\/div>
SOLAR POWER PRICES ARE DROPPING AT RECORD RATES. CREDIT: ACERA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Prices for solar, wind, and battery storage are dropping so rapidly that renewables are increasingly squeezing out all forms of fossil fuel power, including natural gas.<\/p>\n

The cost of new solar plants dropped 20 percent over the past 12 months, while onshore wind prices dropped 12 percent, according to the latest Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report<\/a>. Since 2010, the prices for lithium-ion batteries \u2014 crucial to energy storage \u2014 have plummeted a stunning 79 percent (see chart).<\/p>\n

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\"Lithium-ion<\/picture><\/div>
LITHIUM-ION BATTERY PRICES HAVE PLUMMETED SINCE 2010 AND ARE PROJECTED TO KEEP DROPPING.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe economic case for building new coal and gas capacity is crumbling,\u201d as BNEF\u2019s chief of\u00a0energy economics, Elena Giannakopoulou, told<\/a> Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

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At the same time, solar and wind plants \u2014 which are increasingly being built with battery storage \u2014\u00a0are eating into the utilization of existing coal and gas plants, making them far less profitable. For instance, the super-efficient combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants that have been popular in recent decades, were designed to be used at full power between 60 percent and 90 percent of the time.<\/p>\n

But their actual utilization rate (also called the \u201ccapacity factor\u201d) has been plummeting in recent years, and is now close to a mere 20 percent in countries as diverse as China, Germany, and India (see chart).<\/p>\n

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\"Solar<\/picture><\/div>
SOLAR AND WIND ARE SQUEEZING OUT COAL AND GAS WORLDWIDE.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Arizona regulators \u201crecently refused to endorse plans by three power companies that included more natural-gas facilities,\u201d the\u00a0New York Times reported<\/a>Wednesday. \u201cCommissioners directed them to make greater use of energy storage and plants that produce zero emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stunning drops in solar, wind costs mean economic case for coal, gas is \u2018crumbling\u2019 Things are only going to get tougher for gas and coal compared to renewables. SOLAR POWER PRICES ARE DROPPING AT RECORD RATES. CREDIT: ACERA. Prices for solar, wind, and battery storage are dropping so rapidly that renewables are increasingly squeezing out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19633,19635,349,19634,19632,554,674,1564,16192,884],"class_list":["post-33036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-coal-energy","tag-coals","tag-gas","tag-gas-energy","tag-joe-rommmar","tag-natural-gas","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar-energy","tag-think-progress","tag-wind-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33037,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33036\/revisions\/33037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}