A crystal of hope: New solar technology

"Like most people I know I've been struggling to find hope since Trump's election. But one thing, more than anything else so far, has kept my nose above the waters of hopelessness."

By Stephen Luntz

 Excerpt:

"It's hard to know just how cheap perovskite cells could be, but the answer almost certainly is very cheap indeed. If some of the work these teams are promoting can be brought to fruition we are likely to see solar-produced electricity sold profitably for prices of US$20-$40 per MWh everywhere outside of northern Europe, Antarctica and a few bits of North America. ......

This would completely throw energy predictions out. The International Energy Agency has recently brought forward the date when they think coal consumption will peak to 2020, but they still expect the downslope to be relatively gradual. It may seem arrogant of me to tell the experts they are wrong, but given that the IEA has been underpredicting the growth of solar by orders of magnitude for at least 15 years, I don't feel ridiculous doing so.

It seems to me that when solar can be installed at a price coal can't match, this will actually happen, and coal plants will close at a staggering rate. I can't see any reason why there will be any coal plants operating by 2030 outside a few countries — notably Poland — that combine low sunlight with abundant local coal."

Go to the whole article on the Australian Greens site.