Beyond Paris - Sunrise in America - 500,000 jobs in Spain

Zero Emission Think Tank - The news is spreading fast with the US, China and Europe already having ratified the Paris world climate treaty. But what is next? Start doing.

The fastest growing source of new energy

We are sitting in a conference hall with many, many attendees, listening to the experts about the fastest growing source of new energy. With an anticipated 12 Gigawatts installed this year, this fastest source of new energy in the US is?

Solar!

While new coal plants produce power for about 7-10 cents according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (1), solar energy in the US is at 3-6 cents today. Solar is outperforming new conventional power. Sunrise in America!

Replacing Coal

Across the US there are about 78 Gigawatts of old coal plants, scheduled to be retired within the next 10 years. They will likely be replaced by cheap renewables. It`s wind and solar.

However, even with an anticipated 100+GW more renewables, wind power would increase from 5% today to 10%, and, solar power from 1% today to 5% (2).

That`s not enough. There is more than 80% missing. And there is a lot of discussion at the conference, how to get to the next level.

50% solar

For solar it could be homes. If all homes in the US had solar panels installed, solar energy would produce about 50% of the US electricity (2). And rooftop-solar is cheap. Very cheap.

The cheapest source of energy in the world: Rooftop Solar

Zero Emission Think Tank has evaluated roof-top Solar in Spain. The results also apply to the US. If you have a 4kW solar installation with 25% autoconsumption, it only takes a feed-in tariff of 5 cents to achieve a payback time of 10 years. Remarkably, 5 cents is about the whole sales price for power in Spain, and, if you were to install solar PV on all 10 million buildings in Spain, and, on a further 3 million industrial buildings, Spain could have 500,000 jobs for 10 years without any subsidies. Rather, it is a win-win-win. The homeowner profits with cheap power after the payback time. The grid operator profits, obtaining peak power at a cheap 5 cents, reselling higher. And, last not least, society profits from 500,000 new jobs! It only takes a feed-in tariff for rooftop solar in Spain. Let the sun shine in!

And if you run economics for 30 years, you are down to 1.7 cents for rooftop solar. We at Zero Emission Think Tank therefore refer to “extremely cheap renewables”(1)!

And, if you look at the world solar map, the solar insulation for Madrid in Spain is green, the rest of the world is yellow and orange!!!

Dr. Ingo Stuckmann, Director, Zero Emission Think Tank

(1) Paris COP21- Self Seller: extremely cheap renewables! / by Zero Emission Think Tank

(2) Discussions at recent SPI Solar Power International and AWEA Wind Energy Finance conferences.

(3) Paris COP21 - a self seller: extremely cheap renewables! 

"Sunrise in America"