Trump promotes coal, other countries turn to cheap sun power
MARIA ELENA, Chile: On the solar farms of the Atacama Desert, the workers dress like astronauts. They wear bodysuits and wraparound sunglasses, with thick canvas headscarves to shield them from the radiation.
The sun is so intense and the air so dry that seemingly nothing survives. Across vast, rocky wastes blanched of colou
r, there are no cactuses or other visible signs of life. It is Mars, with better cellphone reception.
It is also the world’s best place to produce solar energy, with the most potent sun power on the planet.
So powerful, in fact, that something extraordinary happened last year when the Chilean government invited utility companies to bid on public contracts. Solar producers dominated the auction, offering to supply electricity at about half the cost of coal-fired plants.
It wasn’t because of a government subsidy for alternative energy. In Chile and a growing list of nations, the price of solar energy has fallen so much that it is increasingly beating out conventional sources of power. Industry experts and government regulators hail this moment as a turning point in the history of human electricity-making.
“This is the beginning of a trend that will only accelerate,” said Chilean Energy Minister Andrés Rebolledo. “We’re talking about an infinite fuel source.”
President Trump ordered US regulators this week to reverse Obama- era policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and he has promised to “bring back” the US coal industry. But construction of coal-fired power plants dropped 62 per cent over the past year worldwide, according to a survey by the Sierra Club and other activist groups. In China last year, the number of new permits for coal-fired plants fell by 85 per cent.
More worldwide generating capacity is being added from clean sources than coal and natural gas combined, according to a December report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which closely tracks investment in renewable energy.
An investor in Chile wanting to build a hydroelectric dam or coal-fired plant potentially faces years of costly political battles and fierce resistance from nearby communities. In contrast, a solar company can lay out acres of automated sun-tracking panels across an isolated stretch of desert and have them firing quiet, clean electricity in less than a year, with no worries about fluctuating fuel prices or droughts. The sunlight is free and shows up for work on time, every morning.
Long dependent on energy imports, Chilean officials now envision their country turning into a “solar Saudi Arabia.” Chile’s solar energy production has increased sixfold since 2014, and last year it was the topscoring clean- energy producer in the Americas, and second in the world to China, according to the Bloomberg rankings. (China is the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases but also the leading investor in renewable energy.)
Driving the global shift to cheap sun power is a dramatic decline in the cost of the photovoltaic ( PV) panels that can be used to create giant desert solar farms or rooftop home installations. China
This is the beginning of a trend that will only accelerate. We’re talking about an infinite fuel source. Minister Andrés Rebolledo, Chilean Energy Minister
produces more than two-thirds of the world’s PV panels, and their price has fallen more than 80 per cent since 2008.
If the trend does indeed symbolise a turning point, that doesn’t mean every country is on board with the global greenenergy conversion.
Trump’s executive order this week rolled back restrictions on the coal industry and struck down a slew of other measures intended to limit carbon emissions, including requirements that federal officials take climate change into account when making regulatory decisions.
Electricity production is the largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions, and more than two-thirds is generated from fossil-fuel sources, according to the most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency. The United States last year pledged with other members of the Group of 7 nations to phase out subsidies for oil, gas and coal by 2025.
But meeting such goals remains politically contentious in the United States, with an existing network of conventional power plants and jobs that depend on them. Nations such as Chile can take a different path.
Chile is adding solar plants because they fulfill the country’s goal of 60 per cent clean energy by the year 2035. But mostly it is adding them because no other energy source can compete with the awesome sun power of the Atacama Desert.
Unlike many of South America’s other major countries, Chile has virtually no oil or gas deposits. With a heavy dependence on imported fuel, Chileans have been paying some of the highest electricity rates in the region, but prices are falling as renewable sources come online.
The Atacama is well-suited to solar energy production for the same reasons astronomers put high-powered telescopes in northern Chile for the clearest possible Earth-based views of the cosmos.
In nations such as Japan and Germany, which are some of the world leaders in solarenergy production, the sun’s rays are partly diffused by water molecules floating in the air, even on days when it isn’t cloudy.
But in the super- dry Atacama, where it virtually never rains, the photons beam straight down. Put a solar panel beneath them, and it’s like plugging into the sun.