With affordable wind and solar, the energy revolution is here

We are living through an energy revolution that will be every bit as life altering as the fossil-fuel revolution 150 years ago.

This is driven primarily by plummeting prices of renewable energy: Solar energy has declined 90 percent in the past decade, while wind has declined 70 percent. This means wind and solar are now our cheapest energy sources.

When I talk about energy, people are shocked and skeptical of this fact. So I show them what’s happening in Texas. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, 90 percent of the energy being connected to the grid over the next six years will be solar (101 GW), wind (22 GW), and batteries (47 GW); the remaining 10 percent will be natural gas (18 GW).

The people building this energy are not Birkenstock-wearing hippies, but people whose primary mission is to make money. They are building wind and solar energy because it is the cheapest energy source.

In 2021, there were days when wind contributed more than 50 percent of Texas’ electricity. Given the continuing growth in renewable energy, we can expect that, within a few years, there will be days when 100 percent of Texas’ electricity is coming from renewable energy sources.

I also like to show data proving that states with more renewables do not have more expensive energy, nor does adding renewables to a state’s energy grid increase the cost of energy.

Some people ask whether wind and solar are only cheap due to subsidies. Certainly, wind and solar receive help from the government. This has been instrumental in driving early adoption that spurred the innovation that created the price declines we are now seeing. But those subsidies have been rapidly dropping.

And, of course, oil and gas also get enormous subsidies. Some are tax breaks, while others are provided by you and me: Fossil fuels change the climate and poison our air, which impose enormous costs. Because the energy producers do not pay these costs — society does — these can be correctly thought of as subsidies.

There are other important, but even less obvious, external costs associated with fossil fuels. As commodities whose price is set on the world market, international politics can cause the price to whipsaw. We are living through an oil price spike associated with the invasion of Ukraine.

And uncertainty is an economic killer. Given that no one has any idea how long we’ll be paying this Putin tax, how can businesses and individuals plan for the future? The price of renewable energy is far more predictable, another way that renewable energy is superior to fossil fuels.

A common objection people make to solar and wind energy is that they are intermittent. Let me be clear: Experts have spent the better part of the last decade showing how to build a reliable energy system primarily based on intermittent energy sources.

The key, as described in numerous reports and peer-reviewed publications, is to build a grid that contains mainly wind and solar energy, but with enough dispatchable energy to counterbalance their intermittency. Dispatchable energy are those sources that can be turned on and off, as needed, including nuclear, geothermal, hydroelectric, natural gas with carbon capture or long-term storage.

The strategy is to use your cheapest energy, wind and solar, when available because the cost of producing an additional unit of energy is zero. When not enough free energy is available, then use your more expensive dispatchable energy sources.

Peer-reviewed research has shown this approach is capable of producing reliable, low-cost energy that avoids the impacts of climate change, air pollution and economically price swings.

Sadly, some policymakers are trying to push us backward. Using the high prices of gasoline as an excuse, they are calling on us to double down on fossil fuels. This is a terrible idea, akin to your heroin dealer telling you the solution to your heroin problem is more heroin.

While efforts to increase shortterm production in some situations may make sense, building new infrastructure like pipelines can lock us into a noncompetitive energy source for decades. Even if we succeed at raising production and lowering the price of gasoline, fossil fuels will never again be our cheapest energy source and we will remain vulnerable to all the other problems they bring, like climate change and air pollution.

Instead of looking backward, the time is now to embark on the pathway to eliminating fossil fuels. Once we get there, we’ll realize that it’s a better world.