Skip to footer

Solar and wind energy to be cost competitive by 2025, report finds

Wind and solar electricity will become cost competitive, without the help of federal subsidies, by 2025, according to a new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

|
Jaime Henry-White/AP/File
Solar panels cover cars parked in a lot nearby Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta.
  • By Joao Peixe Guest blogger

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NERL) has released a study, called ‘Beyond Renewable Portfolio Standards: An Assessment of Regional Supply and Demand Conditions Affecting the Future of Renewable Energy in the West’, which predicts that wind and solar electricity generation installations will become cost-competitive, without the help of federal subsidies, by 2025.

Several states in the western US have set up standard requirements needed for developing a renewable portfolio, which will be the primary drivers of any large scale expansions in wind, solar, and geothermal power generation capacity.

David Hurlbut, the senior analyst at the NREL, said that “the electric generation portfolio of the future could be both cost effective and diverse. If renewable and natural gas cost about the same per kilowatt-hour delivered, then value to customers becomes a matter of finding the right mix. (Related article: Wind Energy Spreading Beyond Europe)

Renewable energy development, to date, has mostly been in response to state mandates. What this study does is look at where the most cost-effective yet untapped resources are likely to be when the last of these mandates culminates in 2025, and what it might cost to connect them to the best-matched population centers.” 

The study found that geothermal energy will likely remain more expensive than other forms of electricity generation per megawatt hour, but that solar and wind will become cost competitive once all renewable energy mandates are in place. (Related article: Good News for Wind Turbine Manufacturers)

In 2025, New Mexico and Wyoming will have the greatest untapped wind power potential, with New Mexico benefitting from the Californian and Arizonan markets as well. Montana is also mentioned as a state with great wind potential for the future, able to link to growing demand from markets in the Pacific Northwest.

Solar power will be popular in California, Arizona, and Nevada, where solar resources are at their best.

Original source: http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Solar-and-Wind-Energy-to-be-Cost-Competitive-by-2025.html

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Solar and wind energy to be cost competitive by 2025, report finds
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0830/Solar-and-wind-energy-to-be-cost-competitive-by-2025-report-finds
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe