Much has been made recently (including this previous solar blog entry) about the cost of oil and in particular, the cost of uncertainty.
I read this article today about fading solar power market demand in 2011 due to renewable energy subsidies abating in Germany and Italy. While I agree with most of the article, it fails to mention that the cost of solar has declined dramatically in the past three years, and that returns on investments, as created by older subsidy levels, are simply no longer required to produce viable solar power projects.
Most solar blogs will concede that the reduced subsidy level will create a softer demand market. I am not ready to do that. I think that the continuous march towards renewables, which remains unabated, will get even more active as the cost continues to reduce to where there is grid-parity pricing with other sources of power. In the end, its more about the pocketbook, although politicians like to cloak it in the “clean green machine”. Climate change is a worth cause yet until the carbon credits market really juices up the value of such credits, not as many people pay attention to that part of the investment decision as we’d like.
I don’t really like to “greenwash” what I do. Even my dog knows that solar is green by now, yet we all continue to do it. I guess once renewables take over a majority of energy generation, then we can even drop the word “renewable”. Perhaps then we’ll accept to simply label oil and coal as “dirty sources”, and aid them to continue their journey towards irrelevance on our globe.
Sass