Solar power is a simple idea, but it is expensive, difficult to accomplish and possibly environmentally unfriendly. Despite this the solar industry is still growing for 2 reasons:
1) Rapidly lowering cost curves for producing PV cells (converts the solar into another energy form)
2) Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) which are being rapidly adopted by many states. RPS sets standard requirements about how much of the state’s energy portfolio must be obtained from renewable sources (solar, wind, hydro-electric, etc.)
California recently increased their RPS to 33% by the year 2020, and ‘sunny California’ is a prime candidate for solar to achieve their 33%. While solar is very efficient, at about $0.80/watt to produce, it is actually still 5 times more expensive than comparable fossil fuel energy sources. The discrepancy in price arises as the average cost for residential solar installation is between $8,000-$12,000.
Environmentalists have concerns about California increasing the solar portfolio; large tracts of land would become ‘solar fields’ which could cause temperature inversion in the area, also the fields would interfere with habitat. Additionally, solar is actually very water intensive, using water to cool the cells. Currently the US Department of Energy, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of the interior are conducting an environmental impact study to determine the effect solar would have on the environment.
But how can solar be made more affordable? Increasingly both economists and environmentalists are releasing reports signaling that solar needs to be advanced more in order to be cost effective. Perhaps if the cost of remediating the externalities caused by burning fossil fuel was included in the cost of oil and coal, comparatively solar would seem like a good option. Aside from incorporating government incentives in the form of grants and tax breaks, the solar industry needs to continue to evolve before solar begins to out-pace fossil fuels.
--Ashlee Harvey with thanks to this article
