Whether or not the world has all of the clean energy technologies it needs to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions is an important ongoing debate among the climate policy community. Buoyed by steep cost reductions for wind and solar power technologies during the past decade, proponents argue political will is the major factor holding clean energy back from dominating the global energy market. Critics counter that even with recent cost reductions clean energy still isn’t realistically competitive with fossil fuels everywhere without the help of unsustainable subsidies and contentious government mandates.
The debate over whether clean energy is ready for global primetime has long-lasting policy impacts. Proponents often advocate for subsidies, mandates, and carbon prices that directly boost the deployment of today’s clean energy technologies. Critics often argue for a more comprehensive innovation strategy aimed at developing cheaper, better clean energy technologies, including more research, development and deployment (RD&D) and subsidy reform. And with limited or declining public support for climate and clean energy policy, this tug-of-war plays out in government budgets, advocacy campaigns, and international climate negotiations. For example, the world invests $254 billion in clean energy finance and deployment, but only $21 billion in clean energy RD&D.
Is clean energy poised for global scale-up, modest deployment, or is more innovation needed? How should U.S. policy reflect clean energy’s technological readiness?
This is a nonsensical debate started by people who want to slow down Clean Energy because they think that this transformation is so controllable by policy. The biggest mistake the… Read more »
The premise that renewable energy is somehow not ready shows little knowledge of the US or global markets. The U.S. installed 1,330 MW of solar PV in first months of… Read more »
It’s important that we continue to ask tough questions about development of cleantech and what is needed to enable more of it. But asking if we have enough innovative new… Read more »
It’s certainly typical of Jigar to revert to ad hominem attacks rather than engage in a real policy debate. I’ll take the high road. For those that want to truly… Read more »
Matthew, I agree with your statement that “many believe if we continue down the existing technology path….we’ll magically get all of the way to deep decarbonization.” As you have pointed… Read more »
You cover a lot of ground so I will focus on impact of scale and volume on costs. Some things benefit by increases in size, to a point. So typically… Read more »
Clean energy simply isn’t competitive, if it was, there would be no RPS, ITC or other subsidies and mandates. Nor can we count on “climbing the learning curve,” right now… Read more »
Please people. As we are supposed to be “experts”, why can we not look at the middle path. The strategy of “all of the above” will only work if we… Read more »
It is abundantly clear that clean energy is not going to dominate the energy supply chain now. Whether clean energy will dominate should be determined by cost effectiveness, not political… Read more »
Matt and Dawn have done a persuasive job here of trumping Jigar’s vexed arguments. I’d like to add a few more points. First, there is some not uncommon confusion here… Read more »
Innovation is not the problem. Renewables are clearly cheaper than fossil fuels when you take the external costs of fossil fuels into account. Not taking those external costs into account… Read more »
It is odd to me that people are suggesting that learning curves are not predictive. They have a great track record in solar and wind and now it appears they… Read more »