Technology

A core irony of climate change is that markets incentivized the wide-scale burning of fossil fuels beginning in the Industrial Revolution, creating the mess humanity is mired in, and now those markets are driving the Green Revolution that will help fix it. Coal, oil, and gas are commodities whose prices fluctuate. As natural resources that humans pull from the ground, there’s really no improving on them — engineers can’t engineer new versions of coal.

By contrast, solar panels, wind turbines, and appliances like induction stoves only get better — more efficient and cheaper — with time. Energy experts believe solar power, the price of which fell 90 percent between 2010 and 2020, will continue to proliferate across the landscape. (Last year, the United States added three times as much solar capacity as natural gas.) Heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces in the U.S., due in part to government incentives. Last year, Maine announced it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule, in part thanks to state rebates.

[T]he technology is more powerful than ever, with a single cell capable of producing over 400 watts. And get this: 97% of them do exactly that — another huge step up from just four years ago, when most panels performed below that mark, according to a marketplace report by EnergySage.

This colossal evolution of solar power is not just a cool fact. It has also fueled the adoption of solar energy on an unprecedented scale and had real impacts on the financial benefits of switching residential and commercial fuse boxes over to solar.

For example, the lifetime energy savings after installing rooftop panels can now be as high as $33,000, Forbes reported.

[W}hen the owner of one of those leased parcels decided to work with Acciona Energia to help site its High Point wind and solar farm, Gerlach initially was not enthusiastic.

“The thought of taking productive farm ground out of production with solar panels was not, in my personal opinion, ideal,” he said.

But Gerlach was determined to make the best of the situation.

Ultimately, that meant a win-win arrangement, where Acciona pays him to manage vegetation around the 100 MW array of solar panels that went online in early 2024. Gerlach does that with a herd of 500 sheep.

“We don’t own the land, we don’t get a say — that’s landowners’ rights, and I’m very pro that,” Gerlach recounted. ​“In U.S. agriculture, the biggest thing that gets farmers in trouble is saying ​‘that’s how we’ve always done it so that’s what we’re going to do.’ Renewable energy is probably not going anywhere, whether you’re for or against it, it’s coming, it’s what’s happening. As an agriculture producer, we’re going to adapt with it.”

“Solar does continue to surprise us,” said Gregory Nemet, who wrote How Solar Energy Became Cheap, in an email. “It seems like it shouldn’t at this point. It’s been roughly 30 percent growth each year for 30 years. And costs continue to fall so new users — and new uses — continue to emerge.”

In the past year, solar power has experienced Brobdingnagian growth, even by solar standards. According to a new report from Ember, an energy think tank, the world is on track to install 29 percent more solar energy capacity this year — a total of 593 gigawatts — compared to last year, which was already a record year. This is more than one-quarter of the electricity produced by every operating coal plant in the world combined. In 2020, the whole world had installed just 760 GW of solar in total.

Wholesale prices swing wildly each hour of the day, and even more so as a larger share of electricity flows from wind and solar installations. Because the generation costs of wind or solar farms are negligible, market prices will be near zero when there is enough renewable power to cover most of a region’s electricity demand.

Electricity market dynamics get weirder when renewable-energy producers don’t have an incentive to stop feeding power into the grid, usually because of government subsidies. Then grids can be flooded with excess power, pushing prices into negative territory.

Van Diesen said he’s made 30 euros, equivalent to around $34, over the past five months charging his car, enough to cover the service fee from his power supplier, a Norwegian company called Tibber.

“I’m charging the car for free,” said van Diesen, who is part of a group of clean-energy enthusiasts in the Netherlands who call themselves green nerds. “To me it’s also like a hobby and a game—how far can I go?”

Doing laundry in the evening? The electricity could be free a few hours later when demand dies down and the wind picks up. Likewise, in regions with lots of solar power, charging an electric vehicle in the morning is usually far more expensive than powering up under the midday sun—or whenever the price is right.

In the U.S., most states don’t currently allow such real-time pricing, but many think that will change. Already, in some of the world’s biggest economies from Western Europe to California, the occurrence of zero and negative wholesale power prices is growing fast.

What this means is that for flights of up to 200 km (124 miles), the aircraft will just use two electric motors located relatively close in to the fuselage on each wing. For going farther – up to 400 km (249 miles) – two small turboprop engines located farther out on the wings will kick in to extend the aircraft’s range.

One charge of the aircraft’s BAE-Systems-designed batteries should take only 30 minutes.

Like other electric airliners, the ES-30 should produce fewer carbon emissions than its conventional counterparts, while also being quieter, cheaper to operate, and easier to maintain. Additionally, because its electric motors quickly deliver maximum torque, it will be able to take off from runways as short as 1,100 m (3,609 ft) – with its turboprops helping.

Sporting a 32-meter (105-ft) wingspan, the fully-functional new demonstrator aircraft is the planned size of the ES-30.