Poised for Progress

While these groundbreaking shifts have been taking place in Europe, China, and the United States, the world’s reigning superpowers have brought about important changes of global significance in the electricity market. The year 2011 marked the first time in history that these powerhouses invested more money in renewable energy than in fossil fuels. The main driver of this has been the fact that solar power has fallen in price to be equal to, or even less than, much of the electricity we pay for in our current grid.

In California, one of the nation’s most expensive electricity markets, a homeowner’s peak electricity use, on average, cost more than $0.18 per kilowatt-hour in 2011 and went as high as $0.35 per kilowatt-hour. Solar-leasing companies save the average consumer more than 15 percent, depending on the cost of installation and financing. Every state is different, but the economics are improving all the time, and by 2015, according to projections by the Department of Energy, two-thirds of US households will save money by using solar electricity.

The main driver of the cost reduction in installed solar panels is the fact that the core component of solar-power systems—the silicon cell—is, as we’ve discussed, now being produced in volume. We’ve seen this happen before in the computer hardware industry with the commoditization of the silicon chip, a slightly different-sized product but surprisingly similar from a manufacturing point of view. As integrated circuits or semiconductors became much cheaper, microprocessing—the service they provide—became more widely available for less, and microprocessors ended up in everything from cars to phones. Like silicon chips, solar cells continue to drop in cost and become more powerful as time goes by.

This is incredible news for people and the planet. Solar panels are now being mass produced, and consumers are benefiting from cost reduction due to volume production, much like with cell phones and other electronics. For every doubling of the manufacturing capacity of solar panels, there’s been an 18 percent price reduction of the end product. The investments made in solar-product manufacturing by China, Korea, India, Germany, the United States, and other countries over the past five years have broadly tripled the production capacity, bringing down the end-product price more than 50 percent. That value is passed on to you in the price you pay for the electricity coming out of these products.

Just as the mass production of silicon chips drove down the price and increased the affordability and the availability of computing power, so too will the reduction in the price of silicon cells make solar power universally available and affordable. This will unleash an era of economic possibility as to how we can use solar power, which, today, some say is silly. Who knew that your oven or clothes dryer might serve you better with a microprocessor? Similarly, a self-powered solar cell phone or a case that charges your laptop will be something we can have in the near future. To some degree, you can choose your own solar adventure, for the solar-powered future is at hand.

But don’t think this all will come easily and without lots of metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears. We can’t be complacent and wait for it to happen, for as far into the woods as we’ve traveled chasing our societal fossil-fuel addiction is as far out as we have to walk toward the sun. To win the energy battle, we need to organize, get solar on our homes, and demand positive energy policies. We solar citizens must stand up and be counted, as do the people employed in the industry and all of those who want to pursue the many commercial opportunities that low-cost solar makes possible. Spawning easy and affordable solutions for low-cost solar hardware will take lots of genius, human hours, and solar entrepreneurship—from financial whizzes and software engineers to creative marketers and, most importantly, passionate consumers.

For decades to come, the massive makeover of our inefficient, stored-solar-power (aka fossil fuels) conversion grid to a future-state direct solar, sunshine mesh needs to be designed, financed, built, and maintained—all of which will take time and a huge amount of work. Happily, a huge amount of work means an equally big number of new jobs in existing trades and professions as well as in innovative categories, like the “remote solar designer” position that Sungevity created: engineers who design a solar system for your home using software and aerial imagery so that they never have to bother you at your house.

Adoption of solar power is a key solution both to the economic downturn and to the climate change calamities caused by our dependence on ol’ King CONG. Just as the rise of the steam engines from the mineshafts of England was a harbinger of the Industrial Revolution that swept the globe, the mass adoption of solar power will transform our economy in ways that are broadly beneficial. In the past few years, solar job creation has outpaced the greater economy tenfold. Meanwhile, the fossil-fuel electricity-generation industries shed 2 percent of their employees. There are now more than 100,000 workers in the US solar industry, which means they outnumber coal miners in this country.

We’re playing in the big leagues and can’t drop the ball. To win the game, we need to stay in the game—and to do that we have to build political momentum and economic vitality. Our efforts are already paying off. The conservative intergovernmental International Energy Agency (IEA) is now predicting that by 2050 most of the world’s electricity could come from solar power. The keyword here is could because it all depends on what energy policy our nation chooses, what we as voters and consumers demand, and the kinds of solar businesses our best and brightest build over the next few decades. The IEA forecasts that we could create astounding wealth and opportunity—a many thousandfold increase in solar adoption in just 40 years. As a campaigner with Greenpeace, I spent years protesting the lack of consideration that the IEA gave to clean energy, and now the agency is even more bullish on solar than I am!

Imagine for a moment how much work we could create with 50 percent of our electricity coming from different forms and applications of solar power. The solar industry currently produces less than 1 percent of electricity and employs 100,000 individuals. Does that mean 5 million more people would soon be solar workers? Probably not, because with scale comes efficiency (meaning some of the work could be done through automated technology), but certainly many millions would be engaged in the industry. A study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance showed that making the United States a 100 percent solar nation would create nearly 10 million jobs. So even if the solar industry were to displace every employee who makes a living working for Dirty Energy (an impossible scenario), we would still have a net gain of 7 million jobs—and we hope that there will be places in the solar industry for those who leave Dirty Energy (see chapter 5).

Some of these job gains will be in the opportunity that solar power unlocks in adjacent spaces: in building and roofing materials, in financial products banking on the sun, and in digital and software companies needed to harness this potential and adapt it to our current condition.