Naam: Solar electricity costs will drop 4x by reaching one-third global generation
Ramez Naam · What’s the next big trend in clean energy? · Jul 20, 2023 · at 2:05
Clean tech analyst Ramez Naam predicts the future trajectory of solar power cost reductions.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“So my personal forecast is the cost of solar electricity will drop by another factor of four. By the time electricity is, by the time solar is about a third of all electricity generation on Earth.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ramez Naam
Naam: Wilderness no longer exists; preserving ecosystems requires active human management
“There is no such thing as wilderness on planet Earth anymore. We have modified the climate such that if you're, if it's a forest, if it's a coral reef, if it's a wetlands, It doesn't exist in the same climactic band that that natural ecosystem evolved in. And …”
Naam: Continent-scale transmission is the most underrated clean energy technology
“The most underrated of those technologies is super long duration transmission. That is probably the one that... Ultra long distance, like coast-to-coast, continent-scale transmission. It's probably the one that has the best upside and the most certainty that w…”
Naam: Space launch costs are dropping faster than solar power costs
“Space launch is getting cheaper faster than solar. Only, only two things in history have gotten cheap faster than solar to date, which are computing and gene sequencing or gene printing. But right now, we're in a phase where the cost of space launch is actuall…”
Naam: IRA spending will reach trillions due to uncapped subsidies
“It's not four and fifty billion dollars of federal spending a year. It's like trillions. Because the IRA is not a pool of money. It's a per unit subsidy. And forecasters always do what? On unit forecasts, they always underestimate it, right? So the actual size…”