Until Now
TechnologyEnvironmentEconomics

The cost of clean energy collapses

Solar power falls roughly ninety per cent in a decade and becomes the cheapest electricity.

When
Duration
14 years
Known to
± 1 year
Era
Contemporary, Holocene

Photovoltaic module prices fall by around 90 per cent between 2010 and 2020, and onshore wind and lithium-ion batteries follow similar curves, driven by manufacturing scale-up concentrated heavily in China. Solar is now the cheapest source of new electricity in most of the world. Deployment is growing faster than almost any forecast predicted, and still not fast enough to meet the Paris trajectory.

Just before

Just after