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That’s because most clean energy jobs are in deployment and maintenance rather than manufacturing, and since higher costs slow down the rollout of renewables, increasing prices reduces the total number of people working in clean energy (even if the number working in manufacturing increases).
But my point is that this is still not the reason (or is only a very small reason) why these goods from China are cheaper than elsewhere. The main driver of lower labour costs has been automation; not having a human worker at all.
But, China mainly dominates these markets because it has produced a long-term industrial strategy for these technologies and has honed an optimised, modern supply chain as a result.
And beyond that, by the time solar scale has doubled 4 more times, to the equivalent of 16% of today’s electricity demand (and somewhat less of future demand), we should see solar at 3 cents per kwh in the sunniest areas, and 4.5 cents per kwh in moderately sunny areas.
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Both of those forecasts were wrong. Solar has plunged in price faster than anyone – including me – predicted.
Add these up, and it’s plausible that solar’s contribution to the energy system could double or triple the amount currently considered feasible for solar to provide.
We can use the last decade to predict the future prices of solar power. Not by looking at the cost of solar as a function of time, but by looking at the cost of solar as a function of cumulative scale of the solar industry.
This incredible pace of solar cost decline, with average prices in sunny parts of the world down to a penny or two by 2030 or 2035, is just remarkable.
The data paint an incredible picture: One that shows the price of solar electricity from utility-scale systems dropping by anywhere from 30-40% with each doubling of cumulative solar deployment.
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