Cheap Solar Power Further Threatens Coal Industry

By David Merrill

Will coal plants soon become the 8-track stereo of the energy world? 

If present trends continue, coal power could become obsolete in as little as 10 years.  Prices for solar electric power have fallen 90 percent in the last decade and further steep drops in price are likely.  By 2016 solar-electric power could be cost competitive with coal and natural-gas fired power plants. This means that coal plants approved for construction today could become expensive, dirty dinosaurs only a few years after operation begins -- and for decades down the road.

Denver, Colo. recently approved construction of an urban solar power plant. It will be up and running by 2007. Then for the next 25 years the plant will provide electricity with no emissions, no fuel cost, no fuel delivery cost, no fuel price risk, no noise, and minimal maintenance. What is the chance that nervous and angry crowds will pack public meetings in Denver, complaining about the sunlight glinting off the panels?

In Southern California, plans are in the works to construct a 500-megawatt concentrated solar-power plant, roughly equivalent in output to a moderately-sized coal plant.  All of the electrical power needs of the U.S. Southwest could be provided in this fashion, with zero emissions.   

Consider these other developments in the extremely dynamic solar field:

Currently commercially available solar panels convert sunlight into electricity at no more than 21 percent efficiency. The Defense Department Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is pulling together the largest-ever solar research and development project to produce commercially viable solar cells that convert sunlight at 50 percent efficiency. They plan to achieve this within four years.

On the German island of Foehr in the North Sea -- a cloudy, windy and remote place -- residents already acquire 70 percent of their power from the wind and the sun.

Currently installed large-scale commercial solar systems in California will pay for themselves in as little as nine years.  From that point on their owners’ energy savings add to the bottom line.

San Luis Obispo, Calif. is passing legislation requiring that, by 2020, 50 percent of new homes must have solar power. A 5 percent requirement will take effect in 2008, and an additional 4 percent per year will be added thereafter.  Some new homes in California already produce 70 percent of their power from the sun.

President Bush’s Solar Initiative, announced in his January 2006 State of the Union address, aims to make solar energy cost-competitive with traditional power produced from coal and natural gas by 2015.

The solar photovoltaics (electricity from sunlight) market grew 40 percent in 2005.

Venture capital investment in solar energy tripled in 2005. The top three technology IPO’s (initial public offerings of stock) last year were all solar companies.

Coal’s prospects are darkened further by the growing awareness of -- and outrage at -- the enormity of the environmental, health, and social costs of coal mining and burning.  Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury pollution in the global environment. One in six American women of child-bearing age, for example, have elevated levels of mercury in their bodies. Mercury-impaired fisheries pepper the American landscape, asthma rates are skyrocketing, and Appalachian mountaintops are being blown to bits to extract coal. Finally, coal-fired power plants are the largest source of global warming pollution in the United States. 

If external costs like the huge environmental and health impacts of coal extraction and burning are taken into consideration, solar is already cost-competitive. Those who propose coal-fired power plants must be ready to explain the wisdom of constructing plants to burn a dirty fuel for power that may be no cheaper than a zero-emissions source within ten years. 

In the U.S., 129 coal plants are in various stages of planning and development. The global figure is an anticipated 1200 plants coming online over the next ten year, a nail in humanity’s coffin that we must not allow to be driven.   

The Solar Age has dawned on this troubled planet. It deserves our enthusiastic embrace. A U.S. moratorium on the construction of coal-fired power plants is the logical next step.

David Merrill is the Executive Director of GlobalWarmingSolution.org based in Missoula.