YNTR: Can Solar Power Compete with Coal? In India, it’s Gaining Ground

You Need to Read the Wall Street Journal’s Can Solar Power Compete with Coal? In India, it’s Gaining Ground by Phred Dvorak.

After a long incubation period supported by subsidies and alternately buoyed and challenged by rapidly changing economics, the solar industry is breaking through as a lowest cost source of energy. In India costs have dropped 84% in 8 years, and levelized (subsidies taken out), solar was already 14% less per kilowatt-hour than coal in 2018. Mainstream financiers and good unit economics suggest that India, followed by Australia and China, can ramp up Asia’s solar electrification faster than other regions.

Electricity from sunlight costs less, a hopeful sign for developing nations building out their power grids 

BHADLA, India—In a dusty northwest India desert dotted with cows and the occasional camel, a solar-power plant is producing some of the world’s cheapest energy.

Built in 2018 by India’s Acme Solar Holdings Ltd., it can generate 200 megawatts of electricity, enough to power all the homes in a middle-size U.S. town. Acme sells the electricity to distributors for 2.44 rupees (3.4 cents) a kilowatt-hour, a record low for solar power in India, a country that data trackers say has the world’s cheapest solar energy.

Bring your loved ones together this holiday season to give #GiftsToTheFuture. Each day on the way to welcoming the new year, we'll share a little something you can do to help make it (and many years that follow) better for those you love. enough.co/gifts-to-the-future

How you earn, spend, save, and invest can grow climate solutions faster. Let's work on it together?