For over a hundred years, most of the world has acquired its electricity from burning dirty fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. These old sources of power generation came with huge downsides, from air and water pollution to health impacts and climate change. But today, innovative clean energy technologies are quickly replacing them. Renewable sources like solar and wind have gone from niche to mainstream practically overnight thanks to improving performance and plummeting prices. As they continue to expand, clean power promises to transform how we generate electricity across the globe.
Powering Up With Solar
Of all the clean energy contenders, solar power generation is leading the charge. Converting energy from sunlight into electricity is nothing new, but according to the people at Commonwealth, the scale and efficiency at which it can now be done is. Photovoltaic (PV) panels have fallen over 80% in cost since 2010 as manufacturing scaled up and capacities keep rising – the average commercial solar array now transforms over 20% of sunlight into usable energy. Even in cloudy weather, they generate plenty of power to smoothly feed the grid.
Beyond pricing and output improvements, adopting solar energy has also become much more practical thanks to supportive policies and financing options. Tax credits and net metering programs enable households to sell excess power back to utilities and even earn income from their panels while solar leasing arrangements let people go solar with little to no upfront investment. With payback periods shrinking to under 5 years on average, solar power generation has become an obvious win-win.
Winds of Change
Meanwhile, power generation from wind energy is also hitting new heights worldwide. Airflow has always held tremendous untapped potential for electricity production, but engineers have only recently gained the ability to harvest it affordably on a mass scale. Today’s wind turbines stand hundreds of feet tall to capture steadier winds and generate exponentially more power.Â
Other innovations have increased wind power’s reliability as a consistent grid supplier. Carefully mapping out turbine sites using weather and air current data helps minimize dips in generation. Moreover, pairing wind farms with utility-scale batteries or other storage helps with output intermittency issues. By leveraging these strategies and economies of scale, wind energy has seen costs fall 50-60% in under a decade. It is now price competitive with even the cheapest fossil fuel options in many windy regions.
Powering the Future
Solar panels and wind turbines represent just the beginning of the clean energy transition. Renewables like geothermal, tidal and advanced biofuels are also starting to contribute more sustainable power generation capacity in certain markets, and innovative solutions like small modular nuclear reactors promise to further decarbonize electricity systems down the road.
Renewables are already altering power grids from Asia to Europe to the Americas. Over two-thirds of new generation infrastructure installed today taps zero-emissions sources rather than fossil fuels. As technology continues advancing and adoption spreads, some studies suggest the world could run 80 to 90 percent on renewables by mid-century.
Conclusion
In only a matter of years, power generation from clean technologies has gone from improbable to unstoppable. Renewable energy offers a win-win solution by kicking our dirty fossil fuel addiction while also empowering people through distributed power access and ownership. Grassroots support for renewable energy is starting to influence established electricity companies. As solar panels, wind turbines and other sustainable generators keep scaling up while costs drop, they are well on their way to fundamentally transforming how the world is powered. The rise of clean energy heralds a brighter, cleaner and more equitable future for society’s electricity needs.
