Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
The solar industry has experienced a meteoric rise over the past two decades, growing from a small cottage industry to one of the leading technologies in the energy transition. It’s not been a smooth ride, and there’ve been plenty of bankruptcies on the way, from Solyndra to Suntech, but more than half a terawatt of new solar is now being built each year and the industry is still growing rapidly.
So how did we get here, and how far do we have to go? Michael Liebreich is joined by BloombergNEF lead solar analyst Jenny Chase to chart the course of the solar industry, do a little mythbusting, and ask what next for this multibillion dollar industry. Is China’s dominance of solar a problem? Is solar still too expensive for developing countries? And when will we get free electricity?
Links:
• Jenny’s Book - Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon: worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/q0437
• youtube.com/watch?v=GitsTNsC9dU
• youtube.com/watch?v=m6KIMswZkWA
• Auke Hoekstra’s IEA chart: https://x.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1333192375259295744
Chapters:
0:10 - Intro
1:50 - Jenny Chase and BloombergNEF
4:25 - The early days of NEF
9:10 - The silicon bottleneck
13:45 - The solar price crash
18:00 - Grid parity
21:58 - Solar forecasting underestimates
27:40 - Inflation and solar
30:50 - How cheap is solar?
39:00 - Levelised costs
41:00 - Free electricity
46:36 - Dependence on China
50:00 - Is solar toxic?
56:11 - Long-distance transmission
1:02:05 - Outro
The solar industry has experienced a meteoric rise over the past two decades, growing from a small cottage industry to one of the leading technologies in the energy transition. It’s not been a smooth ride, and there’ve been plenty of bankruptcies on the way, from Solyndra to Suntech, but more than half a terawatt of new solar is now being built each year and the industry is still growing rapidly.
So how did we get here, and how far do we have to go? Michael Liebreich is joined by BloombergNEF lead solar analyst Jenny Chase to chart the course of the solar industry, do a little mythbusting, and ask what next for this multibillion dollar industry. Is China’s dominance of solar a problem? Is solar still too expensive for developing countries? And when will we get free electricity?
Links:
• Jenny’s Book - Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon: worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/q0437
• youtube.com/watch?v=GitsTNsC9dU
• youtube.com/watch?v=m6KIMswZkWA
• Auke Hoekstra’s IEA chart: https://x.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1333192375259295744
Chapters:
0:10 - Intro
1:50 - Jenny Chase and BloombergNEF
4:25 - The early days of NEF
9:10 - The silicon bottleneck
13:45 - The solar price crash
18:00 - Grid parity
21:58 - Solar forecasting underestimates
27:40 - Inflation and solar
30:50 - How cheap is solar?
39:00 - Levelised costs
41:00 - Free electricity
46:36 - Dependence on China
50:00 - Is solar toxic?
56:11 - Long-distance transmission
1:02:05 - Outro
