Monday, June 13, 2011

Coal vs. Solar

The price of rooftop solar is already lower than new natural gas peaker plants or nuclear power.  Figure 1, below, shows the rapidly declining price of solar power.   According to an article on Climateprogress.org--(see solar is ready for the full article) by 2015 solar will be competitive with coal.  Since it takes 6 - 8 years to bring a new coal plant on line, any investment today in a new coal plant will be cost ineffective by the time it is built.  See Figure 2, below.


Figure 1.


Figure 2.

Not only does it make no sense to build new coal  fired power plants, but it is time to start shutting down the existing plants.  See the documentary "Last Mountain" for some good reasons why (in addition to global warming)

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