Abundance

by Ezra Klein

We did not always know how to power economies without using fossil fuels. We do now. This is the technological miracle of our age. The cost of solar energy fell by about 90 percent from 2010 to 2020. The cost of wind power fell by nearly 70 percent.16 Solar power does not choke the lungs. Wind power does not sting the eyes. Neither of them warms the planet. Two decades ago, it was not possible to imagine that modernity was compatible with renewable energy. Now we need not imagine it. The world installed more solar power in 2023 than it did between 1954 and 2017. We have seen repeated periods in California and Texas of “negative energy prices”—moments where consumers are, mind-bendingly, paid to consume electricity because there is more of it than the system needs. The cost of solar is falling so fast that for much of the day it will be effectively free, in much of the world, by 2030.