You can tell solar+storage is cheaper than anything else except conditionally wind at least in the US because people have stopped building new generation capacity for anything else.
[0] https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/chinas-solar-producti...
Solar + Storage is cheaper than a gas peaker plant, but it is not cost competitive with a base load gas plant.
Energy producers in Texas are are adding 8x as much solar capacity (24 GW) as natural gas capacity (3 GW) [1] over 2024-2025. Do you believe that the entire Texas power plant industry is deliberately choosing less profitable and capital inefficient generation?
That could be the case, they may optimistically forecasted or undercounted potential future problems, but at this point in time their calculations seem to show that solar is tremendously more cost efficient to deploy over its expected lifetime.
It could also be the case that there are just subsidies for renewable energy in Texas that tip the balance. But at the scales we are now discussing, 10-20% of total energy generating capacity, the total value of those subsidies would need to be quite tremendous (in the G$ to 10 G$ per year range).
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61783#:~:tex....
Governments are investing in solar because they want to be ahead in the renewable economy, where energy literally just falls from the sky. Is that a subsidy? I guess. It is also a good strategic move.
Are petrochemicals taxed or subsidized? I have no idea, it is a big tangled web. What are the costs of staying plausibly friendly with Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members, who pays that bill?
I’m not going to try and defend either way, but I don’t believe anybody who says they have an answer. If they did manage to analyze the entire global economy somehow (where to even start) I don’t think they’d post the answer here.
