The Revolution of Wind and Light — The Rise of Renewable Energy

Windmills and water wheels appeared as early as the first installment of this series. For thousands of years, humanity has turned the flow of wind and water into motive power. As for the sun’s bounty, farming itself rests upon it. Neither wind nor light is by any means a new force.

So why is ‘the rise of renewable energy’ spoken of as an event of the twenty-first century? The reason is simple. For a long time, generating ‘electricity’ on a large scale from these natural forces was regarded as too expensive, too unreliable, and not realistic. That conventional wisdom was overturned in a mere decade or so. Wind and light have now come to occupy a place among the cheapest sources of power in the world. This article is the story of that quiet but decisive reversal.

The Ideal That Cost Too Much — An Era in the Supporting Role

Until the end of the twentieth century, wind power and solar power were seen as technologies whose ideals were beautiful but which were, in reality, unreliable.

There were two reasons. First, price. Solar panels were labor-intensive to manufacture, and their cost per unit of power generated far exceeded that of fossil-fuel generation. Second, instability. The wind blows at its own whim, the sun sets at night, and clouds dim its light. Electricity must always balance supply with demand, yet sources left to nature struggle to meet that requirement. So renewable energy remained a modest presence, supporting from the wings the leading roles of thermal and nuclear power.

Even so, research and challenge continued. The oil crises of the 1970s made nations aware of the danger of relying entirely on fossil fuels, and heightened interest in alternative energy. There were also countries, like Denmark, that found a way forward in wind power early on and refined the technology. That country’s wind-turbine makers would in time grow into firms that represent the world. The people who did not abandon the ideal were, in this period, quietly laying the foundation for the reversal to come.

Germany’s Gamble — The Energiewende

The one that took the decisive step of pushing wind and light from supporting roles to leading ones was Germany. That challenge is called the ‘Energiewende’ (energy transition).

The turning point was the year 2000. Germany enacted the ‘Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG)’ and introduced a groundbreaking mechanism: the feed-in tariff (FIT). It obligated electric utilities to purchase the electricity made from renewable energy over a long period, at prices fixed in advance. This made it easier for those investing in solar and wind to forecast their future income. Farmers put panels on their roofs, and communities jointly built wind turbines — such movements spread from place to place.

Germany’s Energiewende also had challenges that cannot be overlooked. The cost of the purchases was added onto electricity bills, and the burden on households and businesses provoked debate. As power sources subject to the weather increased, the difficult question of how to operate the grid and maintain stable supply also rose to the surface. One cannot proceed on ideals alone — that reality, too, was a precious lesson Germany’s experiment showed the world. Even so, this gamble proved, at scale, that renewable energy could become a ‘real option.‘

Price Destruction — The Decade the Conventional Wisdom Collapsed

And then, at a speed no one had foreseen, the greatest barrier — price — began to crumble.

According to figures compiled by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the generation cost of large-scale solar power is reported to have fallen by more than eighty percent over the decade and more from 2010. Onshore wind power also dropped substantially, and recent assessments hold that, in many regions of the world, solar and wind have become cheaper sources than newly built thermal power. The technology once called ‘the ideal that cost too much’ had, before anyone noticed, transformed into ‘the cheapest reality.’

Why did it fall so suddenly? Mass production driven by adoption pushed costs down, manufacturing technology advanced, and worldwide competition shaved prices further. The mass production of solar panels in particular powerfully accelerated the price destruction. Germany lit the fire of demand with its feed-in tariff, and the world’s manufacturing capacity expanded all at once to answer that demand — this chain of supply and demand overturned the conventional wisdom in a decade.

For prices to fall means that it holds up even without subsidies. Not goodwill toward an ideal, but economic rationality itself, became the reason to choose renewable energy. This was a quiet but enormous turning point in the history of energy.

The Road to the Leading Role, and the Challenges That Remain

Wind and light thus rose from supporting roles to presences eyeing the leading seat. Yet the story does not end there.

The greatest challenge is still ‘instability.’ Cheaper though they have become, the sun sets at night and the wind blows at its whim. To keep supplying electricity stably, one cannot do without storage technology to hold the generated electricity, transmission grids to share electricity across regions, and mechanisms to finely adjust supply and demand. How to put these in place is a difficult problem that nations continue to grapple with even now.

Even so, the tide has surely turned. Renewable energy is no longer ‘a dream that may someday become practical,’ but ‘a reality being used in large volumes now.’ In the very period when humanity stood frozen before the grave questions over nuclear power seen in the previous installment, wind and light were, so quietly that no one noticed yet surely, building up their strength.

And to this swell, one more immense force was about to be added. A planet-scale challenge far beyond any one nation’s electricity bills or industrial policy — climate change. The pressing demand to protect the very earth would push the revolution of wind and light into a great current from which there is no turning back.