Solar electricity becomes the cheapest power
Between 2010 and 2024, the global average levelized cost of solar photovoltaic electricity fell roughly 90 percent — from around 35 cents per kilowatt-hour to 3-4 cents, depending on geography. By 2023, solar had become the cheapest form of new electricity generation across most of the world, including in regions with abundant fossil-fuel resources. The cost decline followed a learning curve (Swanson's Law) similar to Moore's Law in semiconductors: each doubling of cumulative installed capacity has produced a roughly 20 percent drop in unit cost. The decline has been driven primarily by Chinese manufacturing scale — China now produces over 80 percent of the world's solar panels — which makes the energy transition simultaneously a Chinese industrial-policy story.
The U.S. invented modern photovoltaic cells (Bell Labs, 1954) and Japan and Germany scaled the early industry. China's takeover of solar manufacturing was deliberate state industrial policy executed through provincial subsidies, low-interest loans, and willingness to accept years of losses to drive Western competitors out. The strategy has more or less succeeded — and now constrains the West's options for any energy transition that doesn't rely on Chinese supply.
05 · The Transition
Three energy revolutions are running simultaneously. American shale fracking has made the U.S. the world's largest oil and gas producer for the first time since 1973. Solar and battery costs have collapsed by 80 to 90 percent in fifteen years, with China dominating both production and the rare-earth supply chain. And weaponized energy — Russia's gas cuts to Europe, Western sanctions on Russian oil, the price-cap mechanism, the Nord Stream sabotage — has demonstrated that the petrodollar system can be unwound, in pieces, in months. The wealth ranking of the next era is being decided right now, and not all of the candidates know they're competing.
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