The most recent report by the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is
frighteningly clear: the fight against global warming is going so slowly that the world faces
potentially devastating social and political consequences as early as 2050 – or sooner. To avoid
this catastrophe, we need to significantly accelerate a full conversion to clean energy sources by
the 2030s. Pushing the price of solar electricity down dramatically by a factor of 10 in the next 10
years would allow us to make this transition in a timely and cost-efficient way.
Unfortunately, few in the world of public climate policy seem to be seriously considering this
approach yet, probably because current expectations are more modest: solar prices going down
by factors of two or three within 10 years. Though this would be welcome, the world would still
fall well short of the targets recommended by the IPCC, which emphasizes the imperative of
dramatically faster decarbonization. To get to that factor of 10, government funding for research
into new and cheaper photovoltaic (PV) solutions must be reconfigured to prioritize speed rather
than the standard research funding methods that prioritize efficiency so as not to waste money.
We need therefore to finance new PV solutions as we did new vaccines at the start of the recent
pandemic: funding good ideas even if some don’t work out. We need those that do, and we need
them quickly.
We single out PV technology because we believe it is the most amenable to such a rapid change.
Some green technologies, like nuclear and fusion, have multi-decade time scales, even just for
building new plants. Geothermal could be a good substitute in the limited regions where it can be
exploited, but it can’t scale up to global needs. Wind energy is a big component of green electricity
provision, but its costs are dominated by the manufacture of well-understood mechanical
components, while PV is a solid-state technology closely related to other technologies which are
steadily dropping in price, like computer chips and display screens. A drop in the price of any of
these would be most welcome, but we believe that laboratory R&D could achieve a PV revolution.
We need such a revolution, since despite the scientific evidence and the declared government
commitments and targets, the domestic policies of the world’s largest countries have not yet even
begun to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), let alone push them close to zero.
If governments continue to pursue such short-sighted policies, disastrous environmental
conditions, which we are now witnessing with increasing frequency, will force them into last
minute responses requiring big mitigation expenditures, major subsidies for clean industries and
energy and unpopular taxes and regulation. Focusing sharply now on lowering the price of clean
energy can, however, allow us to avoid much of the financial cost and social disruption.