{"id":22784,"date":"2020-06-16T11:07:26","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T05:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/?p=22784"},"modified":"2020-06-16T11:07:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T05:37:26","slug":"solar-energy-costs-to-fall-further-as-low-interest-rates-become-another-major-cost-deflator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/2020\/06\/16\/solar-energy-costs-to-fall-further-as-low-interest-rates-become-another-major-cost-deflator\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar Energy Costs to fall further as Low-interest rates Become another Major Cost Deflator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Renewable energy costs<\/em> are set to decline further as interest rates have become negative in large parts of the globe. With the <em>COVID-19 crisis<\/em> leading to a GDP decline in most countries, central banks globally have been rapidly cutting rates to fight the crisis. <em>The USA has cut rates to zero while central banks in Europe have gone even deeper into the negative territory<\/em>. With renewable energy costs being made up in a large part by financing costs, this means that <em>solar and wind energy plants will have even cheaper LCOE<\/em> compared to earlier. The demand slowdown and sharp increase in supply from China has led to solar equipment costs falling by almost 15-20% over the last year. With most countries seeing disruptions, supply from China has not found a home leading to further cost declines in the prices of solar cells and panels.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/stock-footage-solar-panels-and-wind-turbines.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16920\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/stock-footage-solar-panels-and-wind-turbines-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"stock-footage-solar-panels-and-wind-turbines\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/stock-footage-solar-panels-and-wind-turbines-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/stock-footage-solar-panels-and-wind-turbines-134x75.jpg 134w, https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/stock-footage-solar-panels-and-wind-turbines.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width:767px) 300px, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With both equipment and financing costs coming down sharply, solar LCOE is set to fall further. Recently, Abu Dhabi saw a solar plant with\u00a0an\u00a0LCOE of around 1.5 cents. Other parts will also see similar prices in the coming year with <em>interest rates remaining very low<\/em>. This will put even further pressure on fossil fuel plants which are seeing growing opposition from <strong>climate change<\/strong> activities. Many countries <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/2020\/06\/15\/uk-well-on-its-way-to-green-energy-transition-with-two-months-of-coal-less-energy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">like the UK<\/a>, during the COVID-19 crisis, did not touch RE plants but sharply reduced the power generated from coal and other plants.\u00a0 Few\u00a0countries also showed great robustness of their power systems even with renewable energy making a greater than 50% share of the overall power generation for long periods of time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With solar technology showing continuous improvement and financing costs falling, solar energy could become almost free over the coming 10-15 years with prices already touching 1 cent and falling further every year. In the coming years, the cost of generation will become almost a nonexistent cost factor with most of the costs coming from integrating renewable energy through batteries, hydrogen, and other technologies. <em>Fossil fuels have a bleak future going forward.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Renewable energy costs are set to decline further as interest rates have become negative in large parts of the globe. With the COVID-19 crisis leading to<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,45],"tags":[1147,1293,1294,4791,4794],"class_list":["post-22784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-renewable-energy","category-solar-renewable-energy-greeninvest","tag-coal-plants-shut-down","tag-covid-19-and-solar-energy","tag-covid-19-crisis","tag-solar-energy-competes-with-fossil-fuel","tag-solar-energy-costs-to-fall-further-as-low-interest-rates-become-another-major-cost-deflator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}