Renewables are increasingly becoming more attractive as their costs continue to drop at a stunning pace. Solar and wind plants are now not only significantly cheaper than coal power, as a new report revealed last week, but they’re also putting natural gas to shame. New research shows that the cost of batteries has been declining so unexpectedly quick that renewables plus battery storage are now cheaper than natural gas plants in many applications. The recent study conducted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance reports that electricity prices “for onshore wind, solar PV, and offshore wind have fallen by 49 percent, 84 percent, and 56 percent respectively since 2010”. On top of that, costs for lithium-ion battery storage has dropped 76 percent since 2012 – and plunged 35 percent in the past year alone. These price drops have been global game changers and are expected to smooth out the process of transitioning the world to greener sources of energy.
Better battery storage is helping make renewables cheaper than natural gas
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