Costs for wind and solar have plummeted. Thanks to exploding worldwide usage, solar and wind are now the lowest cost ways to meet our electricity needs. As Bloomberg Finance noted recently, “in 2004 it took an entire year to install a single gigawatt of solar PV. By 2010, it took the world one month... By 2016, one week. Last year saw single days.”
Fortunately, the Ford Government has recently recognized that it cannot continue to ignore these ultra-low-cost sources of power. But its plans for 5,000 megawatts of new renewable energy are baby steps compared to what is happening abroad. First, the Ford Government’s plans to increase the use of polluting gas power is a threat to our climate and to our wallets. New gas-fired peaker plants are expensive, high-carbon, polluting, and outdated.
Fortunately, we now have many good storage options for variable renewable power – including stationary and mobile batteries, thermal storage, and coordination with Quebec’s huge water power system. When the cost of storage is included, wind and solar are still less than half the cost of new nuclear reactors and gas peaker plants.