The Price Collapse

Solar electricity costs have fallen by over 90 percent since 2010. Wind is close behind. In most of the world, building new solar or wind now costs less than simply running an existing coal plant — less than the coal it burns, before you count construction at all.

This is not a forecast or a policy wish. It is the everyday math that utilities now use when they decide what to build next.

Why Prices Keep Falling

The driver is a learning curve. Every time the world's total solar production doubles, the price drops by about a fifth. This pattern even has a name: Swanson's Law, and it has held for decades.

Bigger factories, better cells, faster installs, and fierce competition all feed the loop. More panels made means cheaper panels, which means more get made.