Windpower is just another form of solar energy. The sun heats some parts of the earth more than others every day, creating areas of low and high pressure—and that’s what makes the wind blow, and those majestic turbines turn.
Solar power and windpower are the two cheapest ways to make electricity on planet earth. The cost of solar power has fallen ninety percent in the last fifteen years, and the cost of windpower is down seventy percent.
We now have ever-cheaper batteries to store power from the sun and wind for use when night falls and wind drops. The price of batteries for things like EVs dropped twenty percent in 2024
In the places where we’ve taken full advantage of these technologies, the use of fossil fuels has begun to plummet. California used 25 percent less natural gas in 2024 than in 2023 because so much solar power came online; at night, batteries were often the biggest source of supply.
In the U.S., states with the most renewable energy generally have the lowest electricity prices. Around the world it’s usually cheaper to build new solar farms than it is to run existing coal-fired power plants.
Pretty much every country on earth can supply its energy needs with sun, wind, and hydropower, using less than two percent of its land. The developing world is now building sun and windpower faster than the developed nations.
If we convert to renewable energy, we’ll need far less mining than we do now. That’s mostly because, if you mine something like lithium, you can put it in a battery where it works for 25 years (and then you can recycle it). If you mine coal, you burn it and have to mine some more tomorrow.
Since sun and wind produce electricity, it’s good that we have new appliances ready to make use of it. EVs, heat pumps, and induction cooktops use far less energy and are far cheaper to operate than the internal combustion engines, furnaces, and gas stoves they replace. (An e-bike, on average, uses a penny’s worth of power every 5 miles)
In the U.S., needless regulations make putting solar on your home three times more expensive than in Europe or Australia. In Germany last year 1.5 million apartment dwellers put up “balcony solar,” which isn’t available in the U.S. because of permitting requirements. Local governments can easily change this.
The biggest problem with power from the sun is that’s it too cheap—as the Exxon CEO explained last year, his company won’t invest in renewables because they don’t produce “above average returns” for investors. That’s because you can’t hoard this power, or hold it in “reserves.” It’s energy for people, not billionaires and oligarchs.