The Economist writes, solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source

Our Take, With Doug Sheridan

The Economist writes, solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040

s, they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy.

On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity solar panels produced promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—including Africa, where 600 MM people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind.

The aim should be for the virtuous circle of solar-power production to turn as fast as possible. That is because it offers the prize of cheaper energy. The benefits start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less—and that includes pretty much everything.

Then come the things cheap energy will make possible. People who could never afford to will start lighting their houses or driving a car. Cheap solar energy can purify water, and even desalinate it. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers that will, for decades to come, be getting hotter.

But it is the things that nobody has yet thought of that will be most consequential. In its radical abundance, cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting tiny Ferris wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities.

Our Take 1: Quite honestly, this ode to solar utopia by the Economist seems like something one would have read in 2020, not 2024. Solar energy so cheap they haven't even invented all the myriad uses for these magically free green electrons yet... really?

Our Take 2: Celebrating solar taking over the global energy system because the Chinese have perfected the production of cheap PV panels is like celebrating Chinese-made straw huts that cost $1 becoming the largest single form of shelter on earth by 2030. Both parties beg serious reconsideration.

Our Take 3: Sticking with the housing analogy, would mankind be better off living in cheap straw huts? Are straw huts really reliable forms of shelter for eight billion people? And who will pay to build and maintain the backup brick and wood homes that we'll need alongside these straw huts to shelter us when weather and other events render our flimsy and reliable, but cheap, straw huts too damp, cold, hot, humid, ripped, burned, or rotted to live in every day?

Our Take 4: Our sense is that we probably should be able to convincingly answer the above questions... and others... before we go all in on cheap Chinese-made straw huts... or solar energy. What say you?