Renewable Energy Costs Decreasing - Use Increasing
The Art
The Sketch
What’s Inspiring
The unit costs of some forms of renewable energy and of batteries for passenger EVs have fallen, and their use continues to rise.
“The top panel shows global costs per unit of energy… for some rapidly changing mitigation technologies. ..In 2020, the levelized costs of energy of the four renewable energy technologies could compete with fossil fuels in many places. ..” These costs include “…installation, capital, operations, and maintenance… “but not grid integration or climate impacts…” The bottom panel shows cumulative global adoption for each technology, in GW of installed capacity for renewable energy and in millions of vehicles for battery-electric vehicles..”
SPM Figure SPM.3, Climate Change 2022 – Mitigation of Climate Change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, WGIII, Figure SPM.3: Unit cost reductions and use in some rapidly changing mitigation technologies.
The art combines the top panels and bottom panels into a single graph to emphasize the consistent trajectories of the lines in each case. The combined images are then showed side by side.
