Standard climate scenarios are underestimating the uptake of renewable energy technologies and overestimating the cost of the net-zero transition, according to a new paper in the journal Energy Research & Social Science.
Those calculations fail to account for “plummeting” prices for solar and energy storage over the last decade that “have made a net-zero transition more feasible than current climate scenario models indicate,” Utility Dive reports, citing the paper by the Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC).
The study found that the models that support the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) understate the potential of “two key options for rapid decarbonization,” rapid growth of intermittent renewable energy technologies and greater energy efficiency on the part of end users.
The Mercator researchers noted that the cost of storage batteries has already fallen below US$100 per kilowatt-hour, “significantly less than a 2021 publication predicted they would cost by 2030,” the news story states. “The cost of battery storage has fallen 85% over the past 10 years, while the cost of solar has fallen 87%.”
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