By Germán Toro Ghio, Karlstad, Sweden, 22 August 2025
"We all say we want a fairer dawn for those not yet born, but that vow counts only if we leave them a livable world. True: nature knew tempests long before we learned their names; beneath our feet, a heart of fire and magma beats, asking no leave to stir. Yet our ambition, dressed as necessity, has marked everything—waste on the seafloor, scars across the forests, a chemical haze drifting into the upper air. In a handful of decades, green turned grey and science fiction became habit. And still, not everything falls. We have learned to cast nets for light. We catch the noon sun and store it in battery banks, then release it on command when it’s needed most. What once was brightness lost to evening is now firm power that steadies hospitals, neighbourhoods, entire cities—less smoke, fewer price spikes, less fear of the night. Even where haze once felt like fate—the Beijing of 2008’s dimmed sky—new rays have been forged: panels, batteries, and grids that bring the colour back. The “ugly duckling” of pollution found its wings by scaling what works. The question is no longer whether Earth will have her outbursts; it is whether we will stop worsening them. The answer is not a creed but a deed: store the sun, harness its power, clean the air, and ease the cost of living. Fewer excuses, more clean kilowatts. From grey back to green—by will, and by craft... Introduction — Politics That Shift Every Five Years, and the Need to Strongly Guard the Transition The recent history of solar energy is the history of a promise repeatedly tripped by the same obstacle: intermittency, weaponized as a political argument. Every electoral cycle—every half‑decade—brings new rules: incentives created or axed, tax credits expanded or trimmed, permits accelerated or frozen. That pendulum didn’t just shape the adoption curve; it also minted a convenient narrative: solar as a “subsidy‑dependent” technology, vulnerable to a ministerial signature.
That narrative fractures once solar stops being a daylight‑only generator and becomes firm capacity. The technical and economic inflection point has a name: BESS (Battery Energy Storage Systems). With BESS, solar electricity ceases to be an uncertain flow and becomes a dispatchable service that stabilises the grid, arbitrages prices, and delivers frequency and voltage support. When that service costs the system less than many fossil alternatives—while creating local jobs and tax revenue—the political space to “slam on the brakes” narrows: doing so now means higher bills, lower resilience, and stranded investment.
This essay reconstructs—historically—how the sector moved from fragility to resilience: from the era of fossil shocks to the economy of flexibility; from Spain’s “sun tax” to normalization; from the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to its 2025 retrenchment; from the gray skies of Beijing 2008 to a China that manufactures the transition for half the planet. It closes with an epilogue: why, with BESS, the fabled “red button” of energy politics is no longer on the table.
I. Origins: When Politics Ruled the Sun (1973–2010) The energy matrix of the last half‑century pulsed to the beat—and the shocks—of oil and gas. The 1973 and 1979 oil crises inaugurated the modern energy era: inflation, recession, stagflation, and the realization that dependence on imported hydrocarbons was a macroeconomic fragility for consumers and exporters alike.
In that context came the first policies supporting renewables: Europe’s feed‑in tariffs, tax incentives, and quotas. Photovoltaics (PV)—still expensive and relatively inefficient—grew by political fiat. With each change of government, the pendulum swung: programs undone, retroactive cuts, “booms” followed by “busts.” Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic—2000s case studies in whiplash. Technology advanced, but regulatory risk wrote the adoption curve.
One decisive ingredient was still missing: turning intermittent energy into useful power.
II. 2010–2015: Cost Declines and the Mirror of Vulnerabilities The 2010s brought two crossing trends. On the one hand, the learning curve pushed down module and balance‑of‑plant costs; on the other, markets kept reminding us that political cycles don’t forgive. Spain is paradigmatic: in 2015, Royal Decree 900/2015—the infamous “sun tax”—kneecapped nascent self‑consumption in a country with some of the best solar resources in the world. Hundreds of initiatives went bust or fell into induced coma.
Global industry drew a blunt lesson: as long as solar depends on subsidies and its output isn’t dispatchable, every policy swing can become an existential risk. The technical antidote was still to come.
III. 2016–2020: The Technical Hinge — From Backing Up the Grid to a Grid Backed by Storage Between 2016 and 2020, storage moved from promise to real operation. Landmarks like Hornsdale Power Reserve (Australia) proved that a large BESS can damp frequency events in milliseconds and capture market revenues. In parallel, a new interconnection standard consolidated: IEEE 1547‑2018 and its testing/interoperability ecosystem. Inverters stopped merely “following” the grid to actively supporting it; grid‑forming classes emerged, capable of creating the electrical reference and emulating inertia.
The strategic consequence is enormous: paired with BESS, solar ceases to be “cheap midday energy” and becomes firm peak capacity. A revenue stack is born—time‑shift arbitrage, capacity, ancillary services, deferred network upgrades—and with it better debt terms and better IRR. Public discourse starts to change: the talk isn’t just about “green kWh” any longer, but about system services and avoided cost.
IV. 2020–2025: Mass Deployment, Smart Power Electronics, and the Economy of Flexibility The early 2020s hit the accelerator. Global battery pack prices fell sharply after the 2022 blip; utility‑scale PV posted low-levelized costs of energy (LCOE); and hybrid solar+BESS plants moved from pilots to grid assets.
In systems like California and Texas, batteries flatten the “duck curve,” shift energy into the evening peak, tame price spikes, and provide fast response. Florida’s Manatee Energy Storage Centre (409 MW/900 MWh) is emblematic of fossil‑peak substitution; meanwhile, Virtual Power Plant (VPP) aggregation opens a distributed services market.
The binding constraint is no longer physics but administration: interconnection queues in the terawatts, study rules under reform (clustering, “first‑ready‑first‑served”), and a chronic deficit of permitting capacity. Paradoxically, the transition collides with 20th‑century procedures for 21st‑century technologies.
V. The Counter‑Narrative We Omit at Our Peril: Fossil Subsidies and the Crises We All Paid For The stock criticism—“renewables live on subsidies”—ignores that the fossil system has long been propped up by explicit subsidies (administered prices, exemptions, consumer aid) and implicit subsidies (unpriced externalities) that reached trillion‑scale magnitudes in 2022. Each hydrocarbon shock translated into inflation, recession, and energy poverty.
BESS flips the macro board: by coupling solar and wind with storage, the system separates itself from geopolitical shocks and gains price predictability. Instead of socialising the losses of fossil crises, it socialises stability benefits: avoided peaks, deferred grid capex, and reduced wholesale volatility. The transition stops being a “green gesture” and becomes macroeconomic stabilisation policy.
VI. The IRA (2022–2024): When Policy Accelerates the Economy—and Creates New Inertia In August 2022, the United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA): investment and production tax credits for clean generation, standalone storage, grids, and manufacturing; bonuses for domestic content and energy communities; and credit transferability that lubricated finance. The effect was twofold: it sped up utility‑scale projects and unleashed a wave of industrial announcements (modules, cells, inverters, components).
The political map turned ironic: a good part of those investments landed in Republican‑leaning states with available land, grid headroom, and friendly local policies. The constituency for solar+storage stopped being an urban niche and became a transversal fabric of contractors, landowners, utilities, and large energy users.
VII. 2025: The Pendulum — Executive Pause, Legislative Trims, Economic Resilience On 20 January 2025, a federal executive order instructed agencies to pause disbursements under the IRA (and IIJA) for programs subject to policy review. In parallel, on 4 July 2025, Congress enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), a broad budget‑tax package that trimmed and tightened several IRA provisions. Among the most sensitive changes for residential deployment, Section 25D (the 30% residential clean energy credit) expires for expenditures after 31 December 2025; rules for “beginning of construction” were tightened for projects that sought to rely on earlier safe harbours.
Is that the end of the surge? Not quite. Two shock absorbers work here: (1) several IRA lines remain (albeit narrowed) and (2) the intrinsic economics of solar+BESS are already competitive in multiple wholesale markets. Utility‑scale projects remain bankable when they stack arbitrage, capacity, and services—particularly in regions with pronounced peak prices and growing demand (data centres, electrification). Put differently: BESS “de‑politicizes” a chunk of risk. If an asset saves money and stabilizes the grid, rolling it back is expensive—politically and economically.
VIII. China: From Olympic Haze to the World’s Green Factory The symbolic hinge is Beijing 2008: the city enacted extraordinary measures to cut smog during the Games (odd‑even traffic restrictions, temporary plant shutdowns, halted construction). Studies recorded real, if temporary, improvements. From 2013 onward, the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP) launched a “war on pollution”: PM₂.₅ targets, industrial controls, cleaner heating, and transport electrification. Between 2013 and 2020, Beijing lowered annual PM₂.₅ by roughly 40–60%; nationwide levels also fell, with measurable public‑health gains.
Environmental policy converged with industrial strategy: China leads the solar value chain (polysilicon, wafer, cell, module), dominates battery manufacturing (LFP as the chemistry of choice, TWh‑scale capacity), and has become a net exporter of EVs. In generation, it adds tens of gigawatts of solar and wind each quarter and in many provinces mandates storage allocation by rule. In 2024–2025, China tops new installations and manufacturing capacity by a wide margin.
Is it “green” already? Not entirely: a coal base persists, along with transmission bottlenecks and curtailment in saturated regions. But the direction of travel is unmistakable: falling carbon intensity, more renewables firmed by BESS, and accelerated deployment of pumped hydro and ultra‑high‑voltage lines to match resource and load.
The Western response has been defensive trade policy: tariffs and anti‑dumping duties on Chinese modules, batteries, and EVs; local‑content requirements for credits and procurement. The aim is to buy time and rebuild the domestic industry; the risk is slower deployment precisely when volume is most needed. The key will be balancing economic security with speed.
IX. Spain and Europe: From Regulatory Trauma to the Flexibility Dilemma Spain offers a complete arc. From the “sun tax” (2015) to its repeal (2018) and simplified self‑consumption (2019); from freeze to leadership: by 2024–2025, PV is the country’s largest technology by installed capacity. But with lots of solar comes two realities:
Zero/negative prices in high‑irradiance hours; An urgent need for flexibility (storage, demand, interconnections) and planning.
The EU frames the response with storage goals and grid funds; Iberian operators are rolling out auctions and programs targeting BESS and pumped hydro. The challenge is to scale without over‑building: to align demand curves, services markets, and investment signals so that each additional MW of solar displaces fossil generation, not merely cheapens midday.
X. Business Model and Finance: From LCOE to System Value LCOE captures the average cost of a “pure energy” MWh, but systems buy services: peak‑hour capacity, frequency stability, voltage control, reserves, and network deferral. A solar+BESS hybrid may show a higher “energy LCOE” than standalone solar, yet lower the total cost of maintaining reliability. That is where bankability blooms:
Stacked revenues (energy + capacity + ancillary); Lower price risk (firm contracts, arbitrage); More, cheaper debt; System value (T&D deferral) that PPAs don’t always capture but the system undeniably does.
When regulators remunerate what the system actually needs—not just kWh—capital flows even in politically adverse cycles.
XI. Unfinished Business: Duration, Recycling, Minerals, Codes, and Permits Duration: commercial windows are stretching toward 6–8 hours in longer‑peak markets; flow or sodium‑ion may win niches; LFP will likely dominate for cost and safety. Recycling & second life: design for materials recovery and closed industrial loops. Critical minerals: diversify suppliers, enforce traceability standards, and craft international arrangements to soften political chokepoints. Codes & operations: mainstream grid‑forming and cybersecurity protocols; standardize interconnection requirements. Permitting: move from linear queues to digital one‑stop shops with clustered studies, transparency, and early viability screens.
XII. Strategy for Governments, Regulators, and Industry Reform markets to pay for flexibility and services (not just kWh). Public procurement that prices system value (firm capacity, black‑start, network deferral). Gateways for projects with clear Supply chains: attract key manufacturing (cells, inverters, BMS) yet allow imports where domestic supply cannot scale—yet. Permits: time‑bound SLAs by project type, deemed approval for non‑critical phases, and independent technical panels to relieve bottlenecks. Data: standard telemetry and APIs for VPPs and aggregators, with privacy by design.
XIII. Synthesis: Why BESS “De‑Politicizes” Solar It converts intermittency into useful power and services. It lowers the total system cost (not just apparent LCOE). It creates local jobs and revenues—a transversal constituency. It decouples from fossil shocks and stabilizes the macroeconomy. It raises the political price of rollback: scrapping something that cheapens bills and avoids outages is unpopular.
Epilogue — The Day the Red Button Stopped Working For half a century, energy policy played with red buttons: freeze tariffs, open or close subsidies, impose bans, or move duties. Fragile and intermittent, solar was the easiest piece to topple. One decree stopped the rollout; another rekindled it.
BESS changed the game mechanics. Where there were naked kWh, there are now muscular kW: power on demand, frequency services, black‑start, price dampers. Each hybrid plant builds a coalition around it: landowners, installers, municipalities, energy‑intensive industries, shops, and households that pay less and suffer fewer outages. It’s a quiet majority, but a persistent one, for whom the energy transition is not a slogan but a reduction in risk in their daily life and business.
When a government tries to “go back,” it no longer faces only environmentalists and technologists; it faces taxpayers and consumers who prefer clean power. Raising bills, reintroducing volatility, reinstating bottlenecks, or destroying local investment carries immediate political cost. The “red button” still exists, but pressing it burns.
The question for the next five‑year cycle is not whether there will be attempts at reversal, but how much they will cost to try. The answer is already embedded in grids, contracts, and factories: solar with BESS has become infrastructure. And infrastructure, when it delivers daily value to every pocket, stops being a vulnerable promise and becomes a fact that conditions politics. That is the historical turn.
There is work ahead: permits, transmission, recycling, duration, technology‑neutral rules without lock‑ins. But the storyline has changed hands. It’s no longer “politics decides and energy obeys”; it’s accounting that decides, and politics that adapts. For the first time in fifty years, the exit path from energy crises does not run through fossil subsidies or the acceptance of volatility as fate. It runs through flexibility and scale. It runs through thousands of invisible BESS units that, every day, turn sunlight into resilience and resilience into democratic power.
That is the strength of the new electricity system: it doesn’t shout—it works. And when something works—when it cheapens and protects—it ceases to be a battlefield and becomes firm ground. There, the red button stops being a temptation and becomes a relic.
The author Germán Toro Ghio is among the rare commentators able to traverse the frontiers between energy, politics, and culture. With an audience of more than a quarter of a million readers worldwide, he has become a reference point in the global energy debate. As an Expert in The Energy Collective and a contributor to Energy Central’s Power Perspectives™ series, he has distinguished himself by rendering legible the often opaque interplay of markets, geopolitics, and infrastructure. His career in the sector spans more than three decades, including leadership roles such as Corporate Vice-President of Communications for AES Dominicana, where he pioneered strategies for natural gas development and regional energy integration.
Yet Toro Ghio’s path extends far beyond kilowatts and contracts. Before entering the energy sector, he navigated the realms of literature, diplomacy, and cultural policy. He served as Executive Secretary of the Forum of Culture Ministers of Latin America and the Caribbean; he co-authored Colombia en el Planeta with William Ospina and Beatriz Caballero of the La Candelaria Theatre Group for the UNDP; he collaborated with the Nicaraguan poet-priest Ernesto Cardenal; and, with the encouragement of Octavio Paz, he revived Carlos Martínez Rivas’s La insurrección solitaria—restoring Central American poetry to its rightful place in the currents of twentieth-century literature.
As a writer, he has published works ranging from Nicaragua Year 5—a documentary testimony in images, catalogued by Lund University—to The Non Man’s Land and Other Tales. He has directed and overseen literary editions such as Joven arte dominicano, promoted by Casa de Teatro in Santo Domingo and distributed to universities across the world.
Chilean filmmaker and political scientist Juan Forch—an architect of Chile’s historic 1990 “NO” campaign, later dramatized in Pablo Larraín’s Oscar-nominated No—has written of Toro Ghio’s narratives that they “enrich our understanding of history beyond traditional battlefields and royal courts,” praising journeys that move effortlessly “from the discomfort of a Moscow hotel to the exhilaration of the Nicaraguan jungle.”
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