It’s not a question of if solar technology will be on par with fossil fuel technology, it’s a question of when will government subsidies for fossil fuels be on par with solar? If fossil fuels weren’t so in bed with politicians, solar would have a huge slice of the energy pie at this point.
The point is, whether we get our subsidies and our smart grids or not, short of completely banning PV research, we will see true grid parity and beyond in most places across the globe in the next 5 years.
I don’t know how so many people in the debate miss this.
Once solar reaches parity with fossil fuels, it will continue to increase in efficiency and drop in cost, and as this happens there will be a rapid expansion of solar capacity globally, and accompanying drop in fossil fuel usage and CO2 emissions.
The only big factor to hold this back is energy storage technology, but Tesla is showing that Lithium technology can make a start, and hopefully better technologies won’t be far behind.
Hydrogen fuel cells are improving, and capacitor technology has a lot of potential, so even in a short (10-20 year) time frame, it’s very possible that solar will be the dominant form of electricity generation, which could greatly reduce carbon emissions and halt the increase in atmospheric CO2.
