Below is an extract from an article in the Telegraph.
Those who say ?solar is more expensive than gas and coal? take a misleading snapshot in time: they make a one dimensional statement about a two dimensional phenomenon.
A nuclear plant takes more than ten years to install, a solar PV plant of similar output one year. As for rooftop solar, zero-emission solar homes can be built in a matter of months, as SSE have shown in practice in the UK.
A revolution is unfolding. At least some investors appreciate this. A record $211 billion flowed into clean energy in 2010, driven in the main by Chinese wind power and European solar roofs.
British industry must not miss out on this revolution. Neither must our increasingly hard-pressed citizenry, few of whom will want to be paying ever rising Big 6 electricity prices based on coal, gas and nuclear, beyond the UK?s solar grid-parity crossing point.
It is no longer credible to say that solar can?t play a major role in a sustainable energy mix. Deutsche Bahn intends to run the entire German railway system on wind, solar and hydropower. The German economics ministry has collaborated with German companies to run a scaled model of the national economy on a real mix of renewables, including solar, and concluded that a healthy modern economy could be run on renewables, including baseload electricity. In a report due out later this year, the International Energy Agency will admit that solar can provide 60% of global electricity by 2060.
