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From $1,500 a watt to cheaper than fossil fuels, solar energy has come a long way — and innovators are just getting started.
As TriplePundit marks 20 years as a newsroom, we’re reflecting on how the global sustainability space has evolved and changed, what we got right and what we didn’t, and what we can learn from all of it. Follow along with the series here.
The pace of innovation in the solar industry of today is nothing less than astonishing. Despite this year’s abrupt shift in U.S. energy policy, solar costs continue to fall globally, and solar technology is beginning to integrate with other systems including agriculture, buildings and water infrastructure. The global scale of the solar transformation is all the more impressive considering that the first practical solar cell was introduced to the world just 71 years ago in 1954.
The sun’s ability to transform earthly substances is not new, of course. It is practically as old as the Earth itself. Evidence indicates the atmosphere initially lacked oxygen until a tiny microbe called cyanobacteria evolved 2.7 billion years ago, with the ability to use sunlight as fuel to split water, emitting oxygen as a byproduct.
Other examples in nature abound. Plants deploy little more than water and sunlight to grow in massive proportions from tiny seeds. In humans, the impact of sunlight on the skin is well known. Sunlight also sparks a chemical reaction in the body to produce a type of vitamin D.
Applying human innovation to sunlight is a much more recent development. The first known use of sunscreen was 40,000 years ago, and humans have been experimenting with the sun ever since. By 450 BC, primitive magnifying glasses were used to focus sunlight to light fires, though the first modern magnifying glass didn’t appear on the scene until over 1,000 years later.
In 1839, a French scientist reported the first known instance of the photovoltaic effect, or the ability of sunlight to produce electricity. Within 50 years, researchers were testing solar cells made with selenium and gold, among other materials.
Scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey introduced the first truly modern solar cell in 1954. Designed for practical applications, the solar cell was based on the semiconductor material silicon. Within a decade, enterprising innovators were deploying solar cells to run transistor radios and recharge batteries. But these early cells were limited in their ability to convert light to solar energy. Adjusted to modern dollars, electricity from early solar cells cost more than $1,500 per watt.
To raise the level of solar conversion efficiency, researchers developed multi-junction technologies using cadmium and other expensive materials. These advanced, high-efficiency solar cells are suitable for aerospace applications and other niche purposes, but they are far too costly for widespread use.
That is where the solar industry stood in the 1970s when the oil crisis briefly raised the potential for relatively inexpensive silicon solar cells to enter the market. To signify federal support for solar energy, U.S. President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the West Wing of the White House in 1979.
But when Carter left office the following year, and oil once again flowed abundantly, interest in solar technology for everyday use waned in the United States. Japan, on the other hand, continued to develop commercial solar through the following decades and by 2000 was the world leader in installed solar capacity.
For the U.S., the next wave of real momentum didn’t come until decades later, with the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 and later with the Department of Energy’s 2009 SunShot program under President Barack Obama. Modeled after the Moonshot effort that saw the U.S. beat Russia to the moon, SunShot aimed to bring the installed cost of solar energy down to parity with fossil fuels. The effort, formally launched in 2011, included cutting “soft” costs like labor, supporting hardware and permits, and reducing the cost of solar cells.
“One of the most transformative changes in technology over the last few decades has been the massive drop in the cost of clean energy,” wrote Hanna Ritchie, deputy editor at Our World in Data and a researcher at the Oxford Martin Program in Global Development, in a progress summary published last year. “Solar photovoltaic costs have fallen by 90 percent in the last decade, onshore wind by 70 percent, and batteries by more than 90 percent.”
Along with improved solar cell technology, rising demand for solar energy helped manufacturers increase production — leading to a further drop in cost, and thus even more demand. Between 1975 and 2022, the average cost of solar panels fell by 20 percent each time global installed solar capacity doubled.
Today, solar — supported in part by energy storage systems — is the most economical, and the fastest, way to meet the rising demand for electricity. Solar and storage accounted for 82 percent of new generating capacity added to the U.S. grid during the first six months of this year, according to data from the trade organization Solar Energy Industries Association. Solar alone claimed 56 percent, for a total of 18 gigawatts.
“With a spectacular decline in costs to around four U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour in just one year, solar PV’s global costs in 2023 were 56 percent lower than fossil fuel and nuclear options,” the International Renewable Energy Agency reported last year.
Regardless of the shift in U.S. federal energy policy, the demand for electricity shows no signs of slowing down, and the solar industry is poised to capitalize on that demand – if not this year, then in the years to come, when another policy shift occurs.
Rooftop solar panels, once a rarity, are now commonly offered by new residential and commercial developers. New “balcony” solar panels bring more opportunities to harvest solar energy at apartments, while the data center boom continues to fuel the demand for new utility-scale solar power plants in the U.S. and globally. Businesses are beginning to deploy ground-mounted solar arrays to transform brownfield liabilities into energy-producing community assets, and the emerging science of agrivoltaics is helping farmers grow their income by combining energy and agricultural production on the same land.
Other new developments include perovskites and other emerging low-cost solar materials; flexible, lightweight “thin film” solar cells that can be integrated into building walls and other structures; and floating solar panels that enable water system managers and industrial operations to take advantage of the built environment while reducing water loss from evaporation.
Looking ahead, futuristic technologies like see-through solar cells may soon transform clear glass windows into power stations, and new orbiting systems will beam solar energy from space into receivers on Earth any time of the day or night, regardless of the weather.
Solar energy has been the constant, reliable foundation of life on Earth for billions of years. It continues to fuel the technology revolution of today and will continue to be the source of new energy solutions for years to come. After all, politicians come and go, but the Earth will keep rotating around the sun long after the current occupant of the White House leaves office as scheduled on January 20, 2029.
Tina writes frequently for TriplePundit and other websites, with a focus on military, government and corporate sustainability, clean tech research and emerging energy technologies. She is a former Deputy Director of Public Affairs of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and author of books and articles on recycling and other conservation themes.

TriplePundit brings solutions journalism to sustainability news, reporting the under-told stories of how business, environmental conservation and social good connect.


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