Natural Gas Loses to Solar on Costs, A First

In what may be the first time, a U.S. solar power project has been declared cost-competitive against natural gas in a competitive bidding process, a judge has said solar is cheaper than natural gas.  The ruling could be a road map for avoiding a new fossil fuel age dominated by big natural gas.

On the last day of 2013, an administrative law judge for the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, Eric Lipman, issued a decision about competing energy investments for Minnesota's future.  The state utility Xcel offered up several proposals to fill a 100 megawatt power need.  The two main competitors were a new fossil fuel plant powered by natural gas and a series of many distributed solar projects to be built around the state, the so-called Geronimo $250 million solar proposal. 

This decision wrestled with competing visions of the U.S. energy future.  Will it be dominated by new, large fossil fuel plants powered not by coal but by natural gas, as gas continues to replace coal - even though gas still emits significant greenhouse gas emissions?  Many of the energy pundits say that is where we are heading.  They argue that gas will be the cheapest fuel, beating out more expensive solar, so let's just ignore the climate impacts of gas.  That's the conventional wisdom.

But as with most conventional wisdom, it rests on a pile of unexamined assumptions. When this independent judge looked at the facts, rather than the hype, he found that solar wins and gas loses.

Natural Gas Loses to Solar on Costs, A First