📚 How to solve these questions: 12 tips for all 6 Interactive Reading question types, with a worked example for each.
For most of the last century, the argument against renewable power was cost. Wind and solar were described as worthy but 1, suitable for demonstration projects rather than for supplying a country. That argument has largely collapsed. In much of the world, new solar is now the cheapest electricity ever built, and the change happened faster than almost any forecast allowed for. The reason is 2 rather than science. Each time global production of panels doubled, the price fell by roughly a fifth, and it doubled many times. Nothing comparable happened in coal or gas, where the fuel itself remains a 3 cost. A solar farm, once built, runs on sunlight that nobody invoices. The new problem is timing. A grid has to match supply and demand 4, and the sun sets at roughly the hour when households start cooking. Batteries can move a few hours of power across the day, and they are improving quickly, but seasonal storage, holding summer surplus until December, is still far beyond what is affordable. This is why the debate has shifted. The question is no longer whether renewable electricity is 5 enough to build. It is whether the rest of the system, the storage, the transmission lines, and the market rules written for coal plants, can change quickly enough to use what is now being built.