Going big and fast on renewables would save trillions in energy costs
23 September 2021
Doyne Farmer, Cameron Hepburn and Eric Beinhocker have published an opinion piece in Bloomberg that summarises the conclusions of a broad set of studies produced by INET Oxford researchers over the past several years. Key contributors to that research include François Lafond, Rupert Way, Matthew Ives, and Penny Mealy.
The article highlights our academic work showing that renewable energy technology costs have plummeted exponentially over decades following a learning curve. In contrast, fossil fuels have roughly the same costs as they did over a century ago. The progress of renewable energy technologies is highly predictable and this has enormous implications for climate and energy policy. A major, accelerated push to deploy renewables and drive out carbon emitting fossil fuels is likely to lower energy costs by trillions of dollars, reversing decades of conventional wisdom that our clean energy future would cost more than our fossil fuel present.
> Read the full Bloomberg article
> Read the related research paper
> Read a summary of our work by leading environmental activist Bill McKibben
Further media coverage of our research:
> Technology saves us: Oxford sees a $26 trillion gain from net zero (The Telegraph)
> It's climate week again but the calendar is running-out (The New Yorker)
> Clean energy has won the economic race (Project Syndicate)
> World could save £20 trillion on energy costs by switching to green power (i)
Image by Cornell Frühauf from Pixabay