Breakthrough Dialogues

We Made Wind and Solar Cheap, Now What?

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Episode notes

Breakthrough has long argued that fighting climate change is mainly a matter of making clean energy cheap, and — thanks in large part to federal deployment subsidies — this is precisely what we've done for solar and onshore wind technologies. But since experts agree that they aren’t enough to fully decarbonize today's electric power grids, we need to focus subsidies on emerging sources of firm generation like advanced nuclear, while also investing in the energy storage and transmission infrastructure we need to support more solar and wind. The next few years mark a potential inflection point in the evolution of America's electric system. Smart action now will enable faster, cheaper decarbonization in the future. Today’s episode is a webinar recording that discusses the merits of this strategy. It’s a conversation moderated by Grist’s Zoya Teirstein, featuring our own Alex Trembath, Leah Stokes from UC Santa Barbara, and Varun Sivaram from Columbia University. For the accompanying visuals, check out our YouTube channel.