- Solar panel prices have fallen 90 percent since 2010, making solar the cheapest form of energy on Earth.
- Early German subsidies and Chinese manufacturing scale-up set off a cost spiral that still drives 80 percent of the global solar supply chain today.
- Energy security, not climate policy, is now the biggest driver of adoption, with even the Trump administration overseeing record US solar growth.
Solar power is far and away the world’s fastest-growing form of energy production, beating out every other form of energy on Earth in 2025. Despite a recent political pivot away from renewable energies in the world’s largest economy, solar power additions continue to shatter its own records year over year as the sector has long since outgrown any need for subsidies. Solar power has simply become too cheap to fail.
“We have a plentiful and cheap source of electricity that can be built quickly, almost anywhere in the world,” NewScientist wrote in an article published late last year. “Is it fanciful to imagine that solar could one day power everything?”
How has a once-niche and costly form of energy generation taken over the global economy in under 30 years? According to a new report from Scientific American, solar’s stunning success story comes down to four interrelated factors: affordability, policy, fossil fuel leapfrogging, and the finite nature of fossil fuels.
Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy on Earth, with solar panel prices having plummeted an astonishing 90 percent since 2010. This newfound affordability has led to an enormous uptick in photovoltaic installations in nearly every corner of the globe. While richer nations initially led the charge for solar power capacity additions, poorer nations are now representing an increasingly considerable share of demand growth. In countries where national power grids are unreliable or limited and power is costly, solar-plus-battery systems represent an affordable and secure alternative. Pakistan, for example, has become an unexpected poster child of solar adoption in recent years as residents install rooftop solar and batteries faster than any other market on Earth.
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