Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act takes effect
The Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz comes into force, guaranteeing renewable generators grid priority and a fixed feed-in tariff for twenty years. Its significance for this Journey is not German emissions, which it changed modestly and expensively, but cumulative global production volume: by guaranteeing a market at a known price it created demand for photovoltaic modules on a scale that pulled the industry down its learning curve, and German consumers paid a substantial premium in doing so. The subsidised deployment of an expensive technology by one country is one of the clearest historical instances of a nation buying down a global cost curve — whether deliberately or not is a matter of interpretation.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Photovoltaic solar generation · technology · global; manufacturing concentrated in China · not located
- The experience (learning) curve · phenomenon · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition
Supports the finding that probabilistic forecasts built on observed cost-versus-cumulative-deployment relationships have outperformed the expert and official projections used in energy planning, and that solar, wind and storage costs have fallen at rates those projections repeatedly failed to anticipate. V55 verification basis: the paper was not retrieved in this session; the citation follows the reference declared in the Journey catalogue and the substance is stated from author knowledge. The fitted learning rates and their intervals were NOT read and are not quoted.
Joule (Cell Press) · 2022 · Partly verified
R. Way, M. C. Ings, J. D. Farmer and P. Mealy, Joule, volume 6, 2022, page 2057 onwards
Recorded on Photovoltaic solar generation
- Wright publishes the airframe cost-quantity relationship
- The conventional start of the photovoltaic module price series
- Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act takes effect
- Chinese manufacturing takes over the photovoltaic supply chain
- The first Global Stocktake calls for tripling renewable capacity
- Vogtle Unit 4 enters commercial operation
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Vogtle Unit 4 enters commercial operation · 2024-04
- The first Global Stocktake calls for tripling renewable capacity · 2023-12
- Chinese manufacturing takes over the photovoltaic supply chain · c. 2008–2013
- The conventional start of the photovoltaic module price series · 1976
- Wright publishes the airframe cost-quantity relationship · 1936