Despite the end of solar panel tax incentives under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, globally, solar is having a moment. The World Economic Forum reported that renewable energy capacity increased by 15.1% in 2024, with much of that driven by solar growth in China.
“Some point in the last five years or so, we crossed an invisible line where it became cheaper to generate power from the sun and the wind than it did from setting coal and gas and oil on fire,” said author and environmentalist Bill McKibben. “That’s an epochal moment in human history.”
In his upcoming book, “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization,” McKibben looks at how the explosive growth of the solar industry could pave the way for a more climate-resilient future. McKibben spoke with “Marketplace” host Amy Scott about the book; the following is a transcript of their conversation.
Amy Scott: So why solar? Why is that a last and maybe our best chance at avoiding climate calamity?
Courtesy W. W. Norton and Company
Bill McKibben: You know, I’ve been working on climate change for a very long time, Amy. I wrote the first book for a general audience about what we then called the greenhouse effect back in the 1980s and the first hint that we’ve actually had of something that’s scaling fast enough to make even a small difference in how hot this planet gets has been the explosion in the last two years of the amount of solar power on this planet. Last year, 95% or so of new electric generating capacity came from the sun and the wind, and that’s remarkable. You can see it happening everywhere. It’s centered in China, which is building about half the clean energy on the planet. Forget petrostates, they’re now the world’s first ‘electrostate.’
Scott: I mean, it’s really remarkable. Why has this happened in just the last couple of years?
McKibben: Money, money, money. Some point in the last five years or so, we crossed an invisible line where it became cheaper to generate power from the sun and the wind than it did from setting coal and gas and oil on fire. That’s an epochal moment in human history. We really could wind down combustion quickly on this planet, saving something of the climate, preventing millions of deaths a year from breathing the bad effects of that combustion, and, not in a minor way, we could also take some of the pressure off the geopolitics of this earth. It’s pretty hard to fight a war over sunshine.
Scott: But the myth that solar is expensive is so pervasive. You write it’s considered like the full the Whole Foods of energy, but actually it’s more like Costco. Why is that so sticky?
McKibben: Well, it’s because it’s been true for 40 or 50 years. Ever since we started talking about this stuff, we’ve called it alternative energy, and that’s because fossil fuel was always, and remains, fairly cheap. But activists and government policy makers set the conditions that began to allow demand to build, and as that demand built across the world, but especially in China, people figured out how to make really cheap solar panels. There’s now parts of Europe where people are putting up solar panels instead of fences, because it’s cheaper than buying good wood. It’s only in the US where we’re, at least for the moment, determinedly turning our back on all of that.
Scott: Right? We have to talk about the 900-page Republican tax cut and spending bill known as the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill,’ that became law and will essentially remove incentives for solar power here in the United States. How big of a setback is that for the overall energy transition?
McKibben: It’s a huge setback for the American role in that energy transition, but in the long run, it’s probably going to be at least as big a problem for us economically. We’re essentially ceding the future to the Chinese, and it’s possible that 20 years from now, the U.S. will be a kind of museum of coal-fired power plants and internal combustion engines, while the rest of the world has moved on to cheap, clean technology. That would be a great shame, and it’s not inevitable. Even with the current powers that be, there’s a lot that can be done at the state and local level to surge ahead with renewable energy, even while Washington is sticking its head as far down the sand as it can get.
McKibben, center, at a protest outside of the White House.
Courtesy McKibben
Scott: As you mentioned, China is leading the solar revolution, leaving the United States behind. You’ve been to China’s Solar Valley. What did you see there?
McKibben: Well, I’ve been to China a bunch of times and watched different phases of this, including the very early ones. The Chinese figured out early on that this was where the future lay, and that’s why now the pace at which they’re doing this is truly incredible. In May of this year, China was putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, and a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels is the rough equivalent of a nuclear or a coal-fired power plant, they were doing that every eight hours. Can you imagine building a nuclear plant every eight hours? That’s essentially what they were doing, and they’ve coupled it, of course, with the technologies to take full advantage of all that electricity.
Scott: All this kind of makes you wonder, does the world even need the U.S. to be fully on board? Can we get to a livable climate ceiling without U.S. involvement?
McKibben: The problem is not only that we’re still second-biggest source of carbon in the world, but also that the other thing that the Trump administration is doing is trying very hard to sell our fossil fuels abroad. For the moment, we’re going to have to do this without the help of Washington. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it. You know what state in America is putting up renewable energy far faster than any other?
Scott: I do know the answer, but yeah, it’s a surprise.
McKibben: The Lone Star state of Texas and and it’s because they understand the economics of it. That’s what’s keeping their rapidly expanding grid affordable and, probably just as importantly, reliable.
Scott: I was telling my producer before we started that reading the book is kind of an emotional roller coaster. It’s at times extremely hopeful and also very depressing. At the end of the book you write that when you finished writing your first book about climate change, “The End of Nature,” you felt catatonic. But after this book, 40 years later, you felt a combination of sadness and exhilaration. Why exhilaration?
McKibben: Well, at the prospect that there’s finally something we can do that can scale. I’m sad because of all that we’ve already lost and will continue to lose, but we finally have something that, if we decided to do it at the pace that it’s possible to do it at would get us somewhere.