Number of the Day

The Plummeting Price of Solar Power, by the Numbers

Investments in climate technology have grown fast over the past few years — but not fast enough

Five times: That’s how much cheaper solar energy has gotten over the past nine years, according to data from the research nonprofit Our World in Data, which shows that the average cost per unit of energy for photovoltaic solar energy declined from 38 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2010 to seven cents per kilowatt-hour in 2019.

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham pointed out on Twitter that while this technological progress hasn’t been quite as rapid as Moore’s law — which states that computer processing power doubles about every two years—it still represents a qualitative shift that could open up many unexpected opportunities.

It does seem that VCs like Graham are looking for those opportunities: A report from PwC showed that early stage funding for climate tech companies has grown from $418 million in 2013 to $16.1 billion last year, a rate of investment growth three times faster than in the artificial intelligence space. These investments are going to companies and researchers working on everything from battery tech (which will be crucial to making solar energy reliable), vertical farms, carbon…