
The Breakthrough in Renewable Energy
Renewable energy is getting cheap enough to win on price alone, and this VPRO Backlight film, directed by Martijn Kieft, follows the economics behind that shift. Industrialists and energy entrepreneurs lay out the numbers: solar costs have fallen more than 80 percent, wind by roughly 50 percent, closing in on the price of natural gas. The camera moves between corporate offices, production lines, and government ministries in China, where state investment in solar and wind is a response to catastrophic air pollution, and Morocco, where officials are targeting 40 percent of national energy from solar by 2020. Further stops in Abu Dhabi, the Netherlands, Brazil, Chile, Australia, and California show the same calculation playing out under different governments and climates. The film's argument is blunt: consumers and countries do not adopt clean energy for ethical reasons, they adopt it once it is cheaper, and that tipping point is arriving faster than the industry expected. The footage is less about ideology than spreadsheets, factories, and falling price curves.