China solar prices have room to fall, compete with coal

Declining costs in China’s solar industry could allow the government to reduce prices offered to photovoltaic developers by more than a third by 2020 and see plants powered by the sun become competitive with coal within a decade, Bloomberg reports. “It’s possible” to allow prices to be cut to 0.5 yuan (U.S. 8 cents) a kilowatt-hour in four years, the world’s biggest panel maker Trina Solar Ltd. said in an e-mail citing chairman Gao Jifan. This year developers got at least 0.8 yuan a kilowatt-hour for photovoltaic power generated for approved projects. China surpassed Germany last year as the nation with the most installed solar-power capacity, in the process making renewable energy more competitive by driving down costs.