TLDR: R&D, cheap capital, Wright's Law, better accounting. Like all new tech stacks, solar and wind benefited from modest R&D, access to cheap capital (subsidi

TLDR: R&D, cheap capital, Wright's Law, better accounting. Like all new tech stacks, solar and wind benefited from modest R&D, access to cheap capital (subsidies, financial markets), "economies of scale" (low enough unit cost with high enough production rate to unlock Wright's Law aka the learning curve). It remains to be seen if (or when) renewables will benefit from better accounting. Most impactfully, carbon tax to bake externalities into the street price of fossil fuels. Also, better energy market designs. And crucially, sufficient hush (extortion) money to soak up all the stranded assets held by incumbents. All those polluting coal power plants being run at a loss, teetering on the edge bankruptcy, because some revenue is better than none. -- FWIW, my thesis doesn't account for turf battles preventing widespread adoption. In the case of high volt energy transmission, required for next growth phase of renewables, the blocker in the USA are all the jurisdictional boundaries. We can't just build up the new power lines we need, because every Bubba in every county in every state needs to be bought off. David Roberts of https://volts.wtf https://volts.wtf does a great job of covering these policy tarpits.