Solar Energy Saves Europeans $135 Million A Day

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You would think the fighting in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz would be sending the price of oil and methane for power plants in Europe soaring, and cause the price people and businesses pay for electricity to increase. You would be right, except for one thing. Europe has installed lots and lots of solar power in the last few years, and that solar power is saving Europeans more than $135 million a day, according to Solar Power Europe.

Its latest analysis found that, “since March 1, Europe’s solar fleet has helped avoid more than €11 billion in fossil fuel import costs, offering a clear demonstration of what a renewable-first energy system can achieve in times of volatility. Those savings are equivalent to Belgium’s recent annual defense budgets and they represent only a fraction of what is possible if Europe moves faster. By deploying more solar, scaling storage, and accelerating electrification, it can reduce the role of gas in setting electricity prices, strengthen Europe’s energy independence, and build a more secure and affordable energy system.

“Our message remains consistent — solar is delivering, storage is scaling, and Europe must now translate ambition into action. With the right policy signals, swift implementation and continued collaboration across institutions, industry, and society, we can build an energy system that is cleaner, more affordable, and more secure for all.”

Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of SolarPower Europe, told EuroNews last week, “Lessons from the past 100 days [of war] should sharpen the focus on delivering the non-fossil fuel flexibility, such as battery storage, that can amplify the benefits of Europe’s renewable power generation.” She argues that could help reduce energy bills for Europeans and deliver a “more secure and competitive” Europe, provided concrete measures and financing tools from the EU are available to keep the momentum going.

Europe Leads The Way

EuroNews says that several European nations had already demonstrated the benefits of focusing on green technology prior to the war on Iran. Since 2019, Spain has doubled its wind and solar capacity, adding more than 40 GW to its energy mix. To put that into perspective, a 1 GW generating station could power nearly 900,000 households for one year, provided they use an average of 10,000 kWh of electricity per year. The US average is about 10 percent higher than that.

“Spain’s wind and solar growth has reduced the influence of expensive fossil generators on the electricity price by 75 per cent since 2019,” Ember said in a report published last year. “This decline in the hours where the electricity price was tied to gas power cost was faster than in other gas-reliant countries, such as Italy and Germany.”

In European power markets, the most expensive generator operating to meet demand, which is typically fossil fuels, sets the hourly wholesale electricity price. However, as generation from lower-cost technologies like wind and solar grows, it displaces gas and coal, meaning fossil fuels determine the price less often.

France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain all set new records for daily solar production in late May, according to the latest analysis from AleaSoft Energy Forecasting. It said Germany generated 503 GWh of solar energy on May 28, the same day France reached 179 GWh. A day later, Spain produced 265 GWh and Portugal clocked in at 32 GWh.

Renewables Surge In UK

On 26 March, wind generation in the UK hit a new high of 23.9 GW. “Wind provided more than half of Britain’s electricity during this record period, and it’s highly significant that, earlier in the day, low cost wind and solar nearly squeezed methane off the UK energy system entirely — with gas falling to its lowest level of generation for nearly two years, providing just 2.3 per cent of our electricity,” Tara Singh of RenewableUK told EuroNews. “That’s what the energy transition looks like in practice, and it shows why we need to continue to build out an ambitious pipeline of new clean energy projects now and in the years ahead.”

Liars Figure

The numbers don’t lie. Renewables are cheaper than nuclear, hydro, pumped hydro, or thermal generation in virtually all cases. Not only that, they can be planned, installed, and connected faster that any other power source. The wait time for combined cycle turbines for methane fired installations in now 5 years. Solar can be done and dusted in under a year.

That is the reason for this recent headline in Forbes: “For every dollar the world invests in fossil fuels today, it invests nearly two in clean energy. Despite record political backlash, the money keeps moving in one direction, and it is not the direction the headlines suggest.”

According to the latest World Energy Investment 2026 report from the International Energy Agency, global energy investment is set to reach about $3.4 trillion this year. Of that, $2.2 trillion is expected to flow into clean energy, including renewables, nuclear, grids, storage, efficiency, and electrification, while about $1.2 trillion will go to oil, gas, and coal.

The message here is that while blowhards like energy secretary Chris Wright and the so-called president are blathering about energy dominance, the truly dominant energy sources today are renewables and they are getting more so by the hour — boosted by the unfathomable stupidity of attacking Iran when every senior intelligence analyst warned that doing so would lead to a closure of the Strait of Hormuz and cause a global energy shock.

In the aftermath, renewables are gaining ground in the overall energy mix. It may well be the imbecile president has done more to promote the growth of renewables than anyone else in the history of the world. Everything Trump touches dies, and the fossil fuel industry will be the next to learn that hard lesson. Couldn’t happen to a better group of people!