IELTS Reading Practice: The Rise of Renewable Energy

For most of the twentieth century, the vast majority of the world’s electricity was generated by burning fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas. This approach was cheap and reliable, but it came with a significant environmental cost: the release of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Over the past two decades, however, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydropower have grown dramatically, driven by falling costs and growing political will to reduce emissions.

Solar power, in particular, has seen the steepest cost decline of any energy source in history. The price of solar panels has fallen by more than 90% since 2010, largely due to improvements in manufacturing and economies of scale. In many parts of the world, building a new solar farm is now cheaper than building a new coal or gas plant, a milestone that seemed almost unimaginable a decade ago.

Wind power has followed a similar, though less dramatic, trajectory. Offshore wind farms, which place turbines out at sea where winds are stronger and more consistent, have become increasingly common, especially in Europe. Critics point out that both wind and solar are intermittent — they only generate electricity when the wind blows or the sun shines — which creates challenges for grid stability that fossil fuels and nuclear power do not face in the same way.

This intermittency problem has spurred rapid investment in energy storage technology, particularly large-scale batteries, which can store excess renewable energy for use when generation is low. While storage costs remain a barrier in some regions, most energy analysts agree that the combination of cheap renewables and improving storage will make fossil fuels increasingly uncompetitive over the coming decades.