A Look at the Evolving U.S. Energy Landscape: Bill McKibben on Solar, Wind and the Future of Power

At Altus Power, we believe America’s energy future will require more power, more choice and a pragmatic approach to meeting growing demand. As electricity needs rise across the country and the world, there’s a need for a diverse mix of energy resources to help deliver affordable, reliable power. Educator and environmentalist Bill McKibben recently offered his perspective on the rapidly changing economics of solar and wind energy. While his views are his own, his observations underscore how far renewable energy technology and economics have come, and why solar is increasingly becoming an important part of America’s broader energy mix.

Bill McKibben is the author of 20 books, including 1989’s The End of Nature, a climate change explainer for a general audience. He’s the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He’s a winner of the Gandhi Peace Prize. He’s the co-founder of 350.org, a global grassroots climate campaign, and Third Act, a climate and justice movement for people over 60. He’s even the namesake of a woodland gnat, the Megophthalmidia mckibbeni.

Now, McKibben — who most recently authored Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization — is highlighting solar energy’s transformation from a so-called alternative energy source into an increasingly competitive and widely deployed source of electricity.  

In fact, McKibben considers solar and wind to be the “Costco of energy” in that it’s “cheap, available on the shelf in bulk, ready to go,” as he explained recently on The Ezra Klein Show.

“The stuff that we spent my whole lifetime calling alternative energy from the sun and the wind is now the obvious, common sense, straightforward way to produce power,” McKibben said. “Sometime earlier this decade, we passed some invisible line where it became cheaper to produce energy from the sun and the wind than from setting stuff on fire. … Now we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.”

According to data compiled by Lazard and cited by the Solar Energy Industries Association, the average levelized cost of electricity for a utility solar power plant in 2025 was $58 per megawatt-hour (MWh), compared to $78 for a combined-cycle gas turbine power plant, $122 for a coal power plant, $180 for a nuclear power plant, and $200 for a gas peaking power plant.

During the interview, McKibben heralded the solar energy victories in places like Australia, which is producing so much solar and wind power that energy companies are offering free electricity in afternoons. It’s miraculous, McKibben added, that storage batteries are letting Australians fill up on free electricity in the afternoon and use that power at night. “Iteratively, we’ve gotten better and better in a dance between activism and engineering that finally has now produced this thing that has literally become, for parts of the day on one of our continents, too cheap to meter,” he said.

Progress extends from Vermont — in which agrivoltaic arrangements paring solar panels with weeds and wildflowers have resulted in significant pollinator population increases — to the Vatican City — which Pope Leo XIV plans to make the first carbon-neutral state in the world through solar energy.

McKibben remains focused on accelerating renewable energy deployment and believes policymakers will continue to find ways to support its growth.  

“I think it is probably going to be more carrots than sticks, but I think the real thing that happens is that every time a solar panel goes up, every time an E.V. drives out of the showroom, every time someone switches to an e-bike from a car because they figured out they don’t need 3,000 pounds of sheet metal to get their kids to school — every time that happens, the role of traditional  energy sources in the overall mix incrementally changes,” he said.  

And McKibben believes someone somewhere will promote the “group project” that our planet has ahead of us. “That project is the rapid electrification of this planet, which would have huge advantages for people around the world and for our climate future,” he said.

At the end of the interview, McKibben recalled the forces behind 1970’s inaugural Earth Day, including the photos of the planet coming back from Apollo 8. “I think someone is going to recapture some of that energy and some of that hope and do great things with it now that there’s no longer any technological or economic obstacle in the way,” he said.