He wrote five years ago that solar would be the cheapest option by 2018, expecting it to go below 6 cents a kWh by that time.
Now Bloomberg reports on the latest auction results in Mexico, where solar averaged 4.05 cents.
That beats wind, which averaged 4.39 cents in the same auction. And it beats by a substantial margin what van der Leun expected two years from now.
While that alone is not enough to solve the climate crisis, it sure helps.
Update: van der Leun kindly states on Twitter that he is happy to have been wrong and adds that the 4.05 cents was subsidized by extra income from selling certificates.
One might also add that those solar projects are not expected to be operational until 2018, as PV Magazine reports.
With the subsidy on one hand and the two years it will take to get the projects to actually deliver, “6 cents in 2018” actually looks pretty accurate.
But getting there even faster is good news as well.
Update II: Christian Roselund says that auction needs to be redone on Twitter here.