On a recent Core Memory podcast episode, solar energy expert Joel Jean claimed: “It’s now the cheapest source of electricity we have.” He was talking about solar, and he immediately qualified himself, signaling an expert rather than an advocate.
Sunlight, Geography, and Price
The cost story depends heavily on location. “In Germany, you know, if you have higher power prices, right, like you can be competitive, but it’s not going to be as cheap as, you know, in Arizona,” Jean told Vance. Sunlight hours and local wholesale power prices both matter; the headline claim applies to the best sites rather than every site.
Vance had built toward the cost question throughout the conversation. When Jean laid it out, Vance responded, “That’s what I was going to ask you. So it is, it’s the cheapest.” The confirmation mattered because it was the discussion’s destination, according to Core Memory.
Oil Majors as Early Solar Innovators
The most surprising stretch was historical. Jean argued that fossil fuel companies were once at the photovoltaics frontier. “BP and Exxon, you know, all these players had huge solar efforts, they kind of pushed the technology in many ways,” Jean said. “The oil companies were kind of the innovators in solar back in, you know, the ’80s and ’90s” before abandoning it, according to Core Memory.
Jean traced peak US solar R&D spending to the price shocks of 1973 and 1979, pinning the subsequent loss of momentum on cheap oil’s return. When Vance pressed him on why the US did not lead the industry it had helped invent while Japan, Germany, and Australia pushed ahead, Jean pointed to the oil industry’s political weight and the country’s abundant, inexpensive domestic supply.
What the Official Projections Actually Say
Jean’s framing sits alongside a cautious institutional view. The US Energy Information Administration published its Annual Energy Outlook 2026 in April of that year, describing “tight cost competition between natural gas and renewables for new power plant construction”, with fuel and technology costs shaping the mix.
The agency also raises a consideration Jean’s framing does not address. The US Energy Information Administration notes that in cases with more wind and solar generation, greater total capacity is generally needed due to the seasonal and diurnal limitations of wind and solar and the necessity for dispatchable resources during times of low or no wind and solar output, including coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear. The cheapest way to generate a unit of electricity differs from the cheapest way to run a grid that must deliver power at three in the morning, according to Core Memory.
Cheapest Does Not Mean Dominant
The clearest illustration is in the agency’s baseline. The US Energy Information Administration Counterfactual Baseline case has natural gas at about 40% of US electricity generation by 2050, with wind at 20% and solar at 20%. For context, the US Energy Information Administration says coal’s share is 16% in 2025, declining in every case by 2050, to less than 1% where greenhouse gas regulations remain in place and about 5% where they do not. Per the same agency, Nuclear was 17% of generation in 2025, sliding to between 12% and 15% by 2050. See the full Annual Energy Outlook for detail.
The irony: oil majors that pushed solar forward in the 1980s and 1990s abandoned it. The thing they left behind is now, by one expert’s measure, the cheapest electricity available, according to Core Memory. Whether that makes it the grid’s foundation remains unresolved.