Sustainable Women Series: Driving Down Solar ‘Soft’ Costs: A 70 Percent Reduction in 5 Years

Launched by the Department of Energy in February 2011, the SunShot Initiative was designed to make solar energy cost-competitive by 2020. In 2010, the cost of one solar watt was $3.80. The SunShot project was attempting to reduce soft costs – non-technology costs – to $1 per watt or $0.06 per kilowatt-hour, an almost 75 percent decrease in the 2010 cost.