Solar growth is exploding worldwide, blowing past previous power generation benchmarks globally and bringing with it an influx of new jobs. But what exactly is behind this precipitous growth?

Several distinct factors seem to be driving the increase in solar installations worldwide, each offering distinct insights into the ways that the industry can develop. Below are the top three reasons that experts believe solar will become the universal energy of the future:

Falling Costs

One of the primary drivers of the increasing prevalence of solar is that the technology itself is inexpensive — and growing more so by the day. Photovoltaic (PV) module costs continue to plummet and today come in at nearly 80 percent less expensive than they were ten years ago.

“The technology still has further improvements so we expect that within the next 10 years photovoltaics will become, in many regions of the world, the cheapest source of electricity,” said Patrick Graichen, CEO of renewable energy German think tank Agora Energiewende. “[We predict] there’s no end to the cost decline in photovoltaics.”

This, combined with innovations involving the storage or solar energy, has led to solar being viewed as one of the most cost-effective ways to generate power. Even with fossil fuels at historically low prices, the finite and difficult to mine nature of oil and natural gas has solar poised to become the renewable energy source of choice in the very near future.

Government Support

Faced with falling costing and growing markets, governments across the globe have been making significant investments in solar technology and beefing up renewable energy initiatives. France, partnered with India, has already made a nearly 300 million euro investment in expanding its burgeoning solar market.

This eye for expanding solar even extends to countries that have previously seemed steadfastly set on the economic place of fossil fuels: Following the 2015 Paris climate change summit, Chinese nationals raised solar and renewable energy deployment targets, now aiming to generate 150 to 200 gigawatts via solar by 2020.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. the previously heated battle over net metering has begun to cool, as utility companies and consumer groups have increasingly been working together to roll out solar promotion and development initiatives. Realizing that solar adoption tends to take place in communities with, in the words of GTM Research Solar Analyst Cory Honeyman, “favorable rate structures,” many of these initiatives have focused on rectifying the issue of “grid parity.”

Simplified Integration

Finally, the integration of renewable energy into existing grid structures no longer represents the technological challenge it used to. With the variation in generation offered by solar, many utility providers shied away from relying on the renewable energy, as summarized in concerns by the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC). But these concerns, according to a Brattle Group study, commissioned by The Advanced Energy Economy Institute, may have been “overstated.”

“[O]ngoing technological progress and ongoing learning about how to manage the operations of the electric system will likely allow the integration not only of the levels of variable renewable capacity now in places like Texas and Colorado but even significantly larger amounts in the future,” wrote the Brattle authors.

Indeed, the combined development of grid integration, regulatory and government support and rapidly shrinking costs points towards a future where solar may take its place as not just a preeminent renewable energy source, but a preeminent power source in general.

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