On summer solstice, George Monbiot's £100 bet against solar power ended. Who won?

[wtmusic]

"Three years ago, in the course of our debate about the best means of generating electricity, I bet £100 against a claim made by Jeremy Leggett, chairman of the company SolarCentury. He had asserted that domestic solar power in Britain would achieve grid parity by 2013. This means that it would cost householders no more than conventional electricity."

<>

"In other words, though the subsidy has come down sharply from 2010, which partly reflects a real decline in the price of solar power and partly reflects the extraordinary generosity of the initial tariff, we're a long way from grid parity. This, I think, highlights the danger of believing what we want to believe. Climate change is too serious to mess about with. We should be hard-headed in addressing it, and should subject the technologies which attract us to as much scrutiny and rigour as the technologies which repel us.

It was this process which, after my initial enthusiasm, turned me away from solar power in the UK and led to my reluctant endorsement of large-scale wind and (later) nuclear power as the UK's most viable sources of low-carbon electricity."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/jun/21/solar-power-wind-nuclear-carbon-electricity