The renewable energy conversation is starting to change, with talk of renewables driving the market for more traditional energy sources, rather than the other way around.

The BBC on Japan:

Following the Fukushima disaster in March 2011 all of Japan’s 48 other nuclear reactors were shut down. The predicted blackouts did not happen, the country kept running just fine.

But there has been a cost. Prior to the Fukushima disaster nearly 30% of power came from nuclear. That has been replaced by burning lots more coal and gas – Japan is now the world’s biggest importer of liquefied natural gas…

Following the Fukushima disaster, the Democratic Party government enacted a “feed-in tariff”.

Anyone could put solar panels on their roof, connect up to the grid and the power companies would be required to pay them a generous 40 Yen per kilowatt.

The response was dramatic. Money poured in to solar, and not just on people’s rooftops. In 2011 Japan had just 4.9 gigawatts of installed solar capacity. Just three years later, at the end of 2014, that had leapt to 23GW. It put Japan ahead of Italy as the number three solar energy producer in the world.

They go on to suggest that the government may turn the nuclear plants back on, and that may slow down the renewable revolution. But still, renewables were competing favorably with fossil fuels in the meantime.

Meanwhile, NPR actually suggests that renewables may be helping to drive down the price of oil.

“What the Saudis could see was new forms of renewable energy consumption — windmills, tidal power, solar power and the Tesla,” Verleger says.

He says in the longer term, electric cars and those other technologies could mean less demand for oil. Shorter term, the global economy has slowed and that means less thirst for oil right now. At the same time, with fracking the U.S. is now rivaling Saudi Arabia as an oil superpower…

So he says the Saudis now want cheaper oil, in part to slow down the fracking revolution in the U.S. — and to signal to the developing world: Don’t worry — you don’t need to invest in alternative energy. You can buy cheap oil from us.

This is very different than a couple years ago, when we were arguing that renewables were competitive only because of high oil prices.