I agree - great message, but it hugely understates the potential to increase generation efficiency.  Maybe that's just because they didn't know to look for it, but I get nervous by any report sponsored by a bunch of utilities (National Grid and DTE were listed among their sponsors).

But this is nitpicky - overall, great report.  

The solar resource is much much larger than coal, oil, and gas reserves combined.  Where is solar industrial process heat, solar chilling, solar cogeneration, deep geothermal power and heat, firewood, biomass district heating?  PV cheaper than CSP?  Nuclear cheaper than both?  Color me blue.

This is great news, if in fact it could be considered "news", since it's been pretty clear that fixing inefficiencies (both market and energy) is in everyone's long-term best interests.

But...

Almost 40 percent of abatement could be achieved at "negative" marginal costs, meaning that investing in these options would generate positive economic returns over their lifecycle. ...
Unlocking the negative cost options would require overcoming persistent barriers to market efficiency, such as mismatches between who pays the cost of an option and who gains the benefit (e.g., the homebuilder versus homeowner), lack of information about the impact of individual decisions, and consumer desire for rapid payback (typically 2 to 3 years) when incremental up-front investment is required.

The thing is, these mismatches, like most externalized costs, represent an opportunity for profit by certain parties to the transaction.  These profits are taken at a cost to other parties (and/or to the commons) but these sources of profit are well established in the economic and political system, and some business are built primarily around exploiting these inefficiencies to their own advantage.  They are an accepted part of business as usual.

So you're back to the same old problem: A few people are greatly advantaged, while many people are slightly disadvantaged.  The costs are spread widely, so the incentive for any given individual to try to change them is small.  While the profits are concentrated, and the incentive of those who profit to preserve the status quo is large.

(There's some econo-speak term for this problem, but I don't know it off hand.)

Also, these inefficiencies are part of the status quo, so many people who are being harmed by them either don't notice the harm, or don't think that it's anything bad or unusual -- just part of "life isn't fair" (which is IMO the biggest bloody cop-out in all of history, but I digress).

New nukes cheaper than distributed solar PV?  And wind?

Doesn't seem like their figures have taken into account a few things.  Like cleaning up and disposing of waste and rising fuel costs.

I wonder how this whole chart would shift were GHG climate change costs, medical costs from pollution, and cost for wars over oil/nuclear prolideration added in?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Of course the same news about negative costs was in the Stern Review and IPCC WG3 - in fact I seem to recall a very similar graph in the WG3 report, I'll have to dig it up.

Also, my impression is that the higher oil and other energy prices go, the more this graph shifts down below zero.

Anyway, the more news this sort of stuff gets, the better. It is absolutely true that financial barriers to efficiency in particular (residential and business HVAC primarily) are hiding huge potential rewards. Capital investment money is our friend to a large degree across the whole renewable energy/efficiency spectrum.

Dunno got a few problems with that graph?

Cellulosic = negative cost?(!?)
Solar Thermal costing more than Solar Photovoltaics?

Something fishy there.