1. This is excellent. It means we're well on our way to sustainable energy generation. Wind and solar are only going to get cheaper. Even without subsidies, there is no reason to ever build another coal or oil fired generation facility. Natural gas will stick around until utility scale batteries ramp up, to where peaking plants are too expensive compared to utility scale batteries.
2. Nuclear is dead. Very dead. Thorium. Fast breeder. Pebble bed. I don't care which you pick, no one is going to pour 10 years and $1-4 billion into a plant that won't be cost competitive when it turns up (maybe some governments, but you can't fix that; it'll just get mothballed).
3. Utility scale batteries are going to be needed to make up for solar and wind's capacity factor (availability). Tesla is going to clean up with its Gigafactory. Well done Elon. I hope Mars treats you well.
4. Any pollutants or negative externalities of both solar panel and battery production can be much better contained and managed than the output of a coal plant.
5. Cheaper renewables means even cheaper power available for the transition to electric vehicles.
6. First world demand for renewables will continue to drive down costs, allowing third world countries to piggyback off the cost savings. Remember how Africa leapfrogged with cell phones instead of land lines? Imagine battery packs and solar roofs in every home instead of traditional utilities. It's already feasible with current economics.
You did miss two things - distribution networks and industrial customers. Those are the two problems that nobody seems to be solving yet.
Basically, high-voltage electricity is distributed with networks that are dumb and old. The generation and usage is very carefully balanced with heavy users and large producers, because the network does not have storage capacity. It also has very little tolerance for power imbalance, the frequency cutoffs in the old equipment running most of the network are rather severe (in high-voltage networks, frequency increases with more power being fed into the system).
There are already extremely severe network problems in Germany for example where quite a bit of power comes from solar and wind. (I worked as an embedded sw engineer doing software that controlled solar inverters for a while)
The problem with upgrading distribution network is of course the MASSIVE amounts capex needed to replace it.
The other problem is industrial consumers - an aluminium smelter requires a certain amount of power coming in 24/7 or the ovens will freeze and if they do, restart is basically impossible. There are many other factories with similar problems. Given the trend towards just-in-time production and shipping, the chain of events that leads to massive disruption in the global trade can start from a fairly small shutdown with large snowball effects.
I'm not trying to put down green power generation, just saying that getting the price down to reasonable level is just one part of the puzzle.
>The problem with upgrading distribution network is of course the MASSIVE amounts capex needed to replace it.
No. This is primarily a political issue not a question of lack of resources, and the capex and difficulty required is, while high, typically overestimated by a large degree.
The main problem is that the networks are usually owned by monopoly utilities with interests in power generation. How much do you think they want to upgrade if the net result is more competition? Hell, they'd probably pay not to have to upgrade.
>There are already extremely severe network problems in Germany for example where quite a bit of power comes from solar and wind.
"Severe" would suggest blackouts or at least brownouts like California had in 2001.
>The other problem is industrial consumers - an aluminium smelter requires a certain amount of power coming in 24/7 or the ovens will freeze and if they do, restart is basically impossible.
If you must do something impossible, do it at least... twice :) ??
"Over the past 12 months, German aluminum giant Trimet has ramped down production twice on request from German grid operators."
Yes, they didn't shut it off entirely, but this demonstrates that smelters who can vary their electricity usage are actually part of the solution, not the problem.
(provided Germany didn't overpay them to ramp down that is... which they may well have)
> The main problem is that the networks are usually owned by monopoly utilities with interests in power generation. How much do you think they want to upgrade if the net result is more competition? Hell, they'd probably pay not to have to upgrade.
This... is exactly what is happening :-). Utilities and network operators are trying out ways to give incentives to customers who can respond with negative load (i.e. turning the power down). It makes economic sense because the alternative is increasing production at immense speeds, which is quite costly and inefficient (often using diesel generators, and a lot of them). Aluminium smelters like the examples you give (and quite a few other businesses) are doing precisely this.
Also note that an aluminium smelter works by electrolysis, not by pyrolysis (which is what GP seems to suggest?), which is why they use so much electricity and why they can in fact turn it on and off at a whim.
> an aluminium smelter requires a certain amount of power coming in 24/7
Absolutely! A key point regarding energy is that you must be able to plan its availability. Lacking major improvements in energy storage, it boils down to predictability for energy production. Unfortunately, solar and wind miss it.
Regarding customers such as aluminum smelters: I wonder if nature could cope if we used fossil fuels for only them.
Another thing, while wind/solar might might be approaching the cost of fossil fuels I suspect the story may be different for developing countries. In South Africa we have power capacity problems and what was the decision? Build the biggest coal power plant in the southern hemisphere.
If we want to solve climate change developing countries are going to be a very severe problem. The people in charge have no interest in fore-sight.
Actually, yes. Global atmospheric CO2 concentrations will (probably) stabilize if we reduce output to about 5% of the current level, by outflow to the deep ocean (which is a vast reservoir). But that is still very difficult to reach, especially with business as usual.
Hydro and geothermal are 'green' solutions that can manage pretty constant power levels 24/7. Just make sure your factory is close to those type of power plants and you'll be fine.
>Natural gas will stick around until utility scale batteries ramp up, to where peaking plants are too expensive compared to utility scale batteries.
There's another possibility which is that there will be an overbuild of solar and wind caused by a clean energy boom (ZIRP already did this to oil; where is that ROI-hungry risk capital going to look for returns next?).
The market will then figure out ways of putting the large irregular surpluses of electricity to use. For example, generating fuel as mentioned below, or running adjustable output aluminum smelting plants.
I think the opportunities opened up by periodic bouts of practically free electricity which have already started to occur have been vastly understated. People just look at the other side of the equation - probably because oil/utility companies have tried to keep us fixated upon it.
I think the most optimistic part of all of this, though, is the implications for democracy and peace. When the age of oil finally expires (and it is nearing a close) there won't be any way to put a chokehold on supplies of energy with raw military power.
This is probably the only thing, in fact, that could actually lead to lasting peace in the middle east, which has been plagued by the resource curse for a century or so.
Periodic bouts of practically free electricity make water desalination much more attractive.
Perhaps you even get a stabilizing mechanism where:
drought ~ high solar output -> cheap electricity -> water desalination -> eliminates drought problems.
My parents live in a part of India where summer temperatures routinely hit 45C (113F). Because electricity is expensive and my parents' house is quite large, they couldn't afford to run air-conditioning for more than 8-10 hours a day - usually at night.
Whenever I would go home, the heat would completely wreck my productivity. I would have to sequester myself in the coolest room in the house, then judiciously use the air conditioning to maintain some semblance of sanity.
Then my dad got fed up and took advantage of a government subsidy to buy solar panels.
It was expensive initially, but now we essentially have free power. We'll break even in terms of costs within 4 years.
We now run air conditioning when we want, wherever we want.
The increase in productivity is massive. I no longer have to deal with heat when I go home.
Now imagine this happening for billions of people living in tropical climates.
> We'll break even in terms of costs within 4 years.
That means a loan of up to 25% interest could have financed the solar panels. Are interest rates higher than that for your parents?
> The increase in productivity is massive. I no longer have to deal with heat when I go home.
> Now imagine this happening for billions of people living in tropical climates
For what it's worth, the GDP per capita of Singapore used to track the introduction of air conditioning. Not sure what's cause and what's effect, or coincidence.
We've heard that before, as far back as 1954: "too cheap to meter". The problem is, even if the incremental generation of electricity is practically free, there are still large costs in building the windmills and solar panels. And there are large distribution costs as well.
In addition, the more cheap energy there is, the more inefficiently people will use it. Why bother with things like Energy Star and LEED? Just build inefficient power supplies and poorly insulated buildings. After all, it is "practically free" to heat them and cool them.
Post scarcity energy is a non-starter. Consumption will always increase as necessary. Here's an even more crazy example: just how much bitcoin (or similar) mining would there be if energy were cheap? It's already a disgusting misuse of resources, it would be a lot worse!
> Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in 5 minutes to power the world for a year.
At current levels, and that's the point of the parent comment.
> That's effectively limitless.
It's 0.0000095 or so. Impressive but not limitless. An earth in which all the infalling sunlight was used for power would be a dark place, which would be bad for people and for agriculture. And oxygen production. So actually lot less than that.
Close. We're very close. Renewables and electric transportation gets us very far. Automated farming and 3D printing or automated assembly of housing will be the last step.
"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." -- William Gibson
Totally offbeat angle, nothing to do with energy markets at large, but:
My whole country is situated north of the 60th parallel north. Winters are friggin cold and I would be very concerned if there were no sources of energy not dependent on sunlight or wind.
Also, I'm a neurotic so in case of a nuclear winter type of effect I would love to have some nuclear reactor technology going.
For deep space exploration solar panels don't work. It would be nice if we maintained active interest in power generation systems not dependent on sun or atmospheric movements.
> First world demand for renewables will continue to drive down costs, allowing third world countries to piggyback off the cost savings. Remember how Africa leapfrogged with cell phones instead of land lines? Imagine battery packs and solar roofs in every home instead of traditional utilities. It's already feasible with current economics.
I think the real advantage in places like China, Tanzania, Kenya, etc, is they don't seem to have half of their political class entrenched in the idea that they need to crush renewables because of an unholy alliance of their business backers (the Kochs, Murdoch, etc) and the portion of the population who are apparently pro pollution because they hate hippies or something.
Natural gas will stick around until utility scale batteries ramp up...
Batteries have improved over time, but I'm not convinced that they'll see the vast improvements necessary in order for them to replace natural gas for a long time. If natural gas really must be replaced the most logical alternative might be ammonia.
Ammonia has hydrogen's good properties: not a greenhouse gas, doesn't cause smog, numerous production methods including electrolysis, easily transported in liquid form, can be used in fuel cells or in ICEs. However it doesn't embrittle, in liquid form it's actually denser in hydrogen atoms than liquid hydrogen is, and due to its agricultural applications there is already an established distribution infrastructure (in the Midwest, at least).
I bet you $1000 to a charity of your choice that utility scale batteries combined with renewables replace natural gas for electricity generation in the US in the next 10 years. I shall even assume all the risk. If I'm correct, you can buy me a coffee.
Rhetorical flourishes aside, I'd love for you to be right and I'm perfectly content to be convinced that you are. What specific technologies or materials will get batteries over this hump? Please don't say lithium-ion because although they seem OK for phones I can't seem to buy one for a power tool that will last a year.
http://beaconpower.com/operating-plants/ but there are others, some even quite old. More often selected for niche reasons than market peak load balancing. e.g. site one at long end line of insufficient frequency stability.
This type of technology can allow the extra power generated by solar/wind to be used to create oil. If this technology is developed further, I think it could be a better alternative to batteries. Imagine a desert full of solar panels creating oil with excess electricity during the day. And at night the oil can be used to either provide night time electricity or directly in the existing oil infrastructure (cars, gas stations, etc.) The oil would be effectively carbon neutral.
The benefit of creating oil like this is that it is energy dense, the downside is that it is hugely inefficient at every step compared to battery storage and burning it still produces air pollution.
If cars and all the oil infrastructure didn't exist, EV and batteries are superior. They have far better efficiency and are a much more elegant solution. But all the oil infrastructure does exist and is a huge advantage for oil producing solutions. Consider asking a random person, would you rather keep your current car and use oil that has a side benefit of being carbon neutral or throw away the car, buy a brand new EV, and all the other associated costs (like upgrading the electric sockets in the garage). I think most would keep their car. And for someone living in an apartment without a personal garage, it's not even an option.
If we someday convert our deserts into massive solar energy farms, it may not even matter much that the oil technology is less efficient. There would be so much excess energy during daytime, the greater efficiency of EV wouldn't be a big advantage.
And gas engine technology itself isn't standing still. The traditional ICE engine efficiency of 25% is pathetic compared to the EV 80%. But the Prius combines both technologies and gets 40% thermal efficiency which is a big improvement. It's possible this could be increased further with more improvements in hybrid technology.
Many think that hybrids and plug-in hybrids are a bridge technology to a pure EV future. But the future may end up being a lot more similar to the present than expected. Maybe the typical car purchase in the future will be a 100 mpg hybrid with 60 mile plug-in battery range as an option. Those who have personal garages would buy the option, those who don't would not. And it would be all powered by massive solar power farms in the Mojave desert and wind farms in the mid-west. And the output from all this would be electricity and carbon neutral oil.
>But the Prius combines both technologies and gets 40% thermal efficiency
well, you can get an even better ICE with relatively simple improvements. In some sense there is just no business case for it as metal-air batteries would probably beat all the other options for passenger cars in near future.
>Many think that hybrids and plug-in hybrids are a bridge technology to a pure EV future. But the future may end up being a lot more similar to the present than expected. Maybe the typical car purchase in the future will be a 100 mpg hybrid with 60 mile plug-in battery range as an option.
kind of. Small personal cars will go EV (typical secondary and metal-air batteries). Starting with pickup trucks and into the big ones - will be hybrids with various plugin (probably with metal-air or similar) options.
> well, you can get an even better ICE with relatively simple improvements.
You really can't. Note the VW emissions scandal. We've already hit the wall regarding how much energy we can squeeze out of a unit of liquid fuel (most of the energy gets wasted as heat).
>We've already hit the wall regarding how much energy we can squeeze out of a unit of liquid fuel (most of the energy gets wasted as heat).
far from it. Just for example - the gas turbine reaches 50+% efficiency and in sequence hybrids there is no limitations which killed gas turbine car 50 years ago. Of course gas turbine is expensive, so we aren't going this way.
>Note the VW emissions scandal.
A BigCo stuck in old ways tells nothing about what is technologically possible. I'd say you can't do worse than current typical gas or diesel engine which basically hasn't changed for 100+ years :) Even well known Atkinson cycle was implemented en-mass only recently. Once i file my patents, i'll tell you in more details about other efficient designs and improvements :)
Without the efforts like CAFE and CA emission/efficiency requirements, we'd still be stuck with 20% efficient carburetor gas ICE. The increase of the regulatory pressure creates market opportunity for efficient designs, and you'll see what will come when CAFE hits 50mpg :)
He is probably referring to other pollutants such as NOx. It is unavoidable to produce some amount of these pollutants in an oil combustion process. But California has shown that it's possible to get this down to a low level. Smog used to be really bad in LA. But a combination of catalytic converters, strict emissions testing, and oil refinery requirements to make cleaner burning gas has dramatically reduced smog. The oil refinery requirements make CA gas very expensive compared to the rest of the nation. But I think it's worth it for the air pollution improvements.
Oxides of nitrogen, soot and various other pollutants come out of burning diesel, even if it's just carbon we pulled out of the air. It would be carbon neutral, but not pollution neutral.
There are also alternative storage solutions, like flywheel and pumped water storage. I don't know where those stand at the moment, but I imagine that a they are at least competitive with batteries, seeing as current batteries have fairly low storage capacity and need to be replaced regularly.
I excluded flywheels and pumped storage as they're rarely cost effective except in a few edge cases. Cargo containers full of batteries can be trucked or sent by ship anywhere necessary, and I expect them to get cheap very fast.
Understanding costs with and without subsidies is critical. I believe the current reports about renewables being cost-effective relative to fossil fuels includes subsidies but I couldn't find the raw data after a few minutes of googling. If so, just means the costs are being shifted -- and that renewables are still more expensive than coal/gas.
The big problem is that we still don't have effective ways to time-shift energy production. Solar and wind power sources will never replace base-load coal/gas plants until we can solve that problem. Battery technology doesn't solve this problem yet.
>Solar and wind power sources will never replace base-load coal/gas plants until we can solve that problem. Battery technology doesn't solve this problem yet.
From the article:
> In the power industry, Hawaii is commonly considered a "test case" for new renewable energy technologies because its power prices — the highest in the nation — have made cutting-edge resources cost-effective on the islands before they reach that point on the mainland.
So not directly applicable, right now, in most other locations.
Since we already basically ignore, in an economic sense, the externalities that come with burning fossil fuels, ignoring any subsidies associated with renewables is sort of fair game. Or at least, if you're going to insist on factoring in subsidies, you should also account for externalities.
"1. This is excellent. It means we're well on our way to sustainable energy generation. Wind and solar are only going to get cheaper. Even without subsidies, there is no reason to ever build another coal or oil fired generation facility. Natural gas will stick around until utility scale batteries ramp up, to where peaking plants are too expensive compared to utility scale batteries."
Wind/solar + batteries will never cover everything, because statistically there will be an event that the (very finite) capacity can't meet - then people will die, either freezing or overheating.
"2. Nuclear is dead. Very dead. Thorium. Fast breeder. Pebble bed. I don't care which you pick, no one is going to pour 10 years and $1-4 billion into a plant that won't be cost competitive when it turns up (maybe some governments, but you can't fix that; it'll just get mothballed)."
You're very wrong here. China in particular is investing heavily in nuclear going forward, including thorium. There are a number of companies here in the US, such as Flibe Energy and Thorcon that are working hard on next-gen nuclear solutions.
Nuclear is actually more environmentally friendly than wind, as it doesn't decimate bird and bat populations, has a much smaller land use footprint, and doesn't cause widespread noise pollution. It also has the additional attributes of reliability and low cost. The inherently safe next-gen nuclear technologies will come in at less than 5 cents per KWH, perhaps as low as half that.
On a level playing field, wind in particular can't compete. Eventually solar may, given enough technological breakthroughs.
> You're very wrong here. China in particular is investing heavily in nuclear going forward, including thorium. There are a number of companies here in the US, such as Flibe Energy and Thorcon that are working hard on next-gen nuclear solutions.
While China continues to build a handful of nuclear plants, their wind generation capacity is already far ahead of what they're producing from nuclear:
"Do you have data? Because there is enough wind potential alone in the US to satisfy the US power requirements 10x over."
When it is blowing, possibly. However it requires backup power for those inconvenient times when there is no (or little) wind. The cost of backup plants is one of the hidden costs of wind.
"While China continues to build a handful of nuclear plants, their wind generation capacity is already far ahead of what they're producing from nuclear"
China is planning on 400-500 GW of nuclear electric production by 2050. That will likely dwarf the real output of its wind farms.
"Wind is already cheaper than nuclear without subsidies in the USA and the UK. It also kills less birds and bats than buildings, cell towers, and cats."
Wind might be cheaper in the very best siting areas. The long-term durability of the generators remains to be seen.
Regardless, the affordability and effectiveness of wind has long been exaggerated by advocates. Here is a more balanced treatment:
'The true cost of wind energy is higher than most cost estimates calculate. Mandates requiring the use of wind energy increase electricity costs for consumers, and subsidies mask the actual cost of doing so. RPS require intermittent renewable energy to exist, but at the expense of utilities and consumers. The PTC makes wind power cheaper for utilities and consumers, but at the expense of taxpayers.
Through such policies, U.S. policymakers have essentially decided that electricity consumers will have wind power, even if it is more expensive. The cost of this decision has fallen to U.S. taxpayers and consumers of electricity. When weighing the costs and benefits of wind power, not including all of the hidden costs makes wind power appear to be a more attractive option than it actually is. Energy policy decisions, however, should be based on a more complete estimate of the cost of wind energy.'
"You mention next-gen nuclear tech will come in at 5 cents/kwh. Utility solar is already below 4 cents/kwh"
That is heavily subsidized, and also in the very best siting environment. Obviously those installations produce nothing at night, and even during the day average well under their peak output.
Solar is in no way a replacement for reliable, 24/7 nuclear generation.
There's interesting issues to consider with respect to scale + locality in generation/storage.
My father-in-law's partner has a property in a rural area. Their property runs on 100% solar. The surrounding area has no local (large scale) power generation. During a recent storm the whole town was knocked off the grid. The property with solar kept working (after the storm, not during) while town was without power for days.
It's pretty rare to invest in small scale, local fossil fuel power generation. Small communities have to rely on the grid. But small scale renewable is feasible. There are cost benefits to larger systems, but those benefits need to be weighed up against the risk mitigation of having local systems.
The opposite side to that is that often the best places to run renewable generation is in remote areas and cities may be dependent on larger scale grids. (not that too many people want a fossil fuel plant operating in their city)
I expect that storage system (utility scale batteries) will shift the proposition again. Maybe your rural community doesn't its own generation, just the ability to store enough power to survive a grid failure for a few days.
It's pretty rare to invest in small scale, local fossil fuel power generation.
I think you're ignoring the diesel or natural gas fueled generators that are now installed at most supermarkets, many office buildings, and even apartment buildings and private homes. They are everywhere these days; even 10 years ago you didn't see them as much.
I think you misunderstand OP. You're confusion backup generation (what you mentioned) with full time petroleum generation. Small towns aren't running their own coal plants, and the only geographic region I'm aware of running petroleum generation is Hawaii, which is why their power is so expensive, and they're moving to solar and utility scale battery storage at breakneck speeds.
I'm wondering, when they say prices are now near parity, is that pure prices, or does it still consider the "cost of externalities" factor?
Also, does it factor in the necessary costs for peak load and low production (cloudy / no wind)?
I actually don't think life would be that bad if society had to self-limit consumption during these times, but what are the real facts on these two items?
>I'm wondering, when they say prices are now near parity, is that pure prices, or does it still consider the "cost of externalities" factor?
I think it just counts externalities that are already priced in via taxes/subsidies.
It's not really possible to price global warming or clean air anyway.
Plus, remember the story about primary school parents who were fined for being late to pick up their kids?
The effect of trying to price global warming or clean air is harmful in and of itself. We shouldn't be trying to accurately assess the cost of destroying our environment to determine the exact tax to levy on the fossil fuel companies. We should be taxing them into oblivion now that we have alternatives.
Fossil fuel corporations will fight for their existence and profits from energy scarcity until their last gasp of tainted air. It won't affect their behavior at all.
It does apply to policymakers, however, who are very much human, and who place altogether too much faith in the idiotic models created by economists as it is.
There's also CSP[0] which has taken off recently in the past 5 years (fastest growing[1] segment at ~4GW total vs ~177GW for PV) which is overshadowed by most compared to PV mind-share, but is better suited for projects that require more energy/load requirements.
I also can see CSP being more attractive to locales with existing grids and who can probably attract financing easier for a +100 MW plant to one institution vs 100k+ people having to be sold on such to install PV on their house/property. There's definitely a market for both and they will all chip away at fossil fuels rapidly coming from different sides of the market for energy.
The problem with CSP compared to PV is all the moving parts. You need something like molten salts, coupled with a conventional turbine and generator. PV can be purely solid state, a thing of beauty IMO compared to mechanical "contraptions".
That's less of a problem, and more of a feature, because those molten salts enable CSP to provide more power for up to 16 hours[0] sans sunlight which is important if you need dispatchability, which is not really comparable to PV's which cannot offer the same now, hence why CSP is not killed off by PV's and has continued to grow along with PV's.
You also have to consider that people who live in apartments or rent a house in developed markets are pretty much either locked out of the market for PV's or not incentivized to pay out of pocket (even considering the subsidies/financing that exist [looking at you Solar City]) for such systems. I'd say that share of the population is far larger than people with a mortgage/own a home and are interested in such systems.
This embodies the situation: "Does this mean CSP will eventually disappear, trampled by PV? Not necessarily. CSP has one major advantage over PV: dispatchability. Current CSP plants can store thermal energy for up to 16 hours, which means that their production profile can match the demand profile (just like a conventional power plant). PV is not dispatchable, as a feasible commercial energy storage system does not yet exist. Dispatchability will be increasingly important when and where renewable energies achieve high penetration rates, so two things can happen: CSP becomes a commercially viable solution before a commercial PV storage system is developed, carving its own market segment; or the PV industry quickly solves the storage issue and becomes the solar technology of choice."[0]
Practically speaking there hasn't been a lot of large scale CSP done, and e.g. Ivanpah[1] has a lot of limitations and teething problems. It has no energy storage, and it needs to use natural gas for 4.5 hours each day during startup.
As for your assertion that CSP has continued to grow, the one data point I linked to claims "little appetite" from California utilities for power from plants like that.
One thing can probably both agree on is that CSP is a "go big or go home" technology. It's not suited for small scale deployments. Which makes it quite complementary to rooftop PV.
> "Practically speaking there hasn't been a lot of large scale CSP done…"
Maybe not in the United States, but it has taken off in Spain (looking at Wikipedia I cited earlier, which is probably better suited to take advantage of it in theory since installations are near population centers). I see far more interest oversees than in the United States… which is not surprising considering all the entrenched players that simply don't have the influence to the same degree in other places.
I can agree with this statement to some degree: "It's not suited for small scale deployments. Which makes it quite complementary to rooftop PV.", but seeing how it's serving a need that PV has not been able to provide to date despite it all, I'd hardly say its "go big or go home", there's far more abundant sodium and potassium available in the earth's crust vs lithium.
Proof? Citations? Because wind is already cheaper than nuclear (and solar will be in the next 2-3 years), and no one will invest in nuclear plants if they won't be profitable in 10 years (which they won't be).
Only onshore wind power is cheaper and it still costs about the same. Offshore wind power is about twice as expensive. Can you show your sources to solar power prices analysis since at this moment LCOE by Energy Information Administration doesn't predict the solar power prices to drop below nuclear power price by 2020?
Have you ever looked into the negative environmental impacts of lithium mining and disposal?
Elon's battery tech has serious negative environmental impacts yet the majority of people think its perfectly green because the media hasn't yet vilified this industry like they have fossil fuels.
> Have you ever looked into the negative environmental impacts of lithium mining and disposal?
I have. Lithium is mined from a brine on the surface, versus strip mining. Its neutral from an environmental impact perspective. Lithium batteries are almost fully recyclable except for the insulation (which is currently landfilled).
> Elon's battery tech has serious negative environmental impacts
7. Compressed air energy storage can't get here fast enough.
Batteries are great, but they have to be replaced. Tanks can last for centuries and the materials are way cheaper at scale (CAES makes no sense below the MWh scale).
The IEA indicates that world demand for power will rise, but at a much slower pace than historically due to the level of efficiencies we're realizing due to technology:
> 6. First world demand for renewables will continue to drive down costs, allowing third world countries to piggyback off the cost savings. Remember how Africa leapfrogged with cell phones instead of land lines? Imagine battery packs and solar roofs in every home instead of traditional utilities. It's already feasible with current economics.
Wired internet kicks wireless' ass everytime. So having land infrastructure is critical. That leapfrogging could bite them in the ass, if they have to gig now to lay down cables.
Wind and solar are still not competitive. The report says that coal costs $75 per megawatt hour, while land-based wind costs $83 and solar comes in at a whopping $122. That's far from "almost competitive". Also note that these are not costs of production, these are what people wind up paying for it. That means that the coal numbers include extensive taxes, while the solar and wind numbers include extensive tax discounts and incentives. This makes the real difference in production costs even bigger than what this report implies.
If we as a society decide we want clean energy, that's fine, but it is important that people make these decisions based upon actual facts. Clean energy in 2015 is still significantly more expensive than energy produced using fossil fuels (and of course this report leaves nuclear out entirely, which is far cheaper than coal).
> Even the study’s most conservative estimate of the uncounted cost of coal — $175 billion a year — would more than double the average cost of coal-fired electricity, the authors found.
And most of that is from well-understood and well-measured health impacts of coal pollution:
> At this lower range, roughly 80 percent of the costs were from well-documented public health impacts like lung and heart disease
So you pay $75 per megawatt hour for coal. And then the poor sap who lives downwind of the coal plant pays another $75 per megawatt hour for your electricity use in the form of dying early from lung cancer.
>The report says that coal costs $75 per megawatt hour, while land-based wind costs $83 and solar comes in at a whopping $122. That's far from "almost competitive".
$83 is close enough to $75 that tweaks to tax policy can now be used to make renewable energy investment over fossil fuel virtually a no brainer decision without adversely affecting overall energy production that much.
Indeed, that's pretty much what Germany has done.
>Also note that these are not costs of production, these are what people wind up paying for it. That means that the coal numbers include extensive taxes, while the solar and wind numbers include extensive tax discounts and incentives.
I won't speculate as to why you didn't note that fossil fuel subsidies are also included.
>$83 is close enough to $75 that tweaks to tax policy can now be used to make renewable energy investment over fossil fuel virtually a no brainer decision
The tweaks to tax policy you're referring to have already happened, and they still haven't made wind and solar competitive. Taxes and incentives being included are the only reason that the numbers quoted in this extremely misleading report are even remotely close to each other (although an 11% difference in a multi-trillion dollar industry is hardly insignificant).
>The tweaks to tax policy you're referring to have already happened, and they still haven't made wind and solar competitive
They already did in the UK and Germany as the article points out.
The political weight of utilities and the oil/natgas industry is significantly higher in the US which is probably why the US hasn't followed in Germany/UK's footsteps. Too many Senate re-election campaign funds being paid for by Kochs, etc.
>"too many Senate re-election campaign funds being paid for by Kochs, etc."
Or maybe, just maybe, decision makers realize that this stuff doesn't have to be, nor should be, implemented overnight?
Renewable energy innovation is occurring at an incredibly fast rate. The economy is a complex thing. Adoption will happen without distorting markets with overwrought subsisidies and burning money trying to accelerate it further.
> Adoption will happen without distorting markets with overwrought subsisidies and burning money trying to accelerate it further.
So you think that instead of introducing counter distortions to protect the environment we should just keep the distortions that are damaging it that we already have?
We need to carefully balance tax breaks for renewable energy solutions so that they do not stifle innovation. The key is to make buying renewable energy enough to entice consumers; both families and business; while at the same time not slowing the progress of innovation because the handouts are too profitable to give up.
Most economists agree that the sane policy is to tax the production of Greenhouse Gases and other pollutants. This prices in the externalities correctly for coal, gas and oil and then the free market does the rest by providing alternative electricity sources with less pollution, people and companies being less wasteful and more efficient, and new markets and products becoming viable (e.g. battery storage on the grid).
As part of that, all the existing subsidies given to fossil fuels should be removed, because subsidising and taxing them at the same time is silly.
(Some kind of measures should be take to return some of this tax money to the poor, as they pay proportionately more of their money on tax, and have the least ability to change their behaviour in the short term)
If this is done then renewables can thrive without any subsidy because they are already, in an economic literate reality, the better choice in large numbers of situations, and as their uptake grows this range will increase.
Why is this not done? Look at all the people in this thread who don't understand what an externality is and think taxes are evil. Hilariously, this has mostly just meant that the changes are still being implemented, but in a far more "big government" manner, with lots of rules, regulations and central control and money going to special interests.
Tax breaks so often get sucked up by the supplier, so the consumer sees none of it. Prices will jack up until, even with a consumer tax break, its almost exactly the same deal as conventional energy. Anything else is leaving money on the table, which no rational supplier will do.
Means, if tax breaks are not uniform (state by state for instance) then they server to impede new markets.
The number of green-energy scandals grows yearly. They have no moral high ground to stand on in that regard. And all energy suppliers play in the same competitive sandbox, right?
I admire your optimism :-) but I'm not 100% sure that is true. If there wasn't a political drive behind this, wouldn't it have been easier to burn coal for the next 100 years?
There are lots of examples of innovations changing entire industries without a political drive being behind it. The day someone discovers a clean energy method that is easily cheaper than fossil fuels will be able to cash in because the market will switch to it quite handily, regardless of politics. The only political drive I really worry over with things like this is cronyism that prevents innovations in an effort to maintain status quo.
This is already happening. Rooftop solar is disturbing monopoly utilities who are trying to stop it from disrupting them by slapping charges on customers who use it, or refusing to allow them to connect.
In the UK, a government with ties to fossil fuel industry (where the money is centralised and easy to syphon into bribes and kickbacks) is sabotaging wind power in favour of fracking.
Abbot in Australia etc.
The technology is already there, it's all about the politics now.
Germany main source of energy is still, by far, coal (lignite to be precise), and it's not going down yet. The expansion of renewable energy, which is very real, is being done at the expense of nuclear energy.
I wish they would be doing it the other way around: closing coal power plants before the nuclear ones. But Germany has lignite, and doesn't have much of a nuclear industry, so economically it makes much more sense that way...
Sure, it will eventually decline. But when you see the sharp decline in electricity produced from nuclear power plants, it feels like a missed opportunity to lower CO2 emissions faster.
I'm only looking at this from a greenhouse gases point of view. Maybe German nuclear power plants are particularly unsafe and it's better to wind them down quickly? I doubt it, which is why I lean towards an economical (more so than financial) decision.
Nuclear energy generally depends on the political will for the state to (in effect) take on the cost of insurance for the most serious accidents, since it is impossible for the energy producing companies to buy such insurance. It looks like in Germany that political will is no longer there.
This kind of thing does leave renewables open to attack based on the "subsidy bad" line of thinking. The whole point of the incentives is to pay a fair price for a superior product that does not cause pollution and health damage. It is unreasonable to require a superior source of energy to actually be cheaper. In that sense nuclear/solar/wind are worth purseing even if they cost more than coal. The fact that renewables are so competitive is more a testament to how inefficient large fossil fuel power stations are.
Well the entire raison d'être of a fossil fuel station is that it exploits the high energy density of its fuel. Despite the incredible property of coal and gas it is hardly "cheap" exactly. In a lot of economies energy bills would still be expensive for most people even if we only had coal and gas stations. It is perfectly possible that local solar will be cheaper than fossil fuel in the long run, especially when you take transmission losses into account
Taxes are part of the cost of electricity, and it's perfectly reasonable to include them in the cost of production. Wind power being down to within 10% of the cost of coal, that's absolutely competitive territory.
Additionally, the article notes that in some countries the costs are even higher for coal and natural gas, and in those countries, solar is certainly within competitive costs.
You might not like that governments are taxing some forms of electricity more heavily, but it's a valid way of encouraging the industry to migrate to cleaner options.
> You might not like that governments are taxing some forms of electricity more heavily, but it's a valid way of encouraging the industry to migrate to cleaner options.
It's not just a "valid way". This is the way taxes are intended to work! Taxes are not just a way for the state to collect money (maybe in the past centuries). They are also the main way to frame the economy.
Here in Germany, the term for "tax" is "Steuern" which means something like "controlling/steering/directing/governing". This is exactly the official purpose of taxes, and includes collecting as well as spending taxes.
It's interesting how many times I see people not understanding the effects of taxes. Like the short-minded people that think they'll reap huge benefits from taxing cigarettes and base their budgets around it. But then people stop smoking or find alternative sources for cigarettes so that the huge windfall of tax income never happens. Now they are left with a huge hole in their budget.
Did you consider the possibility that taxes on cigarettes are intended as an incentive to stop smoking and thereby lower the health care costs of treating long term smokers' various ailments?
Yes, but are you assuming that all tax districts had the same thinking? The situation I'm referring to up in the Northwest US, as I recall, was not considering that. Plus I'm sure there are other examples of budgets being based on taxes that didn't pan out, leaving a deficit in the budget.
I simply pointed out that by using prices that include taxes and incentives, this report artificially exaggerated the costs of coal and understated the true costs of solar/wind. They aren't really even close to being competitive in real terms, but this report falsely implies that they are.
Bloomberg LLP, the company behind this report, is run by Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire radical environmentalist. Therefore it isn't necessarily surprising to see such misleading tactics used in a report produced by them, but it is disappointing because Bloomberg masquerades as a news organization.
I simply pointed out that by using prices that include taxes and incentives, this report artificially exaggerated the costs of coal and understated the true costs of solar/wind. They aren't really even close to being competitive in real terms, but this report falsely implies that they are.
How do you define "real" terms? Sure it's not the price that would emerge if those taxes/incentives didn't exist, but market prices are always adjusted to the current particularities, it's never an absolute value. For example, if it was technically and legally possible to identify all the health and property damages caused by coal pollution and force the coal producers to compensate affected people, the market price of coal would have to be higher than what you call "real" cost, but would that be any less real?
Regulating or taxing emissions is simply a form of collective demand for clean air, a scarce resource. I don't see how it is any more artificial than demand for land that drives up the prices for coal mines or the demand for labor that determines salaries of coal miners.
In other words, producing energy by burning coal consumes clean air. Clean air is owned by the public and the public is charging for its use.
You should also include external costs to your cost of producing coal power; then is what the CO2 taxes are an attempt to do.
That someone else is forced to pay to handle the effects of your pollution doesn't mean that this cost shouldn't be considered part of the cost of coal generated electricity.
I don't think downandout is confused with the purpose of taxes, nor do I see it disagreeing with them.
The point I think (and to which I agree) is that real costs matter because anything can be "competitive" with enough subsidization. And subsidization doesn't make things cheaper in the real sense, it simply realigns incentives.
As is, renewables are heavily subsidized, fossil fuels are taxed heavily, and there's still a gap. It's trivial to close that gap through tax policy. So then the question becomes, what is the correct level of subsidization? I'm not sure, but I don't think the answer is "more, more, more". Because eventually you will eliminate the industry that is paying the taxes to offset the subsidized one. When it's no longer economically feasible to pay those heavy subsidies, that's when you'll see why the real cost of production matters.
Those are global averages. Some countries have lots of sun and little coal, and vice versa.
Islands that have to import oil to burn are ideal early markets for example.
And every solar panel or wind turbine reduces the price of the next, a positive feedback loop.
Every bit of coal or gas burned puts more CO2 in the atmosphere and increases the costs that governments will impose on production, a negative feedback loop.
Except that he didn't say that at all and has given extremely detailed accounts of the current thinking at the time in history (they were already looking towards the upcoming limitations and bottlenecks they would face in expanding RAM sizes).
Although it is true that solar and wind are dropping in prices recently I don't think an urban legend misquote has any relevance.
In the future you might want say 'misattributed' or 'wrongly attributed' for this case.
The term 'attributed to X' can mean "is widely but wrongly attributed to X", but can also mean "I heard it somewhere and it sounds true so I'll go with my gut feeling instead of verifying it" or "I hear there are doubts, so while I have no opinion, I'll keep my bases covered."
Personally, rather than be stuck in that mire, I would suggest quoting Prof. Frink from Simpsons:
> 'I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.'
This in turn came from the quote widely but wrongly attributed to Thomas J. Watson of IBM:
> 'I think there is a world market for maybe five computers'
> Often dated to 1943. Thorough research of Watson's writings and statements have produced no example of him saying this. It appears to be a corruption of a remark by Howard Aiken that four or five computers could meet all of the United Kingdom's computing needs. See Ralph Keyes (2006), The Quote Verifier.
Of these, only the Frink version has an accurate attribution. I think the other two come with some malice. By repeating the urban legend as if it's relevant, I think you are forwarding that malice, even if unintentionally.
They can drop to zero, they are still not going to replace regular power plants because you can't guarantee baseline power with them. You could drop all power generated with them into pumping water to huge reservoirs, so they can generate baseline power around the clock, but it's not feasible in a lot of places, and you are losing a lot of energy just to move the water up and down.
Not sure whether you're just using the term incorrectly, but I see this claim repeated a lot so forgive me for explaining: you do not need baseline power.
Baseline power is the observation that if we have less than ideal power plants that need to run 24/7 to be economical (usually because of high capital costs, e.g. nuclear plants), we can still deploy them if we then also invest in other plants for filling in the peaks.
See, the important part here is that you always need to meet demand (maybe you can shift demand around a bit, but after shifting it the observation still holds).
If you have baseline plants, your supply curve is a flat line so the peaks in the demand are the holes you need to fill in somehow.
With a renewable source like wind or solar, you may actually be able to meet the peak demand, but then have a hole in the supply at some other point (say at night, or when there's no wind). So you need to fill in these somehow (as you say).
The frustrating part about this is that fossil fuels have had the scales tipped in their favor via 1) subsities, and 2) not accounting for externalities in the price. The economic costs of particular emissions, CO2, mercury, and other pollutants are very real, and astronomical, but a classic tragedy of the commons.
If we factor those into the price, renewables like solar and wind would be much more competitive.
You make a valid point, but I'd be curious to what extent this applies on both sides. I know I certainly hear a lot of buzz about the subsidies provided for "green energy", installing panels, that sort of thing. I was also under the impression that we haven't fully moved away from using certain rare earth metals/other compounds in the panels/large electric generators, which likely have a heavy cost externality in mining.
Really wish there was some repository of what the "true costs" of the things we use are, this has got me thinking about even more mundane goods when you consider the whole supply chain.
Fossil fuels get on the order of 100+ billion per year in direct and indirect subsidies in the US as a conservative estimate. By far the largest subsides for 'Green Energy' go to corn ethanol which is mostly political football. After that there really more rounding errors than anything else.
PS: Nuclear seems to be popular on a lot of tech sites, but it needs massive subsides to come close to break even.
I'm not saying you're wrong (and I think you're right), but do you have a source for the "fossil fuels get $100billion+ in subsidies" and "Nuclear needs massive subsidies to come close to break even"?
> A new 3,260 MW Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was given planning consent on 19 March 2013.[10] A guaranteed "strike price" of £92.50 per megawatt-hour (to be indexed for inflation over 45 years) was announced on 21 October 2013. The new power station would see Hinkley's contribution to the country's power supply rise to 7%.[9] At the time of the planning consent, the price for electric energy on the wholesale market was around £45 per megawatt-hour while the new power plant was expected to need earnings of £90 per megawatt-hour in order to break even.[11]
You are misreading the article, that cost overrun is from a previous nuke project (supplied by Areva, started in 2005 and not yet finished).
Regarding what the price guarantees are worth (and it's not an estimate, it's in contract), there are some interesting scenarios for sure if they can't hold up their promises. For example the joint company is being bankrolled with a large slice from Rosatom, one wonders what happens to their capital in case of a bankruptcy!
The true fully-internalized cost of fossil energy is enormous. Mass extinction, crop failure, mass human migration, ocean ecosystem collapse. You think you can put a price on that? Do you think it's going to look cheaper than a couple tens of billions of dollars spent incentivizing solar panel installation?
If these things do happen (are they really any reliable predictions?), perhaps they're compensated for by the fact that we can grow enough food to feed the planet thanks to fertilizers and fossil fuel powered transportation. The situation would probably be worse without fossil fuels (limited to mostly medieval technology) than even a doomsday scenario with them.
Don't forget ocean ecosystems have already more or less collapsed due to fishing and mass human migration has already happened due to urbanization and population growth. Most city buildings that exist today will have been constructed in the last few decades or certainly the last century. We're quite fast at moving and developing civilizations.
I wish there was a link to the article and sources on the prices.
"while natural gas-based electricity cost $82 in North and South America."
This makes no sense – the price of NG is very local.
I just ran an analysis of NYISO Zone J (New York City's) average hourly price for the last year – and it comes out at an average of $40.87 per MWh(peak and off peak). This would include all sources of generation.
The prices in the article would have everyone generating electricity loosing massive amounts of money – which they aren't.
I read a summary of some recent research at Stanford - concluding that wind was more than competitive with oil. That article mentioned that there were hidden subsidies to many energy sources, including oil and gas, and that most analysis didn't take those into account.
As more countries and states enact market systems that put a price on carbon emissions, clean energy technologies will actually become cheaper than fossil fuel technologies
Translated into plain English:
As more governments raise the price of fossil fuels through increased taxation, solar and wind may cost less than fossil fuels.
What does the author have to gain by obfuscating something so obvious?
What is the impact on people when their energy costs are raised? (Hint: energy - vast amounts of it - goes into everything, from growing food to producing artificial heart valves.)
>As more governments raise the price of fossil fuels through increased taxation, solar and wind may cost less than fossil fuels.
well, as it stands currently the whole society pays the tax for the fossil fuels use - that tax is the expenses and damages caused by the environment damage and climate change, oil wars, backward countries and people having huge political power due to being rich from oil, etc... It is only fair to shift at least some of the tax burden to the actual producers and consumers of the fossil fuels.
>What is the impact on people when their energy costs are raised?
what are you talking about? 100w solar panel costs less than $100, double that for installation and wires&converter. So $200 loan at 6% for 20 years is $1.5/month or $0.05/day. In CA the panel will produce 1kwh/day. I.e. $0.05/kwh. And no more kissing of Saudi princes' lower backs :)
For society you need reliability, you just don't stop freezers just because sun goes down, or there is period of storms or night. You would need atleast 14 times the hour capacity just to smooth the daily curve. [In winter there is less sunlight hours and maximum sun light is mid-day.]
The cost is more than 0.1$ per watt hour of capacity, just for battery, and not for any power electronics going with it.
So this alone would increase your cost estimates by 150$
And for society you probably want a weeks worth of electricity stored in some form or other to deal with weather differences, and not summer winter difference. So minimal goal would be 24*7. Or just more than 150 hours.
Or that another 1500$ of cost not included in your estimations.
Now a big thing to realize, in electricity markets where networks are required to take in solar and wind from other players, its not the producer of electricity that bears the cost of that large storage its the utility that buys the electricity from market.
Right now it works somewhere along the lines. Lets make 40% efficient fossil fuel plants instead of 60% efficient slowly starting fossil fuel plants, so that we can turn them on and off for covering the difference between intermitted sources and consumption.
So in reality renewable plants end up just becoming fuel saving devices for fossil fuel plants while reducing fuel efficiency of said plants when they actually are turned on .
In long run I believe nuclear is way to go if we want to stop global warming. The intermittency problem goes away with it and you can run a grid with 100% nuclear with very little storage because production isn't intermittent, and with modern plants you can vary electricity production between 50 and 100%
Global warming is accumulating effect, the emissions are just rate of change, and not the temperature difference, and we need to aim pretty close to zero emissions to stop it. [Yes nature takes some of it off from circulation but a lot less than people think because naysayers compare our emissions to winter, summer cycle of plants that cancels itself in yearly basis.]
it isn't a car, so the range of technological options is much wider, ie. there is no need for high capacity small batteries. One can hydrolyze the water during low loads and store the resulting hydrogen (hydrolysis equipment and stationary storage is relatively simple and cheap). A generator with gas turbine to burn the hydrogen would cost on the scale like $400/kw - a small addition to the $2K/kw capital cost for solar panels install. The week of reserve storage - 200kwh to be generated - with even low 40% efficiency of turbine generation - would require storing 250m3 of hydrogen to provide a week reserve per 1kw of basic capacity. Lets say that storage is generous $1/m3.
As result, under $3K/kw we'd have a week of reserve and the ability to short-term double power during peaks using the gas turbines. And using the same loan calculations it is $0.075/kwh.
If that part bothers you, ignore it. Solar and wind are already cheaper without any subsidies. It should bother you though, but I've learned to not bother wasting my time with people about why. It doesn't matter at this point, now that fossil fuels have lost the lead.
"Wind power is now the cheapest electricity to produce in both Germany and the U.K., even without government subsidies, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). It's the first time that threshold has been crossed by a G7 economy."
I didn't paste the rest in here, its long, but you should read it. Its even better in the US.
I once read a study from a major state university, commissioned by the state government, that argued that it was more economic to recycle plastic bottles than to landfill them.
BUT... when you dug into the details of the report (something the journalists and general public were unlikely to do), you found the calculations didn't correct for taxation (landfills) and subsidies (recyclers) as regulatory distortion. The report simply treated them as natural economic components; itemized, yes, but not removed from the conclusion.
When I saw that I have to admit I became rather more cynical about the intersection of politics and academics. It just wasn't right.
Hilariously, by ignoring such subsidies, they're effectively "discovering" something every street cleaner in some countries already knows - you get paid for collecting plastic bottles and you don't get paid for leaving them in the rubbish bin!
I don't think what the author mentioned and what you implied are one and the same. From author's perspective, when you look at the actual price of fuel including the carbon emissions that they are causing, which cause expenses in other ways like health/environment, clean energy technologies are actually getting cheaper than fossil fuel technologies.
I don't know why I couldn't reply to your comment 4 children down but oh well.
I don't understand how what you say is somehow a case for fossil fuel more so than a case for energy use. That is: why is the rise of a country's wealth metrics tied to fossil fuel? Wouldn't it be the same even if it were using say solar?
Also, I quickly browsed through your second link and I was very surprised about the figure 1.6 (which claims that there is less pollution as time goes by). I checked the source and although there isn't much context, it seems that what the EPA data is saying is that less pollutants are emitted year over year… that's a negative second order derivative of the amount of pollutant, not a negative first order derivative as the title seems to suggest (to me anyway).
It bothers me greatly that such a superficial analysis reveals bothersome details like this. I am inclined to believe that this source is not very good.
man, there is no argument about importance of industrial civilization and fossil fuels that brought us here. There is a reason why the term "weaning of fossil fuels" is used as the time of fossil fuels has passed, and now their usage only slows down the development of our civilization.
My argument is that fossil fuels and industrial civilization yields positive externalities, including longer lifespan and resilience against the impacts of a changing climate.
I agree. Fossil fuels have definitely had benefits in the past but now we have to ability to continue with those benefits, increase them and remove the negatives.
By raising energy prices, which will soak the poor? Not everyone can afford to shop at Whole Foods, drive $100k electric cars, and live in LEED-certified houses (not cheap here in Seattle!)
If society can afford to not include the huge negative externalities inflicted by fossil fuels in the bill, it gets to show that affordable green energy is largely a question of political will.
Pollution has a cost associated with it. Is regulation that makes the polluter liable for those costs a pro-human thing to do? Isn't that more equitable?
>What is the impact on people when their energy costs are raised? (Hint: energy - vast amounts of it - goes into everything, from growing food to producing artificial heart valves.)
There ought to be minimal impact on overall energy costs since renewable energy is capable of filling in the demand at the same cost these days.
Renewable energy is also perfectly capable of ramping up supply to match demand (unlike oil or gas there isn't a hard resource limit to manufacturing capacity).
I live in Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle, which is right on the ocean. If and as sea levels rise, every single person here would be better off running away from their homes, abandoning everything they own and starting from scratch somewhere inland.
For each of us, even this would be better than abandoning industrial civilization, which is the thing that gives us hospitals, abundant food, clothing, shelter, clean/hot/cold water, and everything else needed for a good human life.
Holy strawman. Taxing fossil fuel now equals abandoning industrial civilization?
But I agree on one point. When (not IF) the sea level rises, some people are bound to end up better off, by taking opportunities and exploiting all the other people who have to find new place to live.
Some people will do absolutely anything to make money, and don't care how their action will affect people living now or a generation from now. Human nature.
Holy strawman. Taxing fossil fuel now equals abandoning industrial civilization?
As of 2007, Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, leading opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, wants taxes that will prohibit 80% of fossil fuel use. Since then, he has called for outlawing 90-95% if fossil fuel use.
Scaling of these solutions is what we need to worry about. Scaling wind and solar to actually provide energy on the scale we humans consume it is a totally different question that "how much does this cost per mega watt hour".
I'm actually more excited about the small scale generation. Solar is the only viable method for generating electricity in 1 watt to several KW. Wind also comes in handy here. I'm wondering what news technologies this will allow.
Using real money, taking into account much of the complexity of real world accounting: i.e. considering lower current interest rates, and many places where many of fossil fuel's externalities have to be paid for by the users of the fuel.
2. Nuclear is dead. Very dead. Thorium. Fast breeder. Pebble bed. I don't care which you pick, no one is going to pour 10 years and $1-4 billion into a plant that won't be cost competitive when it turns up (maybe some governments, but you can't fix that; it'll just get mothballed).
3. Utility scale batteries are going to be needed to make up for solar and wind's capacity factor (availability). Tesla is going to clean up with its Gigafactory. Well done Elon. I hope Mars treats you well.
4. Any pollutants or negative externalities of both solar panel and battery production can be much better contained and managed than the output of a coal plant.
5. Cheaper renewables means even cheaper power available for the transition to electric vehicles.
6. First world demand for renewables will continue to drive down costs, allowing third world countries to piggyback off the cost savings. Remember how Africa leapfrogged with cell phones instead of land lines? Imagine battery packs and solar roofs in every home instead of traditional utilities. It's already feasible with current economics.
Did I cover everything? Anything missing?