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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"?


For nuclear:

> 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]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_...


Up north the latest nuclear plant guarantees price for its owners at 50 EUR/MWh (37 GBP) or less: http://www.energypost.eu/rosatom-signs-contract-build-nuclea...


"Its cost estimate has gone up from €3 billion to €8.5 billion." So, these estimates are not exactly worth much.


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!


A couple of sources in here, below the first few paragraphs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of...

This article on 'de-facto' subsidies computed by the IMF that includes externalities such as pollution and global warming is also worth reading:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fu...




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