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Brookings Study Calls Solar, Wind Power the Most Expensive Fossil Alternatives
turkeydance (1266624) writes A new study [PDF] from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, argues that using solar and wind energy may be the most expensive alternatives to carbon-based electricity generation, even though they require no expenditures for fuel.....Specifically, this means nuclear power offers a savings of more than $400,000 worth of carbon emissions per megawatt of capacity. Solar saves only $69,000 and wind saves $107,000. An anonymous reader points out that the Rocky Mountain Institute finds the Brookings study flawed in several ways, and offers a rebuttal.
"$400,000 worth of carbon emissions", it says. What, monopoly money?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.
The Brookings Institution??? Why would anyone give a damn what some think tank, er, thinks?
By definition, a think tank's job is to simply rationalize their clients opinion.
Quite odd how, out of the first eighteen comments (not counting replies), five are about decommissioning costs, and five are about meltdowns? They seem to repeat the same talking points, almost as if on a script.
I'm not saying they're shills, but at the very least a lot of people seem to be getting their information from the same place, which leaves them missing several crucial facts:
1) Nuclear power works at scale. It's proven, and it scales perfectly. The biggest solar plants on the planet are 500MW (Topaz Solar Farm, PV) or 400MW (Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, thermal). A single nuclear reactor is well above that - scroll down this list and you'll see very few sub-500MW, and quite a few 1GW+ reactors. And remember, most plants have more than one reactor. 66 nuclear plants are enough to give us 20% of our energy. 947 wind plants are only enough to give us 3%, and 553 solar plants (PV and thermal) don't even break half a percent.
2) Nuclear power would be a hell of a lot safer if new designs were actually approved. The regulations are pretty much ridiculous - they don't approve new reactor types that are designed to solve all the problems we've found with the old designs, but they still allow old designs with known weaknesses to be extended long past their designed lifespan. Add to that the ridiculous costs of dealing with the bureaucracy and the weak requirements for cleanup/decommissioning, and it almost seems like the regulations are designed both to make nuclear power unprofitable, and to keep public opinion against it. Hmm...
3) Nobody is arguing for pure nuclear power, because that doesn't work for all the reasons people say it doesn't work. Nuclear (and geothermal, where possible) makes for an excellent base load. Nuclear meshes well with hydro - excess capacity can be used to run the dam in reverse, pumping water up to store that energy for later use. And if positioned right, it provides both cooling water for the reactor, and a single point to close off flow or install filters if something does go wrong. Wind, tidal and solar can supplement this as locations allow, with solar in particular taking the edge off the peak load.
4) Every power plant can go wrong. What happens when a hydro dam fails? Thousands of people die. What happens when a solar plant fails? We don't know yet, but it probably won't be that good considering how much damage they can do even when working properly. Same for wind, and tidal, and geothermal. They do some minor damage even when working perfectly - frying or chopping up migratory birds or fish, or altering the geology in the case of geothermal. Nuclear has the benefit, at least, of being perfectly clean when working perfectly. Yes, if things go wrong it can be absolutely horrible, but that's why regulations need to focus on redundant containment and fail-safe designs, not on constant inspections.
Just because you know your bread will eventually turn green with mold, doesn't mean you should throw it away now. Use petroleum until the economic curves actually cross, not before.
Early solar adopters aren't bearing this cost because the power company charges them same amount for power whether or not the sun is shining - it's not really an issue until solar is a bigger power source. Germany IS already there, leading the way with solar and wind, and has been paying outrageous prices for electricity at certain moments when there is a crunch - up to 400 times the normal rate! But as you can imagine this is a huge financial incentive to create new solutions.
I question the study because the transition to solar will be gradual, and it's hard to say what more efficient means we might come up with to store power. If we had a smart grid that could communicate fluctuating electricity prices to devices, there might be a lot they could do.
It's interesting to me that, when someone publishes a study that might not support the liberal template of "renewables and sustainables rock", the moderators also publish a rebuttal. In fact, I have never seen a Climate Change article with a rebuttal attached EVER. Slashdot slanted, oh hell yes they are.... come on guys. Let ALL of the members in the forum speak.
Straight conversion efficiency isn't the only factor that matters by a long shot, and might not even be the most important factor. Maximum charge cycles / lifespan strikes me as important. Cost of materials. Safety. Regulatory complications. A 10% loss in efficiency is probably worth it to go from 3,000 charge cycles to 10000.
fencepost
just a little off
1, and 4 are moot when you are generating all the power you need from your own roof... Now, batteries need to catch up, but a bank of batteries in your basement can keep a house overnight if it's well insulated.
This is assuming you're in a place where it's feasible to do this (see #2, as none of these points exists in a vacuum from the others).
For places like the North Central and North Eastern US, you don't get enough hours of daylight, nor enough quality of light during a good portion of the year to pull more than a trickle charge off a normal sized rooftop. And that's BEFORE calculating a foot of snow and ice on the roof.
Try harder.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!