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World's Cheapest Energy Source Will Be Renewables Within Three Years (qz.com)
Morgan Stanley researchers predict renewable energy will become the world's cheapest form of power within three years. An anonymous reader quotes Qz:
Renewable energy is simply becoming the cheapest option, fast... "We project that by 2020, renewables will be the cheapest form of new-power generation across the globe," with the exception of a few countries in Southeast Asia, the Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report published Thursday... Globally, the price of solar panels has fallen 50% between 2016 and 2017, they write. And in countries with favorable wind conditions, the costs associated with wind power "can be as low as one-half to one-third that of coal- or natural gas-fired power plants." Innovations in wind-turbine design are allowing for ever-longer wind blades; that boost in efficiency will also increase power output from the wind sector, according to Morgan Stanley.
The researchers also predict America will reach its Paris Climate Accord targets in 2020 -- five years early -- simply because renewables are already becoming the cheapest option for power.
The researchers also predict America will reach its Paris Climate Accord targets in 2020 -- five years early -- simply because renewables are already becoming the cheapest option for power.
Utilities are already adding storage it became cost effective about a year ago. Cheaper then adding peaker plants.
Net metering at the residential scale. Forcing energy companies to pay retail instead of wholesale is a direct subsidy to residential solar. Requiring some fraction of renewable generation forces the power companies to pay wind even when Nuclear is cheaper. That's a direct subsidy. California, in particular, requires power companies to,buy all available renewable power, whether or not they need it. That subsidizes renewables by ensuring that they never have idle capacity. The EPA Andrew other federal and state agencies giving coal construction, particularly major repairs and upgrades, a pocket veto by just not responding to permit actions is an indirect subsidy, as they are deliberately driving up the construction cost to competition. Ignore direct congressional pressure on major landholders in the desert southwest to force them into leasing their land to politically connected renewable companies at well below market rates. And let's not get started with the average of a decade and a half of regulatory and judicial delays to nuclear construction which increase the cost ten-fold. No subsidies here.
You can get it from here - http://www.cc.com/video-clips/...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
If you're talking about cutting edge stuff. It's mostly the Government. There's a good reason lots of STEM professors carry/carried some level of clearance.
Also see transistors (gov contract to Bell Labs to develop components for radar improvement, general purpose computers for ballistics calculations, ARPAnet, GPS, EPIPEN, etc....). Free market can't be bothered to see things veyond a fiscal quarter.
Somewhat uniquely in the US, Pennsylvania has an abundance of cleaner burning anthracite coal, though it's more expensive than bituminous. Google coal anthracite vs bituminous.
Lets verify that for a moment.
You linked to a blog, that quoted a chart from the Washington Times, so lets Google that article:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/9/hillary-clintons-solar-energy-baloney/
Which cites a chart made from EIA numbers, specifically naming this article.
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/
Which cites LOAN guarantees, and R&D costs among the biggest costs, i.e. the CAPITAL costs.
"That idea that renewables will be cheaper than coal is simply politically motivated bullshit."
No, you're the victim of someone deliberately trying to mislead you by mixing in capital costs subsidies in and comparing them to ongoing costs.
You expect a huge capital investment when switching to renewables and thus a large capital cost.
For example Musk has rolled out the latest car from his factory, car 1, if I calculated the capital cost per electric car it would be about $2 billion for that one car!
The economics is already headed in this direction. California generates so much electricity with their solar power that we in Arizona are paid to take it during the day which is great for us!
Arizona has also steadily been solving the power dip but even if we only power ourselves during the day on renewables we are heading in the right direction. Plus we have solutions to this already deployed. We just need to keep going and the cost of AC in this state won't need to hurt so bad in the summer.
That's good, because most of the poor assholes who would otherwise mine coal are dying from either cancer, lung disease or opiate addiction. And you can thank the coal industry for all three.
Coal destroys communities.
All of what you said and literally. I give you the Centralia, Pennsylvania mine fire:
The Centralia mine fire is a coal seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States, since at least May 27, 1962.
The fire is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet over an eight-mile stretch of 3,700 acres.[1] At its current rate, it could burn for over 250 more years.[2]
The blaze has resulted in most of the town being abandoned. The population dwindled from 2,761 in 1890 to only 7 in 2013, and most of the buildings have been leveled.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Turning the region into a resourceless dump of poverty is unlikely to improve things for anyone.
Lifting the Resource Curse probably will improve things in the long run.
That's why Germany and Denmark, which have the highest wind+solar energy investments, have such affordable electricity. Oh, wait...
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/europeelectricprice.png
In Germany, where they now get 20% of their electricity from wind & solar, the extraordinarily high cost has driven the price of electricity there up to three times what I pay here in North Carolina. (Well, it also doesn't help that Merkel is shutting down their perfectly good nuclear plants.)
The truth is that the intermittency problem with wind and solar is so severe that when you get more than a few percent tied into the grid it actually has negative value. It is only "crony capitalism" (government mandates, tax incentives, etc.) which make wind & solar competitive with coal and gas except in very special circumstances.
Diverting resources to wind and solar boondoggles impoverishes people, not just in West Virginia, where huge numbers of them are now out of work, but also everywhere that it inflates the cost of energy. It causes people living "on the edge" to sometimes have to choose between eating and staying warm.
Either choice can be deadly. In Europe, where there have been enormous price hikes for energy because of "renewables" scams, "energy poverty" is killing tens of thousands of mostly-elderly people:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fuel-poverty-killed-15000-people-last-winter-10217215.html
What's more, most of the energy used to PRODUCE solar panels, and much of the energy used to produce wind turbines, comes from soot-belching, coal-fired power plants in China, and most of the energy REPLACED BY these devices would have been produced in clean power plants with state-of-the-art "scrubbers" in North America, Europe & Australia.
So, Chinese workers get emphysema, American workers get to collect unemployment (until it runs out), and American & European environmentalists get to feel self-righteous.
Such a deal.
unfortunately the poorly maintained pipelines in my home state are leaking and have contaminated surface water and ground water in some areas.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They're not adding storage for because it's cheaper than peaker plants. They're adding storage because peaker plants cant correct the stupid fast supply transients (100 msec-5 sec) caused by large PV farms. Those are all about grrid stability inside 10 seconds, and have nothing to do with the pipe dream of overnight storage for renewables. All of the current large scale storage projects are straight up graft.
This! It is quite telling that several oil companies were critical of Trump for pulling out of the Paris accords. But it's quite obvious when you look at it. E.g. BP own and operate 2.4GW worth of wind farms in the USA (14 farms) and many more internationally. Total is the second largest solar generator in the world, and even late comers like Shell just invested close to $2bn in a green energy division.
The writing is on the wall for oil, and the oil companies and preparing.
Intel has a fab in Israel, and an assembly factory, plus various R&D facilities.
Just a quick FYI, the largest body counts were all in non-Muslim countries and did not involve Islam at all. In fact, most did not involve religion at all. You have to go down the list a long way before you get anywhere near a Muslim country.
Here are the stats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll
Sorry to interject with facts, I hope I didn't spoil your day :(
It does cost "the state" - government has shit to pay for, and they are going to pay somehow - either by taxing something else, cutting services, or running a deficit to be paid later. Saying tax breaks cost nothing is pure idiocy - if not collecting income has no effect, start returning your paychecks to your employer and see how long you last.