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.

Comments

Bye bye, Middle East

[OneHundredAndTen]

If this pans out, the Middle East problems will become largely irrelevant, outside the Middle East. And Saudi Arabia will revert to what it always was.

Re:Bye bye, Middle East

[dbIII]

Funny thing is that was Nixon's plan way back, and then Carter's after the oil shock.
A huge amount of foreign oil money got donated to both parties to stop that sort of energy independence so now we spend a far larger amount giving free military support to the Saudis.

Re: Bye bye, Middle East

[Gavagai80]

No, actually it's the abundance of oil that makes the middle east a mess. Just as the abundance of natural resources have fueled so many wars in Africa. It's called the paradox of plenty.

Re:Free market FTW.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, technology, science, and engineering FTW. "free market" parasites show up after the fact and guilt us into giving THEM credit.

One small problem

[Synon]

What about the cost of energy storage? Producing it is not enough if you can't use it at-will.

Re:One small problem

[dprimary]

Utilities are already adding storage it became cost effective about a year ago. Cheaper then adding peaker plants.

Probably not

[Picodon]

If this pans out, the Middle East problems will become largely irrelevant, outside the Middle East. And Saudi Arabia will revert to what it always was.

I’m not so sure about that. There is more at stake in the region than just oil revenue, like competing regional influence (with military benefits), mass migrations, exportable terrorism and, of course, the Israel-Arab conflict in which the U.S. has always been knee deep. Turning the region into a resourceless dump of poverty is unlikely to improve things for anyone. If coal country here in the U.S. can effortlessly swing to radical extremes because their outdated jobs have gone away, think of what’s likely to happen in the Middle-East when it’s their turn. It would probably be smart to help them to a soft landing and rebound to better opportunities.

Re:Probably not

[ChrisMaple]

The Middle East, Israel excepted, is a "resourceless dump of poverty" because of the people and their self-destructive beliefs. Israel, like Hong Kong, is essentially resourceless and has become relatively rich through intelligent human action.

Re:bullshit

[myrdos2]

I can buy a 20 watt solar panel at walmart for a hundred bucks. Standard solar output is way less than the max though, because of clouds, night, sunlight that isn't at the right angle, etc. Usually you figure 20% of max production. So that's 4 watts 24 hours per day. Say it lasts 20 years, which is conservative IMO. 4 watts * 365 * 20 = 29.2 megawatt-hours over the course of its lifetime.

If your ideas are correct, that's a subsidy of $230 per megawatt hour, or $6,716 total subsidy for that solar panel.

Let's think about that for a second. Do you really think the government is shelling out $6,716 every time someone buys $100 worth of solar panel from Walmart? And that there's a giant conspiracy to hide that fact from consumers? Does that seem like a sane explanation to you? Or maybe that website should not be trusted without double checking elsewhere on the web.

Here's my link.

tax deducations

[OrangeTide]

The oil industry becomes less profitable as the tax breaks they have had in the past began to close. All things being equal, expect renewables to get cheaper and fossil fuels to get more expensive just on the tax benefits.

(tax deductions are not a subsidy in the strictest sense of the word)

Re:tax deducations

[nealric]

I am a tax attorney for an oil company. It's a lot more complicated than that. Overall, the oil industry actually bears one of the highest effective global tax rates- much higher than tech companies. Many countries where we do business have extremely high taxes specifically targeted at the oil industry. We don't have a ton of intellectual property that can be easily shifted between jurisdictions with the stroke of a pen so there are fewer aggressive planning opportunities.

The biggest "tax break" in the U.S. for the upstream oil industry (exploration and production of oil as opposed to transport and refining) is the expensing of intangible drilling costs ("IDC"). These costs would lead to a deduction in almost any income tax regime, but allowing such costs to be expensed accelerates the deduction. The industry would argue that expensing better matches the underlying economics of the transaction than having to capitalize the costs (deducting a portion over time). Many companies are actually capitalizing IDC voluntarily because they've been operating at a loss for the past few years. You don't pay any tax at all if you don't make any money.

Long story short, tax breaks are not what is driving profitability in the oil industry. It's commodity prices first, second, and third that drive profitability. Right now, they are in the tank. I'd also note that renewable sources also have considerable tax benefits- arguably more aggressive than those available for the oil industry, it's unlikely that tax makes a big difference on a comparative basis.

Re:Very interesting

[wierd_w]

You are still thinking of the 1980s there AC.

Many of the current solar panel designs do not use arsenic in the panel doping process. Much of the research has been in the development and use of inexpensive organic molecules, and even plastics instead.

This is one of the reasons why the price has declined so precipitously; It is not just China flooding the market with cheap (artificially price lowered) panels-- It is also ACTUALLY LESS EXPENSIVE manufacturing processes that do not incorporate toxic metaloids, like arsenic, which have costly refinement processes with expensive waste materials-- instead favoring organic molecules deposited with a simple chemical reaction onto pure crystalline silicon, or onto a suitable plastic substrate. In some cases, the photon collecting capabilities come from nanostructures generated inside the silicon using laser assisted vapor deposition, and other novel techniques.

If you had actually been following the research and science in emerging panel designs and technologies, you would know that-- but you were clearly too busy poopooing it instead.

Re:Coal Is Already Cheap

[fahrbot-bot]

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.

Re: End of subsidies

[Rei]

Net metering at the residential scale. Forcing energy companies to pay retail instead of wholesale is a direct subsidy to residential solar.

It can also be the other way around. Solar production tends to correspond with peak demand, and peaking power costs an arm and a leg. A solar user importing power at night and exporting power during the day is doing operators a favour.

That said, I think it would be fair to do what we do in Iceland with power bills, that is separate the infrastructure cost on your bill (aka, what it costs them to provide you with a power connection, amortized) from the generation cost. So if you want a grid connection, you always pay the infrastructure bill - but your generation bill could be net metered, even negative, ideally wholesale** both ways with time-of-use taken into account.

** Wholesale because you're already paying the overhead cost separately.

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.

Citation needed for specifics showing that this is some sort of widespread practice, or even that it occurs at all. The feds generally have no say in "coal construction" excepting where it touches upon the EPA, which is obligated by law to respond to all permit actions. Coal-producing states are generally extremely coal friendly.

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.

Again, "Citation needed showing that this is some sort of widespread practice, or even that it occurs at all." What you're describing is eminent domain - quite common with roads, oil pipelines, power lines, etc, but can you name a single example of it being used for building "renewable" power plants in "the desert southwest"?

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.

Pure nonsense. Name a single nuclear power plant that has had its cost "increased ten-fold" due to "regulatory and judicial delays". One can easily take a look at power plants that have gone way over budget - for example, here's one of the most extreme cases in modern times. Planned for 2010, but now probably not operational until as late as 2020, and coming in at three times its initial budget. Why? NIMBYs? Red tape? Hardly:

"The delays have been due to various problems with planning, supervision, and workmanship"
"The first problems that surfaced were irregularities in the foundation concrete, "
"Later, it was found that subcontractors had provided heavy forgings that were not up to project standards and which had to be re-cast"
"An apparent problem constructing the reactor's unique double-containment structure also caused delays, as the welders had not been given proper instructions"
"... told the BBC that it was difficult to deliver nuclear power plant projects on schedule because builders were not used to working to the exacting standards required on nuclear construction"
"...are in bitter dispute over who will bear the cost overruns and there is a real risk now that the utility will default."

Tell me, when was the last time that you welded a large-diameter zirconium-alloy pipe and X-rayed it for defects, with any possible sign of imperfection meaning having to cut it off and start from scratch? How many people in the world do you think have that skillset? Because that's what's involved in nuclear power plant construction - it is extremely exacting. And if you think it'd be just jolly to cut corners, by all means hold that view, but understand that I most definitely will not be joining you in that.