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Renewable Energy Set To Be Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels By 2020, Says Report (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Continuous technological improvements have led to a rapid fall in the cost of renewable energy in recent years, meaning some forms can already comfortably compete with fossil fuels. The report suggests this trend will continue, and that by 2020 "all the renewable power generation technologies that are now in commercial use are expected to fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range." Of those technologies, most will either be at the lower end of the cost range or actually undercutting fossil fuels. "This new dynamic signals a significant shift in the energy paradigm," said Adnan Amin, director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA), which published the report. "Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now -- overwhelmingly -- a smart economic one." The report looked specifically at the relative cost of new energy projects being commissioned. As renewable energy becomes cheaper, consumers will benefit from investment in green infrastructure. The current cost for fossil fuel power generation ranges from around 4p to 12p per kilowatt hour across G20 countries. By 2020, IREA predicted renewables will cost between 2p and 7p, with the best onshore wind and solar photovoltaic projects expected to deliver electricity by 2p or less next year.
If the claimed problem is that many things have been left out of the calculation, the response would be first to look into what those things are, rather than jumping straight to demanding a corrected final result.
I suspect you're not asking in good faith, due to the absurdity of the way you phrase the question.
But if you were just being lazy, then I'll spoon feed you the search term: "fossil fuel externalities." That will return your years and years worth of reading materials on the subject, and you can very quickly find out if the orders of magnitude of the external costs justify conclusions about the relative costs even without having precise "objective" numbers.
Also, please note that that isn't really what "objective" means. Perhaps you meant something different, like "unbiased." Using the philosophy definitions of the terms, figuring out the costs after including externalities is clearly subjective. Using common English definitions, neither is relevant until you're making an actual accusation of bias.
The problem is the cost of storage. Renewables are intermittent meaning we need storage or baseload backup. 96% of our current storage is done thru pumped hydro. All of our current storage will last less then a hour. It is not feasible to scale that up to a 100% percent renewable grid. Batteries are even more expensive and less feasible for grid level storage.
Given the realities of climate change, it is immoral to oppose nuclear power
... by 2020 "all the renewable power generation technologies that are now in commercial use are expected to fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range." [and will continue to drop below them] ... "Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now -- overwhelmingly -- a smart economic one."
THIS is how The Invisible Hand eliminates greenhouse gas emissions. B-)
Cost of renewable energy collection drops as tech advances.
* Solar photovoltaic, in particular, benefits from semiconductor tech.
* Control and conversion IS semiconductor tech, with all the Moore's Law benefits.
* Storage rides the battery advances driven by things like laptops and electric cars.
Cost of grid generation may benefit some from tech, but it's mostly mature and advances slower.
Meanwhile, cost of fossil fuels continues to climb as the easy stuff gets used up - while renewables (if you already occupy a good site) pretty much don't HAVE ongoing fuel costs.
As the cost passes crossover in progressively more locations, renewables will first take up new loads, then (as the second crossover is passed similarly and it becomes cheaper to switch than not), displace existing fossil fuel generation.
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Fossil fuels are most common in a few countries. That means odds are you have to go somewhere else to get them unless your country happens to be one of the lucky ones. There's a long history of nasty wars fought over oil. And those wars are _expensive_. The Iraq war's final bill is going to be around $7 trillion with a 'T'. Afghanistan is going to be around $3 trillion.
Then there's pollution. Even if you pretend climate change is a Chinese hoax smog isn't. Asthma, lung cancer, respiratory & heart disease are all exacerbated and in some cases outright caused by burning Fossil Fuels. And if you're using leaded gas you can add sever mental problems to that list.
Then there's the massive subsidies and tax breaks oil companies get. Yeah, yeah, renewables get them too. But it's still part of the cost of oil. Plus oil spills and their clean up. And the cost of shipping the stuff. The list goes on and on, but the first two I cited are the big ones because they're the ones that aren't part of the direct cost and therefor aren't obvious and/or counted.
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Even more important than "renewable" energy is diversity of energy sources. Every source of energy has its drawbacks:
- Hydroelectric dams are "renewable" and fossil-free. But they disrupt river life.
- Wind farms kill birds and (in some people's view) ruin landscapes.
- Nuclear energy creates waste products that are very, very hard to safely dispose of, and create risks of leaking in natural disasters.
- Solar energy farms require a lot of land, and endanger and displace wildlife.
- Tidal-powered turbines kill marine life.
Any energy source, if replicated at extremely large scales, will have major undesirable side effects. If instead we have a wide array of sources, each one's negative impacts won't be as widespread.
Just like with investing money...don't put all your eggs in one basket.