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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.
when the US and the rest of the world loses collective interest in the middle east? Saudi Arabia is just now trying to figure out how to modernize their country when the price of oil collapses. They're desperately trying to get women into the economy because their current social system isn't compatible with the kinds of two income families countries want/need to maintain the growth/profit margins they're used to.
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If you factor in the long-term effects of continued fossil fuel use on health and the environment in general then it's already far less expensive to use renewables.
You are referring to the uber-nutjobs commonly referred to as "Dominionists". For a soft-core preview of what a Dominionist-run country would be like, try reading The Handmaids Tale -- but the reality of a Dominionist world would be orders of magnitude worse, I assure you. Try reading up on it, but don't blame me if you have digestion issues and anxiety problems over it for a while.
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
You just left out most of the costs of fossil fuels!
Why worry about that?
When the DIRECT cost passes the crossovers, renewables first take up the new loads, then displace fossil fuels for old ones.
So you don't NEED government hacks to map the indirect costs into the market (and provide massive opportunities for graft and rent-seeking). The UN-hidden costs are enough to drive the market.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
>"Renewable Energy Set To Be Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels By 2020"
Or we figure out effective fusion, finally, and all our problems with energy and everything related to it just go "poof"! Energy related nation conflict, emissions, waste, land use, most of the danger, most of the cost, supply issues, many of the grid issues, could all quickly disappear.
OK, so I am living in a dream world. But it COULD happen.... based on how long it has already taken, probably not by 2020, unfortunately.
Oil is rarely used for electricity generation. In 15 out of the top 20 energy generating countries, it is less than 5% of the electricity fuel mix.
Remove fossil oil, and relation between nations change. Saudis will be obvious loosers. I wonder if Russia's economy is diverse enough to avoid collapse. And without oil, US interest for middle east vanish, will US Israel support too?
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.
And they left out 2 trillion dollars for a war in iraq over oil.
And they left out 4,000 dead for a war over oil.
And they left out ongoing military capability required to fight a war in that region plus the cost of stationing thousands of troops.
And they left out the nearly trillion dollar subsidy to coal by allowing it to dig up coal for below market rates on federal lands.
And so on.
The subsidies for fossil fuel are woven so deep they don't even look like subsidies any more (like special accounting laws only used by the fossil fuel industry that save them billions of dollars per year).
And the ongoing incalculable health care and productivity costs for everyone who grew up inhaling lead from gasoline.
Alternative enegy isn't pollution free. But the pollution tends to be concentrated geographically instead of spread all over everywhere.
The point is that alternative energy subsidies are a drop in the bucket compared to fossil fuel subsidies.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Not awful logic, but it overlooks quite a few rather important factors
1. Pumped hydro can be cheap, but only if you use it a lot. Today, it is used to store energy generated during periods of low demand (wee hours of the morning) to store energy to be sold back during periods of high demand. That works because such periods occur predictably every day. Try that with things like wind and solar which are intermittent, with seasonal or 3-4 day supply peaks. The pumped storage costs -- which are mostly capital and maintenance --will be higher.
2. You need to pump a lot of water to do pumped storage. Very roughly, you need to lift 1 cubic meter (1 metric tonne) 100 meters to store 1Kwh. There aren't a lot of sites available that have both abundant water and terrain that will support both an upper and a lower pool.
3. Practical pumped storage efficiencies are typically 70% give or take a bit. That's put 4kwh in to get 3kwh back. That can work, but only when the differential between low demand and peak demand is substantial.
4. Capital costs for pumped storage are very high. Investment recovery time is probably decades. Battery technology IS improving, albeit slowly. It could make your facility obsolete before you've pocketed wealth beyond belief ... or even paid off your loans. Likewise, widespread adoption of electric vehicles charged at off hours could reduce the peak load differential that your economics depend on.
Think of pumped storage as a huge battery that comes only in sizes humongous and even bigger. It has a very long lifetime -- decades, maybe centuries. Its self discharge rate (leaks,evaporation) is low.. No memory effects. Can discharge safely to zero (Don't try THAt with say Lion). . But it has rather low charging efficiency (70% give or take). And it can fail catastrophically (dam failure) which will likely be VERY costly.
Oh yes, and it's not all that great environmentally because of constantly varying pool levels -- plan on being sued ... probably repeatedly -- once radical environmentalists figure that out.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
They have already moved past this, you don't need pumped hydro or railroad cars with concrete blocks in the back to store excess energy, you just need a large vertically suspended concrete or lead block that can slowly descend with gearing to a generator, takes up minimal room, can be scaled easily, and is currently being tested!
The challenge for climate change will be getting the US to consider the alternative
FTFY
Negative. The problem is how this issue is spun. US may use more kWh per capita but in terms of total consumption, China beats us hands down. China's consumption is also increasing while the US's consumption is decreasing. Evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Thanks for playing though.
We'll make great pets
People died building the Hoover Dam, that's an inescapable fact.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I don't think you're going to find any reform or conservative Jews who think that, and I doubt you'll find more than a handful of orthodox Jews who do. As for Christians, I've only ever seen that sort of thinking from the fundamentalist sects - who I will grant are the most visible and powerful group of Christians in the US. But Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Methodists generally do not think that way. As for Muslims, I must admit a fair amount of ignorance, but I doubt that the mainline sects are any more apocalyptic than mainline Jews or Christians.
Oh, so now fossil fuels are responsible for vaccines?
The SINGLE biggest extender of lives in human history.