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.

Comments

I'm wondering what's going to happen

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:It already is...

[Aighearach]

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.

Not counting the cost of storage

[atomicalgebra]

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

Re: Not counting the cost of storage

[blindseer]

You say that but I remember a couple very long and hot summers where Dad sat by the TV watching the weather channel on satellite, waiting for the wind to blow and the rains to start. Crops won't grow without the rain, and the winds bring the rain.

So we sat in the farmhouse, and watched the weather channel. Weeks at a time. My brothers and I would play with our Lego blocks almost afraid to talk to Dad since he was oddly quiet everyday.

Oh, I'm sure someone will point out that if it was the summer and there's no clouds then for sure then solar panels would make a lot of electricity.

I can recall some relatively warm and calm winters. I tried to make a flight but the fog hanging over the Midwest was not moving. Planes had to be diverted for the fog. Many flights were cancelled. Even taking buses was not advised with such heavy fog. This was around Christmas time and a lot of people wanted to travel. The air was so still that air quality advisories were everywhere. It was warm for winter but people still needed heat. People were burning wood for heat, coal power plants were working hard. Some farmers ventured in the fields to dispose of melting manure. Everything stank.

No sun. No wind. Days at a time. Covering entire states.

Oh, then the wind blows. Along with the wind comes, hail, snow, sand, rain, and whatever else it can pick up from the ground. Then there are tornadoes, ice storms, lightning. All kinds of fun in the Midwest.

Give me nuclear power. Nuclear power doesn't care what the weather is like. It's cheap, safe, reliable, and we would not be reliant on Arabian oil or Chinese solar collectors.

Re:Not counting the cost of storage

[Mashiki]

Uh not even close. The bid prices in the US for solar are around 0.188kWh around 0.30kWh for solar. Coal however does come in at around 0.032kWh however. If you use batteries for load balancing? Double that. Triple it if it's a combined solar/wind battery balancing system. Those prices are still half of what we pay in Canada. It still is cheaper to build a coal power plant, it is still cheaper to flood thousands of KM of land and build a dam. Kinda like what they're doing out in BC, where there are no lack of passes for wind. And it's *still* cheaper to build a brand new hydroelectric dam.

Re:Sure

[hipp5]

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.

Re:Wars and Pollution come to mind

[blindseer]

It seems you may have come to one of the answer as to why Saudi Arabia, UAE, and other oil rich nations are investing in nuclear power. They are investing in solar power too, it seems. Why would they invest in nuclear power if solar power holds so much promise on providing cheap energy?

Here's something the US Marines figured out. Solar panels are difficult to protect in a time of war. They can't be put in a concrete bunker and still provide power. They spent a lot of money on developing flexible and durable solar panels that can be part of their protective structures in the field. They also know that as durable as they are they are still vulnerable to things like rain, snow, and sand.

The US Navy has long been researching means to synthesize fuel from seawater using nuclear reactors to drive the process. They've been very successful and it seems that the only thing stopping them from moving faster is interference from the Department of Energy. We can't have the Department of Defense outshining the Department of Energy on developing energy solutions, can we? We'll probably get this process in the Navy fleets, fueling up Marine tankers that drive out to field hospitals and such, once the DOE can put enough fingerprints on it to call it a "joint effort".

What might this process do for oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia? This process of synthetic fuel doesn't much care where the carbon and hydrogen comes from. It can take crude oil and process it into refined fuels. Fuels without lead, sulfur, and other nasty stuff that gets people sick.

Oh, byproducts of this synthetic fuel process is drinkable water, oxygen, heat, and perhaps some excess hydrogen. Heat, hydrogen, and nitrogen means ammonia fertilizer. Saudi Arabia knows that they will run out of oil some day. A few young princes see nuclear power as a way to keep exporting valuable commodities and not revert to tribes warring over hills of sand and sources of clear water. Water and fertilizer means food to eat and export. They'll probably be exporting oil for a long time yet, but it will most likely come from olives in the future.

Diversity of energy sources more important

[Tony Isaac]

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.

Re:It already is...

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

Re:It already is...

[vtcodger]

I cold buy to put in some pumped hydro. That type of base storage is where the next gold rush will be found.

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.