9 ms·
If I could install solar today I would, regardless of cost (apartment living prevents it). That may sound crazy, but I theorize that when you consider external
by fpgaminer 11y ago
If I could install solar today I would, regardless of cost (apartment living prevents it). That may sound crazy, but I theorize that when you consider externalities the cost of grid electricity already far exceeds the cost of solar. It's going to cost humanity a whole lot of money to both survive and fix the damage we're dealing to the environment today. I'd rather pay more now for solar, than pay through the nose later for the environmental equivalent of a triple bypass surgery.
I doubt others see it that way, so I guess I'll pay the cleanup cost later like everyone else regardless. Such is the human condition.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- leni536 11y ago> I'd rather pay more now for solar, than pay through the nose later for the environmental equivalent of a triple bypass surgery. That's really generous, however I think it would be the government's duty to compensate for these externalities so you don't have to pay more for solar (or not much more) than for the grid. Otherwise the environment will just stay a huge "tragedy of the commons".
- mtgx 11y agoThe very least the governments can do is eliminate all subsidies to coal, oil and natural gas. They've had them for decades. I don't think it's healthy for a society to prop up an industry that long with subsidies, especially when it's one of the most profitable.
- Gravityloss 11y agoAustralia had a carbon tax. Unfortunately it has been reverted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia
- 7952 11y agoA politician can make any kind of spending seem bad by just calling it a subsidy regardless of the social benefit. But when it benefits people they like it can just be quietly ignored. The real test should be if it ensures that people pay a "fair price" for a product. Paying a little more for clean energy is perfectly reasonable.
- newjersey 11y ago> The real test should be if it ensures that people pay a "fair price" for a product. Paying a little more for clean energy is perfectly reasonable. You could argue the other way and say that paying a little more for dirty energy is perfectly reasonable because someone has to come after them to clean things up. There is a cost to that.
- mattlutze 11y agoPrice manipulation in the market in any direction will end up providing an edge for someone to extract value / reduce the fairness to consumers. Outside of very short term smoothing effects from strategic reserves, "fair price" raises some troubling price-fixing flags, for me.
- themartorana 11y agoEspecially when those industries are killing us. Imagine government subsidies of cigarettes or heroin.
- meragrin 11y agoCould you list the subsidies you're against? All I ever find is general business items or for non-conventional fuels.
- mikeash 11y agoThis isn't what people normally mean when they refer to subsidies, but the fact that fossil fuel users are allowed to contaminate everyone's air is effectively a massive subsidy for their operations. If the cost of the CO2 and pollution were paid by those producing it, this stuff would be way more expensive.
- davegardner 11y agoThe IMF recently published a working paper[1] on energy subsidies at global and regional levels that might be of interest. They do use an fairly broad definition of what counts as a subsidy (including cost of damages environmental damages and global warming effect of CO2 emissions). [1] http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0 http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0
- toomuchtodo 11y agohttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fuel-companies-getting-10m-a-minute-in-subsidies-says-imf http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fu...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- redcalx 11y agoHave you factored in the CO2 footprint of solar panels? Producing pure silicon is energy intensive, then there are various metals involved, so you've got mining, refinement, smelting, and bulk transport costs. The panels also have a limited lifetime so you need to think about the disposal or recycling cost in 15-20 years. Pretty sure I've missed a load of costs too.
- simonbarker87 11y agoOne thing to remember though is that there is a reasonable level of CO2 extras around generating traditional non-renewable sources (mining, transportation, materials to build the plant, maintenance of machinery etc).
- jeletonskelly 11y agoCould it be said that in order to gain the technology and production methods of a cleaner, more efficient energy source we must expend energy from dirty and inferior sources first? It seems to be the case; we go after the low hanging fruit or the fruit that we know we can do something with. If that is the case, then can that be seen as a optimistic outlook for human kind in regards to climate change? That in order for there to be a clean energy future we have to harness the energy sources available to us to get there.
- djb_hackernews 11y agoNo. Eventually renewable energy becomes a lower hanging fruit.
- brrt 11y agoThis is calculated in energy return on energy invested (EROI). Solar is doing.. ok in that regard: http://rameznaam.com/2015/06/04/whats-the-eroi-of-solar/ http://rameznaam.com/2015/06/04/whats-the-eroi-of-solar/ The comparable number for fossil fuels (in this case, oil) is 'well to tank efficiency', which amounts to about 25% for oil, if i recall correctly. So 1/4th of energy contained in oil is already spent to bring it to market. Notably, wind energy has a far more favorable EROI than solar does (currently), but wind power is a relatively limited resource.
- Asbostos 11y agoAre you sure you can't? Apartment building rooftops in China are typically covered with solar water heating panels. Sure it's not PV, but it's solar and it serves tenants all the way down the building, not just those adjacent to the roof. Perhaps you just need to check with your building owner.
- mhb 11y agoIf your goal is to reduce environmental harm, why is it necessary that you use the solar electricity yourself?
- Gravityloss 11y agoIf you own the apartment, you can formally present to the building board that solar panels should be built on the roof. They would be owned by you, some group of people living there or the housing association. If you're a tenant looking for an apartment you can keep asking it from landlords. Hopefully they start seeing that it's something that can be a distinct factor. If you're a company doing real estate software, you can incorporate info about solar panels (and things like energy efficiency metrics) to the software.
- Spooky23 11y agoBeing a good citizen now doesn't reduce my obligations in the future, so I'll be avoiding a solar retrofit as long as possible. Personally, it would take something like a decade to recapture the capital costs associated with a solar installation. I don't have a 10-year commitment to my home, and don't have a capital gain tax liability to offset. So with solar I save a few bucks a month, and pick up alot of risk that my electric utility bears right now.
- walshemj 11y agoEven in the UK with a massive government tax break our set of panels will take 8 or so years to break even - and we have an almost perfect south facing roof. Makes sense if you own the property and have the spare cash to take the free money (8% yield tax free) - though the UK government is reducing the subsidy
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoFor the north american audience, it's worth pointing out that the UK is as northerly as Canada, so its not ideal for solar, though it does have a part to play I think.
- walshemj 11y agoWe Are not to bad (50 miles north of London) and we do have a perfect south facing roof
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoI used to think this way until I started dating a geologist. She brought down my optimism when she detailed the ways that the environment is ravaged to extract the materials necessary to create solar panels, wind turbines, and so on. Rare earths are great for handling high heat, but their resistance to reaction also means it takes a LOT of nasty chemicals to purify the ore. Not that we should keep on burning fossil fuels, but we shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking that renewables are a one-way street to environmental prosperity.
- ohitsdom 11y agoA one-time dirty process for a future steady source of clean energy. Isn't it still much better than continually burning fossil fuels? And if we're counting extraction costs, don't discount the extraction cost to get fossil fuel and build fossil fuel processors (car engines, power plants, etc).
- 542458 11y ago> A one-time dirty process If only it was. Neither solar panels nor wind turbines last for a very long time, and the recycling processes don't exist on an efficient or clean scale for either yet.
- pjc50 11y agoMost panels have a rated life of 25 years and deteriorate slowly. That provides plenty of time for the recycling to be built. It's also comparable to the design lifetime of most types of non-renewable power plant.
- ssmoot 11y agoI'm not qualified to answer either way. But my grandfather worked at a coal fired plant. I've been to the strip mine. I've seen the trains that run continuously to truck it in. From a layman's perspective it seems like an incredibly efficient process. Is there any chemical refinement going on at all? All that I saw looked mechanical (but I was very young). I would guess that it would take many years of Solar before it broke even, in an environmental impact sense, with "cleaner" coal. I think ultimately solar probably wins. But the initial cost seems like it must be orders of magnitude higher. That said, I'd get solar if I could. Just not my highest home-improvement priority and I'd have to do something about the trees shading the south side of my roof. I like my trees. :-( OTOH it would be nice if there were a high power (~2KV), affordable (<$2,000?), silent wind turbine solution to supplement our grid power.
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoIn many places you can pay extra to get your electricity from less carbon intensive generation sources without actually changing anything in your home, it may be worth looking into if you feel strongly about the issue. In the UK Co-operative energy and Ecotricity are two that I'm aware of. The other thing you can do is invest in a "community solar garden" project, which basically means you pay for the panels, and get the benefit of their generation, but they don't sit on your roof.
- LurkingPresence 11y agoIn the US you can use http://www.arcadiapower.com/ http://www.arcadiapower.com/, it doesn't cover everywhere but it's a nice start!
- brightsize 11y agoAvista Utilities, here in Washington state, is offering community solar in a nice, self-contained package. You lease a panel in their solar farm, they install and maintain it, and you get a credit on your electric bill for whatever it generates. At the end of the lease you will presumably have a positive ROI from it though that of course depends on actual power generated. It seems like a really nice way to "go solar" that's accessible to anyone with the cash to buy the lease. http://www.avistautilities.com/services/Pages/communitysolar.aspx http://www.avistautilities.com/services/Pages/communitysolar...
- plorg 11y agoEven a few years ago, the amortized price per kWh of installing, operating, and maintaining a solar installation was lower for an end-user than the price they would be paying the utility for electricity, in most parts of the U.S. In places where the regulatory regime and utilities are sane with regards to metering and feed-in tariffs putting in a solar installation is already a winning proposition.