13 ms·

Wind now competes with fossil fuels, and solar almost does

137 points by joyce 11y ago

hugh4 11y ago
Using real money accounting or funny money accounting?
- MaysonL 11y ago
  Using real money, taking into account much of the complexity of real world accounting: i.e. considering lower current interest rates, and many places where many of fossil fuel's externalities have to be paid for by the users of the fuel.
etrautmann 11y ago
The frustrating part about this is that fossil fuels have had the scales tipped in their favor via 1) subsities, and 2) not accounting for externalities in the price. The economic costs of particular emissions, CO2, mercury, and other pollutants are very real, and astronomical, but a classic tragedy of the commons. If we factor those into the price, renewables like solar and wind would be much more competitive.
- existencebox 11y ago
  You make a valid point, but I'd be curious to what extent this applies on both sides. I know I certainly hear a lot of buzz about the subsidies provided for "green energy", installing panels, that sort of thing. I was also under the impression that we haven't fully moved away from using certain rare earth metals/other compounds in the panels/large electric generators, which likely have a heavy cost externality in mining. Really wish there was some repository of what the "true costs" of the things we use are, this has got me thinking about even more mundane goods when you consider the whole supply chain.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    The true fully-internalized cost of fossil energy is enormous. Mass extinction, crop failure, mass human migration, ocean ecosystem collapse. You think you can put a price on that? Do you think it's going to look cheaper than a couple tens of billions of dollars spent incentivizing solar panel installation?
    - Asbostos 11y ago
      If these things do happen (are they really any reliable predictions?), perhaps they're compensated for by the fact that we can grow enough food to feed the planet thanks to fertilizers and fossil fuel powered transportation. The situation would probably be worse without fossil fuels (limited to mostly medieval technology) than even a doomsday scenario with them. Don't forget ocean ecosystems have already more or less collapsed due to fishing and mass human migration has already happened due to urbanization and population growth. Most city buildings that exist today will have been constructed in the last few decades or certainly the last century. We're quite fast at moving and developing civilizations.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Fossil fuels get on the order of 100+ billion per year in direct and indirect subsidies in the US as a conservative estimate. By far the largest subsides for 'Green Energy' go to corn ethanol which is mostly political football. After that there really more rounding errors than anything else. PS: Nuclear seems to be popular on a lot of tech sites, but it needs massive subsides to come close to break even.
    - Qwertious 11y ago
      I'm not saying you're wrong (and I think you're right), but do you have a source for the "fossil fuels get $100billion+ in subsidies" and "Nuclear needs massive subsidies to come close to break even"?
      - lyschoening 11y ago
        A couple of sources in here, below the first few paragraphs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of... This article on 'de-facto' subsidies computed by the IMF that includes externalities such as pollution and global warming is also worth reading: http://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...
      - ju-st 11y ago
        For nuclear: > A new 3,260 MW Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was given planning consent on 19 March 2013.[10] A guaranteed "strike price" of £92.50 per megawatt-hour (to be indexed for inflation over 45 years) was announced on 21 October 2013. The new power station would see Hinkley's contribution to the country's power supply rise to 7%.[9] At the time of the planning consent, the price for electric energy on the wholesale market was around £45 per megawatt-hour while the new power plant was expected to need earnings of £90 per megawatt-hour in order to break even.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_...
maxharris 11y ago
The article uses euphemisms and double-talk: As more countries and states enact market systems that put a price on carbon emissions, clean energy technologies will actually become cheaper than fossil fuel technologies Translated into plain English: As more governments raise the price of fossil fuels through increased taxation, solar and wind may cost less than fossil fuels. What does the author have to gain by obfuscating something so obvious? What is the impact on people when their energy costs are raised? (Hint: energy - vast amounts of it - goes into everything, from growing food to producing artificial heart valves.)
- harigov 11y ago
  I don't think what the author mentioned and what you implied are one and the same. From author's perspective, when you look at the actual price of fuel including the carbon emissions that they are causing, which cause expenses in other ways like health/environment, clean energy technologies are actually getting cheaper than fossil fuel technologies.
  - maxharris 11y ago
    During the 20th century, deaths due to temperature extremes dropped by over 70% (mostly due to the advent of air-conditioning): http://www.econ.yale.edu/~js2755/Climate_Adaptation_BCDGS.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/~js2755/Climate_Adaptation_BCDGS.pd... I also found these statistics helpful: http://www.moralcaseforfossilfuels.com/data/ http://www.moralcaseforfossilfuels.com/data/
    - simplexion 11y ago
      I also found these statistics helpful: http://www.pd.infn.it/~dorigo/autism_organic_foods.jpg http://www.pd.infn.it/~dorigo/autism_organic_foods.jpg
      - maxharris 11y ago
        My argument is that fossil fuels and industrial civilization yields positive externalities, including longer lifespan and resilience against the impacts of a changing climate. If you followed the link, you'd see that the raw data for many of the figures, including figure 1.9/5.1, comes from EM-DAT (http://www.emdat.be http://www.emdat.be), as well as other sources including the World Bank's World Development Indicators (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator http://data.worldbank.org/indicator), and even Scripps! (http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/merged_ice_core/merged_ice_core_yearly.csv http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/merged_ice_core/merged_ice_c...) Your response to this is to make silly jokes. Nice.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
1. This is excellent. It means we're well on our way to sustainable energy generation. Wind and solar are only going to get cheaper. Even without subsidies, there is no reason to ever build another coal or oil fired generation facility. Natural gas will stick around until utility scale batteries ramp up, to where peaking plants are too expensive compared to utility scale batteries. 2. Nuclear is dead. Very dead. Thorium. Fast breeder. Pebble bed. I don't care which you pick, no one is going to pour 10 years and $1-4 billion into a plant that won't be cost competitive when it turns up (maybe some governments, but you can't fix that; it'll just get mothballed). 3. Utility scale batteries are going to be needed to make up for solar and wind's capacity factor (availability). Tesla is going to clean up with its Gigafactory. Well done Elon. I hope Mars treats you well. 4. Any pollutants or negative externalities of both solar panel and battery production can be much better contained and managed than the output of a coal plant. 5. Cheaper renewables means even cheaper power available for the transition to electric vehicles. 6. First world demand for renewables will continue to drive down costs, allowing third world countries to piggyback off the cost savings. Remember how Africa leapfrogged with cell phones instead of land lines? Imagine battery packs and solar roofs in every home instead of traditional utilities. It's already feasible with current economics. Did I cover everything? Anything missing?
- AngrySkillzz 11y ago
  There are also alternative storage solutions, like flywheel and pumped water storage. I don't know where those stand at the moment, but I imagine that a they are at least competitive with batteries, seeing as current batteries have fairly low storage capacity and need to be replaced regularly.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I excluded flywheels and pumped storage as they're rarely cost effective except in a few edge cases. Cargo containers full of batteries can be trucked or sent by ship anywhere necessary, and I expect them to get cheap very fast.
- timv 11y ago
  > Did I cover everything? Anything missing? There's interesting issues to consider with respect to scale + locality in generation/storage. My father-in-law's partner has a property in a rural area. Their property runs on 100% solar. The surrounding area has no local (large scale) power generation. During a recent storm the whole town was knocked off the grid. The property with solar kept working (after the storm, not during) while town was without power for days. It's pretty rare to invest in small scale, local fossil fuel power generation. Small communities have to rely on the grid. But small scale renewable is feasible. There are cost benefits to larger systems, but those benefits need to be weighed up against the risk mitigation of having local systems. The opposite side to that is that often the best places to run renewable generation is in remote areas and cities may be dependent on larger scale grids. (not that too many people want a fossil fuel plant operating in their city) I expect that storage system (utility scale batteries) will shift the proposition again. Maybe your rural community doesn't its own generation, just the ability to store enough power to survive a grid failure for a few days.
jweir 11y ago
I wish there was a link to the article and sources on the prices. "while natural gas-based electricity cost $82 in North and South America." This makes no sense – the price of NG is very local. I just ran an analysis of NYISO Zone J (New York City's) average hourly price for the last year – and it comes out at an average of $40.87 per MWh(peak and off peak). This would include all sources of generation. The prices in the article would have everyone generating electricity loosing massive amounts of money – which they aren't. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mOm7bMQYJof7WDfqXmbAgHu59uiSeBLSStzKhoqq7eU/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mOm7bMQYJof7WDfqXmbA... You can find raw pricing data from the various US energy markets below – you'll have to dig a bit. This is price though, not cost. http://www.nyiso.com/ http://www.nyiso.com/ http://www.pjm.com/ http://www.pjm.com/ http://www.ercot.com/ http://www.ercot.com/ http://www.miso.com/ http://www.miso.com/ http://www.caiso.com/ http://www.caiso.com/
- oska 11y ago
  > I wish there was a link to the article and sources on the prices. Here [1] is the official press release. However, I don't think the full report is available as a free download. [1] http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/wind-solar-boost-cost-competitiveness-versus-fossil-fuels/ http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/wind-solar-boost-cost-c...
- MrTonyD 11y ago
  I read a summary of some recent research at Stanford - concluding that wind was more than competitive with oil. That article mentioned that there were hidden subsidies to many energy sources, including oil and gas, and that most analysis didn't take those into account.
downandout 11y ago
Wind and solar are still not competitive. The report says that coal costs $75 per megawatt hour, while land-based wind costs $83 and solar comes in at a whopping $122. That's far from "almost competitive". Also note that these are not costs of production, these are what people wind up paying for it. That means that the coal numbers include extensive taxes, while the solar and wind numbers include extensive tax discounts and incentives. This makes the real difference in production costs even bigger than what this report implies. If we as a society decide we want clean energy, that's fine, but it is important that people make these decisions based upon actual facts. Clean energy in 2015 is still significantly more expensive than energy produced using fossil fuels (and of course this report leaves nuclear out entirely, which is far cheaper than coal).
- puranjay 11y ago
  This reminds me of that comment attributed to Bill Gates: "64k memory ought to be enough for everybody" The trend is very clear: solar and wind are dropping in prices. It's now only a matter of when, not if.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago
    Except that he didn't say that at all and has given extremely detailed accounts of the current thinking at the time in history (they were already looking towards the upcoming limitations and bottlenecks they would face in expanding RAM sizes). Although it is true that solar and wind are dropping in prices recently I don't think an urban legend misquote has any relevance.
    - puranjay 11y ago
      Which is why I said that it is "attributed" to Bill Gates. I know he didn't say it
      - 11y ago
JulianMorrison 11y ago
Wind may be cheap, but here in the UK a hostile government and NIMBYs have made it hard to open new wind-farms.
humbleMouse 11y ago
Scaling of these solutions is what we need to worry about. Scaling wind and solar to actually provide energy on the scale we humans consume it is a totally different question that "how much does this cost per mega watt hour".
- frgewut 11y ago
  I'm actually more excited about the small scale generation. Solar is the only viable method for generating electricity in 1 watt to several KW. Wind also comes in handy here. I'm wondering what news technologies this will allow.

137 points by joyce 11y ago

hugh4 11y ago

Using real money accounting or funny money accounting?

MaysonL 11y ago
Using real money, taking into account much of the complexity of real world accounting: i.e. considering lower current interest rates, and many places where many of fossil fuel's externalities have to be paid for by the users of the fuel.

etrautmann 11y ago

The frustrating part about this is that fossil fuels have had the scales tipped in their favor via 1) subsities, and 2) not accounting for externalities in the price. The economic costs of particular emissions, CO2, mercury, and other pollutants are very real, and astronomical, but a classic tragedy of the commons. If we factor those into the price, renewables like solar and wind would be much more competitive.

existencebox 11y ago
You make a valid point, but I'd be curious to what extent this applies on both sides. I know I certainly hear a lot of buzz about the subsidies provided for "green energy", installing panels, that sort of thing. I was also under the impression that we haven't fully moved away from using certain rare earth metals/other compounds in the panels/large electric generators, which likely have a heavy cost externality in mining. Really wish there was some repository of what the "true costs" of the things we use are, this has got me thinking about even more mundane goods when you consider the whole supply chain.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  The true fully-internalized cost of fossil energy is enormous. Mass extinction, crop failure, mass human migration, ocean ecosystem collapse. You think you can put a price on that? Do you think it's going to look cheaper than a couple tens of billions of dollars spent incentivizing solar panel installation?
  - Asbostos 11y ago
    If these things do happen (are they really any reliable predictions?), perhaps they're compensated for by the fact that we can grow enough food to feed the planet thanks to fertilizers and fossil fuel powered transportation. The situation would probably be worse without fossil fuels (limited to mostly medieval technology) than even a doomsday scenario with them. Don't forget ocean ecosystems have already more or less collapsed due to fishing and mass human migration has already happened due to urbanization and population growth. Most city buildings that exist today will have been constructed in the last few decades or certainly the last century. We're quite fast at moving and developing civilizations.
- Retric 11y ago
  Fossil fuels get on the order of 100+ billion per year in direct and indirect subsidies in the US as a conservative estimate. By far the largest subsides for 'Green Energy' go to corn ethanol which is mostly political football. After that there really more rounding errors than anything else. PS: Nuclear seems to be popular on a lot of tech sites, but it needs massive subsides to come close to break even.
  - Qwertious 11y ago
    I'm not saying you're wrong (and I think you're right), but do you have a source for the "fossil fuels get $100billion+ in subsidies" and "Nuclear needs massive subsidies to come close to break even"?
    - lyschoening 11y ago
      A couple of sources in here, below the first few paragraphs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of... This article on 'de-facto' subsidies computed by the IMF that includes externalities such as pollution and global warming is also worth reading: http://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...
    - ju-st 11y ago
      For nuclear: > A new 3,260 MW Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was given planning consent on 19 March 2013.[10] A guaranteed "strike price" of £92.50 per megawatt-hour (to be indexed for inflation over 45 years) was announced on 21 October 2013. The new power station would see Hinkley's contribution to the country's power supply rise to 7%.[9] At the time of the planning consent, the price for electric energy on the wholesale market was around £45 per megawatt-hour while the new power plant was expected to need earnings of £90 per megawatt-hour in order to break even.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_...

maxharris 11y ago

The article uses euphemisms and double-talk: As more countries and states enact market systems that put a price on carbon emissions, clean energy technologies will actually become cheaper than fossil fuel technologies Translated into plain English: As more governments raise the price of fossil fuels through increased taxation, solar and wind may cost less than fossil fuels. What does the author have to gain by obfuscating something so obvious? What is the impact on people when their energy costs are raised? (Hint: energy - vast amounts of it - goes into everything, from growing food to producing artificial heart valves.)

harigov 11y ago
I don't think what the author mentioned and what you implied are one and the same. From author's perspective, when you look at the actual price of fuel including the carbon emissions that they are causing, which cause expenses in other ways like health/environment, clean energy technologies are actually getting cheaper than fossil fuel technologies.
- maxharris 11y ago
  During the 20th century, deaths due to temperature extremes dropped by over 70% (mostly due to the advent of air-conditioning): http://www.econ.yale.edu/~js2755/Climate_Adaptation_BCDGS.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/~js2755/Climate_Adaptation_BCDGS.pd... I also found these statistics helpful: http://www.moralcaseforfossilfuels.com/data/ http://www.moralcaseforfossilfuels.com/data/
  - simplexion 11y ago
    I also found these statistics helpful: http://www.pd.infn.it/~dorigo/autism_organic_foods.jpg http://www.pd.infn.it/~dorigo/autism_organic_foods.jpg
    - maxharris 11y ago
      My argument is that fossil fuels and industrial civilization yields positive externalities, including longer lifespan and resilience against the impacts of a changing climate. If you followed the link, you'd see that the raw data for many of the figures, including figure 1.9/5.1, comes from EM-DAT (http://www.emdat.be http://www.emdat.be), as well as other sources including the World Bank's World Development Indicators (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator http://data.worldbank.org/indicator), and even Scripps! (http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/merged_ice_core/merged_ice_core_yearly.csv http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/merged_ice_core/merged_ice_c...) Your response to this is to make silly jokes. Nice.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

1. This is excellent. It means we're well on our way to sustainable energy generation. Wind and solar are only going to get cheaper. Even without subsidies, there is no reason to ever build another coal or oil fired generation facility. Natural gas will stick around until utility scale batteries ramp up, to where peaking plants are too expensive compared to utility scale batteries. 2. Nuclear is dead. Very dead. Thorium. Fast breeder. Pebble bed. I don't care which you pick, no one is going to pour 10 years and $1-4 billion into a plant that won't be cost competitive when it turns up (maybe some governments, but you can't fix that; it'll just get mothballed). 3. Utility scale batteries are going to be needed to make up for solar and wind's capacity factor (availability). Tesla is going to clean up with its Gigafactory. Well done Elon. I hope Mars treats you well. 4. Any pollutants or negative externalities of both solar panel and battery production can be much better contained and managed than the output of a coal plant. 5. Cheaper renewables means even cheaper power available for the transition to electric vehicles. 6. First world demand for renewables will continue to drive down costs, allowing third world countries to piggyback off the cost savings. Remember how Africa leapfrogged with cell phones instead of land lines? Imagine battery packs and solar roofs in every home instead of traditional utilities. It's already feasible with current economics. Did I cover everything? Anything missing?

AngrySkillzz 11y ago
There are also alternative storage solutions, like flywheel and pumped water storage. I don't know where those stand at the moment, but I imagine that a they are at least competitive with batteries, seeing as current batteries have fairly low storage capacity and need to be replaced regularly.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I excluded flywheels and pumped storage as they're rarely cost effective except in a few edge cases. Cargo containers full of batteries can be trucked or sent by ship anywhere necessary, and I expect them to get cheap very fast.
timv 11y ago
> Did I cover everything? Anything missing? There's interesting issues to consider with respect to scale + locality in generation/storage. My father-in-law's partner has a property in a rural area. Their property runs on 100% solar. The surrounding area has no local (large scale) power generation. During a recent storm the whole town was knocked off the grid. The property with solar kept working (after the storm, not during) while town was without power for days. It's pretty rare to invest in small scale, local fossil fuel power generation. Small communities have to rely on the grid. But small scale renewable is feasible. There are cost benefits to larger systems, but those benefits need to be weighed up against the risk mitigation of having local systems. The opposite side to that is that often the best places to run renewable generation is in remote areas and cities may be dependent on larger scale grids. (not that too many people want a fossil fuel plant operating in their city) I expect that storage system (utility scale batteries) will shift the proposition again. Maybe your rural community doesn't its own generation, just the ability to store enough power to survive a grid failure for a few days.

jweir 11y ago

I wish there was a link to the article and sources on the prices. "while natural gas-based electricity cost $82 in North and South America." This makes no sense – the price of NG is very local. I just ran an analysis of NYISO Zone J (New York City's) average hourly price for the last year – and it comes out at an average of $40.87 per MWh(peak and off peak). This would include all sources of generation. The prices in the article would have everyone generating electricity loosing massive amounts of money – which they aren't. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mOm7bMQYJof7WDfqXmbAgHu59uiSeBLSStzKhoqq7eU/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mOm7bMQYJof7WDfqXmbA... You can find raw pricing data from the various US energy markets below – you'll have to dig a bit. This is price though, not cost. http://www.nyiso.com/ http://www.nyiso.com/ http://www.pjm.com/ http://www.pjm.com/ http://www.ercot.com/ http://www.ercot.com/ http://www.miso.com/ http://www.miso.com/ http://www.caiso.com/ http://www.caiso.com/

oska 11y ago
> I wish there was a link to the article and sources on the prices. Here [1] is the official press release. However, I don't think the full report is available as a free download. [1] http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/wind-solar-boost-cost-competitiveness-versus-fossil-fuels/ http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/wind-solar-boost-cost-c...
MrTonyD 11y ago
I read a summary of some recent research at Stanford - concluding that wind was more than competitive with oil. That article mentioned that there were hidden subsidies to many energy sources, including oil and gas, and that most analysis didn't take those into account.

downandout 11y ago

Wind and solar are still not competitive. The report says that coal costs $75 per megawatt hour, while land-based wind costs $83 and solar comes in at a whopping $122. That's far from "almost competitive". Also note that these are not costs of production, these are what people wind up paying for it. That means that the coal numbers include extensive taxes, while the solar and wind numbers include extensive tax discounts and incentives. This makes the real difference in production costs even bigger than what this report implies. If we as a society decide we want clean energy, that's fine, but it is important that people make these decisions based upon actual facts. Clean energy in 2015 is still significantly more expensive than energy produced using fossil fuels (and of course this report leaves nuclear out entirely, which is far cheaper than coal).

puranjay 11y ago
This reminds me of that comment attributed to Bill Gates: "64k memory ought to be enough for everybody" The trend is very clear: solar and wind are dropping in prices. It's now only a matter of when, not if.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  Except that he didn't say that at all and has given extremely detailed accounts of the current thinking at the time in history (they were already looking towards the upcoming limitations and bottlenecks they would face in expanding RAM sizes). Although it is true that solar and wind are dropping in prices recently I don't think an urban legend misquote has any relevance.
  - puranjay 11y ago
    Which is why I said that it is "attributed" to Bill Gates. I know he didn't say it
    - 11y ago

JulianMorrison 11y ago

Wind may be cheap, but here in the UK a hostile government and NIMBYs have made it hard to open new wind-farms.

humbleMouse 11y ago

Scaling of these solutions is what we need to worry about. Scaling wind and solar to actually provide energy on the scale we humans consume it is a totally different question that "how much does this cost per mega watt hour".

frgewut 11y ago
I'm actually more excited about the small scale generation. Solar is the only viable method for generating electricity in 1 watt to several KW. Wind also comes in handy here. I'm wondering what news technologies this will allow.