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We live in a strange time where our access to clean power is limited not by technology or product cost but by politics, dedicated lobbying dollars and the entre

• cobookman 9y ago
  How does politics prevent electricity companies from building solar plants. While I agree politics could help enable it more through subsidies. However we are capitalisticish where utilities won't build a coal plant if solar is truly significantly cheaper.
  • crdoconnor 9y ago
    >How does politics prevent electricity companies from building solar plants. By whacking massive tariffs on imported solar panels. They pretend it's done for the benefit of American solar manufacturers. It's not. It's done for the benefit of coal and gas. If they just wanted to help American solar manufacturers they'd give them subsidies to offset what they (erroneously) considered "unfair" competition from China.
    • KirinDave 9y ago
      Let's not forget major wind power states literally making it illegal to compete with gas.
    • djrogers 9y ago
      Those tariffs are brand new and in the US, but the data in TFA is fro last year in Australia.
      • crdoconnor 9y ago
        A) Solar tariffs were initially brought in under Obama and B) I figured the question was a general one - not specific to Australia.
        • Consultant32452 9y ago
          The reason for the tariffs is definitely related to why the costs are so low. 1) Chinese manufacturers stole American technology and are producing without having paid the R&D. 2) China is heavily subsidizing the industry on many levels all the way down to raw materials. If China were a company in the US we'd be calling them out for violating our monopoly laws, driving everyone else out of business. I don't support tariffs on anything under any circumstances, but I think it's important not to let the discussion get framed as a simple: Obama/Trump hate solar because donors. There's a bigger geopolitical game being played here.
          • crdoconnor 9y ago
            I skimmed the state department report justifying the tariffs and one of the justifications they gave was "local governments in China promoted local solar companies on their websites. This amounts to free advertising, which is a subsidy". The phrase "clutching at straws" jumped instantly to mind. I think they weren't expecting anybody except the Chinese to actually read it. There were zero reports in the US media on its contents. They basically just reported that the report existed. I have seen precisely zero evidence for 1. Frankly, Chinese solar tech beats US tech hands down. The US might be better at making ridiculously expensive panels with 2% extra efficiency to go on satellites but Chinese companies aren't even competing in that market - their tech is centered around making panels that are acceptably efficient with aggressive cost cutting in their manufacturing process. They're hands down the best in the world at that. China does get an implicit subsidy via the suppressed yuan but that applies equally to all Chinese products, not specifically solar panels, so if you're going to slap 30% tariffs on solar panels why not assembled iphones too? The geopolitical game being played here involves one of misdirection. If you follow the trail of money it becomes clear what is really going on. The US solar manufacturing industry is small and makes almost no political donations. The US solar installation industry - who lobby against tariffs - is much larger and contributes much more. Both are completely dwarfed by political contributions from coal, oil and gas. The idea that Obama and Trump (the latter especially not being known as being a friend of clean energy) are simply trying to help a weak and politically irrelevant industry out of their green, green hearts and only coincidentally helping their "real" friends I frankly consider an insult to my intelligence, but hey, people lap this shit up. Don't they?
    • test6554 9y ago
      A subsidy is a government cost and likely needs more approvals than A tariff which is a source of income for the government. One was accomplished with executive order while the other would likely have to go through congress.
      • crdoconnor 9y ago
        They did it before with solyndra. That was before solar became an existential threat to coal and gas. Obama had some fairly close ties with oil/gas despite him trying to tout his green credentials.
  • cle 9y ago
    If politics can help it through subsidies, then it can certainly harm it through opposite means (subsidies of competitors, fees, taxes, tariffs, overregulation like zoning rules, extra requirements or legal liability, etc.).
  • cromulent 9y ago
    Utilities certainly will build a coal plant when coal subsidies are over 3% of global GDP. That's a huge figure, and hardly capitalist. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1...
    • rb808 9y ago
      You can see a copy of the report here: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15105.pdf https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15105.pdf It isn't a direct subsidy. They're saying pollution from coal has external costs and there isn't a tax on the coal-burning polluters to pay for this, so in effect coal has a subsidy. I guess it has a point but I think calling that subsidy is misleading.
      • cromulent 9y ago
        Sure, the term might not be the most appropriate one, but if we are talking about choosing the most effective use of capital to create energy, and one method has negative externalities that are shared by the whole world but are not taxed, and one method does not, then it's much harder for solar to be an attractive option. The market is skewed.
      • danans 9y ago
        Subsidy just implies that someone other than the coal industry is paying for a cost that the industry imposes. The only time the term subsidy didn't make sense was when we didn't know that these externalities existed. But the moment the costs were clear, not assessing them on the coal industry became a subsidy.
        • rb808 9y ago
          Agreed. Its interesting too the external costs of not using coal. EG shutting down mines causes a lot of economic hardship in some regions of the US. Is that a subsidy for gas/solar/nuclear?
  • KirinDave 9y ago
    In America a lot is being done to actively discourage anything but CNG and coal. Montana is literally crippling their economic growth to keep coal and CNG producers and burners happy and the US is raising tarrifs on solar panels and components to further damage a market that has already been under constant, pointless regulatory assault.
    • Brakenshire 9y ago
      Strangely enough, installation in the US is a lot more expensive than it is in Germany and most other countries with a significant installed base of solar, even once you ignore subsidies. And according to something I read from the US Dept of Energy, one of the big reasons for that is reckoned to be over-regulation. That's because each US state has complicated, separate laws for permitting, attachment to the grid, and so on, whereas Germany has a unified regulatory system which allows installers to get decent economies of scale. The US has all sorts of odd subsidies and issues of regulatory capture like this, I'm thinking also the corn subsidies, and the block on buying cars direct from retailers. It's ironic that all of that happens despite all of the vastly stronger rhetoric about cutting regulations. In my opinion it's another indication that a 'starve the beast' approach to government is not effective even on its own terms. To actually get rid of specific bad policy you have to campaign against those measures specifically, and have people in government who are acting in your interests, you can't just rely on a general anti-government government.
      • dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        >And according to something I read from the US Dept of Energy, one of the big reasons for that is reckoned to be over-regulation. Yes. This is non-negligible part of the problem. There's lots of regulation and that plays right into the hand of the incumbents (utility companies) who can use that regulation to make it harder to compete.
        • KirinDave 9y ago
          And many of these subsidies are actually protective of existing energy industry that wants to enforce connectivity to the grid. California in particular had a relatively quick plummet in power demand that actually caused older parts of the grid to start breaking. PG&E despite having used negligence to set a bombs with gas line negligence and kill dozens of dogs with electrified ground plates argued they couldn't cut into profitability, and started forcing people to reconnect to the grid even if the customer would exceed the maximum buyback cap PG&E offers (as I understand it, not a homeowner so this specific part is only my reading). Result is protectionist nonsense that greatly reduces the profit margin of solar for individual installs.
  • blibble 9y ago
    decreasing prices also reduce an investor's return if prices keep dropping hugely year after year: investors aren't going to be very willing to risk their capital, as tomorrow's prices might not allow them to recoup their investment (yeah, futures are the answer, but are presumably expensive if you're talking about decades)
    • Retric 9y ago
      Depends on the rate of return and payback. Panels only last ~20 years so they need to payback ~5% of the investment + interest in the first year. Assuming costs drop less than ~4% waiting is unlikely to be a net benefit. (Basically, trading 1 year now for 1 year 20 years from now is rarely worth it.) Further, panels are far from the only cost involved so really waiting is generally not worth it. Which you can see because panels are being used as quickly as they can be manufactured.
      • chimprich 9y ago
        Is that true that panels only last for about a couple of decades? A quick google suggests that that's just the warranty period and they just lose about 1% efficiency a year.
        • Retric 9y ago
          This stuff depends on the panel. Panels may still function in 40+ years, but the decreasing power output becomes very significant. I am more saying losing total output in ~30+ years and ~0.5% to ~1% power output until then is about the same as losing 1 year of power output 20 years from now.
  • wonderwonder 9y ago
    How about by trying to make it illegal for state utilities to sell power generated by alternative energy? https://www.popsci.com/wyoming-is-basically-trying-to-outlaw-clean-energy https://www.popsci.com/wyoming-is-basically-trying-to-outlaw... Many politicians place a very high value on the opinions of their major campaign contributors. Many of those contributions come from established coal based power companies.
  • ebikelaw 9y ago
    Ha! Can't tell if trolling or what, but if you want a great example from California look at Panoche Valley. It's a barren wasteland with no crops and little grazing, where the Spanish explorers despaired that they'd entered Hell. But as soon as someone wanted to put a solar power station there, chaos broke out. Even the Sierra Club sued to stop the project. Project eventually got downsized from 250MW to 150MW, and construction has only just started, 10 years into the project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoche_Valley_Solar_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoche_Valley_Solar_Farm
  • phil248 9y ago
    Many states have put up barriers to rooftop solar, at the behest of local utilities. That's the most common and obvious example.
• deleted 9y ago
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• bufferoverflow 9y ago
  Not really. It's not like we have a trillion solar panels near the surface that we simply have to dig up. Coal is only alive, because the infrastructure is all there, and it's profitable. The mines are there, the electric plants are there, they are connected to the grid, etc. Solar panels and batteries are not there, they need to be manufactured, transported from China, land needs to be bought, then they have to be installed. New fabs need to be built to match the increasing demand.
  • wonderwonder 9y ago
    All of the above is true. But coal is also alive because of the way the EPA was politically forced into classifying coal ash as solid waste as opposed to toxic. This has amplified the negative affects of coal residuals a hundred fold. It has also made it increasingly difficult to regulate as well as made it easier for state and local politicians to defend. This started decades ago The epa provides guidelines on coal ash storage but does not have the power to enforce them. This power falls to the local level and is expected to be enforced via citizen lawsuits. Some state politicians are working hard to prevent even this. http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article75704382.html http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-co... This is directly a result of lobbyists and campaign contributions.
    • dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      While favorably classifying waste certainly helps the coal industry I'm not getting on the "more federal power will solve this" bandwagon. We'd also have a lot more wind farms if it weren't for environmental regulations. A group of people with money can stall a project by taking them to court over environmental impact and compliance with regulation.
      • woodandsteel 9y ago
        So are you saying that the conservatives have it all wrong when they say that coal in the US would be healthy if if it were not for the actions of the federal government?
• Brakenshire 9y ago
  To be fair, this is only just happening on a pure cost basis, if this is true it will be new for this year, previously it has only been in countries with high retail rates and high solar output (Italy, Australia, Hawaii etc) where solar plus battery was on the verge of competitive, and even then more on a somewhat hypothetical basis assuming friendly planning laws, access to equipment like a Powerwall which may actually be difficult to get hold of straight away, efficient installation ecosystem, and so on. The things that we should be criticizing are more about: i) Failing to acknowledge the transition had to be done regardless of whether it was more expensive, because the result of climate change would be worse ii) Failing to accept that the cost of these technologies (electric batteries, electric cars plus charging infrastructure, solar, wind) was consistently falling in a way which implied they would become cheaper than current technologies over a period of decades. iii) Supporting new technologies over the existing technologies, and to what degree to push them over a tipping point quickly. Subsidies and mandates have been completely instrumental to getting to these point, there's no way solar in particular would have scaled up without them. If we are already at or around a tipping point, maybe we will be able to reduce them quickly rather than slowly, but I still think they will be important over the next 5-10 years for making this happen by 2040 rather than 2060.