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Those taxes and levies are used to finance the renewables, so it makes no sense to leave them out of the picture. These renewables produce a lot of power that
by gridlockd 6y ago
Those taxes and levies are used to finance the renewables, so it makes no sense to leave them out of the picture.
These renewables produce a lot of power that isn't needed during their peaks, which gets sold at low or negative prices on the market, yet is compensated for with the full subsidy.
During their troughs, you need another source of power, usually natural gas, which is expensive, or coal, which raises the baseline production and therefore exacerbates the peak production problem. The result on CO2 emissions is pretty damning.
This is the danger of picking "winning technologies", you are telling the market to waste resources. Instead, you need to incentivize the market for your actual goal and then let it do its thing. Putting a price on CO2 would've incentivized all sorts of technologies that reduce net CO2 emissions.
- kstenerud 6y agoAnd we're doing exactly that: Putting a price on CO2, and also subsidizing renewables to kickstart the industry and get some production scale going. Seems like the fastest route to full renewables. You can even see the effect of the market manipulation starting in 2008: out-of-pocket costs on solar have dropped 8x since then. No problem of this magnitude is ever solved with a single-prong approach. It calls for some far-thinking: Figure out which energy sources will eventually be the cheapest to harvest sustainably, and then take a financial hit now for a bonanza later. Complaining about the price comparison today is just silly, considering that people in the industry only look at out-of-pocket money when making their decisions.
- cbmuser 6y agoThey have been “kuckstarting” renewables in Germany for the past 20 years and we invested 500 billion Euros. How long do you want to continue kickstarting? Until 2150?
- kstenerud 6y agoAnd now production has ramped up, economies of scale are in play, R&D startups are all over, and out-of-pocket costs have dropped 8x in the past 12 years.
- addicted 6y agoIt’s become the cheapest source of energy in the world? And anyways fossil fuels have received and continue to receive far greater subsidies.