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The biggest recipient for subsidies in the energy sector is fossil fuels, for which many would not be commercial viable unless they were directly given funds to
by belorn 6y ago
The biggest recipient for subsidies in the energy sector is fossil fuels, for which many would not be commercial viable unless they were directly given funds to stay operating. Here in Sweden we have oil fueled power plants which is paid just to exist, and then they get paid a second time for any energy they do produce.
Why do they get this money but not renewables? The name of the subsidy program makes that very clear. Reserve energy. The oil fueled power plant get paid to simply exist in the case where demand exceeds production of renewables. Before they shut down the latest nuclear reactor this was mostly to address cold windless winter nights, but now its operating basically all year as dips in renewable energy regularly cause situations where that reserve energy is required for a stable energy grid.
I get how people do not like subsidies for nuclear, but I really dislike subsidies for fossil fuels and I hate how oil is being burned just because it now is called "reserve energy".
One would think that if storage costs were the cheaper choice then we would be phasing out fossil fuel from the "reserve energy" strategy. There is no such plans. In contrast, the current plan and government investments goes to increase the reserve energy capacity from fossil fuel in every way possible. To my knowledge there does not exist a single commercial operated storage system that get charged with wind and later sold, here or globally. There does exist solar and battery, commonly with about 75% capacity for 4hrs, and a charge cycle of a single day. The economics for wind require massively higher capacity (weeks rather than hours), and the charge cycle which will repay the investment is significant slower (several weeks rather than a single day).