4 ms·
> $50/gallon tax to be competitive At that level, nuclear would be much, much cheaper. Also, there could be a "net tax" system where renewables AND nuclear wou
by trashtester 4y ago
> $50/gallon tax to be competitive
At that level, nuclear would be much, much cheaper. Also, there could be a "net tax" system where renewables AND nuclear would get some of those taxes as price subsidies. Let's say that fossil fuels were to be disadvantaged by $X per unit of pollution (lets say 1 unit would be the pollution from 1 ton of natural gas). To prevent all of that disadvantage, one could lower it by $Y (for ($X-$Y)/unit pollutant, and at the same time subsidize nuclear and renewables by $Y per unit of pollutant it displaced.
That way, the competitive advantage would still be $X, but Y could be set high enough that net taxes would stay the same as today.
- sokoloff 4y agoI'm philosophically opposed to referencing it to "whatever amount would be required to make renewables competitive" but more aligned to "whatever amount represents the true costs, including externalities" (and making the same levies against renewables as well, for mining externalities, waste disposal, etc). Or true costs plus a small margin to ensure there's a nudge. I don't mind people being exposed to the true cost of their energy; I want that. I don't want to get into picking winners and losers by referencing them to economics of an unrelated power source.
- trashtester 4y agoWell, I agree with you. I suppose my argument was presuming that either nuclear or renewables WOULD be competitive with fossil fuels for almost all use cases, if all externalities of fossil fuels are included.