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This money is going to pr not building plants. Half a billion isn't enough to build one plant

• JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > money is going to pr not building plants There is tons of private capital ready to finance new plants. If coal communities grant permits, the panels will be laid. Also, I’m suggesting a plan an enterprising community could launch to put themselves at the front of the line. Hell, they could probably sell carbon credits against the phase-out.
• runako 3y ago
  > Half a billion isn't enough to build one plant Georgia Power builds utility-scale solar plants smaller than that[1]. 139 MW in the $200m price range (in 2017) certainly counts. Add to that in order to build a $200m plant does not require $200m of liquid cash any more than buying a $500k house requires $500k of liquid cash. $500m can put a significant amount of utility-scale solar online (although this effort does not appear to be geared to directly instantiate new power generation). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/georgia-power-announces-new-139-mw-solar-project-at-robins-air-force-base-300458799.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/georgia-power-annou...
• jandrese 3y ago
  If the money went towards utility scale solar it would install about 666MW of production at the current average rate of $0.75/W installed. This is not much considering that currently coal plants generate about 200,000MW of power in the US. Obviously direct investment on this level will not be enough to achieve the goal of total Coal shutdown. It's also worth noting that many coal plant "shutdowns" are actually just conversions to natural gas, which from a carbon perspective is more of a sidestep. Better for the environment, but far less so than offsetting the production with renewables.