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> As it stands, they are already equal to or cheaper than fossil fuels. If they were actually cheaper, there wouldn't be any need to ban fossil fuels. Everyone

> As it stands, they are already equal to or cheaper than fossil fuels. If they were actually cheaper, there wouldn't be any need to ban fossil fuels. Everyone would switch on their own accord.

_aavaa_ 3y ago
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’m arguing for their ban. What I’m arguing for is that we stop treating the atmosphere as a public sewer and put a durable price on carbon (one that’s reflective of the externalities it creates).
- lazide 3y ago
  You didn’t address the point that your claim they are actually cheaper doesn’t seem to make any sense.
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    See for example page 5 for a comparison of LCOE [0]. For the issue of intermittency see page 11. Even after firming for intermittency (and without subsidizes or a price on carbon) solar and wind are cheaper than gas peaking plants, very competitive with coal, and competitive/more expensive than combined cycle gas. If you put a price on carbon (I.e. stop treating the atmosphere as a free sewer) the renewables become even cheaper. This analysis considers a carbon price of 20-40USD/tonne CO2. (It’s unclear if they only consider that price on literally CO2 or on CO2e.) but that hypothetical 20-40$ is lower compared to what currently Canada is doing (48$ USD) and a lot lower than were the Canadian number is going (~112 USD). It’s somewhere in the middle for the Europe since there is a huge spread in price [1]. [0]: https://www.lazard.com/media/nltb551p/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/nltb551p/lazards-lcoeplus-april... [1]: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/carbon-taxes-in-europe-2023/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/carbon-taxes-in-europe...
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      Neither solar nor wind can substitute for a peaking plant, no matter how much "firming for intermittency" you apply. Apples and oranges. The entire raison d'etre of a peaking plant is that you can bring it online immediately when a sudden peak in demand occurs. Solar and wind simply can't do that. You can't simply pick up the phone and order the sun to shine or the wind to blow.
      - _aavaa_ 3y ago
        That’s simply not true. One option for firming is to overprovision to account for the capacity factor. The other kind of firming, talked about in the slide I mention, is about short term (hours) battery storage. Taking California as an example, their solar causes negative electricity prices during the day meaning that fossil fuel/nuclear need to dump electricity on the market and pay people to take it since ramping down would be even more expensive. This in turn requires peaking plants on either side of that solar peak. Introducing short term storage allows for that access electricity to be shifted a few hours to address that demand. A complementary, and orthogonal, change is demand side management. People already voluntarily change their behaviour to take advantage of time of use pricing. With strong solar penetration mid day can become the cheap electricity price rather than night time.
        lazide 3y ago
        No amount of overprovisioning is going to help you at 2am with solar (or during a really bad storm), and wind has similar but even less predictable issues. Either way, overprovisioning, storage, etc. add significant costs and it isn't clear what those costs would actually need to be to avoid serious problems with high frequency if we actually take fossil fuels out of the equation. We have experience with fossil fuels enough to say 'store x amount of diesel (or natural gas) onsite so you can handle a 100 year storm' or similar. We have no such experience with solar, battery storage, wind, etc. Also keep in mind, California has pretty much the ideal climate for 'green' energy - almost all it's population is in temperate, sunny climates, and it has huge sunny deserts and wind generating mountains all nearby. Most electrical usage will be air conditioners, and in that climate those are near ideal solar loads. And they're the ones that just pushed to keep their major nuke plant online they were shutting down. It's going to be a lot harder for almost everyone else. Demand side only goes so far - sometimes people do actually need that energy now, and it tends to be when there are real issues that need that energy to address. Like emergencies, storms, cold snaps in the winter, etc.

> As it stands, they are already equal to or cheaper than fossil fuels. If they were actually cheaper, there wouldn't be any need to ban fossil fuels. Everyone would switch on their own accord.

_aavaa_ 3y ago

I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’m arguing for their ban. What I’m arguing for is that we stop treating the atmosphere as a public sewer and put a durable price on carbon (one that’s reflective of the externalities it creates).

lazide 3y ago
You didn’t address the point that your claim they are actually cheaper doesn’t seem to make any sense.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  See for example page 5 for a comparison of LCOE [0]. For the issue of intermittency see page 11. Even after firming for intermittency (and without subsidizes or a price on carbon) solar and wind are cheaper than gas peaking plants, very competitive with coal, and competitive/more expensive than combined cycle gas. If you put a price on carbon (I.e. stop treating the atmosphere as a free sewer) the renewables become even cheaper. This analysis considers a carbon price of 20-40USD/tonne CO2. (It’s unclear if they only consider that price on literally CO2 or on CO2e.) but that hypothetical 20-40$ is lower compared to what currently Canada is doing (48$ USD) and a lot lower than were the Canadian number is going (~112 USD). It’s somewhere in the middle for the Europe since there is a huge spread in price [1]. [0]: https://www.lazard.com/media/nltb551p/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/nltb551p/lazards-lcoeplus-april... [1]: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/carbon-taxes-in-europe-2023/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/carbon-taxes-in-europe...
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    Neither solar nor wind can substitute for a peaking plant, no matter how much "firming for intermittency" you apply. Apples and oranges. The entire raison d'etre of a peaking plant is that you can bring it online immediately when a sudden peak in demand occurs. Solar and wind simply can't do that. You can't simply pick up the phone and order the sun to shine or the wind to blow.
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      That’s simply not true. One option for firming is to overprovision to account for the capacity factor. The other kind of firming, talked about in the slide I mention, is about short term (hours) battery storage. Taking California as an example, their solar causes negative electricity prices during the day meaning that fossil fuel/nuclear need to dump electricity on the market and pay people to take it since ramping down would be even more expensive. This in turn requires peaking plants on either side of that solar peak. Introducing short term storage allows for that access electricity to be shifted a few hours to address that demand. A complementary, and orthogonal, change is demand side management. People already voluntarily change their behaviour to take advantage of time of use pricing. With strong solar penetration mid day can become the cheap electricity price rather than night time.
      - lazide 3y ago
        No amount of overprovisioning is going to help you at 2am with solar (or during a really bad storm), and wind has similar but even less predictable issues. Either way, overprovisioning, storage, etc. add significant costs and it isn't clear what those costs would actually need to be to avoid serious problems with high frequency if we actually take fossil fuels out of the equation. We have experience with fossil fuels enough to say 'store x amount of diesel (or natural gas) onsite so you can handle a 100 year storm' or similar. We have no such experience with solar, battery storage, wind, etc. Also keep in mind, California has pretty much the ideal climate for 'green' energy - almost all it's population is in temperate, sunny climates, and it has huge sunny deserts and wind generating mountains all nearby. Most electrical usage will be air conditioners, and in that climate those are near ideal solar loads. And they're the ones that just pushed to keep their major nuke plant online they were shutting down. It's going to be a lot harder for almost everyone else. Demand side only goes so far - sometimes people do actually need that energy now, and it tends to be when there are real issues that need that energy to address. Like emergencies, storms, cold snaps in the winter, etc.