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Poland still has majority coal power production! It's one of last places you can possibly blame renewables for pricing.
by pjc50 10mo ago
Poland still has majority coal power production! It's one of last places you can possibly blame renewables for pricing.
- altern8 10mo agoWell, green initiatives made us stop using coal. Also, we've started exporting because of carbon credits--which caused prices to skyrocket.
- Moldoteck 10mo agoprices in poland are dictated by coal. Coal got insanely expensive due to co2 taxes
- altern8 10mo agoCorrect. Exactly my point.
- pfdietz 10mo agoSo, it's not renewables fault, it's that you're no longer getting away with distributing your negative externality over the world for free. I'm sure my sewer bill would be a lot lower if I could just pipe my sewage into your garden.
- Moldoteck 10mo agoCo2 tax is less about externality and more about putting this extra money into renewables. When ren are underperforming but bidding low prices, they will still be compensated by the merit order which is artificially bumped even higher with CO2 tax. And the worst thing is other regions like US or China don't have such a tax, causing industry offshoring. It's a noble case to want to subsidize ren sector, but this method is hurting EU more than helping
- pfdietz 10mo agoThey could put the money into renewables, but there's nothing mandatory about that policy choice. The idea of a Pigouvian tax is to eliminate the market distortion negative externalities create. In general, you want to tax things you don't want, like pollution, not things you want, like productive work.
- Moldoteck 10mo agoyes, but since this tax is done only at EU level, it causes industry offshoring and $ redistribution. EU could have just subsidized ren more instead of this tax. This way electricity/production prices would be lower while ren tech still supported
- pfdietz 10mo agoIndustry offshoring is dealt with via CO2 tariffs, which the EU has also introduced. Subsidizing production is itself a market distortion.
- Moldoteck 10mo agoOnly small part of the problem is dealt with tariffs. And these were introduced only recently. Market is always distorted one way or another depending on the goals. Co2 tax too is a market distortion since the tax value is chosen arbitrarily