3 ms·
Correct. Exactly my point.
by altern8 9mo ago
Correct. Exactly my point.
- pfdietz 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo agoIndustry offshoring is dealt with via CO2 tariffs, which the EU has also introduced. Subsidizing production is itself a market distortion.
- Moldoteck 9mo 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
- pfdietz 9mo agoVery weak arguments there. Adding distortions is ok because other distortions exist? Non sequitur. Tariffs don't currently do everything therefore they cannot ever solve the problem? Also a non sequitur.
- Moldoteck 9mo agoYeah. Very weak. Just like German economy.
- pfdietz 8mo agoEurope, especially central and eastern away from the coasts, is in the unenviable position of being the renewable energy armpit of the world. So their choice is either not be competitive in energy-intensive industries in a renewable world or continuing to be competitive in a fossil-fuel-doomed world. This dilemma leads to various kinds of magical thinking, like "nuclear will save us" or "climate change isn't real".
- Moldoteck 8mo agofor nuclear at least we know what final result may look like, in France. We know both costs and timeline to achieve decarbonization. We also know more or less the same about Germany which took a different path, starting from 2000 under red-greens and schroder and continued by cdu. To me it sounds much more magical to hope DE will have anytime soon abundant cheap hydrogen to firm it's 80GW+ of gas plants according to Fraunhofer's ISE plan.