[etrautmann]

The frustrating part about this is that fossil fuels have had the scales tipped in their favor via 1) subsities, and 2) not accounting for externalities in the price. The economic costs of particular emissions, CO2, mercury, and other pollutants are very real, and astronomical, but a classic tragedy of the commons.

If we factor those into the price, renewables like solar and wind would be much more competitive.

[existencebox]

You make a valid point, but I'd be curious to what extent this applies on both sides. I know I certainly hear a lot of buzz about the subsidies provided for "green energy", installing panels, that sort of thing. I was also under the impression that we haven't fully moved away from using certain rare earth metals/other compounds in the panels/large electric generators, which likely have a heavy cost externality in mining.

Really wish there was some repository of what the "true costs" of the things we use are, this has got me thinking about even more mundane goods when you consider the whole supply chain.

[Retric]

Fossil fuels get on the order of 100+ billion per year in direct and indirect subsidies in the US as a conservative estimate. By far the largest subsides for 'Green Energy' go to corn ethanol which is mostly political football. After that there really more rounding errors than anything else.

PS: Nuclear seems to be popular on a lot of tech sites, but it needs massive subsides to come close to break even.

[Qwertious]

I'm not saying you're wrong (and I think you're right), but do you have a source for the "fossil fuels get $100billion+ in subsidies" and "Nuclear needs massive subsidies to come close to break even"?

[ju-st]

For nuclear:

> A new 3,260 MW Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was given planning consent on 19 March 2013.[10] A guaranteed "strike price" of £92.50 per megawatt-hour (to be indexed for inflation over 45 years) was announced on 21 October 2013. The new power station would see Hinkley's contribution to the country's power supply rise to 7%.[9] At the time of the planning consent, the price for electric energy on the wholesale market was around £45 per megawatt-hour while the new power plant was expected to need earnings of £90 per megawatt-hour in order to break even.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_B_Nuclear_Power_...

[fulafel]

Up north the latest nuclear plant guarantees price for its owners at 50 EUR/MWh (37 GBP) or less: http://www.energypost.eu/rosatom-signs-contract-build-nuclea...

[Retric]

"Its cost estimate has gone up from €3 billion to €8.5 billion." So, these estimates are not exactly worth much.

[lyschoening]

A couple of sources in here, below the first few paragraphs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of...

This article on 'de-facto' subsidies computed by the IMF that includes externalities such as pollution and global warming is also worth reading:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fu...

[thrownaway2424]

The true fully-internalized cost of fossil energy is enormous. Mass extinction, crop failure, mass human migration, ocean ecosystem collapse. You think you can put a price on that? Do you think it's going to look cheaper than a couple tens of billions of dollars spent incentivizing solar panel installation?

[Asbostos]

If these things do happen (are they really any reliable predictions?), perhaps they're compensated for by the fact that we can grow enough food to feed the planet thanks to fertilizers and fossil fuel powered transportation. The situation would probably be worse without fossil fuels (limited to mostly medieval technology) than even a doomsday scenario with them.

Don't forget ocean ecosystems have already more or less collapsed due to fishing and mass human migration has already happened due to urbanization and population growth. Most city buildings that exist today will have been constructed in the last few decades or certainly the last century. We're quite fast at moving and developing civilizations.