[petercoolz]

To be clear, the price of energy goes negative because of government subsidies. For example, a wind plant with a $30/MWH subsidy can afford to run at a price of -$30.

Similarly, if you're in California and you ever wondered why your electricity bill is 2x that of any other state, it is because you are the ones footing the bill for those subsidies. Without subsidies, wind and solar are far more inefficient at a $/MWH basis.

[toomuchtodo]

Oil, coal, and gas is subsidized to the tune of ~$400 billion a year (2010 numbers), while renewables are around ~$60 billion a year. Renewables have a capital cost, but no fuel cost.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-21/when-it-come...

"Meanwhile, a recent report from the U.N. Industrial Development Organization notes that photovoltaic module prices have been falling at a rate of 15 percent to 24 percent a year for some time. In 2011, factory gate prices for crystalline-silicon photovoltaic modules fell below the $1-per-watt mark, often regarded as the point of “grid parity” for solar power. Earlier this year, they reached 85¢.

The “levelized cost of electricity” for solar, a measure of the average price of power over the lifetime of a power project, has fallen from 32¢ per kilowatt hour in 2009 to 17¢ in early 2012. These declining costs are a major factor behind an explosion in use. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council calculates that from 2006 to 2011, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and wave electricity production increased from 1 percent to 2.7 percent of total US production, from 0.1 percent to 1.5 percent in China, and from 5.3 percent to 10.7 percent in Germany. One sunny Saturday in May 2012 saw Germany produce nearly half of its electricity from solar. Given the long life of power plants—often measured in decades—this rate of change is phenomenal. Again, five years ago, total global photovoltaic capacity was just 16 gigawatts. In 2011, the world added nearly twice that—29 gigawatts—of new capacity."

Note this article is from October 2012, two years ago. Renewable installations have skyrocketed, with subsidies far below what oil, gas, and other fossil fuels are provided with.

[brc]

Those oil, has and coal subsidy numbers are completely bogus if they are generated from the iea numbers. Iea is just a solar/wind lobbying front - and the bulk of the numbers are made from countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran directly subsidising the cost of petrol for their citizens.

It is laughable for anyone to suggest that oil, coal or gas energy is subsidised when these numbers are calculated on wooly figures like access to land, or tax deductibility of research - the same rules that apply to all companies, software companies included.

The simple fact is that oil, gas and coal energy generates a magnitude more tax revenue than it ever gets in irritating or indirect subsidies, while the 'renewables' sector only ever takes subsidies and doesn't return net tax. This is plainly obvious based on the per mw/h cost of these technologies - there is no magic formula involved in selling something below average cost of production an making a profit, no matter how much volume you do.

[rayiner]

A Harvard study a few years ago found the externalized cost of coal to be about $350 billion per year in the U.S. alone: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/16/usa-coal-study-idU....

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to bring government subsidies for renewable into the discussion, you also have to consider the externalized cost of legalized pollution. The only defensible calculation is to look at cost per kilowatt hour excluding government subsidies and including externalized costs. That's the true economic cost of the energy source.

And coal is miserable on that front. I wouldn't be surprised if coal use is a net loss to the economy (i.e. the value of the energy generated by coal is less than the environmental cost of coal use).

[refurb]

I wouldn't be surprised if coal use is a net loss to the economy (i.e. the value of the energy generated by coal is less than the environmental cost of coal use)

That doesn't make any sense. Net loss to the economy? If you were to say a net loss overall, including environmental costs, I might agree.

[rayiner]

Environmental costs are part of the economy. The cost of solar includes paying highly-skilled workers to build the panels. The cost of coal includes paying doctors to treat the resulting increase in lung disease, etc.

The problem is that we don't measure economic activity accurately, because we ignore draw-down of capital (human, natural, or otherwise). Fukushima actually increased Japan's GDP for a quarter, because the damage-response activity gets counted in GDP while the loss of physical capital does not. Fossil fuel use suffers from this problem in two ways: 1) the value of the capital removed from the ground isn't counted (i.e. nobody counts selling off their family furniture as net positive income, but resource-rich countries count selling off oil or minerals as such); 2) the loss of human and environmental capital is ignored (strip mining mountains causes rain to wash away river banks, and that's money directly out of someone's pocket).

[brc]

Even then, it's not a net loss to the environment.

Coal is an energy dense naturally occurring product. The environmental damage from coal relates to mining, shipping and burning it. The environmental benefits of coal are that extraction, transport and burning doesn't happen to other things - ie, biomass, otherwise known as timber.

England has more forest now than it has for centuries, because a more energy dense substitute for energy was extracted (coal). In many developing countries, access to coal would be a net benefit, because it would reduce clearing and burning of vegetation, and because the ensuing affordable energy allows for more intensive food production, and the keeping of food inventories, further lessening the pressure on the environment.

Of course, everything that applies to coal also applies to natural gas even more so, and obviously to fusion even more than that. But this meme of 'coal is evil and must be stopped' ignores the reality of the situation and completely ignores the benefits of efficient energy production, especially in the case where real, persistent and preventable environmental damage is taking place because there is a lack of efficient energy productin.

[JanezStupar]

So are you implying that we would be better off long term if we just shut down coal plants immediately?

[rayiner]

Being able to externalize pollution is a subsidy. Accounting for externalized costs, coal is about parity with wind in terms of cost, though gas is ahead of both.

[toomuchtodo]

Agreed, but with the price of oil headed below $80/barrel, shale and other fracking operations that are expensive to operate are now going to operate at a loss (causing some producers to go bankrupt). You're going to see the cost of natgas dip down, and if enough producers go out of business, jump back up to new highs as production will have dropped quite a bit.

[kbart]

Yes, there was an article about that few days ago: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/13/wind-powe...