Imagine a city that owns a coal power plant. They decide to move to alternative energy and close the coal power plant.

If they go with solar, they still need something to produce energy at night (at least it’s off-peak, though). They can’t go 100% wind either, because they need something to supplement energy production on calm days or nights. They can go with nuclear or hydroelectric, and they could have wind supplement that.

But if they’re already building a nuclear or hydroelectric plant, why not just build that plant larger and forget the windmills? Windmills have almost negligible operating/maintenance costs, but they have this huge upfront cost that by the time they’re actually profitable they are obsolete.

Or maybe build a nuclear plant large enough for the city and use the money they would have spent on windmills to get everybody top-of-the-line LEDs?

YANS, jasg, kindly do not accredit to me anything I have not written.

thanks

Max…
I suspect you and EDaniel along with most on this thread don’t actually care whether CO2 is reduced, since we don’t believe it’s catastrophic if it doesn’t. However if it stays at the same level while energy capacity is increased, and if that increase was really achieved at the same cost per MegaWatt then that is something to celebrate not deride, because energy demand will be ever increasing. For that reason I think this study is answering the wrong question and even getting that answer wrong. The real problem for realists is not future CO2 levels but future energy demand. Even Greenpeace are realistic when they expressly state that it is a huge challenge even just to keep fossil fuel plants at the same level in the future. And yes we should try to do that just in case. Any CO2 reduction or stabilization will likely have to be by energy conservation. But again we’ll probably just be running to stand still.

maxlybbert, those numbers show that the actual real-world, as-installed carbon-displacement-efficiency for wind is about 4.2 %.

This is almost never mentioned even tho its been in E.ON reports for several years now.

I don’t think the low number for coal subsidy that I gave before has anything to do with few coal plants being built in 2007. That EIA report compares 2007 numbers with 1999 numbers. They don’t list dollars per MWh for 1999, but the overall subsidy for coal was quite a bit less in 1999 than 2007 (in constant 2007 dollars), while the amount of electricity generated using coal was only a little bit less in 1999 than in 2007. Thus, the subsidy in dollars per MWh is lower in 1999 than 2007, but not by all that much. On the other hand, subsidies for renewables more than tripled from 1999 to 2007, while the amount of electricity generated by solar and wind increased by about a factor of six (I had to find that in a different EIA report). Thus, the subsidy per MWh seems to have declined for renewables in 2007 vs. 1999, but it is still about 50 times higher than coal (comment # 23).

The numbers for cost of electricity that you cite from that Yale report show that wind generation is reasonably competitive with coal, natural gas, and nuclear, but note that it doesn’t list solar. Solar electrical generation is MUCH more expensive, and will be for the forseeable future. By the way, those numbers (5.58 cents/kWh, etc.) are not the cost for building the plant; they are electricity costs averaged over the whole plant lifecycle, so they take into account fuel, maintenance, etc. I won’t vouch for those particular numbers, but they are similar to ones I have seen elsewhere. The strange one is natural gas; I’ve never seen natural gas electricity costs below coal costs. Coal is the lowest; that’s why over 50% of our electricity is generated using coal.

Germany built windmills capable of producing 48,000 MW of power. According to the BWEA link they should produce on average 1/3 of that: 16,000 MW. But Germany’s only been able to reduce electricity production from coal plants by 2000 MW, hardly a rousing success.

CO2 output doesn’t increase, but it doesn’t decrease that much either. Instead people get to feel good for doing something, but that something is ineffective.

Going to US reports on comparative costs, may I point you here :
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=8813
reprinted from the Wall Street journal, where it says:
“The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration has concluded that there isn’t much difference between the cost of new power plants using wind and other traditional fuels, such as nuclear, coal and natural gas, if you take into account a broad array of expenses. A plant entering service in 2015, the administration said in a 2006 report, could make electricity from wind for 5.58 cents a kilowatt hour — versus 5.25 cents for natural gas, 5.31 cents for coal and 5.93 cents for nuclear. The report didn’t quantify the differing environmental impacts. ”

This is elaborated a bit here on the same site:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/electricity.pdf#page=3
see table 8.2 cost/kw where you see that wind seems to be cheaper than coal.

It’s good to bring out the actual numbers though. The trouble is that too many reports are constructed more for support than illumination. I’d like the two opposing factions to get together and seek out the actual facts, with sensible accounting. Perhaps the wsj article does that already though.

Maxl…
Your understanding is not borne out by actual experience. This is why we have a grid. There are some sophisticated techniques for dealing with such problems. See here:
http://www.bwea.com/energy/myths.html
Certainly in Spain, Denmark and Germany no new fossil utility or batteries were required as backup. Bearing in mind that Wind power was never actually intended to supply 100% of the grid. Between 20 and 40% works out fine.

Coal $0.44/MWh
Natural gas $0.25/MWh
Nuclear $1.59/MWh
Solar $24.34/MWh
Wind $23.37/MWh

And, apparently, the back-up power plant is often a fossil fuel plant. And fossil fuel plants aren’t designed to be turned on and off on a whim ( http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2009/04/the-problem-with-wind.html ); so instead they are kept running at some low level. Which means, of course, that they are still kicking off CO2 even when the electricity they generate isn’t being used.

On ROI you have to make sure that you are actually saving money. Eg if you close down a loss making railway line does that mean you spend much more on road building? The UK did exactly that. France once again got it exactly right. Bearing in mind that some things are so vital to the rest of the economy that a little overspend can easily be justified on the basis of the lesser evil. Of course profit is nicer: I was surprised that SNCF made 2 billion profits while delivering a really quality service. Clearly a little subsidy at the start can be repaid by later profits.

Jae
I wouldn’t argue with a word of that report. I’m surprised at the solar panel finding but there are no shortage conmen in the green energy business – a wider study is warranted than just one guy at the bar. The US has plenty of oil and so does Venezuela but it’s very expensive oil. It’ll really need lots of subsidies . By the way I’m usually JamesG but i had to re-register.