Cost of reducing emssions

At some point solar and wind will be cheaper simply because the world will start to run low on fossil fuels. This might be in 20 years or 200 years time and the time is important

I would argue that offshore wind power is cheap enough at £46/MWh in today's money

This is equal to importing natural gas as 2.3p a unit which is significantly more expensive than actually importing natural gas for 1p a unit

Still I think this is worthwhile for us to do to pay this premium

Partly because about one third of that wind cost will come back in taxes so that's really 1.5p Vs 1p on a post tax basis. But also because I think all things considered supporting the net gas exporters isn't in the long term interest of the west. So paying 1.5p for domestic wind rather than sending 1p off to Russia is worth it. Think of it as indirect defence spending

Also I believe the costs of wind power can continue to fall so hopefully these £46/MWh wind farms will become cheaper still. Plus hopefully at the end of their 20 year lives a large part.of the wind farms infrastructure can be reused with perhaps only the blades and generator replaced so maybe the energy companies can sell wind electricity for significantly less when they replace the wind turbines

So on economic grounds I think offshore wind in the UK is a positive argument
Oh and if the UK investment brings prices down enough so other countries also adopt mass offshore wind that's good too because it makes the world a little bit more secure and it reduces fossil fuel prices for us in the process

So while I do highlight a lot of the negatives of wind power and claimitchange and the outright lies, on balance I am very pro offshore wind power

I also feel air to air heat pumps can be deployed at affordable prices if done so on a large scale. Many hot middle income countries have air to air heat pumps so it will definitely be affordable if a workforce was trained to install and maintain them. With smart grid technology and low electricity prices these heat pumps can be close to natural gas heating prices

And for transportation hybrids are far more efficient so there are savings there
Then plug in hybrids can cover 99% of annually mileage with as little as 40 mile range


So there is an economic path for a deep decarb
It will take 30 years but it is possible

The same is likely true for much of the rest of the world
It makes no sense for the net fossil fuel importers to not go solar and wind
Of course those countries with net fossil fuel exports who have cheap secure fossil fuels there isn't much of a real incentive for them but they will also so this just because most political players have little to no understanding of business

I still meet people who think once you have solar energy it's free electricity for ever so it's the obvious choice. No idea about supply demand storage or degradation and replacement and capital costs etc. These people have votes and will vote for PV and solar even if it makes them poorer as they don't know better

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

I was listening on internet radio to a discussion on this subject. The Australian contributor was making much the same point for Australia as I was making in the opening thread about the UK i.e. 'can GB alone justify spending such vast sums for an almost negligible effect?

No there is no justification to spend vast sums for negligible effect
But if the price point can be such that the vast sums are much smaller sums then it's much more sustainable and possible. It looks like this price point may be reached within 5 years

Does anyone have statistics to challenge the depressing statements in that article? Don't shoot the messenger - that is a question, I have no idea! E.G.

It takes a long time infrastructure is slow

If you project current deployment rates forward 30 years you might get something like
5TW of solar and 2TW of wind power which would be about 33% of global electricity demand which would make solar and wind the #1 global electricity source. While the fundamentals would call that a failure it's actually a huge success.

If deployment increased by 50% solar and wind could be 50% of the world's electricity grid in 30 years time which would be a massive success. The other 50% would be a mix of nuclear hydropower biomass and fossil fuels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I totally agree. I spent years arguing with 'C' that the most important benefits from subsidising RE (especially wind and solar, and a big shout out here has to go to Germany and Italy)) was that the richer nations got the cost down, just in time, for countries with growing middle classes / energy demand to avoid going down the FF route. He did not like this argument.

In the case of India it was very clear cut. They argued that they had the right to a standard of living like ours (and we can't deny them that) and therefore they should be able to ramp up FF generation massively, but in the early to mid 2010's, they changed this policy and started to roll out vast amounts of wind and PV as they could now afford it. All nations that have rolled out RE for generation expansion (as opposed to say us switching from FF to RE) has led to a hidden 'win', as emissions would have been even higher had they ramped up generation via FF's.

In the case of Africa (I'm generalising about the continent, obviously many countries are more developed), they will effectively leapfrog most of the FF generation age, and like India etc are expanding generation with RE, rather than first having to roll out FF generation each time.

If 'we' paid for RE generation in such countries that displaced coal gen, rather than our gas gen, then the global benefits would be greater, but that's a hard sell I suspect.

Alternatively we could help support their rollout, and taking that to the extreme, our rollout of RE does exactly that by contributing to an expanding industry and thereby helping to bring down costs for all.

Europe is driving off-shore wind, most of the richer nations have driven costs down in on-shore wind, and PV costs are now tumbling thanks to massive rollouts in the sunnier nations, so we are now in a great place regarding RE viability for the poorer nations.

I generally agree with the theme of this post

However intermittent wind and PV need full fossil fuel infrastructure to enable them to work

As such the existence of wind and PV have not in any way reduced the need for India or Africa or China to not build fossil fuel power stations