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Wind farms - ugly truths
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Please stop using retail prices as evidence of anything. They are made up of so many components and need so much explanation, they're practicaly useless in understanding any one part of the energy system
What a bizarre statement!! This thread is about having wind energy on national grids and its knock on affects. What other measure is there of the costs of operating such grids??
PS: On this subject, Very interesting admission by the former chief scientist in the UK department of energy recently admitting that the cost of wind/solar on their grid has been dramatically underestimated for years
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/11/18/decc-consistently-misled-public-over-electricity-costs.html
I have been quite strongly against the use of levelised costs (LCOE), referring to it as "the great levelised costs lie". It's therefore gratifying to see Mackay publicly agreeing with me
and tellingly further down
"It's a pity that this use of whole system costs was not extended to, say, the regular statements on comparative costs of electricity generation that DECC has been putting out for years, including all the time that Mackay was in position as chief scientist. These have exclusively used levelised costs.
But it's good that an insider has finally admitted that the government has been misleading us about electricity costs for years."
"
Some other very interesting stuff on that link I will go into more detail over the coming days0 -
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Costs and prices are two different things. I think I've said that statement about seven separate times on this form.What a bizarre statement!! This thread is about having wind energy on national grids and its knock on affects. What other measure is there of the costs of operating such grids??
For example, retail prices can go up when taxes go up. Retail prices can be kept artificially low through subsidies from general taxation. Retail prices can go up when network costs go up.
See?0 -
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OssianSmyth wrote: »breakdown of Danish consumer electricity price
Denmark has high "green" energy taxes to support tax credits,incentives etc. aimed at the wind/solar industry ie. another type of support for the industry outside of direct tariffs, PSO levys' etc. This is a factor on many grids pushing so called "green" energy. Transmission costs are also higher in such grids for obvious reasons with sprawling wind farms often being remote from where the power demand actually is. Interesting discussion of these factors in the link below
http://judithcurry.com/2015/05/12/true-costs-of-wind-electricity/
a telling quote from no less than Warren Buffet on the matter
"I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit"
That tax credit alone was costing US taxpayers billions of dollars every year0 -
Fossil fuel generation does not pay the cost of the pollution damage it causes to society (the social cost of carbon). The freedom to pollute at no cost (untaxed externalities) is a subsidy from the state. By analogy, if you could get free permits from the state to throw your waste on the street that would be a similar subsidy.
The US estimates this carbon subsidy at $40/tonne and uses this figure in cost benefit analysis where releasing more CO2 is part of the plan. The Stern review estimated $300/tonne while Richard Tol's estimate for ESRI was about $200/tonne. Whatever it is, it's not zero.
Power generation in Ireland is covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, whereby power plants need a permit for each tonne of CO2 emitted. However, most of these permits are allocated for free at the start of each year.
If fossil fuel generation stops being subsidised, there would be little need for price guarantees for wind. The current price guarantee for wind is a 15-year term in Ireland, after which it competes freely. Compare that with 45yr inflation guaranteed price offered to nuclear in the UK.
Onshore wind cannot be the answer alone for Ireland. We need a broad mix of clean energy sources from biogas to solar and tidal. We need more international interconnection and storage. We need to insulate our homes and make our transport more efficient and we need to reorder our electricity network to allow every home to generate its own power and sell the surplus back to the grid.
We will also need peaking plants powered by biomass or gas. The idea of baseload is coming to an end.
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OssianSmyth wrote: »Fossil fuel generation does not pay the cost of the pollution damage it causes to society (the social cost of carbon). The freedom to pollute at no cost (untaxed externalities) is a subsidy from the state. By analogy, if you could get free permits from the state to throw your waste on the street that would be a similar subsidy.
The US estimates this carbon subsidy at $40/tonne and uses this figure in cost benefit analysis where releasing more CO2 is part of the plan. The Stern review estimated $300/tonne while Richard Tol's estimate for ESRI was about $200/tonne. Whatever it is, it's not zero.
Power generation in Ireland is covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, whereby power plants need a permit for each tonne of CO2 emitted. However, most of these permits are allocated for free at the start of each year.
If fossil fuel generation stops being subsidised, there would be little need for price guarantees for wind. The current price guarantee for wind is a 15-year term in Ireland, after which it competes freely. Compare that with 45yr inflation guaranteed price offered to nuclear in the UK.
Onshore wind cannot be the answer alone for Ireland. We need a broad mix of clean energy sources from biogas to solar and tidal. We need more international interconnection and storage. We need to insulate our homes and make our transport more efficient and we need to reorder our electricity network to allow every home to generate its own power and sell the surplus back to the grid.
We will also need peaking plants powered by biomass or gas. The idea of baseload is coming to an end.
So your arguement is tax fossil fuel to levels that make wind seem compeditive?? How does that work when reneweables like wind/solar can't provide baseload and need to be backed up by conventional plant?? Does you plan take account of energy poverty or the fact that it will simply mean many industries moving to economies with cheaper energy prices??. Would it not make more sense to invest in energy saving measure like retrofitting houseing stock instead of further handouts for wind energy speculators. Are you aware that fossil fuels are already heavily taxed in this and other Western countries?? eg. Most of the price of a litre of petrol in this country is made up of tax.
The problem with simplistic knee jerk energy policies is highligted in the piece below. Also highlights how many in the so-called "green" movement appear to think that forcing emmissions abroad is the same as "emmision reduction"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/12009962/The-UKs-energy-policy-is-an-act-of-national-suicide.html
"She seems wholly oblivious to the fact that, with the approach of that Paris climate conference, both China and India have announced that, over the next 15 years, they plan to double and triple their CO2 emissions by building hundreds more coal-fired power stations. They each plan to add more CO2 every year than the mere 1.2 per cent of global man-made CO2 emitted by Britain."0 -
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Capt'n Midnight wrote: »Nope. The argument is to remove the hidden subsidies on fossil and nuclear so it's a level playing field.
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Hidden subsidies?? As I stated earlier most of the cost of petrol/diesel in this country is now tax. Can you point out the "hidden subsidies" in any of that?? 0 -
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Our power stations run on petrol / diesel and pay retail cost ?Hidden subsidies?? As I stated earlier most of the cost of petrol/diesel in this country is now tax. Can you point out the "hidden subsidies" in any of that??
http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energysubsidies/The IEA’s latest estimates indicate that fossil-fuel consumption subsidies worldwide amounted to $548 billion in 2013, $25 billion down on the previous year, in part due to the drop in international energy prices, with subsidies to oil products representing over half of the total. Those subsidies were over four-times the value of subsidies to renewable energy and more than four times the amount invested globally in improving energy efficiency.0 -
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