Solar is now cheaper than some coal, says India energy minister
climatechangenews.com
climatechangenews.com
So the headline here is, as is usually the case with articles in this space, misleading at best. It's slightly cheaper than the highest-end coal, but dramatically more expensive - nearly 1.5X more - than the lower end. Overall, it's still more expensive, and that doesn't include the cost of batteries to deal with the fact that the sun sets each day.
To be sure, advances are being made in this space. But this headline is nothing more than clickbait.
That may be, but that isn't what the headline says. It simply says that solar is cheaper than coal, which of course is not the case right now.
But conversely, all coal is not cheaper than all solar!
That applies globally and in India.
The point is that solar costs are declining every year, by 10% p.a. In many sunny places it is already at parity or below (eg Arizona, Mexico, Rajasthan and Gujarat in India, Mexico). We have already seen several bids this year at US¢ 3/Kwh ($30/MWh). $20/MWh is in sight - that would be well under the cheapest coal.
This link is useful summary http://cleantechnica.com/2016/04/15/why-energy-experts-are-s...
(And none of this accounts for the massive unpriced carbon + health externality of coal plants).
Coal is staying at best flat + whatever the fuel cost.
$30/MWh seems to be very very cheap. That is half the price of the lowest bid in India. Is there a source for that number?
Austin July 2015 - $57.10 per MWh. See [2]
Nevada July 2015 - $38.7 per MWh. See [3]
Mexico April 2016 - $35.44 per MWh. See [4]
[1] http://cleantechnica.com/2014/11/29/dubai-shatters-solar-tar...
[2] http://cleantechnica.com/2015/07/02/worlds-cheapest-solar-po...
[3] http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/buffett-stri...
[4] http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Solar-Stuns-in-M...
Seven Words Found Insufficient for Expressing Nuance
Headlines "Easy Targets" for Quibbling
Why does solar always need batteries? These are not "advances". India is adding 20k MW of solar and 10k MW of wind p.a. China is at 20+20. US at 20+20. Europe at 20+20.
30% of all new power capacity additions globally will be from renewables for the foreseeable future. Probably more.
This is without "batteries". Without subsidies.
The need for "baseload", "storage", or "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow" are red herrings. They are not relevant.
Whether we like it or not, driven by massive cost and technology improvements, solar and wind are here in a massive way.
Dharnai, a community of about 3,200 people in eastern India's Bihar state, had been without electricity for three decades. So when activists with Greenpeace set up a solar-powered microgrid in July of 2014, the excitement was palpable. But, residents said, the problems started almost immediately.
When the former chief minister of Bihar state visited to inaugurate the grid, villagers lined up to protest, chanting, "We want real electricity, not fake electricity!"
By "real," they meant power from the central grid, generated mostly using coal. By "fake," they meant solar.
India is quite capable of having unreliable power without solar. I agree that people should not be fobbed off with unreliable solutions, but that doesn't mean solar can't be a big part of the grid mix. It sounds like the activist microgrid was inadequate.
http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-what-is-the-real...
"It is believed that, out of the 70 million tonne of diesel consumed in the country per year, about 20% or 14 million tonne is used in captive power generation."
Not bad. They only generated ~2500 kWh electricity last week.
Giving anything for free is a thankless job. Almost anything given for free is almost certainly treated as worthless.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but how is my desire for electricity at night time "not relevant"?
They aren't red herrings they are poor excuses when used as a reason to not to expand renewable but they aren't without their merit.
We need to improve energy storage considerably to be able to push renewables to be actually a major part of the electric grid.
A a major part is a very important definition here because they need to be dependable, it's nice when you have a headlines that Denmark has reached 90% of it's energy production with wind for period X but we also need to put it into perspective that it was only a few hours in a single day on a specific year.
Solar and wind are being constantly improved it's true but we also need massive improvements in energy storage as well as to renew our interests in better and safer nuclear reactors to actually drive out Fossil Fuel completely and have an abundance of energy that could be used to improve everything around it.
Our energy goals shouldn't be aimed at something comparable to fossil fuel we should find ways to produce 10 times what we produce now in a cheap, reliable and environmentally sound fashion. If we have an abundance of electricity many other things can improve, we can stop sucking out out underground water and make desalination cheap for everyone, we can grow more crops faster reducing the amount of food, we can produce more at lower costs.
Energy is a much larger bottleneck than people assume, especially to developing countries, better energy production, better grids mean that everyone in Africa can get a water purified, an AC and a fridge, it also means that we can start treating the sewage which is a problem now in many parts of Africa where NGO's gave them a water pump and forgot that they also need plumbing and septic treatment facilities.
So while you might claim that solar and wind are here in a massive way, we haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg as far as energy production goes and where we should be. And sadly too many people in the environmental lobbies want to cut down on energy production rather than to increase it 10 fold.
and these links would be helpful
http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/02/base-load-power-is-a-myt...
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/08/rmi-blows-lid-baseload-p...
http://rameznaam.com/2016/01/31/how-far-can-renewables-go-pr...
I wouldn't be surprised if the first commercial fusion plant in the UK is built only after the 30 year design lifetime of my solar panels has passed.
PS: Remember there is no night in space. So that's 4 * (149,597,870,700) ^2 * 1.3kw for billions of years. After the stars die, then we can start using all that saved up hydrogen.
But, I'll be happy with your scenario too.
Please help me the understand evidence that suggests we have somewhere on the periodic table to move to after Lithium batteries? (Lead Acid ----> NiCd ----> Lithium....now where do we go?)
How do we improve energy storage? Be very explicit about what data/evidence are driving your statements. Bold claims about energy storage increases are unusual given the energy realities of today.
How much natural gas peaking can solar/wind displace?
As far as batteries go, the chemistry doesn't necessarily has to change that drastically the internal structure of batteries is always evolving and we are finding more ways to increase their efficiency.
And with advancements in nano technology new flow batteries are becoming more and more viable for long term energy storage Hydrogen–lithium batteries could offer 8-13 times the energy density of regular LiOn rechargeable batteries and modern flow batteries are just in their infancy.
Flow batteries are also very appealing to the automotive market because cars with batteries that run on nanoelectrofuels could be refueled just like petrol so once your battery runs out of charge you simply pump out the depleted solution and pump new one in.
A much better argument is that we want and need many orders of magnitude more energy to do the things than need to be done. And renewables are not energy dense enough for that.
Batteries are obviously not the only solution - a more connected grid would push the problem into the future, but to claim this is not a relevant problem is ignoring something that is already manifesting.
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/members/edenh/publications-1/copy...
The important thing to note is that politicians are hopefully willing to act on this.
And batteries neither, apparently
"The future is solar" isn't some hippy fantasy, it's a sincere market projection. Apparently, a robust, distributed, decentralized, sustainable power grid is unbelievably the actual long-term direction of free-market forces.
That in itself is interesting for all sorts of reasons, many of them applying to countries like India with infrastructure difficulties.
About 7 years ago I visited Cow Bay, north of Cairns, Australia and past the end of the grid (it ends at the Daintree river, I think). All the B&Bs, houses, hotels and such were running on Diesel generators. Smelly, noisy... People turn them off at night. I wonder if solar has replaced much of this yet.
If local solar reduces the need for power infrastructure in areas where marginal costs are highest, I wonder if the economics of grids changes in some sort of useful way generally. Maybe the cost savings in marginal infrastructure reduce overall costs meaningfully. If governments (or the quasi independent private energy players) are too broke or disfunctional to provide good central power, there's an alternative. When telcom infrastructure was simplified by mobile, that had a big impact in places that never had wired infrastructure in the first place but got mobile phones.
Dirty bombs hardly make sense in terms of headcount, but their psychological effects would be tremendous. Therefore, security around nuclear installations will remain high - and that's easier to organize and cheaper around big, centralized stations.
Modern LFTR and TWR designs addresses most of your concerns and leaves the rest with less risk than the incumbent status quo.
Update your ken on nuclear, the current narrative is hurting as all deeply.
I really don't believe any country is sincere towards climate change. Every country puts their economy before others. So expecting another economy to help you is a foolish assumption.
However, India is not asking another economy to help them. India can develop its solar energy sector by itself.
The west accuses the developing countries to be big polluters since they use less environmentally-friendly means of energy production. Then when countries like India try to subsidize the domestic solar energy market, WTO accuses them of illegally supporting domestic over international solar producers. Its like you are called a drug-addict first and when you try to wean off it on your own, you are accused of cheating the rehab centres. Excellent example of double standards.
Until the US sues them and the WTO rules against them. http://in.reuters.com/article/usa-india-solar-idINKCN0QV2FD2...
IMHO Free trade of commodities (food, solar cells etc.) is a good thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_a... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay_Round / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Agriculture [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Development_Round
Don't get me wrong though, I'd prefer a world without the need for nation states and borders - but as long as we do have them IMO some of these international organisations are overstepping, and WTO is near the top of that list.
Of course having to protect this very wide range of domestic industries to maintain true independence will result in a huge loss of economic efficiency; so even if it is done right (without an "oops, we forgot the bit about the fertilizer" issue), not only do you have to be a rather large country with a lot of resources, you also have to accept a significantly lower standard of living and a degree of backwardness.
How much it helps I'm not sure; Britain for instance managed to feed itself during WWII even though it relied on its navy for food shipments and of course its cargo ships were constantly attacked. Certainly it did better than it would without a strong navy but with an independent domestic agriculture, since it would have been invaded.
On the other hand, presumably importing vitally important things without exporting vitally important things in return might put you in a bad bargaining position in international politics in times of peace, and maybe then domestic industries making sure that you can survive without imports are helpful; though even that doesn't seem like a huge problem unless you're importing from a cartel (and even very powerful cartels sometimes break down, the way OPEC did recently.)
As to agriculture - I sincerely think it's protected because producers simply bribe the people in the government; there was even research that the more concentrated and bigger ag producers are in a country, the more protected they are (even though a lot of the nominal arguments for protection are much stronger with many small producers than with few large ones typically employing fewer people), though I didn't look deeply into it and perhaps the researcher was biased by expecting this conclusion.
Few countries have been damaged as much by protectionism as has India, and fewer have had such great gains by its gradual elimination.
Doesn't EU do the same (i.e. tax Chinese solar panels to support local producers)?!
Don't expect logic, empiricism, or any kind of sanity to hold in international trade policies.
Subsidizing markets is different to favouring local suppliers. For instance, Germany's feed in tariffs subsidized solar, but it didn't distinguish between German, American and Chinese manufacturers, and that policy is a major reason why solar prices have come down so much - Germany almost single-handedly supported the scaling up of capacity, and scaling down of cost of the global solar industry, from about $20/W down to $2/W.
Instead they try to develop inhouse production that they own and have to cover the initial capital costs.
There was a theory in ~19th century that Portugal/Spain trading wine for machinery from Great Britain mean it was equal to growing said machinery on fields - Britain shot away technologically and that was that. (I can't find the name of the theory though :/)
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/free-trade-us-unemployment_b_...
Then provide tax credits and advantageous financing. A local content minimum insures that the local industry faces no incentive to become competitive and is simply a sinecure for well connected and politically powerful industrialists.
I've been tracking prices for solar for the last couple of years, and I've only seen them go down. Pulled the trigger and purchased our own install because they went down yet again this year.
Although I do agree government policy as a whole can be sorely lacking in some areas. The gentle, incremental approach has led us to fall behind almost all EU members in meeting renewable goals.
The countries generally don't own, operate or even develop the technology. The countries don't charge for it.
Individual companies, people, innovators make new technology, and they charge as much as they can, as much as the technology is worth to buyers.
If "rich countries" mess things up, it's through subsidies to solar, wind etc. which is suposedly bringing the price down, not up (though this may be inefficient).
Many countries in the so-called "developing" world, particularly those with oil-based economies such as Malaysia, Saudi-Arabia or Venezuela, are subsidising oil and coal based fuels to their population.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coalition-wants-to-build-1-2...
He's not requesting other countries help them, he's requesting other countries help themselves. Dependence on coal and being a last major country to replace coal with solar is foolish. Engery defines economies, and solar is the future.
Look who is talking: http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/12/09/comparing-po...
Until countries like India do not take steps towards sustainable human population, these are all pointless games.
Wealthy nations have been helping poorer ones for generations. Major institutions are devoted to it, such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, UNICEF, PEPFAR, and many, many more.
The world isn't entirely altruistic, of course, but there's a trendy notion these days, a sort of Ayn Randian (or Objectivist) idea, that it's entirely, unavoidably selfish, which is just as unrealistic.
Also, note that India is offering to help poorer nations with solar power, for free.
1.World's first solar power airport is in India http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/14/technology/india-cochin-sola...
2.Solar power from dams http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-11-10/news...
Even if you're not making profits (and so have no tax, and accelerated depreciation doesn't help you), commercial electricity rates in India are high, and you can expect break-even in about 3 years.
For residential consumers, break-even is 5-7 years, depending on which state you're in.
For your specific example, would need to know details to offer comments. At first glance, the quoted price seems way too high. Consider not installing batteries unless you absolutely must for your use-case.
Its basically an attempt to show that as a country, we can move to cleaner power if the right technology transfer is supported by US and Europe. It is the second step after the agreement to transfer US nuclear energy tech to India (which has not signed the Non Proliferation Treaty).
I think the US govt will have to open up its technology and patents to be used by India - if the climate change deal needs to be ratified. Otherwise there is zero chance of it being passed in the Indian parliament.
Was to contrast cash grants from other forms of subsidies like feed-in tariffs, cheap loans, net-zero metering, etc. There's no reason to parse my comments like some kind of religious text - I will tell you what I mean.
EDIT: low demand, not high demand, of course
Unfortunately, the Australian Government, which under the Labor Party was trying to phase out polluting industries via a Carbon Tax and then an ETS were voted out of power due to their own cromulence and internal dysfunction.
We then got one Anthony John Abbott as the new Prime Minister who was backed by Joseph Benedict Hockey, his Treasurer.
Joe Hockey attempted to shut down the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and said the following:
"If I can be a little indulgent please, I drive to Canberra to go to Parliament, I drive myself and I must say I find those wind turbines around Lake George to be utterly offensive. I think they're just a blight on the landscape."
The first thing that the Abbott government did once they got into power was roll back the mining tax and stop the ETS. Tony Abbott said:
"Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world."
Abbott lasted just under two years before his even more dysfunctional government (which barely passed any legislation and whose leader was the most unpopular and incompetent Australian leader of recent history) came to an ignominious end and Malcolm Turnbull was reinstated as the leader of the LNP, and thus was elevated from backbencher to leader of Australia.
I am hopeful that Malcolm Turnbull can turn this around, but I think it's unlikely. Much of Australia's wealth is derived from coal exports, even though it never actually employed a large proportion of the Australian population (and employs even less now as there have been a lot of mine closures, especially in the Hunter area of NSW).
Sadly, we squandered the huge wealth that it generated and although the Labor party made a start towards transitioning to a clean energy economy, it has all been rolled back in only two years and the momentum they got going is unlikely to be reestablished any time soon.
Our leaders have let us down badly, and Abbott's risky bet on coal is going to cause Australia a lot of problems in the years ahead.
So the same storage tech that is needed to increase the share of renewables we can rely on also makes things better for nuclear.
A) The spikes aren't actually that huge (fossil fuel companies exaggerate, who knew?).
B) It's a problem that's relatively easily dealt with by overproducing and variable pricing. After years of championing free markets, fossil fuel companies 'forgot' that they are efficient mechanisms for mediating fluctuating demand and supply.
Note the comparison is for new installations - coal power is only cheap now because the massive construction expenses were sunk long ago. Constructing a coal plant is a huge expense, particularly as it has to be centralized because it makes no sense below a certain size. Whereas with solar you can have very small installations closer to point of use that are still financially sensible. You win on capex, you win on operating costs, and you win on transmission losses. Capital expense used to be much much higher a decade ago for solar, and emission standards for coal plants were not rigorously enforced for old installations, making coal appear cheaper. Of course, if you count the expenses related to the pollution and health damage done by coal plants, coal was always more expensive.
Headline is not possible at face value except that it is.
In fact the government appears to be spending one hundred billion dollars on solar in the next six years. By 2022.
Furthermore, "The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy provides 70 percent subsidy on the installation cost of a solar photovoltaic power plant in North-East states and 30 percentage subsidy on other regions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India
I'm all for renewable energy. Solar is great. At this point I don't see how the headline isn't clickbait bullshit.
There are multiple people saying "sounds too good to be true, but it isn't. Solar is great because I said so!". This guy provides evidence to support that it is not true and gets downvoted? Wut?
For the umptieth time HN hears only what it wants to hear.
>“Through transparent auctions with a ready provision of land, transmission and the like, solar tariffs have come down below thermal power cost,” Goyal said in a tweet.
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/22/solar-power-now-cheaper-...
See here for more https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520789
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0
Also there labor cost, and the cost (and time) of navigating the political system to get permits are lower.
So a big project can be made a lot cheaper and faster from first shovel to producing electricity.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11415510/solar-power-costs-inno...
Suggesting that costs are not falling fast enough to overcome value deflation. Seems quite US-focussed though. The numbers in the two articles don't seem directly comparable.
For the near term, financial engineers have not done solar any favors with recent "yieldco" abuses.[1] Though with value deflation, financial innovation and regulatory protection may not be able to save solar.
When enough of the worlds billionaires and other powerful riffraff get spooked by climate change, you'll see carbon taxes imposed. And countries like China and India will simply phase out burning coal.
A bunch other sustainable forms of energy have environmental problems. Wind generators cause harm to birds, geothermal electricity sources like in Hawai'i raise the temperature of bodies of water disrupting wildlife. Nuclear power comes with great risks of radiation leakage. Biofuel is hugely inefficient. It seems any solution comes with problems.
How much area do we have to cover with solar panels to power a largish metropolitan area?
If you get high deployment in places with high urban sprawl (lots of rooftops), the long term prospects (say 35 years) negative power bills may become the norm - I know a number of people that already have them.
There's been dramatic gains in solar output and power efficiency in the past few years. The trajectories are looking good.
There's a pretty solid upper-bound on that.
I think seeing another 100% gain in affordable solutions is conservative, since 400% is what's possible.
When people compare say a million homes power needs, which is about 1000Gwh/month, in the non-distributed systems you need a 1000Gwh/month solution (think nuclear). However, this hypothetical 4-fold increase in efficiency would need only 7 solar panel (1.6m x 1m) per house for a net zero need distributed system.
If the right market incentives were there, and in a future market anticipating the swanson curve, someone may install say 25 panels (18 in excess of their need) to generate monthly passive income ("fans" of solar have 30+ panels)
Under this model, someone would be powering their house and two of their neighbors.
You can see how this can add up with the right market structure.
My argument is that in a world of a free-market entrepreneurial energy, you won't need a centralized power generator capable of powering 1 million homes. In fact, you may not need centralized power generation at all.
The future problems aren't going to be in power generation, but in storage.
And why would they! If an industry or country can get an advantage out of a renewable tech, it's not in their interests to fund studies if they could give the wrong answers. That's the reality of it. Biofuel was a good case in point, it's proponents are now back peddling pretty fast. The drive to profit forbids foresight.
You can add diesel cars, electric cars, and CFD, LED bulbs to that list too.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/10/07/17/2D2AF4010000057...
Domestic cats kill 1.3 .. 4.0 billion birds a year just in the US:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cats-kill-more-one-billi...
Even the high estimates for bird kills by windmills are 2 to 3 orders of magnitude lower:
http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-...
Compared to the downsides of coal and gas and the risks of nuclear? I really don't think you should worry.
http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08...
Its less than you think. Most of them could be on rooftops.
This is an often repeated exaggeration.
The Australian government did a study on this[1] as it was claimed that the Orange-bellied Parrot (an endangered species) was at risk from wind farm developments. They concluded:
"The potential threat that wind farm developments in Tasmania, western Victoria and south-eastern South Australia pose to the Orange-bellied Parrot has been quantified in the Wind farm Birdstrike Cumulative Risk Assessment Report (Smales et al. 2005). The assessment report concluded that the predicted annual cumulative mortality rate from all the wind farms modelled corresponds to an additional Orange-bellied Parrot mortality of around one bird per year."
The full study. "Wind farm collision risk for birds" can be found at [2].
[1]: http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspe...
[2]: http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/2d42fcb...
Took the fun edge of an otherwise very pleasant island trip.
The great thing about solar is NOT depending on government. If government puts the right regulation in place, that allows people to locally build solar cells on their houses, farms etc then that it where the great potential for solar power is. Not being dependent on central authorities doing their job.
Solar scales down so much better than coal and that is its real advantage for developing countries with weak governments and lots of red tape.
> The great thing about solar is NOT depending on government
We have these theories on the one hand, and the evidence of solar's success in India as a government program on the other. I'll take empirical evidence over hypothesis.
Google CEO Indian. Microsoft CEO Indian.
Watch out all you fox news watching Americans.
I'm not saying that they should have remained in India (far from it), but they chose not to so they could contribute to largely American growth.
I would argue this trend is showing off. The oil producing countries pumping out their oil, because they don't see value reducing the capacity, while the oil prices are historically low.
Or you want to be the only one holding to accessible oil, and pretty much sole provider of oil for plastics and other non-fuel petrochemical products.
I wish I lived in an alternate reality where the hippies and greens didn't effectively scuttle nuclear power development.
Too bad there is no "sexy" equivalent like a Tesla to make USA change from coal to solar/wind.
We must put carbon capture technology on all coal plants as the immediate high impact stop-gap solution to CO2 emissions. I think the only way this happens is regulatory.
The general utility verdict on solar/wind is that it's good for displacing natural gas peaking in a small way.
If you add carbon capture to coal, you decrease efficiency and increase costs to the point that it simply isn't viable. It's simpler to just regulate coal out of existence directly and replace it with a mix of gas/solar/wind/hydro/etc.
The only people who care about carbon capture for coal are those invested in coal. Everyone else sees it as pointless (though it may have applications for other carbon producing processes like concrete).
Solar and wind are ready for prime time, displacing peaker plants is just the beginning, solar will wipe out all contenders during daylight hours and then the stuff they displace into the off-peak hours will start getting eaten by storage that shifts solar into the evening.
2. "I think a new coal plant would give you costlier power than a solar plant." Someone's "I think" is a gut feeling by a government minister, not anything to do with reality.
3. The given cost comparison takes a one-time outlier lowest-price-ever in an auction to provide a 70Mw plant installation with certain assurances, with the overall average cost of the other technology. An invalid comparison, as well as inaccurate to imply that the lowest bid for 70Mw was also the bids for the other parts of the 420 mW projects.
People really can't leave their bubble worlds can they?
But solar is getting cheaper. Is anyone shocked?
"I think a new coal plant would give you costlier power than a solar plant"
He thinks a NEW plant would give you costlier energy. Secondly, aren't the solar projects subsidized in a BIG way? I have seen many smart people say that solar is a sham. They say it's just an opportunist's play. Entrepreneurs want to get on the government's tit and the politicians are happy to portray themselves as environmentally friendly in front of the increasingly global warming wary voters.
If anyone can argue against that, please speak up. I haven't seen anything other than wishful thinking and naive people patting themselves on the back because someone got their hands on tax money.
-- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/say-goodby...
Absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine if we spent $4BN annually on nuclear energy and public outreach on how it isn't dangerous?
Yet another case where leftists would rather feel good than do good.
What a completely useless response. Why even bother commenting? Four words?
Since you can't be bothered to come up with a source, see pages 3-10 of the following document from the Congressional Budget Office. [1]
Renewables get the large majority of the cash, and nuclear isn't even close.
[1]: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/...
Capital costs [for solar] have fallen 60% in the past four years and could drop a further 40% reports Deutsche Bank
Solar energy prices hit a new record low in January with the auction of 420 megawatts in Rajasthan at 4.34 rupees a kilowatt-hour. In comparison coal tariffs range between 3-5 rupees/kWh.
You do the math.
All the talk about solar energy is making unfair comparisons and people are eating it up because it aligns with their wishful thinking. Just take as an example this article. The minister said that solar energy might be cheaper compared to energy from NEW coal plants. But everyone in here heard something else.
Solar and wind is for the majority not subsidized in India.
What you are referring to is the Min of New and Renewable Energy offering a VGF "viability gap funding" for certain very large projects termed UMPPs (Ultra Mega Power Plants) of 1000-4000MW. These are few and take-up has been poor due to the execution complexities.
India is adding 15-20k MW of Solar and 10k MW of Wind per year - the vast majority of which is completely unsubsidized. State electricity distributors tender for plants, and private developers bid a tariff they feel will support their ROI.
Apart from the US and its PTC structure, most of the huge capacity additions happening in wind and solar in Europe, Asia, Africa, China and India are happening from pure private unsubsidized auctions for power.
I don't want to enter into debates about the rest of the comment, but this is demonstratebly false in Europe from my experience as a EU citizen keeping an eye on funding programs and public discourse.
A quick google search says that the 2012 EC report on energy subsidies concluded close to 15 billion euros in subsidies for solar alone. The report DOES NOT include tax credits and DOES NOT include preferential lending support.
In addition, German citizen's bills have skyrocketed to the 2nd place (behind Denmark) because of solar power. German business refuses to eat up the solar power as part of a package because it will make them uncompetitive. This sentiment echoes around Europe, so I suggest you check your facts.
I don't even want to START on Chinese equipment manufacturers, many of whom face bankruptcy after the government dialed back on subsidies.
In all honesty, your opinion seems completely false based on the evidence I've seen.