While I agree politics could help enable it more through subsidies. However we are capitalisticish where utilities won't build a coal plant if solar is truly significantly cheaper.
https://www.popsci.com/wyoming-is-basically-trying-to-outlaw...
Many politicians place a very high value on the opinions of their major campaign contributors. Many of those contributions come from established coal based power companies.
The US has all sorts of odd subsidies and issues of regulatory capture like this, I'm thinking also the corn subsidies, and the block on buying cars direct from retailers. It's ironic that all of that happens despite all of the vastly stronger rhetoric about cutting regulations. In my opinion it's another indication that a 'starve the beast' approach to government is not effective even on its own terms. To actually get rid of specific bad policy you have to campaign against those measures specifically, and have people in government who are acting in your interests, you can't just rely on a general anti-government government.
Yes. This is non-negligible part of the problem. There's lots of regulation and that plays right into the hand of the incumbents (utility companies) who can use that regulation to make it harder to compete.
California in particular had a relatively quick plummet in power demand that actually caused older parts of the grid to start breaking. PG&E despite having used negligence to set a bombs with gas line negligence and kill dozens of dogs with electrified ground plates argued they couldn't cut into profitability, and started forcing people to reconnect to the grid even if the customer would exceed the maximum buyback cap PG&E offers (as I understand it, not a homeowner so this specific part is only my reading).
Result is protectionist nonsense that greatly reduces the profit margin of solar for individual installs.
This happens despite Norwegians generally being positive to government and regulations while Americans seem knee-jerk anti anything government.
To get simple and good regulation I think you need an effective government and a belief in government. In Norway you can enact large and broad reforms and regulations, while in the US everything seems peacemeal.
Take welfare or healthcare. The US has a huge patchwork of small programs and minor regulations. This is due in part because of a reluctance towards broad but simple government programs like single payer.
A government can set standards for data exchange and bills e.g. which is why prescription can be sent from my doctor electronically to all pharmacies in Norway.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1...
It isn't a direct subsidy. They're saying pollution from coal has external costs and there isn't a tax on the coal-burning polluters to pay for this, so in effect coal has a subsidy.
I guess it has a point but I think calling that subsidy is misleading.
The only time the term subsidy didn't make sense was when we didn't know that these externalities existed. But the moment the costs were clear, not assessing them on the coal industry became a subsidy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy#Environmental_external...
1) The net externalities are measurably negative
2) The coal producers should be paying them
There are clear and massive positive externalities to fossil fuel, and anyone arguing otherwise needs to take a deep breath. They are the foundation of modern civilisation, and we all get non-economic benefits from the era of unprecedented peace and prosperity that we live in. If we price in all the externalities, fossil fuels probably do deserve a subsidy. The renewables debate is about whether we have an alternative that is better than the historically magical substances we call fossil fuels.
Since it has a higher EROEI than solar, if we are going to start pricing in externalities I would be comfortable arguing fossil fuels deserves a higher subsidy than solar for positive externalities. I don't think that is sensible, but neither do I accept that there is an 'implicit subsidy'.
The 2nd assumption is a political question that afaik has been answered in the negative. It doesn't make sense to claim that they 'have a subsidy' when the system we use to determine if they should be paying for an externality (currently) accepts that they do not have to.
This sounds like sentimentality. We've found better ways that costs less and have fewer externalized costs. Consistent electricity at the point of use is indifferentiable as to its source. It matters little if coal got us to this point if other technologies can provide cheaper energy in less environmentally harmful ways going forward.
> and we all get non-economic benefits from the era of unprecedented peace and prosperity that we live in
Prosperity is not at risk with the implementation of renewables and storage. The removal of the health costs of coal-generated air pollution will increase quality of life.
> unprecedented peace
What exactly does coal uniquely offer in terms of supporting peace vs other sources? Also, you are conflating coal with all other fossil fuels when it suits your argument. They are not all the same. Natural gas will continue to have use as a heating fuel for a long time, but the same can't be said of coal. It doesn't have a significant use today beyond producing electricity.
What is at risk are jobs in the already long-declining coal extraction, transport, and combustion industries, and the people in the regions that are dependent on those industries should be helped transition in the near term.
Cheap energy generates positive externalities. Obviously I'm not talking about the buyer and the seller of the that energy, I'm talking about the social polity at large. There are positives to having large cheap energy reserves, and those positives are absolutely not priced in to the energy market.
Cheap energy is an enabler that frees resources up for other tasks. It is not a reasonable position for someone to pretend that coal is 'implicitly subsidied' because they've picked up on one negative externality and decided that it should be priced in; the net picture needs to be considered. If we were going to price in all the externalities of having such a cheap and convenient but dirty fuel it might well get an actual subsidy, but that would be silly in its own right. This is one of the major reasons why the pro-renewables crowd has such difficulty convincing anyone to price in the environmental impacts.
Sure, if the debate is had and we all decide that a specific negative externality is to be priced in then I've got no leg to stand on and I'll sing a different tune. But governments so far have implicitly accepted that that negative externality should not be priced in.
I think you'd have to be pulling a pretty long bow to argue that fossil fuel extraction and use has no environmental externalities - this paper for example (http://insight.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2015/measuring-fossil-fuel-hidd...) shows that for 2008-2012 "the implicit subsidy exceeded post-tax profits (averaged over five years) at all 20 of the largest oil, gas and coal producing companies studied".
We're already (globally) subsidising the fossil fuel industry, I think it's only fair to ask for some of that money back - it's not like they would 'unpollute' the sky and sea if they could anyway.
While they may be the foundation of the modern era, fossil fuels are also a dirty relic that should be left in the past. Leaving aside the environment impact I don't think I'd have to argue so hard that they have a not-so-great legacy when it comes to huge injections of capital into the middle east and it's concomitant propping up of dictators and despotic dynasties.
There absolutely can be social utility in remedying structural unemployment, but we are not in an economic system where people have a right to wages for work that is not valuable.
"Undercharging for global warming accounts for 22% of the subsidy in 2013, air pollution 46%, broader vehicle externalities 13%, supply costs 11%, and general consumer taxes 8%."
just because the government normally pays for it, doesn't make it somehow not a subsidy.
if prices keep dropping hugely year after year: investors aren't going to be very willing to risk their capital, as tomorrow's prices might not allow them to recoup their investment
(yeah, futures are the answer, but are presumably expensive if you're talking about decades)
Panels only last ~20 years so they need to payback ~5% of the investment + interest in the first year. Assuming costs drop less than ~4% waiting is unlikely to be a net benefit. (Basically, trading 1 year now for 1 year 20 years from now is rarely worth it.)
Further, panels are far from the only cost involved so really waiting is generally not worth it. Which you can see because panels are being used as quickly as they can be manufactured.
I am more saying losing total output in ~30+ years and ~0.5% to ~1% power output until then is about the same as losing 1 year of power output 20 years from now.
By whacking massive tariffs on imported solar panels.
They pretend it's done for the benefit of American solar manufacturers. It's not. It's done for the benefit of coal and gas. If they just wanted to help American solar manufacturers they'd give them subsidies to offset what they (erroneously) considered "unfair" competition from China.
1) Chinese manufacturers stole American technology and are producing without having paid the R&D.
2) China is heavily subsidizing the industry on many levels all the way down to raw materials. If China were a company in the US we'd be calling them out for violating our monopoly laws, driving everyone else out of business.
I don't support tariffs on anything under any circumstances, but I think it's important not to let the discussion get framed as a simple: Obama/Trump hate solar because donors. There's a bigger geopolitical game being played here.
The phrase "clutching at straws" jumped instantly to mind. I think they weren't expecting anybody except the Chinese to actually read it. There were zero reports in the US media on its contents. They basically just reported that the report existed.
I have seen precisely zero evidence for 1. Frankly, Chinese solar tech beats US tech hands down. The US might be better at making ridiculously expensive panels with 2% extra efficiency to go on satellites but Chinese companies aren't even competing in that market - their tech is centered around making panels that are acceptably efficient with aggressive cost cutting in their manufacturing process. They're hands down the best in the world at that.
China does get an implicit subsidy via the suppressed yuan but that applies equally to all Chinese products, not specifically solar panels, so if you're going to slap 30% tariffs on solar panels why not assembled iphones too?
The geopolitical game being played here involves one of misdirection. If you follow the trail of money it becomes clear what is really going on. The US solar manufacturing industry is small and makes almost no political donations. The US solar installation industry - who lobby against tariffs - is much larger and contributes much more. Both are completely dwarfed by political contributions from coal, oil and gas.
The idea that Obama and Trump (the latter especially not being known as being a friend of clean energy) are simply trying to help a weak and politically irrelevant industry out of their green, green hearts and only coincidentally helping their "real" friends I frankly consider an insult to my intelligence, but hey, people lap this shit up.
Don't they?
This is, of course, in addition to the standard protectionist industry subsidies like the Joint Venture rules, subsidies on raw materials like steel, or transportation of such goods via rail, etc.
[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-china-is-domi...
I think it's also cute how you think Trump of all people is so concerned helping out US solar manufacturers given his, y'know, words.
That was before solar became an existential threat to coal and gas.
Obama had some fairly close ties with oil/gas despite him trying to tout his green credentials.