The next time some paid troll whines about coal getting government subsidies, and wind and solar being “pure” show them this.
From the Washington Times:
By Stephen Moore
One of Hillary Clinton’s wackier ideas is to build half a billion solar panels — at taxpayer expense. It would be one of the largest corporate welfare giveaways in American history. The Institute for Energy Research (IER) estimates that the cost of the plan will reach $205 billion. That’s a lot of money to throw at Elon Musk and all of Hillary’s high-powered green energy friends.
By the way, there are only 320 million people in the country so her plan would mean more solar panels than people. If Hillary has her way, the entire landscape in America will be blighted by windmills and solar panels. How is this green?
The economics here are even worse. Back in the 1970s Washington made a big bet on green energy with synthetic fuels and renewable fuels. The programs crashed and were all mercifully killed off during the Reagan years. Billions of dollars went down the drain. George W. Bush made a big bet on switch grass and wood chips to produce energy. President Obama has spent more than $100 billion on wind and solar subsidies. Instead of energy independence, we got bankruptcies like Solyndra.
A lesson of the last several decades is that the government has a horrible record of intervening in energy markets. Mr. Obama was running around the country in his first term warning that America was running out of oil. He wasn’t paying attention to the shale oil and gas revolution and the advent of clean coal technology that overnight doubled our fossil fuel resources. At the very time that natural gas prices were falling to $2 per cubic million feet, the government was trying to force feed the nation on wind and solar power which costs three to five times more per kilowatt hour of electricity.
Read more here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/9/hillary-clintons-solar-energy-baloney/
h/t Dr. Roy Spencer
Here is the source of the data for the graph: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf
Update: Clinton’s plan looks like a big subsidy and tax credit handout. See more in this fact sheet. Graph below:
“Hillary Clinton’s solar plan will cost more than $200 billion above and beyond current projections,” according to an analysis by the free market Institute for Energy Research (IER).
“But the true cost of the plan is much higher, especially when the costs of adding this much solar power is considered,” IER reported. “Making matters even worse, electricity demand is not projected to grow enough that this new generating capacity would be needed, making Clinton’s plan even more wasteful.”
Let them do it. That is the only way they will learn the truth. It will be the most catastrophically wasteful industrial failure in world history and will push the US economy into default. Attrition comes before contrition.
It’s even worse that we thought… again!
In a normal, non-insane market, an inferior product is sold at a discount price compared to higher quality competitors. Only in the state’s idea of capitialism is this reversed.
How many more decades of insane government spending whimsy must we endure before people realize they have given the state too much power? Note to political optimists: it’s not the people we elect that has things so messed up. It’s the unchecked power we’ve given the state.
Actually, it’s the failure – or, more often, refusal – to understand that the State is unchecked power [PDF link].
If this is installed capacity as opposed to produced MWh, then the subsidy is even greater.
GH, I checked the EIA document. It is estimated production at estimated capacity factors.
Thanks, Ristvan,
We have just past the point, earlier this year, where there are now 1000 million (1 billion) vehicles in the world. If all petrol and diesel engines were replaced by electric engines and each one needed recharging every night how many terrawatt hours of extra power would be needed. Somebody must be able to do a “back of the envelope” calculation however my knowledge, I was in Dentistry all my working life, doesn’t stretch to it. All I know is it would take a lot of windmills and PV cells just to charge up our means of transport and yet no politician seems to be aware of, or consider, this in all of their fancy schemes for decarbonising the economy.
Let me give you a rough lower bound. The chevy Volt has a 17.1 kwh battery and an all electric range of 38 miles. The battery range was chosen because about 2/3 of all US trips are less than 40 miles. Hence a rough lower bound only (tesla range is ~200 miles). So a billion (1*10^9) such vehicles with a daily charge requires 17.1*10^9 kwh. That is 17.1*10^6 MWh. The Volt (at 220V) charges in 4.5 hours. So to a first order approximation, about (17.1/4.5h) 4*10^6MW of additional capacity; less if charging times are completely random–but they wont be. Charging is during the night and at 120v takes 13 hours. So only something like 4 million (thousand thousand) MW of additional capacity.
At 1000MW per plant (say Westinghouse AP1000 third generation nuclear design) being vehicle green ‘only’ requires building ~4 thousand additional nucs. Southern is building 2 at Vogtle for $8.5 billion. We should get a volume discount–say $4 billion each. ‘Only’ requires a $16 thousand billion investment. $16 trillion, capital cost only. Warmunist chump change.
Thank you very much for your answer ristvan. I felt it was going to be a large figure but it is even larger than I thought. What a talking point when dealing with our eco friends. I don’t think they’d like that many extra nuclear plants in the world as they are not too keen on the existing ones.
We are going to need all the electricity generation we can get: solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol generated out of thin air and unicorn-powered vehicles.
Because you know what’s coming next.
http://sliptalk.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/16160539/idea5.png
” solar gets 436 times more [subsidies] than coal”
In other shocking news, water is wet.
There was a big difference between now and then. The 1973 and 1979 oil crisis were a huge shock to the economy. National security was at stake. We had to look at all the possibilities and we didn’t know how things would turn out.
Today, on the other hand, we are swimming in oil. What’s happening is a completely self inflicted injury.
What we can learn from the 1970s is that cheap energy is a foundation of our prosperity. Take that away and we will suffer. People will be less happy and healthy.
The CAGW alarmists are willing to send me to an early grave. I fear, and therefore, hate them.
Regardless of the difference, the US is currently also investing billions into renewable fuels via the RFS2 rules.
18 Billion gallons of renewable fuel the O&G industry is being forced to buy this year. 80% ethanol that goes for $0.85/gallon. So the US is throwing about $15B this year at renewable transportation fuel.
That doesn’t count the wind/solar subsidies. Sorry to bring you that bad info.
I’m surprised Stephen Moore used data that recent. He’s not known for that or doing his homework when giving speeches in other states about their taxes.
Are the idling (for fast response) single-cycle gas-powered generating plants also subsidized? They are needed to fill in for solar at night and on cloudy days, for wind when the wind stops, and for both when there are sudden interruptions. And are they considered part of a wind/solar system?
“natural gas prices were falling to $2 per cubic million feet”
10^6 * 10^6 * 10^6 would be 10^18. I’ve forgotten how to even say that!
Ok, one quintillion. I looked it up. If you’re willing to sell me a quintillion cubic feet of natural gas for $2, I’ll take it!
===
You might want to fix that. I think you meant $2/mmBtu. Or $2/thousand cubic feet. Both are appropriate at this level of accuracy.
Does anyone know of a similar graphic for the UK subsidies ??
I do not, having just searched using six years of highly developed Google-foo (three ebooks) on your behalf. But suspect they are much higher based on things like feed in tariffs and capacity constraint payments. Paul Homewood’s UK blog has a lot of posts from which you may be able to construct an equivalent chart with minimal research effort, just calculations in an Excel spreadsheet.
rist,
Thanks for looking, I just hoped there was something out there I’d missed.
Will try & track-down the data.
As well as Pauls
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
site are you aware of David Reid’s site-
http://www.variablepitch.co.uk/
lots of generating, technical & financial info on the un-reliables.
It’s not the subsidy, which is mildly worrisome. It’s the intentional misalignment between propaganda and reality that discourages a reasonable assessment.
I wonder if the cost of solar per unit of power generated includes the extra cost needed to stabilise the grid in case of sudden withdrawal?
The fallacy of wind turbines is revealed with simple arithmetic.
5 mW wind turbine, avg output 1/3 nameplate, 20 yr life, electricity @ur momisugly wholesale 3 cents per kwh produces $8.8E6.
Installed cost @ur momisugly $1.7E6/mW = $8.5E6. Add the cost of standby CCGT for low wind periods. Add the cost of land lease, maintenance, administration.
Solar voltaic and solar thermal are even worse.
The dollar relation is a proxy for energy relation. Bottom line, the energy consumed to design, manufacture, install, maintain and administer renewables appears to exceed the energy they produce in their lifetime.
Without the energy provided by other sources these renewables could not exist.
If you want to see really horrendous subsidies, check out the subsidies for nuclear power in the UK. It adds up to about £10 per year for each consumer. Most of the profit will go to China or France. What was that about domestic solar panels again?
What was that about domestic solar panels again?
at least 20 times as much?
We really need to sort out the definitions being used.
The cheapest source of energy cannot possibly be subsidized under any useful definition.
By ‘useful’ I mean one which is a conserved quantity.
When people include arbitrary tax breaks as subsidies the definition becomes that of a quantity which is not conserved and can be decided arbitrarily.
If we stick to a conserved quantity then it can be used as an estimate of the energy being consumed by these so-called energy sources.
tax rebates, tax writeoffs, etc are not direct subsidies like green energy gets.
beware the trap.
This is the real problem with renewable energy policy.
http://www.treehugger.com/solar-technology/bill-nye-backed-solar-company-aims-cut-cost-solar-60.html
Bill Nye is aiming for government handouts with a business model that is long out of date and already tried by other failed players. Ultrathin silicon cell “savings” models fool no one at this point, except program officers handling loans and grants and directed to look the other way.