LOL Ms. Elektra surely hates wind and solar. LOL
Low Costs of Solar Power & Wind Power Crush Coal, Crush Nuclear, & Beat Natural Gas
1. Wind & Solar Are Cheaper (Without Subsidies) Than Dirty Energy
The first point is the very basic fact that new wind power and/or solar power plants are typically cheaper than new coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants — even without any governmental support for solar or wind.
Not only are they typically cheaper — they’re much cheaper in many cases.
2. Wind & Solar Are Actually Even Much Cheaper Than Dirty Energy (More So Than Lazard Shows)
The estimates above are supposedly “unsubsidized,” but if you include social externalities as societal subsidies (I do), the estimated costs of fossil fuels and nuclear energy are
hugely subsidized in those charts.
A study led by the former head of the Harvard Medical School found that coal cost the US
$500 billion per year in extra health and environmental costs — approximately 9¢/kWh ($90/MWh) to 27¢/kWh ($270/MWh) more than the price we pay directly. To fool yourself into thinking these are not real costs is to assume that cancer, heart disease, asthma, and early death are not real.
The air, water, and climate effects of natural gas are not pretty either. On the nuclear front, the decommissioning and insurance costs of nuclear power — unaccounted for above — would also put nuclear off the chart.
3. Solar & Wind Became Much Cheaper In The Past 7 Years (85% and 66%, Respectively)
No, wind and solar costs didn’t roll off a cliff because of Obama, but his staff did help to hasten the roll to some degree. Programs like SunShot have helped to bring down costs even faster than they were coming down anyway, as did greater deployment of renewables — with greater production and deployment, costs come down almost automatically.
4. The Lowest Solar Costs Shown In The Lazard Report Are Considerably Higher Than Globally Recorded Low-Price Bids
I won’t go into much detail right now, but I will update this article as more record-low prices for solar power and wind power are reported. For now, though, note that we’ve seen solar project bids for
under 3¢/kWh in the UAE and well under 4¢/kWh in Mexico — prices that are well below the Lazard’s low-end estimates for the US.
5. People Can Get Lower Prices But More Jobs With Solar & Wind
Whether American, British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, or [fill in the blank], solar and wind power don’t just mean lower prices — they also typically mean
more jobs. Much of the price of dirty energy power plants is in the fossil fuel — the physical resource. When we buy that fuel, much of the money goes to the billionaires and multimillionaires who “own” the fuel — the coal mines and the natural gas wells.
Sunshine and wind, of course, are free, but distributed solar and wind power plants have to get built and installed — those are things humans do. When we pay for solar and wind power plants, we pay for human labor, and often help create or support local jobs.
We don’t actually have to choose between low prices
or jobs
or protecting our air, water, and climate — we get all of those things with renewable energy options like solar and wind energy.
