Not enough demand to make it cost effective. Anyone want a partially built nuclear reactor?

How much?

quoted in the article the problems with old reactors is that cheap natural gas is beating them out on the market. these reactors failing is a step backwards for fixing Climate change

Yep, also referenced, government interference altering the market.

Is there not enough government subsidy? Or should the state simply charge natiral gad producers for the predicted cost to citizens of global watming?

*warming, even.

Yes, natural gas producers should have the costs of climate change incorporated into cost effectiveness of egenwration incorporated. It might not be a charge but rather a coat adder when it comes to procurement

Solar with battery storage comes in at around half to two thirds of the cost of nuclear, which makes one wonder why they thought this was a good idea

Isn't solar really inefficient, though?

No. What makes you think it is? Besides the feed stock is free, so efficiency isn't much of an issue. More efficient than fossil fuels for sure though!

Depends on where you are. It certainly can be. There is also a significant fossil fuel requirement in creating and transporting the panels, and many of the panels don't get used enough or last long enough to make up that difference.

The vast majority of the world could be provided with electricity through solar farms in the northern Sahara, though, if they built them.

Please link to that study. Because 1) manufacturing energy is a tiny fraction of the output. 2) there is zero reason you'd use fossil fuels to build solar panels, 3) distributed generation is typically cheaper than central generation. Sure great solar resource in the Sahara, but the transmission costs and transmission losses mean that actually powering devices in Europe with local generation is probably more efficient

God, you're so ready to be angry all the time.

"manufacturing energy is a tiny fraction of the output"

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf

Solar panels generally take 2-4 years to neutralize the energy put into creating the panel, at average sunlight throughout the US and at average efficiency. Given that averages are averages, some panels will take longer to achieve this. This is significant, not a tiny fraction. In some places, obviously, it will be a shorter period of time and might actually come out to a tiny fraction, in which case, fantastic, get solar panels. That's a good choice. For some people on the other end of the spectrum, the time and money invested in panels that take that long to neutralize the energy costs and even longer to pay themselves off with zero annual emissions isn't worth it, and maybe there is a better option for them, such as wind, hydro, thermal, or whatever. It is not as if I said that solar panels are bad and I don't appreciate you preparing yourself to attack me on a point I haven't and had no intention of making, given that it's a terrible point. Renewables' largest issue right now in general is that they are localized sources of energy and are better in some places than others, and that is something that is quickly changing with battery storage, but we're not to the point yet where an average is representative of the whole population.

"there is zero reason you'd use fossil fuels to build solar panels"

Literally every manufactured thing requires energy to create. We use fossil fuel energy - a lot. If solar panels are created exclusively using renewables, then fuck, that's fantastic. Please show me that this is the case before you deny that we use fossil fuels to manufacture things.

"Sure great solar resource in the Sahara, but the transmission costs and transmission losses mean that actually powering devices in Europe with local generation is probably more efficient"

I didn't mention the cost. I simply said that it is possible, as a way of suggesting that solar works in the right setting.

You're correct, Steven. Solar is very inefficient compared to fossil fuels. Natural gas has an average efficiency of 43%, coal is at 33% while solar is approximately 20%. That's a lot better than where it was about 5 years ago though when it was only around 10%.

Acfually, manwe, you're wrong. Solar derives from sunlight, as does fossil fuels. Fossil fuels involve conversions of energy to carbon by photosynthesis and then fossilization then extraction inputs (which you ignore) transportation, distribution and finally use before reaching the grid. The fraction of sunlight converted to useful electricity is incredibly small, if you put it on a similar basis.

20% use of a free respurce is considerably more efficient than 40% of a very expensive and limited and polluting resource. Ultimately it's a meaningless comparison for any of the decisions to be made. Ultimately it is cheaper

^

The only reason a limited resource would ever be cheaper than an unlimited one would be through government intervention. Where are the free market libertarian people when you need them?

I have limited patience for nonsense. The stakes are too important

From your source

"87% to 97% of the energy that PV systems generate will be free of pollution, greenhouse gases, and depletion of resources.". That means the frattion runs 3% to 13%. Maybe I should say a small fraction.

There is no particular reason to use fossil fuels for anufacture. Yes, we use a lot because of incredibly bad planning, partly driven by beside the point talking points to suggest that solar isn't a good solution. In fact, one certainly could easily manufacture renewables with renewables. Please see Tesla's battery factory powered by a 70MW installation. So, that's hardly a knock on solar, but a knock on the legacy grid.

How big the carbon footprint is depends on where a panel is made and deployed. A European panel installed in Europe has about the third of the footprint of a Chinese one installed in the US

It is still cheaper and with lower footprints than nuclear or fossil fuels

Sorry I get angry, but I work in this space professionally and after a while one gets allergic to bullshit and have a correspondingly over the top reaction.

Photosynthesis is highly inefficient, i have to presume this is mostly because once you're getting free energy (by manufacturing the molecules which plants use for photosynthesis) you don't need to worry that much about efficiency.

You do need to worry about competition, and ideal leaf shapes or coverage, a lot of plants don't bother keeping their leaves for winter because the sun is less intense... But overall conversion rates i've seen estimated around 16%? (Or maybe lower, i can't recall).

Of course one way to increase efficiency is to create a second molecular system for converting a different wavelenght of light - which some bacteria/algae (i think) do. Can't quite remember if it is a bacteria or algae, but most photosyntesizing plants are green while this one does two wave lenghts and as a result is a dark red/wine colour...

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109739/is-plant-photosynthesis-more-efficient-than-solar-panels

More like 2%. Only a fraction of fixed carbon becomes oil and the. When extractin and transportation losses are included fossil fuel efficiency is something like 0.02%

if solar IS more efficient naturally... then why on earth do we need to subsidize it? shouldn't stopping ALL subsidizing and making all costs leveled mean solar gets picked naturally?

the best prediction i see is at 2021: average leveled $42.1 per megawatt hour for solar, $48.1 per megawatt hour for natural gas

https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-1000917.pdf

@JY first, i didn't suggest subsidising anything, only taxing the costs of natural gas which are external to the production methods.

I'm not advocating solar, or subsidies. If Solar is more efficient than natural gas, it depends on when you start counting from - if you're only counting the energy taken to extract the gas against the energy released from burning, that gives you a totally different result than going back to photosynthesis...

But for pricing you don't need to worry about that, only the cost to the environment. Does solar have extra costs (like the entropy cost of assembling all these atoms into a very specific arrangement - and the repair cost if they get out of alignment?). I don't know... For nuclear is the psot-shut down cost and cleanup cost included? Will it he paid for by the state (from general taxation) if the company goes bankrupt? And do these costs justify the wavy regulation on the nuclear industry? Is the regulation able to keep up with changes in technology?

Also, when we talk about subsidies, is this grants to new companies for them to setup and develop basic r&d or tax breaks to make the running of a 'proven' technology more cost effective?

There is a clear difference there - and i would argue that all government funded r&d should be patented by the state and become a source of income, licensed to all interested competitors, even if 50% of the profits go to the company who did the research...

Gods, is he on this "but solar is subsidized bullcrap?

Fossil fuels have been getting financial and monetary subsidies for a century and are still getting them. If we subsidized solar as much as we subsidize fossil fuels it'd basically be free

Efficiency has nothing to do with cost. You can build a pretty efficient solar cell, but it'd be very very expensive to do. In the case of renewables, the cost of energy is the value of all energy produced, divided by cost of the infrastructure. In the case of natural gas though, it is the value of the energy divided by the cost of the infrastructure (if it isn't utility owned, in which case its socialized for the utility), cost of the natural gas, and the cost of the natural resources damages. Of course that last one is socialized in most cases as well. The cost of the fuel is a bit difficult to predict and can bounce all over the place and is subject to market manipulation and is itself subsidized.

The reality is solar and storage are just plain cheaper now even without removing the subsidies for gas.

For example, natural gas plant release on the order of 430 kg/ MWH. That is 0.47 tons per MWH. That works out to a socialized cost of around $40/ mWH of those emissions. Given that solar comes in at around $40/MWah these days, give solar that kind of subsidy and that's basically free

@orathaic

yeah, and all of these factors are hard to determine. i'm just trying to find where people are getting these numbers from. can you give me a source?


@Ogion

can you provide a source? because the few studies i've found say that we're still a few years off. i'm not trying to pick a fight, i just want to know where on earth you're getting these number. (and i know that subsidies go to oil companies, but there's still a large tax credit for solar)

http://news.energysage.com/congress-extends-the-solar-tax-credit/

this is the study i found where i got my number btw

https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-1000917.pdf

and i looked at this was is interesting for data worldwide, but that dataset doesn't specify the most highly efficient models for solar energy and of fossil fuel energy (and since we always build new, i'm trying to find that data)

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Renewable_Infrastructure_Investment_Handbook.pdf

it seems like it's still only regionally more efficient

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/where-is-residential-solar-and-nuclear-cheaper-than-natural-gas

@JY, the only numbers i claimed were relating to the (relatively unimportant) photosynthesis efficiency. And i provided a link (which wasn't to a particularily reliable source, but hey...) i don't claim to have any other numbers (except a proposal for govt funded research, and i'm literaly making those numbers up).

But yeah, i agree, all these numbers can be hard to calculate. Also thanks for the links, i may do some reading...

I like the idea of 'using the most appropriate tech for the region' - there is some who would go further and suggest we rely on solar and use power during the day, matching peak demand to the solar peak at noon. Which would be a nice if dofficult to achieve... (Also clouds... Cause i live in ireland, and sun isn't that common).