Solar energy: your tax dollars being used up

Somehow, the number-one most emailed story at the NY Times is about solar energy. I’m surprised that this made the top of the list. After all, it’s not about how a woman can train her husband like one trains a sea mammal.

The power they produce is still relatively expensive. Industry experts say the plant here produces power at a cost per kilowatt- hour of 15 to 20 cents. With a little more experience and some economies of scale, that could [or maybe could not?] fall to about 10 cents, according to a recent report by Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. Newly built coal-fired plants are expected to produce power at about 7 cents per kilowatt-hour or more if carbon is taxed.

The solar plants receive a federal tax subsidy, like other types of renewable energy, which makes the economics work for builders but also feeds skepticism about the technology’s long-term potential. “Unless there’s a subsidy involved, it doesn’t seem like a very attractive technology,” said Revis James, a renewables expert at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility industry consortium.

So you see, you’re tax dollars are paying for this.

Furthermore, I’m sure the figure above doesn’t account for the fact that these plants require a backup plant using conventional fuels for when the sun isn’t shining. I used to live in Phoenix; even though it’s the desert, we did get cloudy days from time to time. The need for a backup plant significantly increases the costs of this technology.

This article also gets a basic fact of electricity production wrong:

As prices rise for fossil fuels and worries grow about their contribution to global warming, solar thermal plants are being viewed as a renewable power source with huge potential.

There’s a misconception about how fossil fuels relate to electricity. We rarely use oil to generate electricity in the United States. Coal is the fossil fuel of choice for electricity production, and coal is entirely a domestic market and is not effected by a worldwide shortage of petroleum. The quote above plays into that misconception.

There’s plenty of uranium available. We should be building nuclear plants.

Comments

[Renee Wallace]

This blog should have been "Oil energy, the death sentence to the world from Global Warming." Really, this entire Website is just a front for the Far Right!!!

By the way, very few people at the top of the Bush Administration do NOT have ties to big oil. Old Rice even had a ship named after her. Now there is a closet lesbian if I ever saw one. And according to people I worked with at Stanford University who actually knew her when she worked at Stanford, she is probably the biggest Oreo in the US (Black on the outside, white on the inside.) See vehemently opposed affirmative action at Stanford, even though it helped get her the job at Stanford. What a self hating hypocrite!

[miles]

Sigma wrote:

"There’s plenty of uranium available. We should be building nuclear plants"

Yup.....

Here is what I think about solar and wind...................put it on existing infastructure. Our telephone polls for instance could each be outfitted with a small windturbine atop if (preferably a vertical one) and our roofs with the new roof-tile solar panels.............any energy made is put on the grid so we can conserve our valuable coal as much as possible while science looks for a better solution in the next 100 years, etc.

If we wouldn't have fought this war in Iraq, we could have afforded this. With wind and solar, one needs to have them spread out (like on our rooftops) over very large areas so that weather in one area (cloudy days with little wind) doesn't just shut the whole thing down. Its going to be windy somewhere (along the jetstream) and sunny somewhere on the face of this nation. Any voltage made would just help conserve our -precious-coal, one of America's greatest assets

[verde]

"she is probably the biggest Oreo in the US (Black on the outside, white on the inside.) See vehemently opposed affirmative action at Stanford"

What is that supposed to mean? You liberals are complete idiots. Instead of criticizing his post on it content, which is solar energy is not cost effective and how electricity is not tied to international oil, you make this ridiculous statement.

If you are black, your attitude illustrates the reason our youth are falling even more behind (even the ones with above ave iq) despite millions and millions being poured into the educational system. You encourage a culture of ignorance and laziness. I do not agree with Dr. Rice's politics but I am personally insulted at the use of oreo. How exactly should she act, as a highly educated woman in academia and politics.

If you are white you illustrate what I have come to believe, that most white liberals are racists. They want blacks to fail and have no desire what so ever to find effective solutions to the problems in the black community.

What an idiotic comment.

[anonymous]

This blog should have been "Oil energy, the death sentence to the world from Global Warming."

The Earth has been cooling for the past year, with the total drop in average global temperatures exceeding 0.5C.

I'm surprised HS hasn't blogged about this fact.

[russ]

HS,

You should google "Nanosolar" apparently they've developed a cost competitive solar alternative. And it's not some pie in the sky nonsense, either.

The whole point of these subsidies is so that eventually incremental discoveries will make it price competitive. No guarantee, just a hope.

It's safe to say that this exact formula has been working with wind technology.

[Vim]

Renee Wallace:

Personally, I don't think she owes other black people anything just because she's dark skinned and they are dark skinned. That sort of idea is against everything for which I stand. I think she does a lot for other blacks just by being a successful and highly visible black person in America.

miles:

"If we wouldn't have fought this war in Iraq, we could have afforded this"

Nobel laureate, Joe Stigliz says the war will cost at least 3 trillion. It makes me sick to my stomach. What could one have achieved instead:

"8 million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students."

says Stiglitz's coauthor.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-3000000000000-wa_b_89596.html

Instead it's bought a lot of dead Iraqi people, Al qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, etc, etc.

Anyway, getting back to the main topic, I think the US government can spare a few dollars from killing innocent Iraqis and destabilizing the middle east to see if maybe we can make solar a better technology. Even if it's wasted money, at least it's wasted money that didn't also kill Iraqi children as a side effect.

[Turambar]

This blog should have been "Oil energy, the death sentence to the world from Global Warming." Really, this entire Website is just a front for the Far Right!!!

If so we should all be happy because your post was a front for the typical Far Left thought process:
- flawed thinking (shouldnt it be helpful if people know something helpful about energy production?)
- Off topic slur ("old")
- Off topic slur ("lesbian")
- Off topic slur ("Oreo")
- unproven or justified assertion ("Biggest oreo")
- unproven and off topic assertion (hired because of affirmative action)
- unproven and off topic assertion, and bonus slur points ("self hating hypocrite")

So in sum, you have addressed none of the points raised in the post and embarrassed your entire political viewpoint.

[John Smith]

Considering all the waste that our tax dollars are going to, why are you up in arms over non-polluting, renewable solar panels?

So what if its not THAT efficient, and nuclear plants are better. We're at least doing something to put this country's energy plan on the right foot.

If solar panels can become more efficient, then they can be used in a few years to power hydrogen cars. So, don't count them out yet. Large federal spending will create more competition in the industry.

Nobel laureate, Joe Stigliz says the war will cost at least 3 trillion. It makes me sick to my stomach. What could one have achieved instead:

"8 million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students."

Nothing new. We've heard it all before, including the "dead children" complaint:

"For the price of a B-1 bomber, we could have____ ."
Fill in the blank with a wasteful social program of your choice. Popular selections include public schools and loser minorities.

"Some day the schools will get all the funding they need and the Air Force will have to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

For anyone who is interested, what the US has spends on public schools:
http://mangans.blogspot.com/2008/03/terrible-american-education-costs-us.html

They could use a little underfunding.

[bbartlog]

Fill in the blank with a wasteful social program of your choice

If I suggest something useful (like returning the money to the taxpayers), does that sharpen the argument for you? Pointing out that the other team would *also* waste the money does not somehow make huge military boondoggles worthwhile.

There’s plenty of uranium available

Maybe in the ground. If you've been following uranium prices for the past few years then you know that the market is not exactly flooded. I imagine the Chinese are buying a lot.

[anonymous]

If solar panels can become more efficient, then they can be used in a few years to power hydrogen cars.

The green wet dream...

Hydrogen cars produce water vapor exhaust. Water vapor is the chief greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Few people realize that AGW models do not get run away warming by simply modeling additional CO2, a trace gas far too weak to cause 2-7C warming over a century. They assume that additional CO2 will raise the temperature slightly, increasing the atmosphere's ability to hold water. The additional water would trap more heat, increasing humidity again, etc in a cascade. That's how they get wild numbers.

So if CO2 can cause this cascade, what will millions of little humidifiers do?

For many reasons I believe the CO2-humidity link to be false. Never the less the push for hydrogen cars just goes to show how many people are ignorant of global warming despite their claims to care and to want to "do something" about it.

Aside from all of that, we can power hydrogen or EV cars using nuclear and save money. So unless nanosolar pans out, why bother with solar?