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The costs of fossil fuels and of renewables

Comparing fossil fuel to renewable energy costs    Global Warming , Examiner John Ryden 6 Nov 09

It is difficult to compare the cost of renewable energy to energy derived from fossil fuels. Renewable energy is free! No one charges for using the wind or the sun to create electricity. The fuel cost for sun and wind power is free. Fossil fuels are not free. You have to pay for the coal, oil, and natural gas used to generate electricity.

The Cost to Build

There is however, the cost for building the solar collectors and the wind mills that capture this energy. There is also the cost for building the fossil fuel power plants……

The Cost to Operate…………Once the plants are built, then the cost to operate becomes the only decision on how power is produced. If you have already built a wind farm and a coal plant, then the cost to operate the wind farm will be much less than the cost to operate the coal plant. Free wind is always going to be cheaper than the cost of coal. When the wind farm is producing power, the utility will decrease the amount of power from the coal plant to save on the cost of fuel.

The decrease our use of fossil fuels, we only need to build more renewable energy power systems. These will displace the use of fossil fuels because the marginal cost to operate these systems will always be lower. Cap and trade does not automatically mean we will invest in more renewable energy systems. A better approach would be to target incentives to build more renewable energy systems. A small carbon tax on fossil fuels to help fund renewable systems would be a good way to displace fossil fuel plants while at the same time producing the energy we will need to grow our economy.

Comparing fossil fuel to renewable energy costs

November 7, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, 2 WORLD, climate change, ENERGY | renewables