Fossil fuel energy never really cheap. Solar could be cheaper

According to 1Block Off The Grid, U.S. taxpayers have contributed over $500 each towards fossil fuel subsidies in the past 5 years, compared to just over $7 for solar power. Subsidies do not come out of thin air; they are the result of indirect taxation or tax breaks that see less revenue coming into government coffers. Ultimately, the cost is borne by the taxpayer and the consumer.

1Block Off The Grid states that if solar power received the same financial support as fossil fuel in the U.S., solar energy would be cheaper than fossil fuel generated electricity across the nation.

The Cheap Energy Era That Wasn’t, Renewable Energy news, 25 Nov 10, Fossil fuels – not so cheap As the era of “cheap” energy courtesy of fossil fuels draws to a close; it’s becoming increasingly apparent it never really existed. Our addiction to fossil fuels appears to have been a case of “easy credit” – where you get the goods immediately, but the paying is always hard and long and the full costs not always apparent at the point of sale.

“Cheap energy” been a death of a thousand small cuts and the repayments will not only be made by us, but by future generations – both in monetary terms and otherwise. There has been a great deal of negativity in the media on the issue of renewable energy rebates, but what many people don’t realise is they have been paying heavily for “cheap fossil fuel” for years.

According to 1Block Off The Grid, U.S. taxpayers have contributed over $500 each towards fossil fuel subsidies in the past 5 years, compared to just over $7 for solar power. Subsidies do not come out of thin air; they are the result of indirect taxation or tax breaks that see less revenue coming into government coffers. Ultimately, the cost is borne by the taxpayer and the consumer.

1Block Off The Grid states that if solar power received the same financial support as fossil fuel in the U.S., solar energy would be cheaper than fossil fuel generated electricity across the nation. It’s worth noting too that no energy sector in the USA has ever been developed without subsidies – so why is solar sometimes portrayed as the bad guy when this is normal evolution? There is a villain, but it is elsewhere.

An issue often overlooked is the real reason why solar power needs to be subsidised at all. All the effort and resources that have gone into propping up polluting fossil fuel industries for decades have been at the expense of clean, renewable energy technologies that have been kept on the outer………..
Skyrocketing electricity prices have been a “short, sharp shock” for a variety of reasons and solar is only a bit player. …………..

In a sense, even solar power rebates and incentives are really still just fossil fuel subsidies. It’s a puzzling situation and akin to a snake eating its own tail. The solar subsidies exist in part to combat the effects of fossil fuel subsidies that keep those polluting fuels artificially cheap. It’s a curious and confusing form of fossil fuel double dipping.

The renewable energy subsidies help to stimulate uptake of solar power and in the process drive down prices so that solar and other forms of renewable energy can become dominant in our energy mix to battle the problems that fossil fuels are causing. Whichever way you look at it, the problems all seem to come back to fossil fuel………..

Thankfully, solar grid parity is rapidly approaching regardless – unless of course the clean energy revolution is somehow derailed….

The Cheap Energy Era That Wasn’t : Renewable Energy News :

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Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

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