Do you agree with Nature magazine that solar is the most expensive way to generate electricity?
. . . and that coal and nuclear are the cheapest?
In the current issue of Nature, page 872 shows a comparison of costs of producing electricity.
The cheapest is coal without carbon capture storage ("CCS"). Then nuclear. Followed by coal "with mature CCS", then municipal solid waste, then wind onshore, biomass, wind offshore and finally, at the extreme end of cost is solar photovoltaic.
So – if you don’t like coal, then it seems that nuclear is the way to go. Or do you disagree with the findings presented by Nature?
.
.
EDIT @ gcnp58
No, I don’t want to ask that. You go off into your tie-dyed world of living by candlelight if you like, and good luck to you. But please don’t try and force the rest of the world to conform to your vision for it. There’s a word for that.
.
Solar energy is very expensive compared to other alternatives.. That is because of the lowenergy density of sunlight. Anything that has to be collected over a larger area is more expensive. The manufacturing cost and mantaineance are high. There are also toxic waste issues with the manufacturing.
Another problem with solar is where do you put then. The green loving politicians in the state of California have made it illegal to put solar panels in the desert. Even in areas with the most sun there are days that there is no sun. To use sun more than a few hours a day, you have to move the panels to track the sun. That uses energy. and makes the systems more expensive. This is different than windmills that can use the wind to move themselves.
Nuclear power is intentionally made more expensive by politicians, becuase they are not interested in a solution to the problem. They sabotage all attempts to make safe centralized spent fuel storage and recycling, and then complain that there is no where to store the spent fuel.
If we all had nuclear power, there would be no need for climate change research, cap and trade.
Whether you believe in climate change or not, it would not matter.
There would be no be no purpose in life for certain politicians.
Many who support climate change agenda, only do so because they what they really want is to destroy our way of life. If they get their way, when everything is destroyed beyond any recovery, they will say I am bored now, can you put things back the way they were?
Typically those costs analyses don’t factor in disposal of nuclear waste. The range on those costs are also quite large, and CCS/coal and nuclear overlap, so you are misinterpreting the results. A more correct way to state it is that CCS/coal costs roughly the same as nuclear, except the former does not have the hidden costs of long-term storage of nuclear waste. Of course, there will also be issues associated with CCS technology that are unknown at present.
But your question displays a very simplistic take on the article, and one slanted by your political bias.
The real question you should be asking is that if all available power generation technologies are expensive, impractical, or will entail unforeseen and possibly large drawbacks, why is there so much resistance to large-scale energy conservation and use-reduction programs? But you don’t want to ask that, do you?
So what?
That will change and the calculation is misleading because you cannot put a cost estimate on every possible consequence.
There’s nothing wrong with nuclear, and AGW proponents are generally in favor of it. It is certainly better than coal, but it does have its problems. Deciding which is better should be based on a reasonable cost-benefit analysis, comparing construction cost, operating cost, storage of waste, insurance, and anything else that you can think to throw in there. The Greenpeace types who oppose nuclear at all costs do not help, but neither do the Limbaugh types who insist that it is cheaper than dirt and always will be.
But anyway I find your interpretation of the graph a little misleading. It clearly shows ranges for prices, and virtually all of them overlap with each other. PV has the largest range of all of them. I don’t know why that is but suspect that part of the reason is that PV is much more viable in some places than others.
Here it is for those who’d like to see, reproduced shamelessly without permission:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4055/4373254543_8739b8bac1_o.jpg
And just to be extra nitpicky, these are not "findings" from Nature. The article is just about CCS, it was not a study of the costs of various energy technologies. The graph came from Bloomberg, not Nature.
The real question here is why not build more Coal Power stations, all with catalytic converters and filters so that only CO2 and water vapour are vented – no acid rain, no particulate carbon, no pollution. Coal can be cheap and clean if you ignore the Warmist bogeyman of CO2. Are you willing to force everyone in the world to pay four times the current price for electricity to eliminate harmless CO2 emissions?
This will cause poverty and deaths through freezing in Winter and heat exhaustion in Summer.
PV Cells are nearly as dirty to build as the mercury long life fluorescent bulbs that wamists seem to like so much: both are major polluters of land-fills with heavy metals.
If you realy want to save electricity you would change building codes to make 1 metre eaves mandatory (Cheapest Air-con possible) and ban down-lights in ceilings, punching holes through your ceiling insulation is just plain stupid, and 1 pendant light casts the same illumination as 4 downlights.
Nothing really new. That is why the utility industry was trying to shift over to Nuclear in the 70′s and 80′s until our well educated "Environmentalists" killed our Nuclear program. All studies done then (there were millions, if not billions spent on research) resulted in the same conclusion. Solar, Wind, Geo, etc. were all good, but had limitations and could not practically supply the massive amount of reliable 24/7/365 power needed for our society. Same as today. Physics and Math stay the same. Politics sways in the breeze.
Now we find ourselves in a fix. We could be sitting pretty and not producing a lot of CO2 as well as telling the mid east oil merchants to **** off. Countries like France were smart. They produce most of their power with Nuclear.
That is what we get for listening to "Environmentalists" instead of Engineers, Chemists, and Economists.
True now (although not by that much), as a general rule but it won’t be later. Even now, solar is cheaper in an isolated rural area than running power lines to a single house.
Right now, we do need nuclear, simply because the risks of global warming are clearly greater than those of nuclear power. The eventual goal should be truly renewable energy; solar, wind, geothermal, etc. But that will take 30-50 years, and we need to get away from fossil fuels sooner than that..
I have to agree with Bob. The wide range for solar is because it’s far cheaper for someone to put solar panels on their roof than it is to build a huge array and transmit that power. I’m personally of the opinion that solar will keep getting cheaper and cheaper and become more efficient the more widespread it becomes. That it was swept under the rug for so long is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. It could already be dirt cheap if it had continued to evolve.
I have a solar powered calculator (Casio fx-451) from the early 80s which as far as it’s capabilities would be easily out-shined by something the size of a postage stamp, but the solar tech hasn’t changed much at all, and that’s just sad.
_
$ per Kw, absolutely, unless its a passive system.
they wont be saying that when petrol is $20 a gal
Yes, solar is currently the most expensive in most cases.
However, comparing ‘mature CCS’ with current PV is silly. It makes as much sense as comparing ‘mature PV’ with current CCS, in which case the PV would look fantastic and the CCS awful.
You notice the graph has a very large spread for PV; this probably accounts for the large range in prices (CdTe modules are about half the price per kW of silicon ones), and in how sunny places are (Californian panels will produce over twice as much as British ones). The cheapest PV panels, according to Nature, need to drop in price by about 35% in order to match the price of the most expensive normal coal. (and the price of coal they demonstrate doesn’t appear to include externalities, which more than double its real cost anyway)
Iirc, FirstSolar contracts are based on a price fall of 8%/yr for the next few years. ‘Mature’ PV is likely to see significant further price drops which may well make it cheaper than CCS in many areas (eg areas that are sunny, but don’t have nearby geological storage sites say).
Solar is worth investing limited amounts in now in sunny areas to encourage the market to continue to develop the technology – it’s one for the future and I think the signs are pretty encouraging that by 2020 (and possibly before) it’ll be cost effective in sunny areas.
Yes, at this time solar is more expensive then fossil fuels.Any alternative energy is more expensive,our society and economies depend on oil.The easy oil has been found,now we go for the deeper and harder oil. There is still lots of oil out there(it took 150yrs to get to this point it will take another 150yrs to use up whats left)As oil gets more difficult to find and refine it will get more expensive,we are going to have to decide whether we want fertilizers or fuel.Its a real good time to be exploring the possibilities of alternative energy
The problem with solar energy is everyone would have to buy and have it installed themselves. Houses come hooked up to the grid already, so no one even thinks about going any other way. You still have to put down a hefty amount of money to put it in, where electricity from the city is pretty cheap. So people just don’t get around to putting it in. It has been such a hard sell. Solar companies try to sale their product, but they just don’t get a good response from the public. No one I know gives it a thought. It would be great if we could go solar, but to many just don’t see the point when you already have power coming to the house.
Solar is the cheaper…why? Because the fuel is free. So is wind. So is hydro. I suspect that geothermal is as well. What costs is the infrastructure to capture the free fuel. With coal and nuclear you have to build the infrastructure, plus buy the fuel, plus dispose of the waste. Gas at least doesn’t have the solid waste disposal problem but like coal still has it’s CO2 problem. Nuclear has no CO2 component but like coal and gas has a massive supply tail and the added problem of 10,000 years of radioactive waste…for which we have no solution. Besides, any ‘solution’ to the radioactive waste problem would be far more expensive than buying everyone in America a PV system. Some folks have suggested that PV panels are expensive, but that’s a function of limited production at this point. I remember when TV’s were expensive, as were microwave ovens, not to mention computers. CD players cost a bundle as well. The first VCRs cost $1600 and were as big as a suitcase. Remember cell phones? The first ones were $2500 and you had to lug ‘em around in 007 case. Coal is a 19th century technology with a long supply trail and waste, environmental and health problems attached. Oil is an early 20th century technology with the same problems as coal. Nuclear is a mid 20th century technology with a long supply tail and massive disposal and potential environmental and disposal problems. This is the 21st century, so solar and wind, given the political will to deal with the coal/oil and nuclear mafias and to force development is the only practical way to keep the wheels on the road and the lights on in the future. The problem isn’t technical or even economic….it’s political. Give it a think!
I think Hydro is cheaper than all of those listed, but of course, there aren’t any more rivers to dam.
And I agree that nuclear has it place.
For a large plant today, I would agree, solar is among the most expensive.
As some others have mentioned, cheapest is not always best. Do you wear the cheapest clothes you can find? Personally, I don’t get my clothes from the free section of craigslist…
For an individual home, solar is not necessarily the most expensive, considering retail costs for distribution.