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Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035, Study Says
By 2035, it will be more expensive to run 90% of gas plants being proposed in the U.S. than it will be to build new wind and solar farms equipped with storage systems, according to the report Monday from the Rocky Mountain Institute. It will happen so quickly that gas plants now on the drawing boards will become uneconomical before their owners finish paying for them, the study said.
The authors of the study say they analyzed the costs of construction, fuel and anticipated operations for 68 gigawatts of gas plants proposed across the U.S. They compared those costs to building a combination of solar farms, wind plants and battery systems that, together with conservation efforts, could supply the same amount of electricity and keep the grid stable.
As gas plants lose their edge in power markets, the economics of pipelines will suffer, too, RMI said in a separate study Monday. Even lines now in the planning stages could soon be out of the money, the report found.
Hopefully our electrical distribution grid will still work.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 11 2019, @12:32PM (8 children)
The subsidies have always decided the economics: it's why we grow corn for fuel, it's why solar scaled up to become economical in the first place, and it's why we've developed an automobile based society.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 11 2019, @08:50PM (7 children)
And the real subsidy to the oil business is the US military involvement in, say, the middle East. All the others are relatively minor. (And in "all the others" I'm including things like the Interstate Highway network.)
If you want to assert that most of the subsidies benefit more than one party, I'll agree. But as long as the oil industry is one of the benefiting parties, it should count as a subsidy of the oil industry.
N.B.: The strategic value of the oil industry, especially in the period before, say, 1980, should not be underrated. There are reasons why those subsidies were enacted. But this doesn't keep them from being subsidies. And the argument now is that those subsidies should be admitted if you are comparing the costs of oil vs. solar.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 11 2019, @09:41PM (1 child)
Chavez giving away gasoline for virtually free in Venezuela was not an altogether dumb strategic move... free energy for the people means the people do more stuff, which, generally speaking, is good for the economy. At least if you want to emulate the US economy, where we're all running around doing stupid stuff for questionable reasons.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @04:00PM
Yes.. questionable reasons indeed...
https://youtu.be/UqqMwAPJg-c?t=138 [youtu.be]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 12 2019, @12:17AM (4 children)
I am glad you raised the geo-political impact of fossil fuels. Hardly anyone does, but it is a huge, huge reason to jump to renewables as soon as possible. Just as one thing to consider: America buys $360 billion of foreign oil every year. Imagine the boon that money would be to the American economy if it stayed here. Imagine what a help it would be to our foreign policy to not directly and actively fund Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, and the other countries that hate our guts and work and pray for our destruction every day. Imagine the jobs that $360 billion would create in America, whether through building and maintaining solar and wind installations or doing other things entirely.
A person could also go into the strategic threat that climate change is and will be thanks to all the extra CO2 that burning fossil fuels puts into the atmosphere, but the above is enough to chew on for now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @11:49AM (3 children)
Said the natural gas industry.
$1000 per capita per year - nice, but not really life changing to the current US lifestyle.
Chaos is opportunity, opportunity for military adventure, opportunity to grow all kinds of established interests in the newly disrupted areas.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 12 2019, @01:06PM (2 children)
The TARP stimulus Congress passed in 2009 was $700 billion and it was a one-time deal. Stopping oil buying would be half of a TARP stimulus every year.
That's a shit ton of jobs and a really excellent amount of money to not give to Saudi-funded madrassas.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @05:17PM (1 child)
Back before climate change was "on the radar" I thought the US was actually pretty smart: trading essentially worthless concepts (American dollars) for foreign oil, while we kept our fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Then the Saudis give us back umpteen millions of dollars in exchange for some F-16 fighter-jet toys and similar trinkets.
When it really hits the fan, dollars will just be broken promises.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 14 2019, @03:51PM
That's astute. It will be quite an adjustment, then, but there are quite bright sides to it: the perceived value of bankers, politicians, and lawyers will drop to zero, or less.
Washington DC delenda est.