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A group of scientists have called for a "moonshot" renewable energy research program called the "Global Apollo":
They say they have generated interest from major nations in their plan for an investment of 0.02% of their GDP [about $150 billion over 10 years, and about the cost of the Apollo program in 2015 dollars] into research, development and demonstration (RD&D) of clean electricity. Their report, launched at London's Royal Society, says on current projections the world will exceed the 2C danger threshold of climate change by 2035.
The academics are led by the UK's former chief scientist Professor Sir David King. He told BBC News: "We have already discovered enough fossil fuels to wreck the climate many times over. There's only one thing that's going to stop us burning it – and that's if renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels. "Under our plan, we are aiming to make that happen globally within a decade." Another of the authors, former Cabinet Secretary Lord O'Donnell, told BBC News: "People never believed we could put a man on the Moon - but we did. People don't believe we can solve climate change - but we have no choice."
It complains that renewable energy has been starved of investment to a shocking degree, with publicly funded RD&D on renewable energy only $6bn a year – under 2% of the total of publicly funded research and development. The authors say this compares poorly with the $101bn spent worldwide on production subsidies for renewables and the $550bn "counter-productive" subsidies for fossil fuel energy.
Solar is the most favoured renewable source as the group says it has greatest potential for technology breakthroughs, and most new energy demand will be in sunny countries. The cost of solar has been plummeting and is already approaching competitive prices in places as different as Germany, California and Chile. But the authors believe next-generation plastic photovoltaics can to keep prices tumbling. They believe battery technology is improving fast – but think batteries and other forms of storage need to be massively developed to store intermittent renewable energy. The authors say much smarter software is needed to enable electricity grids to cope with the new sources of power. Some experts believe that energy technology has developed so fast that it simply needs further price support to keep volumes rising and costs falling. Others will complain that the Apollo group has done little to tackle the immense problem of replacing fossil fuels in heating.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @02:52PM
Let's translate this: Dear government, please take that guy's money and give it to me!
Renewables are already to the point that they can stand on their own. Solar energy is already competitive with other energy sources in many places. From here, the only role government can or should play is to keep the market neutral. Commercial interests will do the rest; large-scale government R&D funding is no longer necessary.
Production subsidies should be the next to go. They distort the market, allowing parasitic companies to hang on even when they have no kind of sensible business plan. Let the parasites die, so that the healthy companies can develop properly.
And again we have the nonsense about subsidies for fossil fuels. Whenever you look into this, you find that the vast majority of these "subsidies" are perfectly normal parts of the tax code that can apply to a wide variety of companies. Calling a standard tax break a "subsidy" is deliberately misleading.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.