I'm posting this here as I know there a few people on this ng with knowledge of this topic. This sounds like renewables are making big inroads, but is it as good as it sounds?
I don't have any axe to grind here, or chains to pull, just a genuine interest.
"Wind power is now the cheapest electricity to produce in both Germany and the U.K., even without government subsidies, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). It's the first time that threshold has been crossed by a G7 economy"
A quick browse around the Bloomberg site failed to find any detail on that first sentence. What a pity. Does anyone have a link to their detailed analysis?
The problem with costings of this sort is that the answer you get depends on the assumptions you make, and what you include and what you exclude. Many of the costings of electricity produced from renewable technology (wind, solar, tide, wave etc.) don't take into account the cost of providing back-up generation for when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine, etc.
As the article points out in the case of the USA, the so-called virtuous cycle is making conventional base-load fossil-fuelled electricity more and more expensive because the plants sit idle for longer periods of time, but they still have to be paid for. So fewer new conventional plants will be built, older ones won't be replaced, and they'll find themselves relying on fewer and fewer clapped-out fossil-fuelled plants when the wind doesn't blow, and they'll be blacked out. So is the cycle virtuous, or disastrous? Integrating and managing renewables with existing traditional generation will be increasingly difficult as the renewables become more widespread.
As an aside, it's interesting to note from the graph* that the solar costs by State in the US vary geographically from north to south, as would be expected, Vermont being a lot less sunny than Arizona. It's not clear whether the horizontal black line for coal and gas is absolute or subsidised, but even in Arizona it would appear that solar can't compete with coal and gas without subsidy at present.
*typical economist's graph. No units on the ordinate. Pah!
The clue is in the name. Bloomberg new energy finance. They make money by borrowing from investors and lending it to windmill builders. So they have a vested interest in making the most attractive claims.
They also have similar units in Government, National Affairs (tax, regulations, etc) and Big Law, ie areas where companies are willing to pay for reports on stuff.
I imagine the coal mines are equally as interested in reports on 'new energy' - it's the competition after all. You don't get very far as a research organisation by telling people only what they want to hear.
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