Onshore Wind Is The Cheapest Electricity Generation Option In Europe (via Clean Technica)
Originally published on Renew Economy. The falling cost of renewables is not news to those who have paid attention to analysis from green-focused think tanks, or groups like Bloomberg New Energy Finance. But it is when a major European utility, with…
This post was republished using Repost. Please read it on Informed Comment directly: https://www.juancole.com/2014/05/onshore-cheaper-nuclear.html
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from last winter: “Spain Breaks Record for Wind Energy as Primary Source of Power”
“…The ‘less educated’ typically refer to the spot price….” That’s a laugh. The fossil fuel industry does everything it can to obscure the real prices, particularly of oil. The spot prices are a convenient way to follow trends. Even the deal between China and Russia is not only obscured but some of it is tied to international future prices of crude oil (despite being a contract for natural gas, though it must be said that China apparently got a sweet deal).
I’m no expert on oil prices (too many prevaricating sharks), but I generally follow the rule of thumb that large fields can sell at 35-75% of the spot price and many small operations are now selling at 70-90%. When Fracking producers like Chesapeake Energy make headlines for cute financial maneuvers, it’s likely they’re barely making a profit, if at all. Oil and natural gas also have many mechanisms for the main operators to make money even when the profit margin is low or nonexistent. The other thing about fossil fuels are all the gee whiz promotions on how great a field is doing, until suddenly the promotions stop, and small or foreign investors are the last to know.
2 to 4 cents a kwh is fantastic, even wholesale. Now we can start talking about the benefits of having energy that is less capital-intensive and more labor-intensive – because turbines have no fuel cost but they do have maintenance costs. Logically, when fuel is imported or obtained from property owners, it is going to send money overseas or to property owners. Our economy is now all about replacing jobs with property, and it’s not working.
We know from other articles on this site that in Germany wind power has damaged the ability of power companies to play Enron-style games with peak demand prices. Thus even fossil-fuel power is forced to become cheaper. Since we still need baseload electricity, that’s important. At 2 to 4 cents, maybe we can start making things in the US again instead of having China do our polluting for us.