Quote:
Originally Posted by heep223
Interesting that you're bringing up Spain as "initially taken the hit and now now they're becoming competitive". Spain is around the same size of economy as Canada so it's a good comparison.
Germany, who actually were on this before Spain was, is actually investing massively in coal consumption because of the loss of nuclear and the high cost of renewable:
You talk about an honest assessment of the data but it seems like you're leaving out some pretty key data. In Canada we have access to huge amounts of cheap natural gas to generate electricity and it's a pretty clean burning fuel. We already have the infrastructure (transmission, refining, production) in place to develop and consume natural gas.
If we can use some public profit from the Oil & Gas industry to support renewables then we should but I would draw the line there. But it would be completely irresponsible to continue to fund or introduce large scale support for this industry. I'm all for phasing out dirty coal completely in favour of cleaner natural gas, but taxpayer funding of large scale solar and/or wind industry is bound to end in disaster just like it has all over the world.
Let the renewable industry become competitive naturally, or with small reasonable support.
http://www.economist.com/news/busine...s-cost-del-sol
http://energyskeptic.com/2015/renewa...ly-and-the-uk/ |
I see this post has got alot of traction.
Too bad it's three years out of date in a sector that's moving by the month. Too bad alot of it is patently untrue and unsupported by the data I posted previously. Such as Germany investing massively in coal. How can you draw that conclusion based on the chart I posted above?
In either case, yes developing renewable energy was expensive. I never have said otherwise. Developing renewable energy now is not.
And it's all fine and well to launch barbs about your pet issue argue about side topics, and generally be a crank on this topic. It's the EASY work. Yes yes, renewables expensive, GHGs who cares, hippies - lets punch them and give ourselves high-fives.
But if you're going to do that, at least bring something more to the table than stale old articles about expensive renewable energy and complete fabrications about Germany's energiewende.