{"id":6182,"date":"2013-10-19T08:53:05","date_gmt":"2013-10-19T12:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=6182"},"modified":"2013-10-29T05:06:48","modified_gmt":"2013-10-29T09:06:48","slug":"solar-and-wind-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-more-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/solar-and-wind-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-more-evidence.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar and wind cheaper than fossil fuels –more evidence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nThe most cost-effective power sources are solar and wind,\r\nre-affirms a study that includes social costs,\r\nsuch as the environmental costs of the climate\r\nchange caused by CO2<\/sub><\/small> from fossil fuels\r\n(the social cost of carbon, or SCC),\r\nand the health damage caused by sulfur dioxide pollution.\r\nIt’s time to stop paying for utility executive profits with our health and dollars.\r\nNo fracking, no pipeline.\r\n

\r\nM Caulfield wrote for Exposing the Truth 24 September 2013,\r\n\r\nRenewable Energy Now Cheaper Than Fossil Fuel<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

<\/a>Renewable energy is becoming more and more\r\ncompetitive. Alternative and renewable energy sources are increasingly\r\nbecoming more affordable. According to a new study published in the Journal\r\nof Environmental Studies and Sciences<\/a>, it is now less costly in\r\nAmerica to get electricity from wind turbines and solar panels, than it\r\nis to get it from coal-fired power plants. The study shows, when climate\r\nchange costs and other health impacts were factored in, that it is even\r\nmore cost effective to convert an existing coal-fired power plant with\r\na wind turbine, than it is to keep the old fossil fuel-burning plant.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nUnsubsidized renewable energy is now cheaper than electricity from coal and<\/a>\r\ngas power stations in Australia as well. Wind farms in Australia\r\ncan produce energy at AU$80\/MWh. Meanwhile, coal plants are\r\nproducing energy at AU$143\/MWh and gas at AU$116\/MWh. And the myth that alternative energy sources\r\nwere<\/a> enormously more costly than the typical\r\nfossil fuels, is proving to be untrue. And after initial\r\ninvestment costs are waged, making them now ameliorated, and the raw materials for solar and wind power<\/a> are free, besides\r\ncosts of upkeep, and the harvesting of those sources doesn’t cause\r\nmayhem to the environment. Making it an ever-more appealing alternative\r\nenergy source.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\u201cThe perception that fossil fuels are cheap and\r\nrenewables are expensive is now out of date… The\r\nfact that wind power is now cheaper than coal and gas in a country with some of the world\u2019s<\/a> best fossil fuel\r\nresources shows that clean energy is a game changer which promises to turn\r\nthe economics of power systems on its head,\u201d – Michael Liebreich,\r\nchief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIn lead author Laurie Johnson\u2019s Blog 17 September 2013,\r\n\r\nNew Study: Clean Energy Least Costly to Power America’s Electricity Needs<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe study results show that our electricity system, which generates\r\nfully 40 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide pollution, is\r\ncostly. Already, climate change is contributing to record heat\r\nwaves, floods, drought, wildfires and severe storms. Such extreme\r\nweather caused more than $140 billion in damages in 2012. American\r\ntaxpayers picked up nearly $100 billion of those costs, according to\r\nan NRDC report released in May, 2013….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nWe arrive at our results in large part based upon a measure\r\ndeveloped by economists called the\r\n\r\n“social cost of\r\ncarbon,” or SCC<\/a>. The SCC estimates how much damage one ton of\r\nCO2 emitted today causes now and into the future. Our study also\r\nincludes economic damages caused by sulfur dioxide (SO2), another\r\npollutant released by coal-fired power plants. Every year, SO2\r\ncauses thousands of premature deaths, respiratory ailments (e.g.\r\nasthma and bronchitis), heart disease and a host of ecosystem\r\ndamages.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nSo fossil fuels and nuclear are the alternative power sources,\r\n<\/a>\r\nand we need to stop subsidizing them with our health and environment\r\nand get switch to solar and wind as quickly as we can.\r\n\r\n

\r\nAnd we can:\r\n\r\nsolar stocks are beating fossil fuel stocks<\/a> 120% to zero.\r\nThe tipping point has come.\r\nUtilities are \r\nrunning scared of solar power<\/aa, because\r\n\r\nsolar parity<\/a>\r\nwith fossil fuels has been reached,\r\nyes\r\n\r\neven with natural gas<\/a>,\r\n\r\nand long since reached with nuclear<\/a>.\r\nNuclear has always been\r\n\r\na boondoggle<\/a>, never surviving without massive taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/a>Even with\r\n\r\nfracking<\/a> natural gas prices are not going to keep going down,\r\nwhile\r\nwhile \r\nMoore’s Law<\/a>\r\nkeeps driving solar prices down and\r\n\r\ndeployments up<\/a>\r\nlike\r\n\r\ncompound interest<\/a>.\r\nThis new study only uses current costs;\r\nit doesn’t even take the exponentially decreasing price of solar power\r\ninto account, so the case for solar now is actually even stronger.\r\nIn about a decade,\r\n\r\nsolar power will overtake every other power source<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\nThe\r\n\r\nlong hot smoggy night of burning fossil plants is ending<\/a>,\r\nand\r\n\r\nsolar power will win like the Internet did<\/a>:\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nso fast\r\n\r\nit will make your jaw drop<\/a>.\r\nThere’s no point in paying dirty tribute money to fossil fuel companies that makes us all more dependent on them,\r\nnow that\r\nthe\r\n\r\nsolar sun of jobs, energy independence, and clean air and water<\/a>\r\nis already rising on Georgia.\r\nSoon we’ll see\r\n\r\neven Southern Company get out in front on making Georgia and the southeast\r\na net exporter of solar and wind energy<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nDivest Harvard<\/a>, and\r\nFossil Free Valdosta<\/a>.\r\nNo nukes, no coal, no fracking,\r\n\r\nno pipeline<\/a>. Yes solar rooftops and offshore wind!\r\n

\r\nPS: Owed to Dante Acevedo.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most cost-effective power sources are solar and wind, re-affirms a study that includes social costs, such as the environmental costs of the climate change caused by CO2 from fossil fuels (the social cost of carbon, or SCC), and the health damage caused by sulfur dioxide pollution. It’s time to stop paying for utility executive […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,141,216,14,16,41,6124,104,32,23,289,24,36],"tags":[8719,8745,8753,1003,8704,8706,3787,8701,8718,8702,7089,12,7,562,1980,8737,8715,8713,7088,8758,7087,8714,6,8716],"class_list":["post-6182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-co2","category-coal","category-economy","category-environment","category-health-care","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-science","category-solar","category-wind","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-divestment","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-fossil-fuel","tag-georgia","tag-health-care","tag-lake","tag-laurie-johnson","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-nrdc","tag-nuclear","tag-pollution","tag-renewable-energy","tag-scc","tag-science","tag-social-cost-of-carbon","tag-solar","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1BI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6182"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6394,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6182\/revisions\/6394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}