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Author Topic: Fossil Fuel Subsidies - The Invisible Ones are Worse Than the Obvious Ones!  (Read 8384 times)

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AGelbert

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    • Renwable Revolution
 
‘Renewables Are Cheapest Energy Option’ When Fossil Fuel Subsidies Are Removed, Says REN21 
Alex Kirby, Climate News Network | June 27, 2015 12:34 pm

A significant threshold has been crossed by renewable energy as analysts report that the sectorʼs size last year reached double the level it was at just 10 years earlier.

 
Removing fossil fuel and hidden nuclear subsidies globally would make it evident that renewables are the cheapest energy option. Photo credit: Shutterstock

This expansion happened in a year when the global economy and energy use both grew, but without a matching rise in emissions of carbon dioxide  —the main greenhouse gas targeted in efforts to restrain global warming.

The report by REN21, a global renewable energy policy network, says the result is an example of sustainable development. Despite the worldʼs annual 1.5 percent increase in energy consumption in recent years and 3 percent GDP growth last year, 2014ʼs CO2 emissions were unchanged from 2013ʼs total of 32.3 billion tonnes.

The reportʼs authors say this decoupling of economic and CO2 growth is due to Chinaʼs increased use of renewables and to efforts by OECD countries to promote more sustainable growth, including by increased energy efficiency and use of renewable energy.
 
“Renewable energy and improved energy efficiency are key to limiting global warming to 2°C and avoiding dangerous climate change,” says Arthouros Zervos, who chairs REN21.


 

Distorting subsidies

Solar, wind and other technologies, including large hydro-electric schemes, used in 164 countries added another 135 Gigawatts last year to bring the worldʼs total installed renewable energy power capacity to 1,712 GW. This was 8.5 percent up on 2013, and more than double the 800 GW of capacity recorded in 2004. One GW can power between 750,000 and one million typical U.S. homes.

The authors say the sectorʼs growth could be even greater were it not for more than US$550 bn paid out in annual subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy. They say the subsidies keep the prices for energy from these fuels artificially low, encouraging wasteful use and hindering competition.

Christine Lins, executive secretary of REN21, says: “Creating a level playing field would strengthen the development and use of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. Removing fossil fuel and hidden nuclear subsidies globally would make it evident that renewables are the cheapest energy option.”

 

By the end of 2014, renewables comprised an estimated 27.7 percent of the worldʼs power generating capacity—enough to supply an estimated 22.8 percent of global electricity demand.

The amount of electricity available from renewables worldwide is now greater than that produced by all coal-burning plants in the U.S. Coal supplied about 38 percent of U.S. electricity in 2013, compared with around 50 percent in the early 2000s.

Solar photovoltaic capacity has had a rapid 68-fold growth, from 2.6 GW in 2004 to 177 GW in 2014, while wind power capacity has increased eightfold, from 48 GW in 2004 to 370 GW in 2014. Employment in the sector is also growing fast, with an estimated 7.7m people worldwide working directly or indirectly on renewable energy last year.


 

Outpacing fossil fuels

New investment globally in renewable power capacity was more than twice that of investment in net fossil fuel power capacity, continuing the trend of renewables outpacing fossil fuels in net investment for the fifth year running.

Investment in developing countries was up 36 percentsu from the previous year, to $131.3 bn. It came closer than ever to overtaking the investment total for developed economies, which reached $138.9 bn in 2014—up only 3 percent from 2013.


 

China accounted for 63 percent of developing country investment, with Chile, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey each investing more than $1bn. By dollars spent, the leading countries for investment were China, the U.S., Japan, the UK and Germany. Leading countries for investments relative to per capita GDP were Burundi, Kenya, Honduras, Jordan and Uruguay.

But REN21 points out that more than a billion people—15 percent of humanity—still lack access to electricity, and the entire African continent has less power generation capacity than Germany.

The report says that off-grid solar PV has “a significant and growing market presence,” and other distributed renewable energy technologies are improving life in remote off-grid areas.

However, it stresses that this growth rate is still not enough to achieve the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) goals of doubling renewable energy and energy efficiency, and providing universal access for all by 2030.

http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/27/renewables-are-cheapest/2/


Agelbert NOTE:
The math done above is accurate as far as it goes. However, it does not even begin to explain how REALLY EXPENSIVE fossil fuels ALWAYS HAVE BEEN!

WHY? Because the invisible "subsidies" (health care costs, pollution costs, wars for oil costs, ETC.) were not included. There is NO SUCH THING as an "externality" in thermodynamic processes. EVERYTHING that happens has a MEASURABLE effect. The Empathy Deficit Disordered ASS HOLES in the dirty energy industry have tried to make their biosphere math challenged fairy tale view of reality the "accepted wisdom". Only fools continue to believe them.

Hope for a Viable Biosphere of Renewables: Why They Work and Fossil & Nuclear Fuels Never Did

Quote
The quagmire that faces industrialised civilisation is much of it was built using cheap fossil fuels which were not only subsidised directly but in nearly all cases the externalities were never factored in so the damage and costs associated with fossil fuel were lugged to the general population/wildlife/environment.  - Monsta666

Monsta is right. But he ignores the DELIBERATE malice and aforethought that gave dirty energy the "subsidies" in the first place AND continues to be used as a hammer to hamper cost effective energy (i.e. RENEWABLE ENERGY) development due to MASSIVE big oil corporate corruption of government.  >:(

MKing's mendacity and double talk (see defense of fracking    below) about energy costs is a textbook example of the mens rea modus operandi of externality ignoring fossil fuelers everywhere. 
 
Might I pose the question that if we peak oilers are correct about fracking being a ponzi scheme; that major cracks should start appearing soon in this house of leverage and constantly required drilling or fracking of costly wells.

Tight/shale oil and gas wells aren't expensive, the most recent range of numbers provided to the public by the Texas BEG are in the 3-10 million each range, drilling and completing, I confirmed this independently after I last spoke with Tinker and his group a month or two back.

These kinds of numbers are nearly insignificant when compared to conventional oil or gas production in places like the North Slope or GOM, North Sea, anywhere in the Arctic, and are less than half the cost of doing the SAME thing in Argentina, China, or Russia.

As far as hydraulic fracturing itself being a ponzi scheme, it has been going on for 60+ years, I don't think it has much to do with overall financial performance myself, but more with the relationship between price, cost and well performance.

For example, using financial reports on public companies allows interesting analysis of the aggregate, but not the distribution of profitability at the well level of resolution.

For example, lets take two oil companies in the Bakken. One of them is run by a bloviating amateur, he drills and completes a $10M well, pays $1500/month to have someone operate it for him, and requires a nice office building, a staff of sycophants to blow smoke up his ass, all of these things cost money, and the overhead for this company is $100K/month.

This company will probably lose money, and badly, trying to recoup not only the initial CapEx but the $101.5K month nut they have created.

Whereas another company, requiring only one person to achieve the same result, and wanting a modest income of $2k month from this well, will probably make money.

No difference in anything other than the overhead sitting on top of the well's performance.

Fortunately, when the first company goes bankrupt, the second will buy the discounted cash flow of the first companies wells (doesn't give a crap about the building, let the bank foreclose) and make their money off expected increases in price as peak oil takes hold and the price of oil increases as Malthusians expect.

The combination of these three things at the detail level, and aggregate, is important. Amateurs don't tend to know the difference, in part because they don't see how the performance of private companies works, and how they are just salivating right now, waiting for someone to fall, that their assets might be acquired at a discount.


Quote from: Golden Oxen
Shouldn't financing and borrowing problems be arising already?

They certainly might be.

My connections with Wall Street money says that they are still looking to get in, you can barely get them to bite on 1/4B deals, they really want 1B deals right now, and can easily come up with 10B for the right deal.

So the money does not seem to have dried up yet.
[/size]
 

To paraphrase Samuel Clemens in regard to some of his experiences with people that make holes in the ground to get stuff out of and sell to us for "profit", a FRACKING site is a hole the ground with a bunch of LIARS on top.

Here's an article MKing will disagree with and ridicule as "garden variety" or "irrelevant" or disdain with some other pejorative bit of puffery.

The only part of the article he will agree with is that the Oil and Gas industry ACTUALLY gave solar power technology development a boost back in the 70s because PV supplied power to very remote locations the fossil fuelers tend be located for new profit over planet piggery.  ;D

The FULL story of how we-the-people have supported these fossil fuel and nuclear welfare queens is there from the start until this day. The appearance of profitability ignores our tax money for research and continuous subsidy.

Fossil fuelers have an amazing ability to ignore, not just externalized costs, but the giveaways from we-the-people! They have the brass balls to compute those subsidies as part of the ROI. That's a blatant accounting falsehood. Without subsides they are not profitable, period. But MKing will continue with his fantasies, come hell or high water. So it goes.  :P


SNIPPPET 1:

Quote
The bias against renewable funding and support is clear. Recent analysis found that over the first fifteen years an industry receives a subsidy, nuclear energy received an average of $3.3 billion, oil and gas averaged $1.8 billion,Fto and renewables averaged less than $0.4 billion.

Renewables received less than one-quarter of the support of oil and gas and less than one-eighth of the support that nuclear received during the early years of development, when strong investment can make a big difference. Yet even with this disparity, more of our energy supply now comes from renewables than from nuclear, which indicates the strength of renewables as a potential energy source.

SNIPPET 2:
Quote

The momentum behind renewable development came to a rapid halt as soon as Ronald Reagan was elected president. Not only did he remove the solar panels atop the White House, he also gutted funding for solar development and poured billions into developing a dirty synthetic fuel that was never brought to market.

Unnatural Gas: How Government Made Fracking Profitable (and Left Renewables Behind)

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/unnatural-gas-how-government-made-fracking-profitable-and-left-renewables-behind
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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