Quotation of the day on picking the taxpayers’ pockets to pick energy losers….

Quotation of the day on picking the taxpayers’ pockets to pick energy losers…. | AEIdeas
Quotation of the day on picking the taxpayers’ pockets to pick energy losers….

Mark J. Perry | August 13, 2014, 11:44 pm

…. is from Matt Ridley’s article “Renewable energy is not working”:

Over the past ten years the world has invested more than $600 billion in wind power and $700 billion in solar power. Yet the total contribution those two technologies are now making to the world primary energy supply is still less than 2 per cent. Ouch.

If we had spent that sum on research, and steadily replaced coal with gas as a source of electricity, we would have done far more to cut carbon emissions and kept prices low. A new report by Charles Frank of the Brookings Institution has come to the startling conclusion that if you encourage gas to replace coal, you get fewer emissions per dollar spent than if you use wind or solar.

In Mr. Frank’s words: “Solar and wind facilities suffer from a very high capacity cost per megawatt, very low capacity factors and low reliability, which result in low avoided emissions and low avoided energy cost per dollar invested.” In short, we are picking losers.