Hurray for Environmental Capital, in response to the LATimes call for massive clean energy subsidies:
Simply put, fossil fuels remain cheaper [than green energy] because not all their costs are tallied—and that means pollution. Traditional power plants spew particulates into the air as well as carbon dioxide, but historically the cost of that pollution was not included in the pricetag for, say, operating a coal-fired plant.
When those costs are included, dirty old coal suddenly gets a lot more expensive. Even the most modern coal plants, fitted with all kinds of gizmos to scrub the airm of dirty emissions, still cost more. In comparison, zero-emissions energy like wind power and solar power don’t carry any significant hidden costs.
European researchers who have spent years exploring those so-called external costs figure regular old coal plants actually cost an additional 9-17 cents per kilowatt hour (7-13 European cents)—that’s an extra two or three times the average cost of electricity in the U.S. Even the cleanest of coal plants still costs an extra 2 cents per kilowatt hour. And that, coincidentally, is the amount of subsidy support that wind power gets from the federal government to help close the cost gap. “When the external cost resulting from local and global impacts are included, the electric power system changes become more radical,” the European researchers concluded.
Bridging that cost gap is the whole thinking behind a cap-and-trade scheme that would put a pricetag on carbon emissions, which would make a whole suite of energy alternatives—from nuclear power to “clean coal”—cost competitive, depending on just how pricey carbon emissions really are.
And that is another reason that the quickest—if not the politically easiest—path to boosting clean energy will come through a national cap-and-trade scheme, rather than ramped-up federal “brainpower” or another Manhattan project.
In fairness to the LATimes, they are not all about subsidies out there in California [emphasis added below]:
To help renewable energy compete on price, Chu and other officials say, the administration wants to revamp energy research and spend more on it, starting with billions of dollars in the pending economic stimulus bill; create demand for clean energy by forcing utilities to draw from renewable sources such as wind turbines and solar panels; string thousands of miles of transmission lines to bring wind and solar power to consumers; and levy a de facto tax on fossil fuels through a nationwide cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
