I'm curious, since it's pretty much not mentioned at all in the article: How much of this is due to US gov't subsidies of renewables in the US? Are other countries seeing the same trends in the absence of the helping hand?
Ahhh, externalities again. Perhaps a more important question - how much of it is due to deep Chinese subsidies for panel manufacturers? That's something rarely mentioned in the Solyndra debacle - the whole reason behind it is that the Chinese are effectively selling solar panels at a loss. I'm not even sure the answer would be useful, considering both sides of the equation are deeply subsidized. Besides which, pollution for coal plants that power Las Vegas and Los Angeles don't count towards those states emissions if the plant is in, say, Arizona. Then of course there's the discussion about the environmental impact of solar panel construction.
Friedman's column in today's Times suggested that we could use Putin's aggression as a pretext for forcing through a comprehensive energy policy that focused on renewables as a way to isolate gas and oil rich oligarchies such as Russia. Not such a bad idea, but really, what's the point of suggesting Congress do anything right now, given their obstinate state.
Haha. Yeah, it's a total fantasy. Ironically, the Iraq War was supposed to bring us more oil. Remember how the $2 billion that we would have to spend on the war was an investment that would be paid off by oil revenue within 6 months? Oh man, sometimes it's fun to reminisce.
Fracking only works for natural gas, which has about a tenth the energy density of gasoline. You aren't going to see LPG cars any time soon. Tar sands are much harder to get oil out of than wells. The only reason we're mining tar sands in Canada and not in Saudi Arabia is we don't have to mine tar sands in Saudi Arabia. This discussion misses the point that the US hasn't mined much of our reserved on purpose. The goal is to let the other guy run out of gas first. Great Game bullshit but it's the truth.
I less brought it from the pov of: "What is the state of competition between the two?" And more with the question in mind: "At the current level of subsidies, could solar panels be sold to an entire country / state without bankrupting the US?" (And China, too, forgot about that place...) Can this similar change be seen in less rich countries where the state pockets aren't quite as deep?
Back in the hoary days of Clinton's first term I did alternative energy design. We ran some numbers - a solar panel 100 miles on a side parked in the middle of the Nevada desert would provide all the energy the United States was currently using. Now all you gotta do is buy the panel, right? Well, and string it up. Makes a point though. What if, instead of spending a billion a week for three years killing Iraqis, we'd spent a billion a week on solar panels? Problem is the wrong republicans get rich then.
Although stringing it up is non-trivial, as I'm sure you're aware. If there were a such thing as a long range, superconducting wire, our energy needs would be solved in short order, since we could turn the bottom of the ocean into a thermal pump. Unfortunately, concentrated energy just doesn't work right now. I think for this reason (among others), materials science is going to be a great field for young engineers to get into in the coming decades. Sure, it's boring to work in materials science research, but the end products are well worth the effort, if successful.Well, and string it up.
From what I understand, it's not so much the subsidies, but the leasing models introduced by SolarCity, etc. Efficiency is now high enough that these companies are paying for the installation upfront (which was a major pain point), and the owner buys it back, sometimes completely with the money saved by adding the panel. I posted an article a couple of months ago about SolarCity trying to create an investment vehicle out of these leases, probably because raising cash is a bottleneck.