George Monbiot is earning more points for intellectual honesty. It is also refreshing that the Guardian continues to publish his very non-PC analysis of the solar subsidies:
(…) Against my instincts I’ve come to oppose solar photovoltaic power (PV) in the UK, and the feed-in tariffs designed to encourage it, because the facts show unequivocally that this is a terrible investment. There are much better ways of spending the rare and precious revenue that the tariffs will extract from our pockets. If we are to prevent runaway climate change, we have to ensure that we get the biggest available bang for our buck: in other words the greatest cut in greenhouse gas production from the money we spend. Money spent on ineffective solutions is not just a waste: it’s also a lost opportunity.
Environmentalists have no trouble understanding this argument when lobbying against nuclear power. Those who maintain that it’s more expensive than renewable electricity argue that we shouldn’t waste our money investing in it. But now I hear the same people telling us that we should support every form of renewable generation, regardless of the cost.
(…) The German experiment, almost identical to the UK’s, has now been running for ten years. An analysis published in November by the Ruhr University shows just what it has achieved.
When the German programme began, in 2000, it offered index-linked payments of 51 euro cents for every kilowatt hour of electricity produced by solar PV. These were guaranteed for 20 years. This is similar to the UK’s initial subsidy, of 41 pence. As in the UK, the solar subsidy was and remains massively greater than the payments for other forms of renewable technology.
The real net cost of the solar PV installed in Germany between 2000 and 2008 was E35bn. The paper estimates a further real cost of E18bn in 2009 and 2010: a total of E53bn in ten years. These investments make wonderful sense for the lucky householders who could afford to install the panels, as lucrative returns are guaranteed by taxing the rest of Germany’s electricity users. But what has this astonishing spending achieved? By 2008 solar PV was producing a grand total of 0.6% of Germany’s electricity. 0.6% for E35bn. Hands up all those who think this is a good investment.
After years of these incredible payments, and the innovation and cost reductions they were supposed to stimulate, the paper estimates that saving one tonne of carbon dioxide through solar PV in Germany still costs E716. The International Energy Agency has produced an even higher estimate: E1000 per tonne. There are dozens of ways in which you can save carbon for 100th of the cost of solar PV at high latitudes.
The paper comes out against using feed-in tariffs to stimulate wind power as well, but in this case it shows that largescale wind in Germany is likely to become cheaper than conventional power by 2022, at which point subsidies will become redundant. It makes no such prediction for solar PV. It reinforces the point I made in my first sally: that while Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme, any carbon savings made by feed-in tariffs merely allow polluting industries to raise their emissions. The net saving is zero. The paper suggests that a far more cost-effective mechanism would be to crank down the emissions cap under the trading scheme, then let renewable technologies fight it out to offer the biggest carbon savings per euro.
(…) While I’ve been taking plenty of flak for arguing this case, I’ve also received a lot of support from green energy experts. Chris Goodall and David Thorpe, for example, have both come to similar conclusions, by working the case out from first principles. If you doubt what I say, I urge you to read their analyses, and the astonishing figures they have produced.
I have no horses in this race: no products to sell, no shares in any company, no favours to discharge or lobbyists to please. I am simply trying to work out what’s best. I realise that there is no persuading some people: that they will believe what they want to believe. But I hope that some of you might be able to see that this is an honest attempt to get to the truth of the matter, and to find the most effective means of preventing runaway climate change.
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