Thanks again. Just watched this finally, and scheduled a post on it for Sunday (1pm EST).

Tremendous video/talks.

And didn’t realize you were one of the speakers when you dropped it here — double thanks! Thoroughly enjoyed many of your points, and very uplifting to see your focus on and passion for this. Best of luck in your work.

and yeah, externalities. if we had common sense, as a society, we’d make companies internalize those… and this whole site wouldn’t exist because we’d only have cleantech… ok, maybe an exaggeration, but the world would look a lot diff and i’d probably be doing something else.

To answer your main question:
Solar technology is already cost competative with fossil power in the US. Especially when you consider that solar power is producing peak-load power.

You might ask:
What?! Why isn’t it taking of like crazy then?

The answer is simple:
The power/energy market isn’t a free market and the design of the market forces that exist are designed to favour large power producers instead of small & independent investors. Power is being sold and traded, but independent power producers face huge regulatory and economic barriers that prohibit them from selling their “good”. For example it’s difficult, sometimes impossible and expensive to get access to the grid. Is it free trade in goods when new independet market participants aren’t able to enter the market and sell their goods?

In other words: The Marketplace (grid) isn’t open and the market conditions are heavily distorted by local monopoly structures that recieved subsidies and priviledges for decades to this very day. This is due to the fact that energy is a strategic good and was always closly linked with politics.

Unfortunatly all of these barriers create extra costs for planning, organizing, permits and especially financing when it comes to getting renewable energy sources on the grid. Those costs are not based on technology costs which you seem to think is the critical part.

Just a little example to proof my point:
In Germany solar doesn’t recieve direct subsidies in the form of tax-breaks or cheap loans that artificially reduce project costs.
The ONLY support solar power projects (small & large) recieve is a feed in tarrif that gurantees the per kWh revenue and there is guranteed access to the grid. The former is pegged to system costs the later streamlines the process of getting clean energy on the grid.

Due to this legal framework most of the problems I wrote about earlier are gone. As a result of the technological progress and these market conditions it’s possible to produce utility scale PV-solar power for $10ct / kWh and residential-rooftop solar for $15ct / kWh  in Germany.

Imagine the German market conditions would apply to places with higher solar insulation… well basicly the entire US since Germany gets as much sun as Alaska.
That would mean you (litteraly you) could produce solar power for $5-7ct/ kWh in places like California or Texas. TODAY!

Don’t bitch about the technology, Bitch about the horrible political framework in your country that is biased against renewables and doesn’t implement what’s most efficent.
The higher costs are due to a lack of market access, horrible financing conditions for independent investors due to uncertainty, lack of mobilization of the solar industry,… AND lack of competition. There are enough studies by smarter people than me that compare German style incentives with Portfolio-Standard / Quota-Systems… most of them conclude what is obvious in reality.
German style policy is more cost efficent while leading to higher installations, it also leads to more innovation, thousends of new independent market participents and a highly competative market for renewable energy technologies.

The US isn’t used to looking abroad for effective solutions, but it might be helpful to recognize the fact that China has entered the race and now even Japan. Economy 2,3 & 4 have a clear strategy to be a leader in the most critical economic sector of the 21st Century. The question is: Do you want to join or fall even further behind and rely on fracking your way till that source of energy is depleted.

Are you open to “real math” Ben, or do you want to put the normal thumb on the scale in favor of fossil fuels?

I’ll give you some real.

We spend roughly 18 cents per kWh on the top of the meter price for coal.  We spend that via our tax dollars and health insurance premiums in order to cover the health and environmental costs created by coal emissions.  

If we add in what it is costing us in terms of more extreme weather due to global warming the price goes even higher,.

If we add in what it will cost us in the future due to the additional heating already in the ‘pipeline’ the price climbs again.

Solar is already cheaper.

—

The cost of driving an EV charged from solar panels in the sunbelt (not that PV is how we will charge most EVs/PHEVs) would be about five cents per mile.

To drive a gasmobile that cheaply you would have to drive a 50mpg vehicle on $2.50/gallon gas?  Seen any $2.50/gallon gas lately?

Of course in that $4/gallon we pay now at the pump there’s no inclusion of climate change produced damages.  There’s no inclusion of the cost of three oil wars and the immense amount of money we are forced spend on “homeland security”.

The reason you get your junk fondled or your nads rayed at the airport?  Oil.

Solar is already cheaper.

They take a few min to find if you know how to look.  Ironically they are mostly improvement for casing practices. (and most of them are old)

He took things out of context and either didn’t understand what the papers were saying or/and is trying to manipulate people. Implying leak potential does not mean it will happen on a large scale.

The science is not on his side.  There are tens of thousands of scientists and engineers that work in the oil industry.  They care about the environment, and if there really were problems at least a few of them would be screaming at the top of their lungs.  The only people who are strongly opposed are people with little or no scientific background and no experience.  Unfortunately, they are loud enough to make our uneducated public and elected official believe in something that just isn’t true.

The people who support Fox do not understand the implications of what will happen should they succeed. (national total ban)

People need to work to educate themselves.  The oil industry has an agenda and so does Josh Fox. 

The truth is in the middle somewhere, but ignoring a large domestic energy sources is a stupid idea.

If you want to be green spend the money for solar panels and wind power, but that action should not be forced by anything other than economic drivers. 

Zachary I have seen a handful of good things posted by you, but I don’t agree with most of what you post.  Something I would like to see is an estimate with real world numbers for how long it will take for solar panels to become competitive with fossil fuels. 

I know this year solar dropped between ~6%-20% this year depending on the scale of the project.  How many years does that have to happen?  How long can drops in price be sustained?

if you answer those questions please let me know on geothunder.com

The whole industry push for hydraulic fracking has given alot more attention & focus to the enviromental 
impacts. Economically those impacts basicly consist of externalized costs in terms of health damages & damages to industries like argriculture, fishing,… . 

In Germany Exxon tried to ensure people it’s safe with a massive advertising campaign… that campaign was the first time many people ever heared of fracking here. So when they looked it up the first address they found was an information portal set up by anti-fracking activists. *lol*

Way to shoot yourself in the foot Exxon.

There has recently been an incident where conventional drilling has spilled Benzol into the water supply because the operators used unsuited piping to dispose the wastewater of drilling… Great!