Giardiasis said:
Serious question, but how much do you know about the process of electrical energy production and transport? If the answer is little, than how can you have such a firm position on the matter?
[youtube=560,315]N-yALPEpV4w[/youtube]
Nothing directly as I don't work in the industry, however I invest in a wide variety of companies and always do my own research. I may use tips from others, but will always do significant research myself.
The video you have added highlights some very good points, however I know you know stats so will understand this, there was a slide there where he showed the environmental cost of production of solar panels against other streams, stats can show whatever you want so I'd be interested to know how this was calculated, initial production or across a number of years. As I'm sure you are aware the ongoing cost related to solar panels is next to nothing. I have direct knowledge of solar panels on buildings as I installed them on my old house (I now rent) a whkle ago, cost me about $3k (including inverter) and across a 12 month period probably produced about half of my energy from this source. When I mentioned solar subsidies in my previous post, I'm less concerned about the initial upfront cost (which was previously subsidised via RECS) but more about FIT's. The grid can now "buy back" this gas from individuals at a significantly lower price than retailers buy from the direct energy suppliers, ie. this is via incentives by the government. I'm not sure why a more structured market has not been created, this is the retailer we are talking about, and not the supplier. With the current suppliers, the retailers purchase energy from suppliers and on sell to households / businesses. Why can they then receive energy back from households at significantly less than they can buy from retailers? It makes very little sense and deters households from investing in solar.
My view from an economical perspective for the country is many power plants are built in public / private partnerships. If this cost is deferred to households / businesses this will occur if the investment is favourable enough for households / businesses. The payback on my home system was around 3.5-4 years, when I did this analysis 2 years ago for the business I work for (which uses flat roof warehouses, which are significant real estate for solar) payback has increased to around 7-8 years and there was no chance that would be approved.
Going back to the video, I agree with some of the points, however I feel he understates some of the costs of nucleur but my view is nucleur has a place in the strategy, but should be part not the bulk of the strategy. I'm also not a big fan of large scale solar installations and I note he focused a lot more on those than on buildings, and I understand why he did that as it didn't fit his rhetoric that investment in solar / wind was actually hurting the environment. Installation on buildings does not steal land from another source, it uses real estate that will be used for no other purpose.
We will never get to a position where all power has to be from clean energy (unless we include nucleur) because cleaner sources are cyclical, for example, I was generating circa 13-14 kwh's per day in summer but about half that during winter for obvious reasons so I relied on the grid far more during winter (not even allowing for gas for heating etc) so I still see natural gas and nucleur as part of the solution.
Its a complicated issue and everyone has different views but IMO solar on buildings (residential and business) should be an important part of the solution and to encourage that investment we need to offer more than 6 or 7c FIT (or whatever it ios now) which is below the cost from all other sources.