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The problem with this idea that we subsidized solar until it was profitable is not accurate. Solar power doesn't pollute and I would argue that all other forms

by socrates1998 6y ago

The problem with this idea that we subsidized solar until it was profitable is not accurate. Solar power doesn't pollute and I would argue that all other forms of power that do pollute aren't taxed nearly enough for it, with coal being the most obvious example. Coal power sends an insane amount of carbon into the atmosphere. If we properly carbon-taxed coal, it would go out of business tomorrow. And that doesn't even get into the environmental destruction that comes from strip mining. Strip mining is when coal companies buy a whole fucking mountain and then destroy it piece by piece to remove the coal. How the fuck is that not good for the environment and our society after the coal is gone? So, solar power really is a lot of cheaper than coal when you consider all the negative externalities that it brings.

kyrra 6y ago
Manufacturing isn't free. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt... > Making solar cells requires a lot of energy. Fortunately, because these cells generate electricity, they pay back the original investment of energy; most do so after just two years of operation, and some companies report payback times as short as six months. While the above article is from 2014, it likely still applies today. I would be interested to know how much manufacturing processes have changed since then. The other big thing the article points out is the toxic chemicals and toxic process used to produce solar panels.
- ReactiveJelly 6y ago
  So a model based on pollution taxes would have worked better - We could tax the manufacturing plants, and the coal plants, and have a bake-off to see which is cleaner - Burning coal for power, or burning coal to run factories for PV panels. But it would have been less popular, because at least in the USA we don't have a good welfare system to balance out the indirect tax on poor people, who have to spend more of their income on electricity, gasoline, other pollutants.
- floatrock 6y ago
  Energy requirements of various technologies is commonly measured with a simple ratio called ERoEI -- Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Basically, any energy source can be thought of as an "energy multiplier" -- it takes some amount of energy to free the resource (manufacture it, mine it, etc.), then it produces some amount of energy output over its lifetime. So by looking at energy-out / energy-in, you get a sense of your bang for your buck. Looking at the latest figures on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Application_to_various_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Ap... : - Conventional oil wells are 18-43:1 (I've heard saudi oil wells -- the easiest to drill -- are in the range of 60:1) - Shale is 1.5:1 (say you what you will about the shale revolution, but from an energy output point of view, it's literally scraping the bottom of the barrel) - Oil sands are 5:1 - Wind is 20-30:1 - Solar is 9-34:1 As with any lifetime/embedded cost analysis, there's lots of variability dependent on your assumptions, manufacturing conditions, and operating conditions. There's nuances in energy types, like wind turbines produce electricity but require tons of diesel trucks and concrete to assemble. But we can roughly say that in terms of energy requirements, solar is more efficient than shale or oil sands, but it tops out at the lower to mid range of conventional oil.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >- Shale is 1.5:1 (say you what you will about the shale revolution, but from an energy output point of view, it's literally scraping the bottom of the barrel) >- Oil sands are 5:1 wtf? I thought oil sands were the least efficient but shale is even lower? Is there a source for this?
save_ferris 6y ago
Solar didn't magically just appear on the market at a lower price point than carbon-based resources though, it had to go through several iterations which required significant investment capital. This is usually where government agencies like DOE leverage their capital investment programs because private business aren't interested in paying for the R&D to solve those kinds of big problems without a guaranteed success. Solar is only becoming cheaper today because of the research and capital that was put into developing the technology, not because it's inherently cleaner than coal. To your point, based purely on the market forces (i.e. excluding carbon taxes) coal is still a very viable option. And if the government is motivated to migrate businesses off of dirty energy resources, it also has a motivation to help develop alternatives that the market will accept. Solyndra[0] was one example of a company that received government support to develop solar technology and became notorious for defrauding the government in the process. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra
- jhgb 6y ago
  > and became notorious for defrauding the government in the process Where's the evidence for that? The major point was that Solyndra bet on the wrong horse with CIGS; they were unknowingly doomed to fail from the start.
  - ci5er 6y ago
    What happened with CIGS? There was a privately funded CIGS company here in Austin TX that also didn't make it (even though the founders and investors were solid) and I've not gotten a straight answer as to why - esp. confusing because the first quals looked very good.
    - jhgb 6y ago
      Well, nothing. That's basically the point. Or, at best very little happened with it. "It wasn't getting cheaper faster than silicon was" is the most concise answer I can come up with.
- brendoelfrendo 6y ago
geoduck14 6y ago
>Solar power doesn't pollute Nope. The heavy metals used in solar powers are pretty awful. Perhaps they don't have the same impact as CO2, but we don't have a decent solution for what to do with the trash from old solar panels.
- socrates1998 6y ago
  Yes, I didn't bring that up because I feel like Solar's manufacturing pollution isn't comparable to coal's ongoing and inherently massive pollution. Coal pollutes both in destruction of the physical land (strip mining) and in ongoing pollution from huge amounts of carbon emissions. Solar needs to be a responsible in how they get the materials (mining) and dispose of broken or outdated panels.
  - antattack 6y ago
    When talking about coal pollution lets not forget toxic metals released into lakes and rivers, such as mercury and arsenic.
    - elindbe3 6y ago
      Or the lung cancer causing particle emissions.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Which heavy metals are those? Be specific.
  - Aunche 6y ago
    Solar panels use cadmium and lead in trace quantities that makes recycling certain parts of solar panels unprofitable. I can easily see this being like plastics all over again. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/01/07/ces-2021-everything-you-need-to-know/?sh=188807045401 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/01...
andi999 6y ago
So only rich people can heat their apartment in winter?
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Have you just arrived here as a time-traveller from Victorian London? I have fabulous news! Forsooth, in this, the Year of Our Lord, Two Thousand and Score, Plus One, it has come to pass that mankind hath, by workings most subtle, made manifest many wondrous heating apparatuses that requireth neither coal nor coke, nor indeed train oil.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Gas?
- iso1631 6y ago
  Take revenue from carbon tax and distribute it as UBI. This gives everyone the money to pay the average carbon use, and encourages carbon use to reduce on both the supply and demand side.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
tom-_- 6y ago
The negative externalities of coal aren't adequately captured by taxes, sure...but what does that have to do with government subsidizing solar? Clearly they have.
- sagarm 6y ago
  The government subsidy is a point of criticism for "free-market" proponents. It's fair to point out that fossil fuels, and especially coal, have long benefitted from being able to externalize pollution costs. This is not consistent with an efficient market, since the extra costs of coal are borne by everyone regardless of whether they benefit.
  - tom-_- 6y ago
    Society has subsidized coal by both paying for negative externalities and through direct government investment, which is true for all waste producing energy sources. This is orthogonal to OPs claim that "we subsidized solar until it was profitable is not accurate"
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
I tend to agree with your point about coal, but fail to see what you're trying to say. Maybe the non-taxation of fossil fuels' externalities is akin to subsidies. Then that becomes the reason why solar power needed subsidies, but it doesn't change the fact of their existence. I also doubt raising prices for fossil fuels would have had the same effect on research into alternatives. Solar power is now cheaper than coal, even at the low costs of coal you decry. Given enough time, solar power research will yield tremendous returns, and would have done so under any imaginable tax/subsidy regime for coal and/or solar power. But markets aren't always capable of reaping such rewards. Not because they are evil, but there was a lot of uncertainty and extremely long timelines involved that those institutions just aren't set up for. Politics, however, are. And it worked. Score one for that dirty concept.

kyrra 6y ago

Manufacturing isn't free. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt... > Making solar cells requires a lot of energy. Fortunately, because these cells generate electricity, they pay back the original investment of energy; most do so after just two years of operation, and some companies report payback times as short as six months. While the above article is from 2014, it likely still applies today. I would be interested to know how much manufacturing processes have changed since then. The other big thing the article points out is the toxic chemicals and toxic process used to produce solar panels.

ReactiveJelly 6y ago
So a model based on pollution taxes would have worked better - We could tax the manufacturing plants, and the coal plants, and have a bake-off to see which is cleaner - Burning coal for power, or burning coal to run factories for PV panels. But it would have been less popular, because at least in the USA we don't have a good welfare system to balance out the indirect tax on poor people, who have to spend more of their income on electricity, gasoline, other pollutants.
floatrock 6y ago
Energy requirements of various technologies is commonly measured with a simple ratio called ERoEI -- Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Basically, any energy source can be thought of as an "energy multiplier" -- it takes some amount of energy to free the resource (manufacture it, mine it, etc.), then it produces some amount of energy output over its lifetime. So by looking at energy-out / energy-in, you get a sense of your bang for your buck. Looking at the latest figures on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Application_to_various_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Ap... : - Conventional oil wells are 18-43:1 (I've heard saudi oil wells -- the easiest to drill -- are in the range of 60:1) - Shale is 1.5:1 (say you what you will about the shale revolution, but from an energy output point of view, it's literally scraping the bottom of the barrel) - Oil sands are 5:1 - Wind is 20-30:1 - Solar is 9-34:1 As with any lifetime/embedded cost analysis, there's lots of variability dependent on your assumptions, manufacturing conditions, and operating conditions. There's nuances in energy types, like wind turbines produce electricity but require tons of diesel trucks and concrete to assemble. But we can roughly say that in terms of energy requirements, solar is more efficient than shale or oil sands, but it tops out at the lower to mid range of conventional oil.
- gruez 6y ago
  >- Shale is 1.5:1 (say you what you will about the shale revolution, but from an energy output point of view, it's literally scraping the bottom of the barrel) >- Oil sands are 5:1 wtf? I thought oil sands were the least efficient but shale is even lower? Is there a source for this?

save_ferris 6y ago

Solar didn't magically just appear on the market at a lower price point than carbon-based resources though, it had to go through several iterations which required significant investment capital. This is usually where government agencies like DOE leverage their capital investment programs because private business aren't interested in paying for the R&D to solve those kinds of big problems without a guaranteed success. Solar is only becoming cheaper today because of the research and capital that was put into developing the technology, not because it's inherently cleaner than coal. To your point, based purely on the market forces (i.e. excluding carbon taxes) coal is still a very viable option. And if the government is motivated to migrate businesses off of dirty energy resources, it also has a motivation to help develop alternatives that the market will accept. Solyndra[0] was one example of a company that received government support to develop solar technology and became notorious for defrauding the government in the process. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra

jhgb 6y ago
> and became notorious for defrauding the government in the process Where's the evidence for that? The major point was that Solyndra bet on the wrong horse with CIGS; they were unknowingly doomed to fail from the start.
- ci5er 6y ago
  What happened with CIGS? There was a privately funded CIGS company here in Austin TX that also didn't make it (even though the founders and investors were solid) and I've not gotten a straight answer as to why - esp. confusing because the first quals looked very good.
  - jhgb 6y ago
    Well, nothing. That's basically the point. Or, at best very little happened with it. "It wasn't getting cheaper faster than silicon was" is the most concise answer I can come up with.
brendoelfrendo 6y ago

geoduck14 6y ago

>Solar power doesn't pollute Nope. The heavy metals used in solar powers are pretty awful. Perhaps they don't have the same impact as CO2, but we don't have a decent solution for what to do with the trash from old solar panels.

socrates1998 6y ago
Yes, I didn't bring that up because I feel like Solar's manufacturing pollution isn't comparable to coal's ongoing and inherently massive pollution. Coal pollutes both in destruction of the physical land (strip mining) and in ongoing pollution from huge amounts of carbon emissions. Solar needs to be a responsible in how they get the materials (mining) and dispose of broken or outdated panels.
- antattack 6y ago
  When talking about coal pollution lets not forget toxic metals released into lakes and rivers, such as mercury and arsenic.
  - elindbe3 6y ago
    Or the lung cancer causing particle emissions.
pfdietz 6y ago
Which heavy metals are those? Be specific.
- Aunche 6y ago
  Solar panels use cadmium and lead in trace quantities that makes recycling certain parts of solar panels unprofitable. I can easily see this being like plastics all over again. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/01/07/ces-2021-everything-you-need-to-know/?sh=188807045401 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/01...

andi999 6y ago

So only rich people can heat their apartment in winter?

ForHackernews 6y ago
Have you just arrived here as a time-traveller from Victorian London? I have fabulous news! Forsooth, in this, the Year of Our Lord, Two Thousand and Score, Plus One, it has come to pass that mankind hath, by workings most subtle, made manifest many wondrous heating apparatuses that requireth neither coal nor coke, nor indeed train oil.
- andi999 6y ago
  Gas?
iso1631 6y ago
Take revenue from carbon tax and distribute it as UBI. This gives everyone the money to pay the average carbon use, and encourages carbon use to reduce on both the supply and demand side.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

tom-_- 6y ago

The negative externalities of coal aren't adequately captured by taxes, sure...but what does that have to do with government subsidizing solar? Clearly they have.

sagarm 6y ago
The government subsidy is a point of criticism for "free-market" proponents. It's fair to point out that fossil fuels, and especially coal, have long benefitted from being able to externalize pollution costs. This is not consistent with an efficient market, since the extra costs of coal are borne by everyone regardless of whether they benefit.
- tom-_- 6y ago
  Society has subsidized coal by both paying for negative externalities and through direct government investment, which is true for all waste producing energy sources. This is orthogonal to OPs claim that "we subsidized solar until it was profitable is not accurate"

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

I tend to agree with your point about coal, but fail to see what you're trying to say. Maybe the non-taxation of fossil fuels' externalities is akin to subsidies. Then that becomes the reason why solar power needed subsidies, but it doesn't change the fact of their existence. I also doubt raising prices for fossil fuels would have had the same effect on research into alternatives. Solar power is now cheaper than coal, even at the low costs of coal you decry. Given enough time, solar power research will yield tremendous returns, and would have done so under any imaginable tax/subsidy regime for coal and/or solar power. But markets aren't always capable of reaping such rewards. Not because they are evil, but there was a lot of uncertainty and extremely long timelines involved that those institutions just aren't set up for. Politics, however, are. And it worked. Score one for that dirty concept.