I can’t get a straight answer online. Either there are no figures or the figures are all over the place.
There’s no solid plan to run accurate numbers from. We only just got to a still pretty vague non-binding resolution that sets out broad concepts. Someone might get around to running numbers now that we’ve finally gotten this far using massive amounts of assumptions but there’ hasn’t really been time.
One thing to remember is that maintaining the existing fossil fuel energy system will cost tens of trillions of dollars over the next few decades–so just the fact that the new system will cost tens of trillions of dollars doesn’t necessarily mean it will be more expensive than the status quo.
Paul Hawken was the editor of a book called Drawdown which discusses lots of possibilities and costs. This information is on a website called:
[He is interested in reversing global warming, not just limiting the increase.]
I support a green new deal. I agree with Cortez when she says we always have trillions to fund wars and trillions to fund tax cuts on the rich, but when it comes to health care, renewables, education, etc. its always ‘how will we pay for it’.
So I’m in favor of the idea, I’m just curious how much it’d cost. I’ve seen figures of 2 trillion, 5 trillion, 20 trillion. I have no idea.
5 trillion over 10 years is fine by me. I’d happily pay taxes to fund an extra 500 billion a year in renewable energy.
FWIW, the US currently only spends about 40-50 billion a year on renewables.
You also need to include the opportunity cost of the millions of able-bodied people who will quit their jobs, choose not to work, and get paid for it.
Moved to Great Debates.
Whose Green New Deal have you been reading? Tom Green’s? Seth Green’s? The closest plank in the Green New Deal I can find is the exact opposite of this.
Most of what I’ve read, including on the site I linked to, are idealistic goals rather than practical plans. The purpose today appears to shift the discussion toward a new mentality. Notice that no timeline is ever given for reaching those goals. Putting a dollar figure on it is irrelevant. That makes as much sense as putting a dollar figure on Civil Rights in 1955.
This is an essential point. We should talk about the net cost or net gain, not the absolute cost.
A lot of the conversation against universal health care focuses on absolute cost as well, as though we’re currently paying nothing for health care in our country and we need to find out what it’d cost if we started throwing dollars that way. That massively distorts the conversation.
Let’s not let something similar sidetrack the discussion of the Green New Deal.
How much will it cost to rebuild every building in the US…ditch nuclear…ditch fossil fuels…and genetically modify cows to not pass gas?
I kid
Fine by me, include the cost of savings in the overall cost.
For example, there are something like 125 million households in the US. Assume you gave each one $20,000 worth of solar panels, thats about $2.5 trillion. Rooftop solar is about $3/watt, but industrial scale solar is closer to $1/watt. I have no idea how much it’d cost to cover residential households with pure solar and that is only part of climate change (agriculture, industry and transportation are all important too). But for the sake of argument, assume 2.5 trillion to cover all houses in solar (which is probably a very high estimate but oh well).
But then after that all the households get free energy for the next 30 years, if not longer.
Then again, who knows if there are enough raw materials to build that many solar panels.
With cows, just adding seaweed could reduce their methane emissions.
The entire proposal that Cortez and Merkley put forth yesterday is too long to discuss in one post, so let’s just focus on this post about solar panels and we’ll see how unrealistic the discussion is. Even if the government went out to the money orchard and picked $2.5 trillion off the money trees, we would not get free energy for all households. Not even close. The problems being:
[ul]
[li]There’s a time called “night” during which the sun does not shine. There are possibilities to store energy in batteries during the daytime for use in the nighttime, but that costs even more money.[/li][li]There are weather events such as clouds, fog, rain, snow, and ice that block solar panels, sometimes partially, sometimes fully. This is not a minor issue. For example, in Minnesota, two feet of snow may fall in November and not melt until March. I doubt that Minnesotans would want to risk going all winter without electricity.[/li][li]There are some places where the sun don’t shine, or at least don’t shine very much, ranging from valleys in West Virginia to buildings in New York City overshadowed by taller buildings.[/li][li]There are some large buildings where you just don’t have enough space. For instance, if you had a 50-floor condo tower, you could put solar panels on the roof, but even in full sunshine you wouldn’t get enough electricity to power the building.[/li][li]When demand for electricity is high, there is no way to crank up solar panels for extra output.[/li][li]Solar panels are not completely free of environmental concerns. Numerous toxic chemicals are used to manufacture them, for starters.[/li][/ul]
So all told, there’s simply no way get all our electricity needs met by solar. There is literally no place of significant size on earth that gets all of its electricity from solar. And as for subsidies, it should be noted that we’ve been heavily subsidizing solar for decades yet it still gives us just 1.3% of total electricity.
That is like asking ‘what good is new born baby for?’
Without comment on this Green New Deal concept (which indeed does not appear from the resume I have read in the FT to be very coherent)
The **evocation of subsidies is out-of-date **by almost a decade, presumably from the American right wing ideological hostility to solar (why this is the case is puzzling to me, but I guess it may be the reaction to the annoying Left-Green utopia visions promoted by the green Left activists who are not very literate in the economic or the engineering. As annoying as such people are, it is a grave error to dismiss the technology for political ideological reaction.
Since approximately 5 years and certainly since 3 years, for regions of good incoming solar - new Solar PV for the utility scale generation and even CP is now grid competitive and indeed is beating new coal and even some natural gas installation on a purely market basis, no investment subsidies or preferences on the pricing.
That is the market reality and why the market for new coal is collapsing despite the US right wing obsessions with the fossil fuels. The classic renewable energy generation industrial models of the utility scale solar and the same for the wind for the on and the off shore are become on unsubsidized basis the cheapest new sources across the board by 2020 - the sourcing of this fits exactly the information that the investment bank I work for generates internally. And my employers, they are not in this area to amuse themselves or to feel warm and fuzzy, they are examing the entirely free market investments and giving strong preference to renewable over fossil now. It is a gross error in your thinking if you repeat the US right’s political talking points about this subject, they are out of date now.
The scaling of the solar installations on the utility scale has no begun - citing back to the historical beginning with the subsidies is no longer a supportable view if you are pretending to have a market based analysis and not the politics. It must be observed that while there were errors, the concept of the early subsidies to help the technology catch up to the mature fossil fuels infrastructure did play out very much as the market economists previsions, although did not reach the Utopia Forecasts of the green hard-left activists. It is not to say there were not stupid things done and some stupid promotion / subsidy programs not well designed for the accelerated development of market scale RE but enough was done right to work according to the sober economists forecast.
Of course to the extent that if the US left factions like that of this new young woman promote the unrealistic objectives in disconnect with a good grounding in the market, then they can by unrealistic uneconomic approach undermine progress and give the rhetorical sticks to the right in the USA which seems here to be 100% backwards looking obsessed more with promoting the Buggy Driver vision of energy to put a stick in the eye of the annoying left than the fundamental of the economic competitveness.
While it is nice to cite the idea of the Sahara as an energy pump, there are in fact the severe infrastructure challenges that render the idea not very practical in the nearer term. Morocco is the only country for the region making a very good progress (and it is good progress overall), but has the infrastructure problems.
but in areas with large insolation and using recent storage technology development such as the molten salts, and with now the economies of scale in the utility scale solar investment (and a reasonable standardization) it is indeed no longer coherent and only either ignorantly out of date or purely political to evoke “subsidies” with respect to the subject of a substantial conversion of electric power generation.
But of course although electrical power is an increasingly important component of the energy consumption of any of the modern economies, it is not the only component and it is equally not realstic as some of the green hard-left and activists are promoting for a conversion of the Transport sector to a majority or even a heavy electrical basis, so the fossil is not realistic to phase out rapidly, not without a nasty and unpleasant economic impact.
It is to me useful to not confuse the Electricity with the general energy, already making substantial progress for the electrical production with the mix of the nuclear and the RE can very substantially improve the economics of the long-term energy economy while also addressing the climate change.
I’m afraid any straight answer will be wrong. In the thread about single-payer cost, one “side” forumulated scare figures by ignoring the trillions in insurance premiums that would no longer need to be paid. :smack:
For example: Petroleum-based energy is subject to big subsidies. Might these subsidies be phased out as renewables are promoted? I can’t wade through reports but Chevron’s recent tax rate was less than 3%. In 2017 Exxon’s net income after taxes was higher than its net income before taxes!
This is a string of non sequitors.
The effective tax rate of a large entity undertaking large scale capital investments may indeed sans any subsidy be low in many circumstances. These factoids tell you almost nothing useful by themselves.
It is of course true that the primary energy sector - which is of course dominated by the fossil fuels right now - is subject to massive market distortions due to the public pressure and the populist politics along with the big entity influences - with incoherent public subventions to consumption of fuels overlapping with the subventions to infrastructure overlapping with the subventions to generation…
It is a huge incoherent mess relative to any ideal free market but voila, such are human beings always desiring the incoherent things.
Far less than not doing anything would cost, that’s for sure.
You sure? Why don’t we just move NYC and Miami in-land? Or put all the buildings on giant poles like in The Jetsons?
How about building giant CO2 scrubbers? Or paint everything white so it reflects the sun? Giant umbrellas? Paint the moon black?