[1] https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2017/10/13/texas-...
Economically competitive wind power would be an earth shattering development. If it exists, there would be articles about it everywhere. Everyone on HN would be getting jobs at wind farm startups, and trillions of investment would be pouring in. Venture capitalists would be walking the streets to find wind farm entrepreneurs that have hidden their contact info because of the overwhelming number of term sheets being thrown at them. Bakeries throughout the Valley would be offering turbine-shaped gluten-free cupcakes to VC’s, who would include them with their hand-delivered term sheets in hopes that theirs gets a little bit of extra attention from picky entrepreneurs.
I want it to exist too, I just see no evidence that it does.
Renewable energy has a lot less external costs, i.e. negative effects such as global warming, pollution, etc. On a national or global scale, these costs should be accounted for in any study comparing economical competitiveness. Just looking at the balance sheets of energy companies and their costs vs. income is a bit short-sighted.
If it’s unprofitable it needs to be subsidised. That’s not bad per se. But you can’t run around arguing it’s profitable when it doesn’t appear to be.
"We therefore note that wind is now cost competitive with new coal-based generation capacity."
“Over the past 12 months, across key wind states, except Karnataka, the wind tariff has been raised
...
Generation Based Incentive (GBI) restored: In its FY2014 (April 2013-March 2014) budget the GoI reintroduced GBI for wind power.
...
During the past 12 months, we have seen various states announcing their wind and/or solar installation targets (refer to table 3).
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The GoI has committed to providing low interest- bearing funds from the National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF) for five years to the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), the nodal agency providing debt finance to renewable projects in India.“
[1] https://natgrp.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/india-renewables-...
Am I (along with the rest of the world, who would be dancing in the streets, dedicating trillions of dollars to deploying wind towers in every corner of the earth at this very moment, and writing thousands of credible articles about how the world’s energy problems have been solved if this were true) missing something?
Edit: the green folks are coming in and downvoting these comments like crazy. Could one of you please justify your downvote by replying with a link to a credible article that shows wind energy to be profitable without subsidies in non-exceptional places? I think everyone would love to see it, including myself! Google doesn’t seem to know about this very special, world-changing article. Perhaps it is protected with an overly aggressive robots.txt.