Re:Electricity map: Mapping the climate impact of electricity
by ohgodplsno on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @09:18AM
(#30765684)
>wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electricity these days
*because they are absurdly subsidized, as opposed to other methods of production which have been repeatedly fucked over the years.
Re:Electricity map: Mapping the climate impact of electricity
by ZeroGravitas on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @10:18AM
(#30766388)
Early government support of R&D and market support is one of the things that Germany (and a few other countries) contributed to the current success of renewables.
So that is in part why they are cheap, but they are also simply cheaper now due to their scale of production.
Nothing 'absurd' about that though so not quite sure what you're claiming is happening. Presumably something along the lines of there being a big conspiracy to hide the true costs of renewables which hurts the real cheap energy sources, which are fossil fuels. Which feels backwards to me.
Re:Electricity map: Mapping the climate impact of electricity
by _ph_ on Tuesday March 22, 2022 @10:55AM
(#30766844)
No, they are currently not subsidized at all. What was done was guaranteeing minimum prices for renewable energy. These prices used to be way higher than market prices to make renewable energy generation economically feasible. This way especially important in the first decade of this century and back then you could call the renewables heavily subsidized.
But recently market prices for electricity were by far exceeding the minimum guaranteed prices, so you can't call those renewables as "heavily subsidized".
If I was going to ding Germany for anything (because they've been pretty much world leaders on the whole climate thing) it would be their initial reluctance to embrace EVs but they seem to be over that now. And they stepped back slightly on their climate leadership under a right-wing government but greens seem to have more influence currently so getting back on track.
But generally their carbon intensity of the whole economy is trending in the right direction, despite doing more heavy manufacturing than most other EU countries.