America's Energy Question: What Price Will it Take to Commit to Renewable Energy?

[Nathanael]

The economic recession has hit renewable energy industries in the United States hard, and the effects have been accentuated by the country's lack of national renewable energy policy.

Many renewable energy businesses have found it increasingly difficult to receive money from financial institutions since 2008. Yet, even when the finances have been in order, these companies have seen their projects halted by regulatory bodies which deem the cost of their energy as an added expense to the already tight monthly budget for American consumers.

Link: http://www.energyboom.com/policy/americas-energy-question-what-price-will-it-take-commit-renewable-energy

[TheWraith]

1. Roughly speaking, north of $1 trillion dollars.

If by "commit" you mean establish enough clean energy to put coal and gas fired electrical generators out of business. I ran the numbers once, and just the raw production and installation cost (not including tooling up manufacturing to sufficient outputs) to produce that much energy would cost about $750 billion if you assume a 50/50 mixture of wind and nuclear power, which are the only two forms that are economically viable. Add in a price premium for how much you'd need to expand manufacturing to accomplish this goal, and you're talking about north of $1 trillion.

[GliderGuider]

2. Don't forget the cars

By my rough estimate, decarbonizing the US energy supply would probably cost around $20 trillion. This is based on the USA using 20% of the world's primary energy, and involves replacing 90% of the fossil fuel consumption with some mix of wind and nuclear. Add in some unknown amount (another $1 trillion+?) for grid upgrades to handle the shift to more electricity generated in more remote locations with more variable supply.

If you did it over 40 years it would cost just half a trillion a year...

Can you say "Politically unfeasible," boys and girls? I knew you could.

[TheWraith]

3. The cars are, realistically, not our biggest problem.

Most CO2 and pollution in the US comes from coal.

[GliderGuider]

4. Actually, they are one of the biggies.

The USA burns 900 million tonnes of oil a year, of which about 600 mt is for transportation. That gives off about 1800 mt of CO2.
The USA also burns 900 million tonnes of coal a year, that gives off 2200 mt of CO2.

The CO2 given off by coal and the CO2 emitted from transportation in the USA are pretty much the same.

Cars are an enormous problem - decarbonization can't proceed without addressing them.

[ishaneferguson]

5. By my estimation

Decarbonization will not happen until we are killing hundreds of male and female, straight and gay, conscripts a month in "energy wars" (like Iraq and Afghanistan). When we are "paying" too much in young lives we will cut our caron imports (major portion of our carbon consumption).

Read Michael Klare to see where I am headed.

[Nihil]

6. Optimist.

You could price every gallon of fuel in "person-fulls of blood" and you
wouldn't even raise a flicker of complaint from the fat-assed SUV brigade.
It's not their blood but they want "their" fuel, no matter what the cost.

They simply don't give a shit about the impact on anyone, anything other
than their own tiny little ignorant & insular lives.

If you tax the f*ck out of fuel then you will get somewhere ... but that
isn't going to happen in the USA for "political" reasons ...

No, I don't think that there will be any form of "decarbonization" until
after the "super-carbonization" period of resource wars has escalated & peaked,
meaning that the survivors are not only far fewer in number but totally incapable
of extracting/transporting/refining the remaining resources.

Then, at long last, a semblance of peace will descend across the planet.

[One_Life_To_Give]

7. $200+ per Ton

For Electric Generation something over $200/ton
For transport $5/gal

[Kennah]

8. End the subsidies for fossil fuels

If the billions in annual subsidies that the oil and coal industries enjoy were redirected to renewables, it would push us much further along down the renewable energy road.