Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
And they only count direct subsidies, not indirect ones like road construction or military budgets.

Wind power
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Nov 9th, 2010 at 04:49:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Genau.  and gopod forbid we even begin to include health cost effects.

Some analysts (tips the cap to afew) even go so far as "wondering" if there aren't positive, ahem, National Security Implications, to the further development of renewable energies.

And the founder of this site has even been known to claim that another advantage of renewables is long-term cost certainty, which in other financial analyses, is actually a valuable add-on.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Tue Nov 9th, 2010 at 05:29:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Isn't there another advantage, that windfarms are incrementally scaleable? More turbines can be added in the future if financing is tight now.

Nuclear is only scaleable in very large steps, hydro the same, gas also (I presume the burning/generating plants are hard to add capacity to?). However, wavepower is probably incrementally scaleable.

I have not seen this argument before, but it seems to be a reasonable one. Or I may be way off the technology: perhaps offshore wind farms are limited by geology? Perhaps preparing the site infrastructure for future increments is too expensive?

You experts will know...

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Thu Nov 11th, 2010 at 07:13:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
You're right for nuclear, hydro and I think, coal. But adding another gas turbine to an existing power plant is probably not a lot costlier than adding a wind turbine to a wind farm.

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char
by Melanchthon on Thu Nov 11th, 2010 at 09:05:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
J, Did you cross-post this diary in the US?  I'm interested in seeing the orange reaction.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
by Crazy Horse on Wed Nov 10th, 2010 at 02:28:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Add in a few of the comments from here and  I'm sure there'd be the odd aneurysm

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Nov 10th, 2010 at 07:41:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series