Power Prices & Subsidies

Renewable electricity prices will have to come down for a while (a decade or two?), possibly to very low levels, but one day they will probably have to go up (unfortunately – either that or humans will have to learn some self control).

One way to get prices down is precisely with subsidies and support – after all the fossil fuel industry loves free money and it seems to have helped them no end, so not apply the same sauce to renewables? As we have seen, according to the iea / imf there is ~$0.5 tn in hard pre-tax direct subsidies and ~$5tn in soft post-tax support available for fossil energy. Imagine shifting all of that to renewable energy.

Battery technology would explode, if you will pardon the metaphor. Batteries and a much smarter grid would get us a long way forwards. But I believe all biological, sociological and psychological evidence points to what would happen, as it always has: without individual and societal control, humans will do what every other biological organism does in the face of plenty and that is expand to take up all of the immediately available energy. Although we might be descended from squirrels, we don’t have their in-built tendency to save for the bad times.

Then there is the matter of the exxon/koch/neoliberal/religious right nexus fuelled in great part by the mighty and frankly vicious and mendacious fossil fuel industry. They will fight brutally and even lethally (the kochs have only narrowly escaped charges of manslaughter and maybe worse) to prevent money going to renewables even as they try to hang to every cent they can get from the taxpayer (have you read dark money by jane mayer or democracy in chains by nancy maclean? Forgive me if I have asked you this before).

As a realist I would say that there is almost no chance of a massive and quick shift in subsidies and support away from big carbon to renewables, but as an optimist, if you think it is a good idea, can you explain to me how this could happen? By happen, I mean happen in time to meet the kinds of zero carbon targets that scientists tell us we must achieve.

BTW, even though I cannot see how this shift would happen, I do think it would make a very good thriller feature film – there is nothing like having an evil antogonist for building suspense and good, fast-paced storyline.