Lecturer at work has PV cells at her place.
Made £8000 from them last year.

Every power source becomes better with more efficient appliances. Including coal, which becomes environmentally friendlier in exactly the same degree that solar becomes economically less catastrophically awful.

Industrial solar generation is not possible without feed in tariffs, home production is not cost effective either.

So it is insane to spend billions on subsidising the manufacture of the current - utterly worthless - generation of PV panels. I have no objection to spending the money on research, but the sheer stupidity of declaring that by year X we will generate X% of power from this hopelessly inadequate source is depressing.

Wind is always going to be bad, it stops working when the wind does. Solar has evident similar issues. So you can't generate any serious power from either without having a backup plan that works on windless days, and nights. A megawatt of solar/wind doesn't even replace a megawatt of coal/gas/nuclear, so it doesn't prevent their environmental impact, so it cannot be credited with lowering emissions, therefore it makes no sense to argue that those forms of generation have environmental costs which it does not.

I hope you enjoyed subsidising her profit through your electricity bill.

Tell me more. If we can bring the bills down, AND make a profit in a year, I’m interested.

It's true. What we ought to do is put PV panels on everybody's roof (no leaving out the poor). Then we can all have electricity in the day and shiver at night. Luckily we won't be able to watch the evening news, the economic statistics will be disheartening.

Yes but there will be other renewables.

So, if we want to remove a megawatt of nuclear power, how many megawatts of renewables do we need to provision? 1 for solar, we can use that in the day (weather permitting), 1 for wind, we can use that in the night (weather permitting) and 1 for waves?

Why not use the only reliable source on that list instead? Nuclear.

Because that's the least attractive to those who want to be scared of the horrible icky nuclear thingy that will explode and kill almost everyone except for the mutant zombies that will roam the land eating the children of the survivors.

or something like that.

I have a magnificent new plan: We can solve all our energy problems by taking the money wasted on feed in tariffs and spending them instead on a PR campaign to make mutants more attractive to the opposite sex. We can highlight the probability of interesting new genital configurations. Then everyone will cross their fingers and hope nuclear armageddon will bring them a 7 breasted girlfriend with a sideways coochie.

Even Germany are abandoning Nuclear and switching to renewables. The nuclear industry's only viable long term option is Thorium reactors or fusion, but we are not there yet. Energy reduction measures are the cheapest and best solution. Making energy more expensive via a carbon tax and a nuclear levy for emergencies and decommissioning because as private companies they could simply collapse and leave the burden on the tax payer anyway. Then there would be little need for feed in tariffs for renewables.

Sometimes the Germans are wrong. This is one of those occasions. Nuclear power actually delivers volts and watts and stuff when required, in useful quantities. No renewable has that to be said in its favour except hydro, for which there is little prospect of new capacity within Europe.

Nuclear power is viable and affordable with actual technology that is available right now. No renewable has that to be said in its favour except hydro, for which there is little prospect of new capacity within Europe.

If thorium lives up to its potential, or fusion to its promise, then industrial scale solar, wind and wave power will all prove to have been an even greater waste of cash than is already apparent. Why should we follow Germany down that path? In what way is spunking piles of money on a [LIFTED] insane plan the kind of bandwagon we ought to pile into?

And in case I forgot to mention it already

It also doesn't prevent you having to build proper power stations - even mighty Germany can't overcome this deficiency. They will end up having to invest in polluting power plants of equal capacity to the renewables, thereby compounding the waste.



Even further to this, if Germany spends vast sums on subsidising their renewables to the point that they significantly reduce their actual use of non renewables, this also constitutes an indirect subsidy on our use of the non renewables (well, coal and gas anyway, not oil). Simply put, they reduce demand, suppliers reduce the price, we get to do all the polluting that germany is eschewing. We get cheaper electricity and plenty of it, while they live in light free hovels congratulating themselves on their wise investment in third world power brownouts.

Well what if they are right and we walk down that economic dead end? Even if Thorium and Fusion are a success then we still need some interim solution. What about remote regions? They would benefit by being self sufficient with renewables anyway. Places like the highlands and islands could benefit from wind and solar because it will give them a steady energy supply and even the option to sell surplus energy.


A subsidy on renewables does not end up being a subsidy on fossil fuels. As the demand falls there is only so low that the fossil fuel can drop. It takes manpower to extract and move. Below a simple point it becomes uneconomic to bother extracting. Mines are simply mothballed till prices are higher. That is why the US rare earth mines are reopening. Prices have risen to the point it is economic again.

Yes... so which should it be?

Obviously not renewables then...

So Nuclear or gas it is.

Hurrah, we finally are in agreement.

I like the idea of using magnifying glasses to superheat steam to make power.

Actually in southern Europe solar is now the cheapest form of energy and it will get even cheaper. So the economics of fossil fuels here are still questionable, though slightly cheaper compared to solar.