More than 90% of new renewable energy capacity is now cheaper than fossil fuels, study shows

5 comments

1. That’s why the oil industry donated 1 billion to trumps cpac account to push against green energy. At his request of course.

2. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. I’m a huge renewable fan, but this title and article is a bit misleading.

   It references prices of renewables to “fossil fuels” as a whole and not broken into categories. In many places energy from natural gas is incredibly cheap. However, it can be expensive to transport.

   The article also doesn’t define any relevant pricing on the different types of energy sources and only says a comparison to the ambiguous “fossil fuels” price. Which is also left unstated.

   It also claims “that fossil fuels still get almost nine times the government consumption subsidies as renewables.” Which is just false. I read into the linked article that it gets that statement from and that article never explains where this 9x figure come from and just says that fossil fuels subsidies have gone up since 2016, but makes no reference to how much is being spent on renewable subsidies.

   In reality Renewable subsidies are much higher than fossil fuels. I’m not an expert on European markets, but since the U.S. is the main driver of the fossil fuel subsidies I’ll focus on that. The U.S. gives $3-4 Billion in direct subsidies to fossil fuels companies. While renewables get $15-16 Billion.

   Obviously, that’s not surprising and most people will say “well it’s the tax breaks that fossil fuels get which is why they get 9x the subsidies” Which they would be wrong in saying.

   About 77% of all the subsidies from the government are tax incentives. With roughly a projected $1.2 Trillion in foregoing taxes from the energy sector. With 94% of that going to renewables and only 6% going to fossil fuels.

   Nearly half of all energy subsidies went to renewables (46%) and less than 20% went to fossil fuels.

   Anyway. I just read the headline was almost positive it was false and now I know that it’s really just an irrelevant statement. Yes, renewables in almost all forms are cheaper than coal. We’ve know this. Most are cheaper than Oil. But, most are not cheaper than natural gas.

   Here’s the full EIA report if you want to see. [link](https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf)

3. But..but they rise my electricity bills again…why?

4. Time to put the Green label away and push renewable energy as “Affordable Energy”. Who doesn’t want affordable?

5. Guess we need to subsidize fossil fuels! /s

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