

Solar Industry Learns Lessons in Spanish Sun - d4ft
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/business/energy-environment/09solar.html

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ars
Money = resources.

If you need extra money to run your solar plant, that means you are consuming
more resources than a comparable plant.

Which means you are not "green". And often means it actually can take more
energy to make solar power than it returns.

The only reason to do this is to spur research into solar energy that might
eventually reduce the resources required. But this isn't really the best way
to do that.

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Retric
That’s an odd argument, a waste water treatment plant costs a lot more than
just dumping raw sewage into the closest body of water, but they are also
generally called "green". Subsidies on solar plants are based on the time
value of money if they produced all their energy in the first day they would
cost far less than coal.

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ars
A sewage plant is not intended for producing energy (or resources). Its goal
is reducing pollution, and people are willing to trade energy and other
resource usage (and their pollution) for that.

> Subsidies on solar plants are based on the time value of money if they
> produced all their energy in the first day they would cost far less than
> coal.

If that were true, you would not need subsidies, investors would be happy to
fund it.

~~~
DaniFong
Cost does not equate with energy.

Back in the 1950's, Freeman Dyson did a study on the cost of electricity.
Electricity costs much more to use than to generate. If electricity were free
there would be only about a 5 percent drop in the GNP.

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.02/dyson_pr.html>

As for not needing subsidies, there's a significant cost of capital beyond
inflation, and there's also some risk due to its being a new technology. These
dissuade investors.

