
Dunkirk auction result boosts the case for offshore wind energy in France - Osiris30
https://www.evwind.es/2019/06/14/dunkirk-auction-result-boosts-the-case-for-ambitious-offshore-wind-energy-in-france/67592
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legulere
€50/MWh sounds a lot cheaper than £92.50/MWh (+inflation) that Hinkley Point C
will cost in the UK.

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ElKrist
You're comparing the price of an energy that is non-drivable (wind) to one
that is (nuclear).

Non-drivable energy sources cannot stand on their own. People also want
electricity in the evening when there's not enough wind or on a cloudy day.

The fact that the energy produced is not drivable must be factored in the
€/MWh otherwise you're comparing apples to oranges.

Also, consumers have to pay (through a tax on the utility bill usually) for
periods when renewables produce too much. See negatives prices in Germany [1]
or Britain paying windfarms owners more than £1 million a week to shut their
production down [2].

[1] [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-
prices-...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-
negative)

[2]
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/1132...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/11323685/Wind-
farms-paid-1m-a-week-to-switch-off.html)

~~~
rakoo
And when you compare comparable things (ie same output 24/7 for the same
duration), drivable solar and wind are not only more expensive, they also emit
more CO2. This trend of replacing nuclear with unreliable intermittent energy
is dooming us all.

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simonebrunozzi
Really? Why would they emit more CO2? Can you expand?

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fooblitzky
Does wind-power help with removing some of the energy from the atmosphere that
global warming is putting in? Or because electricity ends up converted back
into heat, does it make no difference?

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pietjepuk88
I would say it only helps because it prevents (or reduces) the amount of
additional green house gasses released in the atmosphere. I doubt converting
wind energy to electricity and then "storing" that electricity/energy somehow
and somewhere (such that it doesn't turn into heat) is a stupidly inefficient
way of using that wind mill to reduce further global warming. Use the
electricity, and don't use the fossil fuel that would have otherwise been
used.

Related question I guess for someone with more knowledge about this... If
green house gas concentrations were as they were before the industrial
revolution, but we were outputting in the current world's energy consumption
in heat, what would the temperature rise be? I'm guessing it's almost
negligible, with the sun's radiation hitting the earth in one hour supposedly
being enough to power the entire earth for a year.

~~~
jabl
From
[https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201...](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GL063514)

> Over the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, the cumulative
> CO2‐radiative forcing exceeds the amount of energy released upon combustion
> by a factor >100,000.

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reallydontask
I wonder what will be the actual price that charged to the consumer.

