“’Before maybe the end of this decade, I see wind and solar being cost-competitive without subsidy with new fossil fuel,’ Chu told an event at the Pew Charitable Trusts.” (below)
Energy history matters. In the marketplace, what energies performed and at what cost; in energy policy, who said what and when. In this regard, intermittent, dilute energies have a bad history.
Obama’s DOE Secretary Steven Chu has a ten-year anniversary of a statement that is now falsified. As reported by the American Security Project in “Wind, Solar Becoming Cost Competitive: Chu,”
Clean sources of energy such as wind and solar will be no more expensive than oil and gas projects by the end of the decade, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday.
President Barack Obama’s administration has been encouraging companies to invest in green growth, calling it a new source of jobs and fearing that other nations — led by China — are stealing the march.…
“Since rooftop solar customers pay less on their utility bills, they end up contributing less toward maintaining the grid, which they still use. That has meant the cost burden was shifted to those without rooftop solar, and often those who can’t afford it.” (Wall Street Journal, below)
“For rooftop solar companies, generous incentives were the training wheels that had to come off at some point.” (Wall Street Journal, below)
Solar as a grid source of electricity is uneconomic, from the rooftop to the large solar arrays. So various government interventions pushed by the solar lobby must come to the rescue.
Solar’s Investment Tax Credit (ITC) offers a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for 26 percent of the cost of installing solar. Enacted in 2006, it has been extended several times and continue through 2023.…
2021 was supposed to be the year of progress and a final close to the disasterous Plant Vogtle #3 and #4. But it was anything but with early 2022 looking like things have retrogressed.
…Early in 2021, crews at Georgia Power’s nuclear expansion site at Plant Vogtle were struggling to find all the leaks in a pool built to hold spent, highly radioactive fuel. They added air pressure under the floor of the water-filled pool, hoping air bubbles would pinpoint flawed welds. It didn’t work. So an engineer doubled the air pressure.
The result: The pool’s steel floor plates were damaged, rendering them unusable. New ones had to be manufactured. The fixes and rechecks of the pool have taken nearly a year and cost millions of dollars. It’s been that kind of a year at Plant Vogtle.