Being quite curious about what Sarah Palin had to say at the India today conclave, I came across this nugget from her speech : "A recent British study shows that for every 'green job' created, nearly four jobs were lost elsewhere in the economy due to lack of affordable energy!". Now, especially given the person who said it, it is quite easy to ridicule the statement, but I looked it up. Quite clearly, Palin oversimplified the argument (and messed it up), but the actual study did conclude that the costs associated with higher energy prices and government subsidies outstripped job creation by a factor of 3.7. So they were looking at it purely from a jobs/economic perspective, and in the near-term (and not the impact on the environment). This is not just in isolation.. studies in Holland, Germany and Spain have also indicated similar (though not as drastic) results and it has prompted some governments to cut back on subsidies.
These kinds of studies are always open to severe criticism. It is not even easy to nail down a number for the cost of wind energy. Direct generation costs (cost per unit of energy generated by a wind turbine) are easier to estimate, but if you consider the plethora of subsidies and tax-breaks, it gets a lot more muddled (there is also this small matter of effectively distributing it to the customer). If I have to pick a number, I'd say perhaps 6c/kW-hr (not including subsidies), which at least about 30-40% more than conventional sources like coal and natural gas. The good news is that wind energy used to cost many times more about 25 years ago, but the bad news is that the rate of cost reduction has tapered off in recent years.
Now, if wind energy were completely reliable and we had a good transmission/distribution model and the quantitative effects of man made carbon emissions on the atmosphere can be determined and we had a better idea of when we would run out of oil, then paying the extra 30-40% would be pretty easy. Fact is, there is no guarantee that ANY of these issues will be resolved in the near future, so it will just boil down to cold numbers: Cost of wind energy has to go down (along with the % of subsidies) by quite a bit. With the discovery of all kinds of shale gas and assorted resources, in my opinion, fossil fuels will be too useful to ignore because they will continue to be cheap in the near future. With new developments in Fischer-Tropsch techniques (coal to gas and gas to liquid conversion), alternative energy will find the going a bit difficult unless the hammer comes down on pollution (good luck with that in the near future). Incorporating Carbon capture technologies in fossil fuel based plants will increase costs considerably. Till then we will hear more and more Palin-type rumblings and they won't be completely unjustified.
ps: If you are thinking about bias, please consider the fact that part of my research is on wind turbines.
ps: If you are thinking about bias, please consider the fact that part of my research is on wind turbines.
