The True Costs of Various Sources of Energy

A big part of my quest to understand the migration to renewables is wrapping my arms around the issue of costs. I’m headed for San Francisco on Tuesday to conduct two book interviews specifically on this subject; in one, I’ve engaged a true energy techie to walk me through the latest, most detailed reports that compare the costs of various forms of power generation.

Apparently, I’m not the only one struggling to make sense of this. And this subject comes up even more frequently now that nuclear is so prominent in our headlines. I’ve long predicted that, despite the rhetoric, we’d never see another nuclear power plant built in the US, and I based my belief on cost alone. Even if we can magically get a grip on operational safety and waste disposal issues, the costs of nuclear are scary – and unlikely to improve. It strikes me as unlikely that any amount of political and economic power has sufficient strength to sell a solution that – along with all the other things that people find repellant – actually costs more to boot.

Again, it’s not easy to get hard cost estimates, since the bidding for power plants is kept secret, and so most of the figures we have are generated by private institutions – many (all?) of which have their own certain biases.

But here’s an article on the cost of energy generated by various sources that quotes both an agency in the German government and the California Energy Commission, a public agency mandated with the task of periodically examining the costs of various electricity generation technologies that may be used in the state to meet demand.  Both suggest that I may be correct.