>> an ideologically driven push for renewables

> Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so where’s the problem?

The basics of economics are:

  - market price is a function of supply and demand
  - storage costs money
  - distribution costs money.
  - perishable goods a finicky in highly volatile markets
  - CAPEX costs money
  - businesses will try to maximise the difference between price and costs

Yet you know all this as you are a professor of economics in the UK. So how comes that the UK has the highest industry KWh prices in Europe? There must be an absolutely fantastic opportunity to make money and investors should be like vultures grabbing new projects for renewables.

Just the other day I read news that in Germany perfectly well functioning wind turbines are being turned down because they have reached the end of the phase of guaranteed KWh prices. So are the owners crazy and throwing money away? No, they simply do the business calculations and if the math doesn't play out, they simply remove them and build new ones with new subsidies.

The latest auction from the German gov for a new field in the baltic sea didn't even find one bidder.

China is doing lots of renewables but they calculate it down to the penny.

So yes, as you say "Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity". To generate yes. But you need lots of CAPEX to store it and to distribute it. And you can not work with a 95%ile. You need 100% in any developed economy.

Despite marginal cost pricing it not interesting for investors without subsidies.

▲ oezi 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Old wind turbines might be perfectly fine but they are also no longer competitive with modern replacements. Usually it does make sense to replace them with more modern alternatives. Subsidies have gotten very low because carbon credits are now a much more important way for renewables to boost their income (most negative prices reflect that).

Offshore wind is facing the challenge that it is more expensive than onshore wind and also that solar is having a day with ever decreasing prices. Governments are trying hard to minimize the cost of the energy transition, offshore is primarily hurting because of this.

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dust42 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> Old wind turbines might be perfectly fine but they are also no longer competitive with modern replacements. Usually it does make sense to replace them with more modern alternatives.

I would just for once love to see a calculation for this. There have been no advancements in generator technology nor in blade technology. Generators in power stations have a life time of many decades. A third of the 31000 German wind turbines will be put down because of the end of subsidies.

Also subsidising solar power in the north of Germany makes no sense - for months there is no solar in winter but in summer solar adds to the already massive surplus of energy from offshore wind. It is a waste of money. If you believe that global warming is a problem (which I agree with) then the money should be put to efficient use.

	▲	ZeroGravitas 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's a thriving second hand market for wind turbines. Similar to EV discussions a lot of motivated reasoning seems to assume that these items are disposed of in a black hole or set on fire in a school playground after a few years to try to equalize the damage done by combustion alternatives. In reality people are spending tens or hundreds of thousands to buy these used turbines because they have value. I've not seen full calculations for wind but I assume they exist. I've read ones for solar which calculate replacing panels in a farm after 17 years and landfilling the old ones is still ecologically positive because the extra generation of the new panels would pay off. Obviously this only gets better if you resell or recycle the old panels instead.

▲ rcxdude 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>There must be an absolutely fantastic opportunity to make money and investors should be like vultures grabbing new projects for renewables.

They are. While the marginal price is being set (most of the time) by expensive gas renewables projects are making money hand over fist.