Why Solar Is Much More Costly Than Wind or Hydro
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531841/why-solar-is-much-more-costly-than-wind-or-hydro/[font size=4]A new report from the E.U. estimates the true economic cost of different forms of energy production.[/font]
By Mike Orcutt on October 22, 2014
[font size=3]It’s no surprise that if environmental costs are considered, renewables—particularly wind power—are a far better bargain than coal power. But it might surprise many that according to a new such analysis, solar power lags far behind wind and even hydroelectric power in its economic impact, at least in the European Union.
Energy costs are rarely viewed through this lens, though it is more common in Europe than in the U.S. and other parts of the world. The study, commissioned by the E.U. and conducted by Ecofys, a renewable energy consultancy, considered the economic costs of climate change, pollution, and resource depletion as well as the current capital and operating costs of the power plants.
The authors assessed the cost of generating electricity and any resulting environmental damage. They used a measure known as the “levelized cost,” the estimated cost per megawatt-hour, without subsidies, of building and operating a given plant in a given region over an assumed lifetime. The authors referred to established models and academic literature to find monetary values for pollution, land use, and resource depletion. And to account for climate change, they assumed a metric ton of emitted carbon dioxide costs around €43 ($55).
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Surprisingly, solar power fared poorly in the analysis, costing far more than wind power and nearly the same as nuclear power. The reason, says Gardiner, is that many of world’s solar panels are manufactured in China, where electricity is very carbon-intensive. The depletion of metal resources also represents a larger cost for solar than wind, she says. Gardiner notes, however, that solar technology is still improving and may be more cost-effective today than it was in 2012, the year used for the study.
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I'm stunned! Where did they all go? 
I mean, does it matter who he quotes if the arguments are rational?
--imm
Granted, most people don't realize that many Native Americans WERE experienced farmers, only on a permaculture level instead of a field level, using controlled burns to create grazing land for "livestock" and open woodlands for production of acorn and chestnut "crops". But they did this with no plows, no metal implements, no hybrid crops, etc.
Anyway, if the Americans could support a population of 35-50 million in a pre-Industrial setting, I can't imagine the global carrying capacity is somehow below this now, even with the environmental degradation we've already caused
The planet's "natural" carrying capacity for terrestrial vertebrate life is probably in the neighbourhood of 200 million tonnes. This represents the carrying capacity based on solar input only, with no assistance from human technology or fossil fuels. The estimate is derived from Vaclav Smil's biomass estimate for 1900 shown on the graph, which has been reduced by about 30% to account for technology and coal use by that time. The assumption is that by 10,000 BCE this biomass of 200 MT was fully utilizing the available solar flux.
The next question is what proportion of this biomass can be devoted to humans and their domesticated animals without excessive damage to the rest of the biosphere? This is hard to answer without a controlled experiment, but here's one approach.
Begin with the human population in Year 1 AD - about 250 million people - as a baseline. At 50 kg/person that number represents about 12.5 MT of biomass. Domesticated animal biomass in 1900 was about three times that of humans, so that would give us an additional 37.5 MT of domesticated animals, for a total human-related animal biomass of 50 MT. This number represents a quarter of the estimated natural carrying capacity of the planet. That degree of appropriation is probably not completely sustainable, but would likely be OK for a few thousand years, provided there was no further human expansion beyond that number.
Based on this set of assumptions we are currently overpopulated by between 25 and 30 times. and this is without the use of any technology beyond what was available when Christ was born. This assumes that any use of technology promotes overshoot.
This scenario says nothing about what's going to happen given our current circumstances. In fact, might as well come from a different universe, it's so utterly unachievable in this one. It simply represents a way of thinking about life on the planet in such a way that the current situation is placed into a more holistic perspective.
Unfortunately, it also becomes clear that no matter how you slice it or dice it, the human presence on the planet can not be considered even remotely sustainable. And that implies that a correction in our numbers and activity levels is inevitable. The longer we proceed down the current road of technological, energetic and numerical expansion, the closer we come to that correction.
http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/PDR37-4.Smil_.pgs613-636.pdf
