“The oil depletion allowance is not counted. The costs pollution is not taken into account. The cost of regulatory agencies is not taken into account.”

Of these items, only the oil depletion allowance could in any way be considered a subsidy of the fossil fuels industries, and even that one is debatable.

Thanks. A quick perusal seems to indicate that they are only talking about relatively direct subsidies. The oil depletion allowance is not counted. The costs pollution is not taken into account. The cost of regulatory agencies is not taken into account. They claim to have used a government agency for the numbers, but I could not the subsidy information on the website.

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/studies/energy-subsidies-study/

For subsidies related to electricity production, EIA data shows that solar energy was subsidized at $24.34 per megawatt hour and wind at $23.37 per megawatt hour for electricity generated in 2007. By contrast, coal received 44 cents, natural gas and petroleum received 25 cents, hydroelectric power 67 cents, and nuclear power $1.59 per megawatt hour.

MattS. How do you come up with that number? There are so many government subsidies of energy it is hard to keep up with. For example, there is the oil depletion allowance, favorable terms for mineral rights holders (above the rights of surface rights holders. Also the environmental impacts of fossil and nuclear fuel may be absorbed by the public.

To be clear, I am not disputing your number per se. It may well be correct. I am just wondering how you came to it.

In the US? About two orders of magnitude less (on a per unit energy basis) than is being spent to prop up wind and solar.

“and could be economical on a larger scale if sufficiently inexpensive”

Solar will never be sufficiently inexpensive for that, and so far, sufficiently dense energy storage that isn’t some form of liquid fuel appears to be a unicorn.

Go and tell the Europeans… Apparently they didn’t get the memo. And my understanding from Mn is that they are using solar to crack h2o into h2 and o then buring that thru turbines once excess capacity, for whatever reason, is needed. About the only thing that can’t be done is raise the efficiency over 33%. And sorry, but how much government money is spent to keep coal, oil and nuclear options on the table as well? Just about everything except maybe natural gas have some price supports. So why separate off solar/wind? I never claimed it was perfect, only an additional option.

Except, of course, in space where there is no atmosphere to obscure the sun and nearly 24/7 solar visibility.

Solar already is economical for many areas far from the grid and could be economical on a larger scale if sufficiently inexpensive and dense energy storage is developed.

“I don’t see any other downside to converting what power from sun and wind you can to preserve our stocks of fossil fuels for future generations.”

How about the fact that the cost is likely to significantly exceed the present value of the value of the preserved fuels to those future generations.

It makes no sense to do it unless it can be done economically. Wind and Solar will never be economical at large scales.