By Anton Lang
Virtually every commentator who even mentions renewable power generation these days will tell you that renewable power generation is cheaper than coal fired power, but is this really the case?
It has puzzled me for a long time now how they can get away with saying that, and not actually taking the time to check the real data to see if it’s true at all. They just repeat that same old thing, time after time, and as the old adage says, repeat something often enough and it then becomes the truth.
You’ll see all sorts of ways they can justify it, usually by quoting what is referred to by the acronym LCOE. (Levelised Cost Of Electricity)
Over the years I have been doing this, now almost eleven years, I have seen so many different versions of these LCOE documents, and they have changed across the years, becoming more and more complex. However, one thing I have noticed with them is that they are skewed in favour of renewable power to make it look as good as they can possibly make it, and at the same time, skewed against coal fired power to make it look as bad as they possibly can make it.
By far the biggest manner they skew the results is that they attempt to make it ‘a level playing field’, by trying to make the numbers suggest that all the electrical power generated is basically equal, no matter what the source, and there are so many variables that are just not taken into account, and other variables that are included, some of which are patently false, the biggest of these being CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) which is something that will never be achieved on any level, let alone on the scale required, and to a lesser degree, the imposition of a cost on the emissions of Carbon Dioxide, your typical Carbon (sic) Tax
Because that LCOE is so biassed and incorrect, and there have been so many of them, all different, I would tend to discount them.
In saying that, can I actually justify the position I am taking here?
Well yes, I can.............To Read More....
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