A European wind-solar developer and lobbyist responded to my column, Cheap, stable electricity vs climate alarmism last September 24, 2018. The letter was published in BWorld last October 10. Reposting it below.
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(my response to it in the next post...)
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October 9, 2018 | 10:21 pm
AS ONE of the climate alarmists Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr.
refers to in his opinion piece of September 23 (“Cheap, stable electricity vs
climate alarmism”), I welcome the debate he has opened.
Opinions are one thing, facts are another. Our species
emerged over 3 million years when there was a stable quantity of CO2 in the
atmosphere, and this was the figure up until industrialization: 270 parts per
million. Now it is 405 and rising rapidly. This means that we are capturing
more energy in the atmosphere than we used to. How much, I hear your readers
ask? We are capturing the energy equivalent of 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs each
second. In fact since 1998 we have trapped the energy of 2,667,000,000
Hiroshima bombs in the atmosphere.
Cause for alarm? I think so.
I notice that Mr. Oplas didn’t talk about the price of
coal-generated electricity. The US Agency, the CIA which studies these things,
estimates that the cost of electricity coming from coal-fired generation over
the life of the power station is $9.2 cents per unit. This figure was confirmed
for me, as the cost of new coal generated electricity in the Philippines. This
figure includes no clean-up charge.
In bidding for generation in Chile during 2016, where
there is no subsidization of renewable energy, my company bid $4.1 cents per
unit of electricity for 20 years.
This was for firm power, which means my company had to
supply the equivalent of what coal or gas supplies. No variability, no
intermittency, pure clean power that releases no CO2.
We will generate firm power from renewable energy at $4.1
cent per unit of electricity, which is less than half the price of coal-fired
generation.
Solar came in at a price of $2.92 cents per unit.
Even old coal plants, which had its capital cost paid
off, could not compete against new wind and solar. They won no contracts.
There is not a lot of difference between the Philippines
and Chile. If a competition were run between coal versus wind and solar in the
Philippines, renewables would come in at half the cost of coal.
I notice that Mr. Oplas is associating himself with an
invite-only conference where there will be no challenge to his views. The only
way to get to the truth is to issue the following challenge to Mr. Oplas: Let
us choose a public auditorium and let us have a debate on energy policy in the
Philippines. I guarantee the putative audience that I can prove that renewables
are great for the Philippines. Great for firm power, great for price, and great
for the environment. I will even pay for the venue.
I would love to see the Philippines cut the price of
electricity in half, just as Chile has done, by adopting a competitive system
for selecting the next tranche of generation.
Eddie O’Connor is Executive Chairman and Founder of
global wind and solar development company Mainstream Renewable Power.
www.mainstreamrp.com.
Twitter: @mainstreamrp
See also:
Energy 112, Green energy and Energiewende failures, August 22, 2018
Energy 113, First Gen/EDC's anti-coal drama, September 23, 2018
Energy 114, Fossil fuels are good, end the disinformation, October 08, 2018
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