Re: Hmmm
Gas will probably win in that case.
You're right that coal has huge subsidies. It also has, as you point out, huge immediate impacts. However, it has two enormous advantages over solar and wind: a coal plant will run for fifty years or more without losing efficiency; and it can provide consistent base-load as well as peak load.
Wind installations have ludicrously short lifespans for the investment put into them. They also operate significantly below their plated capacity, only operate when the wind is at the right speed and are not remotely consistent enough in their generation to provide base load and too unpredictable to supply peak. This inconsistency requires a back-up plant of similar capacity to be kept operating to switch in when the wind drops, or when it exceeds the operating speed of the turbines.
The obvious complaint about solar is that it only works in the daytime, and only when there's enough sunlight. However, the issue that everyone misses with solar is energy density.
Even if you can convert sunlight at maximum efficiency at the brightest point on the planet, you're only going to get a maximum of around 1kW at noon over that one square meter. You'll be looking at significantly less for the rest of the day. Most solar power stations take up tens of square kilometers to produce fractions of the amount of power and energy of a single coal or gas power station.
Even with the latest advances in solar technology (visible-light rectification antennae are a very cool thing on the horizon), the energy density issue will never go away. That said, solar does have the advantage over wind that you can install it on your roof, which somewhat mitigates these issues.
Both wind and solar suffer the same energy density problem. Until some sort of high-density replacement for existing fuel sources is found, renewables will never be anything other than a tiny supplement to energy production.
Personally I'm hoping that Germany's latest fusion experiment gets off the ground and render the whole thing moot. It's been the most successful fusion reactor so far.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
