[save_ferris]

Solar didn't magically just appear on the market at a lower price point than carbon-based resources though, it had to go through several iterations which required significant investment capital. This is usually where government agencies like DOE leverage their capital investment programs because private business aren't interested in paying for the R&D to solve those kinds of big problems without a guaranteed success.

Solar is only becoming cheaper today because of the research and capital that was put into developing the technology, not because it's inherently cleaner than coal. To your point, based purely on the market forces (i.e. excluding carbon taxes) coal is still a very viable option. And if the government is motivated to migrate businesses off of dirty energy resources, it also has a motivation to help develop alternatives that the market will accept.

Solyndra[0] was one example of a company that received government support to develop solar technology and became notorious for defrauding the government in the process.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra

[ganafagol]

> To your point, based purely on the market forces (i.e. excluding carbon taxes) coal is still a very viable option.

Oh please. Based "purely on market forces" can't exclude carbon emissions. That's a non-negligible externality which your market needs to price correctly. Not doing so is in effect subsidising coal. There is nothing "pure" about this, quite to the contrary. And this has been known for decades.

It's 2021 now. We don't live in 1890 anymore.

[eloff]

Markets suck at pricing on negative externalities. It is literally the textbook example of market failure. That's why we need regulation (e.g. Carbon taxes) to step in and make sure those costs are accounted for.

I don't know what kind of hypothetical utopian market you're referring to, but it's not one that exists in human societies.

[whatshisface]

>Oh please. Based "purely on market forces" can't exclude carbon emissions.

Huh? A bunch of people with no altruistic tendencies, and who are incapable of coordinating through any means but pricing, will not stop overfishing or carbon emissions. I don't get this often repeated thing about how not taxing carbon is subsidizing it, or how cap-and-trade is indistinguishable from naturally occurring markets. Both of those things are clearly artificial constructs built on top of the naturally-forming market. It's like many people are trying to use a perfect society as the zero-mark which all deltas and relative measures are measured from, while the state of nature (and the absence of a policy) is the obvious zero-mark to use.

[ogre_codes]

> Solar didn't magically just appear on the market at a lower price point than carbon-based resources though

You are ignoring the entire point of the post you are replying to.

Extracting coal and burning it has massive external costs. Massive health costs to the workers and even people just living near coal extraction. Massive devaluation of land near the coal mines. Huge issues with non-carbon solution. That's all before the concerns about climate change. Few people were compensated for the massive destruction of wealth/ health & quality of life in the region. In many places the companies extracted every ounce of coal then when the lawsuits started pouring in, the company went belly up.

Once you take into account all the costs outside the costs of acquiring the land and extracting the coal, coal is vastly more expensive.

[jhgb]

> and became notorious for defrauding the government in the process

Where's the evidence for that? The major point was that Solyndra bet on the wrong horse with CIGS; they were unknowingly doomed to fail from the start.

[ci5er]

What happened with CIGS? There was a privately funded CIGS company here in Austin TX that also didn't make it (even though the founders and investors were solid) and I've not gotten a straight answer as to why - esp. confusing because the first quals looked very good.

[brendoelfrendo]

I'm not sure your point in bringing up Solyndra; with that notable exception, the fed's investments in renewables turned a decent profit. It's actually a problem, in hindsight: the program was supposed to take risks on innovative ideas and companies that would be difficult to find via traditional channels, but Solyndra had such a chilling effect that the DOE stopped taking those risks.

[save_ferris]

Yeah, I meant to add the caveat that it was one of the most publicly notable government energy investments for the simple fact that it ended up in scandal, since many aren't even aware that the government invests in companies like this. I wasn't trying to criticize the initiative.

> Solyndra had such a chilling effect that the DOE stopped taking those risks.

It's frustrating to see that a private company's bad behavior wound up being a stain for the government like this.

[socrates1998]

You ignored my main point, which is that coal is also subsidized because we don't accurately price in all the pollution.

Solar would have been explored much sooner if we factored in the pollution.

[jpgvm]

Uhh:

> not because it's inherently cleaner than coal

Is patently false.

It took capital to get there but solar -is- inherently cheaper than coal. That is -exactly- why it's being deployed at scale now.