Hitting a central target to decarbonise Britain’s electricity system by the end of the decade is “increasingly looking out of reach” without a dramatic increase in the financial support given to green projects, in addition to planning and grid reforms.
The value of subsidies handed to the developers of wind and solar farms over the next two years needs to be at least double this year’s record level, according to an analysis by Cornwall Insight, the energy consultancy, if the government is to reach its clean power goal by the end of the decade…
A move to dramatically increase the amount of support given to renewable energy schemes may be controversial, given the increased scrutiny on the affordability of energy bills…
These costs are not paid for by fossil fuel companies. They are paid by society while fossil fuel companies get the revenues. Sure smells like a subsidy.
Reducing fossil fuel use is like removing lead from paint or asbestos from homes. The health gains outweigh the commercial benefits.
And this is not even considering the impact of climate change.
I mean, that’s the question. It’s not merely enough to point out that there exist uninternalized externality costs to the burning of fossil fuels. That doesn’t tell you whether the health gains are higher or lower than the commercial benefits from using fossil fuels.
That’s especially the case these days, where efforts to reduce CO2 emissions have already eliminated a lot of the lowest hanging fruit in countries that have taken the issue seriously (like the UK). UK CO2 emissions have already fallen more than 50% from their peak, and are now lower than they were in the late 1800’s.
Whether the marginal cost of eliminating any given tranche of fossil fuel usage is higher or lower than the health cost benefit is a different question than merely noting that there are health costs associated with fossil fuel pollution.
That argument cuts both ways. The implication of the OP is that subsidies for green energy costs the government. No mention is made of the benefits in replacing fossil fuels with renewables, so I am filling in the vacuum. Feel free to make the counter argument that maintaining the fossil fuel status quo is better for society than accelerating a change to renewable energy.
My post is not about greenhouse gasses. it is about the other pollutants associated with fossil fuel burning that is harmful to human health independent of global warming.
It is like the economics of carcinogens. At what point does it become too expensive to eliminate products known to cause cancer?
Sure. But that’s a little different than concluding that the benefits are higher than the costs. There are certainly health benefits that can inhere to reducing fossil fuel consumption - but there are significant costs involved with reducing fossil fuel consumption as well.
That’s especially the case in countries like the UK, where they’ve already moved pretty far down the curve of reducing fossil fuel emissions. Annual petrol consumption in the UK has already been cut in half from its peak in the late 1980’s. Makes it pretty likely that many of the health benefits of cleaner air have already been realized, and many of the lowest-cost ways of reducing petrol consumption have already been implemented.
A complicated question, depending a great deal on the marginal cost of replacing the products known to cause cancer with alternative products that don’t (or that have a lower risk).
And the OP was about the “far more funding” needed by the UK to reach their stated goals (which are about greenhouse gas emissions). I would appear that the UK government, like many others, has not publicized the cost to the nation or the individual.