SR,

The claim that wind power is now cheaper than coal is complete baloney given the vast subsidies required to installers.

If it were true countries like Germany and China would not be building coal fired generation in preference to wind power.

Shadow,
> Perhaps you would care to back up your sweeping statements.
I refer you to my first comment on this thread.

> The claim that wind power is now cheaper than coal is complete
> baloney given the vast subsidies required to installers.
Exactly what subsidies are you referring to?

> If it were true countries like Germany and China would not be
> building coal fired generation in preference to wind power.
That assumes their construction of coal fired power stations is for economic rather than political reasons.

Aidan,

Actually with wind turbines you are beginning to run into physical limits. Already the biggest turbines generate 9MW (theoretically) but are 200m high (60 stories) with 167m diameter blades. (The energy that can extracted from the moving air is proportional to the surface area covered by the rotors)

A lot of research has gone into the blade and generator efficiencies, but the problem is that to increase the size of the wind turbines to say 400m high would generate 4x the power, but require 8x the materials.

I have no doubt that further efficiencies will be gained, but the dramatic drop in cost/kW of generation is not going to be duplicated in the future decades.

I found it useful for me.

There's no validity in the efficiency argument.

If 100% renewables was the only economically viable game in town every nation/state would have little choice but to opt in to remain competitive. That isn't the case now, and is unlikely to become so as all technologies have equal capacity for efficiency improvements.

It would be a pointlessly stupid moratorium for all nations to agree on a considerably higher cost carbon free source than is available. It would also be a moratorium unlikely to be respected, given human nature to get an edge.

None of this stops dreamers from dreaming, of course. Ideologues will soon be in charge of the asylum and we seem destined to re-fail the German experiment.