"This is becoming ridiculous."

No, it has BEEN ridiculous for over three decades now. It is becoming sane.

Roses1,

"Peter, Jardine, Mark you are missing the elephant in the room: Coal fired electricity is massively subsidized:"

No it's not. You simply do not understand what you are talking about and you have no concept of how to provide comparable figures. You have to reduce all figures to comparable units, such as $/MWh.

When you do that you realise that the fossil fuels for electricity gets negligible subsidies.

Yes, there are some externalities if you look at only the negatives. But you need to offset those with the enormous positives. For example, fossil fuels are supporting nearly 7 billion people. Without fossil fuels the world probably could not support 1 billion people.

Peter: Nobody is denying the fact that we have got to a technological society and high populations because of the harnessing of coal and oil - that is a historical fact we learned in primary school. But I am saying that now is the time to move on and we do have viable options, though you and I may agree on which of them are best.

I have read some of your articles and see that you have researched your arguments and have made relevant points. What was missing on the catallaxyfiles website (loved the sinking coal barge!) was constructive criticism. You have asked for some and I will give it as long as you decease from rudeness ('you don't know what you're talking about'etc).

This report: http://ec.europa.eu/research/energy/pdf/externe_en.pdf
states that: "... if the external cost of producing electricity from coal were to be factored into electricity bills, 2-7 eurocents per kWh would have to be added to the current price of electricity in the
majority of EU Member States."
That converts to AU$30 - 100 per MWh.

As for the reduced capital cost of old coal stations it would be small in comparison (a few dollars/ MWh).

It appears that you acknowledge global warming and health problems with coal? And you assert that the solution is nuclear.

The costs of all electricity technologies are to be found in:
http://www.bree.gov.au/files/files//publications/aeta/AETA-Update-Dec-13.pdf

Peter: You will see from the link I posted that nuclear is far more expensive than land based wind or solar PV. In terms of dispatchable technologies it is only marginally cheaper than solar CST with storage and more expensive than biomass from waste. Note also that the cost of decommissioning, weapons proliferation, waste storage and the risks of nuclear contamination from accidents are not included in the costings for nuclear.

The cost of replacing all generation on the WA SWIS grid has been estimated in the document I co-wrote with others at Sustainable Energy Now (sen.org.au), commissioned by the Greens. It is summarized here:
http://greenswa.net.au/assets/e2029-2014redux.pdf (table on P2)

The levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) in the two renewable scenarios ranges from $163 to $172/MWh (using the revised AETA 2013 data). Note that significant overbuild of wind and solar plus new transmission lines have been included in this analysis.

The LCOE in the BAU case with 9% wind and PV is 172/MWh with a carbon price of $24/tonne (about $145 without) So it is clear that generation from new plant (whether coal or renewable) will cost about 3 times as much as the current $50/MWh.

The cost of nuclear SMR is estimated by AETA to be $120 - 190 per MWh. I bet if you were to estimate for nuclear, at 2025 prices and with additional transmission factored in, you'd arrive at a similar figure to our estimates for renewable scenarios. But the the externalities I listed previously are additional costs, which our grandchildren would be left to carry.

Ben Rose

Alas Ben Rose, the world is full of contradictory studies. BREE's 2013 study was very different to its 2012 study. Possibly after pressure from a government and RE activists that didn't like the results shown in the 2012 version.

Here again is another study which contradicts your view: "Nuclear outperforms wind and natural gas" says study - See more at: http://analysis.nuclearenergyinsider.com/operations-maintenance/nuclear-outperforms-wind-and-natural-gas-says-study?#sthash.UOMyHix4.dpuf.

Ben, please don't dismiss this study just because it was published in a journal called Nuclear Energy Insider. Giles Parkinson in Renew Economy seeks out studies that support his confirmation bias as no doubt Nuclear Energy Insider has done.

Energy industry operators support the study results that give them the best financial result - not the ones that suite there technology biases.

Roses1,

You’ve quoted two reports I’ve cited and linked many times (possibly you picked them up from my comments), but have exaggerated one and misunderstood the other.

The ExternE study is an excellent study of externalities of electricity generation. But you need to understand it and not exaggerate.

First it is for EU-15 countries, not Australia.

Second, there are two parts: damages and avoidance costs. The avoidance costs are the estimated cost of achieving the EU’s commitments, not the externalities of GHG emissions. The External costs of GHG emission are too uncertain to estimate authoritatively.

Third, the estimated externalities of damages for Germany are (in A$/MWh): black coal 11, Brown coal 15, gas 5, nuclear 2.5, PV 6.6, wind 1.2. However, solar and wind need back up so, the mix is much higher than the figures for wind and solar - in fact the external cost of the mix is between coal and gas.

The externalities of coal fired electricity generation in Australia (low population density) are perhaps 1/10th of what they are in EU-15 (high population density).

These are all the negative externalities. You can think about the positive externalities as what would be the case without fossil fuels? Just think about it … no fossil fuels would mean ... ? You might like to read: “Humanity Unbounded: How Fossil Fuels Saved Humanity from Nature and Nature from Humanity” http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/humanity-unbound-how-fossil-fuels-saved-humanity-nature-nature-humanity

Then you argue that there are alternatives. I disagree. Nuclear and the unlimited transport fuels cheap nuclear will be able to produce in the future are decades from being an economic reality because of the effect the anti-nukes have had retarding progress over the past 50 years. Renewables are just an ideological dream. There’s little realistic likelihood of them making a significant contribution to electricity supply. This explains why: http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/