WTF I think you are just thrashing around trying to win an argument by any means.

So you are not a Green? Well tell us what policies you disagree with the Greens on and I may stop classifying you as one.

Am I saying the Forbes reporter has deliberately misled the public? I don't know whether it is deliberate, but it is misleading. The energy minister most probably was doing it deliberately.

My claim was that power in 2008 was USD 0.17 per KWh and only doubled in price because it was based on unreliable renewable energy in the form of hydropower which failed, requiring rationing, and the importation of oil at a time when oil was at absolute record highs. Then I showed that even using the most favourable cherry pick to you of 2010, prices have not halved, they are only down by around one-third to 2021 from 0.34 to 0.22. I could have shown you figures for 2025 where they are now USD 0.26 per KWh, which is a 25% only decline from the peak, and an 18% increase from the bottom.

And as mhaze points out Uruguay are just about the most expensive place for electricity in South America. http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/ and as these other economies are not renewable energy economies your argument that renewables are cheaper fails.

I'm not accusing you of acting in bad faith, just as being overly ideological and posting stories which disintegrate under just a small amount of research and analysis.

Graham,

You would have to tell me what the Greens' policies are before I could comment. I usually look up party policies before elections but I cannot recall any specifics (although I have a rough idea). As they yield little to no power I usually wouldn't bother until the next election cycle.
I know that many commentators on here see the world as a dichotomy - "if you disagree with me on one issue then you are the polar opposite of me" types. I don't and had hoped that as our host your world view was more nuanced.

In the last 23 years electricity consumption per capita has gone up 88% - not a bad proxy for economic growth.

Graham you tried to debunk the "almost halving of electrical production costs" by pointing to a source that referenced residential prices.

Was this a genuine error or a misdirection?

Your source clearly shows a drop in residential prices over time.

The Residential Electricity Price falls from US$0.34 in 2010 (around the time transition started) to US$0.22 on your sources latest update.

You state: "They had a bad year in 2010 when it peaked at USD 0.34, but that's not representative." What is representative is the falling trend after 2010 as transition uptake kicks in.

This is the world trend that I see - households are taking up solar rooftop and battery systems. Small resources poor countries are decoupling from expensive fossil fuel imports. Isolated mining companies are moving to renewable power as much as possible.

Small changes matter.

Even Indonesia's future planned renewable baseload electricity production looks vey similar to Uruguay's current production.

So, if we wade through all WTF’s walk-backs, reversals, obfuscations and linguistic triple somersaults with pike, what are we left with?
A minor South American nation, resource poor except for flowing water, decided to solve some of its power problems by adopting the least bad solution i.e. adding a bit of solar and wind power to its hydro power…. at an enormous cost.

End result? Said minor South American nation managed to produce a derisory amount of electricity (they produce barely more than 1% of South America’s total electricity output!!) at an enormous cost to the nation and the citizenry.

And all this is presented as…well who knows? Certainly not WTF. Apparently its specifically not meant to be an exemplar for other nations like Australia. So, all we see is that, if you are resource poor nation that wants to spend enormous sums to produce a minor amount of power, Uruguay is your go to model. But they did it while using imported renewable infrastructure and that magic word, “renewable”, is all that matters in some circles

WTF?

Now this is just straight projection from mhaze.

Over a few years now, many commentators have pointed out to mhaze that most of his discussion points end up as "walk-backs, reversals, obfuscations and linguistic triple somersaults".

There are no second prizes, mhaze, for trying to project your discussion faults onto me.

I've had to bring back the conversation many times to the original topic.

It's mhaze who introduced koala bears and coral into a discussion about Uruguay's energy production.

Unfortunately, we have to go right back to the first post on this discussion to help mhaze with his comprehension.

I stated: "It will be interesting to see what other countries scale up this type of model." No mention of Australia or Indonesia or other non-Latin American countries that others wanted to add to the mix.

All mhaze needed to say was something like "I don't think one of those countries will be (note future tense, mhaze) Australia".

Plenty of other threads have discussed Australia's possible future energy needs. Ironically they tend to end with people pointing out mhaze's "walk-backs, reversals, obfuscations and linguistic triple somersaults".

Maybe it is Uruguay's success at halving electricity production costs and deceasing both residential and industrial electricity costs while maintaining a relatively high annual growth rate that has mhaze in such a flap.

Then we have Fester and his/her/their "what about"-ism moment by introducing Indonesia (high population/resource rich country) to the discussion. Seeing this as some type of off topic "got ya" moment, mhaze pushes all his chips into the middle of the stack.

It was a blunder of course because Indonesia's renewable base load future investments (a US$63 Billion investment in base load renewables) is not dissimilar to Uruguay's current base load renewables.

Stay on topic, mhaze, talking about polar bears when the discussion is about the energy success of a small, resource poor country is just sad.

"Stay on topic, mhaze, talking about polar bears when the discussion is about the energy success of a small, resource poor country is just sad."

Well I talked about polar bears after YOU'D started talking about how targets don't matter.

You get to set the original parameters of the thread but not how the thread plays out. I get that you want to restrict the discussion to a few minor points that you think supports your ideology, but the rest of us don't need to play along.

Most of the discussion was about trying to work out whatever possible significance you saw in Uruguay's energy system (which I shouldn't need to point out yet again produces a derisory amount of power).

And the conclusion we came to was that what Uruguay has done has no significance to us or any other nation for that matter. But they use renewables and that made you swoon and that's all you wanted to talk about and tried to force everyone else to talk about. But most of us don't swoon over renewables. Sorry but its true and I suspect over the next decade you'll come to learn that. (See my other thread).

WTF

Now you are being dishonest. Indonesia builds 20 coal fired power stations and you claim that Indonesia is becoming like Uruguay. As I commented:

"Indonesia is taking over Australia's mineral processing and providing the power for it with coal. Why can't Australia keep its mineral processing with all that cheap wind and solar power being generated? Why are all the businesses closing if wind and solar are so cheap?"

However cheap the intermittent power coming from wind mills and solar panels might be, the added cost of making that power dispatchable make wind and solar far more expensive than coal, nuclear, and even diesel generators.

Remove the ban and ditch the grifters.