Renewables vs. Fossil Fuels: The True Cost of Energy

This morning here in west central Alberta Canada, the temperature is -38 C. There is little to no wind and it is overcast with ice fog. It has been similar weather for the last few days and will be for the next week(a little warmer). There is around 50mm of fresh snow on everything, around 250mm of settled snow. And the worst winter weather is yet to come with January and February being traditionally the coldest snowiest months with the least sunshine(7.5 hrs a day right now). So far, renewables are absolutely useless here. That makes fossil fuelled energy indispensable no matter all the graphs and cost analyses and theoretic thinking you can display.

Concentrated Solar Power towers have thermal storage built in, sometimes for up to 15 hours. Could you do an episode on why CSP towers are around as expensive today as they were ten years ago? Thanks for your work :)

Energy use avoidance usually trumps any other form of investment in terms of returns. Window and wall shading, or insulation are simple examples. Modifying zoning to allow residents to access services without cars is another at a larger, though still very human scale.

It would be really good if you could go a follow-up on the relative price of energy storage with different systems for example battery storage, pumped hydro or something simple as heating sand or bricks??

You do need to factor in energy storage technology costs (battery, flywheel, ect) that solar and wind do require if you are going to count them as totally green. Alternatively, lacking some sort of storage method, there is the fossil fuel approach to backup power (coal and natural gas). Add in these factors and you will get a much more realistic and accurate cost of renewables. Most analysis of renewables seem to always leave these factors out for some reason, as if they do not matter, but the reality is they do represent a very major part of the equation and any discussion that leaves them out is useless.

A more useful comparison might be to compare the cost that it takes to meet a realistic power demand curve for a certain geographical area using a certain power source or combination of sources. Ideally, the demand curve spans enough time to include rare events such as heat waves or winter storms where peak demand is much higher than the average daily peak.

And as per usual, no mention of storage costs for renewables and how to balance grid supply - the elephant in the room. No mention either of nuclear? A decent attempt but the Lazard report had so many errors and assumption errors.

Rosie, I really enjoy your videos. I know there are a lot of people calling for more depth, but from what I've seen you tend to get to the depth by creating follow on videos on topics. I think it's a good approach because it keeps your video length reasonable and I share your videos because I think they don't overwhelm people. That's important for those strange people who aren't energy nerds. BTW, speaking of strange people, what kind of person is it who doesn't love a good equation? Thanks for all you do.

This was very interesting and helped put the economics in perspective as well as the differences. I would be interested to see a video about how nuclear energy compares to renewables and fossil fuels.

Renewable projects rarely (if ever) publish the additional required to keep a gas power station on standby to fill in their unreliable output. The price of electricity has certainly not come down in the UK. I support clean energy but the elephant in the room is lack of grid storage and I don't see that being solved in the near future.

First time watching your channel - superb video, and by far the happiest presenter of this type of content! Speaking as someone who has worked in renewables for quite some time, it is very encouraging to see this type of analysis given an engaging and accessible makeover. I'll be back for sure.

Thank you for the video (s). I’m one of the tiny fraction of your viewers who is not a fan of formulas. My formal education was too brief. So thanks for including me.

Great video Rosie! Loved the analogy and glad to see the video is doing so well given all the time this must have taken :D

I'm curious about LCOE of molten salt reactors as well as solar with energy storage.

Just had to comment on how awesome your long elaborate analogies are. Biggup yourself !

Given that they enable a 100% renewable system to be 100% available, shouldn’t the cost of batteries (not just e.g. LiFePO, but e.g. liquid air, etc.) should play a greater part in these calculations.

I hope key decision makers are following your work. Your analyses are very good.

another great video ,well done. A lot of prep went into that.

Is it possible to include energy storage costs of renewables to LCOE to improve the accuracy of equivalence?

Best explanation of LCOE yet. Thank you.