I think that is what we are seeing here, as the technology for renewable energy gets cheaper it becomes more costly to fund it because its adoption increases. Subsidising a tiny fraction of the population in order to build incentive in an industry important to the future is fine, subsidising a significant fraction is an unjustifiable expense. The subsidies were never meant to be forever, they were only meant to incentivise the public to spend and the industry to invest. So it's not all bad because hopefully the reason green energy is becoming prohibitively expensive to support is because the technology is cheap enough to begin wide spread public adoption.
We're going to find out very soon to what extent this is true. Subsidies will disappear soon as austerity continues to bite the budgets. However as long as there are government regulations requiring large percentages of the energy sources to be renewable, demand for these will continue to be artificially inflated. This is going to lead to dramatically higher electricity prices, which so far have been masked by lavish subsidies, and not for any other reason than a government policy decision. When people feel the pain, which to some degree is happening already, these nonsensical regulations will be removed by popular demand.
My prediction: In the next 10 years demand for wind and solar energy will collapse as subsidies disappear, regulations forcing inflating demand are dismantled, and as energy demand in general substantially decreases.
Having said all that we're walking into an energy crisis in Europe. Anti-nuclear lobbies have been very successful in recent years in the UK, Germany and Italy and our supplies of fossil fuels aren't getting any cheaper.
And there in lies the problem with renewables: They are not being rapidly deployed because of their technical and economic merit, they are because (at least in the US and UK) solar and wind have been chosen based entirely on political fiat. Basically the energy crisis is the result of political engineering and not any fundamental supply/demand issues. Besides, we're going to face this same question in 30 years when those solar panels and wind turbines all need to be replaced. Which is more sustainable, building a nuclear powerplant or a dam that lasts for more than 100 years or having to replace those things every 20-30 years?
Now as for fossil fuels, actually they are likely to get cheaper. Not because of some fantastic new source, although there are those, but rather because demand will likely plummet in the coming years as the second phase of the this "Great Recession", or whatever you want to call it, kicks in. In today's dollar terms it's entirely possible for oil to go back to
We need massive funding and deployment of non-fossil fuel energy sources now and continuing over the next few decades. We can't afford to wait until peak oil/gas/coal and have to radically build new energy infrastructure whilst dealing with a system where energy costs spiral.
No, what we need to do is get politics out of energy so that the competing sources can compete based on just their technological and economic merits. Raise the air quality standards and streamline nuclear regulations if you must to give a completely even playing field, but ultimately governments have a very poor record of getting it right when they pick and choose winners soley for political expediency.
Besides, have you considered what the results would be if you're wrong and energy prices don't spiral beyond what they are today? Really, based on what the fundementals are and what the global economic situation is likely to be in the next few years there is no reason to believe energy prices will increase significantly for the forseeable future...short of nuclear war in the mid east of course.
And even when it does recover, barring a major political event that disrupts supply it won't instantaneously go through the roof, it's a gradual increase.
The bull goes up the stairs, the bear jumps out the window.
To that end I sincerely hope that the money saved from reducing/stopping subsidies for current gen green technologies is put towards the next gen like better battery technology for electric vehicles (and the corresponding infrastructure) or funding for artificial photosynthesis development.
There's nothing wrong with R&D funding, I personally just have a problem with deployment subsidies.
Next we need to figure out good ways of storing it, government subsidised home batteries anyone?
At a time when government subsidies are disappearing for everything else? If solar requires that to be a major player in the grid, doesn't that just take an uneconomical source and make it more uneconomical?
) and maybe they want nothing more than a bright future for all of them, even if it's the last thing that they do. It just so happens that they don't believe in the future that others have thought out.
