Amateur Climate Change

Electricity prices are a very important issue for climate change, as the main criticism, the only serious one, towards renewable energy sources is that they are more expensive. This is a really important question much discussed in many occasions. My opinion is: yes they are more expensive at first sight but they are cheaper in the long term considering a global point of view, for example with the new richness index proposed by the UN: IWI (Inclusive Wealth Index).

Certainly, this is something I should learn and write, but in this post I prefer to focus in one example and one interview. The example is spanish situation, going from leadership in renewables to full stop in feed-in-tarif and renewable industry. It seems a bad example but I think that can help to think and learn. The last chapter of this story is the sharp increase expected in electricity prices and blaming the renewables completely about it. I am not going to it thorougtly either, I just want to mention this interview with the regulatory system responsible. He is not pro-renewables in any way and mentions them as one of the causes of the price and this incredible thing called tarif deficit (another interesting pair of words), however he explains too that prices are difficult to understand, that there are many different renewables and that too many fossil fuel power stations have also been built expecting a great economy growth and energy demand, and nowadays both are shrinking.

Blaming renewables is easy and a widespread sport but Germany has made an even greater effort and the situation is very different, so it is not so determinant the global economy health seems also important. Two final thoughts:

1.- If Spain is in a bad situation due to too much power capacity this seems an oportunity for electric mobility, it could help reduce electricity costs.

2.- Maybe more expensive electricity is not so bad, if it happened in all places. Certainly it would help efficiency and would be more realistic.