Today’s CJ interview with JLF legal and regulatory director Daren Bakst is a must read.
Bakst debunks the notion put out by NC WARN —with help from the New York Times ——-that solar power is actually more cost competitive than nuclear power. There’s just one problem:
In doing their analysis — or at least to get the result they wanted — NC WARN looked at the cost of solar power. They said, OK, it’s 35 cents per kilowatt hour to generate solar power — power from solar power sources. And then what they did was, they reduced that cost by subsidies. They picked two subsidies — the federal and state tax credits — and they said, when we take into account the subsidies for solar power, now it’s only 15.9 cents per kilowatt hour.
Well, by that logic, that means that if we had a 100 percent tax credit, we could make solar power free. Or we could make nuclear free, or we could make health care free. Anything you want, it can be free.
Besides, you just can’t tell the sun to shine when you need power.
