Thanks -
I was more poiting ot the insanity - anyone who knows anything about Solar would immediately say “Canada?”
I tried a startup with Solar - but my day job, and another startup - took the wind out of my sails. BUT - the city took my idea - and implemented with another company (politcally connected.) The location/site I selected, analyzed, laid out the plan, ownership/capital arrangement(due to taxes) etc. They just - gave it to someone else - without even a phone call.
Financially - solar is hard to analyze - although I agree with most of what you are saying - ignoring some tax ccredits etc - the main problem for solar is time value of $ - it is verysimialr to nuke in that 95% of cost is up front - panels will produce energy for decades - typcial drop is 25% over 25 years - but still productive inyear 25 If energy is stil lvaluable - huge residual value - especially since most of us - even long term calculations - are 7 year window etc.
But something like this article describes? As soon as you get to the word CANADA - we know it is just pure politics - not even TRYING to make sense. Not even misguided optimism. Any - and every - responsible person on the project knows this is a sham.
Besides some great surprised about how much desert land was really available for solar plant development (It less than a percent for all sorts of reasons), my three Latin American proposals died after discussions with “experts” in our anthropology and policital science departments. Shining Path was very anti-technology. They would and did sabotage efforts to introduce medium tech to Indians, particularly if they don't control it. And their sabotage often included killing the operators. Heliostats (I chose parabolic collectors because the were relatively close to the ground, and were relatively proven technology), but can be disable with a rock or two.
The issue of subsidies is clouded by government involvement. Nuclear plants are a good example. When licensing begins, borrowed money begins to accrue. Then the for-profit branches of environmental organizations gets busy, often subsidized with grants from our own government, inventing and raising issue after issue, even for plants which technology is identical to that of operating plants, making excellent livings for the litigators - the environmental law firms. Natural Resources Defense Council is only one of dozens of such operations. I recall that learning, and personally knew one of the many such families, where husband and wife are environmental lawyers, one working for the EPA and one for the NRDC, or Sierra Club or one of the others. Environmental law is big business for lawyers.
When a plant's capital cost is in the billions of dollars, the investors must be prepared to pay lenders interest on the loan for a decade or two before the plant begins to generate revenue. The capital costs, once a plant is in operation, are covered rapidly, as a function of the current regulated cost for electricity, but what investor can afford to put solvency at the whim of judges, the politics of the state legislators. California, with John Holdren’s very active participation, shut down a fully built nuclear plant, already in low-power operation, due to foolish nuclear activists, whose ignorance caused thirty years of pollution from the replacement for Rancho Seco, which came mostly from coal generated electricity. Without the lucrative antinuclear industry, highly paid jobs for obstructing something which scares the ignorant, subsidies would not ever have been necessary. That is why China, building four big plants using former Westinghouse technology, which was sold to Toshiba, and then to China, has brought four plants to low power testing in four years. In the US, while there have been few data points in three decades, the time from proposal to power, is probably closer to two decades.
I know that solar technology works. It just doesn't make sense for applications which require large amounts of high quality energy which must be reliable 24/7. Its about waste products (nuclear generates very little waste, and that is largely recyclable), no atmospheric pollution, cost, safety. Nuclear power is anathema to free enterprise. Once running, there is nothing much for governments to regulate. As Rahm Emanuel pointed out, crisis are good for government, and economic crisis have engendered a previously unappreciated partnership between big banks and big government. Solar power offers all kinds of opportunities for regulation, subsidies which require loans, and control of which guarantees the control of industrial development, because almost all industry depends upon the availability of affordable energy. That is why the Marxists now in Washington, California, New York, ..., are inhibiting all large scale energy ventures, replacing them with mythical green solutions.