Coal Tax Needed
Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:00:00 GMT
I just went to an interesting talk about distributed solar and found out that prices of solar PV panels are dropping dramatically. Soon, PV will be about $4 per watt installed (in large installations) which works out to about $0.17 per kWh.
By comparison, coal-fired electricity sells for about $0.05 per kWh. This includes about $0.02 for the coal itself ($2.15 per MMBtu and 1 MMBTU produces about 100 kWh) and $0.03 for all other expenses.
Adding in a $30 per ton CO2 tax would add about $0.03 per kWh to this price, (coal produces about 2 lbs of CO2 per kWh) for a total of $0.08 per kWh.
So even with a CO2 tax, coal electricity will still be half the cost of PV.
Therefore, for coal electricity to cost about the same as PV electricity, a tax of 400% would need to be added to coal!