What price does oil have to hit a barrel to make solar, wind, Geo thermal etc... economically viable.?

Question

What price does oil have to hit a barrel to make solar, wind, Geo thermal etc... economically viable.?

Answer 1

The reasons for the cost of "green energy is high is because of its' low use. So you say build a lot of wind generators in barren windy Kansas, I say heck ya but the tree hugger say it is a blight on the landscape. So they want once again to drive their Prius's and not look at the big picture...... it's at a catch 22 state right now.

Answer 2

The higher the price of oil the higher the price of solar. It goes hand in hand. It cost to make the electric that is used to make the cells. It takes gas to mine for it and it takes gas to haul it from one place to the  other.

Just like the price of milk. The higher the price of gas the more a gallon of milk will cost.

As more people want them the more of a shortage we will have and the price will go up. so better get them now while the price is low.

Answer 3

Fossil fuel electricity is currently going for $0.07 a kilowatt-hour, and I think somebody here said solar electricity is at $0.20 a KWH.   So I'd say oil has a long way to go, and by that time it will make a lot of capped "empty" oil wells seem like gold mines.

Answer 4

It will take a price that will make people want to stop using gas, some things we have no options for such as heating your house. The price of these new technologies need to come down though as well for people to make the change. Solar and geothermal are nice and dandy but they cost a ton to put in. For a example I was looking into getting a wind turbine, cost 80,000 plus with some grants from uncle sam.

Answer 5

In a lot of cases they are viable but DO NOT CORRESPOND TO U.S. INVESTMENT HABITS which are rather on the short term.

PS: Ajidhell, Wind power is generated as low as 0.03$/kWh and concentrated solar power at 0.08$/kWh.

This being said you forget a cost benefit analysis (cost of pollution, shift from foreign energy costs to domestic jobs, safety of supply, etc...)

Answer 6

There really isn't a strong coorelation between the price of oil and the demand for energy from solar and wind.  One is a liquid fuel used primarily for transportation and the others are used most for stationary power generation.  I would imagine over the next couple of years as the Canadians will have to make daily decision to burn nat gas to produce oil from tar sands or to export the nat gas to the US, that the coorelations will start to get stronger but till then I would expect very little reaction in the solar, wind and geo thermal markets to the price of oil.