COST OF GENERATING ELECTRICITY, THE

Review - Institute of Public Affairs, Dec 2004

THE COST OF GENERATING ELECTRICITY

by Royal Academy of Engineering www.raeng.org.uk/news/temp/ cost_generation_report.pdf

In this study, the United Kingdom's Royal Academy of Engineering shows that renewable sources of energy such as wind are twice as expensive as traditional fossil fuels and nuclear energy. The inherently unreliable and intermittent nature of wind as a source for power renders it unrealistic at the current state of technology, as costly provisions must be made to provide power through other means when the wind fails. The academy included in its calculations such factors as the cost of decommissioning for nuclear generation and the costs of mitigating carbon dioxide emissions for fossil fuels. The study focused on the actual costs of producing power, not on the costs paid by consumers after market influences.