The Energy Information Administration shows that all energy gets subsidies and looks at that in comparison to the amount of energy generated.
Source - subsidy and support in dollars per megawatt-hour (mills per kilowatt-hour)
Subsidy and Support per
Unit of Production
(dollars/megawatthour) as of 2007
Nuclear 1.59
Coal 0.44 (does not include externalities like air pollution
or acid rain damage)
Refined coal 29.81
Natural gas 0.25
Biomass (and biofuels) 0.89
Geothermal 0.92
Hydroelectric 0.67
Solar 24.34
Wind 23.37
Landfill Gas 1.37
Municipal Solid Waste 0.13
Renewables (average) 2.80 (Hydro is making it better)
Total (average) 1.65
Other energy subsidy analysis
They also do not look at the comprehensive view of safety (public risk) such as deaths per terawatt hour
Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity) Coal – China 278 Coal – USA 15 Oil 36 (36% of world energy) Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy) Biofuel/Biomass 12 Peat 12 Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy) Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy) Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy) Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead) Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)
The way they wrote their article and study the implication is that nuclear energy is alone in getting subsidies and alone with any safety issues. The implication might also be if not alone at least far worse than the other energy.
This is wrong. Nuclear is among the safest energy sources. Nuclear gets less subsidy than most of the other energy sources per the amount of energy generated.
In terms of overall money, oil gets far more of the $550 billion in energy subsidies in 2008 worldwide.
If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks
