What are the costs of renewable energy?
This is often the first question that people ask about renewable energy. A full answer, however, requires a fairly detailed look at the different types and contexts of renewable energy. We will now explore this question in some detail. One way to express the costs is to compute the time it takes for a system to pay for itself, relative to the prices of natural gas or electricity from the grid. In other words, how much time does it take for the total energy savings achieved by using a renewable energy system take to equal to the cost of the system? Relative to recent prices for gas and grid power, payback time for renewables were (very) roughly: • Passive Solar Heating: 0-2 years • Solar Hot Water: 5-15 years • Solar Electricity (photovoltaics): 15-25 years • Utility Scale Wind Electricity: 20 years One should keep in mind that these estimates do not include the addition savings that a renewable energy system might provide, such as avoiding the cost of installing power or gas lines, whi
