Plus : all energy souces have been subsidized, ion one way or another … or do you know a country that financed its nuclear power plant developement by a Feed-in-Tariff ? no, that was with tax money.
And for shale gas ? that will be subsidized in a certain point in time by the cost to “repair” the nature and the health of the nearby population.

So , where is the difference ?

What the German subsidy – actually cross-subsidy scheme, the cost is borne by consumers not taxpayers – has bought them isn´t 6% of their electricity supply, it´s grid parity. Feed-in tariffs are now below retail, so the cross-subsidy looking forward, as they expand to and no doubt overshoot the government target of 52 GW, is zero or negative.

The German retail electricity price is admittedly high, twice typical US rates, including a premium of higher reliability and aesthetics (urban buried cables). On the other hand, Germany is as northerly as Canada and US insolation is on average a third higher, two-thirds higher in the Southwest. On reasonably optimistic assumptions about convergence of BOS costs to German and Australian levels, grid parity will arrive in the SW in the next two years.

2) Modules are currently selling at 70 cents/watt(Chinese).Adding the 30% tariff on chinese ones still brings the cost to 90 cents/watt. So that, as per our previous scenario has already brought down the project cost to $2.6/watt. Looks like this blog post is off the mark by $1.8/watt.

3) Natural gas prices are at a historical low today and everyone in the industry agree that natural gas prices are bound to double from here to $ 4/mmbtu. Imagine a scenario where fracking leads to a major accident and the US government imposes some more oversight on the industry. Taking this into consideration, I am sure that the above blogger being an investment advisor would agree that setting up a gas plant is a far bigger risk compared to solar, where the raw material is free and the cost over a 25 year period are well known upfront.

4) It surprises me that the blogger wants to divert government subsidies which help commercialize solar to colleges where breakthrough research happens. The blogger seems to be under the assumption that scientific research is the magic wand for achieving lower costs. In 2007, polysilicon, an important raw material used in making solar panels was going at $500/kg. 3 years later, the price had fallen to $30/kg(in conjunction with Solyndra and Evergreen bankruptcies). Evergreen`s annual report shows $50 mi in R&D expense in the 3 years from 2005-07.

Although R&D is important, the solar industry in the last couple of years has been transformed due to government subsidies. Poly silicon costs have not come down due to R&D, rather it has been due to commercialization and economies of scale. This would not have been possible without German and Italian subsidies.

The blogger probably needs to take a serious re-look at this blog post and more importantly, about investment recommendations for the solar industry.

I wish I could say this was the only inaccuracy in this article but suffice it to say that solar is competitive today in a larger variety of markets than this author realizes. A bit more research would”ve served this blog well.

There”s a reason why the solar industry is the fastest growing industry today while providing more US based employment/watt than any fossil fuel based technology.

Oh, it allows us to pass a living planet to our grandchildren.