How would you like to pay $28 billion and get nothing for it? That's what collectively happened to customers of nuclear plants who have paid $28 billion over decades for a central storage site to store highly radioactive waste.
A federal court last week ordered that a 0.1 cent per kilowatt-hour charge to customers of utilities be stopped after decades of collection. Those fees have created a $28 billion fund that earns $1.3 billion of interest per year and was still collecting annually $750 million in new payments.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/19/usa-courts-nuclear-idUSL2N0J40Y.
These numbers are just astonishing and certainly put tax credits for renewable energy in a favorable light. Those credits have helped to create more than 60,000 megawatts of wind generation and 10,000 megawatts of solar generation, with much more on the way.
Your description does not really correctly render the fact that the nuclear plant owners would have been very happy not to have to collect that money, that made them less competitive against fossil fuel all along, and that they are strictly forbidden to touch one cent of it.
ReplyDeleteAlso per built MW the amount of tax credit for wind is a lot higher.