The really big picture problem is the lack of level playing field for power generators and its impact on the national grid and how so? Well you may believe in taxing a colourless, odourless gaseous plant food because it makes sense like taxing biz on the size of their payrolls among other necessities, but that should apply equally to all generators- ie not just the ongoing emissions but the emissions of any inputs for the whole of life cycle of the generator. But there's a more glaring omission than that with the current RECs and various imposts on thermal generators that are being handed directly to the owners of wind turbines, solar panels and sundry tax-eating brainwaves like geothermal and sinking wave generators (Gummints shouldn't try and pick winners). There's only a level playing field marketplace if the electrons are also dispatchable and reliable.
Well that's far from the case with unreliables like wind generation and as many campers here would know with solar panels. What's been happening is deliberately subsidised wind and solar have been bludging on thermal generators to insure their lack of reliability, thereby not paying them their just insurance premia and sending them to the wall as a result. There's a fallacy of composition going on there, that it can continue unabated without heading for a communal grid train wreck in terms of reliable voltage and frequency at the flick of a switch. The only way to level that playing field is to legislate that no tenderer of electrons to the national grid can tender any more power than they can reasonably guarantee (ie short of unforeseen mechanical failure) 24/7 all year round. That way these unreliables would either have to invest in storage to lift their average tender capability, or partner with thermal generators and pay them their required premia in order to do that, or some combination of the two. You can't guarantee a certain level of power anytime it's required then you get to keep the electrons until you can.
But that's the political problem for all those who believed we could run a modern economy on fickle electrons. They'd have to fess up they got it wrong and where's the political leadership with the cohones to tell all the mums and dads with rooftop solar that if you can't guarantee reliable 24/7 electrons to your communal neighbours you can keep them. That's the real political problem as we head for a train wreck with a national power grid unless we all wake up to the fact we need dispatchable, reliable electrons and not just those at the whims of wind and sun where it's feast or famine. Besides with all the cross subsidies and disperse transmission and voltage and frequency controls, they're proving to be very expensive, fickle electrons anyway.
