This is an 'unfair competition' argument right up there with one I saw deployed against a major 'Social Enterprise' in London which was pitching for a new bus route. The case was that it was 'unfair' that the firm didn't have to pay returns to shareholders.....

There was an interesting statistic trotted out at the launch of Renewables UK (formerly BWEA) a couple of months ago, which I attended.

This was, as I recall, along the lines that the Danes had invested (I think) £1.3bn in windpower, and were making a £270m per year out of it, literally by taking £50 notes out of the fresh air. Compare and contrast this outcome with a similar investment in carbon-consuming plant where there may well be a profit, but where this is made on the back of a national outflow - in all likelihood set to increase - of funds to more or less reliable and/or greedy suppliers of carbon fuels.

European Tribune - Comments - Wind's latest problem: it ... makes power too cheap

Ironically, wind provides "utility-like" returns to investors, ie low, stable single-digit returns

Here I would add that these returns are denominated in fiat currency and are subject to the inflation that it integral to fiat currency and conventional finance capital. Now that dollar interest rates are at the zero bound there are literally tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars available to invest directly in energy. These investors are not bothered about a return ON their capital: they merely want a return OF their capital by protecting its value against dollar inflation.

Rather than these energy funds being invested and ripped off OTC by investment banks or by traders on futures markets (as they are now), it is possible to invest them directly in the 'unitised' production of completed productive assets.

The beauty of unitising renewable energy and energy savings (as opposed to carbon fuelled energy) is that it possible to receive value now in return for Units which it will cost nothing to redeem in the future.

IMHO the best way to make the transition to renewables is to denominate and base financing in energy units. This requires a direct 'Peer to Peer' approach to market architecture whereby transaction intermediaries evolve to become service providers. The adoption of such a partnership enterprise model is actually in shareholders' interests since it enables them to make a 'one-off' exit at an optimal price.

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky