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Comment by masfuerte | Hacker News Reader

Does the build cost matter? After you've built the gas plant you still need to buy gas in perpetuity.

The marginal cost of the energy from the geothermal plant must be very much less.

And yet, when the same argument is made about nuclear, all hell breaks lose

This plant became operational after 2 years and has started paying back the investment. If your project is going to take 20 years before it comes online, you are going to need much, much higher returns to justify the investment. There is also a lot more risk involved in keeping a project alive and viable over a 20 year period, again pumping the expected returns needed before investors will invest.

High level, you raise a good point. However:

    > This plant became operational after 2 years and has started paying back the investment.

Do we know if this project is currently cash-flow positive? One way that this project could be initially loss-making: the labour and maintenance costs exceed revenues from selling electricity.

I don't know. It could be profitable enough to fund the later stages of the build, or proof enough to bring in more risk adverse investors. I don't think we would be seeing press releases if the numbers show that continuing the build is economically doomed.

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