Bjørn Lomborg: Wind power is the path to poverty
Over the past five years, heating a UK home has become 63% more expensive, while real wages have declined. Some 17% of households are now energy poor – that is, they have to spend more than 10% of their income on energy; and, because elderly people are typically poorer, about a quarter of their households are energy poor. Deprived pensioners burn old books to keep warm, because they are cheaper than coal, they ride on heated buses all day, and a third leave part of their homes cold.
In Germany, where green subsidies will cost €23.6 billion this year, household electricity prices have increased by 80% since 2000, causing 6.9 million households to live in energy poverty. Wealthy homeowners in Bavaria can feel good about their inefficient solar panels, receiving lavish subsidies essentially paid by poor tenants in the Ruhr, who cannot afford their own solar panels but still have to pay higher electricity costs.
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The rich world gets just 1.2% of its energy from hugely expensive solar and wind technologies, and we would never accept having power only when the wind was blowing. Over the next two years, Germany will build ten new coal-fired power plants to keep the lights on.
In 1971, 40% of China’s energy came from renewables. Since then, it has powered its explosive economic growth almost exclusively with highly polluting coal, lifting 680 million people out of poverty. Today, China gets a trifling 0.23% of its energy from wind and solar. By contrast, Africa gets 50% of its energy today from renewables – and remains poor.
These intended consequences of renewable energy should be rich electoral fodder for conservative politicians – like cancelled health care plans, an unaffordable electric bill is something the average voter can hold in her hand. Or it might have been, had they not been sitting alongside their enemies on the green manure wagon for the last decade.
Kate, just raise the minimum wage, and this problem is solved! (Let the businesses books balance themselves)
He’s been writing soberly on environmental issues for over 10 years. Had the good fortune to pick up his “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (2002) a couple of years ago in Value Village for a song. Great tome on all issues Green (and how they’re getting it wrong) As many critics of the Greens are wont to say, it’s no longer about the environment but more about ideology. And pieces like Bjorn’s won’t make a lick of difference unfortunately.
Thankfully, privately owned US power companies were smart enough not to piss away their shareholders’ money on windmills.
Making people poorer is part of the plan.
Seems to me there is a very good correlation between a country’s level of wealth and the fraction of its energy use that is not wind/solar. I think their could be a very cool chart/map made showing that.
Wasn’t it Marie Kathleen Wind that said, “let them burn furniture!”?
Lomborg is still a tree-hugging greenie, but with a smattering of common sense. For the eco-fascists, he has lost his way and must be excoriated and excommunicated.
Envirofuedalism. Get on board people!
Talking about Obama care we hear many misleading stories about the Harper Government cutting
health care payments to the Provinces NOT true health care payments are INCREASING
take time to read rgis article
http://www.winnipegsun.com/2014/03/26/anti-harper-crowd-off-base-in-health-care-debate
I take umbrage at the constant stream of negative comments regarding wind and solar power. Perhaps SDA can distinguish for it’s readers the difference between macro-wind (the big utilities over 1MW) and micro-wind (Mom and Pop generation under 1MW).
The business model of macro wind has, and will always be, the leverage of invested dollars by the owner against government and utility grants and subsidies. This model has bankrupted countless companies and used taxpayer funds for all kinds of questionable largesse.
Many fine products especially in wind are available to anyone to generate their own power, that are economically feasible without any government or utility handouts. These products empower the individual to wean off the grid, save money, and in a smaller sense empower the individual to leave their environment in slightly better shape than they found it.
For a good examle of these technologies, see here http://windular.com/
I would agree with KPD Above. The problem is that there is no way to utilize Wind in an Urban setting…ain’t gonna happen…and don’t talk to me about rooftop installations..absolute garbage. Solar yes..but then one gets into an issue with where to keep the 24 or 36 Batteries you will need.?? Or, one could go grid tie but then you are at the mercy of the utilities again.
Micro solar/hydro/wind are great ways to go if you have the space, a decent creek on your property and are able to put up a 75-100′ tower that won’t piss off your neighbours or contravene some bylaw.
Great Resource is this: They call themselves the Leading edge of Low Tech.
Http//www.otherpower.com
rgds,
@KPD Take umbrage all you want but it’s the big eco driven subsidized wind farms that are destroying wealth (and a lot of birds). Policies based on a theory of AGW where there is zero evidence. That’s a bonifide crime.
Mom and Pop windmills paid for with their own money to produce local energy are not the issue.
In Ontario the deck is stacked against home windmills. Solar is prohibitive in price and only feasible thanks to the outrageous subsidy homeowners get from – you guessed it – the taxpayer.
Think of it this way. If solar and wind power were so great do you not think energy companies would have been building these things decades ago.
The only reason they are now is that they’ve got the government on their side in creating a monopoly (as far as hooking to the grid) and getting upwards of 60 cents per kilowatt hour more than the true price of electricity. Great deal if you can get it and of course in Ontario they got it from our incompetent and fraudulent government.
Check out the story in the Windsor Star about a solar company being investigated for not living up to their contracts. The company says it can’t because the system isn’t in place to connect homeowners to the grid and that the ‘rules’ keep changing. Typical of this entire scam that is costing taxpayers billions of dollars and driving many into poverty.
It shouldn’t surprise us when we see results like this when the whole energy/enviro/climate/sustainability memes in the governing class come from elitist sources.
Green energy and sustainability through tax and subsidy (essentially Fabian wealth redistribution) was conceived in the exclusive 1% think tanks of Europe. Any plan so conceived will naturally favor the elite over those who must struggle to make ends meet in the klepto-economic/crony capitalism climate they designed.
In this case we see another transnationalist elite social engineering plan which benefits a few at the expense of many. We should not be surprised that the 1% drive these collectivist wealth redistributing plans to benefit themselves – in the case of once (and still) abundant electric energy they profit at granny’s suffering – and that is proper in their thinking because the social engineering elite are mostly sociopathic – to them human suffering is a side benefit of their control freak resource acquisition and population control schemes.
Some one here likened this regulation of natural/energy resources to “feudalism” – that’s a fair assessment of the globalist end game.
http://windmillseverywhere.wordpress.com/04-agenda-21-sustainable-development-and-the-green-economy/
I don’t think politicians struggling with debt/deficits, unsustainable social programs, low economic growth and an aging population can admit the truth about what Lomborg is saying. The money – billions, trillions? – wasted on green energy could have been put towards issues that are mathematically guaranteed to become political problems. Instead the political class bought the equivalent of magic beans and the golden goose of subsidies has now been eaten by them and their cronies. Regular people only got sky-high energy bills.
Once the real problems listed above are added to the new problem of government-created energy poverty the shit will really hit the fan. No wonder politicians rewriting the new IPCC report want more doom, more panic. They hope it will be a convenient shield for their incompetence while also giving them and their friends a few more years to fill their pockets with taxpayer cash.
If I was an elderly Brit, I’d think twice about hogging the bus seats and complaining about the cold. I’m sure the NHS is just licking it’s lips thinking about all that potential fuel.
You may take all the umbrage you want, in Ont at least, it is large scale industrial wind factories which are devastating the economy and the environment. I actually agree with you on small individual units. I couldn’t care less what Gyro Gearloose wind contraptions you may hook up except that A it isn’t connected to the grid, and B it doesn’t cost me anything,
A quick glance at ontario-wind-resistance.org will bring up daily horror stories of rural people being forced out of homes, being bullied by rapacious wind companies, hareassed by Ont government agencies, all for very little electricity at enormous social and economic cost. With no measurable net effect on air quality.
I have witnessed friends who lost a home and faced severe financial ruin by living adjacent to a wind plant. I face a proposed wind plant next door to my home, plus a mammoth Samsung plant under construction in my boyhood home. Not a fan of the giant fans.
Professor Lomborg learned of the unthinking reaction of many when he published “The Skeptical Environmentalist” a while back. Despite being a firm [C]AGW believer, the community cast him out because the title included “skeptical.” He has recently been brought back into the fold because his new book does not make that mistake, even though his point remains much the same – regardless of the cause climate does change over time, and most political/corporate “solutions” are useless [or worse] while much cheaper and more effective methods are decried as anathema or blasphemy. Too, his own proposals are largely applicable WHICHEVER way global temperature goes.
Even Dr. James Hansen, violently opposed to burning organic fuels of ANY derivation, supports (if mutedly) nuclear power as probably preferable to large-scale solar/wind.
Agreed. Small scale solar makes sense in places where there is adequate sun and tying to the grid is prohibitively expensive. In Southern Baja for instance, electricity from the grid is @ 35 cents/KW, and that’s if there is even service to the edge of your property. In fact there are people who could connect to the grid and decline in favor of solar panels on the roof, due to the costs. A decent solar setup will cost about 10 grand.
Guarding the CAGW narrative against scientific inquiry is today’s version of the Spanish Inquisition. The progressives who have almost completed their task of pimping the mindless into slavery are now (inquisition) Church Police. Church Police in charge of energy issues, public education, culture, economies, health care, etc is not a desirable situation.
Perfect! (I need to scribble that down…)
Many fine products especially in wind are available to anyone to generate their own power, that are economically feasible without any government or utility handouts.
Then by all means go right ahead. As long as you’re financing your hobby on your own dime, then it’s not my concern.
I remember a couple years ago reading some comments from a small African rural medical clinic(perhaps Nigeria?) that the staff were complaining that due to the nature of the funding they had to use solar power. The complaints were there was not enough power to run the equipment,so no sterilzation of instruments or x-rays,and barely enough juice for lights. They were mad because they figured they were handed the dirty end of the stick because they were backwards Africans and not sophisticated whites who got real electric power,all the time.