So called investment in alternate energy by taxpayers support is not investment. It is theft. When you withdraw taxpayer dollars none of these so called alternate energies can stand on their own. Even Nuclear Power is a joke and a scam if looked at purely as an investment without the Billions in tax dollars Nuclear Power would not exist and it is not even green, It requires fossil fuel as well.
I’m not optimistic about fusion, either.
Yes, it is feasible, but it depends on the reactor configuration as well as the fuel.
The main focus is the tokamak, but it requires magnetic confinement. The toroidal geometry is dictated by physics as it’s the best way to enclose the plasma. However, the use of hydrogen isotopes will result in the production of neutrons and that will require that the reactor lining will need to be periodically replaced.
The big project right now is the ITER. It’s well over budget, behind schedule, and it’s not certain if it will approach breakeven conditions.
A better method is inertial electrostatic confinement fusion, particularly the polywell reactor. Work done by the group led by the late Dr. Robert Bussard showed that the method is not only feasible, but, by the use of proton-boron reactions, no neutrons will be produced and the only products will be heat and helium.
Unfortunately, that research was closed down when funding by the U. S. Navy was ended some dozen years ago.
If governments did provide insurance for Nuclear Power, no plants would ever get built.
It is the Canadian Taxpayer that pays for the Nuclear Power Industry Insurance and all waste disposal for the next hundreds/thousands of years for their waste disposal. And probably on the hook for decommissioning worn out Nuclear Plants that are highly toxic as well. The Brits are facing Billions in costs to decommission and dispose of the highly radioactive worn out plants. British costs at 6.1B pounds and they have barely began work. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/27/uk-nuclear-decommissioning-debacle-costs-government-100m
I believe you meant to say “If governments did NOT provide insurance for Nuclear Power”
Welcome to the world of limited liability, the reason for incorporation of most companies.
corrrect
Anything that cannot show a profit and has to be subsidised is never an investment. I do not want someone to tell me roads do not make a profit. We are talking about electricity generation.
In Ontario the government is changing the way we are billed for electricity. Currently we pay based on our electricity use. Soon, we will pay for use and delivery. In other words, even if you don’t use any electricity you will be billed a flat fee for the infrastructure that (theoretically) brings the electricity to your home.
Starting last year the hydro company (Milton Hydro) started trimming back trees in earnest under power lines. There had been several power outages during wind storms where trees fell onto and broke the lines. Someone with a brain must have realized the trees needed trimming. Many of the trees in my rural neighborhood are cedar, easily over 40 years old (which gives you an idea of when the last time was that they cleared the trees). Meanwhile, in town, crews were out planting trees under power lines.
Check your bill, you already pay for delivery. Through the winter I use very little electricity yet I am still billed for delivery. The delivery charge on my April bill exceeded the cost of the power by 44%.
I lied, I misread my numbers the delivery cost exceeded my electricity use by 54%
People need to understand that carbon baseload power generation can only be replaced by low-carbon baseload power. Baseload power must be available, reliable and dispatchable at their nameplate capacity least 85% of the time 24/7/365. Currently, the only replacements for coal that fit into that threshold and have lower CO2 emmissions are natgas, hydro and nuclear and wood based biofuel.
Theoretically, wind and solar can with battery storage but in reality it’s nearly impossible. Wind and solar can only reach about 20-30% of their nameplate capacity in the real world. You’d not only have to overbuild by 3 to 5 times to replace existing baseload power but enough battery storage to cover 2 to 3 days of electricity in case of sunless, windless days. The costs would be astronomical.
Google engineers tried and failed in the RE<C project. ""Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach," wrote Google's Ross Koningstein and David Fork in a piece published yesterday in IEEE's Spectrum."
Bill Gates ": “Do you guys on Wall Street have something in your desks that makes steel? Where is fertilizer, cement, plastic going to come from? Do planes fly through the sky because of some number you put in a spreadsheet?”
Manhattan Institute "Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh."
But politicians, woke activists, Canadian economists and journalists know better….obviously.
Batteries need cover only 2 – 3 days, LC? During an arctic cold front event in the dead of winter, the sunlight is weak and only 8 hours per day, and the wind doesn’t blow at all, and the typical deep freeze lasts a week or more.
And it can be much worse. I drove past an Alberta wind farm in early October after an early season blizzard, and only half were turning, all the rest had one, two or three of their blades ripped off. It was 8 months before they were repaired. There aren’t enough resources in the world to make batteries capable of bridging that gap.
You’re right but the 2-3 days is from data I remember. In reality, you’d need to 1)look at historical data for a specific location 2) find the longest stretch of cloudy and windless days 3) build enough battery storage to last that long.
Most utilities have peaking/emergency power (and imports)to cover high usage and backup from baseload outages to ensure 24/7/365 electricity coverage. You’d have to add that in to zero carbon wind and solar system costs as well. The constant fluctuations of wind and solar makes all of these things more difficult and more expensive.
Only in the theoretical world of academics is wind and solar even a remote possibility for use as both electricity and transportation. But the usual suspects in the chattering class believe it like it is gospel. As long as they have a couple op-eds to wave around like, you’ll never shake their faith.
The rule of thumb for renewable energy systems is, like you mentioned, 2 – 3 days storage. That, however, is the shortcoming of RE. Batteries have limits on charge and discharge rates, so it’s quite likely that a lot of excess energy that are produced by photovoltaic arrays and wind turbine generators is simply dumped.
That’s been the main problem that I’ve come up against in my RE research. Unless there’s a major breakthrough in how excess energy can be stored, as well as battery performance, RE systems will be suitable only for niche applications.
It is mind boggling the extent to which Maurice Strong’s 1948 dream of de industrializing the west world has taken such a strangle hold on much of our political leadership.
Earlier nuclear plants were not so much about electricity as breeding weapons material, nuclear scientists and engineers. An unintended consequence was the devastation of the coal unions in the UK. The latter is probably worth the 154 billion.
However! If you live in N.CA … and the leftists have seized control of the means of production (leftists now control PG&E and the CAPUC) … then there is a whole new way to FORCE consumers off fossil fuels … simply SHUT our power OFF. While on my vacation, PG&E SHUT OFF the power in my little town during a heat wave – TWICE!! No AC for YOU! (Spoken in the Soup Nazi voice). They claimed the EXTREME heat (of global warming -implied) of 102 deg.F caused equipment failure. Oh, puhleeze! Our temps here hit 100 deg.+ many times per year. Don’t tell me (as their public spokeshole told us) that your equipment wasn’t designed for such “EXTREME” temperatures.
So there is a whole new way for the leftists to FORCE us off fossil fuels. Just shut it off.
exactamundo.
watch THIS for the scoop on how enron functionaries would call the nuke plant personnel to drop the output, then make many millions off the spike in price etc etc: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016268/?ref_=nv_sr_8?ref_=nv_sr_8
killing old timers sweltering in their apartments in the process, no A/C etc.
oh my. he’s fcukin’ DEAD, how dat ‘appen?
yupper dupper whats fer supper. george dubya the uber hero on SDA in the day . . . . .
“No market for your oil”
But production keeps ballooning and price has been relatively stable. They wouldn’t be lying, would they?
Energy is not a dying industry. It is the core industry upon which all other industries are based. The fact that renewable energy has not replaced fossil fuel is for one simple reason. It cannot. Wind and solar are intermittent sources of energy. The world (as it exists today) needs continuous energy. Wind and solar will never replace fossil fuel. That is the unspoken truth of renewable energy.
God created for humans a bountiful, fruitful world. But He didn’t just give it to us. We had to discover the keys to it step by step.
We discovered the means to create fire. That allowed us to keep warm and cook food, which in turn vastly reduced diseases and increased life span.
We discovered agriculture. That made supply of grains much more plentiful and reliable. In turn that allowed us to discover animal husbandry. The abundance of food allowed us to create villages and have a stable life.
We were content with those discoveries for a long time, because we did not realize what else was in God’s providence.
But God also gave us brilliant minds. And in the western civilization we made use of them for science and technology. Clerk Maxwell unlocked the secrets of electromagnetism, and American engineers created machinery that could generate and deliver electrical power to far away places. This in turn powered the entire industrial revolution.
Revolution indeed! Travel, communication, power generation were all revolutionized. The last piece of the revolution was the discovery of oil for power generation. Using oil for energy revolutionized its availability. We in the western world have gotten used to having cheap energy and enjoying all its benefits. At a flip of a switch you can have all the light you want, and not dirty oil lamps, thanks to Maxwell and company, and the discovery of using oil and coal to create that energy.
All of these were due to human discovery … of the providence that God provided: fire, agriculture, electricity, oil (which ooze out of the earth at an appropriate rate if we can find and use it).
In the western world, we enjoy plenty and comfort as in no other period of human existence. The average American enjoys food that only used to grace a lord’s table. He has cheap electricity, clean running water, affordable modes of travel, enjoys medical advances not available previously so the life span is dramatically increased.
And yet there are those who have grown so blase in their comfortable lives they begin to question the reasons for that comfort. They claim fire is bad. They claim agriculture is bad, especially grains modified to improve production. They claim animal husbandry (especially cattle) is bad. They claim electrical generation from coal and oil is bad. They claim gasoline to power cars is bad. They claim to want to return to nature. I have no idea how far back. If even agriculture is bad, I guess they want to return to living in caves and foraging for food. Even then, I suspect they still would need fire to survive.
How absurd can they be! And how absurd they even garner not inconsiderable number of followers.
“wind and solar are getting cheaper, their costs are falling”.
FOR THE LOV OF GOD, CAN YOU STOP POSTING CULT PROPAGANDA???????????
Been hearing that for what, 20 years now? “solar is getting cheaper everyday”. The fecking lying liars who tell these lies are really annoying.
Building wind and solar MAY get cheaper but maintaining them will get more and more expensive until critical components wear to failure with nothing left but to junk & replace everything and re-start the economic death dance once again. The people that say solar and wind power are getting “cheaper” are being very selective and specific. If total cost is used I doubt very much that there have been any competitive gains by renewables…but admitting that defeats the point of writing all that cult propaganda that so many eco-disciples are hanging their edible hats on.
Peter Tertzakian is someone trying really hard to sound like the cool eco-kids and has tried hard to write off the oil and gas industry these past few years but alas can’t totally ignore the hard facts that have invalidated his green industry predictions. Saying it doesn’t make it so.
If the cost of solar is falling … it’s because the Chinese are dumping their defective panels on the world market … below cost. However … I believe MY President’s tariffs has reversed the trend. Welcome back from the dead, Solyndra!
Last time I looked, in Germany the wholesale price of electricity was low but the retail price was very high. They have to give away excess green power at below the production cost, give subsidized prices to heavy use manufacturers and then charge other consumers (regular people and small businesses) incredibly high prices to recoup the costs of subsidies to renewable energy and manufacturers. This is almost entirely due to it’s reliance on renewable energy. The kicker:
Mike Shellenberger Apr 26
“Germany will have spent $580B on renewables by 2025 — & increased electricity prices 50% —without having reduced emissions”
That’s what happens when you let politicians, academics, economists and environmental activists control your energy policy.
Kevin I will say it once more with emphasis, SOLAR PANELS AND WIND TURBINES CANNOT BE BUILT WITHOUT FOSSILE FUELS AND MINING. I am quite sure these that there are more stupid people than intelligent.
We are one massive power failure away from waking up. By pushing for reliance on unreliable renewable energy sources over reliable coal or gas power generation, we are adding to the fragility of the whole power grid. And increasing the probability of a massive failure.
A massive blackout left tens of millions of people without electricity in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay on Sunday. The Argentine president called it an “unprecedented” failure in the countries’ interconnected power grid.
Lets hope it does not happen here in the dead of winter.
allow me to put it all in a nutshell:
in Canaduh, it is vastly more impordand to shield the sensitive frum huttt fewwings than to preserve the Constitution Right our American neighbors have to BITCH INCESSANTLY ABOUT THE CRAP THAT COMES DOWN THE PIKE AND SPILLS ALL OVER THE FLOOR.
all under the fundamental right to merely express an honest opinion.
but once agin the LIEberals resort to NAZI-LIKE TACTICS. just my opinion. feel free to express your opinion whilst you can.
ya better hurry.
“It gets worse. Wind turbines, apart from the fibreglass blades, are made mostly of steel, with concrete bases. They need about 200 times as much material per unit of capacity as a modern combined cycle gas turbine. Steel is made with coal, not just to provide the heat for smelting ore, but to supply the carbon in the alloy. Cement is also often made using coal. The machinery of ‘clean’ renewables is the output of the fossil fuel economy, and largely the coal economy.
A two-megawatt wind turbine weighs about 250 tonnes, including the tower, nacelle, rotor and blades. Globally, it takes about half a tonne of coal to make a tonne of steel. Add another 25 tonnes of coal for making the cement and you’re talking 150 tonnes of coal per turbine. Now if we are to build 350,000 wind turbines a year (or a smaller number of bigger ones), just to keep up with increasing energy demand, that will require 50 million tonnes of coal a year. That’s about half the EU’s hard coal–mining output.
Forgive me if you have heard this before, but I have a commercial interest in coal. Now it appears that the black stuff also gives me a commercial interest in ‘clean’, green wind power.”
So called investment in alternate energy by taxpayers support is not investment. It is theft. When you withdraw taxpayer dollars none of these so called alternate energies can stand on their own. Even Nuclear Power is a joke and a scam if looked at purely as an investment without the Billions in tax dollars Nuclear Power would not exist and it is not even green, It requires fossil fuel as well.
I’m not optimistic about fusion, either.
Yes, it is feasible, but it depends on the reactor configuration as well as the fuel.
The main focus is the tokamak, but it requires magnetic confinement. The toroidal geometry is dictated by physics as it’s the best way to enclose the plasma. However, the use of hydrogen isotopes will result in the production of neutrons and that will require that the reactor lining will need to be periodically replaced.
The big project right now is the ITER. It’s well over budget, behind schedule, and it’s not certain if it will approach breakeven conditions.
A better method is inertial electrostatic confinement fusion, particularly the polywell reactor. Work done by the group led by the late Dr. Robert Bussard showed that the method is not only feasible, but, by the use of proton-boron reactions, no neutrons will be produced and the only products will be heat and helium.
Unfortunately, that research was closed down when funding by the U. S. Navy was ended some dozen years ago.
If governments did provide insurance for Nuclear Power, no plants would ever get built.
It is the Canadian Taxpayer that pays for the Nuclear Power Industry Insurance and all waste disposal for the next hundreds/thousands of years for their waste disposal. And probably on the hook for decommissioning worn out Nuclear Plants that are highly toxic as well. The Brits are facing Billions in costs to decommission and dispose of the highly radioactive worn out plants. British costs at 6.1B pounds and they have barely began work. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/27/uk-nuclear-decommissioning-debacle-costs-government-100m
I believe you meant to say “If governments did NOT provide insurance for Nuclear Power”
Welcome to the world of limited liability, the reason for incorporation of most companies.
corrrect
Anything that cannot show a profit and has to be subsidised is never an investment. I do not want someone to tell me roads do not make a profit. We are talking about electricity generation.
In Ontario the government is changing the way we are billed for electricity. Currently we pay based on our electricity use. Soon, we will pay for use and delivery. In other words, even if you don’t use any electricity you will be billed a flat fee for the infrastructure that (theoretically) brings the electricity to your home.
Starting last year the hydro company (Milton Hydro) started trimming back trees in earnest under power lines. There had been several power outages during wind storms where trees fell onto and broke the lines. Someone with a brain must have realized the trees needed trimming. Many of the trees in my rural neighborhood are cedar, easily over 40 years old (which gives you an idea of when the last time was that they cleared the trees). Meanwhile, in town, crews were out planting trees under power lines.
Check your bill, you already pay for delivery. Through the winter I use very little electricity yet I am still billed for delivery. The delivery charge on my April bill exceeded the cost of the power by 44%.
I lied, I misread my numbers the delivery cost exceeded my electricity use by 54%
UK’s Cleanup costs estimated at 154B and will take 120 years to complete the program. All on the back of the taxpayer. So the actual cost is probably in the Trillions given that it is government controlled and over a 120 year period. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-UK-nuclear-clean-up-cost-estimate-dips-to-154-billion-15071602.html
People need to understand that carbon baseload power generation can only be replaced by low-carbon baseload power. Baseload power must be available, reliable and dispatchable at their nameplate capacity least 85% of the time 24/7/365. Currently, the only replacements for coal that fit into that threshold and have lower CO2 emmissions are natgas, hydro and nuclear and wood based biofuel.
Theoretically, wind and solar can with battery storage but in reality it’s nearly impossible. Wind and solar can only reach about 20-30% of their nameplate capacity in the real world. You’d not only have to overbuild by 3 to 5 times to replace existing baseload power but enough battery storage to cover 2 to 3 days of electricity in case of sunless, windless days. The costs would be astronomical.
Google engineers tried and failed in the RE<C project. ""Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach," wrote Google's Ross Koningstein and David Fork in a piece published yesterday in IEEE's Spectrum."
Bill Gates ": “Do you guys on Wall Street have something in your desks that makes steel? Where is fertilizer, cement, plastic going to come from? Do planes fly through the sky because of some number you put in a spreadsheet?”
Manhattan Institute "Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh."
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible
But politicians, woke activists, Canadian economists and journalists know better….obviously.
Batteries need cover only 2 – 3 days, LC? During an arctic cold front event in the dead of winter, the sunlight is weak and only 8 hours per day, and the wind doesn’t blow at all, and the typical deep freeze lasts a week or more.
And it can be much worse. I drove past an Alberta wind farm in early October after an early season blizzard, and only half were turning, all the rest had one, two or three of their blades ripped off. It was 8 months before they were repaired. There aren’t enough resources in the world to make batteries capable of bridging that gap.
You’re right but the 2-3 days is from data I remember. In reality, you’d need to 1)look at historical data for a specific location 2) find the longest stretch of cloudy and windless days 3) build enough battery storage to last that long.
Most utilities have peaking/emergency power (and imports)to cover high usage and backup from baseload outages to ensure 24/7/365 electricity coverage. You’d have to add that in to zero carbon wind and solar system costs as well. The constant fluctuations of wind and solar makes all of these things more difficult and more expensive.
Only in the theoretical world of academics is wind and solar even a remote possibility for use as both electricity and transportation. But the usual suspects in the chattering class believe it like it is gospel. As long as they have a couple op-eds to wave around like, you’ll never shake their faith.
The rule of thumb for renewable energy systems is, like you mentioned, 2 – 3 days storage. That, however, is the shortcoming of RE. Batteries have limits on charge and discharge rates, so it’s quite likely that a lot of excess energy that are produced by photovoltaic arrays and wind turbine generators is simply dumped.
That’s been the main problem that I’ve come up against in my RE research. Unless there’s a major breakthrough in how excess energy can be stored, as well as battery performance, RE systems will be suitable only for niche applications.
It is mind boggling the extent to which Maurice Strong’s 1948 dream of de industrializing the west world has taken such a strangle hold on much of our political leadership.
Earlier nuclear plants were not so much about electricity as breeding weapons material, nuclear scientists and engineers. An unintended consequence was the devastation of the coal unions in the UK. The latter is probably worth the 154 billion.
https://youtu.be/2U9HVIFt2GE
However! If you live in N.CA … and the leftists have seized control of the means of production (leftists now control PG&E and the CAPUC) … then there is a whole new way to FORCE consumers off fossil fuels … simply SHUT our power OFF. While on my vacation, PG&E SHUT OFF the power in my little town during a heat wave – TWICE!! No AC for YOU! (Spoken in the Soup Nazi voice). They claimed the EXTREME heat (of global warming -implied) of 102 deg.F caused equipment failure. Oh, puhleeze! Our temps here hit 100 deg.+ many times per year. Don’t tell me (as their public spokeshole told us) that your equipment wasn’t designed for such “EXTREME” temperatures.
So there is a whole new way for the leftists to FORCE us off fossil fuels. Just shut it off.
exactamundo.
watch THIS for the scoop on how enron functionaries would call the nuke plant personnel to drop the output, then make many millions off the spike in price etc etc:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016268/?ref_=nv_sr_8?ref_=nv_sr_8
killing old timers sweltering in their apartments in the process, no A/C etc.
aaaaaand doan fergit, george dubya [tried to] hand pick this killer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay
for secretary of energy.
oh my. he’s fcukin’ DEAD, how dat ‘appen?
yupper dupper whats fer supper. george dubya the uber hero on SDA in the day . . . . .
“No market for your oil”
But production keeps ballooning and price has been relatively stable. They wouldn’t be lying, would they?
Energy is not a dying industry. It is the core industry upon which all other industries are based. The fact that renewable energy has not replaced fossil fuel is for one simple reason. It cannot. Wind and solar are intermittent sources of energy. The world (as it exists today) needs continuous energy. Wind and solar will never replace fossil fuel. That is the unspoken truth of renewable energy.
God created for humans a bountiful, fruitful world. But He didn’t just give it to us. We had to discover the keys to it step by step.
We discovered the means to create fire. That allowed us to keep warm and cook food, which in turn vastly reduced diseases and increased life span.
We discovered agriculture. That made supply of grains much more plentiful and reliable. In turn that allowed us to discover animal husbandry. The abundance of food allowed us to create villages and have a stable life.
We were content with those discoveries for a long time, because we did not realize what else was in God’s providence.
But God also gave us brilliant minds. And in the western civilization we made use of them for science and technology. Clerk Maxwell unlocked the secrets of electromagnetism, and American engineers created machinery that could generate and deliver electrical power to far away places. This in turn powered the entire industrial revolution.
Revolution indeed! Travel, communication, power generation were all revolutionized. The last piece of the revolution was the discovery of oil for power generation. Using oil for energy revolutionized its availability. We in the western world have gotten used to having cheap energy and enjoying all its benefits. At a flip of a switch you can have all the light you want, and not dirty oil lamps, thanks to Maxwell and company, and the discovery of using oil and coal to create that energy.
All of these were due to human discovery … of the providence that God provided: fire, agriculture, electricity, oil (which ooze out of the earth at an appropriate rate if we can find and use it).
In the western world, we enjoy plenty and comfort as in no other period of human existence. The average American enjoys food that only used to grace a lord’s table. He has cheap electricity, clean running water, affordable modes of travel, enjoys medical advances not available previously so the life span is dramatically increased.
And yet there are those who have grown so blase in their comfortable lives they begin to question the reasons for that comfort. They claim fire is bad. They claim agriculture is bad, especially grains modified to improve production. They claim animal husbandry (especially cattle) is bad. They claim electrical generation from coal and oil is bad. They claim gasoline to power cars is bad. They claim to want to return to nature. I have no idea how far back. If even agriculture is bad, I guess they want to return to living in caves and foraging for food. Even then, I suspect they still would need fire to survive.
How absurd can they be! And how absurd they even garner not inconsiderable number of followers.
“wind and solar are getting cheaper, their costs are falling”.
FOR THE LOV OF GOD, CAN YOU STOP POSTING CULT PROPAGANDA???????????
Been hearing that for what, 20 years now? “solar is getting cheaper everyday”. The fecking lying liars who tell these lies are really annoying.
Building wind and solar MAY get cheaper but maintaining them will get more and more expensive until critical components wear to failure with nothing left but to junk & replace everything and re-start the economic death dance once again. The people that say solar and wind power are getting “cheaper” are being very selective and specific. If total cost is used I doubt very much that there have been any competitive gains by renewables…but admitting that defeats the point of writing all that cult propaganda that so many eco-disciples are hanging their edible hats on.
Peter Tertzakian is someone trying really hard to sound like the cool eco-kids and has tried hard to write off the oil and gas industry these past few years but alas can’t totally ignore the hard facts that have invalidated his green industry predictions. Saying it doesn’t make it so.
If the cost of solar is falling … it’s because the Chinese are dumping their defective panels on the world market … below cost. However … I believe MY President’s tariffs has reversed the trend. Welcome back from the dead, Solyndra!
Last time I looked, in Germany the wholesale price of electricity was low but the retail price was very high. They have to give away excess green power at below the production cost, give subsidized prices to heavy use manufacturers and then charge other consumers (regular people and small businesses) incredibly high prices to recoup the costs of subsidies to renewable energy and manufacturers. This is almost entirely due to it’s reliance on renewable energy. The kicker:
Mike Shellenberger Apr 26
“Germany will have spent $580B on renewables by 2025 — & increased electricity prices 50% —without having reduced emissions”
That’s what happens when you let politicians, academics, economists and environmental activists control your energy policy.
https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/
Kevin I will say it once more with emphasis, SOLAR PANELS AND WIND TURBINES CANNOT BE BUILT WITHOUT FOSSILE FUELS AND MINING. I am quite sure these that there are more stupid people than intelligent.
We are one massive power failure away from waking up. By pushing for reliance on unreliable renewable energy sources over reliable coal or gas power generation, we are adding to the fragility of the whole power grid. And increasing the probability of a massive failure.
Crippling blackout hits tens of millions in South America
Lets hope it does not happen here in the dead of winter.
allow me to put it all in a nutshell:
in Canaduh, it is vastly more impordand to shield the sensitive frum huttt fewwings than to preserve the Constitution Right our American neighbors have to BITCH INCESSANTLY ABOUT THE CRAP THAT COMES DOWN THE PIKE AND SPILLS ALL OVER THE FLOOR.
all under the fundamental right to merely express an honest opinion.
but once agin the LIEberals resort to NAZI-LIKE TACTICS. just my opinion. feel free to express your opinion whilst you can.
ya better hurry.
“It gets worse. Wind turbines, apart from the fibreglass blades, are made mostly of steel, with concrete bases. They need about 200 times as much material per unit of capacity as a modern combined cycle gas turbine. Steel is made with coal, not just to provide the heat for smelting ore, but to supply the carbon in the alloy. Cement is also often made using coal. The machinery of ‘clean’ renewables is the output of the fossil fuel economy, and largely the coal economy.
A two-megawatt wind turbine weighs about 250 tonnes, including the tower, nacelle, rotor and blades. Globally, it takes about half a tonne of coal to make a tonne of steel. Add another 25 tonnes of coal for making the cement and you’re talking 150 tonnes of coal per turbine. Now if we are to build 350,000 wind turbines a year (or a smaller number of bigger ones), just to keep up with increasing energy demand, that will require 50 million tonnes of coal a year. That’s about half the EU’s hard coal–mining output.
Forgive me if you have heard this before, but I have a commercial interest in coal. Now it appears that the black stuff also gives me a commercial interest in ‘clean’, green wind power.”
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/