At Forbes;
Solar panels and wind turbines are making electricity significantly more expensive, a major new study by a team of economists from the University of Chicago finds.
Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) “significantly increase average retail electricity prices, with prices increasing by 11% (1.3 cents per kWh) seven years after the policy’s passage into law and 17% (2 cents per kWh) twelve years afterward,” the economists write.
The study, which has yet to go through peer-review, was done by Michael Greenstone, Richard McDowell, and Ishan Nath. It compared states with and without an RPS. It did so using what the economists say is “the most comprehensive state-level dataset ever compiled” which covered 1990 to 2015.
The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: “All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy,” they write.
Rex Murphy at the National Post website has a great story on the global warming scam today.
Yes, the green energy they giveaway for free to other provinces and countries is made up by charging domestic customers higher prices. Low wholesale prices, high retail prices.
The most accurate way to think of wind and solar is to see them as a parasite on the electricity system. As long as the host (baseload power) stays healthy, the parasite (variable renewable energy) has a manageable negative effect so the electricity system can maintain its core function of reliable, affordable power.
As the number of parasites increase, baseload power becomes unhealthy and electricity becomes less affordable and less reliable. That’s what’s happening. Low wholesale prices due to variable wind and solar is negatively affecting baseload profitability. High retail prices are hurting households and businesses.
Remember baseload power has no use for the parasitical wind and solar but wind and solar absolutely require baseload power to maintain a stable power supply. If every wind and solar installation in Canada shut down tomorrow there would be little affect because those sources are 100% backed up by baseload power. If baseload power shut down, well, see what happened during the ice storm in 1998. And…you can’t use wind and solar for black starts after a complete system outage.
Wind and solar…my candidate for the most useless government policy of the 21st century.
Not only that, but as wind and solar increases, you need to make ‘room’ so that when it’s sunny and windy, they can operate at maximum available capacity. In some jurisdictions, this means permanently shutting off nuclear capacity which can’t be turned on and off when the it’s cloudy or the wind dies down. This means more capacity of natural gas for back up, and in the end, a net increase of CO2 emissions compared to when the nukes were allowed to go all out. They’ve actually shot themselves in the a$$. This is starting to happen in Ontario.
“selling at a loss but making it up on volume.”
Only government could screw up producing electricity. It used to be considered an investment safe enough for widows and orphans, not anymore.
Ice storms ? Just put on another sweater! That’s what I learned from Jimmy Carter. I wonder what temp he keeps his home(s) now that he is in his 90’s?
Just like the people of Flint Michigan; they keep voting for it.
Flint Michigan keeps voting for lead in their drinking water. No sympathy.
Canada keeps voting for higher electricity prices. No sympathy.
The harm that so called renewables have inflicted on the economies of western nations has been nothing short of a Cat 5 disaster. Communities are regressing, job prospects and living standards are falling everywhere. This gigantic tire fire isn’t something that all of a sudden showed up this spring for Forbes to author a cutting edge expose. The hyper expensiveness and unreliability of renewables has been known about for many years. Ontario’s own experiences have be a super sized in-your-face disaster: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/blogs/high-cost-of-renewables-a-made-in-ontario-problem . I read one study where its estimated 37,000 Ontario homes paid at least 30% of their household income for electricity and there were many stories about people having to choose between power or eating. If there was any integrity and character in Canada’s media organizations their boots would have been put to kicking at this eco-madness long ago.
More inconvenient facts:
-the US had big, if not the biggest, CO2 emissions reductions simply by moving from coal to gas.
-those CO2 reductions are much bigger than BC’s carbon tax (which has done next to nothing). And the CT didn’t remain revenue neutral. And the CT isn’t replacing costly regulations and subsidies. And Alberta’s carbon tax didn’t get any concessions or a social license. Canadian economists were wrong on pretty much everything about the CT.
– RE<C Google engineers found that wind (and solar?) cannot displace CO2 emissions at all because their CO2 footprint from manufacturing and installation is greater than their lifetime reduction of CO2 from displacing conventional electricity generation.
If Canadians want to reduce CO2 rapidly, we could just shut down 3/4 of our governments. They don’t do anything productive anyway.
Lorenzo: EXACTLY!! Thanks for saying it!
That is the best comment yet!!! Good one, I love it.
That 11%-17% number seems low. For starters here in Ontario the Liberals paid the windfans 13.8 cents per kw-hr and the feds topped that up with another 1.2 cents. Per the Forbes article there are all these other costs of having wind generation embedded in the power grid, i.e., 5-10 cents on top of what the windfarms get paid .
In the early days the windfarms were guaranteed capacity on the transmission lines and the nukes producing power at half the price were derated to make room for the 20% efficient windturbines ( backed up by natural gas power plants). Cycling nukes per how the wind blows isn’t good for nukes so now the nukes chug along and if too much wind is blowing or demand is low, the windturbines get idled but are still paid as if they were producing power.
FYI in Ontario…The estimated prices paid to each energy source per megawatt hour (MWh) from Jan. 1-Aug. 31, 2016, includes solar, $424; natural gas, $213; wind, $122; nuclear, $66; and hydro, $48. This has led to an estimated average residential price for electricity of $110/MWh. Ontario hydro users also pay for transmission/distribution which can run as much or more that the cost of the electricity consumed.
People talk wind power being green but really windpower has to be backed up by other sources of generation for 70-80% of its rated capacity -To back up the windturbines, Ontario located polluting gas fired power plants in the suburbs of big cities adding to pollution in the cities.
So looking forward to Sheer meeting the Paris commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by installing more renewables. /S
Let’s see what all that “renewable” power gives Ontario right now:
http://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data
Hourly Output by Fuel Type at 1:00 p.m. EST
Nuclear 12,112 MW
Hydro 3,989 MW
Gas 231 MW
Wind 618 MW
Solar 272 MW
Biofuel 58 MW
I think we should have a deal: if you are a bureaucrat, activist or politician who wants to go the renewable route, then your entire income and pension should be based on this “investment”.
I mean, don’t they tell us that we simply can’t lose with renewables? Wave of the future, job creators, etc.
Something you no longer see on IESO home page.
http://webroots.ca/static/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricity.html
Who’s gonna break the news to Ireland?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/21/climate-emergency-ireland-set-to-ban-private-cars-while-planning-mass-third-world-migration/
It’s about vibrant, populated, city centres …
Yep … and here’s what is meant by “vibrant” …
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8104412/london-stabbings-2019-knife-crime-statistics/
It’s a feature not a bug.
Renewable energy is a regressive tax on the poor and middle class. That is all. The ultra wealthy high tech employees here in the SF Bay Area don’t give a rats ass about how much higher their PG&E bills rise if it is in the name of “cleaning the planet”. Their economic survival is not tied to rising energy prices, so they could care less. As a result, PG&E and the CAPUC have been slowly increasing energy prices year after year … and now even boldly say they’ll shut OFF your power anytime they want. This is NOT the USA I was born into. Shameful.
If consumers paid 125.2 Billion more than Normal…Who got the Money? Al Gore, Slim Pickens with BU power systems…..Who is holding the 2T paper debt on time limited infrastructure?
What incompetent fool created the Project “Mission Statement” and missed 90% of the consequences… Maybe the hidden “Mission Statement” was destroying Capitalistic systems, and that is why they have no defined Climate results measurement procedures, besides the role of a Probability stack built on Probability BS .. YES it would destroy wealth until the starving clued in & revolted…
JMHO
Search up green investment funds etc. Whole industry set up to rent seek on green investments.
The windfans produce “carbon offsets” that are part of the carbon credit/carbon offset trading scam.
e.g. The Feds buy carbon offsets from the windfarms to offset the carbon emitted by Great Leader flying around.
“The wind energy company benefits because the carbon offsets it sells make such projects more economically viable. ”
https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/carbon-offsets/
Not exactly. Payback on a windfarm is 5 years thanks to generous government power contracts and capital write-offs.
The Libs set the game up & the Cons played along.
I am going to ask the same question that I ask constantly. How do your build solar panels and wind turbines without fossil fuels and mining. Are all the green freaks so stupid that do not realize that what they want is not “green” in the sense that they think it is? I know that the IQ of the average North American has dropped significantly but holy moley has it dropped this far?
The average Canadian is stupid. Half are even dumber than that ….
channeling George Carlin?
So what happens if we replace fossil fuels with expensive wind and solar?
We get brown outs, black outs, and much higher electricity costs.
AND government will have to raise taxes to replace the tax revenue lost from people reducing/eliminating fossil fuels.
Exactly. Ontario had a program to get people to cut back on electricity use. People did and the revenue at the province owned electrical utility dropped. So they made us pay more for electricity to make up for the lost revenue.