The European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), the main lobby group for renewable energy in the European Union, has gone into voluntary liquidation. This development will leave the sector without a main co-ordinator for lobbying at a time when the European Commission has proposed to scrap nationally binding renewable energy targets after 2020.
EREC, which operated as a non-profit organisation, had incurred major debts from its lease on the ‘Renewable Energy House’ in Brussels, which also hosted other renewable energy associations.
Not a sustainable industry, I’d say.
House of Cards – and so many more to come…
Good.
Everything with a green stamp of approval seems to be defective or inefficient, including the politicians that champion the green cause.
“Everything with a green stamp of approval seems to be defective or inefficient, including the politicians that champion the green cause. ”
No Sir! Not here in Ontario! You know…that place with the sophisticated-and-oh-so-educated voters!
I mean, hydro rates are going up a minimum of 42 percent in the next 4 years, but that’s a small price to pay for greenness, isn’t it? And I know that tens of thousands of acres of forest and scrub that used to shelter birds and bees and other critters have been cleared to grow corn for ethanol, but that’s fine too, isn’t it?
Good!
To paraphrase a quote from a monster from history, “Into the dustbin of history for you”.
If people want green energy then they can buy it themselves, NO government subsidies. Those are only for industries that pay taxes into the economy.
The market always always ALWAYS wins
@Cal2…as does Darwin, thankfully!
YeS , I’m a believer in evolution ,and not for the reasons people might expect .
As the owner of a prostate , there is no way that was planned well, I mean wtf, bad access for something with a high failure rate
Ps. At 59. I am fine
use it or lose it
You are going to see a lot more of this!
If any government has to bribe companies to make a product, or
customers to buy that product, sooner or later, bad things
are going to happen.
If the government subsidizes companies to build inferior
power generators with OPM (Other People’s Money,) bad things
are going to happen.
Not a single one of these “Green technologies” are as efficient
as that which came before;
Electric cars.
Hybrid cars.
Photo voltaic power plants.
Solar plants.
Windmills (AKA bird-shredders.)
CoGeneration came close, but government killed it! (North of
Moscow, you can look this up on the Internet, but you will not
understand it.)
This is why all of these hair brained schemes are going to fail:
The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money – Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain
What part of “If people want green energy then they can buy it themselves, NO government subsidies.” was so difficult to grasp?
Why should you care how people choose to spend THEIR money? Do people tell you how to spend yours?
PV solar works just fine for people living off-grid.
We live in a society where people are free to choose how they spend their money.
I am going to provide a little background:
As a former Millwright, I spent lot of time working in oil
refineries. Insane dickheads created a rule regarding seal
emissions in California. Rule 1173 demanded zero emissions
from gaskets, “O” rings and pump shaft seals.
This created a lot of work in my industry retrofitting pumps
with mechanical seals, after that not so much!
The EPA went on a crusade against the use of industrial engines.
Refineries work to maximize efficiencies. If one process
creates heat, the heat is used to make steam to power turbines,
single and double acting piston pumps. Nothing is wasted.
I worked 80+ to 90+ hour work weeks to build a Clark HRA-8
engine for a refinery in the So. Cal area. This was the
busiest 4 weeks of my life! 18′ long straight 8 engine
weighing 95,000 pounds when we rolled it out of our shop.
Industrial engines served a purpose. They burned off waste
gasses that now have to be dealt with in much more expensive
ways. This Clark engine had (2) 20″ scavenging air cylinders
(Piston turbo chargers) and three double acting gas cylinders.
I was very busy for several years removing the power cylinders
from these engines and installing multi-million dollar AC
synchronous motors, and performing precision alignments.
California’s insane energy policies killed cogeneration. Crank
up a 747 engine driven by natural gas. Use the turbine to
run a 35mw generator. Then use the exhaust heat in your
process. The power you pump into the grid is a bonus!
This concept was so popular that every refinery in California
adopted it. So did every paper mill and major industry in the
state. Even mid sized entities jumped on the bandwagon. A
hospital in Santa Monica, a dairy in Downey, etc.
The state was not stupid. After imposing hundreds of millions
of dollars of costs on oil refineries, they were the only
industry exempt from the regulations that killed the industry!
If North of Rangoon has his way, we will all be living a
prehistoric lifestyle! No industry, no science, no medicine,
no technology, no individuality, no freedom, no liberty.
This is the agenda of the environmental left!
Anyone who assumes I’m a champion of the ‘environmental left’ doesn’t know how to read for comprehension and jumps to unfounded conclusions about people they don’t know, merely to flog their agenda.
Try to be an objective adult, it makes for much better discourse.
Arguing with idiots is a waste of time. Photo Voltaics is one
of the most expensive and least efficient forms of energy
there is!
If the government were not subsidizing it, it would not exist!
Let us start with the fact that the proponents of solar energy
are clueless as to the law of inverse squares.
In order to provide enough power to deal with the energy
requirements for the city of New York, you would need an array
larger than the city itself.
This gets even better!
Solar energy is limited by the fact that the Sun does not shine
24 hours a day. At best, the Sun only shines 12 hours a day.
Subtract from this any overcast day. Now, consider the fact that
peak production is only a fraction of the maybe 6 hours that
remain.
Anyone who believes in the viability of photo voltaics is a
scientific illiterate!
Do we now begin to debate the number of Unicorn farts it takes
to produce a megawatt of energy? I actually worked in several
industries that produced millions of megawatts of energy,
something that the Internet Troll could never understand.
Given the inefficiencies, transmission loses, heat losses,
the bribes to build, or buy a Volt or Tesla, the costs to power
your home, North of Beijing, would cost you more than $100,000.
It’s been a long winter…
I do agree with north of 60 that if you live off the grid with few other affordable alternatives, solar power is a acceptable option if one is happy with minimal efficiency in a typical Canadian climate. I’ve noticed that north is a dependable regular on SDA in all weather conditions so his elect. system must be top of the line and since he didn’t build it with govt. subsidies he makes a good case for dependable power where other options are elusive. I live on the grid but in a remote area and power reliability can be spotty. For me a 3500 watt generator runs the essentials for approx. 6 dollars a day (16 hrs) and can be a blessing as it’s not unusual to have hydro down for 4 or 5 days after a good wind storm. City thinking seldom works in rural areas but we all do what works best for us without even thinking of government subsidies. On a individual basis, green can be a good thing. As a solution for the masses, it’s a disaster.
I’m compelled to remind readers that industries / corporations don’t actually “pay” any taxes – however usurious the rate.
The costs of business are inevitably passed on to the consumer.
Mulcair is blowing smoke when he says otherwise.
“Pay taxes into the economy”
I think you need to learn some basic economics.