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.

Solar and Wind Power Losing Worldwide Support: – “Despite years of favorable public policy, including renewable power mandates and billions in subsidies, solar power still produces only about 0.2 percent of the nation’s electricity. The National Conference of State Legislatures says power from most large, utility-scaled solar installations still costs about 35 percent more than electricity from natural gas plants; many other experts estimate the levelized cost is even higher.”

Going green, turning blue;

“One thousand bucks is just insane, it’s more than my paycheque in a week by a few hundred bucks,” Joe Hebert said Tuesday of the sky-high electric bills that are arriving in this neighbourhood formerly known as The Villages, where 900 families have no choice but to heat their homes electrically.
“We just don’t know what to do,” Hebert said of the monthly bills that are hundreds of dollars higher than in previous winters due to rising electric rates and the coldest temperatures in 36 years.
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They’ve already put extra insulation in the attic of their two-storey home that totals about 1,000 square feet. They don’t heat their basement and turn off the heat entirely overnight, meaning the wakeup temperature is around 12C. Hebert and his neighbours say the conservation measures suggested, such as putting in new windows and doors, don’t seem to help much.

h/t kcdist