Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Now they’re talking in $trillions, the mere $billions in wind and solar subsidies pocketed so far sounds like chump change.
When we’re talking about subsidies to wind and solar, we are including all the thoroughly unnecessary associated costs, like new pumped-hydro schemes; giant lithium-ion batteries; additional fast-start peaking plants (either diesel or gas); and tens of thousands of kilometres of additional transmission lines to bring occasional power from far-flung places to market. And that’s why the total cost of what taxpayers and power consumers are required to stump up for the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ is being spoken about in terms of multiple $trillions.
As Alan Moran explains below, the wind and solar industries’ demand for subsidies is simply insatiable. However, power consumers and taxpayers are unlikely to keep stumping up the amounts now being demanded by those profiting from the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.
Retrieving Australia’s energy policy disaster Spectator Australia Alan Moran 29 February 2024
Australian governments are in denial but it’s clear that the great green revolution they planned for energy supply has failed abysmally. Supply has become precarious and electricity prices to households and commercial users alike are skyrocketing. This is threatening the ongoing viability of industries like nickel and aluminium smelting where energy accounts for a third of the costs.
Rather than abandoning the folly of an energy policy dictated by ideology and bereft of industry knowledge, governments are responding with ever more market interventions. These attempts to remedy the adverse effects of the interventions already in place will aggravate the economic injuries.
Federal and state government measures impose a cost on energy customers of $10 billion per year. These measures include regulations plus direct spending on wind/solar and the costs of system management, transmission, and battery support to counter their poor reliability.
New programs are constantly being announced. But anyone who thinks the government can accurately forecast the costs of these should recall that its original announcement to convert the Snowy system into a pumped hydro storage had a price tag of an estimated $2 billion – that has now grown to $20 billion.
Among Canberra’s more recent new initiatives is the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS), which is to provide further direct assistance to wind and solar and for battery storage to combat the shortcomings of those electricity generation sources. The government said this policy would ‘unleash’ $10 billion of investment. Even renewable-friendly voices suggest the CIS will cost the taxpayer over $30 billion out of a $50 billion national spend. Others estimate that a minimum of 7 days of storage is required and that the forced abandonment of the existing coal facilities will require at least 3,600 GWh of battery storage at a cost of $1,800 billion ($500M per GWh) and that would need replacement every 10 years.
Placing these numbers in perspective, replacing Australia’s 21 gigawatts of existing coal plant – which supplies over 60 per cent of electricity – would cost $3 billion per gigawatt or $63 billion with no need for battery backup or additional transmission. The existing coal plant actually provides some 13,000 GWh of storage.
A previously unanticipated subsidy is the compensation to coal generators as a result of the Ukraine War’s effect on global energy prices.
Compensation for generators’ additional coal cost is estimated at $1.85 billion. In previous years, reimbursing such costs would have been out of the question. Moreover, any additional costs would have been modest until recently. This is because coal generators were (and mainly remain) co-located with coal mines. Victorian brown coal is non-transportable and, being abundant, its costs remain insulated from international energy prices. But NSW and Queensland black coal used by Australian generators is also largely untradeable as it is mainly of a lower quality than that required by overseas generators.
Moreover, most generators were either commonly owned or closely contracted to their coal source. Those using coal that may have export potential are Eraring and Mount Piper in NSW and Gladstone in Queensland. Gladstone is half-owned by Rio Tinto which, seemingly under pressure from Woke politicians and shareholders, sold its mines. Rio declared that this delivers ‘exceptional value to our shareholders’ and it would surely be double-dipping if it also received compensation for what, in retrospect, was a poor commercial decision. However, if unreimbursed, Rio would shut the Boyne Island aluminium smelter in an act that would reveal the enormity of the government-induced energy policy disaster (with a state election looming).
Energy-intensive industries like smelting were originally attracted to Australia in the wake of oil price hikes 40 years ago and most industries received a fillip in their competitiveness because Australian coal was insulated from cost impacts from the global increase in oil prices. Political actions have changed all this and energy-intensive industries are now being kept open only by a mounting series of ad hoc subsidies to counter the adverse impact of the very subsidies governments themselves have put in place.
The fact is that the electricity and gas industries are now totally under government control and subject to the associated political whims and inefficiencies. Governments have conspired with others to create the myth of cheap wind and solar, while traducing the superiority of coal (and gas and nuclear). The impetus for this were ill-founded concerns about climate change and a conviction that Australia could prevent this by closing down coal (and gas) at little or no cost. Instead of allowing that belief to be tested in a market, governments tilted the playing field thereby destroying the nation’s comparative advantage.
Politicians are now discovering the economic and, above all, political penalty being incurred in terms of overpriced energy. To restore past efficiencies, a start would require removing all energy subsidies, discriminatory requirements, and restraints on new power stations (including nuclear – though for eastern Australia, given the fabulous low-cost coal and gas resources, this is unlikely to be commercial). Sadly, such a hands-off policy approach is anathematic to most current politicians who, like supporters of full socialism, attribute past political disasters to their predecessors’ failure to do it properly. The Spectator
The fact that wind and solar industries are quite content to treat rural communities as ‘roadkill’ is bad enough, but, coupled with the fact that their turbines and panels will never amount to meaningful power generation sources, it’s little wonder that the response begins with outrage (at a minimum) and quickly escalates to violent riots.
While the wind and solar ‘industries’ are intent on wrecking rural communities, those communities are intent on fighting back – with all they’ve got.
A decade ago, residents could often be heard saying that they were all in favour of renewable energy, but just not in their backyards – sounding like the classic NIMBY, thereby diminishing their credibility and strength of argument.
Over time, most rural communities have woken up – that there is no right place for large-scale solar and industrial wind power operations, anywhere: they simply make no sense, on any sensible reckoning.
Pro-community groups have worked out that wind turbines and solar panels are incapable of generating power on demand and wouldn’t last a second without massive subsidies, there is no ‘right’ place for them.
Any power generation source that can’t deliver electricity on demand is pointless, so talk about appropriate siting is pure nonsense. Why bother? And why let them wreck your patch of paradise, for nothing?
The fact that wind and solar industries are quite content to treat rural communities as ‘roadkill’ is bad enough, but, coupled with the fact that their turbines and panels will never amount to meaningful power generation sources, it’s little wonder that the response begins with outrage (at a minimum) and quickly escalates to violent riots.
Robert Bryce has been documenting that outrage for some time now. Here he is providing a roundup of why rural communities around the globe are rioting against the wind and solar invasion that comes with our ‘inevitable’ transition to an all-wind and sun-powered future.
Massive Riots, Renewable Resentments Substack Robert Bryce 4 August 2023
Druze residents protesting a wind project near the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, June 21, 2023. Photo credit: Israel police.
The warnings about the landscape-destroying sprawl of wind and solar energy have been coming for nearly two decades. The warnings have come from some of the world’s most prominent scientists, government agencies, and energy analysts.
Unfortunately, those warnings were ignored. And now, all over the world, rural people are reacting with fury at the encroachment of large wind and solar projects on their homes and neighborhoods. The backlash has been ongoing for years and can be seen from the Golan Heights to Oahu. Of course, the backlash against the energy sprawl that frequently comes with large-scale renewable projects doesn’t fit the narrative being pushed by climate activists, anti-industry NGOs, and their myriad allies at legacy media outlets.
Despite the dearth of honest reporting from outlets like the New York Times and National Public Radio, the backlash is irrefutable, it’s growing, and it’s happening on multiple continents. In June, thousands of Druze residents in the Golan Heights rioted to stop the installation of a large wind project on their traditional lands. Last month, Australia’s largest farmers union said it wanted a moratorium on new solar projects. In May, a wind project in Colombia being pushed by the Italian company, Enel, was canceled after it met fierce opposition from the indigenous Wayuu communities.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., over the last 10 days, local governments in Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa have rejected or restricted wind and solar projects. Those moves bring the total number of rejections or restrictions in the Renewable Rejection Database to 574.
Headline from Times of Israel, June 21, 2023.
I’ll dive into the details of what’s happening in Israel, Australia, Colombia, and places like Erie County, Ohio, in a moment. First, it’s essential to put these land-use conflicts into historical context. And that requires a review of the warnings about renewables and land use that have been made over the past two decades. For instance, in 2004, Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, declared that “Solar and the so-called renewables are not green when considered on the large scales required.” In a piece titled “Big Green Energy Machines,” he wrote:
Solar and renewables in every form require masses of machinery to produce many megawatts. They lack efficiencies and economies of scale. Like low-yield farming, to produce more calories, solar and renewables multiply in extent, linearly. Unlike the Internet, solar and renewables cannot become much smaller as they become much larger.
In 2005, Klaus Lippold, a member of the German parliament, told The Guardian that “The problem with wind farms is that you have to build them in places where you don’t need electricity. The electricity then has to be moved somewhere else…There is growing resistance in Germany to wind farms, not least because of the disastrous effect on our landscape.”
In 2008, The Guardian newspaper published an interview with James Lovelock, the chemist and writer who became famous for the Gaia theory of the earth. Lovelock “saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all — renewable energy.” The paper then quotes him directly: “Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it,” Lovelock said. “You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time.”
In his 2012 book, The Carbon Crunch, How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong — and How to Fix It.Dieter Helm, a professor of energy policy at Oxford University, declared, “Even if we devoted all our resources to current wind and solar technologies, they would not be anything like enough to solve the problem of climate change. There simply is not enough land.”
In 2016, shortly before his death, at age 46 from cancer, David J.C. MacKay, a physics professor at the University of Cambridge, said wind turbines are “a waste of money.” Eight years earlier, MacKay had published Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, a remarkable book that hammered home the land-use impacts of renewables. (It’s available for free download.) MacKay, who recognized nuclear must be part of any effort to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, calculated that wind energy needs about 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site. In the same 2016 interview, MacKay called the idea of relying solely on renewables an “appalling delusion.” He continued, “There’s so much delusion and I think it’s so dangerous for humanity that people allow themselves to have these delusions that they’re willing to not think carefully about the numbers and the realities, and the laws of physics and the realities of engineering… humanity really does need to pay attention to arithmetic, and the laws of physics.”
But humanity — or rather, our politicians — haven’t paid the slightest attention to math and physics. And the headlong rush for larger and larger renewable projects has led to significant acts of civil disobedience here in the U.S. In 2010, five people, including some members from the environmental group Earth First!, were arrested near Lincoln, Maine, after they blocked a road leading to a construction site for a 60-megawatt wind project on Rollins Mountain. According to the Portland Press Herald, one of the protesters carried a sign which read, “Stop the rape of rural Maine.”
The protests are happening in Hawaii, a state that has pledged to generate 100 percent of its electricity by 2045…they are the latest example of the raging land-use conflicts over renewable-energy projects that are happening from Oahu to Iowa and Norway to Germany.” I continued, saying “the conflicts are a harbinger of more clashes to come if governments attempt to install the colossal quantities of wind turbines and solar panels that would be needed to fuel the global economy.
Thousands of Druze residents of the Golan Heights rioted for the second day Wednesday against the construction of a new wind farm near the town of Majdal Shams, burning tires and hurling rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at massive police forces securing the area. The Israel Police urged the public to stay away. Twelve police officers were wounded. Four demonstrators were seriously injured, one of them from gunfire, along with three moderately and one lightly.
The wind project is being developed by Energix, a publicly traded Israeli company. The project, which was to have 41 turbines, is not mentioned on the company’s website. The June 21 story continued:
The mayor of the Druze town of Daliyat al-Karmel, Rafik Halabi, told several Hebrew media outlets that the protests could spiral into an “intifada” — the term for an uprising used for two major waves of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis — and that the community was experiencing “great fury” at Israel’s policies and planning laws.
June 24, 2023 headline in Times of Israel
On June 24, The Times of Israel reported that “The head of the Druze community in Israel, Sheikh Muafak Tarif, has warned the government to stop the work to construct wind turbines in the Golan Heights, or face ‘a reaction the country has hitherto not seen.’” The article continued, saying the wind project has:
Angered Druze villagers who see the project as a threat to their agrarian way of life, an encroachment on ancestral lands and a solidification of what they view as Israel’s occupation of the territory. They contend that the giant, soaring poles and the infrastructure needed to construct them will impede their ability to work their plots. They also say the turbines will disturb the almost sacred bond they feel to their land, which is passed down by generation and where families go for fresh air and green space.
Construction on the Golan wind project has apparently been suspended to avoid further conflict. (Video of the demonstrations are available on this Twitter page.)
Now to Australia. A July 27 article in RenewEconomy.com, was headlined, “Farming lobby wants ban on new solar farms as renewable resentment festers in regions.” Here’s the first part of the article:
Australia’s largest state farming organisation, NSW Farmers, is calling for a temporary ban on the construction of new large-scale solar farms in the state, amid concerns developers are not acting in the long-term interests of regional communities. In a motion passed at the Association’s 2023 annual conference last week, NSW Farmers agreed to call on the state Labor government to place a moratorium on large scale solar developments until “planning deficiencies” around plant decommissioning and remediation are addressed. “Current planning and approval provisions for large scale solar energy facilities do not take into account the long-term interests of agricultural land, rural communities and the rural landscape following the ‘decommissioning’ of the facility,” notes on the motion say. “Agricultural land, rural communities and rural landscapes are at risk in the future and there should be no further development approvals granted until these planning deficiency issues have been fully addressed.”
The article also addressed the urban/rural divide, which is just as real in Australia as it is here in the U.S.:
“If this was happening in…say in Sydney suburbs, there would be yelling and screaming!,” Reg Kidd, the former mayor of Orange and chair of the NSW Farmers energy transition working group told RenewEconomy.”
Also on July 27, Reuters reported that the Swedish government rejected a 50-turbine offshore wind project. Each turbine was to be 290 meters (950 feet) tall. Sweden’s minister for climate and environment said the project “would risk damaging sensitive natural values in an unacceptable way. ”
In late May, Enel announced it was quitting a wind project in the La Guajira region in Colombia due to years of protests. Reuters reported that the 197-megawatt Windpeshi wind project was permanently suspended after “Blockades organized since 2021 by the local indigenous Wayuu communities…disrupted the project.” The project, which was about one-third completed, was to cover about 6,145 hectares (about 15,362 acres) of Wayuu lands.
In February, climate activist Greta Thunberg and several hundred other activists blockaded the entrance to Norway’s energy ministry in Oslo to protest a wind project being built on lands used by indigenous Sami reindeer herders. The protest is over a 151-turbine project located about 300 miles north of Oslo. The project, built in 2021, is Europe’s largest onshore wind project. About a week after Thunberg and her accomplices began blocking the ministry, the Norwegian government issued an apology to the reindeer herders. In June, dozens of activists including Sami, again blocked government offices pledging to continue the protests until the government agrees to take the wind project down.
Oh, and one more: On Thursday, August 3, in Canada, the provincial government in Alberta announced it was halting approval of all large renewable energy projects for six months. According to the Regina Leader-Post, the Alberta Utilities Commission “will initiate an inquiry into issues of development on agricultural land, effect on scenery, reclamation security, the role of municipalities and system reliability.”
Now back to the U.S., where I have been documenting the backlash since 2015. Over the past few weeks, I have been updating the Renewable Rejection Database, which is the only free, online, searchable database of rejections and restrictions on wind and solar. The latest tallies: 407 wind rejections and 167 solar rejections.
The latest veto came last week when county commissioners in Erie County, Ohio, voted unanimously to ban all new large wind and solar projects. Tom Jackson of the Sandusky Register reported that Commissioner Pat Old said every township in Erie County had “passed a measure asking the county commissioners to approve the resolution. Public sentiment appears to be overwhelming in favor of the resolution.”
The story continued, saying that Old has been a county commissioner since January 2017. “We have been contacted by more citizens who have asked us to do this than anything else in my time as commissioner,” he said.
Jackson also quoted Commissioner Pat Shenigo: “I would say hundreds have asked us to do this, and less than a dozen have been against it.” Jackson wrote that Shenigo voted for the resolution because he understands the objections of people who don’t want a wind turbine that’s 750 feet tall to be located near their homes. “Would you want this next to your house?” Shenigo said. “My answer is, I wouldn’t.”
Shenigo and his fellow residents of Erie County aren’t alone. Substack
Kenyans hate these things, too – and who can blame them.
Call wind and solar whatever you like, but there’s simply no rational basis to call them ‘clean’ or ‘green’. Both chew up monumental volumes of minerals, chemicals, rare earths and energy just to create the panels and turbines. Both leave monumental volumes of waste when turbines and panels are spent – after a decade or so – much of it incapable of being recycled and plenty of it monumentally toxic.
Call wind and solar whatever you like, but there’s simply no rational basis to call them ‘clean’ or ‘green’. Both chew up monumental volumes of minerals, chemicals, rare earths and energy just to create the panels and turbines. Both leave monumental volumes of waste when turbines and panels are spent – after a decade or so – much of it incapable of being recycled and plenty of it monumentally toxic.
Alex Epstein provides a helpful wrap up of why wind and solar are the world’s greatest enviro-frauds.
“Green Energy” is neither energy nor green Energy Talking Points Alex Epstein 2 June 2023
“Green energy” has 2 problems:
1. It’s not really energy: It doesn’t provide reliable energy
2. It’s not really green: It has a huge “environmental impact”
The goal of “green energy” is to pretend to support abundant energy but to actually oppose it.
The “green energy” movement claims that it wants cost-effective energy—affordable, reliable, plentiful—just without fossil fuels’ pollution or GHG emissions.
But this is contradicted by its hostility toward clean, non-carbon nuclear and hydro—the most proven alternatives to fossil fuels.
You might expect the “green energy” movement to be the #1 supporter of clean, non-carbon nuclear and hydroelectric energy, but instead, it is the #1 opponent. “Green” groups have opposed nuclear for decades (leading to crippling costs) and worked to shut down hydroelectric dams.
Why does the “green” movement oppose nuclear and hydro?
It is because “green” solar and wind are just so cost-effective and so “green”?
No. Solar and wind have not proven to be cost-effective at all, and in many ways, they are the least “green” form of energy.
“Green energy” isn’t really energy
Calling solar and wind “green energy” makes them seem like other forms of energy, just “green.” But they’re not. All other forms of energy provide reliable energy—real energy—whereas solar and wind are unreliable parasites of reliable energy.
Despite claims that solar and wind are rapidly replacing fossil fuels, they provide less than 5% of world energy—only electricity, ⅕ of energy—and, crucially, even that small percentage depends on huge subsidies and reliable (mostly fossil-fueled) power plants (1).
Solar and wind’s basic problem is unreliability, to the point they can go near zero at any time. Thus they don’t replace reliable power, they parasitize on it. This is why they need huge subsidies and why no grid is near 50% solar and wind without huge parasitism on reliable neighbors (2).
The popular idea that we can use mostly or only solar and wind with sufficient battery backup is not being tried anywhere because it’s economically absurd. Batteries are so expensive that just 3 days of global backup using Elon Musk’s Megapacks would cost $590 trillion, about six times global GDP (3)!
Refuting the myth that just a small area of solar panels plus storage can power the world
“Green” solar and wind may someday become a part of real energy solutions—if generators using solar and wind are willing to guarantee reliability, instead of generating unreliable power and forcing everyone else to clean up their mess. But today’s “green energy” is not real energy.
If solar and wind ever become truly cost-effective, you can be certain of one thing: the “green energy” movement will oppose them as insufficiently “green” given their huge “environmental impacts.”
“Green energy” isn’t really green
If solar and wind became cost-effective and deployed on a large scale, they would have a level of “environmental impact” from mining and land use that would make the “green” movement oppose them. In fact, this is already happening.
“Green” means minimal or nonexistent “environmental impact.”
Because sunlight and wind are dilute sources of energy—they take up more space and use more of many materials than fossil fuels or nuclear. This massive “environmental impact” is not at all “green.”(4)
Consider the land use requirements of solar. The world uses over 165,000 TWh of energy per year, which requires ~19 billion kW of power on average. An optimistic, real-world power density for solar projects is 10 Watts per square meter. To power the world, you’d need ~1.8 million square kilometers of solar PV projects (5).
If 1.8 million square kilometers of solar panels doesn’t seem like much, note that it is more than all cities, towns, villages, and human infrastructure combined (~1.5 million square kilometers). And this excludes the huge footprints of solar and battery mining, manufacturing, and transmission (6).
Consider the mining requirements of solar, wind, and batteries.
An International Energy Agency projection for a “net zero” scenario shows an increase in mining and processing of minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earths by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900%, and 700% by 2040.7
Note: The mining and processing of various minerals necessary to supply today’s material-hungry solar, wind, and battery schemes are mostly outsourced to China and other developing countries because they would be cost-prohibitive under Western “green” policies (8).
Because “green energy” has so much environmental impact, even on today’s small scale it faces huge “green” opposition to its land use, mining, and transmission-line-building requirements. E.g., the Biden administration recently shut down a prime “green energy” mining site in Minnesota (9).
If “green” solar and wind aren’t really energy, and if they have so much environmental impact that the “green” movement opposes them in practice, then why does the green movement so enthusiastically support them rhetorically? To hide its real goal: radically reducing energy use.
“Green”—“minimal human impact”—is a fundamentally anti-energy idea. Energy is “the capacity to do work,” which means transforming—impacting—our environment. More energy use equals more impact. If you don’t want us to impact Earth you ultimately must oppose every form of energy.
The fundamental hostility of the “green” movement to energy explains why throughout its history it has never supported current, cost-effective sources of energy and only “supported” imaginary sources of energy that might exist in the future.
“Green” leaders supported nuclear—until it became cost-effective, at which point they demonized and criminalized it. “Green” leaders supported natural gas—until it became cost-effective on a global scale thanks to shale energy tech, at which point they demonized it as “fracking” (10).
Because the “green” movement is anti-energy, any enthusiasm its leaders express for fusion is phony; while they may claim to want clean, cheap, abundant energy before it exists, they will not like the impact it has once it exists. And in the past, green leaders admitted this (11).
Amory Lovins, the leader of the modern “green energy” movement, said in the 1970s: “If you ask me, it’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we would do with it” (12).
When asked in 1989 about the prospect of fusion by the LA Times, Jeremy Rifkin said: “‘It’s the worst thing that could happen to our planet.’ Inexhaustible power, he argues, only gives man an infinite ability to exhaust the planet’s resources, to destroy its fragile balance…” (13).
When asked in 1989 about the prospect of fusion by the LA Times, leading “green” thinker Paul Ehrlich said that given society’s dismal record in managing technology, the prospect of cheap, inexhaustible power from fusion is “like giving a machine gun to an idiot child” (14).
The world needs to reject the “green” movement and instead embrace a “human flourishing” movement that embraces intelligent human impact on Earth as a good thing, and that both embraces today’s most cost-effective energy sources—including fossil fuels—and is eager to improve on them.
To understand why fossil fuels are so valuable for the foreseeable future, and why their benefits far outweigh their negative side-effects including climate side-effects, read this summary of my book Fossil Future.
Denmark is closest to it, getting about 50% of its electricity from wind alone on average over a year. But tiny Denmark needs to import and export massive amounts of electricity to balance its power grid, using reliable capacity in much larger neighboring countries. without this, Denmark would have permanent blackouts. Danish Energy Agency – Energy statistics 2021
Believe the MSM, and you’d think that the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ is a race that’s already won. Peel the onion back, however, and you’ll find a very different picture, indeed. The wilder claims from rent-seekers the louder the cheers of witless approval from the stands.
Believe the MSM, and you’d think that the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ is a race that’s already won. Peel the onion back, however, and you’ll find a very different picture, indeed. The wilder claims from rent-seekers the louder the cheers of witless approval from the stands.
At present, the USA and Australia are running neck and neck in a contest to make the most outlandish promises about an all wind and sun powered future, where, we are told, electricity will be free, plentiful and as clean as a whistle.
There is an adage about telling big lies, so often, that the audience will, inevitably, believe every last bit of it.
So it is with the narrative that surrounds the so-called ‘net-zero energy transition’. The Australian’s Adam Creighton unpacks that glittering falsehood, below.
US energy transition? Don’t hold your breath waiting The Australian Adam Creighton 27 July 2023
A casual perusal of the news would leave anyone with the impression we’re well on the way to the sunlit uplands of our net-zero future, where the vast bulk of our energy is supplied by the wind and the sun.
In reality we’ve barely started the transition and it’s not going to happen, despite the trillions of dollars already thrown at the effort around the world. Last year, about 3 per cent of the world’s energy was supplied by wind and solar power, and only 4 per cent in the US – the remainder overwhelmingly came from coal, oil, gas and nuclear power stations.
Talk of transition has been conducted in inverse proportion to the actual transition. Science and economics have got in the way. The cost of batteries already has started to increase as government mandates to buy electric cars (new combustion engine cars won’t be available in California, for instance, after 2035) kick in.
Indeed, to accommodate the desired rollout of electric vehicles, the mining and processing of the minerals that underpin them, such as cobalt, nickel and lithium, would need to increase by several thousand per cent by 2040, according to Mark Mills, an energy expert at the Manhattan Institute.
“If it were to be achievable, it would be the largest single increase in demand or the supply of metals in all of human history,” he said earlier this year at an energy conference in New York.
A lesser known reason the transition is likely to prove elusive is the vast, unrealistic, increase required in the length and quality of transmission networks, as evidenced by research in the US published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“While the United States is building more transmission, the current pace of investment is well below what would be required for the net-zero future,” three economists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the universities of California and Michigan conclude in their paper, entitled Transmission Impossible.
Unlike, coal, gas and nuclear power stations, which can be built relatively close to centres of energy demand, wind and solar power generation must be located in windy and sunny locations.
In the US, wind power stations are in the middle of the country, in states such as Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, which alone accounts for 26 per cent of US wind generation. California produces 27 per cent of the nation’s solar power, almost as much as the next three states combined. No matter how much those regions produce, the power is trapped, surplus to local requirements and unable to reach other parts of the country – in other words, those areas that will be forced to foot the bill.
“There are hundreds of locations mostly in the middle of the country that now experience negative electricity prices during more than 20 per cent of all hours,” study authors Nancy Rose, Lucas Davis and Catherine Hausman find. In Australia the government has earmarked $20bn to build an extra 10,000km of transmission lines. The situation is more challenging in the US, with more dispersed population centres and a patchwork grid of poles and wires, often up to 100 years old.
“Even the least aggressive scenario entails more than a doubling of transmission capacity by 2050 … It is difficult to overstate the scope of such an increase,” the study authors argue, pointing out that the cost would exceed the historically huge investment in the national highway system that began under Dwight Eisenhower, a project that occurred across a 35-year period.
As the world is gearing up to supercharge battery production it will need vast amounts of manpower, steel, transformers and copper to achieve such an enormous expansion of the grid.
To rely exclusively on wind and solar power to reach the Biden administration’s net-zero 2050 target (nuclear power is not popular) would require “three, four or five-fold” increases in transmission capacity by 2050. In other words, absent some epoch-changing technological development, it’s not going to happen.
In May, author and energy expert Robert Bryce calculated it would take the US, at current rates of transmission expansion, about 80 years to expand the existing network by 57 per cent.
Focusing on cost alone ignores the political and regulatory difficulty of co-ordinating new power lines across local and state jurisdictions, as well as pushback from local energy suppliers who won’t want to see new power lines that reduce consumers’ energy costs.
Possibly because of that, the bulk of the fiscal cost of the climate change provisions in the Biden administration’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, which amount to about $US400bn ($591.5bn) in total, relates to incentives to buy electric cars and for more wind and solar generation capacity.
It is true solar and wind power have declined significantly in cost in recent years, enabling rich nations to diversify their power supplies. But cost comparisons typically ignore the vast sums required to be spent on improving the transmission grid, which of course will be passed on to consumers via higher power prices.
For all the rhetoric about transition, it’s hard to see such an immense diversion of resources taking place. If it does, the “gold plating” problem that pushed up prices last decade will seem like a rounding error as investors in poles and wires recoup their costs from customers.
The fervour for the “clean energy transition”, including the widespread belief that it’s happening, is a triumph of politics over science and economics. In truth the world has no chance of becoming like renewable energy poster child Norway, which is unique in terms of its hydro-electric potential and extremely wealthy thanks to its vast oil and gas reserves it exports to the rest of the world. The Australian
We apologise for this break in the transition, we’ll resume as soon as the ice melts.
You can fool some of the people, some of the time. But Germany’s wind and sun cult are struggling to fool all of the people, for all time.
Slowly but surely, the average German is working out that they have been played for fools. As Charles MacKay observed: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” And so it goes in Germany.
The economic and social costs of Germany’s grand wind and solar transition – aka the ‘Energiewende’ – have already taken their toll, with much worse to come. As Charles Rotter details in the first piece below.
However, in the second, Pierre Gosselin reports on the growing tide of anger and resentment being displayed by ordinary Germans who recognise that they’ve been taken for a ride.
Remarkably this mass movement is being led by a German noble, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, once dubbed the ‘Punk Princess’ but who, now, is calling the grand green transition for what it is: an expensive failure.
Germany’s Costly Energy Conundrum: Poor Planning and Bad Choices, 1 Trillion Dollars Needed Watts Up With That? Charles Rotter 14 June 2023
Germany finds itself facing an astronomical challenge of plugging a massive power gap, one according to BloombergNEF that could cost the country over $1 trillion by 2030 . The urgency to address this energy crisis stems from a combination of factors, including the aftermath of the war in Ukraine and the dubious choice to transition away from nuclear and coal power plants. However, the predicament Germany now faces is largely a consequence of poor planning and inadequate foresight in the energy sector. As the nation scrambles to find solutions, it becomes evident that crucial opportunities were missed, poor decisions were made, and the costs of this oversight are now mounting.
Germany has set aside more than €260 billion ($275 billion) to deal with the immediate risks of an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, but the ultimate fix will be much costlier — if the country can pull it off at all.
BASF SE‘s plans to cut 2,600 jobs as it faces strains from the energy crisis is a sign of the urgency. The chemical giant’s operations in Germany swung to a loss during the second half, and it’s now closing a number of energy-intensive factories, including two ammonia plants and related fertilizer facilities, resulting in 700 job cuts at its main Ludwigshafen site.
Lack of Clarity in Replacing Energy Sources Germany’s dilemma is exacerbated by its unclear path for replacing phased-out energy sources. With nuclear and coal off the table, the country is heavily reliant on importing liquefied natural gas, which comes at a higher cost. The transition to electric cars, heat pumps, and hydrogen production further adds to the energy demand. Yet, there is a lack of concrete plans for generating electricity during periods of low renewable production. The reliance on future gas plants running on hydrogen faces significant hurdles, including a lack of willing investors, the reliance on nonexistent and potentially never existent technology, and the high costs involved, if those problems were to ever be solved.
Insufficient Investment and Unclear Regulations The lack of funding and investment in the energy sector can be attributed to high market uncertainty and unclear regulations and, of course, the dubious prospects of profitability of intermittent wind and solar without major subsidies. These issues hamper the development of necessary infrastructure. Investors remain hesitant to commit to costly projects, leaving Germany in a state of flux. The need for clear regulations and financial incentives is essential to attract private sector participation at all.
Conclusion Germany’s $1 trillion energy challenge serves as a stark reminder of the consequences that poor planning can have on a nation’s energy future. The failure to accurately anticipate the scope of the transition and the absence of a clear path to replace phased-out energy sources have created a significant hurdle. Addressing this crisis requires a comprehensive reassessment of energy policies, including rethinking some of the politically motivated retirement of nuclear power, enhanced investment in research and development, and the establishment of clear regulations and financial incentives. Germany must learn from its past oversights and rectify them swiftly to ensure a resilient energy future for the country. Time is of the essence. Watts Up With That?
Ulrike von Waitz, Mitglied der Gruppe Mothers for Nuclear vor dem Gelaende des ehemaligen Versuchsatomkraftwerk Kahl
German Princess Gloria On Green New Deal: “Going To Be Worse Than Communist East Germany”! No Tricks Zone Pierre Gosselin 18 June 2023
Normally I don’t put much stock in European royalty and what they have to say. But when it comes to Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis of Germany, she has the unique ability to say what millions of people are thinking.
Germans rising up, turning out in masses to protest government’s outrageous energy proposals and policies
Recently she was interviewed as a guest on Youtube channel “Achtung, Reichelt!” where she spoke about the demonstration that had taken place in Erding last weekend (see image above). An estimated 13,000 people protested to protest the government’s heat pump madness. Normally when it comes to climate, getting even a hundred people to show up to protest against government policies would be quite a feat. But now as the economic pain sets in, there are real signs that the masses are finally beginning to wake up.
Princess Gloria told Achtung Reichelt: “Berlin is making policies against us citizens. But politicians are there for the people, not the other way around. Her verdict: “The transition to green energies has failed, failed, failed!”
Germans realizing they’ve been taken for a ride When asked why the people are just now turning out to demonstrate, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis says they are being driven firstly by the fact that “everything has gotten more expensive” and that the people have realized they “have been taken for a ride.”
“Worse than communist East Germany” “But climate change is a huge swindle. It’s a method of extracting money out of the people’s pockets, and they are supposed to feel good about it. The feeling good now ends at the end of the month when they see there’s no longer any buying power, when the restaurants close, when the airline trips can no longer be booked,” says Princess Gloria. “And what’s good is that the Greens have come out and been very open about this agenda: We may no longer travel, we should eat only certain things, we may not heat. It’s going to be worse than [communist] East Germany.”
“Before this is really put into place, we the people have the chance to rise up and to protest together, and foremost – very important – to go out and vote,” she adds. No Tricks Zone
When the weather turns nasty, giant industrial wind turbines simply turn off. When there’s no wind, they produce nothing; when winds hit gale force, they produce nothing.
Goldilocks-thinking is the basis for the wind and solar transition, which relies on power sources that can only operate when conditions are “just right”.
Hailstones make short work of them; a blanket of snow and ice cuts their production to nothing, even when the sun is shining.
A hurricane or tornado soon tears them to worthless shreds.
As the wind and sun cult would have it, however, the answer is always more wind and solar capacity, not less.
Their central and founding myth is that solar panels and wind turbines are gradually, inevitably replacing conventional generators, especially coal-fired power plants.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the weather is doing what the weather has always done. And wind and solar power are responding in kind, by producing absolutely nothing, at all.
Britain Turns to Coal Because It’s Too Hot for Solar Panels The European Conservative Michael Curzon 17 June 2023
The Conservative Party government is far down the road—and much out of pocket —with its plan to remove coal from Britain’s energy mix. But weather conditions earlier this week meant providers had no choice but to start burning coal again, for the first time in a month and a half.
Simply put, there wasn’t enough wind to allow for a good turbine output and it was too hot for solar panels to work efficiently. Some gas power plants were also shut down for maintenance. As a result, the National Grid had little choice but to ask a coal-fired power station in Nottingham to start producing electricity. This was due to be closed last September, but its owners reached a deal to push back the deadline by a year, citing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As part of its drive towards carbon ‘net zero,’ the Tory government announced in 2021 that Britain is moving towards producing no electricity using coal after October 2024. This was a year sooner than the original 2025 deadline, and begs the question: where will providers turn when it’s too hot and not windy enough in the future?
The push—by the party which prides itself on being “sensible” and “pragmatic”—has been met with many vocal critics, but the government appears not to have been fazed. Businessman and former Brexit party MEP Ben Habib said turning our backs on fossil fuels “before adequate alternative sources of ‘sustainable’ renewable energy are available” sounds “daft” because “it is.”
Reviewing some of the latest decisions on energy policy, Mr. Habib told The European Conservative:
In the pursuit of a net zero country, His Majesty’s Government decided many years ago to cut back on filthy coal. Then in 2021, it began shutting down North Sea oil and gas under the North Sea Transition Deal—part of the then Prime Minister’s drive to “Build Back Better.” Under that deal, the off-shore extraction of fossil fuels was to be replaced by off-shore wind energy; wells closed, and jobs moved into green energy. Rough, our biggest natural gas storage facility, was also more or less shut down and now cannot easily be re-commissioned. To make matters worse, not a single nuclear power plant has been built in the UK since the mid-1990s. By 2030, 14 of 15 nuclear power plants are scheduled to have closed with only one replacement, Hinkley Point C, to be commissioned in 2027.
This is not an energy policy, it is energy hari kari.
Such a short-term approach to energy policy is not exclusive to the Tory party. Former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg provided an insight into the minds of our leading political lights when in 2010 he said nuclear is “just not even an answer” because “by the most optimistic scenarios from the government itself, there’s no way they are going to have new nuclear come on stream until 2021, 2022.” Even after these dates, Britain’s energy system will still be unable to operate fully without at least some backup from coal.
Mr. Habib described the recent burning of coal as “rub[bing] salt into the wounds of HMG’s [His Majesty’s Government] idiocy.” The “energy gods,” he added, “have a poor sense of humour!” The European Conservative
Nottinghamshire,England,UK. December 12th 2012. Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal fired power station is reflected in floor water after days of heavy rain.
Germany’s energy ‘policy’ reads like a national suicide pact, one that’s delivered a perfectly predictable power pricing and supply catastrophe. For the crippling prices and routine rationing that’s followed, Germans can thank their purported leaders and their unhinged obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar.
Wind turbines operate on an onshore green field site in this aerial photograph taken near Hamburg, Germany, on Tuesday, June 17, 2015. German investor confidence fell for a third month in a sign that risks from a Greek debt default to bond-market turbulence are stoking uncertainty in Europe’s largest economy. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
Germany’s energy ‘policy’ reads like a national suicide pact, one that’s delivered a perfectly predictable power pricing and supply catastrophe. For the crippling prices and routine rationing that’s followed, Germans can thank their purported leaders and their unhinged obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar.
Already suffering Europe’s highest power prices, German households and businesses have much worse to come.
German industry was once the envy of its European neighbours. Now, there simply isn’t the electricity available to power it.
As Rachel Bunyan reports, the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ is turning out to be not so grand, after all.
Germany faces electricity shortages and can expect to see industries leave the country due to green energy policy ‘disaster’ that saw nuclear power plants ditched for renewables, business chiefs warn Daily Mail Rachel Bunyan 7 June 2023
Germany faces electricity shortages that will see critical industries ditch the country after the government decided to shut down the last remaining nuclear power plants in favour of renewable energy sources, business chiefs have warned.
The head of energy firm RWE said he fears that Germany will face a shortage of electricity that will see prices in the already struggling country soar.
Markus Krebber, 50, warned that this will endanger Germany’s ‘competitiveness’ as an industrial hub, meaning companies will be driven out of the country, taking much needed jobs with them.
‘Germany’s prosperity is based on strong industry,’ Krebber told BILD. ‘A scarce energy supply leads to high prices – this endangers the competitiveness of Germany as an industrial location. We are seeing the first signs of de-industrialisation.’
His stark warning follows the shock news that Germany has fallen into recession – unlike Brexit Britain’s economy which is expected to grow by 0.4 per cent in 2023 and is set to avoid a similar downturn.
German energy chiefs have blamed the country’s poor outlook on the government’s green energy ‘disaster’ that has seen the last remaining nuclear power plants shut down. Instead, the focus is now on renewable energy supplies from solar and wind sites.
But the intermittent nature of these green energy sources, which leaves them susceptible to sudden drops during cloudy or windless periods, means Germany’s electricity system remains vulnerable to electricity shortages and price volatility.
Krebber warned that this could have a devastating impact on Germany’s industries that are trying in vain to prop up the country’s flailing economy.
‘As an industrial location, Germany has a serious problem: We don’t have as much energy available as we need,’ Krebber told Focus. ‘This gap leads to high prices and thus to justified concerns about competitiveness.’
This is all playing into the hands of Germany’s far-right parties, with the Alternative for Germany (AfD)’s popularity surging in the polls over its criticism of what it calls a costly green agenda.
The AfD, which disputes that human activity is a cause of climate change, has tapped into concerns among some voters about the cost of the transition away from fossil fuels.
AfD leader Tino Chrupalla said more voters appreciated that the policies of the Greens, Scholz’s junior coalition partner which wants a swifter shift away from hydrocarbons, brought ‘economic war, inflation and de-industrialisation.’
‘We are the only party that would not form a coalition with these dangerous Greens,’ he said.
Christian Kullmann, CEO of the chemical group Evonik, joined Krebber in criticising what he called the government’s ‘energy policy disaster’ and warned of its impact on Germany’s industries.
‘In Germany we pay the world’s highest prices for electricity and energy, and every industry, every economy lives and depends on a reasonable, inexpensive, available energy supply,’ Kullmann, 54, said.
Kullman warned that Germany, which has historically been a hub for engineering, will see bulk goods no longer being manufactured in the country.
‘We will probably say goodbye to these industries here in the near future – and it won’t be too long at all,’ Kullman said in a stark warning. ‘Germany is under pressure as a business location.’
Roland Farnung, 82, the former CEO of RWE, added: ‘The energy policy now adopted by the federal government is practically an operation on the open heart of society with considerable risks for German companies and the jobs located here.’
In order to combat Germany’s vulnerability to electricity shortages, Krebber says there must be a ‘massive investment’ in green energies. But even with this investment, Germany’s power producers must continue to retool the country’s entire power system at a record pace.
Krebber said: ‘The will and money are there for [investments in green energies]. In order for investments to actually be made, a reliable framework is needed in the long term that creates incentives instead of setting hurdles.’
And some experts say Germany will have to go back to nuclear eventually if it wants to phase out fossil fuels and reach its goal of becoming greenhouse gas-neutral across all sectors by 2045 as wind and solar energy will not fully cover demand.
‘By phasing out nuclear power, Germany is committing itself to coal and gas because there is not always enough wind blowing or sun shining,’ said Rainer Klute, head of pro-nuclear non-profit association Nuklearia.
The German government has dismissed such concerns, arguing that thanks to Europe’s integrated electricity network, Germany can import energy when needed while remaining a net exporter.
But the German business chiefs still warn that Germany could face a shortage of electricity that will see businesses flee – and such a move will be detrimental to Germany’s struggling economy.
Indeed, last month it was revealed that Germany was in a recession after the country suffered an unexpected dip in the first quarter of the year.
Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3 per cent in the period from January to March, data released by the Federal Statistical Office showed.
The figures come as a major blow to Germany’s government, which had boldly doubled its growth forecast for this year after a feared winter energy crunch failed to materialise.
The government predicted that GDP will grow by 0.4 per cent – up from a 0.2 per cent expansion predicted in late January – a forecast that will now likely need to be revised downwards.
German newspaper Bild reported that the country’s economy had already ‘collapsed’ by 0.5 per cent in the winter quarter of 2022.
It comes as the International Monetary Fund was forced to admit it had miscalculated its prognosis of the post-Brexit British economy, which is now set to avoid recession, despite doom and gloom from Remainers who portrayed EU membership as an economic necessity.
The foundation now expects the UK’s economy to grow by 0.4 per cent in 2023, despite declaring just last month it would contract by 0.3 per cent. Daily Mail
One of the many problems with “green” energy is that it is ridiculously expensive. Millions of Americans, if they have to pay the cost of wind or solar energy to power their homes, will not be able to afford it, and will have to sell out. Liberals know this, despite their absurd propaganda about wind energy being “cheap.”
Looking for insight into the wind and solar ‘transition’? Then start with California – where power prices are crushing the poorest households, and blackouts and routine power rationing are now an accepted part of their attempt to run on heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar.
Power prices, already the highest in the USA, continue to rise at a staggering rate. And, as John Hinderaker points out below, in that respect, California is well and truly set on its path to oblivion, with householders in for much, much worse.
Using Electricity to Redistribute Money Powerline John Hinderaker 21 April 2023
One of the many problems with “green” energy is that it is ridiculously expensive. Millions of Americans, if they have to pay the cost of wind or solar energy to power their homes, will not be able to afford it, and will have to sell out. Liberals know this, despite their absurd propaganda about wind energy being “cheap.”
California’s electric companies want to charge people based on their incomes rather than their electricity consumption in a bid to make utilities more “equitable.”
Most people think that when two people pay the same price for the same good or service, it is equitable. But not in today’s brave new world of Leftism.
The state’s major electric companies last week submitted an income-based billing proposal to the state government, which last year instructed utilities to “make electric bills more affordable and equitable.” Under the companies’ proposal, low-income households would pay as little as $15 a month in premiums, while high-income households could pay up to $128 per month. They also must pay for usage.
Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s main utility provider, boasted that the plan will “help to limit the impact on disadvantaged communities, as Californians transition to electrification in support of the state’s clean energy goals.”
In a saner world, the “impact on disadvantaged communities” would be averted by using cheap and reliable energy sources, as we have in the past. The “impact” comes exclusively from liberals’ mania for expensive, unreliable energy. Unable to deny the adverse impact of their policies, the best liberals can do is shift the burden to people who comprise a minority of voters. This is naked income redistribution:
PG&E estimates that its lowest-income customers would see a 21 percent cut in their bills, while high earners would see about a 24 percent hike. The company says it would use the profits from high-income users to fund a variety of green energy initiatives, including the purchase of electric vehicles.
Which will continue California on its path to oblivion. If I owned a house in California, I would sell it.
Californians have seen their electricity rates rise nearly 70 percent since 2010, when the state started to break from fossil fuels. California households pay nearly 83 percent more than the average for homes elsewhere in the United States.
Most people think, I am afraid correctly, that California is a lost cause. The state’s crazy left-wing policies have chased away so many normals that there may not be enough left to reclaim power from the far Left. That is a sad scenario, but if nothing else, California’s decline can serve as a warning to the states that still can be salvaged. Powerline
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