Renewables: Not Feasible for 100 percent Energy & Too Costly

Written by Jack Dini on November 19, 2020. Posted in Current News

Recent headlines have touted the record $55 billion renewable sector investments last year. Yet these headlines hide the fact that the renewable energy industry has been engaged in a world class scam for more than 20 years.

Built on promises of clean, affordable, and reliable energy that can’t be kept, today’s renewable energy industry would not otherwise exist but for subsidies—a burden placed on the backs of taxayers and consumers. At the same time, the traditional energy sources that have helped make the United States one of the most prosperous nations in history are rapidly being forced out of the marketplace.

To keep the renewable industry afloat, Americans will pony up more than $120 billion from 2006 through 2029 in the form of direct subsidies, tax credits, and mandates for generation and transmission. Rather than benefit taxpayers, these funds will primarily boost the profits of multi-billion-dollar generators and Wall Street bankers who invested the $55 billion last year, along with providing for generous donations to ‘non-profit’ advocates of renewables in capitols across the country (who then lobby for even more subsidies). (1)

Texas is the nation’s leading producer of wind energy. Yet most of the thousands of wind turbines littering the Texas landscape would not exist if Texas has not built subsidized transmission lines. These “CREZ” lines were needed because while the wind blows best in West Texas, most Texans live far to the east and along the Gulf Coast. The CREZ lines will cost Texans around $19 billion over their useful life. Wind and solar farms also benefit from more than $3.5 billion in abatements offered by Texas counties and school districts.

Other states have joined Texas in handing the hard earned money of their residents to renewable firms. Maryland, for instance, last year upped its RPS to 50% by 2030. On the opposite coast California is even more ambitious, with a goal of 100% ‘clean power’ by 2045. The size of its market and its large geographic footprint means that California’s goal ‘will soon result in increased costs and reliability issues throughout the 13 states in the Western Interconnection as California’s aggressive policies udnercut reliable power plants and put them out of business,’ according to former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. (1)

The idiocy quotient of government rises again as solar capacity falls to absymal levels in Minnesota where the sun doesn’t shine all the that much in winter. Solar panels generated nearly 30 perent of ther potential output in July 2018 in Minnessota, but electricity generation from the state’s solar plants dropped to 5.6 percent by December 2018. Reasons for the performance decline, which only politicians and interest groups could find surprising, includes shorter days during winter, performance of solar panels lessened from snowfall because snow reflects light, and the expense to clear snow off of solar panels.  (2)

Minnesota and other states are building solar arrays due to federal subsidies and state government mandates. In 2013, the Minnesota legislature passed the Solar Energy Standard, which mandated that 1.5 percent of the state’s electricity must come from solar energy by the end of 2020. Despite Minnesota’s poor solar resources, Xcel Energy wants to spend billions sof dollars building 4,000 megawatts of solar power not because it is the most productive way to generate electricity, but because it will obtain the most  government guaranteed profits. The solar plants will replace reliable power plants that will be closed a decade early.

The ‘green magic transition’ may be the greatest con job in history. Despite the hype over the ever-increasing connected capacity at wind and solar farms worldwide, none, yes none, have replaced any of the hydro, natural gas, coal,or nuclear generating plants that are providing continuous and uninterruptable electricity to people and businesses around the world. (3)

When the islands of Tasmania and El Hierro tried to power their economies with 100 percent green energy, both islands quickly switched back to diesel generators after suffering from reliability problems and soaring costs. An analysis suggests it would have taken 84 years for El Hierro’s wind and hydropower systems to simply pay back their capital costs. (4)

A research effort by Google corporation to make renewable energy viable has been a complete failure, according to scientists who led the program. After 4 years of effort, their conclusion is that renewable energy simply won’t work.

The key problem appeared to be that the cost of manufacturing the components of the renewable power facilities was far to close to the total recoverable energy—the facilities never, or just barely, produced enough energy to balance the budget of what was  consumed in their construction. This lead to a runaway cycle of constructing more and more renewable plants simply to produce the energy required to maufacture and maintain renewable energy plants- an obvious practical absuridty. If this study is to be believed, solar and other renewables will never in the foreseeable future deliver meaningful amounts of energy. (5)

Four Australian researchers have compiled a comprehensive rebuke of the premise that renewable energies  (wind, solar, biomass, etc.) can feasibly supplant fossil fuel to become the dominant power source for the world.

The authors’ analysis zeroes in on the devastating conclusion that each and every one of the 24 previous attempts to substantiate the claim that a 100% renewable energy grid is achievable have failed to satisfy even the most basic feasibility criteria.  (6)

A recent study done by Irish and US based researchers found that wind and solar energy sources are extremely costly and may be causing as much climate change as they purport to mitigate. (7)

The study also points out several of the flaws of wind and solar energy, including the negative impacts on local environments they present.

Despite spending jaw-dropping amounts of money on wind and solar power globally since 2011, the study shows that climate alarmists and the nations that defer to them have definitely not gotten their money’s worth.  A total of US $3660 billion has been spent on global climate change projects over the period 2011-2018. Fifty-five percent of this expenditure has gone to wind and solar energy. The contribution of wind and solar to world energy consumption has increased form 0.5% to 3% over this period.

Meanwhile, coal, oil, and gas continue to supply 85% of the world’s energy with hydroelectricity and nuclear providing most of the remainder.

The study’s led author Coilin OhAiseadha points out” “It cost the world $2 trillion to increase the share of energy generated by solar and wind from half a percent to three percent, and it took eight years to do it. What would it cost to increase that to 100 percent? And how long would it take?” (8)

So what would zero emissions do to temperatures? An analysis of the Green New Deal (GND) climate proponents shows future temperature impacts of the zero emissions objective would be barely distinguishable from zero: 0.173C by 2100. Under an assumption consistent with the findings reported in a recent peer reviewed literature, the effect would be 0.083C by 2100, a policy impact not measurable against normal variation in temperatures. (9)

With our concern for global warming, we are ramping up the use of renewables. The mainstream reporting lets you believe that renewables are just about to power the entire world. But this is flatly wrong. Most of the renewables are not solar PV and wind. Today, almost 10 percentage points come from the world’s oldest fuel: wood. Hydropower provides another 2.5 percentage points and all other renewables provide just 1.6 percentage points, of which solar PV and wind provide 0.8 percentage points.  (10)

Lastly, a September 2020 report from the Energy & Environment Legal Institute on a state-by-state cost of eliminating fossil fuels revealed the cost would be between $18 trillion and $29 trillion in first costs. Going all renewable will force costs to the high end of the range. By comparison, the USA gross domestic product for 2018 was $20.54 trillion. (11)

 References

1. Bill Peacock, “Renewable subsidies leaing America toward European- style energy poverty,” RealClear Energy, March 3, 2020
2. “Solar capacity low where the sun doesn’t shine? Who could’ve known,” naturalgasnow.org, March 27, 2020
3. Ronald Stein, “Renewables may make us feel good, but realistically they just don’t work,” newgeography.com, September 18, 2019
4. Andrew Follett,”Electric grid expert lays out why it’s basically impossible to use 100% green eneergy,” cfact.org, August 1,2017
5. Eric Worrall, “Shocker: top Google engineers say renewable energy simply won’t work,” wattsupwiththat.com, November 22, 2014
6. B. P. Heard et al., “Burden of proof: a comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100%  renewable electricity systems,” Renewable and           Sustainable Energy Reviews, 76, 1122, 2017
7. Collin OhAiseadha et al., “Energy and climate policy—an evaluation of global climate change expenditure 2011-2018,” Energies 2020, 13(18),           4839
8. James Murphy, “Study: green energy sources no the ‘panacea’ climate alarmists claim,” climatechangedispatch.com, October 16, 2020
9. Larry Hamlin, “The great hundred billion dollar+ renewable enrgy fleecing of American taxpayers & energy users,” greatclimatedebate.com, June 13, 2019
10. Bjorn Lomborg, “No, renewables are not taking over the world anytime soon,” linkedin.com, November 28, 2017
11. Anthony Watts, “USA costs to go without fossil fuels: $18-29 trillion,” wattsupwiththat.com, September 22, 2020

About the author: Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has written for The American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, Hawaii Reporter, and Canada Free Press.

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