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Sniggle's avatar

Only if you factor in the government putting their heavy thumb on the scales of energy production. 'Renewable' energy is allowed to game the system, being paid for all power produced, even when not needed, and generating renewable credits at the same time. The dirty secret which has become more well known recently is that 'renewable' energy cannot provide the needed base load for modern society.

The EUs 'renewable energy' facade was shown to rely entirely on Russian gas.

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Scott Mari's avatar

"Building New Renewables Is Cheaper Than Burning Fossil Fuels:

It’s now cheaper to build and operate new large-scale wind or solar plants in nearly half the world than it would be to run an existing coal or gas-fired power plant."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-23/building-new-renewables-cheaper-than-running-fossil-fuel-plants#xj4y7vzkg

The article is pay-walled, but you might get the idea from the title -? Maybe Bloomberg is wrong. Call them up! This article is over a year old.

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Sniggle's avatar

I was not going to pay Bloomberg, but just from the 1 paragraph I could see:

- It said it was cheaper to build and operate solar or wind (in 50% of the world) then run gas plants. Building a plant does not generate energy, nor a base load of energy. These solar and wind farms are built on an optimistic estimate of power produced, and seldom produce the estimated energy.

- Building and operating costs are greatly influenced by government regulations and red tape, and many governments have been very easy and permissive for renewable energy installations, while saddling gas, coal and oil plants with carbon penalties. The red tape to build a new gas plant, I would guess, is suffocating in most 'climate crisis' crazy countries.

- I suspect the article just glosses over the problems with base load, waving their hand at battery storage as if that was a viable and imminent solution.

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NCmom's avatar

No, it's not. If it were, people wouldn't be getting ready to freeze to death in much of Germany and Poland this winter.

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Scott Mari's avatar

Germany also decommissioned all their nuclear power this year - perhaps that was a bad idea. Just because it is cheaper doesn't mean Germany committed funds to build it - I've heard of politicians making bad decisions. But don't try to convince me. These aren't my facts. Call Bloomberg. Maybe they'll issue a retraction. Maybe you can write an Op-Ed.

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NCmom's avatar

Nuclear power is not renewal energy......... it's an actual solution so the climate people pressured German politicians to decommission their nuclear power plants. The real reason the climate alarmists aren't getting the response they want is because their ideology has almost nothing to do with improving the environment or reducing potential greenhouse gas emissions. That's why none of them are too bothered about the catastrophic amount of methane released with the intentional explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines.

When considering the whole supply and demand thing, at any large scale, renewables are not cheaper than fossil fuels because the actual "renewable" power machinery requires huge quantities on non-renewable scarce inputs, that are very ecologically destructive to acquire, and the machinery is energy intensive to build. Then windmills and solar panels only last 2-3 decades. The short-lived nature of renewable energy means a huge amount of the energy the equipment produces in the first place is consumed on the front and back end of producing and disposing of the solar panel or windmills. In Jamaica or Florida or the Bahamas, solar panels have a place, though I'm hoping lead free panels improve quickly because toxic waste is also bad for the environment. In norther latitudes, it's just plain stupid to use solar. The amount of land and equipment that would be needed to replace coal, gas, and oil would mean covering an area around the size state of NY in solar panels. Killing carbon negative natural areas to put up solar panels isn't a net positive. Rooftops don't do the job when the sun only shines 7 hours a day for almost half the year. In practice, windmills usually end up producing less than like 10% of their "capacity" over the entirety of their useful lives.

Meanwhile, natural gas is clean, easy to access, and cheap. The US has identified reserves that would power a growing US and Europe for over 500 years. But the same people playing chicken in traffic on interstates demand we not use this abundant and clean energy sources as a viable long-term bridge to transition to new scalable power sources - from nuclear that already exists, to the potential of self-sustaining nuclear fusion, to liquid hydrogen for cars that is probably only a few decades off (but by no means assured).

The climate people on this thread claim renewable energy is "cheap and scalable" with all kinds of magical batteries and proclamations that carry all the ridiculousness of Saudia Arabia proclaiming it is going to build a city the width of a couple football fields, taller than the empire state building, and the length of Ireland by 2025 (or now 2030)!!! How they are going to get their hands on millions of square meters of mirrors alone, in less than a decade, in the middle of a global supply chain crunch, having made very little progress to date (and its almost 2023) is going to be interesting to watch (eye roll). Actually, Saudia Arabia has a better chance of building their Ireland length dystopian city in the next 7 years than renewable energy being scaled up to heat western Europe alone in the same time frame - not least because winters in Germany tend to be dark and windless.

I don't need to "call Bloomberg." I have a master's degree and it only takes 5th grade math to disprove the assertion that renewable energy is cheaper than other forms. If it were that cheap it wouldn't need trillion sin subsidies while still failing miserably.

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Scott Mari's avatar

There is a great deal going on here. I am worried you are listening to Tucker Carlson - you call wind turbines 'windmills' - a big Fox news giveaway.

The Saudi 'long-city' is very silly. One would almost say a waste.

Northern latitudes do get 50% sunlight - they experience much longer nights in the winter, but then get much longer days in the summer.

Finland is way ahead in EV adoption - I think they are over 80% electric cars, and their grid is fine! A partial proof of the viability of our future!

Nuclear power can be renewable if we use breeder reactors - we should - and they are a great base load for power.

Natural gas burns cleaner, but being 80x more powerful as a greenhouse gas, it is only better than coal if we leak less than 4% of current production. We leak 8%.

Tucker Carlson is demonstrably wrong on any night. He won a ruling in a defamation lawsuit by arguing no credible person could think he was more than an opinion piece.

I hope I haven't upset you - please keep an open mind and run the math - maybe you'll get solar on your roof!

Germany leads the EU in solar power production, and you're right, they have notoriously cloudy winters.

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NCmom's avatar

LOL!!! Finland still uses wood peat, more ecologically harmful than coal, for 27.8% of Finland's energy consumption in 2020 and 29.7% in 2021. Oil makes up around 20% if Finland's energy consumption. Hydroelectric and wind power, combined, make up around a whopping 6.5% of Finland's energy consumption. Solar, if any, is so tiny the ITA doesn't even break it out for Finland. Finland has a population of 5.5million and less than 24 people per square mile.

Electric cars charged by oil and coal requiring heat to come from wood peat - that's your example of a "viable" future????? Maybe if your 80 or have the long-term planning skills of a 5-year-old.

Your assertion of much longer days in summers is cute - unfortunately those much longer days aren't very productive for solar panels becasue the sun simply isn't intense enough. Even if it were, how is one going to stare massive amounts of power for MONTHS??? If your ong day theory works so well, wouldn't Finland or Germany get significant power from solar at least part of the year?

I didn't realize fox news has been around for hundreds of years people have been trying to "harness" the power of wind. Your attempted insults fall short because you have no idea what you are talking about. Rather than actually refute what I have said with true facts you want to play stupid semantics gymnastics games. How mature and productive.

You can babble on about Tucker Carlson all you want. I don't have a clue what you are talking about, and clearly neither do you!!!

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NCmom's avatar

As for your assertions on Germany - per the ITA - "As of 2021, primary energy consumption amounted to 12,193 Petajoule, with more than 75% coming from fossil sources, 16.1% from renewables, and 6.2% from nuclear energy."

Renewables includes solar, wind, and hydroelectric combined.

For 2021 "oil remained the most important source of energy with a share of 32.3%, followed by natural gas with 26.8%."

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Jan's avatar

Does that include the cost for the acres and acres needed for solar farms, and the farmers they put out of business? To say nothing of the food they produced.

And a solar farm could be totally wiped out with one drone strike.

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Nobody's avatar

This is experimental and not proven. As promising as all vaporware.

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Scott Mari's avatar

Try reading. They're doing it and it's out there. You saying - Nope! Not reading that! Doesn't make you right.

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