Without the Climate Apocalypse Cult, Why Would Anyone Buy Into Unreliable Intermittent Energy?
The people and government of South Australia are discovering to their horror and regret what happens when bureaucrats buy too deeply into the intermittent, unreliable green energy scam.
Turmoil in South Australia’s heavily wind-reliant electricity market has forced the state government to plead with the owner of a mothballed gas-fired power station to turn it back on…
… South Australia, which led the charge into wind and solar energy and gets two-fifths of its power from these sources, has suffered the highest prices on the mainland, increasing the pressure on the state’s industrial energy users.
… Energy experts say South Australia’s heavy reliance on wind energy is compounding its problems in two ways, first by forcing the remaining baseload generators to earn more revenue in shorter periods of time when the wind isn’t blowing, and secondly by forcing baseload coal and gas generators out of the market altogether.
__ Energy Crisis in South Australia
Germany (and Europe itself) is running into similar problems, and is being forced to halt construction of new offshore wind farms. Germany is also being forced to make deep cuts in renewable subsidies, used to support wasteful and unreliable wind and solar promotion by government agencies. Other European nations will soon be forced to follow in kind.
Germany’s wind and solar power systems have provided … power at unpredictable times, which damaged the power grid and made the system vulnerable to blackouts.
… major German companies might not be able to build green energy for much longer as the government’s plans have done enormous damage to utilities, destroying their main sources of profit and increasing the price of electricity throughout Germany.
The enormous German utility Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk (RWE) was forced by the government to shut down many of its profitable nuclear reactors and build expensive wind and solar power. The government’s mandate to replace nuclear reactors with wind or solar power cost over $1.1 trillion. The company has a 46 percent chance of going bankrupt within the next two years, according to investment groups.
The amount of money flowing into European green energy from governments and the private sector collapsed from $132 billion in 2011 to $58 billion last year, according to a May report by a British auditing firm. Green energy’s failure to meet reliability and cost goals were the primary reasons for declining investment. Europe has poured $1.2 trillion into the green energy industry to fight global warming, but its CO2 emissions and power bills just keep rising.
Even Denmark is being forced to make cuts in its green energy system in order to save its industry and economy:
In May, the Danish government cancelled construction of five wind farms because the cost of wind-based electricity was too expensive for consumers. The energy projects, approved in 2012, were cancelled after regulators discovered a sharp spike in the cost of renewables.
According to one analysis, Danes are paying the highest electricity costs in the European Union. As much as 66 percent of Danes’ electric bills goes to paying green taxes and fees. Just 15 percent goes to pay for the electricity generated.
… “We can’t accept this, as the private sector and households are paying far too much. Denmark’s renewable policy has turned out to be too expensive,” Denmark’s Climate Minister Lars Christian Lilleholt said in May. __ Europe’s Wind Energy Failures
Green Energy is Unreliable, Low-Quality, Expensive, and Poorly Matched to Demand
European nations such as Germany and Spain jumped head-first into unreliable energy without studying the many potentially catastrophic problems they entail. To prevent outright disaster, they are being forced to rapidly backtrack before it is too late.
In the US, dysfunctional states such as California and New York have been attempting to repeat the mistakes of South Australia, Germany, Spain, and others. State residents and power consumers will pay the painful price for such foolishness, but the politicians and bureaucrats who are guilty of these suicidal policies of resource misallocation and faulty incentives are not certain to receive the punishment they are due.
Who Would Fall for this Foolishness, If Not for the Climate Apocalypse Delusion?
Carbon hysteria is a fool’s delusion, which leads the unwary into all manner of mistakes and quasi-suicidal actions. The UK is beginning to understand that it cannot afford to follow that path to energy bankruptcy:
Britain abolishes Department of Energy and Climate
The UK has come very close to disaster by following the same asinine energy policies as Germany, Spain, South Australia and California. Fortunately, some of Britain’s officials are coming to their senses.
Large Numbers of Anti-Apocalypse Peer-Review Science Finding its Way into Print
240 scientific papers sceptical of climate apocalypse published during first 6 months of 2016
Fortunately, at least a few scientists are beginning to apply actual science to the problem of climate, rather than playing computer games and calling it science. Here’s another approach to actual science in climate studies:
A team of small, shoebox-sized satellites, flying in formation around the Earth, could estimate the planet’s reflected energy with twice the accuracy of traditional monolith satellites, according to an MIT-led study published online in Acta Astronautica. If done right, such satellite swarms could also be cheaper to build, launch, and maintain.
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