“…At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption. Ten years ago, they were at 82. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about 3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82.”…
Goldman Sachs’ Jeff Currie via WUWT
The US has several centuries worth of coal underground, but as the graph above shows, coal use in the US has dropped remarkably over the past century. Fortunately, US natural gas reserves have been more than adequate to allow that cleaner fuel to make up the difference. If you squint your eyes, you may be able to see the “contribution” of wind & solar in green above.
Intelligent energy and natural resource analysts understand that wind & solar cannot generate enough reliable electric power to supply a modern, intensely electrified society. And yet many politicians persist in trying to require their constituencies to adopt a total dependency on those unreliable energy sources. Large numbers of corporate journalists, politically connected opportunists, and academic shills support those politicians in their drive to hamstring their own societies.
Governments can spend huge quantities of money in the attempt to force a particular type of energy onto the public. Here are some of the devious ways that governments try to create an uneven playing field:
- Direct subsidies. This subsidy could be a direct cash grant from a government department or agency
- Tax incentives. These are special tax breaks (credits) or deductions targeted at specific types of electrical generation facilities
- Loan guarantees. A loan guarantee removes risk from the lender, when a government department or agency guarantees fulfilment of loan terms, making it easier for lenders to fund projects that are targeted by such legislation or regulation
- “First-use” mandates. Typically, regulators will require grid managers to accept electricity sold by beneficiaries of these mandates before any other generation facility. First-use mandates ensure that an IVRE can sell its power whenever it can produce it.
- “Floor-price”/minimum price mandates. Sometimes called “mandated feed-in tariffs,” these mandates can either be written directly into law (legislative) or required by regulatory bodies. Either way, such mandates require that beneficiaries are paid a minimum price for the electricity they produce, regardless of whether the price is aligned with market demand or not.
- In summary:
- Subsidies: often a combination of cash, favorable loans, and tax breaks
- Guaranteed Demand: mandates require EMMs to buy electrons from EP-IVRs in front of all other EPs, ensuring that EP-IVRs sell every electron they can produce
- Guaranteed minimum pricing: EP-IVRs are guaranteed a minimum price for every electron they can sell, affecting how much ECLs or ERs must pay to EP-IVRs over other EPs
Reliable vs. Intermittent Power Primer
A graphic look at wind intermittency:
The jagged graph above is typical for wind generation across most relatively windy locations. Anyone who understands the power grid will instantly see the danger for brownouts, blackouts, and grid collapse if utilities do not maintain exorbitantly expensive backup systems that are constantly ready to step in and make up for the instantaneous shortcomings of wind, as well as to be able to shut off instantly to allow wind power to take precedence when the wind is blowing adequately.
Besides the absurd expense involved in maintaining backup reliability to make the unreliable wind systems workable, all constituencies who try such schemes eventually see their reliable suppliers of power (gas, coal, diesel, sometimes nuclear) go out of business and quit, due to the immense wear and tear and other hidden costs with being forced to act as “backup systems” to unreliable wind.
There are two useful videos that demonstrate the impossibility of relying on wind & solar over the ong term:
Wind and Solar Energy Cannot Scale
Wind & Solar devices last about 20 years, compared to fossil fuels generators that last about 60 years and nuclear facilities that last from 80 to 100 years. This means that wind & solar devices must be replaced frequently. But since their manufacture requires hugely expensive materials and large amounts of energy, it is not clear that an all-wind & solar power grid could survive longer than 20 years!
The above linked video explains why wind and solar schemes cannot produce enough electric power to produce duplicate replacements for themselves — much less produce enough electric power to run a society besides. As long as there is plentiful electric power from nuclear, hydro, and fossil fuels generators, society can adopt small portions of wind & solar as “virtuous hobbies,” without suffering too much as a result. But once societies try surviving on mostly wind & solar, they will discover the pain that is felt by anyone who falls on his own sword.
The Energy Transition Delusion
The above linked video explains in excruciating detail why the much-ballyhooed energy transition will be impossible to achieve. The problem in this case is in the exponential growth in natural resource demands and in the impossibly complex supply chains within unstable political regimes. Watch it and see all the problems that are being glossed over by the rah! rah! boys of the green cheerleader brigade.
Another likely difficulty in the grand green energy transition is likely to be an unmanageable increase in complexity on several scales. The article describes some of the problems with newer higher levels of complexity that will be involved when trying to force societies to rely exclusively on EVs for transportation and on wind & solar for electric power.
Viewed from Mt. Olympus, the entire drive to push nations to a significant reliance on EVs and wind & solar energy, is more than just an attempt to channel many $trillions to politically connected investors and entrepreneurs — although it is certainly that. No, given the rather obvious potentially catastrophic impacts on societies that this transition would cause, it seems likely from up here that the foul ideology of “radical population downsizing” has reached the topmost levels of government across the western world. Many of the organizations that have been pushing radical human population downsizing have long received funding from Russia, China, and other enemies of western freedoms and western prosperity. It does not seem coincidental that at this time Russia and China see these suicidal thought trends in the west as being something of a lifeline for the survival of their own corrupt and demographically challenged societies. An investment that is finally paying off, so to speak.
Try to learn all you can about the twisting and intersecting pathways of global green transitions, climate apocalypticism, and western woke-ism. The corporate media is certainly all-in, as are western universities, many western corporations, and most western governments.
Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you!
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst. It is never too late for a Dangerous Childhood © .
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