The Lie of Cheap Renewable Energy

Huh?

 

For me the question ‘if the renewable energy is cheap or not’ is a scientific question and not an emotional, the answer can be only true of false.
Accusing someone of fraud, asking readers what they think, accusing someone of cherry picking – it shows of political agenda.

I tried to understand the table – but there are too many things I don’t understand, so I asked AI BARD:

Question: Is electricity generated by wind or sun is cheaper then generated by fossil fuels?

I think it is a very good answer!

 

Renewable suffers from one major flaw, and it's not cost.

Basically, wind and solar are intermittent. So any utility that incorporates it must also maintain the original generating scheme (generally fossil-fueled) in order to always be able to provide power (losing power, particularly in winter, can kill a lot of people).

Therefore, even if the renewables are cheaper, the system is much more expensive due to redundancy requirements.

I couldn't help but notice that AI BARD seems to have missed that detail.

 

AI is Garbage in/Garbage out.
The final paragraph tells the tale:
"Now, consider the question of whether cost figures in the Lazard Report are the result of rank incompetence versus intentional deception. Could the people at Lazard who produce all these fancy and complex charts and graphs really not know that 4 hour duration batteries cycling once per day are not going to come close to solving the intermittency problems of wind and solar generation? Or do they really know that, and they are just hoping to sell a few hundreds of billions of dollars worth of wind turbines and solar panels before the stupid politicians and investors figure out the scam?"

Every bit of intermittent renewable energy must be backed up by dispatchable (fossil or nuclear) capacity. And that cost is always omitted from projections.

 

One of the difficulties is that the question is much more complex than "Is electricity generated by wind or sun cheaper than that generated by fossil fuels?". Let me give you a consumer perspective Here are some facts which influence our view:
1. We have gone totally solar. We are only "on the grid" to sell our excess BACK to the grid.
2. We used to pay about $500 per month to the utility company. We wrote a check and it was gone... with nothing to show for it but electricity.
3. We still write that same check, but now we are building equity so it has had little immediate impact on our finances.
4. But now we are building equity... a LOT of equity when the solar loan is paid off.
5. As the cost of electricity increases, the amount we receive from selling our excess may become a positive cash flow.
6. We don't worry about blackouts or brownouts at all.
7. Our AC is electric and we use an electric "heat pump" for heat... so our heating and cooling has become free.
8. I do not want an electric car. I want unlimited miles, and no recharging nightmares on long trips.
9. We are "preppers" and solar makes us relatively independent in case of an emergency.
10. I am not out to save the world... just keep my family safe and comfortable.
11. I live in Texas where we drill, refine, distribute and sell our own oil and gas. That keeps gas prices relatively low. We also live in a southern climate so that a "heat pump" is viable.

Looking at that list you can see that the answer to your question varies from location to location, travel requirements, and other variables.

 

Renewables kill.
Wind turbines kill too many birds and bats. How can we make them safer?
Guest Blogger
In fact, some experts predict that turbine collisions could drive certain bat species to extinction. “It’s the No. 1 threat facing our small microbats,” Bennett says. . . .

 

Another one bites the dust.
Developers Cancel Huge Offshore Wind Contract In Latest Blow to Biden’s Climate Agenda
Guest Blogger
Equinor and British Petroleum (BP), the firms working in a joint venture to construct the enormous Empire Wind 2 offshore wind farm, canceled a contract with New York state to…

 

Stupid is as stupid does.
A Cautionary Tale from Prince Edward Island
Charles Rotter
…they became a financial sinkhole and a symbol of unfulfilled promises. . . . .

 

Ingenuity, I suppose.
Lap Dance for Wind Turbines? British Green Energy Developers Accused of a New Low
Eric Worrall
“… The clean energy company strongly denies this allegation, saying that no such offer was ever made. …”

 

So you think windmills kill? Windows kill by he facor of 1,000, cats by 100. Please stay honest.

 

Microbats? Are those for itty bitty baseball players? How about acrobats? Does Windows 10 kill more than other versions?
Windmills kill cats? Flying cats? How about flying fish? Or Rocky, the Flying Squirrel? Is HE in danger too?
SURVIVAL TIP: If you are lost in the desert without water... head for the nearest windmill generator. It will protect you from the buzzards.

 

Well, I'd have loved to discuss with you, but it needs still two to tango.

 

Tango is good... but I prefer fresh-squeezed.

 

No one said windows and cats aren't lethal. But no one is spending large $$ to increase the number of windows or cats.

 

Vive la France!
Is France Quietly Ditching Renewable Energy Targets?
Eric Worrall
Greens are furious the wrong kind of zero carbon energy is being prioritised? . . .

 

For the umpteenth time, "renewables" always require fossil fuel back-up.
Germany To Rely on Coal to Avoid Blackouts
Guest Blogger
The back up for intermittent renewables will come from 40 year old plants, which should have been shut down already. . . .

 

Reality is in the way of the renewable energy future.
Updates On The March To The Great Green Energy Future
January 12, 2024/ Francis Menton

• 
  The cries of climate alarm get ever louder and more urgent. (E.g., New York Times, January 9, “It’s confirmed: 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record and perhaps in the last 100,000 years. By far.”). We’re all about to boil! Something must be done!
  
  
• OK, but then there is the proposed solution: Order up by government fiat that our current fully working and inexpensive energy system must be replaced with a never-demonstrated pipe dream conjured up by political science and gender studies majors who know nothing about how an energy system works.
  
  
• We’re far enough into this by now that some of the pieces are starting to blow up in dramatic fashion. Are we allowed to notice?
  

READ MORE

 

The question is whether governments can see the failure, admit the failure, and change course in time to avoid catastrophe.

Markers Along The Road To The Death Of Net Zero
January 20, 2024/ Francis Menton

• 
  What will the death of the green energy illusion look like?
  
  
• From time to time (see, for example, here and here) I have described a vision where some state or country runs headlong into a “green energy wall” — an impassable barricade of physical impossibility, characterized by scarcity and blackouts, into which the country crashes suddenly. Among the net zero zealot countries I have identified as the leading candidates for imminently hitting such a wall are Germany and the UK.
  
  
• But perhaps, instead of a sudden crash, the demise of the green energy illusion will look more like a slow but steady decline, a gradual withering of economic activity and prosperity.
  
  
• In this scenario, high energy prices brought about by energy restrictions drive important industries out of business and, as good jobs disappear and energy prices increase, the people gradually and inexorably get poorer.
  
  
• Recent events in the UK and Germany seem to point in the direction of this type of scenario.
  

READ MORE

 

Germany is learning the hard way.
Germany, Once a Powerhouse, Is at an Economic 'Standstill'

Melissa Eddy, NY Times

 

I have zero sympathy for their self-inflicted wounds because they are thinking stupidly and irrationally.

 

So is California. It's getting worse because the legislature in an attempt to reduce budget deficits are scaling back on solar subsidies resulting in energy prices in California being ~ double that in other states. California is giving Germany a run for its green money.

The following is from the WSJ and is behind a paywall.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/califo...ower that they generate and remit to the grid.

 

The pro-renewables Texas narrative is once again exposed as false.
Sheridan Shakes the Texas/ERCOT Narrative – Fossil Fuels to the Rescue
ECONOMIC HARM JANUARY 22, 2024

 

The Germans have made themselves guinea pigs in a demonstration of the results of climate madness.
Heat Becomes Unaffordable In Germany… Seniors Struggle, Staying Warm At Public Heating Places…
By P Gosselin on 23. January 2024

Energy poverty is spreading in Germany. Citizens, especially seniors, can no longer afford to heat their residences

Blackout News reports on how German senior citizens, who, due to high energy prices, are being increasingly forced into a life of poverty and struggling to keep warm at home.

“Many pensioners can no longer pay heating costs and so they spend time at so called warming places,” like charitable organizations. It’s just too expensive to pay for heat at home.Bild also reports here.
“Older Berlin pensioners are struggling with high heating costs and cold homes,” writes Blackout News.

Many pensioners are having difficulty coping with paying their rent and high heating costs, many with a pension of well under 1,000 euros.

Recently one leading German politician, Ricarda Lang (Greens) embarrassed herself on German television when she said she thought the average German pensioner earned 2000 euros a month. The average in fact is just 1500 euros.

Soup kitchens and warming places

Sigrid Johannes, 84 years old, says she has to set the heat in her living room on low and doesn’t heat the other rooms. “I’m out and about all day, in the soup kitchen at lunchtime, and at a warming place in the afternoon. In the evening, I snuggle up in a thick blanket to save money,” reports Blackout News.”

Germany’s energy situation is so bad, in fact, that in November, 2022, the “Network of Warmth” was founded in Berlin. “Almost 358 facilities offer warmth for people struggling with high energy costs.”

Meanwhile, the government is doing nothing to make heating energy cheaper.

Nine times deadlier

Climate scammers like to claim that warmth in fact kills, and so think the mean temperature of the earth ought to go back to where it was in the 1960s and 70s, a cold time when the media fretted about the next ice age.

But, as Björn Lomborg here points out at X, cold actually kills nine times more people than heat.

 

Net Zero kills.
Leading British Physician Says Going NetZero Would Probably Lead To 6 Billion Starving
By P Gosselin on 24. January 2024

Without fossil fuels,” we wouldn’t be able to feed the world”, distinguished scientist warns. We’ll be wrecking our lives the next decades.”

British professor Angus Dalgleish, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in an interview with Dr. John Campbell slams climate science and the media who distribute its fallacies.



Dagleish says that CO2 is a greening gas, and so offers many advantages, and that if we stopped using fossil fuels, we wouldn’t be able to feed the world.

Absolutely madness

“Nobody has thought this through,” Dagleish says, comparing NetZero to the pandemic lockdowns. “It’s absolutely madness if we constantly go to this.”

“The unintended consequences will be wrecking our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren, the next decades.”

 

The bill is coming due for solar fraudsters.

• 
  The rooftop solar industry could be on the verge of collapse