Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
News hot off the presses, the madness spreads …
UN calls for doubling renewable energy by 2030
(AFP) – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON — UN chief Ban Ki-moon made a call to double global consumption of renewable energy over the next two decades in order to ensure sustainable economic development.
“It’s possible if we show political leadership,” Ban said. … “We have to be very austere in using energy… We have to completely change our behavior, at home, at the office.”
Figure 1. US energy use, 2008. Click on image for larger view. SOURCE: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
Double our consumption of renewable energy by 2030 … what’s not to like?
Well, the first thing not to like is that renewable energy is intermittent. That means that if we add a million kilowatts of renewable energy generation, we also have to add a million kilowatts of conventional generators.
Second thing not to like is that renewable energy is expensive, typically around three times as expensive as fossil fuel. These first two things conspire to push the cost of power up, way up. Prices of electricity in California are double the prices in neighboring states because of this push for “renewables”.
More to the point, however, is the ludicrous size of what the Chief plans to do. Bear in mind that, as in California, the CO2 alarmists don’t see large-scale hydropower as “renewable” … don’t ask me why, I don’t understand it, but it’s supposed to be teh eeevil regarding CO2 … and as a result, few large hydro plants are under construction anywhere. So they’re not talking about doubling hydropower, that would be a crime in their world.
So the real reason not to like this plan is that we only get a trivial amount of energy from renewables. In the US, we get a tenth of one percent of our energy from solar, half a percent from wind, and a third of a percent from geothermal. Finally, we get 3.9% of our energy from biomass, mostly in industries that generate said biomass as a waste product. Total? A whacking great 4.8% of our energy comes from renewables.
If we double that over the next 18 years, we’ll increase the solar share to a resounding two tenths of a percent … and wind energy will go up to 1% …
Gosh, if we continue at that rate, with solar energy increasing by 0.09% every 18 years, solar will provide ten percent of the US energy by … let’s see, divide by 2, carry the 1 … well, by the year 4012.
10% solar energy by 4012 … that’s some goal there, Chief.
My main problem with the Moon Unit and his bizarro plans is that they are based on the idea that we need to decrease energy use by increasing the price of energy. They are doing that in Britain already, it’s called “fuel poverty”, and it causes old folks to shiver in the winter because they can’t afford to heat their houses. The fact that the Chief is advocating more expensive energy and thinks that reduced energy use is a path to “economic development” is just plain sick.
The opposite is true. We need to increase energy use, and to do that we need less expensive energy, particularly for the poor. Inexpensive energy is the best friend that the poor ever had. The UN’s Chief Moon-ki wants to increase energy prices. That increases prices for all products and services, because from food to clothing to medicine, everything contains energy. The Chief pretends to be a friend to the poor, but his actions do nothing but shackle the poor to a lifetime of energy poverty.
w.
PS—There are a some countries and societies (e.g. the Solomon Islands) that use 50% or more renewable energy, in the form of burning wood, sticks, twigs, and cattle dung for cooking and heating. This leads to indoor and outdoor pollution, lung disease, and eye problems, particularly affecting women. Having been in a number of those countries, I can assure you that the poor people living there would like nothing more than to get OFF of renewable energy … and Mr. Ki-moon is being willfully and criminally blind if he does not know that.
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I used to think of the likable George Monbiot as “Moonbat” (hat tip to James Delingpole). Now we have Moonbat2 in the shape of the clueless Ban Ki-moon.
It always didn’t make sense to me why the UN was created- discussions between the US (and some of Europe) and USSR don’t need many other irrelevant countries in the way. Right now asian countries go to Australia for mediated dispute resolution proving how irrelevant the UN is.
I’ll bet it would be more cost effective to spend money increasing the efficiency of coal & gas plants that it is to spend money on renewables.
Thanks
JK
From my read, he wants to double the consumption of renewable energy, not the percentage consumed.
So if all energy consumption more than doubles in the next 18 years the percentage of renewable energy would actually go down.
Washington State, a very wet place, does not consider hydro power to be a renewable. It is the kind of insanity in government that makes the rest of us crazy.
http://crosscut.com/2010/12/28/energy-utilities/20375/Can-the-state-meet-its-mandate-to-find-alternative-energy-sources-/
There are entire nations that would love to have our very renewable hydropower. I think our largest customer is California, in fact.
“The UN’s Chief Moon-ki wants to increase energy prices. That increases prices for all products and services, because from food to clothing to medicine, everything contains energy. The Chief pretends to be a friend to the poor, but his actions do nothing but shackle the poor to a lifetime of energy poverty”.
Indeed Anthony and not only the poors because this UN plan will make all middle class, including profesionals, become poorer. And this is truly what is totalitarian in the ecomadness: an economic thought control first, an economic cull.
Willful and criminal indeed. But not blind. Eyes wide open megalomanic sociopaths. Cut them no slack, don’t give an inch. These people are not our friends.
Ban said…“We have to be very austere in using energy… We have to completely change our behavior, at home, at the office.”
Dollars to doughnut holes he doesn’t believe the pronoun “we” includes the pronoun “me”…
Willis thank you once again for an informative and logical approach to the real energy problems we face today.
I too have seen countries where wood and its twigs and scraps are important as energy sources, and life is grim there. Severe soil erosion follows deforestation and accelerating poverty followes a collapsing rural agriculture. They lose farmers to the over crowded cities and shanty towns or urban slums develop and life in much worse than it was in rural areas before deforestation.
An important part of the solution to this problem is cheap electricity in rural areas and conservation of soil and water resources.
But to eliminate traditional energy and focus on undependable “renewables” is indeed cruel, and should not be forced on the poorest among us.
Mark Smith says:
April 21, 2012 at 10:51 pm
It always didn’t make sense to me why the UN was created- discussions between the US (and some of Europe) and USSR don’t need many other irrelevant countries in the way.
The UN proved itself dysfunctional as a global mediation body the first time it was tested — the Korean War. So far, it’s been maintaining that streak…
Recently BG, one of the energy suppliers in the UK announced that renewables costs compose 12% of the consumers energy bill, renewables currently supply around 3% of electricity.
What suprises me is not that those ilike Wan Ki-moon in their ivory towers do not see it but that politicians cannot fast forward and not see there would be a general backlash when these eye watering costs seep out to the general public and that their goal is unachievable.
Some of the groups who routinely block Hydroelectric dams from being built, upgraded or otherwise improved remind me of the line from Casablanca “Round up the usual suspects”. The Sierra club, etc., and this group: http://www.hydroreform.org/california/about/core-values
Ban Ki Moon lost all credibility with:
11:25PM BST 01 Sep 2009
Mr Ban said world leaders had a “moral political responsibility” to safeguard the future of the planet.
“I am very much alarmed and surprised to have seen these glaciers all worn,” he told journalists as he visited the Ny-Aalesund climate change research station in the Svalbard archipelago, located 745 miles from the North Pole.
“Unless we take urgent action to stem this trend, we maybe virtually ice-free by 2037, even by 2030,” he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/6124017/Ban-Ki-moon-alarmed-by-melting-glaciers-on-visit-to-Arctic.html
Let’s hope he is still around in 2030 in order to be able to give a very public, shame-faced apology to the world for such alarmism.
FrankSW says:
April 21, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Thanks, Frank. Unfortunately, often a while elapses between the imposition of the renewable mandate and the rise in prices. What that has meant here in California is a doubling in electrical prices … but nobody seems to connect that to the 30% !! renewables mandate by 2020 that was imposed by our clueless leaders.
I fear H. L. Mencken was right when he said:
But I do what I can, yelling “Wake up!” …
w.
Maybe the power companies supplying the UN buildings should cut the power and the back up to show what will be the future with renewable s (don’t like that description) when it’s dark and the wind ain’t blowing.
James Bull
Check out the label of the box in the upper right of the graphic: “Rejected Energy”. That’s a strange euphemism for loss due due conversion and transmission. More than two-thirds of electricity generated is lost in transmission. Let’s put the effort in greater efficiency ther rather than misguided and uninformed expansion of solar and other “renewables”.
It would be a great service to us all if someone could provide an email address for Mr. Moon,
Ah, he is able to read,? or is he typical of his class and leaves the reading to others?!
A substantial proportion of biomass come from venting methane from landfills and there a finite number of suitable landfills.
Much of the rest of the biomass is forestry ‘waste’. I doubt forestry waste has been burnt in situ in the USA for a long time, and clearly leaving it on the ground will produce less CO2 than turning it into fuel and burning it.
Perhaps someone who is more familiar with the subject could enlighten me, but it appears to me that most of the justification of biofuels reducing GHG emissions is based on eliminating methane emisions, as clearly all biofuels increase CO2 emissions.
Meanwhile here in Australia the Greenies have managed to get forestry waste classified as ‘non-renewable’.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/03/20/3459509.htm
And growing plants for biomass is as idiotic as biofuels.
They are going to have to find some sort of renewable that lasts more than a couple of years then.
🙂
Will the world last untill then? i think not…
Given the UN track record of achieving their other goals, such as preventing wars, preventing genocide, enforcing human rights and such, I’m not certain what the concern is.
Calling him a “moonbat” is an ad hominem attach BTW, and I am certain that the entire moonbat population is very insulted by the comparison.
The California Renewable Portfolio Standard doesn’t include large hydro, but does count any generation less than 30 MW (http://www.energy.ca.gov/hydroelectric/index.html). They don’t want to encourage new impoundments (dam construction). The Guv now wants distributed generation, i.e. rooftop solar and small wind generators. The utilities rightly don’t like that. Seems to me it’s punishment for failing to meet the RPS standards quickly enough. The rules now require utilities to purchase renewable energy by auction to meet goals, at whatever price they are available (http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/145622/Renewables/Californias+Renewable+Auction+Mechanism+RAM+Resolution). Ouch.
Why are people who don’t know what they are doing in charge of energy? The same old story: Not power for us, but power for them. The keep fixing it until it’s completely broken, and then they can replace the whole thing with what they wanted all along, and act like heroes.
gallopingcamel says: ‘I used to think of the likable George Monbiot … ‘
Goodness, you’re not his Mum, are you? [‘Son of a galloping camel’ – sounds like a suitably phrased Arab curse!]
Philip;
The biomass argument is somewhat more indirect and simplistic: it uses materials already embedded in the atmospheric carbon cycle, and hence substitutes for geological stores of same, like oil and coal.
It’s perverse, of course. All those geologic CO2 treasurehouses should be raided and returned to their proper place above ground ASAP.
It’s worth including the findings of this government report about the UK’s Carbon Footprint 1990-2009. Fig one shows that despite all attempts to cut UK CO2 the only effective method was the massive recession starting in 2008. Between 1990-2009 we’ve had a ‘dash for gas’ stations which makes us vulnerable to gas prices, littered our landscape with useless windmills and pretty much destroyed our manufacturing industry. Worse, fig one shows that the CO2 connected to imports rose hugely, so our actual CO2 emission were still going up before the financial crash.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/Release_carbon_footprint_08Mar12.pdf
Soon our nuclear stations will start closing down due to age and the same people who won’t let us have coal put barriers in the way of new nuclear so our electricity supply will start to falter. On the plus side, mass poverty will cut our CO2 emissions right down and Mr Moon will be able to point to us as a success story.