The following article was written by a leading environmental activist, who’s also running for governor of California, not some fossil-fuel advocate.
Guest essay by Michael Schellenberger
Over the last year, the media have published story after story after story about the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines.
People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become.
And yet that’s not what’s happening. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Between 2009 and 2017, the price of solar panels per watt declined by 75 percent while the price of wind turbines per watt declined by 50 percent.
And yet — during the same period — the price of electricity in places that deployed significant quantities of renewables increased dramatically.
Electricity prices increased by:
- 51 percent in Germany during its expansion of solar and wind energy from 2006 to 2016;
- 24 percent in California during its solar energy build-out from 2011 to 2017;
- over 100 percent in Denmark since 1995 when it began deploying renewables (mostly wind) in earnest.
What gives? If solar panels and wind turbines became so much cheaper, why did the price of electricity rise instead of decline?
One hypothesis might be that while electricity from solar and wind became cheaper, other energy sources like coal, nuclear, and natural gas became more expensive, eliminating any savings, and raising the overall price of electricity.
But, again, that’s not what happened.
The price of natural gas declined by 72 percent in the U.S. between 2009 and 2016 due to the fracking revolution. In Europe, natural gas prices dropped by a little less than half over the same period.
The price of nuclear and coal in those place during the same period was mostly flat.
Another hypothesis might be that the closure of nuclear plants resulted in higher energy prices.
Evidence for this hypothesis comes from the fact that nuclear energy leaders Illinois, France, Sweden and South Korea enjoy some of the cheapest electricity in the world.
Since 2010, California closed one nuclear plant (2,140 MW installed capacity) while Germany closed 5 nuclear plants and 4 other reactors at currently-operating plants (10,980 MW in total).
Electricity in Illinois is 42 percent cheaper than electricity in California while electricity in France is 45 percent cheaper than electricity in Germany.
But this hypothesis is undermined by the fact that the price of the main replacement fuels, natural gas, and coal, remained low, despite increased demand for those two fuels in California and Germany.
That leaves us with solar and wind as the key suspects behind higher electricity prices. But why would cheaper solar panels and wind turbines make electricity more expensive?
The main reason appears to have been predicted by a young German economist in 2013.
In a paper in Energy Policy, Leon Hirth estimated that the economic value of wind and solar would decline significantly as they become a larger part of electricity supply.
The reason? Their fundamentally unreliable nature. Both solar and wind produce too much energy when societies don’t need it, and not enough when they do.
Solar and wind thus require that natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries or some other form of reliable power be ready at a moment’s notice to start churning out electricity when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining.
And unreliability requires solar- and/or wind-heavy places like Germany, California, and Denmark to pay neighboring nations or states to take their solar and wind energy when they are producing too much of it.
Hirth predicted that the economic value of wind on the European grid would decline 40 percent once it becomes 30 percent of electricity while the value of solar would drop by 50 percent when it got to just 15 percent.
In 2017, the share of electricity coming from wind and solar was 53 percent in Denmark, 26 percent in Germany, and 23 percent in California. Denmark and Germany have the first and second most expensive electricity in Europe.
By reporting on the declining costs of solar panels and wind turbines but not on how they increase electricity prices, journalists are — intentionally or unintentionally — misleading policymakers and the public about those two technologies.
The Los Angeles Times last year reported that California’s electricity prices were rising, but failed to connect the price rise to renewables, provoking a sharp rebuttal from UC Berkeley economist James Bushnell.
“The story of how California’s electric system got to its current state is a long and gory one,” Bushnell wrote, but “the dominant policy driver in the electricity sector has unquestionably been a focus on developing renewable sources of electricity generation.”
Part of the problem is that many reporters don’t understand electricity. They think of electricity as a commodity when it is, in fact, a service — like eating at a restaurant.
The price we pay for the luxury of eating out isn’t just the cost of the ingredients most of which, like solar panels and wind turbines, have declined for decades.
Rather, the price of services like eating out and electricity reflect the cost not only of a few ingredients but also their preparation and delivery.
This is a problem of bias, not just energy illiteracy. Normally skeptical journalists routinely give renewables a pass. The reason isn’t that they don’t know how to report critically on energy — they do regularly when it comes to non-renewable energy sources — but rather because they don’t want to.
That could — and should — change. Reporters have an obligation to report accurately and fairly on all issues they cover, especially ones as important as energy and the environment.
A good start would be for them to investigate why, if solar and wind are so cheap, they are making electricity so expensive.
Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and President of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization.
Read more at Forbes Blogs
A very good analysis. And conclusion. I saved the article.
There’s an important concept in economics. Substitution. When a good or service becomes too expensive, folks “substitute” something else. (This is why we will never “run out” of resources, too. Something becomes scarce, we substitute something that isn’t.)
Well, electricity in California is expensive. The chart says approaching 30 ¢ average. The tariff I pay is 19 ¢ baseline, about enough power to read your bill /sarc;, and then it goes to 32 ¢ / kW-hr.
Now a gallon of gasoline ( yes, I’m in the USA. I could do all this in metric but the units are just clumsy) is a nice standard for energy bought. We see the price posted all day every day. A useful concept for comparing fuel economy in different kinds of cars (propane, alcohol, electricity, …) is the Gallon of Gasoline Equivalent. (The US Government pushes this for cars here.) Presently, here, it’s about $3.25 in California (closer to $2.25 in the rest of the nation…)
So what does a “Gallon” (of gasoline equivalent) of Electricity cost?
There are 3,413 BTU in a kW-hr.
(British Thermal Unit – raise one pound of water one degree F)
There are 114,000 BTU in a gallon of gasoline.
114,000 / 3,413 = 33.4 kW-hr in a gallon of gasoline.
33.4 x $0.32 = $10.69 / “Gallon” of gasoline equivalent electricity.
So if you are using electricity for things like an All Electric Kitchen (like mine), it is about 1/3 the cost to break out your Coleman Camp stove and use it instead. (About 1/2 the price to use your propane BBQ / stove on the patio). It’s even more economical than electricity to use Racing Alcohol motor fuel in a Trangia like “spirit’ camping stove. (That’s what I now use to make my morning coffee. Silent and efficient.)
In short, wind and solar electricity make it highly economical to use gasoline stoves and burn wood in your BBQ or propane in a grill /stove combo. So every morning I make my coffee over methanol / ethanol fuel, and cook my breakfast with gasoline… instead of using my electric stove.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/04/24/gallon-of-electricity/
Oddly, in the Central Valley, PG&E has a time of day tariff for mid-summer peak AC demand that is almost $1/kW-hr. At that point it is a major money maker to run your own generator to power your AC. That would be roughly $33 / “Gallon” GE for the electricity. Another interesting rule of thumb in American units. Take the cost of a gallon of Diesel and move the decimal over, you get the approximate cost per kW-hr of the fuel used in a generator. Diesel is presently $3.75 near me. (Much cheaper in the non-taxed off road form out in farm country central valley). That’s 37 ¢ / kW-hr electricity. So folks are being encouraged to run their AC off small personal Diesel generators during summer. To “save the planet”…
good comment.
You could add water heating, keeping you house warm, industrial process, etc.
Electricity use seems to reach a plateau, not because it lost appeal, but because of insane taxing
Excellent comment.
I generally reckon a litre of kerosene or diesel is about 10kWh. Its near enough.UK prices on a (non road use) litre are around £45p – equating to 4.5p per Kwh which is way lower than end user prices of electricity (although wholesale is around the 4p mark – the rest is grid distribution and greencrap)
That means that for space heating is far better to use oil or even gas as an energy source.
This is not allowed. Not for new houses. They MUST use gas or electric heat pumps. In winter, when heating is most used these typical air sourced heat pumps cant cope and dont do the 3 or 4:1 gain but need boosting with electricity that isn’t pumped. So gains of 2 or less are seen
Making winter heating bills twice the cost of oil heating.
We complain about rising power rates but they fall on deaf ears. Both the power companies and governments profit from higher electricity prices. Though politicians and CEOs may express concern and say they are working toward reducing the cost of electricity, this is actually not in their best interest, there is no financial incentive to reduce them. The financial reward is found in driving prices higher, and so more wind and solar farms are being built.
If you were in their shoes, you’d probably do the same thing.
The way to stop this lunacy is to make higher electricity rates unprofitable for both governments and power companies. I have no idea how that can be done.
“…The main reason appears to have been predicted by a young German economist in 2013….”
That is historically wrong. Such predictions were accepted wisdom in electrical generation circles in Australia, at least, from the 1970s. The real costs of intermittency were modelled and quantified way back then. It was so clear that large scale renewables were rejected out of hand as a future source of any magnitude.
Although Michael Schellenberger has got it right with most of his essay as reported, and thank heavens that somebody of prominence finally has, there is very little in the modern electrical sector that was not understood back in the 70s, even before then. (My employer company was suddenly involved in nuclear economics from about then and the steep learning curve contained much the same as Schellenberger reports, ours being modelled, his being observational.)
In Australia, the biggest impediment to a decent, low cost electrical supply like we used to have is political ignorance in accepting the demands of the Paris Agreement, then believing in the fairy tale that we can satisfy Paris and lower costs at the same time. Anybody who did not see this years ago should not now be in the business of offering advice about electricity costs today. Geoff.
A cogent explanation of the seeming paradox of why those hard-headed Victorian mill-owners changed from ‘free’ water-wheels to ‘expensive’ steam power.
While it is good that one environmental activist has finally grasped that “renewable” generation is expensive, he still has problems with the details.
The reason that cost reductions on solar panels and wind turbines has not reduced electricity prices is that the reduction has been from insanely expensive to stupidly expensive. It is still nowhere near the price/performance of other forms of generation. So the more “renewable” generation, the more expensive electricity becomes.
As for “predicted by a young German economist in 2013” I knew it in the 90s and would have known earlier, if I had bothered to research it.
The only country that is benefiting from wind and solar is Norway; they buy cheap electricity from Denmark, when the wind is blowing, and sell Denmark expensive electricity, when the wind is not blowing. They can do this because much of their generation is hydro which can be switched on and off quickly and which is limited in average output by water availability but can drastically exceed average output when required.
Solar panel ARE cheap. You find them <$0.5 / W. And, with all other thing needed (inverter, cable, rail to fix on a roof, etc.), you are in the ~$1/W of material. Rule of thumb, this means ~$0.1 /kWh electricity price.
Far from "stupidly expensive". So cheap that panel no longer matter in the price of a solar installation, and that's the main problem: other cost don't drop. Even if the panel were free, a solar installation would still be uncompetitive: you now have to move, install, graft to your house electric system, do paperwork to be allowed by your grid manager, etc. Doubling and tripling the cost.
And still work during sunshine hours, not when needed.
A Tesla automobile costs 120000. A spectacular price reduction of 50% does not mean that it becomes the main transportation choice for everyone. The green advocates creatively intermix relative and absolute numbers.
Economists, please note:
What we have here is a demonstration of
DISeconomy of scale.
Economists don’t need to note that, it’s the politicians that need that educating.
I got my Econ degree back in the ’70s and we covered both economies of scale and DIS-economies of scale. That then led to the discussion of Minimum Economic Size and Maximum Economic Size.
For a Steel Mill, the Maximum Economic Size is essentially global demand. Minimum economic size was about 1/2 continent of demand, then various improvements in small scale were made and Nucor started to be the hot steel company instead of U.S. Steel. The other side of the coin is Hotdog Carts. Minimum economic size is One Cart. Beyond that, it starts being increasingly expensive to coordinate the different carts, hire staff (instead of doing it yourself) and keep quality up. Maximum Economic Size isn’t much bigger than one cart. (You can do franchising to extend that, but the individual unit tends to stay one big cart.)
It is the politicians and folks who had One Intro Class (or none and just heard “Economies Of Scale” a few times and thought that was it…) that need to be slapped up side the head and forced to study DIS-economies of scale. Us Economists have already studied it for a long time…
John Garrett: And a demonstration of DAT economy for greens (i.e., “nice coal plant you got there, mate. Be a shame if you got no subsidy for it, eh.”).
Here in the UK, we routinely now see sheep-like press reports that ‘Such and such a country/area/city recently ran on 100% renewables….’
Oddly, no headlines when there’s no wind, and its night time, so ‘0% renewables….’
Heard on radio yesterday “UK record three days burning no coal for electricity (true)”
“Most of our electricity is made by wind and gas (untrue)”
Gas yes, not wind.
In 2017, http://www.gridwatch.org.uk recorded
Wind : 11.6%
Gas : 42.9%
Nuclear: 23.5%
Solar : 3.7%
Wood : 7.4%
Coal : 5.2%
Hydro : 1.4%
With imports (mainly French nuclear) making up the numbers.
to date, this year things are little different.
A little more coal and wind and a little less solar and nuclear
We still rely overwhelmingly on thermal power with gas nuclear coal and wood representing nearly 80% of total demand.
Intermittent renewables are less than 20% (thank Clapton!)
“UK record three days burning no coal for electricity (true)”
But they have to be on standby so they are burning coal and producing evil CO2 the reason behind the renewable energy boom.
No, I dont think they are on standby: there is enough gas to cover any emergencies. Right now we have well over 12GW of gas capacity off line.
If the wind stopped completely, all other forms of power would be able to pick up 100% of the slack?
Really? In that case why not get rid of coal altogether since it isn’t needed, ever.
Journalists must be very careful what they are skeptical of, or they might end up unemployed.
In Greenland?
Especially in Greenland !
It is, of course, the fact that renewables like wind/solar are unreliable. When they account for a small percentage of power, their unreliable nature is handled by the grid without much problem. But when they account for a substantial amount, the grid needs backup reliable power generation and that means you have a system that includes lots of duplicative capacity, and it costs a lot to maintain enough backup capacity- you have to keep it online,ready to go. Renewable folks now are preaching battery storage as a solution, but batteries can store limited amounts of power – enough perhaps to allow excessive noontime solar power to be shifted to evening, but cannot handle days (or even hours) of coudy weather or windless condiitons. The wind has this bad habit of dying off during stationary high pressure weather – when temps are the highest and power demand the greatest. Figures show Texas wind producing at insignificant 3 to 5% levels when demand is greatest during hot summer days. Solar arrays also actually produce less power during hot summer days.
What about ERCOT? Low prices, 18% wind last year. Would you consider 18% low penetration?
How would the analysis change throwing an electricity distribution network good enough to being together demand and production over a huge geographical area? China is pushing for such network.
Mr. Shellenberger, your estimate of rising electricity prices in DK is not well documented in your links.
It is true and obvious that the consumer price, including taxes and VAT is high and increasing, however the (cost)price before tax and VAT is not.
See this link with the prices from 2007. It may be, that you have access to data from 1995, then please show them to validate your claim.
https://www.mm.dk/videnbank/artikel/elpriser2016
Taxes in Germany account for 55% of the retail price. The Renewable Surcharge alone accounts for 23.6% of the retail cost. The transmission system operators pay for the costs of connecting the renewables to the grid. Grid charges account for 25.6% of the retail price. The VAT tax (16%) is the only tax that is not related to the generation and distribution of electricity. Comparing prices before tax and VAT is misleading and invalid.
Blaming ignorance, which appears to be the aim of this article, is very often counter productive.
I find it hard to believe that journalists, politicians and activists in general are ignorant to the realities of this article. On the contrary I believe that the activists mostly know that they promote more expensive electricity, and they do this on purpose, because this is an element of their green religion to reduce the material standard of living, and they lack the historic perspective to see how affordable energy has taken us from slavery to affluence.
The journalists and politicians may possibly understand less, but they listen to the loudest voices in the cases where they don’t outright belong to the activist groups.
This is crazy. California does not need to go all the way to Denmark or Germany. Both of those countries are blessed with hydro that can be used to balance wind and keep costs down. Instead they should look at an independently operating grid within their own continent that is managing 18% wind and has plans to ramp that up along with solar. That grid maintains some of the lowest electricity prices in the world. ERCOT.
The issue is not the technologies themselves, the issue is the market mechanisms.
Let me ask it this way – what penetration would ERCOT need of wind and solar before you all eat crow and admit that wind and solar can be a substantial part of an electricity mix without driving up costs? If it is 20% (the same as Nuclear) then get ready to eat your words next January, because by next January ERCOT will have delivered a full year with wind generating 20% of electric power and still providing electricity prices that are below average in the US. Otherwise you would have to say that Nuclear is only a bit player.
Excuse me, Denmark and Germany blessed with hydro???
Denmark’s highest “mountain” is less than 500 ft and they have no lakes nor major rivers.
Germany’s hydro power production is less than 15% of their total production. Germany pays the Swiss to receive surplus power, Denmark are lucky to get a nominal price when they can transfer wind power to Norway and Sweden.
How about naming your imaginary paradises.
At 15% Germany has about 2x the portion of its electric power coming from Hydro than the US. ERCOT that fraction is (rounded to the nearest whole number) 0%. Denmark – thank you for biting. Denmark is connected via undersea HVDC to Norway and Sweden. Given that the Danes can import as much hydro as they want any time they want then I would say, yes they are blessed with hydro and are able to use that to balance wind.
My point is that it is not the technology. The technology is kind of irrelevant. If you have a stupid market based on coal or a stupid market based on wind in either case you will have bad results. Wind can clearly make 18% penetration without driving up prices even if you have little or no ability to export surplus power, and it can do so in a market where wind drops during times of peak demand (hot summer days).
chadb
The Danes are blessed with the highest energy price in Europe after Germany!
Is that your paradise?
To RPT – No, I am not saying the Danish model is one we should follow. What I am trying to say is that the Leftist model of forcing renewables regardless of the consequences is a recipe for disaster. In ERCOT there were some low penetration standards passed early on that have been massively blown past and are totally irrelevant at this point. What ERCOT did was build transmission lines and deregulate the energy industry. The Feds kicked in a (now) $20/MWh subsidy. I am totally fine with dropping the subsidy altogether, it should be dropped. Same for solar, and the tax incentives should be dropped as well (accelerated depreciation and so on).
However, in current environment the best capital was spent not on repairing labor intensive coal plants, but on building capital intensive (low labor) wind farms that would then be backed up by low capital low labor high fuel price Nat Gas. That is, if your gas plant is running half the time your highest cost is still fuel (not labor or capital). The gas plants are then timed for maintenance in spring/fall when wind production is high and demand is low.
Personally I don’t give a rip where my electrons come from. I am technology apathetic. However, what chaps me is when people point to technology to explain a market failure. The Danes and the Germans have ridiculous markets, and the best technology in the world cannot fix that problem. Stop comparing to stupid markets and instead look at rational ones.
Danes can import, but they can’t import as much as they want. Especially since Norway is determined to electrify their transportation fleet. They are soon going to be needing all of that hydro power for themselves.
1) The claim that Europe in general and Germany in particular have some of the lowest cost electricity in the world is so wrong it’s laughable.
2) Germany’s grid is only stable because they are able to buy and sell electricity from the rest of the European grid with which they are heavily interconnected.
The Windmill Industry here in Oklahoma has been advertising heavily on television lately, promoting wind power, and one of their talking points is that wind power will give us cheaper electricity.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that.
Waaaaaay back in the 70’s, while stationed in Hawaii, solar panels for homes were coming into use. First there was the large tax credit for installing them and then the idea of lowering your electric bill made sense with a lot of people. Even then it was common knowledge (for those who wished to be knowledgeable) that while revenue would decline as more and more people installed solar, infrastructure costs of the grid remained the same. So of course the cost of electricity from the grid had to go up for everyone to keep revenues where they needed to be. As the cost of electricity rose, it made the use of solar more desirable which of course lead to the need to make up for the additional lost revenue with additional increases in price.
The sad thing was those who could least afford solar panels were hit hardest by the rising cost of grid electricity.
One of the last jobs I did for my former employee was to estimate the payback time of a solar roof installation the company did, solely for non-profit political reasons.
The local situation was that grid power could be split into 3 roughly equal parts: Tax (partly to pay for solar subsidies), electricity cost and grid costs.
In the case of roof solar, grid costs and taxes were zero, and there was obviously no real estate costs as the roof was “free”.
At the current extremely low interest level, and excluding the subsidies for the solar equipment/installation, I estimated the payback time to slightly below 40 years.
If the payback period was 40 years then it is in reality never, since it is unlikely the panels will last that long. As a separate question, what did you use for the discount rate? My suspicion is that if the discount rate was anything over inflation the NPV of the install would be negative and the payback would be never.
And it’s not just payback that’s needed, to sustain renewable power long term, you also need as much in net profit again, in order to afford to replace it at end of its life cycle.
People who bought the sales pitch, that all they need to do is to have it pay for itself, are failing to understand how they’ve painted themselves into a financial corner. i.e. they won’t get payback, PLUS the net profit for self-supplied recapitalisation funding, to replace the now rapidly aging degrading and failing system, that is now unreliable, or has failed.
People seem to think these will just keep working.
Meanwhile, they’re one hailstorm or cyclone/hurricane away from losing power for months.
On top of that, your relationships and family will be severely stressed by such shock outcomes and the sudden financial stresses and its inconvenient truths about renewable grid independence.
Good luck with that, as the LEAST of your real costs will be measured in dollars. There are going to be bigger prices to pay, over time.
And I hope you didn’t operate your business on the renewables in that casd, because if you did you’re now properly stuffed, for the foreseeable, as are your now unemployed staff. What’s not to like?
Meanwhile, your retrograde neighbours who are still on mains supply, lost their supply from the storm for just two days. It was novel, like camping, but way better, and they made lots of whoopie in bed to pass the time. Candles are useful.
I had my solar panels installed in early 2012 here in the Netherlands. Back then I still believed the whole global warming story but I don’ t regret it from a financial point of view. A kWh cost me around 25 (euro) cents back then including energy tax and VAT. In the years there after the cost gradually dropped and I am currently paying just under 18 cents per kWh. The reason for the decline is that we have a lot of competition in the energy market and fossil fuel was forced to compete with cheap green energy. The link in the article above shows a decline in price of 13% but I know from my own experience the is more like a 25% drop in cost since 2011.
The difference with other European countries may be that our government left it to their citizens if they wanted to invest in solar on their roof, or buy a share in a windmill. They did not subsidise green energy nor did they impose additional taxes for green projects. Next year I will break even on my solar and since we have net metering here it will even become more beneficial from there on. I may have been duped but financially it worked out very well for me. 🙂
Government can see paying less for energy as an income and tax it. Don’t worry they will find a way to keep you poor .
Good point Robert. Currently I get the exact same amount for a kWh I feed into the grid as I have to pay for every kWh I take out of the grid, the so called net metering. That could stop in a couple of years and maybe I would only get the bare kWh price of around 6-7 cents per kWh or so but since I already earned my investment back it will still be additional profit on my behalf. We will have to wait and see…
1) Electricity price rises in the US are understated. The Federal tax credit dollars used to subsidize wind and solar aren’t conveyed on electricity bills. The German subsidy system is funded through power bills, so they see the price impact directly. We just see more Federal debt.
2) California electricity prices are rising because they chose to favor the least economic renewable energy. Behind the meter solar is much more expensive than utility scale solar. With net metering, residential solar can be paid more than $200/MWh. Subsidized utility scale solar projects are signing contracts for under $40/MWh. Other states have less net metered resources, so their rate impacts are less.
3) Colorado gets roughly the same fraction of electricity from renewables as California and has not experienced significant rate increases. Most Colorado RE comes from utility scale wind projects. Subsidized utility scale wind projects provide power for about the same cost as the fuel to run coal and gas plants, so there is little impact on rates. As noted in the article, even in this area moving to RE will eventually lead to rising rates because of curtailments.
This guy seems sincere in his environmentalism – much more sincere than Moonbeam. Ironic that popular perception is the opposite.
Eliminate competition – raise prices, old as the hills
Instead of paying for baseload mains supply alone we’re being forced to pay for two electrical generation systems and their infrastructure. Why wouldn’t that make for cheaper electron delivery?
Thie was a foreseeable economic nonsense 15 years ago.
The other major problem with ‘renewables’ is they are literally not renewable, because they won’t pay for themselves during their operational life. This whole ideological pipe-dream of renewable energy is STILL flat out uneconomic. People are simply kidding themselves about how expensive the entire operating installations are.
And then the subsidies will disappear with the politics of the next GFC v2.0 crisis and aftermath.
i.e. no recapitalisation funds returned, as the investment for the first installation never made a net profit, sans subsidies. They wear out and degrade before they make any money to recap their capacity.
Unecononic = endless money pit that’s sending you broke.
Thus ‘renewables’ largely won’t be renewed. It’s a technology option for losers.
So the glib fans of much alleged ‘renewables’ will deny that also, as they do, until they can’t ignore it any longer. Many companies have foreseen this outcome, so are visibly just cutting their losses and deciding profits are much preferrable, and bailing out.
Electricity rates skyrocket, where did I hear that before?
Oh yeah, in January 2008 when he was running for President, then-Senator Obama, said that under his plan, “…electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”
One of the few times Obama was honest.
Well written article, Mr Shellenburger, but late to the party and you totally ignore the real reason – huge sums of money going to the people who got the solar or wind energy subsidies that were only needed because everyone knew industry wouldn’t invest in unprofitable wind and solar projects without massive government largess! The first rule a politician should be required to learn and follow is: Ask someone who knows before squandering taxpayer money! In this case, it would be engineers and utility operators! Never ask the “environmentalists” as their bias colors all their projections! Politicians are mostly worthless and the bane of all rational thinkers everywhere! Things would change if the politician had to pay for their mistakes with their own money, not that of the taxpayers!