Will corporate and government green-washing save Earth from inflated or phony eco scares?
Paul Driessen
I’d just passed the local Starbucks in Chicago, when my cell phone buzzed to say the Washington, DC City Council had unanimously agreed “in a preliminary vote” to require that 100% of the District’s electricity must come from renewable sources by 2032. How can they put hundreds of wind turbines and solar arrays in DC, or get only renewable electrons from the wind-solar-fossil-nuclear grid? I wondered.
Then, just a few hours later, I received an email from a marketing and public relations firm. “Starbucks IL Stores Going 100 Percent Renewable,” it announced. The email and a related news release explained that Starbucks has entered into an agreement to power some 340 company-operated Illinois neighborhood coffee shops (plus the future Chicago coffee bean Roastery) entirely with renewable wind energy.
The electricity will be generated by the soon-to-be-completed HillTopper wind project in Logan County, about 150 miles southwest of Chicago. HillTopper is operated by Enel Green Power North America, but the Starbucks deal also involves a separate agreement with Exelon Corporation subsidiary Constellation.
The project’s nameplate capacity totals 185 megawatts; once fully operational, HillTopper will be able to generate 570 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually … under optimal wind conditions. The Starbucks-Enel-Constellation arrangement will involve 48,000 megawatt-hours of wind power annually – “enough to brew nearly 100 million cups of coffee” in the Illinois shops – the memos state.
All these numbers certainly get confusing – an unavoidable problem with wind (and solar) energy, largely due to its notoriously intermittent, unreliable, weather-dependent nature. The problem is also irrelevant to issues that are central to all “renewable” energy and their conjoined “Save the Earth” campaigns.
The fundamental, though diligently ignored reality is that nothing about wind (or solar) energy is renewable or sustainable. Breezes and sunlight are certainly renewable, if inconstant, and free. But their energy is highly diffused and dispersed – the very opposite of densely packed coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear fuels. And the complex systems needed to harness “free” wind power are anything but free.
Major wind projects like HillTopper require scores base that can reach 100 feet below the surface, a 400-foot-tall tower, a monstrous nacelle and generator, and 215-foot-long blades. They kill raptors, other birds and bats by the thousands. And every “wind farm” requires 100% backup by coal or gas-fired power plants that run 24/7/365 on “spinning reserve,” ready to power up every time the wind dies down.
During a nasty heat wave in 2012, northern Illinois electricity demand averaged 22,000 megawatts, but turbines generated a miserly 4 MW. Try brewing coffee in 340 Starbucks shops on 4 megawatts, especially while operating the lights, refrigerators, AC and computer hookups on that piddling electricity.
The backup units require only a few hundred acres, but they also require extra costs, materials and fuels – which means you need expensive duplicate energy systems. That is not renewable or sustainable, either.
Briefly analyzing the life-cycle, cradle-to-grave, global aspects of a wind project and its fossil fuel backup power plants – to assess their “climate friendliness,” renewability and sustainability – requires reviewing the fuels and raw materials needed to manufacture, install and maintain both systems.
Coal and gas power plants require enormous amounts of concrete, steel, copper and other materials, reflecting their energy output. Wind turbine towers and bases require thousands of tons of concrete and steel; rotor blades are made from fiberglass, carbon fibers and petroleum resins; nacelles from petroleum composites; generators and magnets from steel, copper, rare earth metals and multiple other materials. Transmission lines need steel, concrete, copper and plastic. Not one of these materials is renewable.
Extracting ores for these metals, limestone for concrete, petroleum for resins and composites, requires removing billions of tons of rock, processing and smelting ores into usable metals, refining crude oil, and manufacturing everything into finished products. Every step in those processes requires fossil fuels. You cannot make even one wind turbine with wind energy – or transport a turbine … or coffee beans … with wind (or solar) energy.
A single HillTopper-sized wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium, 130 pounds of dysprosium, other rare earth elements, and tons of other metals. If you want to use rechargeable batteries, instead of coal or gas backup units, you need lanthanum, specialized rare earth alloys, lithium, nickel, cadmium and assorted other metals – in massive quantities.
Many of those metals come primarily from China, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other places where child labor is common, adults earn a few dollars a day, and health, safety and environmental rules are all but nonexistent. They’re the renewable energy equivalent of “blood diamonds” and slave labor.
All this raises some awkward but vital questions that customers, journalists, regulators and politicians might want to ask Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, former CEO and now executive chairman Howard Schultz, board chairman Myron Ullman, vice chair Mellody Hobson, and local franchise owners.
* Will Starbucks Illinois stores actually get electricity from HillTopper? Will transmission lines run directly from the Enel wind turbines to each Starbucks store? If not, how will Enel separate wind-generated electrons from the renewable-fossil-hydro-nuclear mixture on the regional grid?
* Since neither of those options is viable, will stores just get fancy certificates, attesting that equivalent amounts of electricity were transmitted from HillTopper to some customers somewhere in the state?
* What will power the shops when the wind isn’t blowing? If the HillTopper electricity is used to brew 100,000,000 cups of coffee a year, what’s left for lights, heat, AC, the Chicago Roastery and so on?
* How is it possibly “renewable” or “climate friendly” energy, if the turbines, transmission lines, backup batteries and backup fossil fuel power plants all require numerous non-renewable raw materials and fuels? How does your 100% renewable pledge factor in the fossil fuels needed to build all those components?
* How will your shops function without fossil fuels for plastic cups, tables, chairs, display cases and counter tops; paints and cleaners; ships and trucks to haul coffee beans; and factories to make all this stuff?
* How is it ethical, moral or “social justice” to get your electricity from slave and child laborers, who risk their health and lives in filthy, toxic pits, under few or no health or safety standards? Will you demand better, safer, more environmentally sound practices in those countries? If so, how might autocratic rulers in those countries react to those campaigns – and impact your business and profits there?
* Will Starbucks require that Enel Green Power allow independent biologists on its HillTopper sites, to determine precisely and honestly how many birds and bats are butchered by turbine blades every year – and prevent company or hired personnel from burying carcasses or letting scavengers haul them off?
* How is it ethical for highly profitable companies like Starbucks, Enel and Constellation to profit from a wind energy system that exists only because of government mandates and taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies? How is it ethical to launch slick PR campaigns to get glowing press coverage for doing so?
* Even with subsidies, wind-based electricity (with its essential battery or fossil fuel backup systems) is more expensive than conventional power. Will the higher electricity costs be passed on to Starbucks customers – or will Illinois ratepayers in general be saddled with higher prices?
* What climate benefits will come from this? Asian and African countries have more than 1,500 new coal-fired power plants under construction or in planning. Assuming for the moment that carbon dioxide actually is the primary force in climate change – how many thousandths of one degree less global warming will the Starbucks Illinois wind energy program result in? Who made that calculation for you?
It’s hard not to view this “100% renewable electricity” campaign as little more than a very clever public relations and virtue-signaling exercise, presented to friendly media to garner accolades the companies really don’t deserve. It will be interesting to see how company officials answer questions like these.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books, studies and articles on energy, climate change, the environment and human rights.
I hope that the City Council of Washington also required that their local residents refrain from electricity when the wind is not blowing and the sun is set!
They will use their backup ‘blood batteries’, mined and manufactured with child/slave labor in China.
The implicit tariffs of labor and environmental arbitrage. Human… “Person” rights, too.
I assume, they will pray to St Arbucks
+42 Tredecillion
The patron saint of Empty Gestures
So,just cut them off the”Fossil Fuel”grid.NO electricity at all from”Coal”LOL.
Make them mount Solar Cells and Wind Turbines to their rooftops
Let’s not forget that you have to increase the number of wind mills if you are going to use batteries as back up.
The power to charge those batteries has to come from somewhere.
There is now a market for fake solar arrays and old, non-functional wind towers in the virtue signaling game. How would they ever know if the solar array is still working or not or if the batteries are doing anything?
Right, and just have a fake, free-wheeling pinwheels w/fake wires. Greenies will think it’s producing if it’s spinning. As you say, solar panels are even easier to fake — just black-painted glass w/”wires” running underneath. And then have painted black boxes for “batteries”. Viola, greenie-altars.
so let’s see……people pay taxes….their tax money is spent on wind to run a direct line to Starbucks…to power coffee shops
The wrong question was asked up at the top.
The correct question is:
Does Starbucks think virtue signaling can “Save Starbucks”?
Yes, yes it does.
(Why do you ask?)
I think you just hit the REAL point, Tony.
I don’t think Starbucks is in danger of going out of business. 18% profit margin & $4.5 billion+ net profit last year.
But, yes, this is all hokum.
We’ll get to see how “profitable” Starbucks really is when their coffee costs more that $10 per cup.
If Starbucks can pay for all of those wind turbines and the land they sit upon, the price of coffee may rise higher.
I doubt Starbucks will get any free passes for dead eagles, raptors, bats, etc., from President Trump.
“We’ll get to see how “profitable” Starbucks really is when their coffee costs more that $10 per cup.”
Won’t slow anyone down in the slightest.
They were having a lot of problems last year when Starbucks management decided allowing the homeless to sleep in their outlets was less of a problem than was being accused of racism.
Because their clientele is primarily composed of man-bunned, laptop-toting gig-working arrested development case “hipsters” for whom being seen in “approved” places by “the woke” crowd is key! What I’d like to know is who decided “THE PLANET!” ™ is in need of “saving” at all–homeostasis seems to do a very good job without the input of today’s so-called “smart” set who if they get any “smarter” will remove themselves from the gene pool, thankfully. Soy lattes alone ought to do it!
“It’s hard not to view this “100% renewable electricity” campaign as little more than a very clever public relations”
Actually, it’s no a clever plan. It’s greedy and takes advantage of the public and their taxes. It appears to be a very stupid plan that is going to be very complicated and so confusing in the long run that the public will ignore it or lose interest in Starbuck’s projects.
It’s all about protecting Starbucks from pressure from the green blob.
dm;gh
Doesn’t matter; got headline.
Paul Driessen,
Your dissection of the ‘nonrenewable’ material manufacturing chain that makes the ‘renewable energy’ claims possible reminded me of a couple of lines from an old Rolling Stones song: “Bite the Big (Green Energy) Apple! Don’t mind the maggots, Uh Huh!”
This illustrates the New World Order of Green Hippocracy perfectly! Thanks!
An excellent article which politicians, bureaucrats et al will read and comprehend at their peril; so will seek to avoid.
Incidentally: Coffee beans are renewable so why is Starbuck’s coffee so expensive?
They are selling the sizzle not the steak.
Beats me, because I think their coffee is lousy and bitter. Give me Dunkin’s any day, but I vastly prefer to stay home and make my own, topped by an inch of raw milk and a quarter inch of whipped cream atop that!
Well then I’m happy to announce that from here on I will only be breathing 100% oxygen molecules.
I promise to only breath green oxygen. That is, oxygen produced by green plants.
excellent!
Some people will just need to freeze in the dark before they learn.
Another good reason to stay out of Starbucks! If their over-priced and over-rated coffee were not enough.
My wife is a coffeeholic but does not think starbucks is any good. Me, I’ll stick with regular old tea, black with no flowery flavors, thank you.
Lapsang Souchong with a bit of honey is a terrific cuppa.
I quite often find PEETS COFFEE is far better than the Overblown Starbucks.
Starbucks only has the market share it maintains from Predatory practices.
It finds a competitor chain that is doing well in its location then offers the Lease Holder 4 times the rent to both take over the space and add the stipulation that No other coffee seller can be rented to at that strip mall locale
I would have to agree with your wife. I also don’t think Starbucks coffee is any good I make much better coffee at home.
Matt
Some nice English Breakfast tea, with some sweetener of choice, to start the day. And a nice smooth Assam with lunch. Much better than that expensive crap at Harbucks.
Australian Afternoon Tea by Twinings is very good.
It’s not called Charbucks for nothing.
As am I (I hand grind my hand roasted coffee beans) and I detest Starbucks coffee. To be fair I detest almost all commercially made coffee, when I take a long trip in my car I always take my beans, roaster, grinder, and French Press with me, along with a large thermos full of ‘my coffee’.
“Renewable” energy (or grocery bags, or garbage pails) confers a self-appointed halo upon fake saints pretending to believe in things they have no intention of doing. As the article points out, virtually all the palaver about renewables is math-challenged.
If America were really serious about non-carbon energy, they’d be building more nuclear power plants, the only current scalable technology for baseline electricity. Favored areas could build more hydroelectric dams.
Absent those two commitments, the fakery will continue, and Marie Antoinette will continue turning over in her grave at the hypocrisy.
Driessen,
Inconvenient questions!
Why don’t they just cold brew all their coffee and serve it at room temperature. Cold brewed coffee is less bitter and very tasty and eventually everyone will get used to room temperature beverages.
Depends on where your room is, and the dependability of energy to heat or cool.
Starbucks, get a fresh cup of cold to lukewarm coffee at a location near you today!
And while they are at it why not have the customers supply their own cups, napkins and plastic ware.
may as well supply the coffee for themselves too.
There’s actually a no-trash movement, featured in WaPo about three (?) months ago, that does just that.
Let me say that I entirely agree with Sir David Attenborough well known British TV naturalist who said at the COP 24:
“…the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” ( the horizon being only some 7-8 years away multiplied by 10^9 -my remark)
At least with Solar, you can plan every day around noon for 3-4 hours of getting something. But in the winter, that is still practically nothing, especially if it is cloudy or the panels are covered in snow. And wind can quit blowing for days on end, so it is actually a huge lability when it is going for broke every wind gust and then a lull. What a nightmare to load follow that mess.
Somebody must have failed Grade 4 Arithmetic.
This highlights a fundamental difference between the public and private sectors — incentives are much different.
The private sector has to deal with rates of return, investment outlays, and risk assessments. The math for public sector decisions is really quite simple. Is the expected number of votes gained a positive number or is it a negative number?
Incentives, risks, and offsets. There are fewer fungible practices in the private sector than in the public sector, where the latter is heavily managed through democratic leverage.
“Somebody?” How about a bazillion jillion?
That’s a precise number, by the way, not a guesstimate. Good enough for the snake oil salesmen, guilt-mongers, and hypochondriacs controlling the renewable energy traveling humbug show.
While the money flows to subsidize such schemes, so too will the lies to justify them.
The only question seems to be “How bad does it have to get before we elect politicians willing to fix the obvious problems?” It reminds me of the 1970’s in the UK: Loss making nationalised industries in cars, coal, steel, etc were forever soaking up more and more and more money from a nation that could increasingly not afford to pay for obvious stupidity. Were it not for North Sea Oil revenues, there might have been violent revolution in the 80’s. Whether you loved Thatcher or loathed her, it was inevitable that such a politician would get votes. People who ought to know better seem to want to go through the cycle again.
On the other hand, it’s not hard to find people who regret the loss of those nationalized industries and believe the solution to your current crisis is to re-nationalize everything.
MarkW
In great part because successive governments couldn’t keep their sticky little fingers off what all of them though was rightfully theirs to meddle with. Trains were a fine example. When British Rail was broken up and sold off to the private sector they were still operating slam door carriages; you know the type, in the best tradition of 1920’s romantic movies, and man were they grotty.
The private sector was expected to modernise the entire rail network and of course one way to help with that was to economise by cutting obsolete and unused services. Customers complained to the government and they waded in with hobnail boots, as though they had been any better.
Too complicated to go into here but it’s a complete mess with rail fare increases about the only thing that can be guaranteed every year in this bloody country, apart from death and taxes.
I believe the UK government and civil service is, per head of population, substantially larger than the US. Our tax burden is now approaching 45% of income in no little part, because of the bloody EU, I have no doubt!
The sooner we get a ‘no deal’ exit from that nest of vipers and get back to trading with the US and the rest of the world under World Trade regulations the better.
Excellent post. I have been asking questions that have been answered by this post. Ideally, this situation must be resolved by the time the petroleum resources start to play out within the next century. Go ahead and let the “green” energy folks evolve the new systems into something viable and comparable and affordable and reasonable but without tax payers subsidies. (1) Electric mid sized cars that can transport four and travel 300 miles per charge at a reasonable rate of speed and comfort with a back up battery for an additional 50 miles. (2) Mega/Gaga DC voltage/power storage at a reasonable cost to consumers and tax payers. (3) Life cycles greater than todays products by at least x4. (4) Long lasting DC to AC converters for transmission and home solar cell usage. (5) Safe non explosive/flammable DC battery consumer products, a consequence of packing high energy into a small package.
BTW, we need to research geothermal resources as Mother Earth has an endless molten energy core that can be tapped at depths of todays modern day drilling rigs for steam generation.
“BTW, we need to research geothermal resources as Mother Earth has an endless molten energy core that can be tapped at depths of todays modern day drilling rigs for steam generation.”
I loved that idea too, but when it was tried in Switzerland it caused earthquakes (small). I hope it can be tried again.
As I understand it, most places in the world simply don’t have rock underneath them hot enough to make it economically viable. Iceland is one of the few exceptions.
Drilling further down in ‘cold’ locations is, of course, just prohibitively expensive. It is just another green myth that we can satisfy our energy needs this way.
You can’t do it with wind.
You can’t do it with solar.
You can’t do it with geothermal, and
You can’t do with hydroelectric.
You can do it with nuclear. And we shall.
It’s actually worse than that.
IF you have available water topside (above the dirt and rock), and IF the rocks below are warm enough to make it worthwhile drilling, you still MUST drill down deep enough to get to the hot rocks. then you MUST force the cold water down through the (very expensive) drill pipe liner to get to the cold water to the hot rocks.
Then you MUST force the warming water through the hot rock matrix to some other point where you MUST ALSO drill down to the hot rocks, COLLECT that now-warmer water, and PUMP it back UPHILL to the now-warmer-water collection tank (which you must also build.) But the water you get back up is only 40% to 60% of what is pumped down below ground.
Make-up water MUST be always available, you cannot count on a hot water table 600-1200 feet underground – or you would have a very rare fountain and geyser pool!
So, now you warmed water topside, but it is cooling down and wasting energy. Need insulation, pipes, pumps, heat exchangers, and water cleaning equipment. LOTS of water cleaning equipment because MOST of the underground hot water in the world is highly contaminated with sulfur, magnesium, chlorides and chlorates, manganese, iron, clays, silts, silicons, …. Many of which will build up in pipes and pumps, heat exchangers and tanks, and foul the system yu are trying to use.
Smell bad and kill people too.
Geothermal energy involves fracking. Exactly the same process, with the same fluids, as used for shale gas.
So now at Starbucks Illinois they ask you if you want “the dead bird coffee or the regular?”. Where does this pass from killing birds and bats come from? Virtue Signalling? Where’s the virtue in chopping up our brothers and sisters the birds and bats? This whole meme boggles the mind. We should turn activists and take photos of dead birds/bats under windmills and ask the states Wildlife Department to get involved. That’s my virtue signal.
The number of birds killed by wind turbines is un-measurable (way down below the noise level) for total bird mortalities due to most causes in effect today, including collisions with buildings, power lines and towers, and vehicles, and deaths due to feral cats.
Don’t lose any sleep over birds dying in windmills – it is literally nothing compared to the number of birds who collide with all of above.
But all of the crocodile tears shed by right wingers over acropophylic bird killing windmills who otherwise don’t give a hoot about anyother environmental concerns is possibly one of the major contributors to sea level rise in the 21st century.
Stick to the science and engineering folks – don’t practice environmental concern trolling, it simply is not credible.
At least with a dead bird you’ve got something in your hand to look at that’s not “could be” or some other describer of future AGW.
https://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbines-ever-be-safe-birds
First off, there aren’t reliable, current numbers for avian deaths due to wind turbines. And secondly, if the number of these turbines is increased at the rate the promoters suggest, these mortality figures will go up fast. And then they will become a concern – when it is too late. So this is a valid issue, although obviously not the only, nor the most important one when considering a massive build-out of wind power farms.
There have been cases in Scotland where eagles have disappeared, and landowners have been accused of shooting them. However, it was pointed out that there were windfarms within the flying range of the birds. RSPB refused to believe that a wind turbine could have been the cause. probably because they have investments in that sector.
I’d like to see webcams at some of the windfarms so there can be an independent assessment of birdstrikes. After all in wild country it’s likely that a carcass is quickly claimed by a land carnivore, so an occasional visual inspection of the site may not reveal much.
Wildlife conservation groups and the Federal government have performed numerous studies over the decades proving the avian mortality data. You just choose to ignore data in favor of ideology.
Sorry, ideology does not trump data, whether on the part of climate alarmists or right wingers who knee-jerk approve of anything that liberals like or say.
I am none of the above. Not a winger of any strip. Just a lifelong engineer with an advanced degree in environmental science management and veteran of decades worth of fights between the BS artitsts and those armed with actual data and analysis.
BS artists come in both left wing varieties and right wing varieties. They are all tiresome.
Wind turbines kill bats (not killed by the other manmade causes listed above) and raptors (ditto).
Not only do they kill Raptors, they kill enough of them to upset the prey predator balance. A study of Indian wind turbine farms shows that they kill (or drive off) 75% of the Raptors near them, causing a real environmental problem because their natural prey (rabbits, rats, etc) multiply without the Raptors to control their numbers.
The problem is that all of the above you site do not do what Wind Turbines are doing to the ‘Apex’ predators in the bird world.
A recent study in India shows that wind turbines reduces the local raptor population by as much as 75%, which creates an environmental issue as their prey (rabbits, rats, etc) multiply without the raptors to control their population.
“But all of the crocodile tears shed by right wingers over acropophylic bird killing windmills who otherwise don’t give a hoot about anyother environmental concerns ….”
Funny. But right-wingers were the original conservationists, continuing on for over a century, and scorned the while by belching-smokestack hard-leftists. They were the people behind the Audubon society, etc. Many of them continue to have a feeling for nature and the environment.
Yes. Duane has fallen for the lie that somehow only one side are able to care, and that “the other side” must therefore not care, by definition. That their way is the only way.
I’ll admit that over thirty years ago I thought similarly.
Not true. The original conservationists were the opposite of right wingers, who cared only about extracting wealth from the land. Teddy Roosevelt was certainly no right winger. Neither was Muir. Neither were any of the original conservationists.
Please, just stop with the fake concern trolling over the birds. You guys could not possibly care less. You convince nobody.
It never ceases to amaze what a long life a convenient lie has.
But then again, you leftists have always believed that a lie in service of your ideology is a good thing.
Speaking of practicing trolling, you’ve done enough to qualify as a professional by now.
acropophylic ??
“acropophylic ??”
That’s when something bad happens at a Greek restaurant.
Or maybe that’s “acropolyptic”.
I suppose he really meant apocryphal, but theres nothing apocryphal about wind machines killing birds.
Duane,
un-measurable, or un-published?
Wind Industry is effectively acting like the tobacco industry and not just as bird killers. They KNOW there are issues and concerns and making a deliberate effort to distract or avoid with either cover ups, outright dishonesty, removal of evidence and by deflecting the discussion by mentioning feral cats.
(also, I am a Dog Person, so any time you want to violently deal with the feral cat issue rest assured you do not need to ask my permission first.)
(also also, I would be interested in seeing studies linking feral cats to raptor killings. The fact cats often kill the smaller bird species is a distraction. It is like saying that it is okay to kill a few whales because krill die all the time. )
Face it Duane, if you really support the environment you have two choices. Remove yourself from the planet in order to save it for the cute furry animals, or vote Right of Centre. Industry and jobs is what protects the planet. It is only when people have money and safety that they start to see the great outdoors as something to protect and respect. If you are starving then rainforests are fuel for your cooking fire and those small endangered animals are lunch.
And before you ask, I do strongly suggest you choose the second option. 🙂
Windmills are airfoils. Subject to corresponding wear and tear.
Failure to follow a proper, and trust me, expensive, preventive maintenance schedule, will result in catastrophic failure. Which is what happens in Germany right now:
http://notrickszone.com/2018/12/02/german-wind-turbines-go-up-in-flames-or-simply-collapse-federal-government-refuses-to-investigate/
Ka-tching, more initially non-budgeted cash down the drain.
I have posted it before so for those that have already seen it, my apologies.
Matt Ridley does a beer mat calculation that probably isn’t far from the truth about wind turbines.
The facts about these useless pieces of hardware are very concerning.
WIND IS AN IRRELEVANCE TO THE ENERGY AND CLIMATE DEBATE
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
and there is growing evidence that they area health hazard to people living anywhere near them
You see, they add the renewable energy to the national grid, then they tap it off at the local Starbucks store.
You see, the grid is like a power version of the internet.
Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen this scam before with provider who promises renewable, non-nuclear power but the small print doesn’t guarantee it will actually be renewable, non-nuclear power if it is unavailable.
Renewable drives, disposable technology. That said, there is space for the natural black blob, occasionally delectable; the artificial green blight, sometimes grating; and other things altogether different (and scary); in the energy production basket.
Renewables are an egregious mistake responding to misinformed subsidy. It is not simply a matter of increased cost. The energy consumed to design, manufacture, install, maintain and administer renewables exceeds the energy they produce in their lifetime. Without the energy provided by other sources, renewables could not exist. They can only exist now because fossil fuels are still used to power industry, heat our homes, power nearly all vehicles, power farming, etc. Incorporating mandatory storage and/or standby CSGT makes it much worse. Renewables are not sustainable.
So called renewable energy, is the dirtiest most environmentally disruptive energy source per terrawatt produced.