See the links in the “big picture paragraph”
Worldwide funding of clean-energy projects fell to its lowest level in six years, in a staggering blow to the battle against climate change.
The findings: BloombergNEF found that global investments in solar, wind, and other clean energy sources added up to $117.6 billion during the first half of 2019, a 14% decline from the same period last year and the lowest six-month figure since 2013.
China saw a 39% drop in investments, as the nation eases up on its aggressive solar subsidies to get costs under control. But spending also declined 6% in the US and 4% in Europe, part because of policies that are being phased out and weak demand for additional energy generation in mature markets.
The big picture: The new report suggests last year’s slowdown in renewable-energy construction has extended into 2019, taking the world in exactly the wrong direction at a critical time (see “Global renewables growth has stalled—and that’s terrible news”). Every major report finds that the world needs to radically accelerate the shift to clean energy to have any hope of not blowing past dangerous warming thresholds (see “At this rate, it’s going to take 400 years to transform the energy system”).
“At this rate, it’s going to take 400 years.”
I agree, we should be ending this scam much, much faster ! IMHO…. ; )
It is still costing us a $trillion every 4 years (that’s what it says on back of my napkin anyhoo 😉
So … drumroll – we can look forward to these creatures separating 100+ trillion $$$ from ‘the taxpayer’ if their ship holds its course from here tothere.
A trillion here, a trillion there … pretty soon it adds up to … total bankruptcy. I want to wake up soon. This nightmare is affecting my health.
Actually if renubles decline 14% a year it would be below 20% of the 2018 ‘value’ by 2030. This may be a generous forecast – essentially the CO2 gambit dead about halfway there.
The main thing shoring it up is the plethora of organizations, departments, faculties… with climate alarmism names. The Ministry of Calamitous Climate sort of thing.
No wonder why Steyer jumped into the race for the presidency. All of his investments are going to hell.
Rubbish! Tom Steyer can make up the shortfall by writing ONE big $$$$$ check to China! Like Sarah Winchester … he can assuage his guilt for making all his $B’s in dirty, filthy, coal … and spend his last dollar building a monument to his guilt.
” … in a staggering blow to the battle against climate change.”
This must be a misprint. It should say,
” … in a staggering boost to the battle against climate change pseudo-science.”
” … in a staggering blow to the battle against common sense.”
That sounds like quite a sensible time scale.
“Worldwide funding of clean-energy projects fell to its lowest level in six years…”
Good.
It’s still double Fossil and Nuclear.
Wah wah.
https://www.iea.org/wei2019/
Karl, do you bother reading the stuff you link? The report says just the opposite of your “It’s still double Fossil and Nuclear.” FF investments were up in 2018, while renewable investments were down.
But…But…But…Without the economic endeavors that are powered by fossil and nuclear there would be no money with which to pay for subsidizing so-called “renewables.”
Ya buts its still falling, wah wah and i’ll call your wah with another wah.
Karl, do you have trouble understanding written English?
Only when the words go against his ingrained beliefs.
Wah Wah what?
The actual Big Picture: Socialists can’t legislate against the iron laws of economics and technology development. Wild, speculative fear-mongering and ideology-driven policies eventually run into the hard wall of reality.
Low hanging fruit gone. Subsidies gone. Tax breaks gone. Hype of limitless dispatchable ‘free energy’ gone. Economies in trouble and don’t need an anchor holding them back. China in more trouble than the rest because it can’t sustain its’ heady growth of the last decade and the minions will start questioning their leadership. Hello schadenfreude.
Clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels – at least, so I hear while electricity price in California is skyrocketing. Subsidies are no longer needed. Just a guaranteed high price for a “clean” energy.
A “guaranteed high price” is a subsidy.
Requiring people to buy a minimum percentage is also a subsidy.
Not if you put them on a level playing field namely if tenderers of electrons to the grid can’t reasonably guarantee them 24/7/365 they get to keep them and the unreliables’ State sponsored dumping game would be all over. Therein lies the great subsidy so would you care to try removing it for proof?
And idiots greens keep claiming only a socialist command economy can make the necessary changes to save the planet!
Well that worked so well in Russia, The GDR, Cuba, N. Korea, Tanzania, Venezuela and etc. maybe we should try it! Ya Think? It’s been said that the peak of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Based on that I’ve concluded that humans (especially socialists) are really stupid.
Clearing the green blight and other ecoperils, one windmill, one photovoltaic panel, one straw that would be recycled somewhere else, at a time.
Boy, are these guys stupid – they only mention renewables as carbon reducers,when nuclear is the prime low/no carbon energy source. China banned any new wind farms more than a year ago, citing “disruption of the grid” as the reason. But China leads the world in new and planned nuclear generation.
Well said. The way you can tell the difference between a person who actually cares about the environment and a person who is says they do but actually has another agenda is their attitude toward nuclear power. People who actually care about the natural world like nuclear power.
The error is they are equating “clean-energy” to wind and solar.
An unrealized prophecy is a first order forcing of a correction, where niche solutions properly enjoy niche investments on a forward-looking basis.
And virtue signalling cost 117.6 billion too much.
The REALITY:
World Investment in Renewable Energy was almost DOUBLE that of Fossil and Nuclear
https://www.iea.org/wei2019/
And all of it wasted.
Karl, that just proves how horrendously expensive renewables are. Tell me, what amount of generating capacity did all that wasted investment produce?
Had that investment in expensive unreliables instead been made in fossil fueled and nuclear plants, the increase in the worlds supply of energy would have been DOUBLE that of the so-called “Renewable Energy” plants.
@Karl:
Karl, please do yourself a big favor and check your facts before you come to this website with a comment like the one above.
If you did so, you might find that the solar panel has been around for about 65 years now having been invented in 1954. Yet, as the Federal govt’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) shows us in the linked web page below, only 1.6% of the electricity generated in the USA in 2018 came from solar. I’ve been following solar’s….ahem….”progress” on the EIA web page for some years now, and I have yet to see solar’s number get over 2% — even with all those govt mandates and subsidies. Somehow, I doubt the number for solar is any better on a global level.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
According to the link above, wind in the USA was at 6.6% last year. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall wind being over 7% some years ago. No sign of any improvement there. If you wonder why all of this is so, you need to look no further than the physics of sunshine and the wind and see that their energy density is quite poor compared to fossil fuels and nuclear — especially nuclear. Energy density matters Karl.
When the use of something jumps from let’s say 0.5% to 1% Karl, one can hardly consider that to be something worth boasting about, even if it is a doubling. At least I don’t think it is. I’ve lost track of the the number of times I’ve had to explain all of this to someone like you here at WUWT after he or she probably read a pro-renewables propaganda piece that suggests or hints that wind and solar are doing far better than they actually are. Wake up and smell the bovine dung Karl.
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
CD, the problem you have is that you are stuck in a narrow definition of “solar.” You see, solar “energy” has been around for much longer than 1954, and in fact has been in use since the invention of glass windows. When you place a glass window on the south side of a building in a cold climate, the sunshine it allows inside provides heat energy for the occupants when it is cold outside.
Mature FF & Nuclear power production doesn’t need radical increases in investment. Without governmental subsidies, what investments in renewables would there be?
….In a staggering blow against rent seeking profiteering capitalists….
TFTFY
Annual renewable generation capacity addition has peaked but renewable storage has “turned the corner”. Subsidies are falling but mandates trump subsidies everytime. Cost doesn’t matter.
Copy
Long-duration storage, by the numbers
If there was a turning point for storage, it came in the fourth quarter of 2016, when 213 MWh of the year’s 336 MWh went online, according to the U.S Energy Storage Monitor from GTM and ESA.
Much of that capacity came from projects already in planning to meet California’s 1,325 MW energy storage mandate.
The LCOE is still falling and undercutting other choices along with any need for subsidy. Remove the subsidies and a layer of also rans would be peeled off along with overpriced rooftop solar.
“At this rate, it’s going to take 400 years to transform the energy system”.
Works for me. But, do we really want, or need to “transform the energy system’? How about just tweaking it here and there, adding more NG pipelines where needed, more coal plants where needed, and maybe some nuclear? That could work too. I’m flexible.
Surely Macron or some of those useful people in the EU parliament are gonna give the Chinese a leg up?
Cmon let’s get serious about this “energy transition” stuff?!
Where’s Benalla gone, when we need him?
” …in a staggering blow to the battle against climate change.”
“… making no discernable impact in the battle against climate change.”
Fixed it!
Good to hear, but too late for me. The jerk Buffet is putting in turbines (technically Pacific Power) all along the road to my “isolated” cabin. I may have to relocate to that Irish island that is begging for people to come. It’s 8 square miles. Maybe they haven’t pillage it yet.
Well let us hope the trend turns into a full retreat back into sane sensible energy policies worldwide.
The sooner wind turbines and solar farms are allowed to compete without subsidy, against established low cost energy generation,the sooner the “renewables” will adopt the hard lesson of economic efficiency or simply die.
The net beneficiaries of a level energy playing field for all participants is the consumer and thus the world economy.
Today I drove a couple of hundred miles passing wind farms as I drove along. The ratio of operational to installed units was 60% that is the best I have seen in a good while. Only four out of every ten were static. If anyone can name a business where 40% of the capital invested is never returning anything I would love to hear what industry it is. To be fair solar only operates max 50% of the time for roughly 75% of the year so that is about as bad as it can get.
Could you imagine the ads for solar if they were being honest with the public.
“Roll up roll up, invest in solar panels they operate 12/7 for at best 75% of the year, and remember government subsidies don’t grow on trees….they grow on solar panels”
And after years of effort and huge expenditure, according to the BP Statistical Review renewables account for just 4.05% of world energy consumption. What transition? See https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2019/07/11/the-renewable-energy-transition/
“…the battle against climate change” reads to me like “the battle against global rotation.” Another skirmish in the left’s endless war on reality.
This article is all predicated on the belief of AGW and that China is not doing its part to save the world. My own view is that China does not buy into the AGW hype, has done the math, and realized that investing in renewables as power sources isn’t going to get us from here to there.
This is actually good news for a change. Now we can concentrate on “real energy”.
Let’s hope that wind/solar keeps decreasing worldwide….
WAIT! Are we now calling “green” energy “clean”? I object!
There is nothing clean about wind and solar device manufacturing. Produces the most toxins per watt of lifetime generation capacity out of all the current methods, even nuclear.
These devices are the toxic trash of the future, with rare-earth elements wasted in them that might be in limited supply down the road.
Correct. Now if only that could be imprinted on the forehead of all the thieves who are ripping us off with “green energy” scams.
What happened to solar and battery storage blowing away fossil fuels and nuclear?
We can afford to reduce our capital investment in renewables as long as use the VW Engineering approach and just start reporting better numbers….