From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
APRIL 14, 2022
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
More evidence that low wind prices at auctions are unsustainable:
Raw material and logistics inflation coupled with downward price pressures from auctions have led to an unsustainable situation where wind OEMs are selling at a loss, with the sector unable to deliver Europe’s planned tripling of wind capacity by 2030, industry leaders have warned.
“The state of the supply chain is ultimately unhealthy right now,” GE Renewable Energy chief executive for onshore wind, Sheri Hickok, told a panel at the WindEurope 2022 conference in Bilbao on Tuesday.
“It is unhealthy because we have an inflationary market that is beyond what anybody anticipated even last year. Steel is going up three times.”
Steel for offshore wind towers is currently being purchased at over $2,000 per tonne, Hickok gave as example, adding that the prices of copper, carbon and logistics had also soared.
“It is really ridiculous to think how we can sustain a supply chain in a growing industry with these kind of pressures.”
After hefty price hikes last year in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic “things were higher but stabilising,” Hickok said, but added that with Russia’s war in Ukraine, the entire system had “unhinched” again in the past eight weeks, making it unsustainable at an unprecedented level of uncertainty.
The GE executive said she is very fearful for the entire wind industry ecosystem.
“Right now, different suppliers within the industry are reducing their footprint, they are reducing jobs in Europe,” she explained.
“If the government thinks that on a dime, this supply chain is going to be able to turn around and meet two to three times the demand, it is not reasonable.”
The European Commission’s recent REPowerEU plan, formulated in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, wants wind power capacity to soar from 190GW today to 480GW by 2030.
Destructive loop
Nordex chief executive José Luis Blanco stressed that even before the Ukraine war, the economics in the wind industry had been destroyed due to price pressures from competitive tenders coupled with a low visibility of wind capacity pipelines due to failed government policies.
“We are investing in volumes in trust in market dynamics, then the volume doesn’t come, then a factory is empty, [and then] it is better [to have] some cash flow than no cash flow — and [consequently] the sector enters into a self-destructive loop.”
Blanco also said if Europe wants to triple its wind power capacity, it needs to better support the independence of the supply chain.
Currently, some 85% of the industry’s components are, however, coming from China, he said.
“The energy independence is supported by a supply-chain dependency policy. This a huge risk.”
Blanco was not only referring to rare earths, but said “normal things” such as metallic shafts in turbines, 95% of which are sourced in China.
All onshore OEMs in trouble
Enercon’s new chief executive Jürgen Zeschky went even further, saying “all European onshore OEMs are in trouble.”
Over the past eight years, cost was the only driver for developments, with low levelised costs of energy and low turbine prices driving the whole business, he told WindEurope 2022.
“We have reached a low cost base, but at the price of outsourcing to low-cost countries,” Zeschky admitted.
“If you look at Europe and Germany, we are constantly losing jobs in industry by relocating to other places.”
But the situation has changed fundamentally, he pointed out.
Due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, “we are faced with a situation, where it is not only about cost, but about an independent, resilient and reliable energy situation in Europe”.
To have sustainable energy generation, Europe needs a sustainable industry, and thus has to overcome being constricted to the lowest cost, he explained.
“That needs to change.”
55555555555555555555555555!!!!! (I’m in Thailand and the word for 5 in Thai is “Ha”) 🙂
BIG WIND…
We’re in trouble…
We can’t compete…
Our materials supply costs are rising Unsustainably…
We’re selling our end product at a loss…
We NEED a dramatic increase in subsidies or we will go insolvent.
Big Wind, take your costly unreliable energy and go blow
All the costs of making wind turbines have gone up, especially in Europe
Also the cost of FINANCING has gone up, i.e., interest rates, because of Bidenflation of 8.5%
Owners typically put up 50% of the turnkey capital cost, the rest is financed.
Owners typically make 9%/y on their investment, when interest rates are low.
They may want to make a higher %, when interest rates are high.
All this translates in Owners having to sell their electricity at much higher prices, and oops, wind is no longer “competitive” (not that it ever was), with fossil, and certainly not with existing nuclear and hydro.
The same is happening with solar and grid-scale battery systems and EVs
All that will make it much more expensive to reduce CO2, which will reduce crop growth, which is already reduced, due to a lack of FERTILIZER, of which the prices have become stratospheric
YOU THINK SOME TYPE OF WORLDWIDE RECESSION SHOULD BE HAPPENING?
Remember, all this is due to the US pushing to expand NATO beyond east Germany, which it had promised not to do in 1990, and turning Ukraine into a NATO-armed battering ram since the US-instigated color revolution in 2014, to crush Russia.
“US pushing to expand NATO”…..think harder Willem….what really was going on is that those countries were pushing to expand NATO to avoid a 1954 Hungary type takeover of their soil, and loss of their new found improvement in standard of living with a demand based economy, instead of the the old iron curtain centrally planned economy with its trainloads of left-footed boots and no toilet paper.
The USSR sphere of influence of East Europe (as a buffer zone) and division of Germany was agreed to by the US, UK, and USSR in 1945, to ensure the USSR would not be invaded again by Germany.
In 1991, the Warsaw Pact, a response to NATO, and the Berlin Wall collapsed, and NATO should have collapsed as well at that time.
None of the wasteful activities after 1991 would have happened.
Last I checked Ukraine isn’t a NATO signatory. If it were WWIII would be in progress. Sweden and Finland are actively seeking to join, not being coerced by existing NATO nations but rather by the Non NATO aggressor nation Russia…who Invaded Ukraine (the Buffer Country between NATO and Non NATO) seeking to annex the remainder of Ukraine like it already has Crimea
You do know, don’t you that Crimea was part of Russia by conquest of the Ottoman Empire (ie Turkish Empire) in the Black Sea, where Catherine The Great kept the Russian fleet in the 18th Century. Ukraine joined the Soviet Union in1922. Kruschev, a Ukrainian, gave Crimea to Ukraine as a gift in 1952. They were all Soviets anyway. Most of the residents were and still are Russians.
… had Putin decided against invading other countries.
Wow! According to you the Eastern European countries should have no right to determine their own future ever.
Quite probably you’re correct about “None of the wasteful activities after 1991 would have happened”. Russia lost 30 million citizens to aggression from the west a few short decades ago. They have a right to be “concerned”. You are definitely correct about the broken promises about NATO expansion, primarily by USA leadership. Both parties are guilty, but Clinton especially. The USA military industrial complex is alive and well, a close competitor to the University/Federal Government Complex. NATO is really just USA, we should get out and let it collapse. It should have when the Berlin Wall collapsed.
Remember that USSR signed the UN Declaration for self-determination. Free and unhindered elections were to be held in all the territories the USSR had conquered. This agreement was broken repeatedly. Russia also broke the agreement it had with Ukraine that it would take over any more Ukrainian soil provided Ukraine remained neutral and didn’t join NATO. Ukraine observed this agreement to the letter – Russia broke it repeatedly.
You can’t trust autocracies.
It doesn’t need a lot to say our government good russia bad. I hope you will all like the green new deal introduced by our good government. From now on also trust all the climate information the governments produce. Remember our government is good.
In 1991 the Warsaw Pact collapsed… and was immediately replaced by the CIS, meaning NATO had no reason to stand down.
Putin’s objective became very clear in 2014
Oh and I forgot Georgia in 2008….
Willem, this one subject where there is close to a consensus on WUWT with the rest of the world. If you know that things arent as simple as they seem in Ukraine, you can expect to get a lot of negative mark downs!
And like everything else, ‘consensus’ matters not one whit.
And what is exactly the difference with a Federal Reserve/ECB centrally planned economy ? The US and Eu economy were already on life support by massive printing of their fiat currency by the ECB and Federal Reserve. There you have your inflation. Covid and Russia were a gift from heaven so they could blame someone else. So Rising prices have nothing to do with Covid or Russia but all with ”stimulating” a centrally controlled economy. But don’t worry because soon we all be millionaires like those people in Zimbabwe.
I may be wrong, but I believe the tanks that crossed the border into Ukraine were
SovietRussian, not US.I wonder if Putin found those Nazis yet?
The founder of the Wagner Group (Dmitry Utkin) has Nazi tattoos. This is a Russian mercenary organization that has fought in Syria, Libya, other various places, and of course Ukraine. It seems Putin has learned much about projection from our Democrat Party here in the USA.
Go to wikipedia and look up Nazi groups in Ukraine. Wiki had about 10 separate full essays on this, which, after the Russian invasion, they it reduced to brief links referring to them as neo-nazis There is nothing ‘neo’ about them. Search re WWII concentration camp guards
So, I fan, in your opinion, JFK was wrong for confronting Kruschev on the menacing installation of aggressive weapons in Cuba then? You don’t see any provocation in the huge arms buildup of NATO at the Russian border area months before Russia moved its army to its border area (let alone the funding of the color demonstrations in 2014 that overththrew the elected gov).
In this day and age it is a sin for a thinking person to not be a bit skeptical at least at what the leaders of UK, US, Canada, EU… are telling us. All I advise, is to do your own research and see what turns up.
Ye, my Schadenfreudometer went into the red zone reading that, too!
Shouldn’t it be into the green?
That’s good news indeed! We will now be learning the hard way! Difficult times ahead. We will all (except probably the Chinese and the Indians!) be a lot poorer in the foreseeable future – but we’ll survive – and eventually prosper.
But windmills will soon disappear – Hurrah.
My crystal ball says EVs will soon be doubling in price. Same for all those EV charging stations Brandon wants built.
The alarmists are going to be priced out of the market. Their efforts to save the world from benign CO2 are in vain.
The alarmists have placed their bets on the wrong horses.
Since the alarmists are currently in charge, we all lose.
Tom A: “Since the alarmists are currently in charge, we all lose.”
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The alarmists and the politicians mandating unrealistic goals for wind and solar have a track record of doubling down on stupid.
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“What? We won’t have enough materials to go all electric by 2030? Then maybe we should eliminate the sale of ICE vehicles by 2024 before we run out of materials.”
Remember politicians are just puppets working for those behind the curtain. Do we really think Biden Harris or AOC have any power ?
They have not bet on a race horse but an ass with long ears.
Show up at the polls en masse and vote the bastards out forever
Does it matter who we vote for. Trump’s biggest problem was his own party. And look at Boris Johnson. He is everything he promised not to be.
The various costs of making wind turbines have gone up, especially in Europe, due to increases in energy, materials, and transport prices
The cost of financing has increased, i.e., higher interest rates, because of the Biden consumer price index, CPI, increasing at 8.5%/y, and the producer price index, PPI, increasing at 11.5%/y
Owners typically put up 50% of the turnkey capital cost of a wind, solar, or battery project, the rest is financed.
Owners typically make 9%/y on their investment, when bank interest rates are low, say 3.5%/y.
Owners may want to make a higher %/y, when bank interest rates are high.
All this translates in Owners having to sell their wind electricity at much higher prices, and oops, wind is:
1) No longer “competitive with fossil” (not that it ever was)
2) Certainly not competitive with existing low-cost, domestic natural gas, nuclear and hydro
The same is happening with the pricing of:
1) Solar electricity
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-name-of-the-game-regarding-wind-and-solar
2) Grid-scale battery system services
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
3) EVs, and EV chargers, and EV charging
All that will make it much more expensive to reduce CO2 to “save the world from climate change’ (if that were actually possible).
However, reducing CO2 reduces biomass growth and food crop growth, which has already been reduced, due to a shortage of fertilizer and phosphate from Belarus and Russia; their prices have become stratospheric. A world recession, or worse, may be in the offing.
Remember, all this is due to the US relentlessly pushing to expand NATO beyond east Germany, which it had promised not to do in 1990, and turning Ukraine into a NATO-armed battering ram, after the US-instigated color revolution in 2014, to crush Russia. See URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-plot-is-thickening-with-germany-and-france-no-longer-in
Add to this worthy list the fact that the stilling of wind is making wind generation less and less economic (thank goodness – I hate the spoilation of beautiful countryside by these moving mechanical monsters).
And especially ”stimulating” the centrally controlled Eu and US economies with ‘cheap’ money.
With EVs, we have the poor paying for the luxuries of the well-to-do. Taxpayers subsidize the purchase and pay for the charging stations. It’s an outrage.
But it’s part of the plan to downsize from 2 car to 1 car and eventually zero car families.
Or, we haven’t seen anything yet about how poor we are going to be — because the wind projects will be paid for regardless, maintaining the 1% lifestyle. Just think about all those ancient huge stone monuments that cost generations their entire lives and never brought any economic return.
Do you reckon a wind turbine has much of a future in that role?
I don’t know what you mean by “that role” but it does seem that wind power cost more (in multiple ways) than it can ever return to most people’s lives, a constant downward spiral.
Is this not the sort of situation where ‘force majeure’ needs to be invoked to cancel long term contracts for wind projects?
Did anyone anticipate two years of disruption to the economy due to imposed covid restrictions and then the economic effects of the supply chain disruptions?
The wind industry doesn’t want “force majeure”, a few weak companies need to get out, that’s all. Wind loves the mandates, the “Government” simply needs to “temporarily’ add “incentives”, to “save the planet”. The corruption isn’t going to end.
One can’t be sure
There is no need to invoke force majeure. With projected inflation rates it will rapidly become uneconomic to continue to add capacity even for wind projects with generous subsidies – as the article implies is already occurring. As long as governments don’t allow terms to be renegotiated the producers will either bail, or go under.
By “that role” I think he meant as a ruined monument to a forgotten age.
20 year contracts to take everything they can produce no matter if there is demand or not. We’ll be suffering from the past decades of wind and solar stupidity for a few more decades. Worldwide tragedy.
Translation: Please, please increase our government subsidies.
Translation: Please, please increase our taxpayer-funded subsidies.
There fixed it for you!!!! It’s all about the money, especially if the poor old (& getting poorer) taxpayer is footing the bill!!!!!!
It is not only government or taxpayer-funded subsidies. Ratepayers get nailed with with extra charges mandated by the state. An electric and gas bill from NYSEG (New York Electric and Gas) can include:
“Systems benefit charge (SBC) a state-mandated charge for all electricity and natural gas customers. The SBC is used to fund clean energy activities conducted by NYSERDA and energy efficiency programs administered by NYSEG”.
One SBC charge for electricity and another for gas.
I hadn’t heard of SBC. SDC (system development charge) has been around here for a while; it is intended to garner cash up front from developments for future infrastructure. Street, sewer(s), water, elect, etc are to keep reasonable accounting and spend the money on the specific infrastructure area.
SBC is scary … take a bunch of money into an administrative slush fund and spend it on ‘clean energy activities’ that actually increase the cost of end point energy, thereby getting even more money for SBC managers to play with in the future. Sounds just as sustainable as the windmill pyramid that is discussed in the subject article.
“Right now, different suppliers within the industry are reducing their footprint, they are reducing jobs in Europe,” she explained.
The guys that don’t get the direct subsidies are seeing the end … they are scaling back, and not expanding to meet the 2030 (or 2050) pipe dream that they know can’t happen.
Forced demand has peaked, supply sees it, & supply is trying to scale back before stretched necks get hurt.
Vestas closed it’s UK wind turbine plant in 2009 and now it’s closing plants in Germany, Spain and Denmark. The last UK wind turbine plant, in Argyllshire, closed last year and there are many others closing across the USA. China shows no sign of following the trend, however.
Just as an aside; I wonder if, after the job losses at the closing turbine plants, Biden has suggested the Green employees learn to code?
Siemens Gamesa, in Germany, also in trouble
(I thought I bookmarked the story from a few months ago about their problems financing their new mega mega 15MW turbine, but patently didn’t)
I found this though:
Reuters Headline: Siemens Energy warns no quick fix for Siemens Gamesa wind turbines
Search around for news on Siemens Gamesa, it’s out there somewhere.
Siemens’ woes started when they took over the Spanish firm Gamesa and deepened with them trying to keep up with the expectations of muppets like Boris Johnson.
The Chinese have learned how to do Cronyism, so that when Western leaders mandate, ABC or XYZ, China peeps know that once The West has committed itself, they can charge whatever they like for their services & products. It happened with Neodymium prices a few years back
And they know know ‘all the tricks’
Lovely example being big Lithium batteries right now. Alibaba quotes, direct from Chinese manufacturers, maybe £25 for a 100Ah 12V battery, but the shipping charge to Europe is somewhere ‘tween £250 and £350. Just to move a £25 item!!!
While rampant inflation in the price of Lithium is used as ‘cover’ for that gouging. But the Lithium content in a Lithium battery is miniscule – it really is and why old Lithiums are not worth recycling in the way Lead Acid batts are.
Because, Western Gov’s have declared that they need these batteries and that batteries of all sorts shapes and sizes are ‘hazardous’
Thus the folks who move them can dream up whatever prices they like – using the hideous prices that insurers (e.g. Lloyds of London) are now charging as cover/excuse.
(The really cynical and wizened amongst us might take the (unfortunate) Felicity Ace to have not been an ‘accident’ at all – but some sort of ‘loss leader‘ perhaps?)
It’s all ever so neat and beautiful as a lot of the folks who underwrite Lloyds are the very people, now de-selected and or retired, who crafted and enacted those regulations
It’s not the batteries that are ‘hazardous’, not by a very long chalk.
Our very own leaders are the Real Hazard – they are doing things so dumb, powered by their own selfishness and greed, as to endanger civilisation itself
While projecting that greed and selfishness onto their own electorate.
what a mess
“The Chinese have learned how to do Cronyism, so that when Western leaders mandate, ABC or XYZ, China peeps know that once The West has committed itself, they can charge whatever they like for their services & products.”
It doesn’t require any kind of conspiracy. All it requires is bog-standard supply and demand curves. When demand rises, so do prices.
But if one plays things properly, so do profit percentages on those raised prices.
I clearly remember when a journalist did a story about automobile parts from the manufacturers. It was cheaper (assuming one had the tools and skills) to buy all the parts for a new automobile from the auto manufacturer and assemble the finished product yourself than to buy a new car from a dealer. Parts supply was a customer service. The light bulb came on once the story was published. Parts quickly became a profit center for manufacturers; prices rose dramatically.
Johnny Cash, One Piece at a Time
Class.
Of course, as more wind turbine manufacturers shut down, the scramble to find spare parts to keep wind farms going will intensify – it may be cheaper and better to cannibalize other turbines in the same farm rather than try to find more and more costly parts.
Don’t blame the leaders, at least not here in the USA. Brandon is just doing what he said he would do and dems, for decades, have done everything they can to damage domestic oil, gas and coal. It’s the “less than wise’ voters that’s the problem (I would like to call them willfully uninformed idiots but polite decorum is important in social discourse, so I won’t do that).
“The European Commission’s recent REPowerEU plan,”
Says it all. The EU, the European Union. Unelected, unaccountable mandarins. They can and will just mandate that the serf pay more in taxes and electric rates. Problem solved.
Meanwhile, the European manufactures are going broke due to high costs. What is the trouble, gang? Astronomical electric rates got you down? China eating your lunch?
Looks like these people need some good old fashion protectionist action from the EU, along with the higher prices to consumers which always comes with protectionist actions.
Take heart, Europe. Your energy security is in good hands. Putin is working overtime to insure that NG, oil and coal are delivered to the countries of the EU on schedule, on contract, in spite of that little war. All the EU countries have to do is pay in Rubles, and stay clear of the war.
Enjoy your energy independence guys.
As I recall, one President Trump told the NATO allies in Europe that becoming dependent on Russia for energy was a real bad idea. They responded by calling him a bully and said he would be better off to mind his own business.
The EU owns this one. The EU jumps into the lead in the International Renewable Power Crash Test Dummy Derby, knocking Germany back to second place with South Australia all the way back in third place.
TonyL, Nice to see someone that understands what’s going on. Too rare.
Economic reality bites … not sure why “we” are in trouble because some companies are going to go down 🙂
Capitalist creative destruction at work.
I wish capitalism were at work. The taxpayers wouldn’t be getting ripped off with these boondoggles if we let market forces work.
People confuse (deliberately?) crony capitalism, state capitalism, huge monopolies and the like with a free market capitalism.
And the media, being mostly left leaning, confuse “capitalism” with “greed”…
It appears market forces are working. They just had to build up enough force to overcome the wrench in the gears ….
The market has spoken.
The virtue signallers can wish all they want. The market does not listen, it simply exists as the least cost greatest benefit determinant. Even state subsidies can not eliminate its ultimate authority, despite brief attempts by political activist that try.
Nothing brief here in the US, with the RE (Ruinous Energy)
investment and production tax credits being renewed for decades, and no end in sight.
To have sustainable energy generation, Europe needs a sustainable industry, and thus has to overcome being constricted to the lowest cost, he explained.
“That needs to change.”
That most certainly does not need to change! Europe does not need to overcome being restricted to the lowest cost, it needs to allow all the energies to compete on value for money. That’s how you get a sustainable industry. If the wind industry then collapses and disappears, Europe will be better off, simply because a better energy source will have replaced it.
If the wind industry is collapsing now, that is fabulous news for Europeans (ie, for all European energy consumers). Everywhere else needs to follow suit, or Europe will get ahead of them.
I can barely wait to celebrate the end of the wind industry. It has been a very long and expensive time coming.
Allez Marine le Pen!!
Adaptation to 2 degrees warmer by giving away a sweater, is much simpler than these policies designed to have more government intervention in our lives, with economic boom by indirect taxation, until 50% of the population makes their living administering or waiting for their wealth redistribution of the other 50%’s fuel consumption. Yes, pick up your litter….
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣breathe, 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
‘Sustainable’ energy absolutely dependent on ‘unsustainable’ energy? Who knew? Oh yeah, all of us.
Do “better support” and “overcome constriction to the lowest cost” lead to nationalization of industry and of raw materials?
Perhaps the “need to change” could drive government price controls?
Will workers in Germany be coerced to accept Chinese pay and rationed government resources?
Will those nationalized industries receive fuel and energy from government sponsored providers at lower-than-market cost?
Which political party’s members will get to decide?
Then on the flip side with the much vaunted saviour of weather dependant power generation the lithium battery sector faces demand destruction-
Eye on Lithium: Soaring lithium prices to bite EV makers where it hurts (msn.com)
The climate changers are going to have to choose between reducing gas or oil with the grid or transport but that will only delay the inevitable.
Steel at $1 per ton would not lead to wind turbines that can sustain a grid. Can’t be done.
Oh dear me!
“ After hefty price hikes last year in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic “things were higher but stabilising,” Hickok said, but added that with Russia’s war in Ukraine, the entire system had “unhinched” again in the past eight weeks, making it unsustainable at an unprecedented level of uncertainty.”
Russia Russia Russia…surely it’s their fault 😉
If Russia didn’t exist, our Deep State would have had to invent it. But since it did exist, the Deep State only needed to apply the usual remedies.
Russia = the current convenient boogieman
What a relief the blowhards aren’t flogging this off on those deplorables, those undesirables, those unvaccinated lo-life’s, those gun lovers & bible huggers, etc, etc,etc, etc……
rated 5 for the best laugh today;-)
The media has steadfastly refused to report that it was the near complete failure of wind and solar electricity generation in the autumn and early winter of 2021 (well prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine) that caused a substantial depletion of stored European natural gas.
European reliance on intermittent wind and solar is what initiated skyrocketing LNG and electricity prices in the winter of 2021-22.
That would seem to be a particularly relevant point. Thanks for making it. I can understand why the media doesn’t mention it: The Truth hurts them and makes them look like the idiots/propagandists they are.
The Truth hurts them and their handlers by revealing how manipulative they are.
Might start timing my market jump into government bonds. The current shitful financial smoke and mirrors in energy is a worry.
A bit early to jump into government bonds, methinks. And if this ends up being the big kahuna, the time might be never.
using non fossil sources to construct windpower is simply not sustainable.
Yet more evidence that wind power is just a green face on a fossil energy source.
The attempt to regulate CO2 is a joke. There’s no evidence CO2 is anything other than a benign gas. Yet our alarmist leaders are in the process of trying to bankrupt us all with their ridiculous efforts. And now it’s coming unraveled. Reality is setting in.
One of these days we will be over this CO2-is-dangerous Delusion and we can get back to living our lives without fear that the world is going to end in ten years because of CO2.
We are living through a ridiculous mass CO2 delusion. The delusional can’t see it. The rest of us can. What we see is Reality is getting ready to smack the delusional alarmists right in the face.
yea but the next big story will be the rapidly increasing atmospheric methane content.
Yes, right after the cop 26 failure we started to hear about the methane crisis.
From the article: “The European Commission’s recent REPowerEU plan, formulated in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, wants wind power capacity to soar from 190GW today to 480GW by 2030.”
How much of that 480GW of wind power is available when the wind doesn’t blow?
The Chicoms are helping Putin murder innocent people in Ukraine. Should we give more money to the Chicoms? I don’t think so.
Here’s a link:
https://www.climatedepot.com/2022/04/13/another-lockdown-in-europe-to-punish-putin-report-urges-europe-should-ban-all-business-flights-private-jets-internal-flights-ban-car-use-within-cities-reducing-heating-in-buildings-fast-tr/
Like Trump, we did all we could to warn them of the pain of green, but like a brat, they wouldn’t listen.
The sooner & harder they do it, the more painful it will be- with bans, rationing & lockdowns- but in the
end, it will be much less than it could’ve been!
All of that will be done to punish Putin, a go-between for Iran & LGB’s US. The deal will be what the EU
favored vs a hardline Trump stance. This is no surprise to me- give $$$$ to Iran so they can pay Vlad!!!
What a bunch of dumb b@$$e$! Maybe they’re masochists who enjoy self-inflicted pain! 😮 😉
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18426/iran-us-russia-ukraine
Vlad can use the $$$$ cuz those Ukrainian tractors are a pain in the drain! 😮 😉
https://twitter.com/FPWellman/status/1514716451856343051
“How much of that 480GW of wind power is available when the wind doesn’t blow?”
You forgot about all the magic battery farms that provide stable wind-sourced power for entire continents for months at a time! Of course, those are free (because they are magic).
This should come as no surprise to anyone.
When demand for any raw material increases rapidly with no increase in supply, the result will always be a huge increase in the price.
But the people and organizations and government pushing the green energy debacle are also squarely opposed to such things as domestic factories and/or new mines to supply what is needed to build out the devices they want.
They have simply ignored any logic or facts or math or basic economic theory, because each of these is antithetical to their ignorance-based ideology.
They have ignored that intermittents need fossil fuels to build, and must be backed up by reliable power on permanent standby.
They have ignored that solar and wind are 100% unable to ever provide baseload power, while also ignoring that hydro and nuclear are the only two non emitting sources of reliable an affordable and plentiful power.
They have ignored that their plans call for replacing things that took the better part of a century to build and install and perfect, while also ignoring all of the potential problems with the new technology they stupidly fell in love with.
And they have ignored that all of their plans are resource intensive to construct and maintain, including ignoring that it takes fossil fuel energy sources to produce solar panels and wind turbines and power distribution infrastructure.
No one who knows anything about economics could be surprised that when the whole world makes plans that require huge amounts of raw materials that are in limited supply, and many of which come primarily from a very few sources in the world, that the price of these materials will definitely skyrocket.
Another thing these fools have had the stupendous shortsightedness to ignore:
What are countries that have no factories and no raw materials going to do if there is a war or embargo?
The answer of course is there will be not a single thing they can do, especially if they also have little or no military at all!
The basic problem at the root of all of this is that people who know nothing about infrastructure, technology, or planning, have been put in charge of planning technological infrastructure for entire countries.
These fools think planning starts and ends with “reimagining”!
‘When demand for any raw material increases rapidly with no increase in supply, the result will always be a huge increase in the price.‘
True enough. But absent central bank ‘accommodation’, I.e. money printing’, a supply shock will only raise prices of the affected commodity while other prices fall. We shouldn’t let these guys off the hook, because they are the real enablers of bad policy, whether energy or foreign.
You can only ignore reality for so long until it catches up with you.
Reimagining relies on the new field of imagineering whereby old axioms of engineering that you can’t make a reliable system from unreliable componentry are discarded as reactionary. All revolutionary struggles and Great Leaps Forward must necessarily discard such irrelevant old shibboleths held by capitalist oppressors of the masses. If you don’t understand the struggle then you’re part of the problem and must be re-educated.
Hah! If you ever tire of your current gig, rest assured you could easily command big bucks in the Biden administration or teaching at any Ivy League institution.
In related news the fight over offshore wind is heating up:
https://www.cfact.org/2022/04/15/virginia-agency-challenges-dominions-offshore-wind-deception/
They will have to lie about costs in every step of the process to even get close.
The same inflationary factors are hurting every business that involves building or manufacturing anything. Ditto with services where labor is in short supply and jobs simply don’t get filled unless you pay the employee drastically higher wages or salaries .. and then they quit a week later when someone else offers them even more.
Inflationary times are very tough times to do any kind of business, to design, build/manufacture, and sell any product or service.
The biggest challenge we have today is constraining inflation. Because once it gets a head of steam, it become self-accelerating, with positive feedbacks.
Interest rates are beginning to climb, with the Fed increasing the Federal funds rate. Home mortgage rates just hit 5.0% yesterday, the highest they’ve been in 11 years, and they’re going to go a lot higher until inflation is checked. Ditto with other kinds of both consumer and producer financing. It’s bitter medicine, but it’s the only medicine that works. I still remember the “stagflation” (low growth, high inflation) of the late 70s that ended only with a massive tightening of the money supply by the Fed, which immediately resulted in a massive recession in 1981-82. We’re headed that way now, unfortunately.
Price stability is one of those things that you don’t appreciate when you have it, but sorely feel it when it’s gone.
With the wind turbine industry, it does seem to be impacting more heavily – not that I’m particularly surprised or upset though.
Please, please line our pockets with even more subsidies at the general population’s expense
The best thing that could possibly happen would be the demise of all wind turbine manufacturing and the removal of all wind turbines from the landscape.
Have any of the contracts drawn up when building a wind generator included a clause demanding the end of life removal of all the material, including the concrete/rebar base/access roads and restoring the site to its original natural state?
Many of the wind farms in the UK are based on areas of peat moorlands which are themselves significant stores of ‘carbon’ and need deep foundations that involve digging through the peat to a stable base. Is this loss of ‘carbon’ included in the calculation of supposed carbon cost of a wind farm, along with all the ancillary costs such as access roads, transformers and connections to the grid?
If not, then all that will be left is an industrial wasteland which will only be of use to film producers of dystopian epics. (As happens now with redundant factories from the rust belt industries.)
If the site is refurbished, will the existing bases be reusable or will there be another round of concrete/rebar installation sterilising/industrialising yet another area of countryside?
Current proposals for more on-shore wind farms in the UK seem to be going down this route.
Two words:
The essence of the problem: They want to industrialize the landscape with windmills but green energy causes de-industrialization.
Gee whiz, who coulda seen this coming? Almost anyone with a thinking brain. Isn’t that some sort of economics thingee…like, supply and demand driving prices for just about anything.
The actual value has nothing to do with it, however, the imagined value to the planet is what is being touted. So, the price for the materials to make the useless wind things will continue to rise and the taxpayers will continue to get gouged to pay for them.
Political economics at its finest. Just sayin’.
Where’s Griff on this post?
Hiding probably. He can’t cope with too much reality at one time or his little brain overheats.
His handlers have strict instructions to divert away from reality, especially if it involves wind industry issues.
No, he awaits instructions but Putin seems distracted by other matters.
Maybe soon Merkle will take over those duties
He’s probably sobbing under his bed.
What these companies are complaining about is hyperinflation caused by just a small disruption in global fossil energy supply. The irony of this situation does not escape me. The fact that solar and wind, in large enough quantities to actually matter, are not economically feasible without subsidies will soon be obvious even to the zealots.
That has been obvious to the zealots from the beginning. They just don’t care; ideology trumps rationality.
The Green God of Wind has failed them.
Next up Griff will repeat the propaganda line of achieving wind quotas for the fatherland.
Maybe they need wood and corn stalk engineering to hold up the windmills along the lines of some wood-based multi-story buildings being hyped.
Biden will just need to proclaim the great offshore wind farms as union-only domains with union steel, union subsidies, and preferred union electricity pricing.
It’s now a tossup between coal-based Chinese steel for wind structures and Chinese forced labor and coal-based silicon components for solar.
Don’t forget the acres of solar glass, melted and refined with
wind energyfossil fuels.I thought I said that.
You did, I thought it needed a boost.
Typical lefty bureaucrat thinking lead to this. Midwit Barack Obama and his band of shallow thinkers FELT the path to greenie utopia was simply to make fossil fuel based energies super expensive and leaving green tech the economic choice. Not once did any of these new age oligarchs consider that rise in petro price adversely affects the price of manufacturing turbines and panels. Wind isn’t used to make turbines and the sun isn’t used to make solar panels. Not to mention the materials made from petroleum. I’m hoping this is the first and not the last of the leftist’s unintended consequences to hinder the green dreams.
Gee whiz. Government subsidies and a magical belief system lead to a frothy market, fierce competition and logistical issues. Conclusion? We need protection from these market forces which serve to reduce prices! Reducing prices are a sign of market failure? Obviously we need government price controls to fix this market failure. It’s Great Depression thinking all over again.
The only market failure here is the government injecting too much money into an industry and making regulations favoring this industry to the exclusion of more sensible alternatives. How does one go about rectifying such thinking — the idea that a few people in government, on the basis of partisanship, have anything like the wisdom to design systems? I doubt a required reading of Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” would be sufficient but would be worth a try.
Wonderful, Kevin! In only two succinct paragraphs, you’ve fully described the poison of ‘progressivism’ and provided the antidote of Austrian economics.
Thirty five years ago a length of 3/0 copper wire sold for about the same price as an equal length of US Pennies. That was when a US penny had 95% copper. Today, that same length of 3/0 copper wire is over $5.00. Prices are for better quality insulated wire suitable for Powerplant, commercial buildings, High-rise or homes. If you have underground service you want the BEST wire, closer to $9.00/ft, 3/0 Gauge (AWG) wire has an amperage capacity of 300 amps for a length of 15 feet, enclosed. Recommended for a 200 amp service drop to a home.
Buy Copper stock/futures.
Domestic energy costs are currently a massive issue here in the UK. I recently had my revised monthly charges sent by my domestic energy supplier: gas has gone from 51 pounds to 66 pounds per month – a 29 percent increase, and electricity from 101 pounds to 152 pounds per month- a massive 50 percent hike. The current international situation may be responsible for the increase in global gas supply cost inceases, but given the UK now being heavily dependent on wind power, what explains the 21 percent further increase in electricity costs? Wind generated electricity is claimed to now be cheaper than that from fossil fuel burning so something doesn’t add up. Trawling the internet, it seems that at least part of the explanation is the much bigger infrastructure required to support thousands of wind turbines rather than a few power stations. This will not go away – it will be translated into higher ongoing maintainence costs. This article suggests that even at current levels the wind energy sector is uneconomical, but how will it be funded? I will survive but already many people are facing the situation of unaffordable electricity bills and a choice between heating or food, a further increase in energy supply costs would be a catastrophe.
In socialist countries the common person often does not survive – they end up in a cold wet shelter with little food or medicine. In a democracy the common person CAN survive if they wake up and vote the liberal idiots out of office. There has to be pain and suffering for many people to acknowledge their beliefs in the politics were wrong…So it is a question of how much suffering before enough people wake up.
I am cautiously optimistic that this is occurring in the U.S. I think our next big election (Nov 2022) will through a lot of these out-of-touch liberals from office. This will stop the bleeding. Then with the 2024 elections we can put adults back in charge of the economy. With our fossil fuel industry healthy, we will be able to get prices back under control.
Or just having basic protection (i.e. walls and roof) against the weather
From the above article:
“Nordex chief executive José Luis Blanco stressed that even before the Ukraine war, the economics in the wind industry had been destroyed due to price pressures from competitive tenders coupled with a low visibility of wind capacity pipelines due to failed government policies.”
Hey, José, strongly suggest you investigate the word “intermittancy” and the phrase “lack of battery backup capacity” as some technical reasons for the abject failure of large scale energy generation from wind.
BTW, the phrase “low visibility of wind capacity pipelines” is bureaucrat-speak for what, exactly?
“BTW, the phrase “low visibility of wind capacity pipelines” is bureaucrat-speak for what, exactly?”
I’ll take a shot at it.
“low visibility of wind capacity pipelines”
“Windmills need fossil fuels and tax subsidies to exist. Pipelines such as Keystone have been shutdown and subsidies are less than we need.”
“Wind capacity pipeline” had me confused as well, but I think I figured it out. It refers to the “planned” growth of nameplate wind capacity of future wind farms. If you have 100Gw nameplate capacity today and in 10 years you “plan” to have 200Gw than you have a “Wind Capacity Pipeline” of 100Gw.
What is so funny about this is nameplate capacity is almost a useless metric for power – it refers to the absolute maximum power the infrastructure can deliver and says nothing about the expected power, the variability of power, or the minimum power of the infrastructure. It says nothing about the capacity to reduce variability for a given amount of time using storage either, but when talking about wind power it’s their favorite metric.
He’s saying new and improved future wind CF isn’t sufficiently recognized. These new and improved turbines are already being manufactured (in the pipeline), and very soon wind CF, he suggests, will see a quantum improvement from going from 2.5 MW to 10+ MW turbines…especially offshore maybe 40 CF soaring to say 45CF. Slightly more efficient, way more expensive. Kill the beast.
10 years is not a “pipeline” . . . it is a constipated marketing-vs-technology mashup.
Batteries for a few days of calm weather costs 10x more than the turbines, and battery prices are increasing. N2N, Natural Gas to Nuclear with blue hydrogen as an antidote for the CO2 is killing us crowd.
Seriously, can anyone think of a situation where the government stepped in to solve what it saw as a market shortcoming that worked instead of creating a total disaster?
This is a 4th wall question.
Government created the problem by distorting the market, corrupting the meaning of the word market, so now the only solution is even more distortion.
So, to summarize, a nonviable business model that required direct & indirect government subsidies & mandatory purchase at a government set price turns out to be a nonviable business model.
There are only two options: double down, or pull the plug.
So the war on fossil fuels has caused some unintended collateral damage?
Reality bites sometimes.
Ban economics Ban Math. Ban Money Ban people Ban Freedom, Ban Reality…. Forward Ho…. down the rat hole. There needs to be a separation of Church of the Mean Greenies and State.
“Ban economics Ban Math.”
Yes, they are racist anyway.
No worries. They can make it up in volume.
Maybe they can use steel formerly used in cars, trucks, and construction to make subsidized wind farms with enough lobbying.
I’m sure union, trade-protectionist steel can come up with some response. Governments have a long history of protecting domestic steel and now they can weld it to green protectionist strategies and goals.
Wait – what? They’re losing money???? Oh, gee whizzikers!!! How sad! How dismal! How sniffly ‘pity me’!!! It’s hard to find any pity to send to them. I had some in a jar in the fridge the other day, but I was saving it for the off-chance that it might snow in my AO next week… and the forecast says it just might.
So those obnoxious things can’t even be used to grind grain now? That was the original idea, y’know: use the wind in the sails on the windmills to grind grain in to flour.
So The Plan is falling flat? OK, well, if I can find anything in my “pity jar”, I’ll let you all know. Meantime, yesterday, I saw a huge bald eagle pull a fish out of a recently restocked lake north of me, and that’s a lot more important than those whiners!!!
The eagle’s last meal?
OH, no, not even remotely last meal! Huge bird, picked that finny fish up and moved aloft with enormous dignity. There’s an old Army base to the south of me, which has about 25 acres set aside for bald eagles and other feather flockers. The base was sold for suburban housing (of course) and those acres are a birder’s magnet. At least three pairs of bald eagles live there, and I’m thinking that the Big Guy I saw is part of one of those pairs. Hope so, anyway.
Until a few wind turbines are installed.
It goes without saying that retards cannot see their own effect on things.
Europe installs renewables to get free power and instead price themselves out of industry.
Then they propose carbon tariff walls to protect their industries, but green energy is supposedly cheaper or at least they keep screaming it so if our sky was red instead of blue then China would institute tariffs on Europe due to chinas inability to compete with Europe’s green economy
And yet the sky is blue, europe is heavy in renewables, and they are collapsing.
And no way to turn it around, the few industries they have will continue to fail, they can’t compete with China’s established coal-fired industries. Death by a thousand cuts. Ouch.
Loving it
Futures market for unicorn rainbow farts looking pretty good.
Good. Let stupid wind power die its death. Get fracking Mr Johnson.
If it isnt viable without govt support it deserves to die. Thats what a free market economy means.
“‘We’re all in trouble’ – Wind turbine makers selling at a loss”
I believe I can hear the bids outside chirping in celebration…..
Deep pocket competitors buying out weak companies to shut them down. They’re not worried about recovering their investment. They simply need to be sure to make the right campaign investments in the right amount to keep the mandates in-place. Cost isn’t an issue as long as there is enough political “support’ for sale. No matter how expensive wind gets the same “cheaper than fossil fuels” will be pronounced and regurgitated by the liberal MSM. And so it goes.
When you look at regs, rules, legislation, and the money they are willing to print do this, rewire the country, insulate everything, install charging stations everywhere, or the universal installation of heat pumps, keep repeating, “It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.”
We don’t have the trained labor forces required for massive projects that require completion in a short time frame, and I don’t see any proposals for appropriate training crash courses. Not enough designers, engineers, electrical workers, construction crews, fabrication experts, even project managers. All the money in the world won’t help if there is no one with the necessary skillset to hire.
Other government programs given big budgets have failed despite having most of the budget left to spend. The labor force simply did not have enough properly trained people to do the work. All these governmental green plans will suffer the same fate.
So all of it just doesn’t matter.
Here in the UK the plan is to train people for a week and unleash them on the unsuspecting public to install 600,000 heat pumps a year from 2028. What could possibly go wrong!?!!!
I’ve read pros saying 90% of existing heat pumps were installed incorrectly, and 70% were sized wrong.
Buy lots of popcorn, and invest in companies that sell portable electric heaters. Their sales will heat up when this program is underway.
I’ve been highlighting the vicious cycle that occurs as people attempt to do away with energy: the cost of producing energy goes up, so the cost of raw materials produced using energy goes up, so the cost of devices that produce no more energy than is needed to make them, goes up.
The closer we get to “net zero” … the more prices rise, the higher energy costs rise, the poorer everyone gets and the less energy that is actually produced as people rely more and more on energy “production” that takes more energy to produce than it produces.
My comment explaining how the vicious cycle of price increases was inherent in net zero was just deleted. Seems like this website was taken over by the dark side?
Oops
The bulk of the wind industry is dependent on China and what’s that going to look like in 2,3 … 5, … 10 years. We should not be aligning ourselves politically or supply chain strategically (is there a difference) with hostile regimes … recall Khrushchev saying “We will bury you!” (in Russian, “my vas pokhoronim”) in his address to Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow on November 18, 1956. Europe, in particular Germany made a serious “political blunder” by aligning with Russia / Putin on oil and gas pipeline imports. But, the U.S. has done similarly … by making the U.S. dependent on China on critical minerals used in alternative energy (batteries, wind, …). Perhaps it would be wiser for the U.S. to support strategically critical supply chain materials… if you believe it, make your voices heard with federal and local government .. ‘cept they are too busy promoting woke agendas, especially likb Demmies.
You have to wonder if anyone could bid at the maximum allowed CFD prices for Allocation Round 4 with a straight face.