Guest “Rhetorical question” by David Middleton
If you can’t see why this is hilarious, you probably flunked economics (and basic arithmetic)…
Wind and solar now employ as many workers as the oil sector.
World Economic Forum on LinkedIn
The LinkedIn post is accompanied by a cute YouTube video:
The World Economic Forum, apparently thinks that this is something to brag about. If you can’t see why this is hilarious, you probably flunked economics (and basic arithmetic)…
By the logic of the World Economic Forum, it is a “good thing” that it takes more people to produce and deliver 7% of the world’s primary energy needs, than it takes to produce and deliver 55% (oil & gas).
It’s actually possible that, in 2021, it took twice as many people to deliver than 40 EJ of “green” energy than it took to deliver 330 EJ of “oil sector” energy.
Renewable energy jobs hit 12.7 million globally
New report confirms growth in renewable jobs despite multiple crises and calls for targeted industrial strategies to create stable supply chains and decent jobs.Press release | 22 September 2022
GENEVA (ILO News) – Worldwide employment in renewable energy reached 12.7 million last year, a jump of 700,000 new jobs in one year, despite the lingering effects of COVID-19 and the growing energy crisis, according to a new report.
Renewable Energy and Jobs: Annual Review 2022 identifies domestic market size as a major factor influencing employment generation in renewables, along with labour and other costs. Solar energy was found to be the fastest-growing sector. In 2021 it provided 4.3 million jobs, more than a third of the current global workforce in renewable energy.
[…]
International Labour Organization
Oil and gas production
The ILO estimates that nearly 6 million people are directly employed by the petroleum industry and over ten times that number of jobs are indirectly created by the industry. Employment opportunities for women in the petroleum industry are increasing, but from a very low base. This may be because of harsh working conditions in the industry: long hours work, especially in oil production; increasing amounts of work round the clock, in difficult, remote areas ; scheduling of shifts particularly offshore when rotation patterns are constrained by transport schedules and limits on accommodation. The petroleum industry faces the shortage of skilled workers.
International Labour Organization
Renewables require 300,000 more employees per exajoule of output than the oil & gas industry does. Whenever I see these “triumphant” articles about renewable energy employing more people than fossil fuels, I’m always reminded of the photos of dozens of workers sweeping snow off the streets of Beijing during President Nixon’s historic visit to Red China in 1972.
Today wind is supplying the UK with 14% of its electricity. For about a day last week it was around 40%, but less than 20% is more normal. CCGT is, alone, around 53%.
To reach 40% today would presumably require three times the wind turbines we currently have. That might mean approaching 100% electricity for one windy day occasionally, but for the rest of the time we would have less that half the electricity the country needs.
To reach 100% today would mean more than 7 times the number of wind turbines we currently have.
According to the BBC “There are now more than 11,000 wind turbines on and offshore” https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-60945298 so we will presumably need more than 77,000 wind turbines to power the UK on a fairly normal day.
The land/sea area required for that is mind boggling.
Matt Ridley illustrated this nicely in a 2017 article but he appears to be using nameplate values: “If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth but no more, how many would need to be built each year? The answer is nearly 350,000, since a two-megawatt turbine can produce about 0.005 terawatt-hours per annum.” which, I think I have illustrated, is not representative of the actual performance (my understanding of this isn’t as it might be so I stand to be corrected) in which case we can multiply his numbers by seven, as if it’s not bad enough as it is.
https://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
It has taken the UK some 20 years to reach the numbers we have. Being that China can only produce so many turbines a year and we are not the only country demanding them, does that mean we will have to wait another 120 years before the country is fully provisioned with wind turbines? None of this, of course, allows for replacement of turbines at the end of their 20 year life.
And as Matt points out, this is only electricity which is a fraction of a country’s energy requirements.
Corrections to my assumptions/calculations gratefully received.
Noticeable by their absence from this thread are the usual trolls that claim renewables are our saviour. Dare we hope they are starting to realise that it’s all a scam?
Maybe the trolls are trying to not draw attention to the report by ignoring it. A similar tactic used by the media when something does not jive with their line of BS. The report does not fit the scam, especially if one looks at the pie chart divisions. Sheesh.
Even if they do, they’ll never admit it!
The Mountain Valley Pipeline remains in obstructionist legal limbo after Manchin falls for bait and switch scheme and then gets stabbed in the back:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-health-covid-government-congress-3562f84c020707d0f0764c3b7d62bb41
Who would have ever guessed that Chucky Schmucky Schumer’s “promise” was a trick to get Manchin’s vote? Everyone but Joe Manchin saw this coming.
I hope New England (particularly Bernie Sanders’ Vermont, Sheldon Whitehouse’s Rhode Island and Pocahontas+Malarkey’s Taxachusetts) freezes in the dark.
They’ve earned it and deserve it.
Woke wizardry,
sleight hand of a magician,
tricking by illusions.
All done to scam the gullible.
Big Brother is a master deceiver, liar and propagandist. The WEF is one of the numerous real-world components of Orwellian Big Brother today on a global level.
WEF video is a present-day iteration of Orwell’s Two Minute Hate sessions…
Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad would probably say, “Arithmetic, bitches!”
Biden is still trying to convince the country that taxing the rich and using a portion of that money to buy votes, is going to solve all of our economic problems.
C’mon! Everyone knows that the more people required to produce the same amount of output increases productivity dramatically! /sarc
Perhaps the mantra should change to:- “It’s not about the economy stupid”.
I call them WTF (hat tup to Robert Kiyosaki). Better describes them and they know jack about economics.