Essay by Eric Worrall
Professor Aled Jones exposing the “myth” that renewables are too expensive and utterly reliant on government subsidies.
‘Decarbonisation is too expensive’ – how to sell climate change action to bean counters
Published: September 29, 2022 1.20am AEST
Aled Jones
Professor & Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University…
With fellow academics, I studied instances from the past 30 years when governments succeeded in using public investment and regulation to rapidly scale up the deployment of renewable energy technologies like solar panels and wind turbines.
We found that the traditional approach to making energy policy – carrying out cost-benefit analyses, otherwise known as bean counting – tended to impede the roll-out of renewable energy because it misconceived the economy as something static which always operates in an optimal way. This perspective assumes that policy can do little to disrupt the structure of existing markets. The meteoric rise of entirely new sectors over the last decade, such as the global electric vehicle market and offshore wind, show that policy can in fact drive radical changes.
…
Myth one: decarbonisation will make electricity expensive
Subsidising low-carbon technology is an investment, not a cost. A recent study suggested it is an opportunity for the global economy with a potential return of US$12 trillion.
…
Myth two: renewables need massive subsidies
…
Renewables now compete with and even beat the cost of generating power from fossil fuels. Offshore wind, for example, produces electricity at about a quarter of the current price charged to consumers in the UK – a price set by the wholesale cost of gas. Building new wind turbines no longer relies on subsidies.
…
Myth three: jobs will disappear
The transition from fossil fuels in energy systems will shed nearly 3 million jobs in mining, power plant construction and other sectors. But it is expected to create more than 12 million new ones in transport, renewable power generation and energy efficiency by 2030.
…
If we continue to fuss about the costs of action then by 2050 there won’t be very many beans left to count.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/decarbonisation-is-too-expensive-how-to-sell-climate-change-action-to-bean-counters-190801
An essay which starts by dissing “traditional” cost benefit analysis pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the claims.
Professor Jones “Myth 1” claim that renewables will not increase power bills isn’t borne out by the evidence. If renewables were cheaper than reliables, California would have the cheapest electricity in the America.
Even President Obama didn’t claim renewables would reduce energy prices.
Professor Jones’ “Myth 2” claim that renewables are not utterly dependent on government subsidies is also refuted by the evidence. Tens of thousands of Spanish entrepreneurs were bankrupted when the Spanish socialist government abruptly and retrospectively cut renewable subsidies in 2010. If Renewables were competitive, and subsidies are simply an accelerator for a transition which will happen anyway, there wouldn’t have been a wave of Spanish bankruptcies when the subsidies were pulled.
Professor Jones’ response to the third “myth”, that renewables will boost prosperity by creating more jobs, is the most interesting of his claims.
I agree with Professor Jones that a genuine switch to Net Zero would create more jobs – but they would be miserable, poorly paid jobs.
Basic economics dictates if you have to hire more people to perform the same service, there is less money available to pay the extra workers. Replacing 3 million jobs with 12 million jobs to produce the same amount of electricity as before does not create wealth, it destroys wealth. Quadrupling the number of workers to produce the same electricity means either the wages which used to be paid to 3 million people now have to be stretched to pay 12 million people, or the service the 3 million people used to provide is now 4x more expensive. Most likely a mixture of both price increases and wage cuts.
Economic growth and wealth creation is about getting more done with less, the primary goal should not be to create jobs – more jobs are created as a side benefit of a growing economy. Our comfortable modern existence is only possible because our ancestors focussed on growth rather than jobs. As a consequence we’re a lot better at getting work done than our ancestors.
Consider a farmer working a field. A few centuries ago, working a large field required an entire team of people. But nowadays a large field can now be plowed or reaped by a single farmer driving a large agricultural machine, or even a robot machine which doesn’t need any direct oversight. That way, instead of say 20 people being paid from the profits of that field, most of the profits go to one person, the farmer who owns the machine – minus the cost of refuelling and maintaining that machine.
This reduced need for farm workers does not mean 19 people are now jobless – it means those 19 people who are no longer required to work the field are liberated to find other, better paying jobs which also use machines to amplify human labor – which is exactly what happened during the urbanisation which occurred during the Industrial Revolution.
Greater efficiency means everyone has a chance to work fewer hours for more money. Employee rights advances like the 40 hour work week was only possible because we all got richer, because it was no longer necessary to work the fields by hand, because most of us don’t have to work our butts off just to get the basic necessities.
If you want a glimpse of life before the industrial revolution, just visit a really poor country. But even the poorest countries today are better off than our ancestors were.
The USA, Australia and Britain have already had a taste of this downward pressure on prosperity, especially places with high renewable penetration. How much did you pay last time you filled your gas tank? How painful was your last household energy bill? At what point is the green fairy supposed to turn everything around, and make all that magic renewable energy cheaper? How many homeless people are required, to convince places like California they might have made a mistake?
Even Professor Jones’ final claim that “… there won’t be very many beans left to count“, a reference to the alleged climate threat to coffee, couldn’t be more wrong. In Australia there is a company called Jaques Coffee which grows a delicious, award winning low altitude tropical coffee – their coffee plantations are only 1200ft above sea level, as opposed to 3000ft+ for most premium coffees. Jaques exports their product all over the world. How did they produce a delicious coffee which grows at a lower altitude than most other premium coffees? Because Australians have been selectively breeding low altitude coffee varieties for more than a century – we simply don’t have access to high altitude tropical highlands like East Africa and South America.
This green nonsense will only get worse, if we allow our politicians to continue listening to academics like Professor Jones, if we fail to challenge the absurd economic narratives of climate advocates, and if we allow our politicians to continue pushing forward with heavily subsidised, impossibly expensive renewable energy.
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How to convince apologetics to give up on climate action?
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Mods, how do we report this clown and get his comment yanked?
Seems this is the only reflection on my post, LOL
Better, maybe banned.
Auto
Your point 1 is something I have been musing about for years. Is there any study examining the global changes in these clouds over many decades? I know we had a bit of a test during 9/11.
How about during the lockdowns?
Sure, there have been attempts. However it seems like satellite data and other sources are unable to track the development accurately. Either it are calibration issues, or there is sabotage.
Before the IPCC and the CO2 narrative, there have been some papers suggesting a strong increase in cirrus clouds due to aviation. Since “climate science” took over, such signals could hardly be detected, with a few exceptions.
Yet it seems some people fairly well know what is going on.Just take Charles Long, Senior Research Scientist NOAA, telling more than he intended..
“There is not a huge W/m2 thing. Though if the clouds were’t there over an increase of 4W/m2 per decade is much, much, much larger than the projected increase due to greenhouse warming. They are talking about 4W/m2 under certain scenarios over 40 or 50 years. This is in 10 years..”
“In the greenhouse world.. I want to be very careful about how I say this because I don’t wanna, I don’t wa.. but part of the problem that we have is, we are talking about some change over a couple of Watts/m2 over a 50 or a 100 years. It’s pretty hard to grasp that we are really doing this. This is a more emidiate thing and you can see this..”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoGZrwzWHJI&t=1313s
(Specifically from 0.34:00 on)
This was in 2015. Since then we had lockdowns and skies that suddenly turned back to deep blue, confirming what was pretty obvious anyhow. And this is only thing in question. There is NO question, that this provides a massive forcing, much larger than CO2..
Micky Mann did a study on this exact issue using the length of mice tails as a proxy for cloud cover.
This is actually better than a Griff post.
🤣 🤣 🤣
There was even a time when CNN would report truthfully about contrails. Surprised this hasn’t been scrubbed off the internet yet.
CNN.com – 9/11 study: Air traffic affects climate – August 8, 2002
Just let me point out, there is no doubt contrails (or aviation induced cirrus) are warming. It is odd when such articles claim uncertainty over this question. A theoretic total cirrus cover would produce a forcing of 60-70W/m2. That is what I get, that is what the literature says, that is what the IPCC claims. No conflicts there.
https://greenhousedefect.com/contrails/contrails-the-basic-physics
The only question how much of the (global) sky is covered by contrails. The IPCC and much of the literature assumes 0.1%. So you get a forcing of 60 * 0.1% = 0.06W/m2. And 0.06W/m2 is again the forcing provided by contrails according to the IPCC. But that mainly just “linear contrails”, without much considering blurred out contrails and subvisual cirrus, both far more significant.
Now what observations suggest, be it because of 2020 lockdowns, or the 9/11 shutdowns, are not 0.1%, but rather 5% and more, especially in the NH.
https://greenhousedefect.com/contrails-a-forcing-to-be-reckoned-with
“when governments succeeded in using public investment and regulation”
1) Governments are an expense, not an investment. The time it takes for
a person to spend money they earned is proportional to the amount of
time it took to earn it. As such, the money would’ve been spent more
wisely by those who earned it rather than in the hands of those who
spent little time concocting “reasons” to steal it!
2) Regulation is the “power of no”, an option entrusted to politicians which
they abuse to gain power for themselves & the government they’re a part of
all at the expense of the populace at large.
Maybe they wouldn’t need to spend so much time convincing economists
to back Nut Zero if it made economic & political sense to do so!
Spending other people’s money, taken by force, on the things that you believe are important, is never a success.
Like most socialists, these guys are convinced that they can spend your money more wisely than you can, which is why they need to take it from you.
If they want to get economists to back renewables then the first step is to not call them ‘bean counters’ in some derogatory and condescending fashion.
That seems common with this mindset – they seem to think that insulting people and calling them derogatory names is how to win them over.
The best single sentence ever written about socialism appears in this article by David Horowitz: https://speakingaboutnews.com/progressive-crime-syndicate/
In the vast library of socialist books, there’s not a single volume on how to create wealth, only how to take and “redistribute” it.
You have to account for the quality of the jobs. At ends of a spectrum of jobs, we have wealth=creating and wealth-destroying jobs. Wealth creating is about making or discovering or producing new materails that society demands. Wealth destruction is epitomised by the examples here, like missions of people spending their boring, barren lives washing dirt from solar panels.
The advent of fossil fuels allowed more global wealth creation.
The start of wind and solar power has demonstrated that its short existence will be propped up by wealth destroyers, also known as regulatory bureaucrats.
Geoff S
Geoff — In the early 80’s I did some consulting work in Mexico City. The project I was working on could have installed new technology and scheduling software and cut the people requirements from 1000 to 300. Oh No, we can’t do that, the government would scream. They want to keep as many people employed as possible. SOCIALISM you know!
For the six months I worked, there was a two story brick building near to the hotel. There were two fellows with a pickup, wheelbarrow, an hammers and chisels dismantling the building. They were still at it when I left. When I asked about it I got the same response. We need to keep people employed. In the U.S. there would have been a big dump truck and a large backhoe and the site would have been cleared in two days. Again, socialism at work.
It appears to me that the NYS DOT took lessons from your Mexican friends
And some parts of the UK’s ‘Civil Service’, post the ludicrous WuFlu disruptions.
I hear today 18 unions have called for no increase in efficiency in Government, effectively, at a time when La Liz needs to cut UK Government expenditure by – IMHO – at least 25%.
Every pound they spend comes from tax, charges, or borrowing- paid by future generations in tax or charges.
Cutting g the range of Government activity should be high on their list!
Auto
A friend of Milton Freedman recalled “At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.””
Again, socialism at “work.”
That’s what gov. does employ as many people as possible on the taxpayer dime no matter how counter productive they are. While some Government is necessary a large percentage is useless crap.
“Aled Jones
Professor & Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University”
This stuff is one of an explosion of desperation climateering offerings raining down impotently upon us this end of days for the meme. Look at this fellows title! The ‘tell’ here is that realization is (belatedly) dawning on him that HIS job is heading for obsolescence.
Poor Aled Jones can’t be oblivious to the gathering megastorm of “Policy-Caused^тм” economic and social disaster for which Sri Lanka served as a feasibility study. He must see upward spiralling of costs of living, empty store shelves, shuttered major industries…
Real life and death “sustainability” problems for hundreds of millions is unfolding. Wifty-poofty fake university “Global 🦄 Sustainability Institutes won’t be any use.
The experience of California a few weeks ago during the heat wave shows that we’ve already hit peak renewable.
In the afternoon they had more solar than the grid could handle. Sun goes down and everyone’s AC stays on, all the sudden the have a power deficit and brownouts.
They shouldn’t add anymore renewables to the grid unless they have dispatchable storage to cache it at least 6 hours to provide energy though the evening peak.
California is suffering from record DEMAND, caused by record heatwaves and more of them.
Demand went 2GW over the previous record in this year’s heatwave.
More people installing and upgrading Aircon to cope with UHI would be my guess Griff, what’s yours or need I ask?
Increasing demand coupled with decreasing reliable supply
California also leads in EV’s. How many were plugged in when people arrived home?
Few if they followed the request of Not plugging in
California’s population is up 5% in the last decade. That would increase demand directly and also increase UHI.
Griff, how long is your record?
About 3″
Only when he’s fully excited !!
Yes, you don’t decommission natural gas plants and nuclear plants when the demand is still increasing. There would have been no problems if the supply was there. California is only suffering from bad leadership and planning.
Don’t forget CA just eliminated all gas furnaces, water heaters and other appliances in the near future. Converting all of those from efficient natural gas to less efficient electricity, will further increase electricity demand. People still need hot water and to be able to cook, even in a heat wave.
Demand went up, and power from renewables went down.
Had CA spent even a tiny fraction of the money spent on renewables, on power systems that work, there would have been no problems.
Record long heatwave for September (not counting heatwaves that began or ended in other months). Not record heat for all days in the heatwave. More importantly, a heatwave with a record number of poor working residents. Power demand is an instantaneous thing, demand from yesterday is not relevant. The issue is peak demand, not how many days in a row you have peak demand. The same heat in our recent lockdown summers would have been less demanding, as fewer employers were operating. And if we still had San Onofre and Rancho Seco, or we had the power plants shutdown because the nukes made them obsolete, there would have been no crisis. Without 3 or 4 more GW of baseload power, there was too much unreliable power in the mix. The sun went down and the supply went with it. Old solution, dump unreliable power and build reliable inexpensive power. Shiny New(some) approach, make people buy electric battery cars, and electric heating and cooking and refrigeration, and then have them not use any of it between sunset and midnight.(except already charged battery cars must be plugged in and drained as UPS batteries, hopefully being recharged before it’s time to go to work!)
Where is the evidence Griffy?
I agree, except for the “unless” part. They shouldn’t add any more, period. And they should end all subsidies and mandates and tax credits for those already on the grid.
These are the measured productivity levels for Weather-Dependent “Renewable” power generation over the last decade 2011 -2021 in Europe, the data is provided by EurObserER, a promotional organisation for “Renewable” Energy funded by the European Union.
EU+UK 2011-21 installed nameplate European “Renewables” ~384 Gigawatts:
Onshore Wind power 22.5%
Offshore Wind power 32.7%
Combined EU Wind power 23.5%
Solar PV 11.6%
Combined Weather-Dependent power: 18.7%
compared to
Conventional Generation 90.0%
The US EIA publishes comparative figures power generation both for capital and long-term costs. When those costs are merged with the measured productivities above and are compared to Gas-Firing for power generation, the comparisons can be seen for a unit of power actually supplied to the grid. However, these comparisons do not account for the problems arising from “Renewables” intermittency and unreliability. They do assume that European gas prices are four times higher than in the USA.
capital costs of power production accounting for productivity:
Onshore Wind ~7 times
Offshore Wind ~15 times
Solar PV on grid ~10 times
long-term costs of power production accounting for productivity
Onshore Wind ~4 times
Offshore Wind ~13 times
Solar PV on grid ~7 times
Would anyone sane buy a car costing 4 – 15 times the normal price that only works one day in five, when you never know which day that might be ? And then insist that its technology is the only way to power the whole economy.
These simple net cost calculations show that any claim that Wind and Solar power are now cost competitive with conventional fossil fuel generation are patently false.
They only represent the comparative costs of each unit of power supplied to the Grid. They do not account for the cost burdens on the Grid that arise from intermittency and unreliability of “Renewables”, nor for the need for continuous power back-up to replace the Weather-dependent power whenever the Weather fails.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/minor-greenhouse-gasses-co2-ch4-n2o/
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/3-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
For 2021, Germany had roughly 100% of their power consumption
of electricity in nameplate capacity for solar & total wind EACH
& yet they’re the nation facing the biggest energy crisis.
The capacity factors mirror your graph: solar 9%, wind 18%,
offshore wind 35%, & combined wind 20%.
Like everyone else, they have little storage capacity which only
compounds their problem. They have ~1.5 hrs of storage, with ~1/2
from stored hydro & ~1/2 from battery storage, with 85% of that
from hybrid & EV battery storage. Snowy days with cold, clear
nights are rare events in a German winter, right?
Lay in some wood.
85% of battery storage from peoples’ cars?!? This is not going to end well.
The UK has 26GW of installed wind both on and off shore and about 11GW of Solar total ~38GW. Between them this morning they are supplying 11.5% of 34.5GW demand. Worse than useless today. Tomorrow is forecast to be very windy so no doubt more wind generated electricity than the grid can handle.
Yes. We must rely on Modsrn Monetary Theory (MMT) so they say. The government jhust prints the money as necessary. And FREEE electricity. Obviously the workers looking ater the ruinables are all on the Government tit, otherwise it couldn’t be free. On anoher bliog today they were scraming NIMBYism about a new Solar array in NSW And the closure of Loy Lang A. The new solar farm in productive country, nameplate 280MW. Loy Lang A 2210MW.
‘Decarbonisation is too expensive’ – how to sell climate change action to bean counters
Myth 4: Renewables need reliable fossil fuel back-up for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
…
Er..erm… No, er…, that one’s true.
Can we leave that one out? Please? Please?
Er.. batteries! Yes, batteries.
Greentard ‘logic’.
The cost of battery storage to make solar & wind reliable is
several times the cost of their units. In the UK alone, I
found several stretches of windless/low generation days that
make wind very unreliable like solar in the winter:
2/8-12/2015; 1/16-25/2017; 2/27-3/7/2021; 3/21-29/2022;
The longer 9-day periods had ~1 better day of generation, but
that would’ve been used mostly for that day alone. There
would’ve been no/little extra power to recharge the batteries
for what was used during the lull before that day. So a good
plan should be for at least 8 days of storage, probably even
10 days, for lulls in a Nut Zero world where 24/7 solar won’t
be there to save them from their $#%$@ur momisugly#% stupidity.
https://www.cfact.org/2022/01/19/unreliability-makes-solar-power-impossibly-expensive/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/12/the-cost-of-net-zero-electrification-of-the-u-s-a-blog-post/
This one is funnier
1.) Subsidising low-carbon technology is an investment, not a cost
Investment is a cost. It’s just that it’s a cost that has the potential to either save or make money in the future.
There are good investments that actually fulfill the promises made. Then there are global warming “investments”, that only benefit those who run the scam.
Some investments lead to a negative benefit over time.
Might be funny if there weren’t so many that are dumb enough, deluded enough, or gullible enough to believe it – and vote for more of the insanity.
From an ABC article two years after Hazelwood power station closed:
This guy must be really thick if he thinks creating 12 million jobs in a sector we previously had no need for is somehow progress. On that reasoning, let’s remove tractors from farming and send the whole population back to the plough.
The Great Lie of socialism is ‘job creation’/
Any damn fool can create jobs. Its wealth creation that is much harder.
Dig hole, fill hole. Rinse and repeat.
Bingo! This time around Pol Pottyism will be different with all those uni perfessor types and stinkers in residence armed with hoes scythes pitchforks and barrows because they’ll be cheap from China’s Silk Road. Affirmative action is a must and no animals according to PETA. Definitely needs to be trialled from each according to their abilities and the fruits of their labours shared equally. The Great Leap Forward and sustainability at last!
And why not have them use teaspoons instead of ploughs?
That’s not such a bad idea if we could get all people scamming welfare to be those laborers. But they’d have to labor….
Prof Aled Jones needs to explain:
If a product is profitable without any subsidy, businesses would jump at the opportunity to be making money off it. Why is this not the case? The simple explanation may be that there is a much cheaper product that does a better job without any subsidy. Economics 101!
‘Building new wind turbines no longer relies on subsidies.’
You have not addressed my point: If no subsidy is needed for building, maintaining and replacing wind turbines and they are able to provide an uninterrupted supply of electricity, why are businesses not setting them up all over the world and bringing down the cost of electricity?
But all depends on how you call a “subsidy”.
There are many private investment companies who are now desperate to find woke/green business because they have made poor commitments to *not* funding any FF development.
As the “real” wind opportunities shink, many unrealistic projects get a leg-up from these desperate companies even though they are clearly going to be a waste of money and sure to fail.
So not unlike poor guverment “investments” – see TV program called “Utopia”.
These projects are really still a subsidy – only it’s sucker money.
Don’t kid yourself.
Is there any lie so risible that griff will not repeat it ad infinitum?
First off, the claim that there are no cash subsidies for the building of wind turbines is questionable at best. There are lots of ways such activities can be funded. Only a few of them are directly traceable to the activity.
Regardless, the biggest subsidy of all is the requirement that all output of such turbines must be purchased, whether it is needed or not, at a price way above it’s market value.
griff has been corrected on this point repeatedly, but continues to ignore reality.
Reference, please?
How about the cost of replacement electricity when they are not generating?
“Building” perhaps not…running profitably 24/7/365 absolutely and without question
Perchance you could explain this Griff?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59906223
So giving something a silly name means you have effectively dismissed the need to assess the cost of what you are doing and what you can expect to gain from it ?
Clearly that is the philosophy adopted by those giving public money to jackasses like this to maintain them in the luxury of unaccountable academic stupidity.
Cost benefit analysis is not bean counting. Bean counters only count cost.
In other words, instead of using beancounters to employ workers and capital in the most efficient manner possible, let’s use pretzel logic to justify an agenda we know is right but all empirical evidence says otherwise.
Anything that needs subsidy to gain market share is a dud.
I wouldn’t say that is always true. It is widely accepted that many technologies may be better than than the existing ones but are not taken up because investment, development and marketing costs are not justified by the foreseeable extra expected return. Something twice as good may not persuade customers to switch for similar reasons.
The thing is, the unreliables were often given governmental subsidies on the basis that they could overcome this starter cost and demonstrate their value.
And yes, they have demonstrated their value. It is far less than what already existed. Sensible people said so beforehand, but the governments ear was only for the green crazies and global-warming scientists. They fell for the argument that all that was needed was a kick start, then everything in the garden was rosy. I expect many politicians never understood they were merely birthing a bizarre kind of vampire/leech.
This green nonsense will only get worse…
“”Green New Deal Rising says Starmer’s green policies prove its proposals and pressure on MPs bore fruit
Labour would set up a publicly owned Great British Energy company focused on renewables; establish a £60bn scheme to insulate 19m homes; make billions of pounds of investment in sustainable industries; and embark on a world-leading plan to reach net zero in energy by 2030.””
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/28/youth-climate-activists-influenced-labours-policies-says-campaign-group
It isn’t just Starmer, it’s Parliament and it will get worse
Centrica has positioned itself to be that company.
Myth 1 should be de-carbon (dioxide ing) ie Net Zero Policy will achieve anything but poverty.
Renewables now compete with and even beat the cost of generating power from fossil fuels. Offshore wind, for example, produces electricity at about a quarter of the current price charged to consumers in the UK – a price set by the wholesale cost of gas. Building new wind turbines no longer relies on subsidies.
Absolutely true!
Except you have to have the backup generator available for when the wind doesn’t blow and so your actual cost goes to 125% of just having the backup power supply and not build the wind generator 🙂
Yep.
Yes!
And add the cost of transmission lines to renewables as well. Rarely are they near the end-user.
Here in the USA you also need to include in the costs of Renewables: government low-interest loans, realistic maintenence & replacement schedules, tax preferences & utility profits – things that the EIA.gov does not include in their LCOE calculation.
It’s the same here, B Zipperer. The quoted price of renewables almost always ignores the real cost.
Supporters also like to complain about fossil fuel subsidies despite the government being very protective of its revenues it gets at several points in the production chain. Oil kept the UK pound afloat in the 1980’s recession and paid for far more unemployment support than could otherwise have been afforded.
They may be currently competitive but that is only because of the artificially bloated price of FF from Green Policies and Russian influence due to EU dependence on Non Domestic Sources
You can’t build a wind turbine or make a solar panel without fossil fuels
Have you got the solution for that?
Griffine sometimes seems to believe in Unicorn Farts.
Perhaps that’s his ‘solution’ this time . . . .
Again, a solution to a non-problem, if FF & Nuclear were permitted by the Established Religion’s Patriarchs and Muftis.
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More dim information from another dimbo.
Contracts for electricity supply should be for a required amount of continuous supply to the grid, not for “we will supply you with electricity when and in what amounts that suits us”.
How much do you think these companies would have to charge when they had to build and maintain the generation capacity to be able to do this i.e. to provide electricity in the manner society actually needs?
A number of us told the politicians not to deregulate generation; we should continue with regulated, vertically-integrated monopoly utilities responsible for meeting customer demand reliably at a reasonable cost. There is no way to make generation cheaper through a competitive market; its still regulated as to technology and operations and the government still continued to meddle. Electric deregulation has proven to be a failure at all levels: Market manipulators, radical price swings, nobody responsible for reliability & etc.
But this (deregulation) was a success. The scammers made money, the utilities made money, the commissioners received munificent post-commission honorariums and employment and they all donated to the politicians (and employed their relatives, and gave to their foundations, and …). The only people who suffered were the hoi polloi. In Our Democracy (TM) they don’t count.
And the transmission apparatus.
Auto
What has driven up the price of Natural Gas so they ruinables have become more affordable?
(It isn’t from a reduced cost or Ruinables)
Putin policy driving UP the cost of gas to the EU
AND
EU energy policy driving down domestic supplies making them dependent on Russian supplies
EU Climate Policy also driving up the price of FF energy sources
Supply and Demand and Idiocy
Since prices for electricity have gone up by 2x and 3x times in just the last two years, as England has relied more and more on wind power, then wind is more expensive than what England used to rely on.
Using Natural Gas to generate electricity across the pond has become expensive due to a lack of availability domestically and a Reliance on hostile nations for supply.
In the U.S., gas is currently $6.83/mbtu while, thanks to Putin and EU policy, gas in Europe is over $35/mbtu.
More than 5 times the cost.
Fracking brought down the price of gas to just overt $2/mbtu in the U.S. and DRAMATICALLY increased supply.
If the EU loosened their grip on drilling AND allowed Fracking they too might be able to be self sufficient and have affordable energy prices, unreliant on Putin
Re subsidies.
Following quotes are from a press release by Siemens Gamesa entitled ‘Europe’s energy independence impossible unless wind power considered a strategic industry’ (26th Sept. 2022)
“The wind industry can contribute to providing Europe with security and independence…….but only if European governments act swiftly to guarantee it is treated as a strategic industry”
“Without intervention and cooperation among governments, manufacturers and suppliers the energy transition here in Europe will become unattainable and Europe will lose its position as a global leader in the wind industry.”
“The sectors ability to produce profitably is currently threatened by auctions solely driven by price, slow permitting and ultimately soaring prices prices for energy, commodities and transport……..As a result wind turbine manufacturers are operating at massive losses and cannot invest to satisfy growing demand for wind energy”
Translation: ‘Give us more subsidies’
Wind Europe 30th Aug 2022 ‘Why is the European Wind Industry Struggling?’
“Europes 5 wind turbine manufacturers are all operating at a loss”
Reasons given include “Government auctions all about price”, “Commodity prices”, “International competition.” – “Today nearly all European wind turbines are made in Europe.But Chinese manufacturers beat European Industry on price and are starting to win orders in Europe.”
“How can Governments Fix This?
3.Chanel EU Recovery and Resilience and REPowerEU funds to the European wind supply chain”
Translation: ‘Give us more subsidies’
“Europe will lose its position as a global leader in the wind industry.”
They say that like it’s a bad thing. LMFAO.
A wind turbine manufacturer whining for Fascism.
You can’t build an offshore wind turbine with its underwater cables, capital cost and 20 years of maintenance for anywhere close to a gas-fired generator in $/MW-hr produced…annualized…
First off you are ignoring all the subsidies.
Secondly you are ignoring the cost of back up power for those many times when your precious renewables are not producing enough (or any) power.
As usual, what you declare to be true is nothing but a lie.
The greens have worked tirelessly to make conventional energy unaffordable. So yes, with governments distorting the markets it appears that wind and solar are competitively priced. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Remove the government distortions to the energy markets and you will see what things really cost.
Wind generation gets the same price as gas generation. No savings to the consumer. And wind still gets the direct subsidies on top of that!
Griff, please learn something about the topic besides propaganda pieces before opining.
Griff,
you must have some reference for the respective prices that you quote, please let us know what they are?
Bear in mind of course that the wind operators get the same wholesale price as the essential gas generators
Giff–It looks like Germany will be relying pretty much 100% renewables this winter, That is if they don’t manage to de-mothball a few coal plants and a nuke or two. lets see how well the experiment forced on them works out come spring.
It is infortunate, but too common that academics discuss matters beyond their knowledge, but in general most will accept such papers because of the stature or positon of the writer.
The large error is to assume that because wind turbines produce electricity that they are equal to and can replace what I call real generators, i.e conventional ‘old fashioned’ power units. This is completely wrong for many reasons.
This misleads a lot of these university types. An old saying in engineering circles, in the U.K. at least, ‘those that can do, those that can’t teach’
those that can do, those that can’t preach
And those who can’t preach…. join Ofsted
Those that can, do.
Those that can’t, teach.
Those that can’t teach, teach at Anglia Ruskin University.
FIFY
Those that can’t do either become activists
It’s all very well to talk about “job creation” but in the UK at present there’s a lot of vacancies, in hospitality in particular, that employers are finding hard to fill due to labour shortages. So do we really need all these extra jobs that nut zero is alledgedly going to produce?
Nope, because “green energy” jobs destroy about 3x as many REAL jobs as they “create.” They degrade, not improve, an economy.
He says it himself:
Myth one: decarbonisation will make electricity expensive
Subsidising low-carbon technology is an investment, not a cost.
Why would you need to subsidise something unless it is expensive.
And what kind of gibberish is “an investment, not a cost”?
It’s the kind of gibberish that someone who is trying to hide the truth, comes up with.
It’s an Investment if it produces something USEFUL at comparatively low prices.
It’s a cost if it produces nothing when needed and still contains a charge/fee.
Since Solar produces nothing at night the subsidy is a COST
Since Wind produces nothing 65% of the time the subsidy is a COST
In both cases the Subsidy COST is virtually unnecessary
He probably studied economics at the same school as Occasional Cortex (who thinks you can just print money to pay for you pet schemes without penalty).
They seem to believe that printing more money just makes everyone richer.
If all the costs are added, on an A to Z basis, and land areas are factored in, wind and solar are at least 2 to 3 times more expensive than coal, oil, gas, nuclear (in China, Russia, etc.) and hydro.
The intermittency of wind and solar requires enormous battery storage (if most traditional plants were shutdown), which is very expensive, in case of wind/solar lulls lasting 5 to 7 days, which may be followed a few days later by another wind/solar lull.
We are not even talking about the storage for SEASONAL variations, which is a whole new ball game.
GRID-SCALE BATTERY SYSTEMS IN NEW ENGLAND TO COUNTERACT SHORTFALL OF ONE-DAY WIND/SOLAR LULL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/grid-scale-battery-systems-in-new-england
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
Renewables = rationing. Why should we accept rationing, when there are viable alternatives?
Because they know better and you have to suck that up
Plus they control the means of violence
Not in my neighborhood.
Eric, we must accept rationing because socialism allocates shortages while capitalism provides abundance.
On top of that, where will the materials come from to create those Battery Megapacks for Grid Scale back-up and still allow for the global replacement of the existing 2.2B ICE vehicles with Battery EVs?
…
Vastly Increased Mining !!!
A major increase in both Land and Ocean mining will be required for sufficient Lithium supplies to create all those First Generation EV Batteries and Utility Megapacks. (Not to mention replacements from use and fires caused by battery failure)
A minimum 50 fold increase in Copper mining will be required to both replace existing ICE vehicles and build for increasing demand. Everyone’s children WILL grow up, move out and need a car and Nut Zero will require eliminating through replacement of existing FF powered cars, Trucks, Busses, Trains, Airplanes and Cargo Ships.
“Replacing 3 million jobs with 12 million jobs to produce the same amount of electricity as before does not create wealth, it destroys wealth.”
This needs to be shouted loud and clear by candidates for office to counter the “green jobs” push.
Giving everyone a shovel, instead of having a few diesel backhoes to do the same jobs is called progress by the wind, solar, battery folks, who never analyzed, or designed/built, or managed a power plant.
Blowing their horn, repeating talking points, is all they know.
At least operating a shovel doesn’t require individual thought. Something the Greens frown on.
Professor & Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University
Yet another source of Grade A bollocks akin to the University of East Anglia.
Home of…. creative writing
“The meteoric rise of entirely new sectors over the last decade,…”
Someone should point out to Professor Jones that of their nature go down, not up.
(BTW, I love Aled Jones’ programme on Classic FM (UK)).
Damn. Should be …meteors of…
The donkey told the tiger, “The grass is blue.”
The tiger replied, “No, the grass is green .”
The discussion became heated, and the two decided to submit the issue to arbitration, so they approached the lion.
As they approached the lion on his throne, the donkey started screaming: ′′Your Highness, isn’t it true that the grass is blue?”
The lion replied: “If you believe it is true, the grass is blue.”
The donkey rushed forward and continued: ′′The tiger disagrees with me, contradicts me and annoys me. Please punish him.”
The king then declared: ′′The tiger will be punished with 3 days of silence.”
The donkey jumped with joy and went on his way, content and repeating ′′The grass is blue, the grass is blue…”
The tiger asked the lion, “Your Majesty, why have you punished me, after all, the grass is green?”
The lion replied, ′′You’ve known and seen the grass is green.”
The tiger asked, ′′So why do you punish me?”
The lion replied, “That has nothing to do with the question of whether the grass is blue or green. The punishment is because it is degrading for a brave, intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with an ass, and on top of that, you came and bothered me with that question just to validate something you already knew was true!”
The biggest waste of time is arguing with the fool and fanatic who doesn’t care about truth or reality, but only the victory of his beliefs and illusions. Never waste time on discussions that make no sense. There are people who, for all the evidence presented to them, do not have the ability to understand. Others who are blinded by ego, hatred and resentment, and the only thing that they want is to be right even if they aren’t.
When IGNORANCE SCREAMS, intelligence moves on.
CO2 is green-
Trees bulking up and growing faster on excess carbon dioxide in atmosphere, study suggests (yahoo.com)
Excess?! There is no “ecxess.” A bit less of a CO2 scarcity, perhaps.
Please don’t feed the Climate Fascist lies…
Completely wrong. That strategy amounts to surrender.
The problem is that ignorance isn’t just screaming, it’s controlling.
” How to Convince Economists to Back Climate Action ”
Many of them (most of them?) are professors in universities. They need taxpayers money to “do” their “research”. The most convincing way would be to defund them.