A recurring theme here at Manhattan Contrarian is that the “smart” people who seek to run the world are not really very smart. They may have gotten high scores on the SATs, and they may have attended fancy universities, but when it comes to practical knowledge of how the world works, they are often complete idiots.
A special case of this phenomenon is that the highest gurus of high finance — the people who are most trusted to have mastered basic numeracy, and who get to pass out trillions of dollars of public funds — are completely innumerate.
I come to this issue today as a result of the recently-completed briefing in CHECC v. EPA, the DC Circuit case challenging EPA’s “finding” that atmospheric CO2 is a “danger to human health and welfare.” The group challenging the Endangerment Finding, the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, asserts standing on the ground that increasing the amount of solar and wind “renewable” generation on the grid necessarily drives up consumer electricity bills. The reasons why this is so have been discussed many times on this blog. Perhaps the most detailed discussion appears in the Articles section, titled “The Disastrous Economics Of Trying To Power an Electrical Grid With 100% Intermittent Renewables.” This subject does require some thought to understand, but certainly no advanced math. The main point is that intermittent renewables cannot power a grid on their own, and as their grid penetration increases, large amounts of some combination of backup, storage, and overbuilding are required, all of which add to the cost of the system. All of this is easily demonstrated with basic arithmetic. Anyone who successfully finished the sixth grade should grasp it immediately.
As obvious as the conclusion of increasing electricity prices may be, our government, represented by EPA and the Justice Department, either claims, or pretends, not to recognize that conclusion. Could seemingly smart people really be so dense?
Well, consider the case of the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. These are the people at the top of the knowledge pyramid of international finance. They get hundreds of billions of dollars of funding from governments in developed countries, and are given the authority to hand out those funds, let alone to educate and instruct governments in developing countries how to run their economies and their monetary policies correctly. This monetary policy stuff is all arithmetic, some of it fairly complicated. Surely, if anyone in the world can do basic arithmetic, these are the people.
So consider the piece from the IMF’s online journal Finance & Development by Bob Keefe, from December 2022, titled “The Price of Energy Insecurity.” According to this guy, wind and solar are the obvious route to inexpensive electricity:
[T]hanks to previous policies and the advance of technology, solar and wind are the cheapest sources of power available in most parts of the world. Electric vehicles are cheaper to operate, especially when gas prices soar. Energy-efficient products—LED lighting, high-efficiency heat pumps and hot water heaters, and better windows and insulation—can save consumers and businesses money with every monthly power bill. And making clean energy at home, from fuel that’s free for the taking, makes a nation more secure.
And it’s not just Keefe and the IMF who have gotten the message. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is fully on board:
“Ending our dependency on Russian fossil fuels is only the first step,” [von der Leyen] said at the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia. “The skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing, for different reasons, the limitations of our current electricity market design. It was developed under completely different circumstances and for completely different purposes. It is no longer fit for purpose.”
And don’t forget about the World Bank, the IMF’s partners in global high finance. From the World Bank’s “Energy” page, September 26, 2022:
Renewables Are the Key to Green, Secure, Affordable Energy. Renewable energy can help countries mitigate climate change, build resilience to volatile prices, and lower energy costs—this is especially critical now as spiking fossil fuel costs are debilitating poor energy importing countries. Solar and wind technologies can become a game changer for many developing countries as solar and wind are abundant, cost-competitive, and a source of reliable power when combined with battery storage.
Or, from the UN’s International Renewable Energy Agency, July 13, 2022:
“Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2021,” published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) today, shows that almost two-thirds or 163 gigawatts (GW) of newly installed renewable power in 2021 had lower costs than the world’s cheapest coal-fired option in the G20. IRENA estimates that, given the current high fossil fuel prices, the renewable power added in 2021 saves around USD 55 billion from global energy generation costs in 2022.
So what is happening in the real world? A guy named Mike Jonas at Watts Up With That yesterday has compiled the latest data that he could find on the relationship between wind and solar penetration in primary energy consumption in a country versus consumer electricity prices. The wind/solar generation percent data come from 2021; the consumer electricity prices are from June 2022. Here is the chart:
Commenters at WUWT point out, correctly, that this chart hides many complications, particularly the extent to which each country either lowers consumer electricity costs with massive subsidies, or raises them by embedding taxes. Nevertheless, the strong correlation between increasing wind/solar penetration and increasing consumer prices is clear.
To me one of the most striking things about the chart is the low level of penetration of wind- and solar-based electricity in primary energy consumption in every country, even after decades of massive subsidies and extreme political pressure to “save the planet” by means of an energy transition. The only country that has gotten materially past 15% wind/solar energy production is Denmark at about 24%; and that is at a cost of consumer electricity prices well over 50 cents/kWh — about 5 times the U.S. average price. (Commenters point out that Denmark has unusually high amounts of taxes embedded in electricity prices, but it would still be an outlier without them.). Germany and the UK, after many years of vast subsidies and an extraordinary push toward green energy have only achieved 10% and 12% respectively of primary energy from wind and solar, with electricity prices over 4 times the average U.S. level. Greece seems to be some kind of a best case for wind and solar, with close to 15% penetration and electricity prices less than double the U.S. average; but check out this Reuters piece about Greece’s vast subsidies to lower prices to consumers.
I won’t claim that the final real world results are yet in. But if wind and solar could actually provide reliable electricity for lower cost than the fossil fuel alternative, this chart would show correlation with a directly opposite slope. Let’s see some country achieve 50%, or for that matter 85% of primary energy from wind and solar (as many countries are supposedly promising by 2050), and let’s see what the costs are.
” Let’s see some country achieve 50%, or for that matter 85% of primary energy from wind and solar”
There seems to be some rank innumeracy here. Primary energy means energy generated of all kinds. Coal for boilers, gasoline for vehicles etc.
Electricity generated is only maybe a quarter of primary energy. The numbers in the graph are fraction of primary energy, not of electricity generation.
It is more that any grid with more than 15% unreliables, like wind and solar,is fragile.Spending most of a week with intermittent power, and no water supply, was rather unpleasant in Texas Feb 2021.
They are stupid or they are liars.
‘But if wind and solar could actually provide reliable electricity for lower cost than the fossil fuel alternative,
this chart would show correlation with a directly opposite slopethere would be absolutely no reason to either subsidize or mandate their use.’Last week a local politician held a town hall meeting for the public to hear from our local utility about the future of our utilities. I thought the push towards 100% renewables would be a main topic of discussion. It never even came up during the time allotted for the public to ask questions. The meeting ended before I was even able to ask during the open Q&A. I was able to put the question directly to the utility representatives before the meeting and all I got was some happy talk about batteries. They are essentially required by law to put out plans which show us going to 100% renewables, but the plans are hopelessly vague on how it actually gets done and what it will cost. They have just a little over ten years before they are supposed to be at 100% and they are talking about modular nukes, pumped hydro, and flow batteries, none of which will get here in time to help them (us). I think some of them know but are not really allowed to speak the truth to the public. It’s bizarre. One thing prominently on display in the plan is DSM.
<$80 bbl crude and $2.17mcf natural gas and we have an unaffordable energy crisis that can only be solved with wind, solar, and battery storage? Battery storage for a few days of cloudy and calm weather costs 10x more than than the panels and turbines. Hello?
They are wealthy globalists with zero intention of helping peons like us. As long as their investments are reaping millions they could care less about ordinary people having reasonable energy costs.
Meanwhile, tomorrow in Boulder, a new low temperature record for the date, last set in 1899, will be beaten. Will it be by 2 degrees or more?
Speaking of rank innumeracy; The IMF does not “hand out” funds, it loans the money to “client states” at usurious interest, designed to usurp said client state’s natural resources and absorb what army they have into the UN as corporate henchmen, occupying said forfeited resources.
In 2020 25% of electricity consumed in Denmark was imported, 33% of total market value.
“Large volumes of import and export are consequences of the large share of wind energy and the missing flexibility in the Danish power system”.
http://www.pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/references/pfb_danish_electricity_balance_2020_2021_04_27.pdf
These people are not incinerate. They are indeed very smart.
The mistake this writer makes is thinking that smartness means that they will deliver things that are good for the population at large. It does not. It means that they will deliver things that are good for THEMSELVES…..
A bit OT but lots to do with Energy and Insanity: From the Land of The Moonbat, (and Prince of Chuckles as was) here’s how to reduce emissions, electricity consumption and everything.
Why didn’t anyone else think of it.
Headline:Welsh government cancels all major road building projects over fears of more cars and emissions
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/welsh-government-cancels-all-major-road-building-projects/
I wonder if anyone has attempted to cost electricity prices based on the primacy of wind and solar generation, now and in the future for all energy demands less a proportion of nuclear baseline, on the basis that those two become totally responsible for funding and delivering standby/backup systems for when their outputs fail to provide a designated safety margin of generation over a worst-case demand (including for a hypothetical period of global cooling).
Take the UK as a for instance.
The plan, supported by Conservatives, Labour, Greens, Liberals, SNP and Plaid Cymru, is to take the UK to Net Zero by way of taking all its energy use to electricity.
So, as of 2025 gas boilers in new build homes will be banned. At the same time the replacement of oil boilers in existing homes will be banned. The idea is to move these uses to heat pumps.
As of 2030 the sale of new ICE cars will be banned. New hybrids will still be allowed to be sold until 2035, after which all new cars sold must be EVs.
Also in 2035 the sale of replacement gas boilers is to be banned subject to some conditions about comparative costs.
I don’t know what the plans are for industrial uses of energy or for trucks, if there are any, but the logic of the plan is all those move to electricity also.
This is a plan to move the power use of the country away from its present mix of gas, gasoline and mainly conventionally generated electricity to a future in which all energy use will be electricity, and all electricity will be generated from wind and solar.
The question for Nick and other enthusiasts is: show us a case where some country or region has done just the first part of this. The first part is moving all electricity generation to wind and solar. Show a case where some country or region has done it.
Nick will say that the UK is well on its way, and that the case proves his point, because the recent dead calms were met by imports, so this shows it can be done. Denmark too, he will say, makes up its dead periods with imports. So it shows it can be done. And he claims, like the UN, that the great thing is, fuel during the day and high winds is free.
One refutation of this argument is price. When the UK went through its recent wind drought (in the middle of the annual winter solar drought), it had to import to avoid blackouts. Look up what the price of spot imports rose to during that episode. Astronomical.
The second refutation is that what the activists want is to have everyone on Net Zero and converted to wind and solar. And if this were to happen there would be no power to buy at any price on a calm winter evening. There would be no imports.
But now we go on a step. There is no country that has converted its electricity supply to Net Zero at current levels of demand. Convert to heat pumps and EVs and most estimates are that this will double or triple electricity demand.
Show the case that this can be done at the same time as converting power generation to wind and solar.
The comparison of electricity generation by wind and solar to total energy consumption is perfectly legitimate, more, its vital to do. The reason is that the political establishment really is bent on converting all energy consumption to electricity at the same time as converting the generation to wind and solar.
This is totally irrational. But measures such as the proportion of power generation that is wind and solar do not catch the true scale of the craziness.
Good article. My favorite line: “Could seemingly smart people really be so dense?”
Yes. At least some are. The remainder think WE are the dense ones who will buy the “cheaper” sales pitch. No, we will check the math.
I think you need to understand Ursula Vonda Liar’s mumblings in the light of a predecessor – Jean Claud Juncker’s – rare moment of Candour…
“When things get difficult, you just have to lie”
I am still amazed that people still expect a politician or a party or a political class to be actually looking out for them, or the planet. Noblesse oblige died with the landed gentry as the source of wealth – gentry, whose peasants made them rich and powerful, through their labour.
That social contract no longer exists.
Today’s crop of jumped up middle managers with no class whatsoever, have zero idea of what one might call the bigger picture, The only function of the plebs is to vote them into power, and public politics is simply the manipulation of various narratives – climate change being one – so as to get voted into power and justify use of it for personal ends.
All political elites in the world are the same. The one who has revealed his face, because he is dying and no longer cares, and doesn’t depend on a democracy to keep him in power, is Vladimir Putin.
The EU models itself on the Russian federation. It would dearly love to emulate Russia in respect of Ukraine, with a ‘special military exercise’ in the United Kingdom, but it lacks the power. But it, too, genuinely believes that the UK really wants to be part of its undemocratic empire, and the people were ‘misled’ by ‘right wing populists’ in breaking away.
So it isn’t a question of innumeracy. The greasy cabal of bureacrats and pressure groups behind the scenes have decided on a policy to rape the plebs, and the job of the Vonda Liars is to sell it to the plebs. Propagandists cherry pick extremely economical truths,or barefaced lies and hand it to paid propagandists like our own Nick Stokes, and the public at large is simply unwilling to admit that it’s been fooled and is being fooled and has always been fooled since forever, into the strange notion that anyone who has fought their way up the bloody steps of political power actually has any interest left in truth, or the people, or in fact anything else. Or is not compromised by bribery or blackmail.
I reiterate Roger Scruton. It isn’t logic driving this narrative, it is power, greed and money.
And pointing out logical flaws is simply of no interest to anyone involved in it.
I mean who is the target audience? Nick Stokes? he drank the Koolaid and is either being rewarded handsomely or is a complete fool. It doesnt matter which.
By definition, people here already know its scientific bunk. And if they can lie about climate change they can sure lie about renewable energy.
The real issue is how to exploit what political and media tools exist to convert the peole who don’t read WUWT, and dethrone the existing elites and replace them with anything that is better.
But who will bell the cat?
I sometimes suspect that it’s no so much “completely innumerate”, but the uncontrollable urge of ‘creative numeracy’. They are so convinced of the solution, they’ll twist and massage the numbers until they fit the desired goal, however inconceivable or impossible the result is.
From the article: “Could seemingly smart people really be so dense?”
Yes, they can be. We have seen it on countless occasions.
The real question to ask is “Why does this happen?”
Take Human-caused Climate Change for an example. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that alarmist climate science is not based on established facts but rather on speculation. Yet some really smart people are convinced it is real based on nothing more than this speculation.
Why does it happen?: I think human psychology has a lot to do with it. Even smart people can fool themselves into believing things that are not true, if they want those things to be true.
Why would they want those things to be true, that are not true? Various reasons.
While the chart is accurate, the message is not quite so clear.
Texas, for example, has the largest percentage of wind and solar electricity among the US states – and Texas also has the 15th cheapest electricity among the 50 US States: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
I would note, however, that Texas’ low electricity price is far more a function of cheap natural gas from fracking than it is from wind and solar. The majority of Texas’ electricity comes from natural gas, and these natural gas plants – both peaker and primary – also provides enormous dispatchable resources to offset the intermittency of wind and solar.
In contrast, California has the 4th most wind+solar but the 2nd most expensive price (49th of 50 cheapest), with only oil burning Hawaii being worse.
The other 2 states between California and Texas in volume of wind and solar: Florida (33 of 50 cheapest/18th most expensive) and Pennsylvania (25 of 50 cheapest/26th most expensive). Pennsylvania also has fracking of natural gas…
It is very hard to make a person understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Any body else think it is ironic that the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, which produced over 2,600,500 barrels of oil a day Jan – Dec 2022? 🙂
The article says “Commenters point out that Denmark has unusually high amounts of taxes embedded in electricity prices, but it would still be an outlier without them.“. However, if the Danish government is simply trying to recoup its own capital expenditure on wind then it would be fair to leave the taxes in the equation.
Incidentally, I think that Germany is still subsidising industry at the expense of households, so the household electricity price is higher than the overall price. It really is difficult to get precisely comparable data on everything.
A recurring theme here at Manhattan Contrarian is that the “smart” people who seek to run the world are not really very smart. They may have gotten high scores on the SATs, and they may have attended fancy universities, but when it comes to practical knowledge of how the world works, they are often complete idiots.
New Republican President MUST NOT nominate any Ivy League graduate for any federal position including judicial, especially judicial, unless their conservative bonfides are unimpeachable.
Take a look at this PowerPoint presentation concerning the current five-year power resource and reliability plan for the US Northwest:
Recap of the Northwest Power & Conservation Council’s 2021 Power Plan
Here are some of my thoughts and opinions concerning the Council’s latest five-year plan:
The Future Market Price of Electricity in the US Northwest
One of the key assumptions underpinning the Council’s five year power plan is that the market price of electricity will fall, not rise, as wind and solar gain an ever-larger share of the region’s power supply, part of which now comes from coal-fired generation located outside the planning region of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.
The assumption the Council makes that market prices for electricity will fall in the US Northwest is based on a wind and solar cost projection the Western Electricity Coordination Council (WECC) has made for the entire Western Interconnect as a whole; i.e., that the market price of electricity generated in and for the Western Interconnect will fall between now and 2045.
WECC is the agency based in California which FERC charters to coordinate and manage planning for the reliability of the Western Interconnect. As it applies to the responsibilities delegated by FERC to the WECC, the Northwest Power Planning and Conservation Council falls under WECC’s jurisdiction.
I don’t believe WECC’s predictions for the future cost of electricity inside the Western Interconnect, and no else should either.
However, the NP&CC’s staff cannot, and will not, make any basic assumptions in its power planning activities for the US Northwest which are not in close alignment with the assumptions WECC makes for the Western Interconnect as a whole.
The Adequacy and Reliability of the Future Supply of Electricity in the US Northwest
The Power Council’s current five-year plan is geared towards supporting the long-term decarbonization of the power grid now serving the US Northwest. The plan states that for the long term future, the supply of electricity in the US Northwest will remain adequate as long as these two main criteria are in force:
— New sources of generation are being added more or less continuously, most all of this new capacity identified as wind & solar. Projects involving new-build gas-fired generation will not be undertaken. Nuclear will play a small role, but only a small role.
— An integrated program of energy efficiency measures and demand management measures is being implemented in order to keep load and supply in balance. E.g., hHeat pumps for residential and institutional heating, a variety of energy efficiency measures for industrial processes, and the use of smart metering for controlling demand in real time.
Intermittency battery storage doesn’t play nearly a large a role as one might expect in the plan, probably because the region has a wealth of hydropower generation resources to draw upon.
As is documented in their monthly Regional Technical Forums, members of several stakeholder organizations including the power utilities are in deep discussions as to which energy efficiency measures and which demand management measures can be used to to keep load and supply in balance.
With the near certain situation that the region’s coal-fired capacity will be retired early, and without adequate replacement, I do not see how it is possible to procure and install the wind & solar capacity the plan calls for, or at the pace the plan calls for.
The upshot is that the US Northwest’s future supply of electricity will fall short of demand with the consequence that energy efficiency measures and demand management measures will come to dominate the region’s decarbonization planning.
The ever-increasing cost of electricity in the region will become the primary incentive for business, industrial, institutional, and residential electricity consumers to adopt the energy efficiency measures and the demand management measures needed to keep load and supply in balance.
When I was young, two claims bothered me the most:
running society on wind and solar;men have a lot more (roughly double) sex partners than female;Both being sooooooooo clearly bonkers for me (as a teen), it frightened me a bit, leaving me wondering how normally integrated adults, even people presenting the news on TV, could utter such absolute crap.
The wind and solar seemed like a joke, and the sex thing… martians?
EDIT:
Another insane one, but more recent:
At Roissy CDG, there is about one take off per minute. Say one every two minute for each “terminal”.
Yet we are told it’s justify to wait for hours for “security”. Wait in line. Wait for WHAT? What the hell are they doing?
And people aren’t screaming about the wait times. They are getting people impeached over wait time in airports. I don’t get it.