Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, our beloved US Gummint, in the form of the Energy Information Administration, just released the latest data on the horrendously large taxpayer subsidies for unreliable, intermittent renewable energy. So I thought I should boil all the numbers down to make sense out of them. Here’s the result.
Note that the subsidy for solar is about 50% higher than the electricity purchase price paid by most US utilities … so the solar scammers make money no matter what.
That’s it. That’s the whole post, right there.
Stay well out there, dear friends, the world is rapidly becoming neither saner nor safer,
w.
[UPDATE]:
Someone in the comments questioned the units of $/megawatt-hour.
The US energy production data are from Table A1 in the linked publication. There, they are given in trillion BTU, a curious unit. Fortunately, the wonderful site UnitJuggler has an Energy converter to tell me that:
You are currently converting energy units from million btu to megawatt hour
1 MMBtu = 0.29329722222222 MWh
I used that to make the conversion.
The fruit of the satanic relationship between academia, government and rent-seeking business. And this example doesn’t even include carbon sequestration. It gets worse.
Here in Wokeachusetts, the forestry haters have devised “proforestation”- which means, end all tree cutting- end logging- so the forests will sequester more carbon. This is a plan to be implemented even after net zero nirvana is arrived at, since their goal is not just be happy at net zero, but to move into the net negative zone- lower the “carbon pollution” in the air- bring back to where it was a few centuries ago. They really think this!
Thinking demands the presence of a brain, that’s what I question.
Perhaps the Goobermint should look into subsidising CCS at all Gas and Coal generation facilities and retain reliable energy
Maybe the government should step back and let reliable energy look after itself.
That’s not part of the fascist plan. Fascism is a political philosophy, movement, or government that exalts nation above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a leader who issues dictates (executive orders), severe economic and social regimentation and regulation, while suppressing any opposition to that plan.
G’Day Doonman.
“…regimentation and regulation…”
Ever tried to herd cats? They’re very independent, as are a lot of “deplorables” in flyover country.
(“Dog-faced pony soldier”? Nah, I’ll stay a “deplorable” thank you.)
A fully integrated oil industry in which every drop from a barrel of crude is used cannot be replaced by a ****ing windmill
The world needs more CO2 not less.
This has already been tried several times, and all projects were eventually abandoned several years ago due to excessive costs.
Carbon (dioxide) Capture and Sequestration (CCS) consists of relatively cheap capture (using solvents that absorb CO2) and very expensive sequestration.
Carbon dioxide cannot be liquefied above its critical temperature of 81 F, and underground storage or sequestration sites frequently exceed this temperature. If liquid CO2 is injected into the ground at a lower temperature and is then warmed up, it can expand explosively, essentially causing a man-made earthquake.
In order to safely store CO2 underground, it must be compressed to at least 1200 psig, but flue gas from a coal-fired or gas-fired power plant (which contains CO2) is normally at low pressure, slightly above atmospheric pressure.
Compression of CO2 over a pressure ratio of about 80 to 1 requires a tremendous amount of compression power. For a coal-fired power plant equipped with CCS, the compressors would consume about 30% of the power generated, with this ratio about 20% for natural-gas fired turbines.
This means that, just in order to avoid emission of harmless CO2 into the air, more fossil fuel must be burned to produce the same amount of power, which would deplete these resources faster than without CCS.
Forests can remove CO2 from the atmosphere naturally, generating oxygen to breathe and providing a habitat for wildlife, and their wood can be used for construction. This is much better than consuming precious energy to bury CO2 underground, where it cannot be converted back into oxygen.
More wildfires will result and that will release the CO2 anyway. Less CO2 means less agricultural production since CO2 is what plants breathe in and use to make sugar.
Riesling vine is happy about CO2 😀
The fertilizing effect of CO2 on plants is well known, as we have already reported several times. However, an increased content of CO2 also has an effect on the quality of wine, as the Tagesschau reports. Scientists studied the effect of increased CO2 concentration on wine varieties.
“What exactly this does to Riesling is being researched by Susanne Tittmann and Yvette Wohlfahrt. Both work at the Institute for General and Organic Viticulture at Geisenheim University. Their research is concerned with what it will be like if things continue as they have been recently. In short, with the future of Riesling. “When we have such high temperatures, it can be difficult,” Tittmann states. But her experiment also reveals something surprising.
The so-called FACE experiment simulates the future atmosphere around some Riesling vines. Using an apparatus, more CO2 is added here to simulate the calculated carbon dioxide concentration of the year 2050. The researchers then test how the vines react to this, how cultivation, physiology, pest infestation and product quality turn out. First conclusion: “Most plants are happy when they get more CO2, because that’s the basic building block for photosynthesis. And if I can do a lot of photosynthesis as a plant, then I can grow a lot,” says Susanne Tittmann. The scientists are explicitly focusing on land management in a changing climate.”
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
German source
Since the world isn’t warming catastrophically there is no need to curtail CO2. I don’t trust any studies anyway until I know more about the authors and see if the experiment is repeatable.
Yes and oxygen which is very useful to some people.
“…“proforestation”- which means, end all tree cutting…”
______________________________________________
Including that tree that’s about to fall on your house during the next storm?
I suppose you’ll have to get a permit and pay a fee to cover the costs of salaries for the bureaucrats who staff the “Proforestration” department.
So the idea is that the forests act as a carbon sink whilst they live and grow, transpiring and respiring away? Which would depend on them not respiring more than transpiring, requiring Massachusetts to have more daylight hours than twilight/darness. And then you’ve got the problem of them relwasing said CO2 after the trees die. The way I see it, they don’t understand, they don’t think and they certainly have no idea of preparing for the future – life must be a continuous series of surprises to these people!
As you note, plants do emit CO2 during hours of darkness. And O2 during daylight.
But you can’t assume that the duration of each controls the volume. What if the rate of emissions are not the same?
Since the solid content of trees is basically large blocks of carbon, (in various chemical combinations), it could be clearly shown that regardless of the daylight/nighttime rations, the nett effect is carbon capture.
The big question remains, unless you remove the trees to allow more to grow, there comes a point where the forest is effectively full and no more CO2 is going to be removed.
So bring back logging and make some future antique furniture.
I was thinking of wood arranged as an ice-preserving arctic mesh.Like storing captured carbon in the freezer.
A mature forest is carbon neutral. In a thousand years time it will have exactly the same amount of tree.
Even old trees grow every year, allowing Mann to use the growth ring to calculate the average temp within .2 degrees, so must sequester CO2.
/s
Then they better clean up all the leaves and branches and other debris under all these trees otherwise they will rot and emit CO2🤷♂️🙄
They clearly have no idea how much CO2 is produced by dead trees:
https://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2023/january-2023-news/climate-key-to-determining-dead-plant-decomposition-and-predicting-carbon-emissions-/#:~:text=Decaying%20dead%20plants%20and%20leaves,of%20carbon%20in%20the%20atmosphere.
The irony of “proforetation” is that as trees get larger they grow more slowly and sequester less carbon. Harvesting at a sweet spot for lumber (which remains sequestered) and replanting actually optimized the CO2 removed from the atmosphere. (Not that there is any need to remove CO2).
Nobody would ever accuse them of knowing what they are talking about. Abandoned forests are bad for wildlife diversity but then we know that they don’t actually care about the environment.
In days gone by, people like that were taken out of circulation to benefit society.
tears before bedtime I think
The article doesn’t say what the so called subsidies for fossil fuel power, but I suspect the biggest are various programs to help “low income” families pay their electric bills.
Thanks for the summary of the subsidy information. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the total cost to the consumer of energy, (and then some projections for the future).
For example, I believe that I am paying somewhere around $0.32 per kwHr in Northern California, and a substantial amount of this due to the investment in Green Energy (Solar, Wind and battery backup). I installed Solar in my home 3 years ago, so I do not pay that amount.
I keep seeing news reports that Solar and Wind are cheaper, but having the subsidies and also the need for backup power seem to me that Solar and Wind are not cheaper.
If you could show the “real” levelized cost of power, I would appreciate your efforts to educate, not indoctrinate.
Wouldn’t that be a task for the government?
See older guest post ‘True Cost of Wind’ over at Judith’s. We carefully reworked EIA CCGT and onshore wind (intentionally secluding subsidies). The ‘true’ LCOE for CCGT was about $58/MWh. The LCOE for onshore wind (using ERCOT penetration and transmission) was $146/MWh. Just about 2.5x.
Rud’s post is True costs of wind electricity, and is well worth reading.
w.
Will,
Much good information, but very much out of date, because of high inflation and high interest rates; those rates will not be decreasing for some time, may be years
The offshore wind mirage is hopeless mired in high costs, delays, high inflation and high interest rates.
Nothing can be predicted regarding dates of completion and $/installed kW, and c/kWh
Under those circumstances, contractors usually bid “time and materials”, instead of “fixed price”, to avoid losses
Regarding your graph, Solar getting $68/MWh, is grossly understated, because, solar needs a suitable fleet of counteracting/balancing power plants to deal with variable output of solar, especially on variable, cloudy days, or expensive battery storage systems
Based on 2023 Tesla battery systems pricing, it takes 51.9 c/kWh passing through a battery system to absorb the very expensive, highly subsidized, midday solar bulge (about 20c/kWh, w/o subsidies), and deliver 81% of it during the peak hours of late afternoon/early evening when wholesale rates are much lower, about 8 c/kWh
Re “the “real” levelized cost of power,”
Seeing as any workable renewable energy system has to have a baack-up system of around the same size and the only viable such source is fossil fuel shouldn’t the calculation go like this –
(Real LCOE Renewable) = (LCOE Renewable) + (LCOE Fossil Fuel) ?
Fixed vs variable cost – equation leaves no room for variable.
You have to understand how the ‘levelized’ cost is calculated. It usually leaves out half the costs.
You first take all the annual cash flows associated with a project – capital, current, fuel, maintenance – by year. Discount them using the NPV formula at an appropriate interest rate. This gives you the NPV of the costs. You then take the total amount of electricity that the project will generate over its life, divide, and this gives you a cost per MWh. If you do this for solar and wind you can often find that they come out cheaper than a gas or coal.
Does this really show they are cheaper? In principle, this is fine, and if you include all the costs the result will be legitimate. As Rud does, in the excellent post on Climate Etc that’s linked to lower down. The problem is that advocates of wind and solar never do include all the costs. This is facilitated by the method, and it comes in two parts.
The first part is people usually leave out the different costs of deployment. With wind, for instance, you need extra transmission to get the generated current to some useful point. Scottish wind may be generated very cheaply, but if it cannot be moved to the south of England its useless, so any given project has to have, to be properly assessed, some provision for the costs of doing that. This is pretty straightforward and one of the first things people learn doing business cases – get all the costs! Many promising careers have been wrecked by leaving out costs, and then having to report to a Board on one’s failure to implement to plan.
The second part is, the method assumes that what counts is power generated. It makes no distinction between (in the UK case for instance) 20GW generated at 3am in July rather than the same power generated at 7pm in January. Both are valued in the same way, they are just a unit of power used for the division. it assumes that when wind falls to 0.5GW in that same January, this incurs no extra costs. This amounts to the assumption that intermittency is not a factor. Or another way to look at it is that its leaving out the costs of deploying wind: the costs of matching electricity supply to demand. Which you might think is a rather basic requirement of any electricity generation business case!
This fallacy is normally regularly committed on this site by Nick Stokes, who echoes a common activist assertion that wind is cheaper than coal or gas because of fuel costs – the ‘wind is free’ argument. The savings on fuel are supposed to more than pay for the costs of installing and running the wind and solar.
To show this, you would have to do an NPV analysis of all the costs. In the case of wind and solar this would include not only the transmission, but also the costs of building and fuelling a duplicate gas capacity. It has to be gas, because nothing else (at least, in most places in the West) can match the speed of fluctuations of wind. Norway and New Zealand are exceptions because of hydro. And gas burned in this stop-start mode is far less efficient than in steady state use, so the fuel savings will be smaller than you might expect.
I have never seen anywhere any correctly done NPV analysis of this sort, and assume that is because it cannot be done. Which Rud’s post on Climate Etc bears out. Here, Nick has never even given an estimate for the amount of gas fuel required to fuel a sample gas+wind+solar installation, let alone even a back of envelope NPV analysis.
All the available evidence from the Western countries in which mass deployment of wind and solar have taken place shows that when all the costs are incurred, which they inevitably are when the fantasy and incomplete business cases are implemented, the result is higher costs compared to gas or coal, which manifest in the form of higher prices and government subsidies. If the advocates of wind and solar don’t do proper NPV analysis, we can get a look post facto at the results of trying it. There is no country which has lowered electricity prices by the move. In fact, prices have risen.
Whether there is a climate crisis or not, you cannot get there from here. Its impossible to move electricity generation in modern industrial societies to wind and solar. Do it, and one of two things will happen. The first is that prices will rise as you install a fully duplicate gas generation sytem and run it at maximum inefficiency. The second is, you don’t install the duplicate gas generation, and create a depression.
Here’s what the EIA say about LCOE and LCOS (Levelised Cost Of Storage)
“LCOE and LCOS by themselves do not capture all of the factors that contribute to investment decisions, making direct comparisons of LCOE and LCOS across technologies problematic and misleading as a method to assess competitiveness of various generation alternatives”
As you say Nick S ignores this all the time in his comments about unreliables.
EIA, ‘Levelised Costs of New Generation Resources’, Annual Energy Outlook 2022
As horrific as these EIA subsidy numbers are, they are probably understated. There are three reasons to think that.
Sadder, subsidies concern only the direct capital costs. The real economic damage is the grid cost to cover intermittency, which is NOT a cost the wind and solar operators bear.
What Rud said …
w.
Exactly. The wind and solar companies should be required to guarantee electricity 24/365 for the price they are paid. If that means they have to buy fossil power from other generators in order to meet that commitment when sun and wind are AWOL, then that is their problem. The costs of unreliability (backup and load shifting) should not be socialized out to the grid because it is only wind and solar that impose these costs on it. If a guest violates a motel’s no-smoking policy, the motel adds the cleaning charge to the customer’s credit card bill. It doesn’t just raise the room charges for everyone else under the guise of “general cleaning.”
“Then that is their problem” It is never just their problem. Ultimately there is only one payer and that is you.
ethical voter got to the point better. Words like “that means they have to buy” forget where “they” get money to buy things.
The perfect solution to end unreliable generation as they would have to cover the costs of the back-up reliable generation sitting idle.
Thanks for this, Willis. But I expect that the subsidy per taxpayer for Fossil Fuels is grossly understated because it doesn’t include the social costs of CO2. (:-))
CO2 and the UN’s IPCC have driven the media crazy.
Bloomberg’s green-energy research team estimated it would cost $US 200 Trillion to stop Global Warming by 2050. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-05/-200-trillion-is-needed-to-stop-global-warming-that-s-a-bargain#xj4y7vzkg
There are about 2 billion households in the world, that is $US 100,000 per household.
Ninety percent of the world’s households can’t afford anything additional.
That means about $US 1 million per household in developed countries or about $US 33,000 per year for 30 years. Working people can’t afford anything like that.
Most people would rather have a degree or two of warming and $US 1 million in their bank account
McKinsey’s estimate was ~ $270 trillion. [ie ~$9T/yr x 30 yrs]
https://www.scribd.com/document/555773648/McKinsey-The-Net-Zero-Transition-What-It-Would-Cost-What-It-Could-Bring-250122
And it assumed all major countries participated with no free-riders, all the projects worked as predicited [including those that have yet to be demonstrated at scale], and were built both
on-time & on-budget. Right!
And worse, it needs to be preloaded [spend more in the early years] to give the magic
time to work.
And guess who is to pay for the lions’ share of the costs?
You only get one guess, so choose wisely!
Enough with the Bloomberg links.
This study from 2015 says that cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather and that moderately warm or cool weather kills far more people than extreme weather. Increased strokes and heart attacks from cool weather are the main cause of the deaths.
‘Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multi-country observational study’ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext
This recent study shows that the cold weather we have every year causes about 4.6 million deaths a year globally mainly through increased strokes and heart attacks, compared with about 500,000 deaths a year from hot weather. We can’t easily protect our lungs from the cold air in the winter and that causes our blood vessels to constrict causing blood pressure to increase leading to heart attacks and strokes.
‘Global, regional and national burden of mortality associated with nonoptimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
“Increased strokes and heart attacks from cool weather are the main cause of the deaths.”
This is true, however, climate doesn’t cause heat disease.
“heart” disease
How about the social benefits of CO2? I think they’re enormous.
they are … and of course they are ignored …
ahh the true social “cost” of carbon is a plus … more CO2 = more green plants and food = less dead people = savings
“doesn’t include the social costs of CO2. “
Good sarc, REJ 🙂
Enhanced atmospheric CO2 is actually a MASSIVE BENEFIT to the whole planet..
…. and things produced using CO2 release are a MASSIVE BENEFIT to mankind.
I cannot think of any real “social cost” of CO2 to society.
The social BENEFITS OF CO2
Is that sarcasm? I cannot tell.
The IMF produced some ridiculous numbers recently where it was all imagination about supposed costs that are implied subsidies.
So yes, it’s all in your mind.
Just like “climate emergency”.
https://envmental.substack.com/p/imf-math-gymnastics
In case you haven’t noticed …. SCOTUS is in the process of reviewing the legality of appointed, not voted for, administrative entities making decisions that become law. This should be a good one, I hope.
Somebody fire up the popcorn machine, we’re going to need a lot of it!
The real answer we need, is how much of those billions has gone into off shore accounts or been laundered through the property industry? And of course, whose?
Look at the annual salaries of the renewables CEO’s and senior management. Does it seem like they care where their money comes from?
Willis, you have a beautiful mind. I always appreciate your posts and articles. This one was very simple, but it’s a profoundly informative graph. Please keep up your great work. Thanks.
Thanks, gc, appreciated.
w.
Very nice, well done Willis.
Another great post, thank you Willis. A somewhat pedantic point: the EIA is the Energy Information Administration, not Agency.
It may well be a biased organisation and, as you have pointed out in the past, has strange methodology when dealing with renewables but it’s 2021 International Outlook showed conclusively that global net zero, certainly by 2050, is a chemira. The International Energy AGENCY, on the other hand, has been totally captured by net zero zealotry.
My pet theory is that Fatih Birol, Exec. Director of the IEA, is angling to become the first Turkish Secretary General of the UN.
Even so, if you delve into their multiple reports you can find things like
‘IEA World Energy Outlook 2022’
“From 80% today – a level constant for decades – fossil fuels fall to 75% by 2030 and just over 60% by 2050”
Thanks, James, fixed.
w.
Story tip – diesel bus – Entire fleet of Jackson’s rechargeable buses out of commission, public transit service falls back on the ever-reliable diesel engine – American Thinker
My cost of electricity is low while the cost of gasoline is high – Central WA State.
Much of WA State’s electricity is from dams, built (with subsidies) many years ago. Contemplate those calculations.
WA State added a CO2 emissions fee/tax this year. An estimate has this as 46¢ more on a gallon of gasoline (already high) – it is an indirect method and raises the cost of everything made/sold in the State. Contemplate those calculations.
When I was a boy walking uphill to school both ways, “46¢ more on a gallon of gasoline” would have doubled its price.
Always watchful Willis. I suggest you have a look at this https://brilliantlightpower.com/
The Suncell technology is about to be released commercially. Their site is a delight for the details and studies given including spectrographs.
Regards, Kev.
Scientists don’t know even what dark matter is yet. It is hypothetical at this point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
That is true. But may be an artifact of fundamentally flawed physics.
Dark matter is inferred from anomalous galaxy rotation given current gravitational theory (too fast outsides, should fly apart without the extra gravity of surrounding dark matter).
But what if on galactic scales current gravitational theory isn’t exact?
What if we fail to account for the extra internal galactic gravitational mass of more proven black holes, which we cannot see except when they are ‘feeding’?
Have a look at BrilliantLightPowerSite. People may be arguing for centuries about the nature of the energy. That does not change the fact that this type of energy exists whatever it’s called and can be produced to order. It arose out of the hunt for cold fusion and labs worldwide swapped results for reproduction. They all had 4 items in common: hydrogen, metal catalyst, plasma and a controlled voltage separately put through the plasma combo. When they changed the voltage different elements were formed.
BLP found that the confirmed spectroscopic examination showed the dark matter as having the same line etc as their Suncell at work.Their testing is complete and backed up and they have designed and built a photovoltaic cell cap to convert the extreme light into electicity. Its now ready for market.
Kev, got bad news for you. If you dig deep, it is all a massive fraud. Including his ‘spectrographs’.Brilliant light Power goes back three Randy Mills scams. Started as Black light Power (get the scam joke yet?) Each a different version of his same hydrino scam, just three different supposed (pictured, graphed) hydrino ‘generators’. Covered (with proofs) as a long example in a chapter of ‘The Arts of Truth’.
Or as put by a Nobel laureate physicist concerning Mills tome, hydrogen atoms have had at least 4.5 billion years to reach ground state in our solar system. Hydrinos are supposedly below the hydrogen ground state. NOT! And as a theoretical physics reviewer said of Mills tome (paraphrased from memory), ‘The well organized portions are plagiarized. The incomprehensible rest was not.’ Footnote to exact citation is in my ebook Chapter including Blacklight Power.
Reminds me of cold fusion- if it were actually cold what would you do with it?
Time will tell. It’s ready for market. I’ve seen some very peculiar products and explanations but this one has been consistently demonstrated and all that is left is customers. It will either prove itself publicly in the next year or so or drop out. So far its 20 year of proving. Have hope.
Reads like advertisement. Does remind one- ff plans are often fully amortized while any new tech must start as full cost.
Nah, I’ll pass—my scamometer busted the needle reading that website.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Light_Power
w.
I respect your opinion> We more like you, truthful and capable.
Great post, Willis!
I hope that every time one of our dear Climastrology true believers mentions the low cost of ruinable energy, Charles or Anthony post your graph in reply! Keep up the good work!
100s of messages about what should/shouldn’t be included in calculating costs … and how to calculate costs.
Willis, the solar investment tax credit is an upfront subsidy that occurs once during the year that the plant enters service. The solar plants should have 20-25 years of service life.
Spreading a single lifetime subsidy over 6 years of production is misleading.
Spread them over the whole service life and they are in line with other RE.
NOT SAYING SUBSIDIES ARE RIGHT. Just saying this approach exaggerates the value for solar plants.
“The solar plants should have 20-25 years of service life.”
“should have 20-25 years of service life.”
“should have”
What service life does historical data suggest, and what are the criteria?
And does anyone bother to keep them clean to maximize output? There’s a cost there if you do, another if you don’t!
Thanks, vboring. While you’re right that it’s an upfront subsidy, the total amount of energy generated includes solar photovoltaic systems of all ages … so the imbalance is more apparent than real.
w.
The solar ITC is also used to subsidize energy storage plants – which consume energy in round trip losses.
This effect also exaggerates the value of the solar $/MWh subsidy.
It was the plot of the 1980s (1990s?) Batman Dark Night movie with Jack Nicholson as the joker.
Wow theres a movie that could never be made in this culture. Maybe we’re better without it, t was very dark, but I don’t like ideas disappearing.
Good to know dollars per watt produced
What were the total subsidies in absolute dollars for each fuel.
bigoldbob won’t like this one.
Nice job Willis, BTW.
“bigoldbob won’t like this one.”
Actually, indifferent. It’s predictable.
Yes, renewables are getting incubated. I’m cool with losing ALL of these subsidies. Those mentioned by the EIA, and those not. But you won’t like it. Almost every year from now on, Dem or Repub, recession or boom, oil and oil associated gas SEC, proved, on, reserves will drop. It’s just boring old geological and petroleum engineering/economic realities taking hold in the worlds most played out oil producing country.
Anyhow, here’s the link that Mr. Eschenbach didn’t want to trust you with.
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf
bigoilbob October 4, 2023 3:46 pm
I reread my post earlier today and went “Dang, my link didn’t transfer from the original”. So I went back to the original, grabbed the link, and added it in.
And now, I read this bovine excrement?
Your breezy assumption that I deliberately left out the link, a slimy and untrue accusation made without even asking me about it, just proves once again that you are actually bigscumbagbob, a bottom dwelling parasite who is willing to make up ugly lies against those whom you disagree with.
I’ll pass on the rest of your claims. If you’d acted like a decent human being we could have discussed them, but I won’t have any truck with a man who falsely accuses me of bad faith.
w.
Robert Bryce’s substack at https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/actually-solar-is-getting-302-times
Video, same topic at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzkqZnIZEf0
Bryce has been on this topic, too. Thanks, Willis, for the graphic scale. Not sure that the wind or solar subsidies include the government mandated “price control” overcharges to customers by local and federal governments and their oligopic electricity and gas suppliers.
Willis is the chart available at the eia website or did you construct it from data at the eia website?
Made it myself from their data. All my charts have 1) rounded corners 2) drop shadow 3) my “two whales” logo.
Besides, the Gummint can’t make lovely informative charts like that. Plus, they won’t, it reveals the holes in their arguments.
w.
Hopefully, the house of cards of cheap alternative, green energy will tumble down in a pile of feces where it should have been all along.
And the media so often let them go unchallenged when they lie that wind and solar are the cheapest.
“Note that the subsidy for solar is about 50% higher than the electricity purchase price paid by most US utilities…”.
“When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.” ~ H. L. Mencken
Remember folks, they are saving the planet.
Who cares about cheap energy? It’s not on the radar. Today, people deal with only ‘ what is’ and as long as the WIFI is up and their tech works…. ‘what is’ is constantly scrolling before them. We have been hooked/mind controlled into becoming powerless serfs thinking that someone will take care of us because we deserve it. It’s a recipe that has worked for creating the quagmire America is in right now.
Why not just say no to expensive EVs, Green Regime tax boondoggle schemes, higher taxes, higher fees, high utility costs and fees, high gas and oil prices? Demand cheap energy. Do whatever it takes voting with dollars and voting for politicians to make it happen.
The question about the potential of renewables providing cheap energy with the right tech breakthroughs and advancements is certainly not a pie in the sky, it’s a carrot leading America into serfdom.
The grid system is only 32% efficient at best, (mostly fossil fuel generation). If 85% is a reasonable goal, then tech advances and vastly improved distribution paradigms would reduce demand for fossil fuel by 52% This is a much better deal than solar but the capital outlay makes it a pie in the sky.
We need affordable, (around the cost of installing central air) high tech-high efficiency fossil fuel (NG works) input home generation, storage and distribution systems with efficiency at >85%). Forget solar tech as it stands now… too expensive. Maybe pairing solar with a cooling TEG in a roof top roofing system could be viable….many not.. Wind is not scalable for the home owner
EV’s would be great if they had a truly viable, environmentally sound and affordable electrical storage and distribution systems. But why mandate them. Let people vote with their dollars. It’s like forcing people from on high to get mostly ineffective vaccinations that have had no clinical trials.
The goal is cheap energy and politically freeing ourselves from the corrupt global Big Green/Big Tech/Big Energy/BIG Media/Big Pharma hegemon.
Opposition to the global hegemon beginning in 2016 only empowered the acceleration of it’s program. I worry that our political system will never again be powerful enough to modify it.
Maybe they should teach that in school instead of recruiting children to gender dysphoria and communism.
Someone in the comments questioned the units of $/megawatt-hour.
The US energy production data are from Table A1 in the linked publication. There, they are given in trillion BTU, a curious unit. Fortunately, the wonderful site UnitJuggler has an Energy converter to tell me that:
You are currently converting energy units from million btu to megawatt hour
1 MMBtu = 0.29329722222222 MWh
I used that to make the conversion.
I’ve added this to the head post.
w.
… dang … don’t know where that formatting came from …
w.
Willis writes
“Note that the subsidy for solar is about 50% higher than the electricity purchase price paid by most US utilities … so the solar scammers make money no matter what.”
And pulls no punches even against our host, Anthony Watts.
Willis writes
“horrendously large taxpayer subsidies”
Statistics can be given in many ways of course. Looking at it from the point of view of where your tax dollar goes, 80% of it goes to fossil fuel subsidies.