The folly of wind and solar as energy sources

[Anonymous]

WInd and solar don't have what it takes to power a modern economy. They make some companies and some countries very rich artificially, but they have made Europeans poor.



Renewables are making Europe energy-poor

Existing policies were causing substantial energy poverty in Europe even before the price spike this autumn

https://financialpost.com/opinion/renewables-are-making-europe-energy-poor">https://financialpost.com/opinion/renew ... nergy-poor">https://financialpost.com/opinion/renewables-are-making-europe-energy-poor



With the recent rise in the price of natural gas in Europe to five times where it was earlier this year, expect to see many more Europeans, including Brits, plunged into "energy poverty" — too poor to pay their utility bills on time and/or keep their homes adequately warm. Why is not hard to grasp: from Greece to Great Britain and everywhere in between, the European electricity grid is increasingly de-linked from reliable, affordable fossil fuels and hooked up to more expensive and intermittent wind and solar projects. When wind and solar are not available, Europeans and others end up chasing the same supplies of oil, natural gas and coal, pushing their prices dramatically higher.



Canadians should pay attention. What Europeans are already enduring and will suffer through again this winter will only intensify thanks to government efforts at COP26 this week to mandate an even faster "phaseout" of fossil fuels. But existing policies were causing substantial energy poverty in Europe even before the price spike this autumn. Stefan Bouzarovski, a University of Manchester professor and chair of an energy poverty working group, estimates that pre-pandemic, 80 million Europeans were already struggling to adequately heat their homes. Meanwhile, at least 12 million European households were in arrears on their utility bills.



The European Union has attempted to provide an objective measurement of the problem but its best data is six years old. The EU Energy Poverty Observatory's most recent estimate — from 2015 — showed that 16 per cent of EU consumers faced a "high" share of energy costs, with "high" defined as energy expenditures relative to income that were more than twice the national median.



To get a better sense of the challenge faced by European households and energy poverty, we used 2008 as a start year and then compared the rise in household median incomes (with the full set of data ending in 2019) with the rise in electricity prices (ending in 2020) in 30 European countries.



We found that in lower-income European countries that have seen strong growth in incomes since 2008 (mainly ex-communist states such as Estonia, Bulgaria and Poland), median incomes rose faster than power prices. Not so in many richer European countries, however. For example, though median household income rose just 19 per cent in France, electricity prices were up 61 per cent. In the U.K income rose just 14 per cent, compared to a 51 per cent rise in electricity prices. In Ireland, income was up 11 per cent, electricity 48 per cent. Worst off was Spain, where median household income rose by just eight per cent, while electricity prices soared 68 per cent.



Canada's existing target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 is daunting enough as is.



Krystle Wittevrongel: Let's be smarter on carbon capture — we won't get to net-zero without it

None

Terence Corcoran: Two climate activists take charge of Canada's resource economy. What could go wrong?

None

Joe Oliver: Our energy self-delusion continues



The response of some European governments has been to subsidize utility bills — as in Ontario, which did it to mask the effect of policies that drove the province's electricity prices dramatically higher. All that does, however, is shift the burden of high power costs from the "consumer pocket" to the "taxpayer pocket." But, of course, both pockets are in the same coat: so, either way, households bear the cost, or their children and grandchildren do if today's utility bills are subsidized through government borrowing.



Why electricity is so costly in the EU and U.K is clear: policy. Governments there have attempted to "transition" from fossil fuels despite their superior energy density — their "power punch," as Vaclav Smil, retired environment professor at the University of Manitoba characterizes it — vis-à-vis renewables.



The result can be seen in the declining share of fossil fuels in EU electricity production: from about 50 per cent in 2000 to 38 per cent in 2019. Nuclear-generated electricity, which has also been discouraged,  has declined from 32 per cent of electricity production in 2000 to just over 26 per cent in 2019.



Meanwhile, renewables have more than doubled as a share of EU electricity production, from just over 16 per cent in 2000 to over 34 per cent in 2019. That would be fine, except solar and wind are not exactly inexpensive. They are also not as reliable as fossil fuels, something Brits were recently reminded of when wind power dropped and coal again had to be used to prop up their country's electricity grid.



It's been said that the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The policymakers gathered in Glasgow evidently want to speed up the killing of fossil fuels even thought it has already led to widespread energy poverty in Europe. Are they expecting different results?



https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/energy-poverty-in-european-households-an-advance-lesson-for-canadians/?fbclid=IwAR2m5AOpZTzxWt5aIjwG8YzBlSVd5RiM5BVtJLseiZK_HowUdB-TP8iAUCM">https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/ene ... B-TP8iAUCM">https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/energy-poverty-in-european-households-an-advance-lesson-for-canadians/?fbclid=IwAR2m5AOpZTzxWt5aIjwG8YzBlSVd5RiM5BVtJLseiZK_HowUdB-TP8iAUCM

[Thiel]

WInd and solar don't have what it takes to power a modern economy. They make some companies and some countries very rich artificially, but they have made Europeans poor.



Renewables are making Europe energy-poor

Existing policies were causing substantial energy poverty in Europe even before the price spike this autumn

https://financialpost.com/opinion/renewables-are-making-europe-energy-poor">https://financialpost.com/opinion/renew ... nergy-poor">https://financialpost.com/opinion/renewables-are-making-europe-energy-poor



With the recent rise in the price of natural gas in Europe to five times where it was earlier this year, expect to see many more Europeans, including Brits, plunged into "energy poverty" — too poor to pay their utility bills on time and/or keep their homes adequately warm. Why is not hard to grasp: from Greece to Great Britain and everywhere in between, the European electricity grid is increasingly de-linked from reliable, affordable fossil fuels and hooked up to more expensive and intermittent wind and solar projects. When wind and solar are not available, Europeans and others end up chasing the same supplies of oil, natural gas and coal, pushing their prices dramatically higher.



Canadians should pay attention. What Europeans are already enduring and will suffer through again this winter will only intensify thanks to government efforts at COP26 this week to mandate an even faster "phaseout" of fossil fuels. But existing policies were causing substantial energy poverty in Europe even before the price spike this autumn. Stefan Bouzarovski, a University of Manchester professor and chair of an energy poverty working group, estimates that pre-pandemic, 80 million Europeans were already struggling to adequately heat their homes. Meanwhile, at least 12 million European households were in arrears on their utility bills.



The European Union has attempted to provide an objective measurement of the problem but its best data is six years old. The EU Energy Poverty Observatory's most recent estimate — from 2015 — showed that 16 per cent of EU consumers faced a "high" share of energy costs, with "high" defined as energy expenditures relative to income that were more than twice the national median.



To get a better sense of the challenge faced by European households and energy poverty, we used 2008 as a start year and then compared the rise in household median incomes (with the full set of data ending in 2019) with the rise in electricity prices (ending in 2020) in 30 European countries.



We found that in lower-income European countries that have seen strong growth in incomes since 2008 (mainly ex-communist states such as Estonia, Bulgaria and Poland), median incomes rose faster than power prices. Not so in many richer European countries, however. For example, though median household income rose just 19 per cent in France, electricity prices were up 61 per cent. In the U.K income rose just 14 per cent, compared to a 51 per cent rise in electricity prices. In Ireland, income was up 11 per cent, electricity 48 per cent. Worst off was Spain, where median household income rose by just eight per cent, while electricity prices soared 68 per cent.



Canada's existing target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 is daunting enough as is.



Krystle Wittevrongel: Let's be smarter on carbon capture — we won't get to net-zero without it

None

Terence Corcoran: Two climate activists take charge of Canada's resource economy. What could go wrong?

None

Joe Oliver: Our energy self-delusion continues



The response of some European governments has been to subsidize utility bills — as in Ontario, which did it to mask the effect of policies that drove the province's electricity prices dramatically higher. All that does, however, is shift the burden of high power costs from the "consumer pocket" to the "taxpayer pocket." But, of course, both pockets are in the same coat: so, either way, households bear the cost, or their children and grandchildren do if today's utility bills are subsidized through government borrowing.



Why electricity is so costly in the EU and U.K is clear: policy. Governments there have attempted to "transition" from fossil fuels despite their superior energy density — their "power punch," as Vaclav Smil, retired environment professor at the University of Manitoba characterizes it — vis-à-vis renewables.



The result can be seen in the declining share of fossil fuels in EU electricity production: from about 50 per cent in 2000 to 38 per cent in 2019. Nuclear-generated electricity, which has also been discouraged,  has declined from 32 per cent of electricity production in 2000 to just over 26 per cent in 2019.



Meanwhile, renewables have more than doubled as a share of EU electricity production, from just over 16 per cent in 2000 to over 34 per cent in 2019. That would be fine, except solar and wind are not exactly inexpensive. They are also not as reliable as fossil fuels, something Brits were recently reminded of when wind power dropped and coal again had to be used to prop up their country's electricity grid.



It's been said that the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The policymakers gathered in Glasgow evidently want to speed up the killing of fossil fuels even thought it has already led to widespread energy poverty in Europe. Are they expecting different results?



https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/energy-poverty-in-european-households-an-advance-lesson-for-canadians/?fbclid=IwAR2m5AOpZTzxWt5aIjwG8YzBlSVd5RiM5BVtJLseiZK_HowUdB-TP8iAUCM">https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/ene ... B-TP8iAUCM">https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/energy-poverty-in-european-households-an-advance-lesson-for-canadians/?fbclid=IwAR2m5AOpZTzxWt5aIjwG8YzBlSVd5RiM5BVtJLseiZK_HowUdB-TP8iAUCM

It's inexcusable that in a country with so much natural gas reserves, and hydroelectric potential that we are forcing people to choose between heating their homes and putting food on their tables. Imported wind turbines and solar panels are the causing energy poverty.

[Anonymous]

Canada and Europe's plan to slow climate change is to make energy and heating expensive.....and send jobs abroad.

[Anonymous]

From energy expert Alex Epstein.



The Truth About Geothermal Energy

Geothermal cannot replace a significant percentage of fossil fuel use because it requires the rare geology of places like Iceland. "Deep geothermal" has promise, but is decades away from scalability.

[Bricktop]

There are people in Australia who want to tap into our geothermal energy source.



They cite places like Iceland as examples.



Iceland's geothermal activity is very close to their surface.



Ours is several hundred kilometres below surface level. But they think all you have to do is drill a deep enough hole.

[Anonymous]

There are people in Australia who want to tap into our geothermal energy source.



They cite places like Iceland as examples.



Iceland's geothermal activity is very close to their surface.



Ours is several hundred kilometres below surface level. But they think all you have to do is drill a deep enough hole.

The same woke idiots who think wind and solar are sustainable.

[Bricktop]

Very much so.

[Frood]

There are people in Australia who want to tap into our geothermal energy source.



They cite places like Iceland as examples.



Iceland's geothermal activity is very close to their surface.



Ours is several hundred kilometres below surface level. But they think all you have to do is drill a deep enough hole.

It might work at places like Daylesford and the volcanic lakes/springs region in Victoria but there aren't many of those in the country.



Plus all the yuppies would throw a shit fit if their hot springs day trips were affected in any way.

[Anonymous]

Solar and wind are unreliable, use up scarce resources, and make us dependent on foreign countries for energy, but they aint cheap. Here is why.



Why "cheap" solar increases the price of power

https://www.cfact.org/2022/03/03/why-cheap-solar-increases-the-price-of-power/?fbclid=IwAR12nQaj7Wo6TqlI-upgfELk7DVMv-p_JBk3PNIHV8cEeHsgS43Cv4H8JbQ">https://www.cfact.org/2022/03/03/why-ch ... 43Cv4H8JbQ">https://www.cfact.org/2022/03/03/why-cheap-solar-increases-the-price-of-power/?fbclid=IwAR12nQaj7Wo6TqlI-upgfELk7DVMv-p_JBk3PNIHV8cEeHsgS43Cv4H8JbQ

So let's look into this cheap solar fallacy a bit more. Our starting point is the fabled cheapness. It is based on a simple measurement called the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). You just take the cost of producing electricity over a long period of time, divided by the amount produced. For grid scale generation LCOE is usually measured in dollars per megawatt hour (MWh).



It is true that most LCOE reports for America have solar (and onshore wind) a little bit lower than for combined cycle gas fired power, which is today's workhorse generator. However the difference is relatively small. Solar LCOE also varies a lot regionally, depending on how sunny it is, but we can ignore that complexity for now.



The big point is that it is impossible for solar to generate reliably. Night always happens and clouds happen frequently. This means that for every MW of solar generation there has to be a MW of gas fired power (or something else) backing it up.



Since we do not need more electricity, solar + gas is a zero sum game, just like having two cars but only driving one. Whenever solar is powering, gas is sitting there costing money but making none, even though it could.



Simply put, the cost of not running the gas generator in order to run the solar is part of the cost of that solar power. This cost of forced idleness is sometimes called the "capacity cost" of the system. The capacity cost due to solar should part of the solar LCOE, but it is not.



The capacity cost of gas fired solar backup will be large. The cost of gas for a power plant is normally only about a third of the total cost of the plant. Gas fired plants are not as expensive to build as coal fired, because their boilers are somewhat smaller, but they are still very expensive.



So when solar power forces gas power to stop, you may save on fuel but the capacity cost of having that gas plant sit their idling is much larger.



Solar may be reducing gas fired emissions but it is certainly not paying off. The same is true for onshore wind. (Offshore wind has an LCOE that may be three times greater or more than onshore, so the savings issue does not even arise.) In fact both solar and onshore wind should only be seen as expensive emission reduction technologies, not as power generation technologies. Both cost extra.



The high cost of backup capacity is why states like California and countries like Germany, that have implemented lots of solar and wind, have such expensive electricity. The power production cost of solar and onshore wind my be low but the grid system cost is not low at all.



Adding low cost solar and wind power just makes grid electricity more expensive.

[Bricktop]

There is only one logical and sensible energy source we should be investing in.



Nuclear.

[Thiel]

There is only one logical and sensible energy source we should be investing in.



Nuclear.

That depends. Most of Canada has abundant natural gas reserves and the infrasture it needs. Other areas have abundant hydroelectric capabilities, although it takes up massive amounts of land. Some places in the world, like Australia have almost inexhaustible deposits of coal. Use it and make it less polluting. Nuclear is a good option for Europe and Asia.

[Frood]

There is only one logical and sensible energy source we should be investing in.



Nuclear.

In theory nuclear is the best but in practice it is susceptible to gross negligence and freak acts of nature.



Fukushima was built in an unstable region, along a coast, and they were using Mox fuel and storing the spent rods in a very unsafe manner.



Chernobyl wasn't maintained correctly due to poor maintenance from a collapsing soviet empire.



TMI almost became a fully fledged meltdown because of emergency systems failing.



And if nuclear power plants are miniaturised and spread out remotely as some researchers and companies would like to do,  we're looking at numerous human error or environmental events rendering little pockets of no go zones for decades all over.



Nuclear should be a limited use application only.

[Thiel]

France gets most of it's power needs from nuclear. In Canada, small modular nuclear reactor technology has reduced a lot of the risks.

[Frood]

You mean spread out the risk.

[Thiel]

You mean spread out the risk.

No, I mean reduce it. At least that is what is being claimed about them, because they are not producing electricity anywhere in Canada yet.



The greater safety should come via the use of passive safety features that operate without human intervention. No need to rely on Homer J. Simpsons to prevent a meltdown.