Having written There is No Climate Crisis, I find it useful/amusing/worrying (delete as appropriate) to see what nonsense the climate catastrophists are churning out. So I subscribe to a newsletter called Inside Climate News produced by a group of them.
The latest newsletter had an article claiming: “New Wind and Solar Are Cheaper Than the Costs to Operate All But One Coal-Fired Power Plant in the United States.“
That surprised me somewhat as countries like China and India, whose leaders aren’t worshippers of Saint Greta and the climate crazies, are ramping up coal use. Here’s a chart for China:
And here’s India:
And, in comparison, here’s the USA:
So is the USA’s energy policy being run by geniuses who realise that coal is too expensive to be economically viable? And are China and India being run by idiots who fail to appreciate the glories of solar and wind power?
In the article claiming that all but one U.S. coal-fired power station are more expensive than solar and wind, the writer does mention Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act: “New analysis shows that renewables beat existing coal plants 99% of the time, thanks to long-term trends and an assist from the Inflation Reduction Act.”
So let’s see what this “assist from the Inflation Reduction Act” is all about. Here’s a U.S. Treasury ‘Factsheet‘ about the Inflation Reduction Act.
In it we read that: “The U.S. Department of the Treasury will be at the forefront of implementation, delivering $270 billion in tax incentives as part of the $369 billion the Inflation Reduction Act dedicates to combating climate change.”
U.S. consumers spend about $1 trillion on energy each year including transport. I did a quick ‘back-of-a-fag-packet’ calculation. If the USA’s 123 million or so households spend around $4,000 a year each on energy (excluding transport) then that’s about $400 billion. Yet the inflation Reduction Act is spending a massive $369 billion subsidising supposed ‘renewables’, which are just a minor part of the USA’s energy use. In fact, wind and solar make up only about 3% of USA energy use:
Yet these almost negligible energy sources are getting $369 billion in subsidies – that’s almost as much as the $400 billion U.S. households pay for in total for energy each year. That’s rather more significant than the seemingly modest “assist from the Inflation Reduction Act” the Inside Climate News‘s writer mentions.
I have a feeling that this means $369 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money will be squandered on largely useless and horrifically-expensive and uneconomical solar and wind energy projects. And then by forgetting that so much money in subsidies has been poured into the bank accounts of wind and solar companies, the climate catastrophists can claim that wind and solar are cheaper for consumers than coal.
That brings us back to the claim made by Inside Climate News that “New Wind and Solar Are Cheaper Than the Costs to Operate All But One Coal-Fired Power Plant in the United States”.
It’s total and utter bilge, nonsense, rubbish like almost all the claims churned out to a gullible public by a compliant media desperately spewing out climate-catastrophist propaganda to prepare us for the colder, darker, more miserable future our rulers have in store for us.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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If you search on this topic, even on duckduckgo, you will find nothing but ‘renewables’, anti-reality, propaganda. It took a while to find a sceptical site. Cowboy State Daily.
I read Craig’s book it is good. As he says in this article the cost calc is rubbish. In 2019 some 70% of coal plants were deemed much cheaper, so in 4 years some magic happened one assumes.
They don’t add in the costs of operations, nor even probably the total costs of acquiring the minerals and materials some of it with slave labour in the case of the panels. I doubt they even add in the unlimited subsidies or the fact that most of these renewable firms are going bankrupt.
Imagine deploying a software system and not calculating all the hardware resources, networking, data storage, ongoing security costs, and operational costs not to mention refactoring, rewrites and code work needed to keep it alive and saying; ‘see, told you it was cheaper than the other software system….’
In wouldn’t put too much trust in duckduckgo – https://newspunch.com/google-lite-duckduckgo-announces-purge-of-independent-media-only-msm-allowed/
Yes I read that headline a week or so ago and I was sceptical too! thanks for making it clear what as actually been done to the costings! Talk about massaging the figures, they must have use gallons of body oil for this one!
The ‘researchers’ might also moonlight as Covid ‘fact checkers….’
Excellent article, it’s hard to know where to begin with the combined ignorance and dishonesty of the entire ‘Net Zero’ project (never mind the pseudo-scientific ‘Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change’ hypothesis which lies behind it).
In technical terms it is the contemporary equivalent of a deluded medieval quest nailed by the genius Leonardo da Vinci in 1494:
‘Oh ye seekers after perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you pursued? Go and take your place with the alchemists.’
No advanced calculations or post-graduate university research projects were ever required to evaluate the validity and utility of ‘alternative energy’, just addressing a simple question:
Would it be more efficient, reliable and cost-effective to
A) Take highly concentrated packages of energy (coal, oil, gas etc), use them to generate guaranteed quantities of electricity 24 hours a day in relatively small power plants located near population centres and distribute this energy directly to commercial and domestic consumers or
B) Divert the power into the construction of tens of thousands of jumbo-jet sized windmills and / or million of solar panels, all of which have relatively limited life-spans and have to be located in huge numbers of vast and frequently remote ‘farms’ designed to generate the secondary electricity which will finally be distributed to consumers:
But only when the wind is blowing between two strict parameters (neither too weak nor strong) and the sun shining brightly (i.e. not when there are clouds or during that similarity rare phenomenon known as night-time).
A ten year old could answer that.
At least if the AGW movement admitted that they believed (with no evidence, quite the opposite) that humanity’s techno-industrial activities were causing cataclysmic problems and the only solution was to revert back to medieval levels of poverty, ill-health and localisation, it would have the benefit of honesty (if nothing else).
As opposed to the have your cake and eat it / ‘alternative energy is actually cheaper than fossil-fuel versions’ deception being highlighted here.
The whole thing can be summed up by the creation of the new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, an oxymoronic title that George Orwell would be proud of.
I did some calcs on a per MW basis and coal plants are 20 x more efficient and productive than solar farms. Solar energy might be 3% of total UK usage right now based on 3 Terawatt output – the average 10 acre solar farm supports 200 households with a megre 1 MW output p.a.. You will need to rack 10 million acres to produce 100 Terawatts of output (or about 1/2 of all farm and forest land in the UK). Apparently carpeting half the land with these eco-destroying subsidised panels is Gaia friendly.
Yes, it’s all so inherently self-contradictory as well as economically catastrophic. Thanks for the additional details, the 10 acre solar farm intermittently covering just 200 homes is particularly striking, especially when you visualise a relatively small conventional power plant reliably and consistently supplying tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals.
Government have interfered in the energy market for political purposes that isn’t a market anymore. Imagine one business that makes yellow jeans and another that makes red jeans. If government gives 100% subsidy to the makers of yellow jeans, then it is clear they will have a massive advantage and their product will be cheaper to those buying it. But that does not mean it is actually cheaper. It only means that it has heavily subsidised and appears to be cheaper. ——–This is essentially what happens with energy where government pick winners and losers based on politics. (The politics of Sustainable Development). But it is even worse when it comes to energy, because not only do government subsidise their political favourites (wind and sun) but they also heap huge costs onto Coal and Gas via so called environmental regulations and mandates because they claim CO2 from those is bad.—- I remember President Obama say some years ago that people could open a coal fired plant but that it would simply bankrupt them. He meant that they would have to jump through so many environmental hoops that it would not be economically viable to operate a coal fired plant. Yet Nuclear, Coal and Gas are the only On Demand Energy solutions. They can provide energy all day and every day. All of the rest are simply part time energy and at best a supplement to Coal Gas and Nuclear, so essentially what is happening is that governments who claim they are “saving the planet” are fobbing their citizens off with renewables that cannot compete with fossil fuels and cannot provide the energy required. Wind and sun cannot provide base load. — I recall the head of the National Grid a few years ago say that “We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available”. He meant when the wind is blowing and when the sun shines. This is totally absurd in the 21st century. This is what we can expect from “Sustainable Development”. We will be allowed only the very basics. Every aspect of how we live will be scrutinised based on how much CO2 we emit. We will only be allowed to emit so much CO2. But there is no evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to the climate, and there is no evidence that NET ZERO policies aimed at reducing CO2 at unimaginable cost will have any impact on climate. ————-So, if NET ZERO will have no effect then why do it? —-Because it is NOT and never was about the climate. Misinformation about the cost/benefit of renewables and cost/benefit of fossil fuels is part of the strategy of getting people onboard with everything green. We hear all the time about the risks of using fossil fuels but never about the risks of NOT using them, and since 90% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels that risk is enormous for the welfare of human beings.
Government have interfered in the energy market for political purposes that isn’t a market anymore. Imagine one business that makes yellow jeans and another that makes red jeans. If government gives 100% subsidy to the makers of yellow jeans, then it is clear they will have a massive advantage and their product will be cheaper to those buying it. But that does not mean it is actually cheaper. It only means that it has heavily subsidised and appears to be cheaper.
Only to sufficiently naive people: If a government takes my money and gives it to the guy who makes yellow jeans, this means I’m paying for them regardless of me ever buying any. And the people who buy yellow jeans pay even more for them than those who don’t as their taxes also flew into the subsidy.
There is a collection of documents and reports at Just Stop Net Zero https://www.juststopnetzero.com/
They include the McKinsey report on the cost of Net Zero; JP Morgan’s Energy review; BP Energy outlook. A copy of the infamous Exxon report 1982. And a miscellany of other useful info.
David Tallboys
If renewables worked they wouldn’t need subsidies
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
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Your first comment really says it all and not just about energy.
Would anyone sane buy a car costing about 10 times the normal price to buy and run, that can only work 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.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/3-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2021-european-wind-drought-analysed/
If all of the energy needs of the U.K. were provided by wind power it would require 360,000 massive 600ft wind turbines or one for every 185 people. The cost of installing these turbines on and off shore would be Three Trillion Two Hundred And Forty Billion pounds (£3,240,000,000,000.00) or about £48,000 for every man, woman and child in the UK or about £150,000 per household.
This price would not include the running and maintenance costs for 360,000 turbines.
This price (£3,240,000,000,000.00 in case you’d forgotten) would not include the necessary electricity to hydrogen converters. (Hydrogen is the only practical storage medium for wind and solar).
This price would not include the cost of constructing hydrogen power stations.
This price would not include the cost of retrofitting vehicles for hydrogen use.
This price would not include the cost of retrofitting homes and factories for electric heating and hot water. (Hydrogen cannot be used in its pure form for heating and hot water, it has to be stored and piped under extreme pressure and is very volatile).
Read more here.
If you ask your average Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion or similar loonie climate activist group you’ll quickly find that they’re not interested in ANY fossil fuel or nuclear use. Wind and solar (similar costs) are their Holy Grail. It just so happens that wind and solar will also be the death of us if they get their way.
The UK now has a minister to implement net zero. What chance is there of getting the message in this article across to people when the government is actively doing everything it can to destroy the UK energy infrastructure which has been developed for years by engineers who knew what they were doing. The idiots are now in charge of the asylum.
What has happened to real journalists? The ones that are not afraid to do their own research or study that of people like David Craig and tell people the truth? Do we have none? Are they all just patsies of the wrong globalist output? Once, our newspapers like the Times and Telegraph would have seized on David Craig’s factual reporting and printed it loud and clear. In the current useless state of mainstream journalism, we would not hear of the truth and expect to believe the crap they publish, except for our own research or that of the Daily Sceptic which we should admire for keeping us informed.