John Hinderaker:
In Minnesota, where I live, our governor has just signed a Blackout Bill modeled on California’s, except that it applies only to electricity, not virtually all energy. Unlike California, Minnesota did not even attempt a feasibility study, nor did it make a cost estimate. The wind and solar mandate was enacted, blind. Only one study has analyzed the cost and feasibility of the Minnesota mandate. It estimated the cost at $313 billion, which is a conservative number, in part because it assumes constant prices for the vast quantities of raw materials (copper, cobalt, lithium, etc.) that would be required. That study also found that even after spending $313 billion, Minnesota would not be able to meet its electricity needs reliably.
And,
The DFL’s Blackout Bill, requiring that all electricity be produced by wind and solar energy by 2040, has now been signed into law by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. The bill’s proponents have not offered any estimate of its cost to ratepayers, nor have they produced a feasibility study purporting to show that 100% wind and solar electricity can reliably power our state.
David Strom:
Producing the panels is one thing, using them to produce electricity is another. For its own power production, China is all about coal.
Gee, I wonder why? Could it be that coal is inexpensive, reliable, always on? Perhaps the Chinese also understand that by pushing solar panels as a major source of energy in Western countries they are giving themselves a leg up in the competition to be the world’s manufacturing hub.
John Hinderaker:
This is what liberal politicians are not telling you—yet. They don’t really plan to replace your car with an EV, they don’t want to replace it at all. They want you to walk, bicycle, and use public transportation. In other words, they want to destroy the traditional American freedom to, as Mark says, go where we please, when we please. That is a radical and unwelcome change in American life, right up there with eating insects instead of meat.
John Hinderaker:
And things are going to get worse. Pretty much all of the policies being followed by the federal government, and many states, will contribute to an ongoing decline in living standards. The attack on fossil fuels and blind insistence on an impossible “transition” to wind and solar energy will cause the cost of energy to explode. The attack on agriculture, which is only now beginning in earnest, will force food prices up. The installation of DEI commissars in every government agency and substantial corporation is in itself wasteful spending, and worse, will make our corporations and government agencies less efficient and thereby raise costs further. And rampant crime imposes enormous costs that are borne by everyone except, too often, criminals.
John Hinderaker:
One might think that an “Energy Action Day” means Xcel will take action to maximize output of electricity. But no: the utility’s failure is taken as a given, and the “Action” consists of customers reducing their standard of living.
We are going to see more and more of this, as increasing reliance on wind and solar devastates our electric grid. At some point, we become a third world country, with electricity available only intermittently. Just as the wind blows, and the Sun shines, only intermittently.
Beege Welborn:
I’m curious about his wife charging the EV at the college — is she paying for that electricity or are the taxpayers? Wouldn’t you just love subsidizing that vehicle twice — first with the tax write-off they got and then with the cheaper electricity to make it zoom-zoom?
Beege Welborn:
Renewables have had plenty of time and bazillions of tax dollars already to stand on their own. We are all dealing [with] the same inflationary pressures and Ukraine, etc — they aren’t suffering any industry peculiar hardships other than the fraud the “Green” industry is founded on.
Time to kick those tax training wheels out from under these bad boys and see how they twirl.
Do they spin happily into the sunset or…like I’m bettin’…does it fall to Earth in a flaming disaster?
