Ranger from the North

David Strom:

The New York Times is working hard to convince us that Trump's attempt--and that is all that is happening now, because a lot of Republicans are pitching to keep much of Biden's "Inflation Reduction Act" spending, and we will have to see whether they manage to do so when all is said and done--will increase energy prices.

It's all based on the myth that renewable energy is practically free--and it is, if you exclude all the costs associated with it.

Some renewable energy really IS inexpensive--Canada has low energy prices because it relies heavily on hydroelectric power to the tune of 60% of its power generation, but good luck building big dams in the United States. But if you look at wind and solar, they are "cheap" only because all the expenses necessary to actually use them are excluded from the calculations.

Also, from John Hinderaker:

One of the worst things about wind and solar energy is that they are terrible for the environment. The principal reason for this is that, apart from being intermittent, they are low-intensity. This means that even when they do produce electricity, it is in ridiculously small amounts. As a result, it takes an enormous number of wind turbines and solar panels to generate a perceptible amount of electricity, and that, in turn, requires vast quantities of natural resources and a great deal of land.

Green energy is a disaster in several ways: it is inherently unreliable and ridiculously expensive. Some people naively assume, however, that wind and solar energy make up for these liabilities by being good for the environment. They couldn’t be more wrong.

The basic problem with wind turbines and solar panels (plus hypothetical batteries) is that they are extremely low-intensity. Do they work? Intermittently, yes. But compared with conventional energy sources, they produce a very small amount of energy on a per-unit of input basis. Thus, they require both enormous amounts of land and vast quantities of raw materials.

Thus, to supply America’s electricity with wind turbines would require a land area twice the size of California. But that isn’t all. Because they are so low-intensity, wind, solar and batteries require enormous amounts of raw materials. To actually transition to a “green” economy (which will never happen) would require the greatest mining, manufacturing, transportation and construction effort since the Industrial Revolution. And mining, manufacturing, transportation and construction all have significant environmental impacts.

# posted by Ranger @ 1:19 PM