Oregon’s Loony Dems Now Committing ‘Green Energy Suicide’

Just as the national Democrat Party is chasing the imaginary pot of gold at the end of the green energy rainbow, so too are Oregon’s Democrats, and they are all-in on wind, solar, and hydroelectric power as the ONLY sources powering Oregon’s electric grid.

Here is an excerpt from an Oregon Public Broadcasting report about the Democrats’ plan:

Oregon would adopt one of the country’s most ambitious timelines for eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from its power grid under a major bill advocates believe will pass the Legislature this year.

House Bill 2021 … sets a timetable by which Oregon’s two major power companies, Portland General Electric and Pacific Power, must eliminate emissions associated with the electricity they provide.

HB 2021′s central thrust isn’t groundbreaking by today’s standards. At least 17 other states and the District of Columbia have already adopted similar goals, according to the Clean Energy States Alliance.

But advocates say Oregon’s plan stands out in both approach and timeline. The bill requires PGE and Pacific Power to submit plans to reduce emissions by 80% from a baseline amount by 2030, 90% by 2035, and completely eliminate emissions by 2040.

Some Oregonians actually understand that science and are aghast that Oregon Democrats are hell-bent on committing “green energy suicide” by dooming the state to dozens of future brownouts ala California. One of them is meteorologist Chuck Wiese.

He sent the below blistering email to his long-time friend Lars Larson, a nationally syndicated radio talk host, and has graciously consented to having it posted to a wider audience here.

This is what he had to say (lightly edited):

I thought I’d briefly examine the insanity of Oregon’s political class wanting to convert our electric grid to nothing but hydro and renewables like solar and wind by eliminating coal and natural gas because of the fake claims about these sources causing the climate to change.

Never mind that nuclear power would be a great substitute for solar, wind, and natural gas, but the environmental nut jobs won’t have any of this either and so far are able to convince the incompetent politicians like Sen. Michael Dembrow (D) and Rep. Karin Powers (D) that these power sources are dangerous and bad for the environment. This is also untrue.

Here is a now-defunct link to Oregon’s 2020 electric energy use and production, “State of Oregon Energy Risk Profile.” Before it was taken down (to avoid embarrassing Democrat legislators?), this information was available for perusal:

SOURCE                  ENERGY USED              RATED CAPACITY

Coal                            2.6 TWh                               .6 GW

Hydro                        30.3 TWh                             8.4 GW

Natural Gas              20.9 TWh                              4.4 GW

Wind & Solar             7.2 TWh                              3.8 GW

TWh = terawatt-hour (1 terawatt-hour = 3.6 x 10^15 J)

GW = gigawatts (10^9 multiple)

Total electric energy consumed in 2020 was listed as 51,940 GWh = 1.86984 x 10^17 J

Total rated capacity excluding wind and solar is 13.4 GW = 4.22583 x 10^17 J

So, without solar and wind, we were at the ratio of these numbers or 1.86984/4.22583 = 44.2% or 44.2% of rated capacity.

The total number of Oregon vehicles can be obtained from this chart. Oregon has 1,424,799 motor vehicles registered and about 32,000 of those are electric. Let’s say that, because Oregon has a lot of environmental loons, over the next 10 years the total electric vehicle registrations climb to 50% of this value, or 712,400 electric cars by 2030. I checked with my electrician and Tesla and learned that if you buy one of these cars and want anywhere close to a reasonable charge time, you will need to have a special house charging outlet made that will use your two-phase 120V incoming lines converted to 240V with a 50-amp circuit.

Using that connection, the maximum charge limit of 8,110 watts can be reached to charge your average 75 kWh Tesla battery, which with this circuit will take 9.25 hours to charge from 0-100%, and roughly half the time for 50-100% and so forth. At a 100% charge, you get 315 miles of driving excluding energy use for lights, heat or entertainment, but that takes available miles away from this total.

I don’t have an exact number to estimate the number of electric vehicles that would be charging continuously on the grid given this information, but I think 30% is a reasonable estimate. Using this number, we would have 213,720 vehicles charging continuously and using this power. In one year, that would equal .546604 x10^17 J.

If we take this number and add it to the 2020 power consumption, we are then at 2.41644 x10^17J / 4.22583 x10^17 J = 57.2% of rated capacity excluding solar and wind.

Now let’s take out coal and natural gas and add solar and wind into the hydro mix as the Oregon Legislature plans:

That changes the numbers substantially as we get 2.41644 x 10^17 J / 2.90822 x 10^17 J = 83.1% of rated capacity. Now in this calculation, I did NOT use the rated capacity for solar and wind because the available power NEVER reaches rated capacity. The true capacity is strictly a function of earth latitude and our yearly climate statistics of cloud cover and wind.

I compared last year’s generated number of solar and wind to the 2014 table listed below from that link, and the numbers are nearly identical proving the true available generated power is only approximately 22% of the rated maximum, therefore .25920 x 10^17 J for the 2020 year. This should be good for 2030 unless a huge amount of solar and wind is added which will be incredibly expensive, and which would go directly to the cost of generating a kilowatt-hour of energy.

And that will blow up in the face of electric vehicle owners as the cost of a Tesla battery recharge could approach $ 150.00. Right now, PGE is charging 50 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity. At $2.00 per kilowatt-hour, it would cost $150.00 to charge a Tesla battery for 315 miles MINUS lights, heat, and entertainment. Here is the 2014 table.

The lesson from all of this is that the total electric consumption in this state will approach 85% of rated capacity if the Oregon Legislature continues to mess up our electric grid as planned. Also, remember that this number doesn’t show us the equation that would graph the variable load on the grid through time which would have daytime peaks and nighttime minimums that rise above and below the mean consumption loading for a day. Therefore, even at 85% of capacity, peak loading could exceed capacity causing brown-outs and electric use rationing, just like in California.

I also submit because of this that with the increasing population and further demands by the Legislature that natural gas heat and use for cooking will be banned from all new homes, and instead, require electric ranges and heat, that we are headed for disaster. These calculations don’t even consider those additions or considerations but would certainly push the peak loads above rated capacity on the electric grid.

Considering what we now know about the Covid-19 lies used to lock us down and attempt forced vaccinations, it has become very clear why the political class entertains this insanity. They MUST know that by doing this they will cause the price of electric energy generation to rocket upwards rapidly in addition to creating shortages and energy rationing. This they apparently love, as it will then become just another opportunity to control each of us individually.

By creating electrical shortages, the resulting rationing will lead to programs that determine who gets to drive a car on a certain day and who must use public transportation, as well as what you can set your thermostat to for heating or air conditioning – all in the name of “saving the planet.”

And if you have adequately brainwashed our youth with the lies they continually are told through public education and media about the climate (thanks to those incompetents like Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, Gavin Schmidt, Phil Mote, etc.), this just might work.

These people do not care about our standard of living or what they are doing to the dollar and financial system. That is also apparent from their cutting off our energy independence and getting radical Board seats occupied by climate loons such as those just seated at Exxon Mobil, as well as assigning ESG (Environmental and Social Governance) scoring and standards to these companies and all others in America.

The idea behind setting this scoring system will determine borrowing ability from major banks as well as creating a dictatorial relationship with corporations that calls John Q Citizen (not remotely connected to any business) a “stakeholder” whose position becomes more important than a shareowner as they intend to make citizens “victims” of corporate profit by calling it greed and social irresponsibility.

The only “cure” will be for private companies to give away their profits to “social justice and equity” positions by creating programs that redistribute profits to the creation of programs like this that will take priority over dividends and R&D. If a corporation doesn’t do this, their “bad governance” will have penalties handed down to it through banks as well as pressure through “environmental justice” groups that will give bad “public relations” scores to these companies.

This, of course, will include diversity hiring which will restrict any company from hiring the best available people on the basis of merit, accomplishments, and experience. This is part of their plan to topple the capitalist system in the United States. It is the China model of communism.

This country has been infected with radical communists in our university system and their ties to important positions in government and the criminal justice system. It’s very plain for me to see that the Biden regime is deliberately attempting to destroy the economic engine of this country and force us into a globalist system they are inventing on the fly.

If they succeed and we don’t stop them now, this is going to have profound consequences to all freedom-loving people and the standard of living throughout the free world.

Conclusion. Consider all of the America Last decisions that The Hologram and his minions have taken since Inauguration Day in January in the context of Chuck Wiese’s warning in the last paragraphs of his email above.

He is spot on and has summarized the Left’s plan of action aimed at destroying the American economy by substituting totalitarian controls associated with implementing their “Green New Deal” for our free-market economy with abundant and inexpensive energy resources from which we have all benefitted since the US was founded.

Is it any wonder that rural counties in Oregon want to secede and join Idaho to escape the inevitable Orwellian dystopia that will result from Oregon Democrats’ green dreams?

The end.

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