The latest report from New York state’s grid operator is a master class in everything wrong with the Western world’s approach to climate change.
That is: everything wrong with an approach that consists of throwing money at green business interests in defiance of any practical consideration.
If you think something else is going on, such as abating climate change, think again. [bold, links added]
To meet a legislated goal of emissions-free electricity by 2040, New York will need up to 45 gigawatts of what it delicately calls DEFRs, or dispatchable emissions-free resources.
Not only is that more than the state’s total current generating capacity of 37 gigawatts, these DEFRs, which are carbon-free like wind and solar yet not interruptible like wind and solar, don’t exist and have no prospect of existing in the next decade.
Starting very much sooner than 2040, New York’s real choice will be Third World electricity reliability vs. paying fossil-fuel operators large fees to keep their plants up and running in a highly inefficient part-time fashion.
Many involved in the state’s energy “transition” might question whether purging the last 10% or 5% of fossil fuels from the system is worth the exorbitant cost. Don’t expect anyone to admit the bigger problem: The transition won’t likely do much to reduce global emissions.
This is the great unmentionable. When New Yorkers use less coal, oil, or gasoline because of environmental mandates, the market price transmits the benefit to other global users, who then use more.
Even more unspeakable is the corollary: Emission-spewing activities simply relocate from one part of the world to another.
China’s emissions growth, from half the U.S.’s to almost 300% of the U.S.’s in 30 years, is partly the product of a transplant of emissions from the U.S. and Europe.
If pressed, Biden officials will privately revert to gobbledygook about carbon taxes that appear immaculately without anyone having to advocate them.
The media fill the gap with wishful thinking and Soviet econometrics, confusing inputs with outputs. Yes, worldwide investment in renewables in the past two years has exceeded investment in fossil fuels.
Supposedly this proves fossil fuels are on their way out. No, it proves fossil fuels are a better deal, consuming less investment to meet their share of the world’s growing power needs.
Again, the Biden administration quietly acknowledges the truth. Its own studies show that solar delivers 25% of its rated output in electricity, wind 35%, and natural gas 57%.
As recently as 2010, coal delivered 67% but has fallen precipitously to 40%. Why? According to the National Energy Technology Laboratory, America’s coal plants increasingly are operated in inefficient, stop-start fashion to support wind and solar, magnifying the national risk of breakdowns and blackouts, which are also highlighted in the New York state report.
New England may well experience blackouts this winter. For the Europeans, of course, everything is worse, having pretended that generous wind and solar handouts made them green while relying on cheap Russian gas to slow the transfer of heavy industry to China. Kaboom.
The ironies are not small. Profit-oriented energy providers already have the incentive to incorporate low-cost solar and wind in ways that meet customer demand for cheap, reliable energy.
It’s the pie-in-the-sky mandates concocted by legislators that drive utilities to adopt renewables in senseless ways unless the goal is to make every homeowner buy a carbon-spewing emergency generator.
For another day is the role of the Obama administration’s calculations about the political salability of green subsidies vs. carbon taxes; how climate change became a politics of personal transformation and utopianism; and the high priestess Greta.
h/t Steve B.
Read rest at WSJ
Years ago their was a product with the slogan, ‘Does the job it’s supposed to do.” Both sustainables and Cov vaxes “Don’t do the job they’re supposed to do.”
The biggest lie comes from the politicians who say that the solution to power shortages is more renewables, that we’ll be okay, given more time and money . Sadly, the dependable coal-fired generators are being run into the ground. Natural gas will get more and more expensive. Meanwhile, social media are censoring factual discussion about how and where we end up, and the Green anarchists are bragging about it.
Of course more renewables is the answer. When the wind isn’t blowing don’t three wind turbines produce more power than one? At night or when they are covered with snow don’t three solar panels produce more power than one?
The theme with this Administration is “mandates.” Forget about market forces, individual choice & personal liberties. In “Biden World,” the central planners are ALWAYS the smartest folks in the room. Now the government wants to mandate the course of the “energy transition.” Rather than following the requisite energy imperatives of cost, density, scale & sustainability, we have veered off on the course of environmental justice & attendant “green ideology.” Let me CLUE IN the activists, government know it alls & media enablers. If you want to see the end product of your current policies, look to Europe. We face the SAME fate of energy POVERTY if we don’t start having an intelligent, fully informed & rational discussion of national energy policy. Get as CRAZY as you want, but alweays remember. The government can mandate we will “openly defy gravity by X Date.” That doesn’t mean they can IMPLEMENT it…
The Soviet Union is an excellent example of how mandates fail. There is one example that shows this very well. A nail factory received a mandate to produce a certain number of nails. It responded by producing a large number of very small nails. The mandate was change to a making a nails that totaled a certain weight. The factory then made very large nails. In both cases it failed to make what the country needed. Be it nails or energy, the best way to mange it is to let the free market operate.
I’m continually amazed at just how stupid climate activist are. I guess I shouldn’t be. They believe in doomsday despite the fact that the UN climate models are out of touch with real world data. They believe in carbon dioxide driven warming despite the fact that we are beyond the saturation point of CO2 for that to occur. What I’m talking about in this comment is the belief that they have that dispatchable emissions-free resources can exist. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Batteries on the scale needed for power grids are unaffordable and require excessive rare earth mineral. The only possible solutions are fossil fuel backup which isn’t net zero, or blackouts.