Is anyone stupid enough to believe the rumor that wind and solar generators can provide consumers with reliable electricity that is cheaper than electricity generated from fossil fuels? It hardly takes much thought to realize that the wind and the sun don’t work when it’s calm and dark, as is often the case, and especially in winter, when it’s also often cold. As a result, a wind/solar system needs total redundancy, or storage instead — which adds to and multiplies costs. Certainly, our political leaders and leading energy experts are fully aware of these and will not attempt to mislead the public about the cost of electricity from a system that is primarily wind/ sun.
If you think so, you must have missed yesterday’s State of the Union Address. President Biden is also not alone in selling the absurd illusion of cheap electricity from wind and solar. The internet is awash with seemingly authoritative voices who claim with full confidence that wind and solar generators are the solution to providing cheaper electricity to consumers.
No numbers indicate failed experiments in places like Germany, the UK and California seem to gain any traction. We need to ask for a demonstration project of a fully solar/wind power system so that the full cost can be shown for all to see.
So there was President Biden last night talk about his amazing green energy plan.
Look, the Inflation Reduction Act is also the most important investment ever to tackle the climate crisis. Reduce utility billsCreate jobs for Americans and lead the world to a clean energy future.
It contradicts reality so dramatically that it’s almost unfair to call it a “lie”. In Germany and the UK, energy transition fantasies have resulted in electricity bills three times or more than the US average, and continue to rise, and millions of people paying money falls into energy poverty. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why costs are exploding. They can build thousands of wind turbines and solar panels, but they cannot eliminate any controllable power plants because they are all needed for redundancy. So now they are paying for two duplicate systems. They then have to pay factories that can maneuver enough to cover their capital costs half the time. They then have to buy fossil fuels as a backup on spot markets where production is restricted, such as a ban on oil extraction.
But like I said, it’s not just President Biden that’s too stupid to figure this out. Consider Mark Z. Jacobson, Professor at Stanford and tireless promoter of his WWS (water, wind, and solar) system as the “low-cost” way of the future. No amount of exposure to Jacobson’s models can stop him from repeating the same ludicrous claims over and over again. He had another shot yesterday in the Guardian, headline “We don’t need ‘miracle’ technologies to fix the climate. Now we have the tools:
Wind, water and solar energy is cheap, efficient and green. We don’t need experimental or risky energies to save our planet.
Jacobson continued with endless bullshit stories about how his imaginary system could provide electricity at low cost. Excerpts:
When combined with electricity storage, heat storage, cold storage and hydrogen storage; techniques to encourage people to change the time to use electricity (to meet demand); good link power transmission system; and convenient and efficient electrical appliances, such as heat pumps, induction cookers, electric vehicles and electric furnaces for industry, WWS can solve the enormous problems associated with climate change at a fraction of the cost. Low fees worldwide.
Are there demonstration projects of any size — small, medium or large — to back up these claims that such a futuristic system would be “low cost”? Absolutely not. I could say that anyone with half a brain knows that Jacobson is a quack. But then we have our President, not to mention the entire federal bureaucracy backed by trillions of dollars in annual taxpayer dollars, buying into his nonsense.
No one is happier than I am to see a demonstration project under construction showing that wind and solar can provide reliable electricity at low cost. Unfortunately, I know too much about the subject to think that is possible, or even remotely possible.
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