Amidst the clamor surrounding the intensive use of coal in China and India, one may not realize that these nations have some of the world’s largest renewable energy installations. In fact, I hail from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu which is often compared to Scandinavia for its large number of wind farms. Accounting for 25 percent of the country’s wind capacity, the state has the largest share of such generating assets in a nation of 1.3 billion people. Yet even Tamil Nadu relies heavily … [Read more...]
Wind Industry: Exploitation of the Weak by the Powerful
Tucker Carlson’s new documentary Blown Away: The People vs Wind Power, first aired October 22. It’s a devastating critique of the wind-power industry. The politics, the economics, the energy reliability, the health impacts—these and more figure into Carlson’s analysis. The conclusion: wind power is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, bad for ordinary people, and good only for its owners, who benefit from tax subsidies that make an otherwise unprofitable industry highly profitable. … [Read more...]
How the Wind Industry Gains by Losing
So you want to make a profit by selling what you produce. What do you do? Sell it for more than it costs you. But that's so old fashioned! Nowadays, you just get into the wind industry. You find state or local policymakers eager to virtue signal by supporting your renewable-, zero-carbon energy tech. And you get them to sign a contract that guarantees you get positive payment for your product even when its market price is negative. Rate- and taxpayers in Georgetown, TX, a small town … [Read more...]
Why Can’t Solar Provide Abundant, Affordable Electricity?
Nuclear engineer James H. Rust, over at the Heartland Institute, has just posted a clear, concise, factual piece refuting the claim that there's a "dirty war" to stop expansion of solar energy in the United States. I won't get into the stuff about the "dirty war"---which is entirely bogus, and Rust demonstrates just why---but thought it helpful to pass on just a little of the factual information about why solar has such difficulty competing with nuclear and fossil fuels. Rust writes: In the … [Read more...]
How Economically Competitive is “Renewable Energy”?
Condemnation's always most credible when issued by a supporter. That's what the renewable energy sector got from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's U.S. Renewable Portfolio Standards 2016 Annual Status Report, which states right in its highlights: "More than half of all growth in renewable electricity (RE) generation (60%) and capacity (57%) since 2000 is associated with state RPS requirements." In short, non-hydro renewable energy---wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass---cannot … [Read more...]
Getting Down to Nitty Gritty: Why Wind and Solar Threaten Electricity Grids and People’s Health and Safety
Rud Istvan has a very instructive article at Judith Curry's Climate Etc. blog about the challenges of bring wind and solar power into use through electricity grids. Bottom line: Their intermittency greatly increases the costs of electricity while reducing its reliability, bringing threats to people's health and safety wherever they begin to make up a significant percentage of total power supplied to the grid. The higher the renewable penetration, the greater this intermittency burden becomes. … [Read more...]
