Let me begin this contemplation by stating that I do not hate ‘renewables’ nor am I a fossil fuel industry shill (the two common accusations lobbed at me whenever I criticise the notion of a ‘green/clean’ energy future). I have constructed my family’s 3.35 kW solar photovoltaic system from the ground up.
It consists of a variety of 100 and 150 watt panels placed upon our deck gazebo and two-car garage, lots of copper connectors, numerous charge controllers and deep cycle batteries (whose efficiency suffers in our Canadian winters due to their storage in our garage that despite being insulated is not heated and can get quite cold), and several inverters. What I am, I like to believe, is a realist that recognises this system’s limitations and implications for our world but especially for those colder-climate regions.
Here are a couple of recent pictures of part of our system, taken this past summer followed by one during the previous winter (those are 100 watt panels in the photo; there are 15 more panels on the garage directly behind the gazebo — 11 x 100 watt and 5 x 150 watt — and another 5 x 100 watt panels on the gazebo roof’s other side to capture late evening rays during our summers):
Here are my pre-gazebo versions that allowed me to periodically alter the angle of numerous smaller panels (40 watt) to better capture direct light:
Let me be frank, I truly believe that ‘clean/green’ energy is a misnomer; in fact, it’s a significant distortion of language that has been employed as a marketing scheme to sell products and a virtue-signalling myth to keep these products flowing to consumers. Not only does no such animal exist, but the complex narratives we’ve weaved about it are rife with the cognitive distortions of denial and bargaining, and heavily influenced by Big Money propaganda.
These stories we are told about a ‘clean/green’ energy future completely overlook a number of inconvenient facts.
First, the dominant narrative rarely if ever discusses all the fossil fuels that would be required to build out the non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies’ infrastructure and its products. Yes, there are arguments that ‘renewables’ can supply the energy required to replace these fossil fuel inputs. But this bargaining strategy ignores that almost all evidence/data supporting this perspective is dependent upon small-scale pilot projects that have not been and very likely will never be scaled up due to both technological and economic impediments. The tale is merely one of theoretical ‘possibilities’, predicated upon many as-yet-to-be-hatched chickens.
It’s also likely no coincidence that much (most?) of the capital funding going into ‘renewables’ and its widespread marketing campaign is being supplied by the corporate energy interests of Big Oil[1] and Wall Street Banks (who also fund Big Oil)[2].
The more damning issue, at least from a non-economic perspective (but has gargantuan economic implications if we were ever to deal with it properly — which we don’t), is the significant ecological systems destruction that would result from such a massive undertaking — to say little of the sociological/cultural implications for many of the regions home to the mineral extraction sites. Not only is there ample bargaining in this story as well — we can develop ‘cleaner’ means of doing business and ones that will benefit impacted peoples — but A LOT of denial regarding the significant environmental impacts (that mostly happen in faraway places that are out of sight — and therefore out of mind — and that can sometimes take years to manifest themselves).
The ‘green/clean’ energy-based, utopian future appears increasingly to have become a grand and extremely attractive narrative which its adherents have argued is the ONLY means of ‘solving’ our fossil fuel addiction. It reduces significantly the anxiety-provoking thoughts that accompany a realisation that humanity have severely overshot the natural carrying capacity of the planet, destroying it and untold numbers of other species, and faces a less than utopian future — to say the least. And it avoids, through the use of a tight Overton Window, the much more difficult option of a gargantuan ‘powering down’ our so-called ‘advanced’ economies and mitigating our overshoot in ways that most people (particularly in these ‘advanced’ economies) would not readily accept.”
But it also happens to bring with it a system of industrial production that sustains the status quo power and wealth structures. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the ruling caste of our planet is increasingly throwing its support behind this ‘solution’ to our energy ‘problem’. And, unfortunately, it seems a lot of very well-intentioned people and groups are being swayed by the widespread propaganda because after all who doesn’t want to avoid huge sacrifices and disruptions to the energy slaves and technological conveniences that provide our ‘advanced’ status.
“Keeping at the forefront of one’s thinking the fact that the future is unknowable, unpredictable, and full of unknown unknowns, anything is possible. But I would argue we do ourselves no favours in participating in and believing without full skepticism our various narratives about endless growth and technological ingenuity as the saviours that will make our utopian dreams/wishes of a ‘clean/green’ future come true.
Such magical thinking keeps us on a trajectory that increasingly is looking to be suicidal in nature, or, at the most promising, deeply ‘disappointing’ and broadly chaotic/catastrophic.”
P.S.
The solar photovoltaic system I have constructed for many thousands of dollars (Canadian) supplies very little in the way of sustained power for our household. I mainly rely upon it as a marginal emergency backup system during our periodic power grid losses. It was capable of running a refrigerator/freezer in our garage for about 3 days during a blackout we experienced due to a devastating derecho that hit most of Ontario, Canada this past spring, before the battery system was drained and required several days to recharge. We have come to rely far more on the gas/propane generators we have. With no other source of home heating as this time, I hate to think of what we would do if our natural gas heating system was down during one of our long, Canadian winters. I know that our solar-based system would not be of much use in that situation.
The solar industry in California is facing significant headwinds following the implementation of a new policy in April, which reduced incentives that had encouraged homeowners to install solar systems.
Bloomberg reports the California Solar & Storage Association has found about 63% of its 400 solar installer members have reported cash flow issues because the new policy crushed consumer demand.
Since last April, sales of rooftop solar systems across the state have crashed 85% in the most recent months of 2023 compared to similar periods one year before, according to solar firm Ohm Analytics.
On Wednesday, California Solar and Storage Association Executive Director Bernadette Del Chiaro told an audience at the Intersolar North America conference in San Diego that 25 to 30 solar companies have already closed shop or abandoned the state.
“We are worried about the next two months,” she said. “We think a lot more fallout may be coming.”
Besides a reduction in incentives, higher interest rates and expensive panels have also curbed demand. This means that solar installers have a dismal pipeline of work through the year’s first half.
Meanwhile, a Bloomberg MLIV Pulse survey of professional and retail investors from late last year found the green energy downturn will last well into 2024.
iShares Global Clean Energy ETF has nearly roundtriped Covid lows.
The ownership portfolio of the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF shows solar, wind, and hydrogen stocks have been clubbed like a baby seal over the past year.
Mississippi residents are consistently told that renewable energy sources, like solar panels, are now the lowest-cost ways to generate electricity, but these claims are based on creative accounting gimmicks that only examine a small portion of the expenses incurred to integrate solar onto the grid while excluding many others.
When these hidden expenses are accounted for, it becomes obvious that solar is much more expensive than Mississippi’s existing coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants and that adding more solar will increase electricity prices for the families and businesses that rely upon it. One of the most common ways of estimating the cost of generating electricity from different types of power plants is a metric called the Levelized Cost of Energy, or LCOE.
The LCOE is an estimate of the long-term average cost of producing electricity from a power plant. These values are estimated by taking the costs of the plant, such as the money needed to build and operate it, fuel costs, and the cost to borrow money, and dividing them by the amount of electricity generated by the plant (generally megawatt hours) over its useful lifetime.
In other words, LCOE estimates are essentially like calculating the cost of your car on a per-mile-driven basis after accounting for expenses like initial capital investment, loan and insurance payments, fuel costs, and maintenance.
We can estimate the LCOE of new solar facilities in Mississippi by using overnight capital cost estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Electricity Market Module and other state-specific factors. We can then compare the cost of solar to the real-world cost data for the coal and natural gas generators at the Victor J. Daniel Jr. Generating Plant, and the Grand Gulf nuclear power plant using the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Form 1 database.
We term an energy source “renewable” when the energy provided is powered by the sun — wind and solar, or powered by gravitational forces — tidal. However, the energy collectors are not renewable.
Solar
Solar panels must be replaced every 30 to 40 years because solar panels degrade efficiency by about 1% per year. If we covered the entire state of Arizona with solar panels, they would produce enough electricity to power the world at our current level of demand — but they would have to be replaced every 30–40 years.
Presently one US company has a recycling program for their solar panels. The cost of recycling is $20 to $30 per panel. Taking the panels to the nearest landfill cost only $1 to $2 per panel. In addition to the devastating waste produced by solar panels, they are manufactured from finite materials found under the Earth — limited materials whose mining disrupts and poisons the ecosystem.
By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually — WIRED
Over half of the industrial processes involving heat cannot be performed by electricity. Electricity alone can not produce the high temperatures necessary. The hottest industrial operations performed by electricity are limited to 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit. The manufacturing process for solar panels involved temperatures between 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit and 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit — meaning it takes fossil fuels to build solar panels. No procedures exist to build them any other way.
Wind
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Solar energy comes to Earthlings in many ways. Ancient Persians used passive solar architecture. East Africans about the same time funneled cool ocean wind through tunnels to cool themselves.
Now at long last, solar energy is outpacing new fossil fuel and nuclear facilities on price, environmental safety, and speed of installation.
One use of solar that has not received enough attention is drying clothes with clotheslines or clothes racks. Before global warming and our climate crisis became a public concern, some local governments banned backyard clotheslines as community eyesores. Fortunately, 20 states have passed “Right to Dry Laws” that allow people to use this simple low-tech and appropriate technology to reduce fuel consumption.
A big booster of hang-drying your laundry is environmentalist Joe Wachunas from Portland, Oregon. Twenty years ago, while traveling as an exchange student in Italy, he learned that only three percent of Italian households owned a dryer. Italians, he noticed, dried their clothes on clotheslines, high-rise balconies, or in open windows catching sun and cross breezes.
Wachunas has competed against dryers, taking only eight minutes longer to hang up a load of clothes than it takes to load a dryer, (not to mention a trip to and from a laundromat). Also, by line-drying, he estimates a savings of $600 a year per family, and your air-dried materials will last longer and shrink less.
As you might think, the great majority of people in the US use a clothes dryer. About 80 percent of Americans use dryers that gobble up more electricity in a household than other appliances (except for refrigerators). These folks will find moving to clean and green drying has many benefits.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Leftists fantasize that before long, we can dispense with all reliable energy sources–coal, natural gas, nuclear, even hydro–and run our society entirely on wind and solar, two forms of energy that have been obsolete for 150 years.
How can this be, since wind turbines only produce electricity when the wind is blowing sufficiently, which is around 40% of the time, and solar only works when the sun is shining and the panels are not covered in ice and snow–in a northern climate, something like 18% of the time? Obviously the Greenies have a problem. Today, their problem is solved by building natural gas plants that carry the load when wind and solar are AWOL–which is to say, a large majority of the time. Of course, the natural gas plants are dispatchable, which means they can produce energy reliably, at will, 24/7. Which raises the obvious question: if we have to build fully-capable natural gas plants to make wind and solar sort-of work, some of the time, what the heck to we need the wind and solar for?
The truthful answer to that question has nothing to do with the laws of physics, and everything to do with the laws of money. But the Left has another answer: batteries! It looks forward to the day when batteries will store the output of wind turbines and solar panels and thereby turn unreliable, intermittent energy into electricity that you can count on to turn on your lights when you flip the switch.
At American Experiment.org, my colleague Isaac Orr demolishes the Green New Deal fantasy. One basic problem is that wind turbines don’t work when the weather gets cold, which can be fatal in the North, especially when we are experiencing a brutal cold snap:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Barely a week after Davos luminaries met with world leaders and Silicon Valley oligarchs to plot their latest phase of the Great Reset, the underlying provenance of their entire ‘climate emergency’ thesis is still struggling to correspond with reality.
Their much-celebrated “Zero Carbon” agenda which virtue-signaling leaders like Justin Trudeau, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden are currently advocating for – is proving to be a lot more difficult to achieve in reality than it is on their elaborate UN Agenda 2030 Powerpoint slides, computer modeled projections and Zoom calls.
No one is being hit with this sobering reality more than the Europe’s premier green trailblazer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country is currently in the grips of Europe’s record-breaking freeze this winter.
Germany’s held up as the world’s wind and solar capital. But, at the moment, the ‘green’ stuff can’t be purchased, at any price.
Its millions of solar panels are blanketed in snow and ice and breathless, freezing weather is encouraging its 30,000 wind turbines to do absolutely nothing, at all. [Note: don’t forget about the constant supply of electricity from the grid that these things chew up heating their internal workings so they don’t freeze up solid!]
So much for the ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future – aka the ‘Energiewende’.
Despite being the object of consternation and much vilification over the last 20 years, Germany’s coal-fired plants are now being appreciated for what they are: truly meaningful power generation sources, available on demand, whatever the weather. With a Nationwide blackout a heartbeat away, the German obsession with unreliable wind and solar is like a time bomb set to explode.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Over the past two centuries, millions of dedicated people – revolutionaries, activists, politicians, and theorists – have been unable to curb the disastrous and increasingly globalised trajectory of economic polarisation and ecological degradation. This is perhaps because we are utterly trapped in flawed ways of thinking about technology and economy – as the current discourse on climate change shows.
Rising greenhouse gas emissions are not just generating climate change. They are giving more and more of us climate anxiety. Doomsday scenarios are capturing the headlines at an accelerating rate. Scientists from all over the world tell us that emissions in ten years must be half of what they were ten years ago, or we face apocalypse. School children like Greta Thunberg and activist movements like Extinction Rebellion are demanding that we panic. And rightly so. But what should we do to avoid disaster?
Most scientists, politicians, and business leaders tend to put their hope in technological progress. Regardless of ideology, there is a widespread expectation that new technologies will replace fossil fuels by harnessing renewable energy such as solar and wind. Many also trust that there will be technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and for “geoengineering” the Earth’s climate. The common denominator in these visions is the faith that we can save modern civilisation if we shift to new technologies. But “technology” is not a magic wand. It requires a lot of money, which means claims on labour and resources from other areas. We tend to forget this crucial fact.
I would argue that the way we take conventional “all-purpose” money for granted is the main reason why we have not understood how advanced technologies are dependent on the appropriation of labour and resources from elsewhere.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The solar industry has been soaring over the past several years. The US is now home to some two million solar installations. Solar energy now provides about a fifth of California’s power and it makes sense that environmentalists champion the industry. Almost a third of the Earth’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the energy sector, so renewable energy sources like this are crucial.
But in a new book, our next guest shows that while “the net social and environmental benefits of solar are uncontested— more jobs, higher quality of life, and much less air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions— the industry supply chain still poses problems for specific communities, ecosystems and landscapes.”
So that’s what I’m here to unpack today with Dustin Mulvaney. He is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at San Jose University and his new book that he’s here to talk about today is called Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice. Thanks so much for being here, Dustin.
DUSTIN MULVANEY: It’s a pleasure to join you. Thank you.
DHARNA NOOR: So, I want to start by talking to you about the conception of solar power. You maintain obviously in this book that solar power plays a really important role in fighting the climate crisis, but you also take a critical look at the political economy of solar. That’s something that’s often missing from environmental movements, because solar has what you call in the book a green halo. It’s sometimes exempt from critical examination. What do you hope that this book will achieve within that broader climate conversation?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In recent news, California legislators have done a gimmick-trick that has earned the state loud applause from the environmentally-minded consumers and activists: California Energy Commission (CEC) recently voted 5-0 to add a new provision to the state’s building code. This includes a requirement that from 2020, all new house and multi-family residences construction of three stories or fewer, along with all major renovations, must be built with rooftop solar panels. Given that the state currently builds ca 113,000 housing units a year, and rising, this should increase significantly already existent solar generation capacity from 15% of the housing stock, currently.
Solar being mandated on virtually all new houses? Sounds like a renewables nirvana, especially given the fact that the state has huge solar generation potential due to its climate. But, as commonly is the case, there is a catch. Or two… or many more… And this means that California’s latest policy mandate may be a poor example to follow, and potentially, a bad policy mistake.
Here are the key reasons.
Rooftop solar is about as effective in reducing emissions as waving a broom into the smog. UC Berkeley’s Severin Borenstein argued this in his note to CEC Commissioner (http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/borenste/cecweisenmiller180509.pdf). Note: Borenstein also alleges that CEC has failed to involve experts in energy economics in its decision making process – something that is not a good policy formation practice.
UC Davis economics professor James Bushnell accused CEC of “regulatory groupthink.” (https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/how-should-we-use-our-roofs/) and offered an alternative to roof solar that can generate far greater environmental benefits. There are, of course, other, more efficient ways for deriding emissions, including: mandating more urban density, raising home and cars efficiency standards, expanding the renewable energy mandate, improving grid efficiencies and transmission expansion, and so on. Once again, CEC did not allow for any independent assessment of the proposed plans economic and environmental impacts.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Buckland is one of a number of projects in remote Alaskan villages that aim to replace expensive diesel with “cheap” solar. Here I examine how much diesel the Buckland array will actually save and how cheap the solar electricity that replaces it will be. The results show that Buckland’s solar array will cut its annual diesel consumption by 3% at most and that any impacts on electricity rates will be imperceptible. If the array’s capacity is expanded to the level where the impacts do become perceptible then electricity rates will probably increase because solar electricity will likely be more expensive than the diesel electricity it replaces. The rationale for the project is therefore questionable (Inset: Buckland Village, Credit NANA regional corporation).
The article on Buckland solar in Blowout Week 252 attracted some interest, so I thought a more detailed review of the project would be in order. As is usual in such cases a number of assumptions have had to be made to complete the review, so the numbers and graphs presented here should be regarded as approximate.
The Figure 1 Google Earth map shows the location of Buckland relative to:
Three nearby native villages. The monthly electricity consumption data from these villages were used to estimate monthly consumption at Buckland.
Fairbanks, the closest place with data from operating solar arrays. These data were used to estimate monthly solar generation at Buckland. Fairbanks is 630km east of Buckland but lies at about the same latitude (64° 50’N vs. 65° 58’N).
Anchorage, the state capital.
Figure 1: Buckland location map
The Buckland solar array:
No specifications or costs for the Buckland array have been published, so I have made the following assumptions:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A $200-billion solar power project that was planned to be the largest solar farm in the world might never happen, government sources from Riyadh told the Wall Street Journal.
The Kingdom earlier this year announced the funding and a partnership with Japanese SoftBank as part of its Vision 2030 economic reform plan that also involves a US$500-billion smart city project.
The solar project would have had installed capacity of 200 GW by 2030 and could have created as many as 100,000 jobs. However, the WSJ sources said, nobody is working on the project and the government is planning another set of renewable energy initiatives, to be made public later this month. Those new initiatives, the sources added, would be more practical.
While some might see the news as a decision made due to changing circumstances—oil prices, for one—others would not need long to recall the shelving of what was to be the biggest IPO in history, of Saudi Aramco. Initially scheduled for the second half of this year, the listing was delayed several times before the delay became indefinite.
Following the oil price collapse from 2014, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince spearheaded a reform drive along with the implementation of some austerity measures that ruffled some public service feathers but were quickly removed once prices began climbing back up. The multibillion-dollar projects are the foundation of this drive. Besides the solar megafarm, there is also the NEOM smart city project, estimated to cost US$500 billion to build.
Earlier this month, the team responsible for the NEOM project, which, by the way should become a tourist magnet, said they had begun environmental, archaeological, and geological surveys of the area where the city should be located.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
It’s a big achievement that highlights a surge in US oil exports, and that shows how the shale boom can make America less reliant on foreign oil.
“It’s a definite milestone. Nobody saw this coming 10 years ago,” said Bob McNally, president of consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group and a former energy official under President George W. Bush. “It’s an unambiguously good thing. It diversifies our dependence from the volatile Middle East.”
Texas is the epicenter of the shale revolution, with soaring production in the oil-rich Permian Basin leading the United States to record output. Rapid technological advances in fracking, the process of unlocking oil and gas deep underground, have dramatically reduced the cost to drill oil in the Permian Basin.
Texas is now on track to produce more oil than either Iran or Iraq. That would make Texas No. 3 in the world if it were a country.
Sounds pretty wonderful, right? Technology advances in the fracking process have enabled the “shale miracle”, resulting in the US producing over 10 million barrels per day for the first time since the 1970s. Think of all the incremental GDP growth that excess oil will power!
If these trends continue, CNN goes on to tell us, the US will become an net energy exporter soon:
US on track to become net energy exporter
The United States still relies on foreign oil — but not as much.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
My years working in corporate strategy taught me that every strategic framework, no matter how complex (some I worked on were hundreds of pages long), boils down to just two things:
Where do you want to go? (Vision)
How are you going to get there? (Resources)
Vision is the easier one by far. You just dream up a grand idea about where you want the company to be at some target future date, Yes, there’s work in assuring that everybody on the management team truly shares and believes in the vision, but that’s a pretty stratightforward sales job for the CEO.
By the way, this same process applies at the individual level, too, for anyone who wants to achieve a major goal by some point in the future. The easy part of the strategy is deciding you want to be thinner, healthier, richer, or more famous.
But the much harder part, for companies and individuals alike, is figuring out ‘How to get there’. There are always fewer resources than one would prefer.
Corporate strategists always wish for more employees to implement the vision, with better training with better skills. Budgets and useful data are always scarcer than desired, as well.
Similar constraints apply to us individuals. Who couldn’t use more motivation, time and money to pursue their goals?
Put together, the right Vision coupled to a reasonably mapped set of Resources can deliver amazing results. Think of the Apollo Moon missions. You have to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there to succeed. That’s pretty straightforward, right?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Recent renewable energy auctions in a number of countries have been won by record low solar and wind bids – proof, according to some media sources, that wind and solar are already cheaper than fossil fuels. This post addresses the question of whether these low bids are realistic and concludes that they probably aren’t. But a detailed assessment of why they aren’t – and why wind and solar auction bids vary so much from country to country – is beyond the scope of a single blog post. Correspondents who can supply country-specific details on these questions are encouraged to provide them.
In recent years auctions have become the vehicle of choice for governments seeking to expand their renewable energy sectors. Instead of setting up generous subsidy schemes and leaving development up to the market, auctions allow governments to specify how much new renewable capacity they want, when they want it by, and in some cases even the time of day over which the power is to be delivered. Auctions, in short, allow governments to plan their transition to renewables in accordance with the targets they have set – always assuming, of course, that they are capable of developing plans that keep the lights on.
The auctions are also often described as being “capacity-neutral”, meaning that bidders can bid coal- or gas- fired power if they want to. As a practical matter, however, wind and/or solar almost always win because of their zero fuel cost and because the costs of matching the intermittent generation from these sources to demand are ignored.
We begin with some historical perspective. Figure 1 shows average wind and solar bid prices between 2010 and 2016, before the most recent round of auctions (data from the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA):
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Buckland is one of a number of projects in remote Alaskan villages that aim to replace expensive diesel with “cheap” solar. Here I examine how much diesel the Buckland array will actually save and how cheap the solar electricity that replaces it will be. The results show that Buckland’s solar array will cut its annual diesel consumption by 3% at most and that any impacts on electricity rates will be imperceptible. If the array’s capacity is expanded to the level where the impacts do become perceptible then electricity rates will probably increase because solar electricity will likely be more expensive than the diesel electricity it replaces. The rationale for the project is therefore questionable (Inset: Buckland Village, Credit NANA regional corporation).
Recent renewable energy auctions in a number of countries have been won by record low solar and wind bids – proof, according to some media sources, that wind and solar are already cheaper than fossil fuels. This post addresses the question of whether these low bids are realistic and concludes that they probably aren’t. But a detailed assessment of why they aren’t – and why wind and solar auction bids vary so much from country to country – is beyond the scope of a single blog post. Correspondents who can supply country-specific details on these questions are encouraged to provide them.
