{"id":63733,"date":"2022-10-08T06:18:25","date_gmt":"2022-10-08T11:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63733"},"modified":"2022-10-08T06:18:25","modified_gmt":"2022-10-08T11:18:25","slug":"the-renewable-energy-paradox-a-more-costly-way-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63733","title":{"rendered":"The Renewable Energy \u2018Paradox\u2019: A More Costly Way Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Michael<\/a><\/div>\n
Michael Shellenberger, eco-modernist and author of “Apocalypse Never,” speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Sydney, Australia on Oct. 1, 2022. (Horace Young\/Epoch Times)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Renewable Energy \u2018Paradox\u2019: A More Costly Way Forward<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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A California-based\u00a0leading eco-modernist has disputed the widespread claim that renewables are a cheap and clean energy source, arguing that it\u2019s the opposite.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael Shellenberger<\/a>, founder of Environmental Progress, said one of the \u201cmost misleading ways that renewable salespeople sell their technology\u201d is they claim the electricity produced by wind and solar is cheaper.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the paradox about renewable energy is when deployed at scale, they actually make electricity production more expensive, Shellenberger told CPAC Australia in Sydney on Oct. 1.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are basically two reasons,\u201d he said, \u201cIt requires more machines, more backup power generators, more transmission systems, and more people to manage the chaos of an electrical grid with a large amount of unreliable weather-dependent energy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shellenberger pointed to a prediction by German economist Leon Hirth\u00a0that the economic value of wind and solar declines significantly as they take up a larger proportion of the electricity grid.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In\u00a0a paper for Energy Policy<\/a>\u00a0in 2013, Hirth\u00a0estimated that when wind turbine power generation comprises 30 percent of the grid, its value declines by 40 percent; while solar power\u2019s value declines by 50 percent when it reaches 15 percent.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe reason is easy to understand,\u201d Shellenberger noted, \u201cSolar and wind produce too much energy when you don\u2019t need them and not enough energy when you do, and both of those impose costs on the electrical grid.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Epoch<\/a>
Steam rises from cooling towers of the Neurath coal-fired power plant as wind turbines spin over a field of rapeseed on May 05, 2022 near Bedburg, Germany. (Photo by Andreas Rentz\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He said the ideal situation was for the electricity supply to keep up with demand at \u201call times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Shellenberger, eco-modernist and author of “Apocalypse Never,” speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Sydney, Australia on Oct. 1, 2022. (Horace Young\/Epoch Times) The Renewable Energy \u2018Paradox\u2019: A More Costly Way Forward A California-based\u00a0leading eco-modernist has disputed the widespread claim that renewables are a cheap and clean energy source, arguing that it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[25823,32963,6089,674,16350],"class_list":["post-63733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-michael-shellenberger","tag-nina-nguyen","tag-paradox","tag-renewable-energy","tag-the-epoch-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63734,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63733\/revisions\/63734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}