America’s Energy Priorities Make No Sense

Wind and solar, a/k/a, “renewable” sources, produce energy less than half the time at many times the cost of full-time nuclear and/or conventional carbon-based energy.

Nonetheless, in the American left’s “green” fantasy world, force feeding the nation renewables somehow equals “following the science.”

Robert Bryce demolishes their fantasies at the Substack website:

“You’ve no doubt heard them: renewables are cheap and getting cheaper, wind and solar energy are the future, and the main reason that conservatives and knuckle-dragging rural landowners are opposing massive renewable projects all across America is that they don’t understand ‘science.’

“That’s the spin. Here’s the reality: the conspiracy against wind and solar is one of basic math and simple physics. It’s not conservatives who are wrong on ‘science,’ it’s [the] liberals…in the climate claque who refuse to recognize (or even discuss) the physical limits on our energy and power networks.”

Wind and solar both require massive amounts of raw materials, some exotic – manganese, chromium, cobalt, molybdenum, zinc and rare earths – that coal, natural gas and clean nuclear energy do not.

Yet “environmental activists” are willing to permit history’s largest, least environmentally-friendly mining, manufacturing, transportation and construction projects to source the raw materials necessary to produce them all, many from hostile regimes, some using child and/or forced labor.

Wind and solar aren’t America’s first renewable boondoggles. The nation has been struggling with the impractical realities of biofuel for years.

Bryce: “[C]orn ethanol and other biofuels…have a power density of about 0.1 watt per square meter. Counteracting that paltry power density requires lots of other resources, including fertilizer, diesel fuel, water, and staggering amounts of land.

In 2021, Bloomberg reported that ‘Two-thirds of America’s total energy footprint is devoted to transportation fuels produced from agricultural crops, primarily corn grown for ethanol. It requires more land than all other power sources combined. … [B]iofuels require the cultivation of about 80,000 square miles of cropland,…an area bigger than the state of Nebraska.’”

Wind and solar aren’t much better. Wind energy power density per square meter is 1; solar is 10.

It would take a 6.7 million acre wind farm to produce the same amount of power that one nuclear plant can on 230,000 acres and a natural gas plant can on 150,000.

Bryce: “[I]t would take the land equal to two entire Californias “to meet America’s current electricity needs with wind energy.” Furthermore, America’s current needs would require more than 7 billion solar panels.

And, energy demands increase annually.

Meanwhile, offshore wind energy is facing a financial crisis as costs continue to rise. Inflation in components and labor costs, along with rising interest rates, has led to a 57 percent increase in the costs of U.S. offshore wind projects since 2021.

Soaring commodity prices have also increased the cost of making onshore wind turbines. By one estimate, the cost of building a wind turbine has surged by 38 percent over the past two years.

Siemens Energy recently reported a $2.4 billion loss on its wind business in a single quarter, and the company expects to lose $4.9 billion in 2023. Other manufacturers/wind farm builders are cancelling projects or begging for increased government subsidies.

Mark P. Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science reports:

“With today’s technology, $1 million worth of utility-scale solar panels will produce about 40 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) over a 30-year operating period. A similar metric is true for wind: $1 million worth of a modern wind turbine produces 55 million kWh over the same 30 years.

“Meanwhile, $1 million worth of hardware for a shale rig will produce enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million.”

In fact, renewable energy projects are such losing propositions that even certain governments are abandoning them.

No current renewable energy scheme will pass a comprehensive, objective cost/benefit analysis.

Alt-energy activists don’t care that American taxpayers and consumers are already shelling out billions of dollars annually for inadequate energy technologies that enrich China, make renewable industry insiders wealthy, and fill politicians’ campaign coffers, while hammering household budgets, destabilizing our power grid, starving practical energy sources and limiting the potential for genuine energy developments.

America’s left-liberal energy policies make no sense at all – unless their inevitable economic and societal damage is deliberate…

https://www.pottsmerc.com/2023/10/23/jerry-shenk-americas-energy-priorities-make-no-sense/