Tag Archives: Renewable energy

Actions Have Consequences

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The idea of renewable energy sounds wonderful–sunlight should be endless, and wind should be endless. Unfortunately, the sun does not shine all of the time, and the wind does not blow all of the time. That could (and did) create a problem.

On Tuesday, Breitbart reported the following:

Spain’s power network has remained silent on the actual cause of Europe’s worst power blackout in a generation, but has acknowledged that it is “very possible” that a problem with solar power systems may have contributed to the failure.

A freak weather incident was blamed on Monday for a massive power cut that affected the entire Iberian Peninsula, depriving Spain and Portugal of electricity. However, this narrative was quickly questioned by energy industry insiders, and Spain’s national energy company now acknowledges that renewable power failure may have been a contributing factor.

Red Eléctrica (RE), the national energy grid firm, has stated that it has ruled out a cyberattack and insists, “We were able to conclude that there was indeed no intrusion into Red Eléctrica’s control system,” despite the national counter-terrorism prosecutor ordering an inquiry. Judge José Luis Calama has given RE and the national cyber-security centre ten days to compile initial reports into the sabotage hypothesis, reports El País.

While the Spanish media is today full of the effects of yesterday’s total blackout, with 150,000 having to be rescued from underground trains trapped in tunnels and whole areas, including hospitals, left without water as the electric-powered pumps fell silent, the public unable to buy food and drink unless they had ready cash to hand, and telephone and internet networks being rendered non-functional, less is being said about how the crisis began.

The article notes:

A report on the importance of inertia in a functioning power grid cited by Porter in turn quoted the United Kingdom’s National Grid Electricity System Operator, who explained in 2022: “Operating the system with low inertia will continue to represent a key operational challenge into the future and we will need to ensure we improve our understanding of the challenges this will bring”.

That report, published by a supplier of clutches for power stations, noted: “Renewable generation is increasingly displacing conventional generation in the generation mix, reducing the amount of heavy, rotating turbines on the grid and therefore the amount of inertia they provide.”

These fragilities are not unknown to the electricity industry, and much has been written on the challenges of transition to renewable power. Yet Bloomberg’s Blas wrote just last week that it has only been comparatively recently that the green energy lobby has even acknowledged such problems, having taken the position in the past that any criticism of green energy systems was motivated by cynicism and ideological opposition, rather than what he called “electricity realism” and real concern about grid resilience.

…Naturally, political attention throughout Europe has turned to the Iberian blackout, particularly as left-leaning governments strive to catch up with Spain in what they call decarbonising their own energy grids. In the United Kingdom, where the government says it wants to reach “Net Zero carbon emissions” by 2050 and wants to achieve this without importing slave-labour-linked solar panels from China, Green Great Reset sceptics have spoken out on the need for a pause and rethink in the light of this week’s events.

Brexit’s Nigel Farage, who is already styling himself as a Prime Minister in waiting and who is cruising towards what pollsters say may be a convincing election victory in nationwide local government contests this week, said on Tuesday morning that “the power outage in Spain is a warning”. The United Kingdom is dangerously reliant on foreign energy imports, he said, stating: “This net zero madness must end”.

Things that work in theory don’t always work in practice.

Things We Were Told By The Environmentalists That Are Actually Myths

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On April 9th, American Greatness posted an article about the things we have been told by the environmentalists that are simply not true.

This is the list:

(1) We are in a climate crisis – ...There is ample evidence that average global temperatures are not rapidly increasing, if they are even increasing at all. There is also strong evidence that extreme weather events are not increasing but rather that our ability to detect them has improved and that population increases have led more people to live in places that are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather.

(2) There are too many people – …The United Nations now estimates the total global population to top out at around 10 billion people, after which it is projected to decline.

(3) We are running out of “fossil” fuel –…According to the authoritative Statistical Review on Global Energy, based on current consumption, proven reserves could supply oil for 61 years, natural gas for 50, and coal for 208. This grossly understates the big picture, however, because proven and recoverable reserves are being expanded all the time.

(4) Biofuel is renewable and sustainable – …Worldwide, biofuel crops already consume an estimated 500,000 square miles while only offsetting 2 percent of the global consumption of transportation fuel.

(5) Offshore wind energy is renewable and sustainable – Absolutely not. Wind turbine blades, on land or offshore, routinely kill raptors, condors, and other magnificent endangered birds, along with bats and insects. Offshore, there are additional harmful impacts. Electromagnetic fields from undersea cables produce birth deformities in marine life and produce magnetic fields that disrupt the orientation abilities of some fish. Their low-frequency operational noise disrupts sounds made by fish for mating, spawning, and navigating.

(6) Renewables are renewable – …Just the consumption of natural resources to build these renewables is hardly sustainable. For example, using data from the International Energy Agency, geopolitical writer Peter Ziehan calculated the mineral requirements for power generation, comparing renewables to natural gas in terms of kilograms of minerals per megawatt of capacity. Offshore wind: 16,000 kg/MW, onshore wind: 10,000 kg/MW, solar photovoltaic: 7,000 kg/MW, and natural gas: 2,000 kg/MW. Compounding this disparity is the fact that natural gas power plants can operate for 60 years or more, whereas solar installations are operable for 30 years at most, and wind turbines substantially less than that, depending on where they’re situated.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the myths. The world’s economy runs on fossil fuels, and until the free market (not government subsidies) comes up with something better, fossil fuels will be the center of the world’s economy.

When Green Energy Isn’t Green

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On Friday, The Minnesota Star Tribune posted an article highlighting one of the problems with wind energy–turbine blades are not biodegradable, and they are big!

The article reports:

GRAND MEADOW, MINN. – Darcy Richardson had big plans for a garden patio enveloped by flowers in her backyard in this little community south of Rochester.

She gave up once the blades arrived.

Trucks dropped off more than 100 fiberglass turbine blades on the empty lot next door in 2020, haphazardly stacked to the edge of Richardson’s property. Almost four years later, the mountain of old wind parts — which is visible on Google Earth — is still there.

Some blades are cracked and stained. Locals say they draw feral cats and foxes and are a safety risk because kids climb on the junk.

They’re also ugly, ruining Richardson’s view, hurting property values and attracting the curiosity of seemingly everyone who drives the highway into town.

“After six months we were like ‘C’mon guys, what’s going on,’” said Richardson, once a master gardener. “After a year we were like ‘Seriously, this sucks.’”

What happened in Grand Meadow is more than merely a local mess. It reflects tensions over the boom of wind energy in southern Minnesota during a shift away from fossil fuels, the problem of recycling green infrastructure, small town political infighting and government and corporate bureaucracy.

The article concludes:

Grand Meadow is looking into whether it can fine TMT. The city asked for help from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, with no luck. Christian is now trying the PUC, where utility regulators plan to weigh in next month after taking public comments on whether the board can or should intervene.

Xcel Energy now owns the wind farm, but the company says it can’t move the blades because it doesn’t own them and described the situation as “isolated.” Xcel is still sensitive to the issue because the blade junk is not exactly building goodwill in a wind-rich area.

Annette Olson co-owns Olson Tree Services, a business adjacent to the blade pile, and said, like several others, she is not opposed to renewable power. But “it’s frustrating when they talk about all the things we need to do to help our environment, but yet they fail to do their part,” she said.

Xcel spokesman Theo Keith said the company is open to including new protections in blade recycling contracts to protect host communities. NextEra declined to comment. Siemens Gamesa said it has a confidential agreement with RiverCap to remove the blades from Grand Meadow.

Donahue, at Canvus, said their lease expires by the end of the year so the blades will be moved soon. But the Richardson family living next to the junk pile, and others, are skeptical.

Darcy Richardson said she sometimes tries to imagine the wind blades as snow piles. The family said they once would have hosted a wedding in the yard, but not anymore. She has a smaller deck close to her house with a small statue of a farmhouse windmill amid black-eyed Susans. It’s the more idyllic vision of renewable energy.

Richardson asked the PUC to consider “what would you do if it was in your backyard?”

Jim had another message: “Don’t mess with my wife’s flowers.”

There are a lot of people who make large political donations making a lot of money from ‘green energy.’ Meanwhile, there are a lot or ordinary people being negatively impacted by promoting ‘green energy’ solutions that have not been completely thought out.

We Need To Rethink Coastal Wind Farms

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I am not going to go into details on the number of dead whales found on the East Coast since exploration for wind farms began. I am going to focus on the more basic problems caused by off-shore wind farms. On Saturday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about some of the problems with the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC (Atlantic Shores) project planned for the New Jersey Coast.

The article reports:

While the Biden administration and other environmental activist groups boast that the Atlantic Shores South project, nearly nine years in the making, is another milestone in the country’s harvesting of green energy, a former U.S. Department of Energy engineer raises alarm bells that not only is this project detrimental to tourism, the ocean’s ecosystem, but it will actually raise energy costs to as high as 80% over the next 20 years.

…“Project 1 and Project 2 are expected to generate up to 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power close to one million homes with clean renewable energy,” according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. 

And while Atlantic Shores South says this project will generate $1.9 billion in economic benefits for the Garden State, an analysis by Edward P. O’Donnell with Whitestrand Consulting found that consumers from residents to commercials to industrial all across the state will see a massive hike in their electric bills. 

The article concludes:

As concerning as it is for Stern to see his electric bills go up, he’s worried about how this green energy project will impact marine animals like whales. 

“The underwater noise from all phases of this, the vessel surveys which use noise devices to characterize the seabed, then the noise from when you pile drive the foundations, and then ultimately the operation of these huge structures create a lot of underwater noise,” Stern said. “We’ve looked at it extensively and we believe it’s going to cause great harm to the whales, to the dolphins, particularly the whales that have to migrate to New Jersey to get where they’re going.”

But according to Stern it gets worse as commercial vessel traffic, military, and fishing boats won’t be allowed in the wind complex.

“So they’re going to be squeezed into these narrow corridors,” Stern said. “And it turns out that the corridors that they’re going to be squeezed into also happens to be a migration corridor for the whales. Now you’re creating, not only a hazard to the whales but a hazard to the vessels.” 

In the Bureau of Ocean of Energy Management’s Environmental Review, the agency acknowledged that the Atlantic Shores South would have a major impact on the North Atlantic White Whale, less than 400 remaining in the wild. 

Stern, who organized Save Long Beach Island in an effort to push back on the project, said there’s also a fear with community members that the windmills, a major eye sore just miles away from the coast, will negatively impact tourism. 

The Long Beach Island Chamber of Commerce said in an email that it was against the project, but did not want to make a comment. 

“What are we doing this for?” Stern said. “People come out and say we have to do this for climate change, but even the agency’s documents say it has a negligible impact on climate change because there is a much bigger dynamic going on there with the rest of the world.”

Stern, along with his comrades in Save Long Island Beach are not giving up and said they will be taking this to court. 

“This is an energy boondoggle,” Stern said. “Unfortunately, it’s also a hazardous boondoggle, and I believe the country will regret this.”

It’s time to re-evaluate.

 

Didn’t Anyone Think This Through?

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On Tuesday, The American Thinker posted an article about the demand for copper that the switch to electric vehicles would create.

The article reports:

A team of University of Michigan researchers recently discovered that the amount of copper needed to keep up with the manufactured demand created by the globalist E.V. agenda is “essentially impossible” to generate. On May 16th, Engineering and Technology published an article by Tanya Weaver which covered the results of the new study:

Copper cannot be mined quickly enough to keep up with current policies requiring the transition to electric vehicles (EVs), according to a University of Michigan study.

…

The study found that renewable energy’s copper needs would outstrip what copper mines can produce at the current rate. Between 2018 and 2050, the world will need to mine 115% more copper than has been mined in all of human history up until 2018 just to meet current copper needs without considering the green energy transition.

To meet the copper needs of electrifying the global vehicle fleet, as many as six new large copper mines must be brought online annually over the next several decades. About 40% of the production from new mines will be required for EV-related grid upgrades.

So what exactly do these numbers look like, in context? Well here’s this, also from Weaver:

[A]n EV requires three to five times more copper than petrol or diesel cars, not to mention the copper required for upgrades to the electricity grid.

‘A normal Honda Accord needs about 40 pounds of copper. The same battery electric Honda Accord needs almost 200 pounds of copper,’ said Adam Simon, professor of earth and environmental studies at the University of Michigan.

‘We show in the paper that the amount of copper needed is essentially impossible for mining companies to produce.’

Wow. Wind mill blades that don’t biodegrade filling up our landfills, solar panels made with toxic chemicals, and now not enough copper to be green. Can we please just go back to fossil fuel. It works and can be used in a way to minimize pollution.

This Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone Who Has Been Paying Attention

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On March 25th, American Experiment posted an article about renewable energy.

The article reports:

Bloomberg recently ran a very interesting interview with Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.

In the interview, Christophers argues there’s a widespread misconception about what’s needed to expand the deployment of renewables and transition away from fossil fuel generation. 

Christophers makes the following argument:

The basic argument is simple, and it’s something that the world doesn’t want to admit: The business of developing and owning and operating solar and wind farms and selling electricity is kind of a lousy business. 

Whether new solar or wind farms get built is ultimately about the expected profitability of those assets. Even though the generating cost aspect has become increasingly beneficial over time that doesn’t necessarily mean that the expected profits are going to be there. 

Generating costs are only part of the costs that a company that owns and controls a solar or wind farm, and sells the electricity, incur. There are also costs associated with delivering that power to where it gets consumed. 

For renewables the delivery costs tend to be higher than they are for conventional power plants because conventional power plants on average tend to be located closer to centers of demand. 

That’s because unlike conventional power plants, renewables like solar and wind farms require huge amounts of land to produce significant amounts of power. 

Unless governments are willing to either assume the burden of renewables development through public ownership…they will have to keep subsidies and tax credits in place indefinitely or else renewables investment will collapse because of the unfavorable economics. 

The article concludes:

The author obviously favors wind and solar and later advocates for a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. However, it is interesting that he acknowledges there is no economy-wide business case for wind and solar without government support.  

It’s time for our politicians to be honest with Americans about the cost of ‘green energy’ both in dollars and in damage to the environment. The people who advocate for electric cars fail to mention the children mining lithium in Africa or the environmental devastation lithium mining causes. Those who favor offshore wind farms fail to mention the number of whales that have died in the implementation of those wind farms or the number of birds that are killed by either wind farms or solar farms. Let’s do the complete research before we back something that is more damaging than what we originally had.

Don’t Mess With Mother Nature

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about the most recent efforts by the State of California to save the salmon.

The article reports:

“In my opinion, any salmon we’re producing this year are likely dead, and if they get to the main stem, they won’t be able to migrate out. I’m more concerned at this point with how do we rebuild the populations in those rivers,” Siskiyou County Supervisor Ray Haupt said.

Environmental groups are celebrating extensive efforts to remove dams across the United States, some of which produce carbon-free electricity. According to American Rivers, an anti-dam advocacy group, 65 dams were removed in 2022, and another 80 were removed in 2023.

Groups like American Rivers argue the dams are killing salmon and steelhead trout populations, encroaching on indigenous cultures, and harming water quality for people and wildlife.

The largest dam removal project in the history of the U.S. began on Northern California’s Klamath River last summer, with the removal of Copco No. 2, the first of four hydroelectric dams to be removed, also called “breaching” or “drawdowns.”

In January, the state began draining reservoirs behind the three remaining dams. The draining is not going well, especially for the fish the projects are supposed to be protecting.

Large amounts of salmon have been stranded on mud that is also trapping deer, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports. Officials are warning people not to try to walk through it, as it can be very dangerous. According to California Globe, a two mile sediment plume extends into the Pacific Ocean.

“We’ve been told we’re the experiment,” Siskiyou County Supervisor Ray Haupt told Just The News. “Eyes wide open. It’s coming to a neighborhood near you.”

The article also notes:

Another major dam-removal effort on the Snake River in Idaho took a major step forward recently with the signing of an agreement between the four Columbia River Basin tribes, the governors of Oregon and Washington, and the Biden administration.

While Congress would have to authorize the dams’ removal, Biden administration officials say that removing the dams would help boost “clean energy” and restore wild salmon populations, and the energy produced by those dams will be made up by “the build-out of at least one to three gigawatts of Tribally-sponsored renewable energy production.”

Why are some states removing dams that create clean energy, particularly when they are killing the wildlife they claim to be preserving in the process? I am willing to bet that at some point in the future these states will decide that they need these dams for energy and rebuild them at an exorbitant cost. Hopefully they will at least build them with fish ladders.

I Guess That Didn’t Go As Planned

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On Wednesday, Just the News posted the following headline:

Massive offshore wind project that was to be operational in 2023 gets a single turbine running

At some point, I believe that we are going to discover that wind and solar may not be the future of energy–they may be a supplement, but they can never replace fossil fuel to handle the energy needs of a growing world population.

In 2019, I reported the following:

In August 2014 The Daily Caller posted an article about Spain’s attempt to convert to green energy:

According to a new report by the free-market Institute for Energy Research, Spain’s green energy policies have resulted in skyrocketing electricity prices, billions of euros in debt and rising carbon dioxide emissions.

“For years, President Obama has pointed to Europe’s energy policies as an example that the United States should follow,” said IER in a statement on their new study. “However, those policies have been disastrous for countries like Spain, where electricity prices have skyrocketed, unemployment is over 25 percent, and youth unemployment is over 50 percent.”

Spain began heavily subsidizing green energy sources, like wind and solar, in the early 2000s with its“Promotion Plan for Renewable Energies. The country used a combination of generous feed-in tariffs, green energy generation quotas and green power subsidies to boost renewable energy development in the country and lower its carbon dioxide emissions.

…But what seemed like a booming green energy economy on the surface was really becoming a costly way to help drive Spain into economic recession. By 2011, Spain’s electricity prices stood at 29.46 U.S. ¢/kilowatt-hour — two and a half times what electricity cost in the U.S. at the time.

The Just the News article reports:

Vineyard Wind, a massive offshore wind project 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, failed to deliver electricity in 2023 as its developers had pledged to do, but they announced Wednesday that one of the project’s 62 turbines was running.

The project’s developers had for years been selling the project as the first utility-scale offshore wind project in the country, based on the 2023 timeline, according to Statehouse News. In December, New York’s South Fork Wind became the nation’s first.

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid, Inc. announced Wednesday that it had managed to get one of the project’s 62 turbines operational, supplying 5 of its 800 megawatts to the grid.

The Commonwealth Beacon reported Tuesday that the developers had missed its 2023 pledge, which they were promising to meet late last week.

Two days into the new year, the Beacon reported, the developers of the $4 billion project still had not made good on the promise.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the story. At what point are we going to admit that no matter how much money the government gives solar and wind energy, the disadvantages outweigh the benefits?

Was This Money Wisely Spent?

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On October 25th, WattsUpWithThat posted an article about spending on green energy and the results of that spending.

The article reports:

Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs (Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global Investment Research Division): “Here’s a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption. Ten years ago, they were at 82. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about 3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82.” … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.”

The article includes the following graph:

The article also includes the following Tweet:

I think it is time to go back to the drawing board.

One Practical Way To Curb Pollution

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On November 2nd, a website called Utility Dive posted an article about a planned move by AES Indiana, an American utility company providing electric service to the city of Indianapolis. It is a subsidiary and largest utility of AES Corp.

The article reports:

AES Indiana plans to convert two coal-fired units totaling 1,052 MW at its Petersburg power plant to natural gas in 2025, which the utility estimates would be $381 million less expensive over 20 years compared with replacing the generating station with renewable energy and storage.

Notice that the implication in the above paragraph is the renewable energy requires storage. The wind does not blow all of the time and the sun does not shine all of the time, so green energy producers need a place to store the energy. The chemicals in the storage batteries are environmentally damaging, and the storage batteries do not last forever.

The article continues:

Like many other utilities, AES Indiana regularly develops a road map for its resource mix, with input from stakeholders. The utility expects to file its latest plan for review at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission on Dec. 1.

The plan envisions adding 1,450 MW of stand-alone solar in the first half of the next decade, plus 450 MW of solar combined with storage and 300 MW of wind.

At the end of the 20-year plan, AES Indiana would have a generating portfolio that is 87% solar, wind and storage, according to the utility. AES Indiana owns and contracts for 3,634 MW, with its coal plants constituting about half its portfolio.

The utility retired one unit at the four-unit Petersburg plant last year and is set to retire its 401-MW Unit 2 next year.

Under the plan, AES Indiana’s carbon dioxide emissions would fall 69%, to about 4 million metric tons, in 2030 from about 12 million metric tons in 2018, according to the presentation.

AES Indiana expects the power plant’s use will fall sharply if it is converted from coal to gas, helping reduce its air emissions and water use.

Natural gas is a clean-burning fuel that could easily meet the needs of American consumers if drilling were to resume. I hope everyone who votes today will remember the joy of being able to heat your house with whatever fuel you prefer to any temperature you like.

It Will Be Interesting To See What The Punishment For This Will Be

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We all remember the images of January 6th. Actually, there were two sets of images from January 6th–the ones we were initially shown that looked somewhat scary and the ones the court made the Justice Department release that showed the police inviting people into the Capitol Building. Nevertheless, there were some people on January 6th that did things that were illegal and should have been dealt with by the legal system. Unfortunately, as we have seen, those arrested were not dealt with in a manner consistent with equal justice under the law.

Today The U.K. Daily Mail is reporting that dozens of climate activists forced their way into the Interior Department building demanding that President Joe Biden cease approvals for fossil fuel infrastructure and lead a renewable energy transformation.

The article reports:

The dramatic scenes came during five days of demonstrations in the capital organized by a Native American climate group calling itself ‘People vs Fossil Fuels’, which is demanding that President Joe Biden cease approvals for fossil fuel infrastructure and lead a renewable energy transformation. 

Footage shared by Washington Post reporter Ellie Silverman shows protestors pushing their way into the Interior Department, while chanting ‘sign the treaty’ and ‘protect the water’.

…Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was traveling Thursday and was not in the building during the chaotic protest.

Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico, is the first Native American Interior secretary. 

‘Interior Department leadership believes strongly in respecting and upholding the right to free speech and peaceful protest,” Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for Haaland, said in a statement. 

‘Centering the voices of lawful protesters is and will continue to be an important foundation of our democracy. It is also our obligation to keep everyone safe. We will continue to do everything we can to de-escalate the situation while honoring First Amendment rights.”

She said protesters who were arrested were taken in for booking. 

The article notes:

Capitol Police said 78 people were arrested on obstruction or crowding charges. Three of those arrested also were charged with assault on a police officer.

Does anyone want to speculate on whether or not any of those arrested will be placed in solitary confinement? Does anyone want to speculate on whether or not any of those arrested will still be in jail nine months from now? The way this situation was and is being handled in contrast to the way the January 6th protest was handled tells us all we need to know about the priorities of our current Justice Department. We have become (or are in serious danger of becoming) a banana republic. Our First Amendment rights are only being upheld when they align with the current political administration. Americans need to learn how to stand up for their First Amendment rights or we are going to permanently lose them.

The Part Of The Story Rarely Told

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Issues & Insights posted an article today detailing the environmental problems with green energy. Yes, you read that right.

The article reports:

Left out of the often mistaken, never in doubt assertions of renewables’ unalloyed goodness is the fact that the hardware used is hardly renewable. It wears out and needs to be replaced. Then what?

“The problem of solar panel disposal ‘will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment’ because it ‘is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle,’” writes energy analyst Michael Shellenberger, quoting a Chinese recycling official.

In his 2018 Forbes column headlined “If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?” Shellenberger also quotes a four-decade veteran of America’s solar industry, who said “the reality is that there is a problem now, and it’s only going to get larger, expanding as rapidly as the PV industry expanded 10 years ago”; and researchers from the Institute for Photovoltaics in Stuttgart, Germany, who found that “contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months, for example by rainwater.”

More recently, Hazardous Waste Experts reported worn-out solar panels are “a potent source of hazardous waste,” producing a “dilemma” that “is especially virulent in California, Oregon, and Washington, as those states started adopting solar energy earliest in the game – suggesting that eco-virtue mightn’t necessarily be its own reward.”

And just as solar and wind chew up immense tracts of real estate, so, too, will the retirement of solar energy’s constituent parts.

I was not the world’s greatest student of physics (that is an understatement), but I do remember learning that it is impossible to make a perpetual motion machine because of friction. The quest for clean energy reminds me of the search for a perpetual motion machine. America has cut its carbon emissions in recent years by using more natural gas, which is a relatively clean source of energy. That change makes much more sense and is much less disruptive than some of the radical ideas being proposed by the political left in America.

Sometimes The Truth Just Kind Of Slips Out

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The Washington Examiner posted an article today that stated something that most of us know but haven’t seen widely reported in the media.

The article states:

In Europe, you will often hear politically savvy people refer to Green Party politicians as “watermelons.” The reason is that although they might be environmentalist “green” on the outside, these leftists are secretly communist red if you look beneath the surface.

They typically resort to such subterfuge because environmentalism is more popular than Marxism. A former East German communist is bound to be unpopular, but perhaps not so much if he rehabilitates himself as a renewable energy enthusiast.

The case of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, is different in that she openly advertised herself as a socialist in a country with a well-grounded historical aversion to such alien ideologies. But her grand policy initiative, the $93 trillion Green New Deal, was still billed as if it were a legitimate environmentalist idea. We were supposedly trying to save the world from imminent destruction. As Ocasio-Cortez herself put it, “We’re, like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

When Representative Ocasio-Cortez makes statements like that, this is what she reminds me of:

At any rate, her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, let the cat out of the bag recently.

The article reports:

Her chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti (the brains and the money behind her political operation ever since her 2018 primary victory) divulged in an unintentionally blunt comment in the Washington Post that the Green New Deal was not only not based in the science of climate change, but in fact not even designed with climate change in mind. “[I]t wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” he is quoted as saying.

In other words, it’s not that they looked for a way to save the world, and just happened to find a way that involved full employment pledges, the retrofitting of millions of buildings, income for those unwilling to work, high-speed passenger rail, and the curtailment of plane travel and carnivorousness. That’s precisely backwards. The Green New Deal came about because Chakrabarti wanted to transform the U.S. economy into something more primitive, and environmentalism struck him as the best excuse for doing so.

The American economy currently is working for everyone who chooses to work. When people work, they are aware of how much money the government takes out of their paychecks. That in itself may present a problem for the Democrats running for election in 2020.

Following The Money On Renewable Energy

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John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article yesterday about the cost of the a green energy proposal in Minnesota. The article illustrates what will happen if this sort of program is attempted on a national scale.

The article reports:

Today Center of the American Experiment released a groundbreaking paper that addresses a relatively mild “green” proposal: legislation that would raise the renewable energy standard in Minnesota from 25% to 50%. Two of my staffers have been working on the paper for months, drawing on publicly available (but rarely consulted) sources to understand what would be necessary to achieve that 50% goal, what it would cost, how it would impact the state’s economy, and what effect it would have on global temperatures.

The paper is titled “Doubling Down on Failure: How a 50 Percent by 2030 Renewable Energy Standard Would Cost Minnesota $80.2 Billion.” With appendices, it runs to 75 pages. I am not aware of a similarly comprehensive analysis that has been done of any “green” proposal at either the state or the federal level. The paper is fully transparent: all assumptions, data and calculations are clearly set forth. The appendices are largely spread sheets. If anyone disagrees with the report’s conclusions, it should be easy to identify where and why those disagreements arise. You can read the paper here.

The article cites a few highlights from the report:

* Building and maintaining “green” wind and solar facilities, along with transmission lines and necessary natural gas complementary plants (to provide electricity when the wind isn’t blowing, i.e. 60% of the time), would cost $80.2 billion through 2050. For a state like Minnesota, that number is out of the question.

* Every household in Minnesota would pay an average of $1,200 per year, in 2016 dollars, through higher electricity rates and otherwise.

* Electricity prices would rise by 40.2%.

* Electricity-intensive industries like mining, agriculture, manufacturing and health care would be hurt the most. Once again, urban greenies are hammering rural, and physically productive, America. [That last is my commentary, not found in the executive summary.]

* Higher electricity prices are a dead loss that will reduce spending in other areas as household budgets are squeezed. Therefore, according to economist John Phelan, using the generally accepted IMPLAN software, achieving the 50% renewable goal would cost Minnesota 21,000 permanent jobs, and reduce the state’s GDP by $3.1 billion annually. It is one small step on the road to Venezuela.

This really does not sound like a good idea. The push for green energy has always been about government power–whether at the state or federal level. It is interesting that the political left has chosen to attack fossil fuels just at the time when America has achieved energy independence because of fossil fuels and fossil fuels are driving our economic success. Economic success is the enemy of those who espouse socialism–if people are become prosperous, why would they want something different?

This Would Be Beneficial On A Number Of Levels

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CBN News posted an article today about an innovative energy source that would be beneficial for both energy production and for the environment. The article hits close to home because it involves an issue North Carolina has been discussing for a number of years.

First of all, I need to say that I know very little about hog farming and hog waste. However, it does make sense that some of the by-products of hog farming might create an environmental problem. However, there seems to be an answer that will be profitable for everyone.

The article reports:

In fact, to Smithfield Foods and Dominion Energy, converting hog manure to natural gas for powering homes and businesses has a sweet smell of success.

“We think it’s a lot simpler, and we think it will change the face of how manure is handled and turned into energy going forward,” Kraig Westerbeek, senior director of Smithfield Renewables, told CBN News.

…So how does it work – turning this waste into energy? Often called biomethane, renewable natural gas is pipeline-quality gas that comes from organic matter like hog waste.

CBN News went to North Carolina to tour Circle K II Farms, a Smithfield pilot project.

“Manure actually is a positive thing,” said Westerbeek. “It creates value, and it helps fertilize crops; it helps produce energy. It’s not a bad thing. We view manure as an opportunity.”

Kraig Westerbeek explains how the process moves from the hog buildings to a huge covered lagoon called a “digester.”

“The product, natural gas, is actually a product of digestion of the solids by bacteria, so for that reason, it’s called digestion,” he said.

…The manure is funneled under the large plastic cover of the lagoon, and it’s mixed over and over. Bacteria break it down, producing what’s called biogas, which causes the cover to bubble up. That gas is 65 percent natural gas.

The biogas produced at farms then moves through gathering pipes to a gas-upgrading unit. That’s when Dominion Energy steps in.

“Where we come in – you see this plant back here – we’re gonna lend our engineering expertise to create a process that’s as efficient as possible in creating clean, renewable natural gas that customers can use,” Childress said.

At the gas upgrading system, the natural gas from the farm is refined. When it leaves there, it is 99.1 percent natural gas. It then enters a pipeline and is funneled to homes and businesses.

The article concludes:

This project involves partnering with local farmers like Dean Hilton, who’s been raising hogs for nearly 15 years. He calls it the “wave of the future.”

“After meeting with Kraig on the trial site, we realized that there’s a lot of opportunity in the fact that we can actually reduce our manure in our current lagoons, as well as turning the solids, the new solids into renewable energy,” Hilton said.

Westerbeek admits turning manure into renewable natural gas is “fairly expensive”.

“You have an investment in a digester like you see in the background, and then the gathering pipelines to gather the gas from different farms and bring it to a central location,” he explained.

“And then one of the more expensive parts of this is actually cleaning the gas from its form as biogas from this digester into pipeline-quality natural gas,” Westerbeek continued.

Both he and Childress along with their bosses believe it’s a worthy investment leading to clean energy, plus economic benefits for their companies, rural America and the general public.

This seems like a win-win situation. Now if we can just do the same thing with cows…

The Need For A Reality Check

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Green energy is a wonderful concept. Energy in Iceland is almost entirely green because the country sits on a number of volcanoes that supply it with thermal energy. I’m not sure that I am willing to live on a volcano to get thermal energy, but that is one way to go green. However, the quest for green energy where there is not such an obvious energy source has not been particularly successful.

CNS News posted an article yesterday about the statement put out by Speaker Pelosi to recognize Black History Month.

The article has the entire statement, but I think the focus is interesting:

Democrats will be pushing a “For the People” agenda that will include raising wages by building green infrastructure.

“And we are pushing forward a bold, ambitious agenda For The People to make good on the promise of the American Dream for everyone by lowering the cost of health care and prescription drugs, raising wages by rebuilding America with green, modern infrastructure, and strengthening our democracy by ensuring that our government works for the public interest, not the special interests,” Pelosi said.

Let’s talk about rebuilding America with green, modern infrastructure. Green energy is one of the major special interest groups in America.

In 2015, The Washington Times reported:

Taxpayers are on the hook for more than $2.2 billion in expected costs from the federal government’s energy loan guarantee programs, according to a new audit Monday that suggests the controversial projects may not pay for themselves, as officials had promised.

Nearly $1 billion in loans have already defaulted under the Energy Department program, which included the infamous Solyndra stimulus project and dozens of other green technology programs the Obama administration has approved, totaling nearly about $30 billion in taxpayer backing, the Government Accountability Office reported in its audit.

The hefty $2.2 billion price tag is actually an improvement over initial estimates, which found the government was poised to face $4 billion in losses from the loan guarantees. But as the projects have come to fruition, they’ve performed better, leaving taxpayers with a shrinking — though still sizable — liability.

It’s a good thing Speaker Pelosi didn’t say anything about lowering taxes–maybe the increased wages with increased taxes will pay for the green energy.

This green energy idea has not been successful when tried before.

In August 2014 The Daily Caller posted an article about Spain’s attempt to convert to green energy:

According to a new report by the free-market Institute for Energy Research, Spain’s green energy policies have resulted in skyrocketing electricity prices, billions of euros in debt and rising carbon dioxide emissions.

“For years, President Obama has pointed to Europe’s energy policies as an example that the United States should follow,” said IER in a statement on their new study. “However, those policies have been disastrous for countries like Spain, where electricity prices have skyrocketed, unemployment is over 25 percent, and youth unemployment is over 50 percent.”

Spain began heavily subsidizing green energy sources, like wind and solar, in the early 2000s with its“Promotion Plan for Renewable Energies. The country used a combination of generous feed-in tariffs, green energy generation quotas and green power subsidies to boost renewable energy development in the country and lower its carbon dioxide emissions.

…But what seemed like a booming green energy economy on the surface was really becoming a costly way to help drive Spain into economic recession. By 2011, Spain’s electricity prices stood at 29.46 U.S. ¢/kilowatt-hour — two and a half times what electricity cost in the U.S. at the time.

President Trump has helped all Americans. We have the lowest unemployment among minorities that we have had in a very long time. Wages are going up, taxes are going down, and the workforce participation rate is climbing. I suggest that if Speaker Pelosi truly wants to help minorities during Black History Month she should support President Trump’s economic agenda.

We Might Take Them Seriously If They Practiced What They Preach

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The Washington Free Beacon posted an article yesterday about some recent actions by Senator Bernie Sanders. It seems that according to the Federal Election Commission, Senator Sanders spent nearly $300,000 for private jet travel in the final stretch of his campaign for re-election to the Senate.

The article reports:

Air travel is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, with some estimations saying that the aviation industry accounts for about 11 percent of transportation-related emissions in the country. The environmental impact is greatly magnified in cases of private flights, which carry far fewer people per trip than commercial jets.

Sanders claims on his website that “climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet” and puts the blame chiefly on the growing rate of emissions being produced by the transportation sector.

“Global climate change is real, it is caused mainly by emissions released from burning fossil fuels and it poses a catastrophic threat to the long-term longevity of our planet,” he writes. “The transportation sector accounts for about 26 percent of carbon pollution emissions.”

The Sanders campaign told the Washington Free Beacon it purchased “carbon offsets” to balance out emissions produced on the trip.

“The campaign purchased carbon offsets from Native Energy to support renewable energy projects and invest in carbon reduction projects to balance out the emissions produced on this trip,” Jones said in an email.

The Washington Free Beacon was unable to identify payments made by the campaign to the environmental group. Jones says the purchase will appear in the campaign’s next filing.

So let me get this straight–it’s okay to have a ginormous carbon footprint as long as you are rich enough to buy carbon credits. Meanwhile, all of us little people are supposed to go broke paying ever increasing prices for energy caused by regulations to lower carbon emissions put on us by people who have no intention of curtailing their carbon emissions. Seems a little unfair to me.

The Things They Never Told Us About Wind Power

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An article at the Center of the American Experiment website tells us some of the things the media might not have mentioned about wind power:

An industrial wind facility in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin has been decommissioned after just 20 years of service because the turbines are no longer cost effective to maintain and operate. The decommissioning of the 14 turbines took many people by surprise, even local government officials and the farmer who had five of the turbines on his property.

What’s really surprising about these wind turbines being decommissioned after 20 years is the is the fact that people were surprised by it. You’d be astonished at how many people I talk to that have no idea that wind turbines only last for 20 years, maybe 25. In fact, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says the useful life of a wind turbine is only 20 years.

The following chart appears in the article:

So what do we do with these things after they have lived their useful life span? Can we dispose of them in a way that is environmentally safe?

The article notes:

The short usable lifespan of a wind turbine is one of the most important, but least-talked about subjects in energy policy.

In contrast to wind, coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants can run for a very long time. Coal and natural gas plants can easily run for 50 years, and nuclear plants can be updated and retrofitted to run for 60 years. This has profound implications for the cost of electricity on a per megawatt hour basis that seemingly no one is talking about.

When the federal government puts out their cost projections for energy, the numbers they produce are called the Levelized Cost of Energy, or LCOE. These numbers are supposed to act as a measuring stick that allows policymakers to determine which energy sources will best serve their needs, but these numbers are wrong because they assume all power plants, whether they are wind, coal, natural gas, or nuclear will have a 30-year payback period.

This does two things, it artificially reduces the cost of wind power by allowing them to spread their costs over 30 years, when 20 would be much more appropriate, and it artificially inflates the cost of coal, natural gas, and nuclear by not calculating the cost over the entirety of their reasonable lifetimes.

The search for totally green energy is not unlike science’s search for a perpetual motion machine. Scientists and engineers may come close, but the perpetual motion machine cannot exist because it contradicts the laws of physics.

If You Truly Believed This, Would It Change Your Behavior?

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the behavior of people who sincerely believe in climate change (or at least claim to).

The article reports:

We keep hearing how global warming is the biggest crisis facing mankind today. But a new yearlong study finds that those ringing the alarm bells the loudest are the least likely to change their own behavior. They just want everyone else to.

The study divided 600 adults who reported on their climate-change beliefs into three groups: “skeptical,” “cautiously worried” and “highly concerned.”

Then the researchers — from the University of Michigan and Cornell University — tracked how often they reported doing things like recycling, using public transportation, buying environmentally friendly consumer products, and reusing shopping bags. And they asked about support for government mandates like CO2 emission reduction, gasoline taxes and renewable energy subsidies. The Journal of Environmental Psychology published the findings.

The findings are not a surprise to many of us.

The article reports the results:

The researchers found that the “highly concerned” group was the least likely to take individual action, but they were the most insistent on government action. The “skeptical” group, in contrast, was the most likely to recycle, use public transportation and do other environmentally sound things all on their own. Skeptics were least likely to endorse costly government regulations and mandates.

“Belief in climate change,” the researchers explained, “predicted support for government policies, but did not generally translate to individual-level, self-reported pro-environmental behavior. ” (emphasis mine)

Two notable examples of spouting climate change rhetoric but creating an unbelievable carbon footprint are Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio. Both live in luxurious homes which use much more electricity than the average American, and both travel on private jets. I have no problem with this–they have earned what they have. However, if you are going to support government regulations that negatively impact people earning a fraction of what you make, you really should practice what you preach.

The Unintended Consequences Of Green Energy

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Wind energy has its positive traits. However, the wind does not always blow twenty-four hours a day, and a back-up source of energy is required. There are also other consequences.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the impact of a wind farm off the coast of Block Island.

The article reports:

The fishing industry is worried the first offshore wind farm to come online in the U.S. will ruin their way of life and kill jobs.

An offshore wind turbine three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, will kill large numbers of fish and potentially drive hundreds of small coastal enterprises out of business, according to a fishing industry representative. Fishermen fear offshore wind turbines will continue to pop up along Atlantic Coast, eventually make it impossible to be a commercial fisherman.

“This will absolutely cost jobs in the U.S.,” Bonnie Brady, director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “If New York Governor [Andrew] Cuomo’s administration gets what it wants from offshore wind that’s thousands of fishing jobs. It’ll rip the coastal communities apart.”

The article further reports:

“Block Island has messed up gill netters and trawlers,” Brady said. “They’re not going to certain areas because its a risk to the boat. The five turbines they put in place there are ruining one of the most productive bottoms around.”

Estimates from the liberal Brookings Institution suggest the U.S. fishing industry supports 1.5 million jobs and generated $90 billion annually.

“These are great jobs,” Brady told TheDCNF. “You can make a really good living working on a fishery. It is a solidly middle class life and a really good trades-job. We have more growth potential for fishing jobs in the U.S. than anywhere else, but we’re being removed from our fishing grounds because of offshore wind.”

There may come a time when ocean-based wind power makes sense, but that time is not now. In addition to the unreliability of the electricity produced by wind and the damage to the fishing industry, the cost of wind-powered electricity is about for to six times the cost of conventionally generated electricity. It may also turn out that in our rush to save the environment with green energy, we have damaged areas of the environment we chose to overlook because of political fads.

 

 

 

The Law Of Unintended Consequences At Work

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One of the problems with the idea of ridding ourselves from fossil fuels is that we really haven’t perfected the alternatives. Our economy runs on fossil fuels, and until we develop a safe, clean, inexpensive, efficient, and reliable alternative, our economy will continue to depend on fossil fuel. In 2014, I posted a story explaining what happened when Spain attempted to switch over to green energy. As far as I know, the only country in the world that has successfully made the switch to green energy is Iceland. They have been able to generate large amounts of electricity because of the volcanoes the island sits on. Recently scientists have discovered that there is a serious down side to solar energy (other than the birds that have been fried while flying over solar panels).

On March 1st, The Daily Caller reported that the construction of solar panels generates Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3).

The article reports:

Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is a key chemical agent used to manufacture photovoltaic cells for solar panels, suggesting government subsidies and tax credits for solar panels may be a driving factor behind the 1,057 percent in NF3 over the last 25 years. In comparison, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions only rose by about 5 percent during the same time period.

NF3 emissions have rapidly increased in Asia as well due to its rapidly growing solar panel market, and researchers think that many nations are under-reporting their NF3 emissions by roughly a factor of 4.5.

NF3 emissions are 17,200 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas over a 100 year time period.

NF3 is also used in the production of semiconductors and LCD flat screens.

The article also points out:

The 1,057 percent increase in US annual emissions of NF3 from 1990 to 2015 compares to an increase of 5.6 percent in carbon dioxide emissions, according to EPA data in a recently-published draft of a new report

There is, however, some good news. The study concluded that the more modern solar panels will emit less NF3 and will have a positive impact on the environment. This conclusion was reached by considering the amount of CO2 that would not be released when the solar panels were used. After some adjusting of the numbers, solar panels could be shown to have a positive impact on the environment. It might be a good idea to keep in mind at this point that a good statistician can make any group of numbers say anything he wants them to say.

The Wind Doesn’t Cut It

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Hot Air posted an article today about changes in Germany’s energy policy. Germany has often been cited as an example of effective use of green energy. Well, evidently green energy is not all it’s cracked up to be.

The article reports:

Germany plans to stop building new offshore wind turbines to lower the costs of electricity and prop up its ailing power grid, according to a revision to a new energy law.

The revision of the law will come into force at the start of 2017, and will sharply limit the construction of new offshore wind farms, reports Reuters. The motivation behind the law is that Germany’ over-reliance on wind power “has pushed up electricity costs in Europe’s biggest economy and placed a strain on its grids,” the article reads.

“Germany now has electric rates for consumers that are among the highest in the world. Energy poverty has become a reality for millions of German families,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The article goes on to explain that Germany has made good use of wind energy, but that there are two problems with wind energy. First of all, despite the fact that the government has subsidized wind energy, the consumer prices of electricity generated by wind are much higher than the price of electricity generated by fossil fuel.  Second of all, wind power is neither stable or predictable–in order to supply electricity 24 hours a day (expected in most western countries), wind power needs a fossil-fuel powered back-up.

The article concludes:

Keep that in mind here in America where we have a vastly larger and more complex grid. We can’t operate this huge system without a predictable energy supply which can be regulated to match fluctuations in demand. Wind can be a great booster to the energy supply in the areas where it can be produced, but the technology remains too expensive in most cases to stand on its own feet and the wind still has an unpleasant tendency to stop blowing sometimes.

 

Speaking The Truth By Accident

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Investor’s Business Daily posted an article yesterday about statements made by Lena Moffitt, who runs the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. The Sierra Club has been very active in ‘the war on coal,’ causing thousands of middle-class Americans to lose their jobs.

The article reports:

Here is what Lena Moffitt, who runs the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign, says: “‎We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. Our board recently passed a policy that we oppose any new gas-fired power plants. We also have a policy opposing fracking on our books.”

The article points out:

…natural gas is a clean-burning fuel that is reducing greenhouse gas emissions and real pollutants, too. There have been no reported cases of water contamination from fracking technology, as even the Obama administration has admitted. But facts don’t matter much in this debate.

…In the same interview with S&P Global Market Intelligence, she admitted: “We are doing everything we can to bring the same expertise that we brought to taking down the coal industry and coal-fired power in this country to taking on gas in the same way.”

‎”I look forward to seeing the same success brought to taking down gas plants to ensure that we’re actually moving to a 100% clean energy future,” she continued. “That is the one Sierra Club policy that we are all working toward: getting us to 100% clean energy, which, of course, would include no new gas.”

It would be interesting to know exactly who funds the Sierra Club. Their war on American energy is not helpful either to the American economy or the American national security. Although the idea of sustainable green energy is attractive, it is not yet commercially (or governmentally) feasible. When we discover a perpetual motion machine, we may find the green energy solution for power right next to it. I’m not holding my breath.

Spain attempted a number of years ago to switch from carbon fuel to green energy. The policy nearly bankrupted the country, and Spain was forced to go back to fossil fuels. As of right now, green energy is not reliable twenty-four hours a day–it has to be supplemented. Therefore, you still have to have fossil-fueled energy plants. The war on American energy is a really destructive idea–it hurts the middle-class Americans that politicians keep saying they want to help.

Following The Money On Climate Change

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On July 30, The Insurance Journal posted an article about the climate change industry. Yes, you read that right. Climate change has become an industry.

This is a chart taken from the article:

Source: Climate Change Business Journal

The article reports:

On Monday the final version of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan, national air pollution regulation aimed at curbing carbon emissions from power plants, is scheduled to be released.

Ferrier believes the plan may eventually prove to be a driver of further growth in the industry. That is if the plan withstands any legal challenges from states, industries and entities opposed to it.

“I think the EPA’s Clean Power Plan has a lot more teeth to it than many other attempts of the past,” Ferrier said. “I think we’ll see more (growth) out of that.”

Following this more climate change policy could come out of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December, also called COP21 or CMP11.

“I think we’ll see the U.S. and China possibly make more comprehensive commitments rather than at past meetings, where they let the European leadership of the group make commitments while they sat on the sidelines,” Ferrier said.

Policy, or the anticipation of new policy, has been one of the biggest drivers of the industry, the report shows.

I suppose we need to give the Obama Administration credit for growing the economy at least in one area. The fact that his policies are causing Americans to lower their standard of living and taking away our freedoms and national sovereignty does not seem to bother the President.

It Sounds Good, But It Doesn’t Work

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Spain went ‘green’ a few years ago. They began heavily subsidizing solar and wind energy projects in the early 2000’s. Last Thursday, the Daily Caller posted an article updating us on the results of this program.

The article reports:

“For years, President Obama has pointed to Europe’s energy policies as an example that the United States should follow,” said IER (Institute for Energy Research) in a statement on their new study. “However, those policies have been disastrous for countries like Spain, where electricity prices have skyrocketed, unemployment is over 25 percent, and youth unemployment is over 50 percent.”

This really does not sound like an example we want to follow.

Not only did Spain’s green energy program hurt the Spanish economy, it didn’t help with the carbon footprint.

The article reports:

The IER study also notes that Spain’s green agenda was not able to keep its carbon footprint from rising. Between 1994 and 2011, Spain’s carbon dioxide emissions grew 34.5 percent, despite the country’s green push which began in the 1990s.

“While the renewable policies themselves were likely not the cause of the emissions increase, the upward trend does prove that renewable energy policies were insufficient to reduce CO2 emissions over a roughly twenty-year period,” according to IER.

“is anything but the model for American energy policy,” reads the IER study. “The country’s expensive feed-in tariff system, subsidies, and renewable energy quotas have plunged a sizable portion of Spaniards into fuel poverty, raised electricity bills, all while having almost no meaningful impact on curtailing carbon dioxide emissions.”

Green energy may eventually provide better ways to fuel the world’s economy, but we are not there yet. We need to allow the free market to determine our steps forward. Government subsidies are obviously not the answer.