Posted on 09/06/2023 7:42:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Surprise, surprise. Subsidies were not enough to make Biden’s energy projects profitable.
Taxpayers will soon be on the hook for The Coming Green Energy Bailout
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for green energy, yet now renewable developers want utility rate-payers in New York and other states to bail them out.
According to a report late last month by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (Nyserda), large offshore wind developers are asking for an average 48% price adjustment in their contracts to cover rising costs. The Alliance for Clean Energy NY is also requesting an average 64% price increase on 86 solar and wind projects.
The IRA includes federal tax credits that can offset 50% of a project’s costs. But renewable developers say their costs are increasing faster than inflation and that the projects will “not be economically viable and would be unable to proceed to construction and operation under their existing pricing,” says Nyserda.
Irony alert: One reason is that the government-forced green energy transition is driving up demand for equipment, material and labor. “Growing demand for renewable energy projects nationwide ‘has exacerbated inflation for renewable project cost components relative to broader inflation levels,’” Nyserda says, citing the Alliance for Clean Energy NY.
The climate lobby says power from wind and solar is cheaper than from fossil fuels, but that’s true only with generous subsidies and near-zero interest rates. Price adjustments that renewable developers want in New York would make solar and wind two- to five-times more expensive than natural gas power.
Another irony: The IRA’s prevailing wage and domestic content conditions for bonus tax credits, which are necessary to make projects viable, inflate costs. That means U.S. taxpayers will pay more for the green corporate welfare, and utility ratepayers will pay more for renewable power. The climate lobby hits you coming and going.
Meantime, the computer chip maker Micron Technology recently disclosed that its planned factories in upstate New York, which are set to receive up to $5.5 billion in state subsidies, will consume as much power as New Hampshire and Vermont combined. Where will all the power come from?
The speed at which these projects blew up seems stunning. But it really isn’t.
EVs, solar, and wind projects don’t scale. Heck, they don’t scale even with subsidies. I have been saying this for months.
Needed minerals and and skilled labor are in short supply. The US is still dependent on China and other foreign countries for materials.
Biden has escalated trade wars with China, but China hasn’t even retaliated much yet. It can with rare earth elements.
Everything Biden does leads to more inflation.
On July 19, I asked Electric Vehicles for Everyone? If the Dream Was Met, Would it Help the Environment?
My follow-up post was What Do MishTalk Readers Think About “Electric Vehicles for Everyone?”
The EV math does not add up in the EU or here. But here we go anyway.
In case you missed it, please consider The Shocking Truth About Biden’s Proposed Energy Fuel Standards
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration NHTSA did an impact assessment of 4 fuel standard proposals and compared them to the cost of doing nothing. Guess what.
The NHTSA conclude: “Net benefits [of stricter mile standards] for passenger cars remain negative across alternatives” vs doing nothing at all.
Government only rewards failure of itself.
Offshore wind, especially, is proving to be unaffordable. Siemens has all but dropped the wind business, and Orstad has had to put US developments on hold due to rising costs. It just isn’t going to work, as most of us already knew.
Not even the pyramids of Egypt compare to the squandered assets of the so called Biden green energy programs
Electric Vehicles for Everyone? Another Leftist dream of disaster for everyone ,LOL
Supposedly, ALL money bills must be passed by the House before they go to anywhere. How does/did this “Biden Act” get passed with a so-called republican House?
Should have invested in nuclear power
The looting of America is accelerating
The USA connected cronies, elites, and its own government representatives are like BLM grabbing all they can from a burning Target before the roof collapses.
I like nuclear in general. But I fear the left's ability to excuse shutting down nuclear cuz it's dangerous doncha know. If they can so casually excuse blocking today what they only recently pushed more use of as "clean burning natural gas", how much quicker will they do that with nuclear?
So instead of us trying to find a power source that placates the left, we should instead figure out how to remove their ability to undermine what we already have that works.
The electricity required for one EV is the equivalent of adding 25 refrigerators to your home.
True that. Maybe not 25 fridges, but definitely a lot of power demand for charging the EV. Before I went solar and got an EV, my A/C was my main power hog with water heater as number two (originally a gas water heater, but I eventually replaced it with a hybrid water heater). In the past 15 months I've had an EV it's been my main power hog "appliance". Of course, that's with charging it at home for about 22K or 23K miles of the overall 26K miles we drove it the first 12 months.
From a 2012 article…….ever wonder why Biden is going down the same kick back path with his green energy bullsh*t? But this time it’s on steroids……
Obama Legacy: List of Failed Obama Green Energy & Solar Companies: Losses in the Billions for Taxpayers. None Succeeded.
23 bankrupt, 27 troubled, equals a new “Obama green-energy failure” list total of 50. At least $15 billion of “green” taxpayer money is either gone or still at risk, and the majority was funneled to Obama and Democrat cronies
"Incremental change" and "moving the goalposts" is standard operating procedure for the leftists.
Give them an inch and they want the next inch and then more after that.
Ever stringent CAFE standards & "acceptable" emission levels (that they quantify) are examples...
I got the 25 fridges info from Rep Tom Massie (R-KY) who is an MIT grad.
I have always wondered about the used car market for EVs. How long does a battery last? I assume its ability to hold a charge declines over the years like any other battery.
I imagine in busy households - multiple children or multiple families - there are long stretches where the refrigerator rarely cycles the compressor off.
I am a household of one and I’m in the thing all throughout the day.
25 refrigerators would pack my large-size living room and would draw quite a lot of current!
Don't get this code jokey from Alabama started on MIT having as many worthless grads as they do smart ones. LOL
I have always wondered about the used car market for EVs. How long does a battery last? I assume its ability to hold a charge declines over the years like any other battery.
That's a good point. A lot of us EV owners are banking on EV makers to honor their warranties, which for mine is 100K miles or 7 years with a guaranteed gradual loss of efficiency to being 50% in the final year. As someone who's had one for 15 months and driven it 29K miles (26K miles by the 1-year anniversary), I'm about 1/4th into the 100K warranty and have yet to see a decline in performance Y-o-Y. (In other words, I assume this last month I had to run the A/C as much as I did last August and I still got the same range and performance.) Part of that is from doing almost all of my charging at home (slow charging extends battery life over always charging at road-side chargers) and other sound EV owner techniques that are in many ways similar to learning how best to extend the life of ICE cars.
Of course, this is coming from someone used to driving a car until it's ready for the junkyard. That's not the case of EV owners who buy one because they like the new tech and will ditch it in 4 or 5 years when the newness seems obsolete.
Of course, this is coming from someone used to driving a car until it's ready for the junkyard. That's not the case of EV owners who buy one because they like the new tech and will ditch it in 4 or 5 years when the newness seems obsolete.
So if you "ditch" the car in 4 or 5 years, someone buying it used would have to purchase a new battery, which could cost $14k or so. I wonder what the resale value of these cars will be.
It depends. If you're married and have 2 cars and the used EV is not meant to be your long travel car, then no battery replacement needed. Or if the EV has low miles then ostensibly the battery is not worn and doesn't need replacement for a while even if used for long trips. In my EV replacing the battery would cost $10K to $12K including labor (assuming I had no warranty) -- but it's not a Too Expensive Still Liberals Adore. I'm predicting it'll cost more when I have to replace mine due to inflation, but it's possible that's wrong because of possible after market replacement batteries being a thing by then.
Basically someone buying a used EV would need to consider the miles just like someone buying a used ICE car, while also considering the intended purpose of the car. For example, over the years my wife and I have been married, always needing 2 cars, we often were happy with one clunker, usually the pickup, as long as we had a nicer and more dependable car for our trips. Assuming another married couple had the same rationale for their 2 cars, finds themselves having to replace one of their cars right after replacing the other one, and the other one they already spent good money on for it to be nice for long trips, then a cheap used EV with a used battery good only for local driving would be fine (assuming it's not needed for pickup duties, since IMHO EV pickups are about as worthless for pickup chores as my ex-mother-in-law is for calming a room). Years later when the nicer car gets old they can weigh a decision for replacing the EV battery to make the EV the trip car.
But even with all of that, the couple needs to first consider whether or not an EV is worth the cost. In my case it was time to replace my wife's ICE crossover and I looked at new ICE crossovers, used ICE crossovers, and new EV crossovers (since EV crossovers were relatively new and there were no used ones). I realized it wouldn't be worth the cost of going EV unless we drove it at least 10K miles per year (based on gas prices in Alabama) and did most of our charging at home. If I didn't have solar the threshold would be about 12K miles annually (cheaper to charge per mile than gas up per mile, but even cheaper if most of your home's power is free). My wife and I agreed that whoever drove the most on any given day would drive the EV to save on gas (unless that person needed the pickup for pickup chores). We also sat down and listed most of our road trips we'd been taking and planned to take for the next few years and researched fast road-side chargers for each trip (as well as hotels with complementary chargers for the few times we rent a hotel instead of renting a cabin, which we can usually charge from an outside outlet and get about 40 miles in a 10-hour night charge with the very slow 120V charging). We also asked each other how often we planned to drive on long trips up north during the winter (never LOL) when EV's lose a lot of their efficiency. And how much insurance increases for an EV (none for my car insurance except for switching from liability only coverage for an old used car to full coverage on a new car, but that price increase has to be taken into account). And how much your state charges for EV fee for annual car registration (to offset not having to pay gas taxes), in my case $200 per year.
All of these things need to be thought out before getting an EV (or for that matter dissing the idea of getting one). At least if you're thinking about practical pros and cons and not things like convenience (leave home fully charged instead of having to fill up every few days for local driving) and zippy acceleration or some saving-the-world-from-cow-fart cult belief.
For me, one reason I got an EV is for energy security with my transportation. Basically, the Dims have to mess up either the availability or the price of both gasoline and power to restrict our long trip traveling. If gas is hard to come by we'll take the EV. If power is hard to come by we'll take the ICE. To me that alone was important for me to consider getting an EV. And in my case local driving is practically impossible for the Dims to reduce with their energy policies even if they made both gas and power too expensive to use (82% of all the power my all-electric home consumes, including charging the EV, comes from solar, and that's with us being gluttonous with things like keeping the AC on low temp and getting in the hot tub a lot all while charging the EV at home for about 22K to 23K of the 26K miles we put on it annually). My last 12 power bills averaged under $75/month -- with no natural gas bill and almost no cost at the pump (what little we drive the ICE pickup).
If I could drill and refine my own oil I promise you I would because IMHO ICE cars in many ways are better than EV's. But I can't. Same for if I could provide my own energy for my home by drilling my own natural gas or mining my own coal, but I can't. The one energy source I can produce on my own is electricity through solar. And the only way to extend to the road that mostly self-reliance on energy is to do most of our driving in an EV. That is what's keeping me from losing sleep with my retirement financial planning. I no longer worry about the Dims' stupid energy policies pricing up energy costs.
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