Here's the easiest way to see how well solar and wind are doing ... Or how poorly, as it turns out...

American Thinker ^ | 11/22/2020 | Wallace Manheimer

[SeekAndFind]

We have all heard on the media and on TV that solar and wind electrical energy is getting cheaper, and often much cheaper than that generated by coal, gas, oil, or nuclear. Here are some recent article titles:

"Solar and wind costs continue to fall as power becomes cleaner," Forbes, April 30, 2020 "Solar power will cost less than coal, Bloomberg Green, June 2, 2020; Solar and wind power will cost less than coal by 2030 according to one analyst's math," Barrons, Energy Features, Nov 25, 2019 However, there are enormous scientific, technical, and economic barriers that these "new" energy forms must overcome before they can be regarded as economical — barriers that are, in reality, just about impossible to overcome. They have been described by recently by Michael Shellenberger, a well known environmentalist, in his recent book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

The skeptical arguments, while correct, are not necessarily easy for a layman to follow. After all, who notices or cares if, to build solar panels, we have to dig up a lot of indium somewhere, most likely in some remote African country, which will not complain about us trashing its environment and paying its citizens slave wages?

However, one thing all of us do understand is price. There is "a gigantic laboratory" in Europe. It is France and Germany. France for years has generated most of its electricity (~75–80%) by nuclear power. Germany, in about 2000, adopted a different route. It has embarked on an "energiewende," a German word for energy transformation to solar and wind. Accordingly, it has decommissioned many of its coal fired power plants and is in the process of decommissioning what once were its 17 nuclear power reactors.

[SeekAndFind]

Below is a graph of the price of a kilowatt-hour of electric energy in Germany, France and, the United States, in euro cents, from 1980 to about 2020. Also shown on the graph are plots of per capita CO2 emission into the atmosphere in tons per year. These are taken and plotted from various internet sources.



The graph shows that, at least up to now, after about 20 years, the German energiewende has failed on both counts. It has not reduced the price of electricity, but rather has greatly increased it. It has not reduced the per capita German CO2 emission into the atmosphere as compared to France, or even the United States (in fact, most of the German reduction shown here predates on the energiewende).

The conclusion is obvious. Sunlight and wind are free, but solar- and wind-powered electricity is very, very expensive. Sunlight and wind are clean, but turning them into electricity is not.

[Sacajaweau]

Here in Upstate NY, solar farms are using up our farmlands.

Such a waste. Think of the oxygen those farmlands produce and the animals they nurture.

It's just plain wrong. Natural gas is still the best option.

[ontap]

If it were so great and so economical why does it depend on government subsidies!!!

[gundog]

They become “economical” when fossil fuels have been made outrageously expensive.

[Wilhelm Tell]

It’s the socialist way - find the most inefficient way to do something and make it mandatory and never learn from failure.

[Renkluaf]

The sun and wind may be “free” but they don’t shine/blow 24 hours a day. You can’t use either for base-load power so their “real” cost has to include the cost of base-load power. The whole thing is a hoax. Remember, when your neighbor puts panels on his/her roof, you’re paying part of his/her electric bill.

[dangus]

>> Here in Upstate NY, solar farms are using up our farmlands. Such a waste. Think of the oxygen those farmlands produce and the animals they nurture. <<

That’s an absurd argument. The U.S. could meet 100% of its energy needs with 8,000 square miles, or about 0.2% of its land area. That can include wasteland, rooftops, brownfields, parking areas, strip mines, etc.

[dangus]

Straaaaange... other sources I find show that the price of electricity in Germany has been flat since 2013. Still very high price compared to most states.

Of course, Germany still relies way too much on coal; that they shut down perfectly good nuclear power plants while 40% of their energy is from coal just demonstrates their insanity.

[rktman]

Check ‘Crescent Dunes Another Green Flop’ out from Jan of this year:

https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/crescent-dunes-another-green-flop

But, I hear the govt is recouping $200 million of the investment. Awesome huh? I wonder how much it will cost to tear down. Or will they just leave it.

[SamAdams76]

Government should just butt out and let the "invisible hand" of capitalism determine fulfillment of our energy needs.

Right now gas and oil are cheap and plentiful. This should be the way of things until those resources start getting scarce. Then, the magic of capitalism will produce alternative methods of energy and bring them to market accordingly.

Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

Right now, we are literally drowning in natural gas and oil. There are still incredible reservoirs of these cheap and reliable energy sources and we are finding more all the time.

[FreedomPoster]

Adopt the Green New Deal, and we can have energy prices skyrocket as shown by that red line.

[farming pharmer]

Was in northern Iowa last week. Thousands of windmills along I80.

[FreedomNotSafety]

Don’t worry Libs will mandate that crops be planted under the solar cells. And that one wind mill be put one right behind the other so they can all use the same wind.

See it’s easy! What about when it’s dark or the wind isn’t blowing? Science will solve that problem just follow the science.

[palmer]

Straaaaange... other sources I find show that the price of electricity in Germany has been flat since 2013.

Very likely they are leaving out the taxes added to electric bills to fund new renewable capacity. https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/cost-electricity-germany-reaches-record-high

[cp124]

Toxic solar panels and bird killing nature blight wind mills. That is the way to go.

[palmer]

"Solar power will cost less than coal, Bloomberg Green...

Your graph and conclusion in post 2 are exactly right. For any hour of labor, plus materials, coal is about 40 to 80,000 times cheaper than solar for an hour's worth of electricity. The problem with the coal mining is that it only supplies electricity for that hour and the solar keeps going with very little extra labor and materials. The solar pays back that investment 40,000 or more hours after installation (5 to 10 years depending on the compable coal mining). Someone has to put the money up front to get the solar.

Typically the claims of lower costs include the financing, but not the generous subsidies like net metering. The pricing does not include any storage or peaking capacity needed to backstop unreliable solar power.

[RedMonqey]

I’m not a scientist but from all I read, the real stubling block is not generation energy from wind or solar(besides expense)

It’s storage.

A nation can produce all the solar/wind energy as the efficiency of these systems are increasing but it al goes to naught when the sun goes down, is cloudy and the wind doesn’t always blow at the optimum rate which the wind turbines can rotate(too little-no energy, too fast and the blades fail/generators catch fire)
To capture all the energy produced at the optimum tine and retrieve it when these systems are “offline”, this ‘free energy” is wasted as there is no comical way to store this energy on industrial scale. Business run on the agreement that they will produce and deliver products in a timely manner and customers expect their needs to be available in equally manner.

Gas powered turbines are often a backup but unless we are going to a completely CO2 free economy, even these will be ‘phased out” as Biden has promised his Green New Deal supporters this will be dismantled.

Storage not yet invented is no way to run an modern economy.

Speaking of unrealistic fairly tales.

California wants to do away to the internal combustion automobile.

To rely on totally solar/wind generation.

Gavin Newson and the General Assemble in Sacramento must seriously ask themselves a tough question.

When the next firestorm hits California(As it surely will)
how will the totally electric car populations charge their transportation vehicles when the Santa Anna winds get so high and sparks start(or threaten) to start the fires and the state shuts down the charging of all the vehicles in the threatened area. Will the fires hold off long enough for the victims to take eight hours to recharge their batteries?

Or will flights of wing pegasuses speed to their rescue and lift their to their Olympian “safe spaces’

[Sequoyah101]

I’d like to talk to you about a bridge in Brooklyn.

I also have a unicorn for sale.

[yukong]

I recently attended a seminar hosted by a consortium of rural electric cooperatives. The seminar was to show off their “green” energy programs. During their presentation they acknowledged how static solar farms were only efficient about 4-5 hours a day, say 10-3 or so, if it wasn’t cloudy. Geo-tracking solar farms were more efficient, up to 5-7 hours a day. Wind was only really efficient at night. Solar was completely unable to provide electricity during normal peak use hours, 5PM to 8PM. Neither was wind. At the end, the keynote speaker lamented how solar and wind would never be viable until we could solve “the storage” problem. He never explained that. During a Q&A I asked about that and I said, do you mean huge batteries? He said yes. I asked how big would a battery need to be to hold 1 or 2 megawatts of electricity? He moved on without answering. These “green” energy programs will never be able to replace gas or coal fired generators or nuclear. Can you imaging the ecological impact of batteries large enough to provide the storage necessary to power a NYC or LA/Chicago? Just folly to believe such.