Posted on 04/09/2022 8:23:29 AM PDT by rktman
Europe is not going to achieve a competitive energy transition with the current interventionist policies. Europe does not depend on Russian gas due to a coincidence, but because of a chain of mistaken policies: banning nuclear in Germany, prohibiting the development of domestic natural gas resources throughout the European Union, added to a massive and expensive renewable rollout without building a reliable backup.
Solar and wind do not reduce dependency on Russian natural gas. They are necessary but volatile and intermittent. They need backup from nuclear, hydro, and natural gas for security of energy supply. Dependency on these backup sources rises in periods of low wind and little sun, just when prices are highest.
“Solar goes to zero for twelve hours a day, and that is guaranteed. The wind blows sometimes, and sometimes it does not, also guaranteed. They both depend on weather, which is 100% out of human control. They are on their best day a supplement,” wrote a Navy pilot follower.
Batteries are not an option, either. It is impossible to build an industrial-size network of enormous batteries; the cost would be prohibitive and the dependency on China (for lithium, etc.) to build them would be even more of a problem. At current prices, a battery energy-storage system of Europe’s size would cost more than $2.5 trillion, according to an MIT Technology Review paper, massively more expensive than any other alternative.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
“Sustainable” energy is a red herring.
The actual goal is to end all energy so 90% of the population starves.
I guess they never heard of ‘Look before you leap’
And we’re doing the same thing.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…..
"Foisted on their own petard "
Our government is following the same policy.
You are supposed to learn by other mistakes, not follow the same policy !
Intentional FUBAR !
They are anti-civilization woo-woos. They are in a sense extreme "reactionaries". The world took a wrong turn at the end of the Neolithic.
Wow.
Who could have seen this coming?
Back to the old ways. Civilization was good while it lasted.
“...continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Civilizations create bureaucratic complexity—which then destroys civilizations.
Homo sapiens never learns.
Or grid-scale energy storage. Note...I prefer nuclear, but not to even mention storage is a massive oversight and taints the whole article as frivolous.
Beware of "one size fits all" arguments (excuse for unaccountable government spending?).
For example, solar power support for air conditioning for relief from summer heat is a good combination in many places imo.
Insights welcome.
Strange how reality always gets its revenge.
Delusional thinking and belief in pretty unicorns has its downsides.
Meanwhile in the US, we have been shutting down and blowing up perfectly good coal plants to achieve greenie goals.
Like ordering you to go find a unicorn to ride, and shooting your horse before you find one.
“Or grid scale energy storage...” an option for which no workable technology exists, and not worth mentioning.
Eurotrash are about to get an expensive reality check.
There are plenty of workable technologies...just not cheap enough yet.
HUH? You must learn to appreciate the smell of dung fires wafting past your mud hut’s veranda in the early morning hours as the sun comes up on another broiling hot day.
Hydroelectric storage is increasingly being used to provide constant emission-free energy to the grid. Batteries and intermittent power are old news.
Essentially you pump water uphill during times of energy surplus and let it flown down through turbines when energy release is needed. Calculations can easily be done to make normally intermittent sources into constant.
Pumps and turbines are much cleaner to manufacture than batteries, mostly cheap metal and have far more storage potential per investment needed.
The water level difference in many of the lakes that can be used would be hardly noticeable.
Of course you’ll still get opposition from the full environazis worried about some tadpoles being pumped up hill. While they go home and flip on their electric lights powered by burned coal...
It’s why Chins is in mass production of hydrogen fuels they want to corner the market by being ahead of the game some other countries are doing the same.
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