Posted on 07/08/2022 8:35:43 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Amid the rise of solar, wind, and other non-fossil energy sources, far too many lawmakers and regulators were eager to toss aside fossil fuel-based energy. Upon the first signs of scalability on the part of renewables, they not only pursued policies that subsidized and incentivized renewables' growth, they also rushed to make traditional energy sources less economical through countless restrictive policies and heavy-handed regulation.
The result converted the energy sector into a sort of artificial market – one that encouraged and rewarded renewable energy while actively discouraging and even punishing fossil-based energy through a maze of tax credits on one side and severely harsh regulatory policies on the other.
We’re living the consequences of those actions today. Not only are gas prices at record highs across the nation, but we also face a shortage of coal, propane, natural gas and other fuel sources. When power plants find themselves in need of an influx of affordable fuel to meet demand, the supply constraints in place today mean that fuel, far too often, simply isn’t available. Facilities throughout the South, including those in Florida and South Carolina are facing what is sure to be an extremely hot summer, and already lack the coal stockpiles necessary to ensure reliable electricity generation.
As important as policy no denying that global factors play a sizable role of their own. During a period of remarkable tumult including, but not limited to, runaway inflation and a huge land war in Europe of all places, we’re seeing a combination of challenges come together all at once to wreak havoc on markets of all types – not just energy. But the presence of these complicating factors shouldn’t lead us to continue on the path of energy policies that marginalize the role of fossil fuels in ensuring our energy needs.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearenergy.org ...
Shut up Xi-O’Biden’s administration and leave the Permian Basin alone and reopen the work on the Pipeline from Canada.
It's TIME to DownSize DC!
Restore the Constitution!Size DC!
Upon the first signs of scalability”
not really
the market never gave such signals
Look what happened in Germany.
Many years ago all the talk moved from OIL to ENERGY.
The reasons were several, but prominent among them was the reality that the left wing lives in cities. They don’t drive much. Food getting to their grocery stores via diesel is largely invisible to them.
More rural and suburban folks drive. Oil is much more loud in their ears.
So talk of energy could focus on electricity and that allows talk about nat gas and coal and solar and wind. Where their food comes from, diesel, is just too obscure. They never think about it and so, no reason not to outlaw it.
Oil is everything. Oil plants and delivers food.
1. Fossil? 😕
But solar on your house or land to make you less dependent on state regulated energy --- that's something I love.
The fault lies with over zealous administrators who haven’t the vision to allow the better technology to succeed on its own. If “renewables” (I’m not convinced oil and NG aren’t renewable) are better, they will win out. If they are inadequate compared to other products, they will fail. There is no future in mandating failure.
Yup. Question for your uninformed person — where does your food come from? Answer from your uninformed person — the supermarket, of course.
CBS? The network of the historical Dan Rather, 60 Minutes and CIA liars? That CBS? Irrational liberal ‘elite’ hatred is bottomless.
EXACTLY RIGHT. The technology never gave such signals, either.
Government people, almost none of who are engineers, so fervently wanted to believe in pixie dust that they destroyed the fossil fuel industry. Like so many government actions, they just knew they were smarter than all those power engineers and could just WILL the new renewable industry into being.
Wind and solar are absolutely useless without long-term storage (days, not seconds and minutes) and large rotating mass turbine/generators to stabilize the 60 Hz grid. There simply are no storage systems that can make wind and solar more than a niche player at <10% to 15% of energy production.
We could use pumped storage, but the greenies won’t allow the required high-elevation, high-volume reservoirs to be constructed.
Until some power engineers teach the ignorant Congress critter some basic engineering, they will continue to make very stupid decisions that will make power high priced, scarce, and unreliable.
We need to consider nuclear as a long term solution.
BTW, why are the power companies silent while the leftists sell their impractical solutions?
One of the major problems is capacity.
Reliability and sustainability. Wind and solar electric power generation has neither. A very wrong-headed approach to “carbon-neutral” means of power generation has led to this conundrum and apparently irreconcilable paradox.
There are several “carbon-neutral” ways to achieve both reliability and sustainability, and among them is included nuclear power generation plants.
The most virulent and irresponsible screed was a film, “The China Syndrome”, a 1979 film about the meltdown of an atomic reactor, and the effects of a runaway disaster following. This combined with the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island reactor about the same time dealt a death blow to further construction of uranium-fueled light water reactors anywhere in the US, shifting a larger burden on coal fired plants at the time.
The later disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, with a great release of deadly atomic isotopes that contaminated the region in the near area of the atomic piles, just reinforced earlier superstitions in regards to nuclear power.
But the engineering of nuclear atomic piles has not been static. There has been a good deal of research into the use of thorium as fuel for an atomic reactor, and it has resulted in a whole new way of harnessing nuclear energy for electric power generation. By use of the molten salt method of extracting heat energy from disintegrating atomic nuclei, most if not all the objections to the possibility of meltdown are mitigated or avoided altogether. The fuel, thorium, circulates in this molten salt solution, rather than being in the form of fuel rods surrounded by water.
Thorium, unlike uranium, does not spontaneously initiate the fission process, but has to be seeded with a small amount of still fissionable isotopes as found in “spent” uranium fuel rods. Once started, the fertile thorium isotopes generate the heat needed to drive the power dynamo attached to the atomic pile, and can continue to do so for years, 24/7/365. at a flat-out full output. And the design is scalable, permitting its application close to the point of consumption of the electrical energy generated. It could be put in service in seagoing vessels, or large land-based transportation systems, much like a railway locomotive.
hopeful that mobile/easy to launch data centers located right at the source of wind/solar gen will make some of these monstrosities profitable....
even there, some storage or fossil fuels are necessary to get beyond the intermittement nature of even the best solar/wind, as you have noted
you can’t politic your way around reality itself
Ocasio-Cortez opposes nuclear energy because her real climate agenda is a backdoor for radical socialist economic overhaul and the destruction of capitalism.
Nuclear is great except the government can mess that up more than they mess up our other energy sources. Nuclear has to be more regulated — and more regulations mean more government pain.
thank you for that educational post
which is to say....she wants to deal in doling out favors, so that she can get fabulously wealthy
seen this a million times
the castros of the world get rich....the people they “liberate” get equality in misery....but get to talk about their “free” health care and education
We need to consider nuclear as a long term solution.
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I am a HUGE fan of nuclear.
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