Posted on 03/31/2023 9:59:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The “energy transition” continues to receive thunderous applause from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The “energy transition” is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy inexpensive (Table 1b and here), reliable, and very clean given the proper policy environment, toward such unconventional energy technologies as wind and solar power. They are expensive, unreliable, and deeply problematic environmentally in terms of toxic metal pollution, wildlife destruction, land use massive and unsightly, emissions of conventional pollutants, and in a larger context large and inexorable reductions in aggregate wealth and thus the social willingness to invest in environmental protection.
But the Beltway being what it is, the fantasists are impervious to reality, until the massive costs and dislocations and absurdities become impossible to ignore. (Witness, for example, California.) Even as they backtrack on their confident assertions that a modern economy can be powered with the energy equivalent of pixie dust, they argue that the emerging problems are little more than growing pains attendant upon short run rigidities, and all will be well given some more time, more subsidies, and more magical thinking.
Uh, no. The obstacles confronting the “energy transition” are fundamental — they are caused by the very nature of unconventional energy — driven by massive costs, technical and engineering realities, severe constraints in terms of needed physical inputs, and at a political level growing local opposition to the unconventional energy facilities central to the “transition.”
These realities — there’s that word again — are discussed in detail in a major recent paper by Mark P. Mills of the Manhattan Institute. This brief discussion cannot do it justice, but let us first quote Mills directly:
In these circumstances, policymakers are beginning to grasp the enormous difficulty of replacing even a mere 10% share of global hydrocarbons—the share supplied by Russia—never mind the impossibility of trying to replace all of society’s use of hydrocarbons with solar, wind, and battery (SWB) technologies. Two decades of aspirational policies and trillions of dollars in spending, most of it on SWB tech, have not yielded an “energy transition” that eliminates hydrocarbons. Regardless of climate-inspired motivations, it is a dangerous delusion to believe that spending yet more, and more quickly, will do so. The lessons of the recent decade make it clear that SWB technologies cannot be surged in times of need, are neither inherently “clean” nor even independent of hydrocarbons, and are not cheap.
Mills makes a number of hard realities clear, among which are the following:
The realities of the physics, engineering, and economics of energy systems are independent of any beliefs about climate change.
Europe, the U.S. and Canada, Australia and the other regions that have pursued power grids with a higher share of wind and solar electricity uniformly have experienced large increases in electricity costs, and even that effect hides the costs of the massive subsidies borne by taxpayers.
It costs at least $30 to store the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil using lithium batteries, which explains why batteries cannot compensate for the unreliable nature of wind and solar power even for days, let alone weeks. “There is no physics, never mind engineering or economies of scale” that would overcome this cost disadvantage.
The time cost alone of recharging an electric vehicle makes such vehicles uncompetitive, even apart from the costs of the batteries and other problems.
The International Energy Agency estimates that only a partial energy transition would require increases in the supplies of lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earths by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900%, and 700%, respectively, by 2040. This staggering problem of materials is “inherent in the nature of SWB technologies,” which means that the cost of unconventional energy will rise even more.
Nonetheless, the delusions continue. Mr. Amos Hochstein, an official at the Department of State, testified before a Senate committee recently that “The imperative [is] to diversify away from Russian energy dependence while accelerating the clean energy transition,” and that “The most effective way to reduce demand for Russian fossil fuels is to reduce dependence on all fossil fuels.”
Got that? Were the Europeans to reduce their dependence upon unreliable deliveries of Russian natural gas, and increase their dependence upon unconventional energy even more unreliable, there will result an increase in European “energy security.” Wow.
This is utter delusion, as Mills demonstrates incontrovertibly. But the Beltway continues in its imitation of George Orwell’s world, in which “War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength.” The “energy transition” translation: “Expensive Energy Is Cheap, Environmentally Destructive Energy Is Clean, and Central Planning Will Yield Utopia.” Only fools can believe such things. Much of the Beltway believes them.
Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
I've just read a new book called "Shorting the Grid". It's been an eyeopener.
Congress passed laws in the '90s that destroyed the highly-reliable regulated vertical monopoly model of power delivery, and replaced it with something called Regional Transmission Organizations.
Now, RTOs own the grid network, and must buy power from independent generators according to a Byzantine set of "market rules". This scheme, rather than reducing cost to the consumer, has actually raised it.
The system is being gamed relentlessly, (remember Enron?)
The worst gamers are the solar & wind suppliers, (which BTW could not even exist in the mix were it not for the RTO system).
With the RTO system it seems that "renewables" get only a small fraction of their revenue from actually selling power to the grid. The rest is subsidies. And for all that, what power they DO supply is so unreliable that it is destabilizing the RTOs to the point where rolling blackouts are almost certain to occur in the near future.
This matters not to the "green energy" oligarchs who have bought the Democrat party.
A very great man once said: Follow the money.
The energy shift is carried out is the end of Wesern Civilization and the beginning of contention between China and Islam for domination of the world. China will win because it is as ruthless as Moslems and much more militarily capable and unafraid to use nukes where there is no nuclear capable enemy any more.
I had a great them professor who would deduces and compare the different energy sources and show the math.
I know the math is there, but that’s way over my ability to compute. I would just like the see it, even if it doesn’t change things.
The reason this pointless gesture continues is because it was THEIR idea, and they just cannot give it up. Little science or practical engineering ever went into the “transition” from hydrocarbon fuel to the so-called “renewables”, and the one “renewable” that actually worked in terms of reliability and abundance of output, hydroelectric, is being phased out just as quickly as the dams built for this purpose can be blown up.
The other highly reliable source, nuclear power, has been successfully legislated and subjected to propaganda fueled by superstition, to the point no new plants are being built on anything like the scale that shall be needed over the next decades, when demand for relatively inexpensive and highly reliable electrical power will increase exponentially.
But nuclear power need no longer come from your grandfather’s atomic power plant reactors. Newer, much smaller modular atomic reactors are now ready to introduction into the commercial power generation industry, and they offer far more flexibility in placement and application.
This is the bridge to the future, if the intention is to rescue the economy is in any way serious. Of course, total collapse of the economy is also the way to destroy capitalism forever, and that may be the real objective.
In which case there shall be no viable future to which a bridge may be built.
But I respectfully disagree with the statement "...the solar & wind suppliers, (which BTW could not even exist in the mix were it not for the RTO system)". The reality is the opposite. The use cases where solar is feasible tend to be the decentralized systems (solar for one home or solar for a small neighborhood). And even then they're rarely 100% dependable on solar.
“The “energy transition” translation:”
We don’t intend for so-called green energy to replace fossil fuels.
You will be impoverished and dependent on your Orwellian masters for your daily crumbs.
The thorium plants.
I don’t know the specifics but I suspect the poster is referring to the requirements where a certain amount of electrical energy must be supplied - or deemed to be supplied - from wind & solar.
the energy transition would be plausible if they hired elon musk to mass produce small modular nuclear reactors. And do it in the same way he makes cars and trucks.
That would collapse the cost of nuclear power to God knows what ridiculously low price and set off another american industrial and agricultural revolution.
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