Posted on 02/12/2019 6:31:11 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Preaching green faith, socialist trust, and pixie dust, the Green New Deal is more fantasy than fact. America's new Green Energy Pixie, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been waving a magic wand, conjuring up the money for this fantasy, claiming that it will materialize out of thin air!
Apparently, the physical impossibility of green energy-harvesting to generate America's electricity needs in less than a decade escapes Brooklyn's Tinkerbelle.
Prestidigitation aside, what would it take to green-generate all her home state's electricity? Let's run some numbers in the real world.
New York State has always been a leader in renewable energy, currently generating 29% of all electricity with renewable power sources. The lion's share, 24%, is generated from hydro-electric by Niagara Falls. Wind is 3% with 1,200 turbines, followed by solar and biodiesel at 2%.
Niagara Falls, a natural hydroelectric corridor, generates 2.6 gigawatts. Putting that in a perspective for Miss Cortez, that would power two flux capacitors in Doc Brown's DeLorean.
New York State generates 33% of its electricity from nuclear reactors. Replacing those nukes with wind turbines is viable yet expensive. Building twelve thousand land-based turbines rated at 1 to 1.5 MW costing around $1,600,000 each, or $19 billion, is not the only cost. Erecting these 300-foot-tall turbines at a rate of four per day would take at least ten years. Shutting down and remediation of six remaining nuclear reactors will take 60 years at about two billion dollars each, according to the NRC. Another cost: Turbines fail when the wind is not within their range of operation and need a backup generator. Add in another 3.3-billion-dollar expense, according to the U.S. EIA, to build natural gas backup generators. Total estimated cost: 34.3 billion dollars for one third of NYS's electricity. s
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Wind turbines are a workable alternative. Downside: They require a lot of land, kill a lot of birds, operate only in a wind corridor, and to date do not have a positive return on investment.
Windmills seem to waste energy. Seems they could produce some type of energy out of all the dead birds.
I’m sure this gets lost on her within the first two lines of reading.
Don’t forget land acquisition, and grid infrastructure, you have to wire the turbines to something. Oh yeah, 3% that’s on paper, real world not so much
That dingbat No Cortex thinks NYC IS NY.
Someone should tell her one is a city and one is a state.
NYC does not decide the fate of the entire state.
Hell they can’t even destroy my beloved Staten Island though they have TRIED, MAN have they TRIED.
Projects in good neighborhoods, drug treatment centers in good neighborhoods and a million other attempts to ruin this mostly Italian/Irish enclave have failed.
Their self absorption and superiority complex will doom them in the end.
I also expect the state senate to be taken back by Rs after the HORRIFIC abortion bill.
A cautionary tale on going 100 percent renewable:
The municipal electric utility locked in 20 and 25 year renewable rates with surplus for peak usage and expected growth, and sells unused power back to the Texas grid. Well, the price of natural-gas generated electricity has plummeted, which means the utility loses money every day selling that juice at a loss.
Idiots. The mayor had Al Gore come to town and went on late-night TV talk shows. Now the peasants are revolting.
No, it is not viable.
The wind does not blow all the time or on demand. Wind power does not contribute overall to power production, because it is expensive to build.
You still have to have other capacity to replace it when the wind does not blow.
Under the Green screw you Deal, cannot have backup natural gas turbines for electricity. That would be baaaad. So, good luck NY when the wind is not blowing. I’ll feel really bad for you in the cold or the hot when you are under a high pressure center - not.
And a blight on the land!!! Miles and miles after endless miles across the Midwest of these things! /spit.
RE: NYC does not decide the fate of the entire state.
Unfortunately, when it comes to elections, it does.
Okay, waiting for the flaming wind mill video. :-)
The greenies here in Washington state blocked the efforts to include hydropower as renewable when the state passed the law that 10% of energy be “green”, which forced the utilities to buy power from wind and solar projects.
Agreed to quite an extent.
But I think we can take the senate back because even for some dems I know the abortion bill is an abomination.
“NYC does not decide the fate of the entire state.” Yeah, some of us out here think the voters Las Vegas don’t control the rest of NV. We’re wrong.
Yeah, it’s been a long time since Rudy and D’amato, though I know Rudy isn’t considered a conservative.
He was still great for the city.
And an even LONGER time since an R could win at the POTUS level.
But I still think we can take back the NYS senate.
It usually is in R hands and I think this abortion nightmare bill (though ANY abortion bill is a nightmare) will help us win it back.
The national debt is $21,000 billion ($21 trillion) and we paid $370 billion in interest on the debt last year.
The Green New Deal isn’t much different than what DC has been doing for the last 60 years. All the presidents through Clinton maxed out our credit card, Bush Jr. maxed out our kids credit card, Obama maxed out our grandkids credit card, and Trump has opened a credit card in our great grandkids name.
Spit.
And at least we keep our parts of NY/NV nice and family oriented and a good place to live.
God knows MANY in the other four boroughs HATE the south shore of Staten Island.
The sad part is that the part of our district that is in Brooklyn has flipped a reliable R house seat to D.
And Trump only won with 56 percent on Staten Island.
MANY, MANY Russians and Albanians moving here and they vote D.
They have tons of money but they vote D.
Gangsters.
Extrapolating from that would be $103Bn and would need 36,000 turbines operating 100% of the time. Given the proclivities of wind and sun not being reliable, the backups would need to be available 100% of the time or following the average amount of sun and wind, we could guestimate roughly 60% solar and 30% wind availability. With an ROI of 21.5 and life span of 20 years, 1.5 years of negative return * $103Bn (current dollars) would cost the N'Yakers $115Bn in estimated actual cost for a span of 20 years. The future cost of money would be more unsustainable than the lack of wind/sun in generating the current need, let alone the future need for energy.
And this chick has a degree in economics?
Capacity to provide wind backup was covered. It was offset by natural gas turbines. But I’m sure that Ms. Cortex would never allow gas turbines to be built because they are not green!
NYers will probably have to do without electricity when the wind doesn’t blow.
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