Whackos who “believe” strongly in something will do anything to ignore the obvious falsity of their belief. So they lie constantly, make crap up, anything to defend the belief. So it is with the climate scam and its twin brother, renewable energy. Anyone who doesn’t believe that the billionaires profiting from the renewable energy delusion are working hand in glove with the climate hysterics isn’t paying attention. And consumers are paying the price. We are seeing tens of thousands of acres of productive farm land turned into wastelands with solar panels and windmills. Completely unreliable sources of electricity combined with higher cost is not exactly what Little Timmy Walz promised Minnesotans when he and hte Dems rammed through a mandate for all electricity to come from those sources. But hey, the billionaires are doing great and contributing a lot of their profits to the Dems.
A set of reports from the Center for the American Experiment has detailed how increased reliance on renewables has increased electricity costs for consumers. What the chart shows is the increased inflation in electricity prices since the renewable mandates and renewable use has kicked in. One chart shows how electricity prices have risen faster than general inflation, even though natural gas prices have grown at a pace below overall inflation. If we had focused on using natural gas to generate electricity, the prices would be much lower than they are now. And along the way, as one of the posts linked to demonstrates, we have dramatically increased our risk to electricity production, as the percentage of generation from unreliable sources increases. One good hail or wind storm and a whole solar farm is gone, creating an environmental mess. (CAE Post) (CAE Post)
The claim that renewables are cheaper is based on LCOE computation which only measures the cost of generation,
That claim ignores full system costs.
Full system costs include the additional costs of transmission ( due in part to the 30x+ larger footprint of renewables), the additional equipment needed to control frequency caused by the high short term variability of wind and solar (think about the wind gusts, or even the short term cloud cover).
Full system costs also include the high levels of battery back up. The biggest single omission in the LCOE computation is the excess build out of renewables. Jacobson’s 100% renewable study has 3x to 3.5x build out of wind and solar over the average electrical usage in the USA. The excess build out is required to provide sufficient electric generation during slow periods (even before battery back up kicks in). That means that electric generation for the year will produce 3x the demand on average, electric generation that will be wasted. Thus the actual cost of wind and solar will be approx 3x the LCOE computation.
Easy to spot the deception in the cost computation. Did Lazards or did any “renewable energy expert” consult an accountant, or engineer, or finance guy to review their work. Of course not. As the advocates would state, people with actual expertise are not “renewable energy experts”.