“Green Electricity Costs a Bundle”, By BJORN LOMBORG

“The data make clear: The notion that solar and wind power save money is an environmentalist lie.”

1. COMMENTARY

Green Electricity Costs a Bundle

The data make clear: The notion that solar and wind power save money is an environmentalist lie.

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By

Bjorn Lomborg

Jan. 1, 2025 5:31 pm ET

WIND TURBINES OPERATE AT THE KLETTWITZ NORD SOLAR ENERGY PARK NEAR KLETTWITZ, GERMANY, TUESDAY, OCT. 15.

As nations use more and more supposedly cheap solar and wind power, a strange thing happens: Our power bills get more expensive. This exposes the environmentalist lie that renewables have already outmatched fossil fuels and that the “green transition” is irreversible even under a second Trump administration.

The claim that green energy is cheaper relies on bogus math that measures the cost of electricity only when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Modern societies need around-the-clock power, requiring backup, often powered by fossil fuels. That means we’re paying for two power systems: renewables and backup. Moreover, as fossil fuels are used less, those power sources need to earn their capital costs back in fewer hours, leading to even more expensive power.

This means the real energy costs of solar and wind are far higher than what green campaigners claim. One study shows that in China the real cost of solar power on average is twice as high as that of coal. Similarly, a peer-reviewed study of Germany and Texas shows that solar and wind are many times more expensive than fossil fuels. Germany, the U.K., Spain, and Denmark, all of which increasingly rely on solar and wind power, have some of the world’s most expensive electricity.

The International Energy Agency’s latest data (from 2022) on solar and wind power generation costs and consumption across nearly 70 countries shows a clear correlation between more solar and wind and higher average household and industry energy prices. In a country with little or no solar and wind, the average electricity cost is about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour (in today’s money). For every 10% increase in solar and wind share, the electricity cost increases by more than 5 cents a kilowatt-hour. This isn’t an outlier; these results are substantially similar to 2019, before the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Take Germany, where electricity costs 30 cents a kilowatt-hour—more than twice the U.S. cost and more than three times the Chinese price. Germany has installed so much solar and wind that, on sunny and windy days, renewable energy satisfies close to 70% of Germany’s needs—a fact the press eagerly reports. But the press hardly mentions dark and still days, when these renewables deliver almost nothing. Twice in the past two months, when it was cloudy and nearly windless, solar and wind delivered less than 4% of the daily power Germany needed.

Current battery technology is insufficient. Germany’s entire battery storage runs out in about 20 minutes. That leaves more than 23 hours of energy powered mostly by fossil fuels. Last month, with cloudy skies and nearly no wind, Germany faced the highest power prices since the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with wholesale prices reaching a staggering $1 a kilowatt-hour.

At least climate-obsessed European governments are generally honest about solar and wind costs and raise electricity prices accordingly, making consumers bear the weight of green energy policies directly. In the U.S., by contrast, consumers pay solar and wind costs indirectly—through tax deductions and subsidies.

Solar and wind credits cost the federal government more than $20 billion in 2024, supplemented by state subsidies. Texas received about $2 billion in federal subsidies last year, and state government subsidies at least tripled that cost. This suggests a total hidden cost for the entire U.S. that perhaps runs more than $60 billion annually, implying that the actual cost of electricity with solar and wind is far higher than stated prices.

Poor countries are especially hurt by the lie that green energy is cheap. Rich countries often refuse to help poor countries with fossil fuel projects. If solar and wind really were less expensive, the world’s poorer countries would easily leapfrog from today’s energy poverty to energy abundance. New energy infrastructure would all be solar and wind. But this happens only in rich countries where generous subsidies and existing fossil-fuel backup infrastructure make our solar and wind deception possible.

In poorer countries, where electricity consumption rose almost 5% from 2022 to 2023, most of the additions came from fossil fuels, with coal contributing more than all solar and wind additions. China during that period added more new coal than new solar and wind. Bangladesh added 13 times as much coal as solar and wind. Despite India’s ambitious solar targets, it added three times as much coal as solar and wind.

This sets the backdrop for U.S. authorities’ recent bribery allegations against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani. Since most Indian states don’t want to “risk ‘intermittent’ renewables,” according to Reuters, he allegedly had to bribe government officials to get them to buy power from his $6 billion solar power project. Mr. Adani’s case confirms what the data already show: Solar and wind are bad business and make our power much more expensive.

Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of ‘Best Things First.’