The Only Thing Falling in Green Energy Costs Is Credibility
The fact green energy costs are doing anything but falling is also proved by the fact decades of ludicrous subsidies are never enough for the corporatists and grifters; they always want extensions….”
The Only Thing Falling in Green Energy Costs Is Credibility
The idea that green energy costs are falling is one of the biggest lies since Barack Obama told us Obamacare would reduce heath costs:
The falling cost of wind deception contaminates official assessments of the macroeconomic consequences of net zero. The Office for Budget Responsibility claims that the cost of low-carbon generation has fallen so fast that it's now cheaper than fossil fuel generation. Similarly, the [UK] Treasury erroneously took falling prices in wind subsidy allocation rounds as an indication of falling wind costs. Both see the economy riddled with multiple layers of market failures, while not recognizing the real danger of government policy being captured by vested interests, as, indeed, it has been. Taken to its logical conclusion, theirs is an argument for switching to central planning and a command-and-control economy.
The Treasury argues that “other things being equal,” the added investment required by renewable energy “will translate into additional GDP growth.” Other things, of course, aren't equal. As recent history shows, there’s a world of difference between investors and politicians making capital-allocation decisions. The centrally planned economies of the former communist bloc squandered colossal amounts of capital, immiserating their populations. Few now believe that investment in those economies boosted growth.
We don’t need to hypothesize. Government data disprove the Treasury’s contention and demonstrate that increasing deployment of renewable capacity reduces the productivity of Britain’s grid. In 2009, 87.3 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity, including only 5.1 percent of wind and solar, generated 376.8 terrawatt hours (TWh) of electricity. In 2020, 100.9 GW of generating capacity, with wind and solar accounting for 37.6 percent of capacity, produced 312.3 TWh of electricity. Thanks to renewables, 13.6 GW (15.6 percent) more generating capacity produced 64.5 TWh (17.1 percent) less electricity.
Those numbers are damning for renewables and demonstrate why they make electricity more expensive and people poorer. Before mass deployment of renewables, 1 MW of capacity in 2009 produced 4,312 MWh of electricity. In 2020, 1 MW of capacity generated 3,094 MWh, a decline of 28.3 percent. It’s as clear as can be: Investment in renewables shrinks the economy’s productive potential.
This is confirmed by the International Energy Agency’s net-zero modeling. Its net-zero pathway sees the global energy sector in 2030 employing nearly 25 million more people, using $16.5 trillion more capital, and taking an additional land area the combined size of California and Texas for wind and solar farms and the combined size of Mexico and France for bioenergy—all to produce 7 percent less energy.
The fact green energy costs are doing anything but falling is also proved by the fact decades of ludicrous subsidies are never enough for the corporatists and grifters; they always want extensions and more, more, more. That’s because the true objective is to get a piece of that $16.5 trillion.