Renewables NOT Renewable

by Viv Forbes

Horse Hollow wind farm

 

There is an incessant chorus from the green gospellers glorifying “renewable” energy and warning disbelievers that continued use of carbon fuels will damn the world to eternal fires of global warming.

Their ire is focussed on carbon dioxide, one very minor but beneficial atmospheric gas which is accused of causing more of everything bad: pollution and extreme weather, droughts and floods, snowstorms and hurricanes, malaria and mosquitos, icebergs and glacier retreat, heat waves and blizzards, declining polar bears and multiplying cane toads.

 
 

We are told that using “renewable” energy will prevent all these disasters and produce cheap “clean” electricity. Four points are relevant:

First, carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil, gas, diesel, petrol or wood is not a pollutant in the atmosphere, not the key driver of global warming or climate change, but a boon to all plants (and thus all life). It is clean and green. There is thus no environmental or climate justification for punitive taxes on carbon dioxide, or for really silly stuff like emissions trading or carbon capture and burial.

Second, wind and solar power have a role in remote or mobile applications and in domestic hot water generation, but are an unreliable and high cost addition to grid power. Because of their intermittent and unpredictable supply characteristics, the large areas of land required to collect significant energy, and their need for back-up generators or huge batteries, they can seldom compete in a fair market with coal, gas, nuclear or hydro power. Nothing anyone can do will change these natural characteristics.

Third, those who wish to use “renewable” energy or to become independent of the grid are free to do so, and this should continue. But green energy should not be molly-coddled with subsidies from taxpayers or other users, nor protected by extra taxes on carbon energy, taxpayer loans, mandated market shares or propped up prices.

Finally, there is one killer point that has recently emerged.

The data collected shows that renewables will barely generate sufficient energy over the life of the facilities to recover the energy used to manufacture, construct and maintain those facilities.


Google has long supported green energy and had a dream to power all of their energy-hungry computers and air-conditioned data centres with “renewables”. It was revealed recently by their own technical advisers that this dream is a delusion. The fatal flaw discovered is that wind/solar energy may not reduce life-time emissions of carbon dioxide and is unlikely to ever be cheaper than coal. The data collected shows that renewables will barely generate sufficient energy over the life of the facilities to recover the energy used to manufacture, construct and maintain those facilities.


Most so called “renewable” energy relies on the sun, and is better referred to as “in-exhaustible”. But at any point on Earth, wind/solar is more accurately called “intermittent energy”. And to build plants to extract electricity from the sun using wind or solar collectors is a zero-sum game or worse – they may not produce enough energy to recoup the energy cost of replacing those facilities.

Wind/solar energy thus fails its central justification – it is not renewable.



Viv Forbes,
forbes@carbon-sense.com


For those who would like to read more:

Google Green tried hard to make green energy work:
http://www.google.com/green/energy/

But Google Engineers now say renewable energy won’t work:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/11/22/Renewable-energy-so-useless-that-even-greenie-Google-gave-up-on-it

Troubles at world’s largest solar plant: production down, gas usage up:
http://breakingenergy.com/2014/10/29/at-ivanpah-solar-power-plant-energy-production-falling-well-short-of-expectations/

The Catch22 of Energy Storage:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/

Large amount of steel & concrete used for a wind turbine base. photo sourced [here]