Renewable Energy
Anthony Watts has been out of town for a couple weeks visiting an amazing site. During the interim, several other people have been posting and
this one from Ralph Ellis really brings home the numbers when people talk about Renewable Energy:
Renewable energy � our downfall?
The government, under pressure from a disparate confederation of environmentalists and greens, have agreed to press ahead with a host of renewable energy sources, including wind, tidal and wave power. Yet, despite the vast sums of public money that will be allocated to these projects and the fundamental enormity of the decisions that have been made, there has been very little in the way of open debate on the subject. Like many aspects of today�s governmental system, the powers that be appear to have made a decision about future energy production based upon image, spin and the number of votes the policy will capture, while ignoring the basic truths and science that should be the foundation-stone of any policy. Nobody has even debated the absolutely fundamental question of whether any of these energy generation systems actually work. The media�s reaction to this steamrollered, image-based decision-making process has been muted to the point of being inaudible, and I can only assume that either very few in the media have any grasp of the calamitous implications of the government�s policy, or they are cowering behind their desks for fear of losing their jobs.
So why, then, do I consider renewable energy to be a danger to the entire nation, both economically and socially? This is, after all, �free energy�, and what can be the problem with a free resource? Well, as readers will probably be fully aware, no resource is free even if it appears to be so, and this is the first of the many lies about renewable energy that have been peddled by industry spokesmen and government ministers. Oil is not free, despite it just sitting in the ground; water is not free, despite it falling from the sky; nuclear power is not free, despite the raw materials being ridiculously cheap, and neither is any renewable energy resource �free�. In fact, the conversion process from �free� renewable energy to usable grid electricity is remarkably expensive and its enormous costs are being subsidised by the consumer. In the UK, this subsidy is achieved through Renewables Obligation Certificates, the cost of which are eventually passed onto the consumer. In 2006 the cost to consumers was �600 million, and this is predicted to rise to �3 billion in 2020. 1 That is about �200 per household per annum, on top of current energy bills, for the privilege of using of �free� energy.
Now one might argue that that is not very much money to demand from the public, given the advertised prospect of clean, renewable energy that will fuel our homes and our economy for the next few generations. Power at the press of a button, and not a drop of noxious emissions of any nature in sight � just an array of perfectly silent, gently rotating wind-turbines stretching towards the horizon � it is dream-world picture direct from the cover issue of an environmentalist magazine, and the answer to a politician�s prayers. In one master-stroke the environment is magically healed, and votes are captured by the million � roll on the next election.
However, it is my belief that this sublime day-dream actually holds the seeds for our economic decline and for social disorder on an unprecedented scale. Why? Because no technical and industrial society can maintain itself on unreliable and intermittent power supplies. In 2003 there were six major electrical blackouts across the world, and the American Northeast blackout of August 14th was typical of these. The outage started in Ohio, when some power lines touched some trees and took out the Eastlake power station, but the subsequent cascade failure took out 256 power stations within one hour.
It is a long essay but a good one -- Ralph has done his homework and shows just how much effort would have to go into a renewable replacement for our current infrastructure. He talks about true alternatives - Nuclear for one. Here is a bit:
If a nuclear power station had killed a whole school full of children the environmentalists would never let us forget it, but because it was the result of the coal industry they let the memory fade. If 6,000 workers were killed every year in the nuclear industry Greenpeace would go ballistic, but because these are coal mining deaths in China they are ignored. Why do some people exhibit these double standards? What is it about technical progress that they so despise? In some respects, some of these anti-nuclear demonstrators appear to be portraying themselves as the world�s very own technological Taliban, and in this guise they must be vigorously opposed.
Emphasis mine - what a wonderful turn of phrase:
technological Taliban
Nails the enviros perfectly.
The 160+ comments are well worth reading as well -- a lot of links to data that backs up Ralph's thesis and a lot of amplification
Posted by DaveH at May 25, 2009 6:51 PM