Green Energy = Civilisational Suicide

Sometimes they blame 'extreme weather events', more often they blame Vladimir Putin, but however much politicians and environmentalists lie to 'explain' price hikes, blackouts and fuel shortages there is one simple truth: They are the ones truly to blame, because their insane 'war on carbon' is now sabotaging the energy industry on which our entire civilisation depends.

Everything we regard as normal - from abundant and affordable food through to an orderly society with time and resources for leisure - is based not on some quirk of fate or on our own genius, but on the ridiculously (by long-term historic standards) cheap and 'dense' energy provided by fossil fuels and nuclear energy. The elite's 'war on carbon' is systematically closing down fossil fuels, while their anti-nuclear mania is blocking the one viable alternative from filling the gap.

The inevitable result of these suicidal policies will at some point in the not too distant future be a sudden systemic collapse. As is explained in our best-selling book Deus Vult - the Great Reset Resistance, the global elite's deliberate destruction of the means of production, distribution and exchange is going to end even more disastrously than the old Communists' attempts to change their ownership

The early symptoms are already visible, with power outages, price surges and forecourt shortages all giving us a glimpse into the future. Government, media and big financial institutions are covering up the damage by concealing the real cost of the 'alternative energy' on which they say we can and must rely. By cooking the books they are preventing the real, informed public debate which is the only thing that could lead to a 'just-in-time' reversal of their crazy, society-wrecking agenda. So let us take a closer look at the energy fraud they are perpetrating on us right now:

The elite narrative is that wind and solar are competitive with traditional fossil fuels and that the cost of wind and solar is rapidly dropping. Academics and the media obediently repeat this fraudulent analysis.

The basis of the fraud is a simple comparison of the cost per kilowatt-hour at the plant gate for electricity produced by wind or solar versus electricity produced by a traditional plant. Some or all of the massive subsidies for wind and solar are ignored in such comparisons. With such a rigged comparison, wind or solar may seem competitive.

But a proper comparison reveals that wind or solar is five or even ten times more expensive than natural gas or coal power. To understand why this is so, we have to explain some basic facts that apply to both wind or solar.

Wind or solar is erratic, intermittent electricity. It comes and goes according to the supply of wind and sunlight. Wind is erratic from day to day and usually has a seasonal cycle. Sunlight depends on clouds, seasons and, of course, does not work at night. So wind or solar electricity supply must be 100% backed up by conventional electricity plants. If 100% backup is neglected, rolling blackouts are the result when there is a lull in wind or solar production.

Residential rooftop solar is backed up by connection to mains electricity. The utility has to spend money on generating plants and a distribution network to maintain backup for residential rooftop systems. When rooftop solar is present, the utility is usually under-compensated for providing the backup service. When cloudiness happens over a wide area the backup plants go into high gear. 

The cost of backup plants for rooftop solar is borne by all the customers of the utility, not just the rooftop solar users who brag about how cheap their electricity is. Thus it is ordinary poor families who subsidise the artificially cheap power enjoyed by those with enough money and property to install 'green' gimmicks.

Wind or solar have both economies of scale and penalties of scale. The economy of scale results from the massive expansion of the industry. The equipment is cheaper and more efficient. The penalties of scale are more subtle.

The goal of introducing green electricity is to replace a significant proportion of the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel power plants. As you increase the fraction of fossil fuel power replaced, the cost of wind or solar escalates dramatically. Penalties of scale start when green electricity grows to the point of replacing about 20% of traditional electricity and escalates from there. The penalty of scale is a consequence of overprovisioning of wind or solar, necessary to boost their contribution to the electricity supply.

For example, even if wind power provisioning is sufficient to carry the typical peak load when the wind is blowing strong, most of the time the wind is not blowing strong and wind power is performing at a much lower level, on average about 30% of maximum capability.

The consequence is that as you try to boost the role of wind power, wind power must be overprovisioned so that it can make a significant contribution when the wind is moderate. But overprovisioning means that a lot of the time the engineers have to feather turbines, because otherwise there would be more power generated than the grid needs. Overprovisioning raises the cost.

With solar power, overprovisioning is less feasible because solar peaks in the middle of the day, and adding more simply results in discarding more power. To ameliorate this problem batteries are added to solar installations to move the excess midday power to the evening. The batteries are horrendously expensive and must be replaced every five years because they wear out. A new complicating factor is that key raw materials for new batteries come from Russia or China.

The fact that wind or solar has to be 100% backed up, usually by fossil fuel plants, means that the wind or solar does not displace the full cost of the fossil fuel electricity, but only the marginal cost, or the cost of the fuel. The capital expenditure for the fossil fuel plants still needs to be amortised. By the time green electricity has displaced 50% of the fossil fuel electricity, overprovisioning and batteries will increase its cost to as much as $100 per megawatt-hour exclusive of substantial direct subsidies. This $100 electricity displaces fossil fuel costing $15.

About 30 states have enacted renewable portfolio standards. These are requirements that a certain percentage of grid power must come from renewable sources, meaning in most cases wind and solar. For example, California requires 60% renewable by 2030. To make matters worse, the left wants to have a federal standard to force laggard states to adopt more such dumb energy.

Once there is a mandate the utility companies must install vast quantities of wind or solar regardless of the cost. The interplay between the utilities and the relatively small number of companies with the resources to build utility-scale installations costing hundreds of millions of dollars has resulted in the emergence of a standard type of deal.

In the short term, all this explains the rapidly rising costs of electricity. And since the same sort of substitution is going on for vehicle engines, the same is true for the cost of transportation fuels.

But the current and looming financial hits for consumers are only the start of the disaster. Because energy costing five or six times what it used to isn't just a problem for ordinary people. The forced replacement of 'dense' energy sources with much less effective sources of power will inevitably begin to unravel all the societal advances made thanks to the ready availability of power so cheap and reliable that we have come to take it for granted.

When you take vast amounts of coal and gas 'horse power' out of the economy, without the technology to replace it, then you only have two choices: Turn the unemployed peasants into beasts of burden to fill the gap - or get rid of them and so drastically reduce the amount of power society needs......

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