The Future Of Power Generation
Oct 6, 2021 20:51:44 GMT -5
Post by Berean on Oct 6, 2021 20:51:44 GMT -5
October 6, 2021
The Future Of Power Generation
By Peter Kauffner
The current consensus on energy and climate is both unserious and incoherent. Burning fossil fuels is said to be responsible for global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions. Although nuclear power is a carbon-free energy solution, much of the public seems to be more afraid of a reactor accident than extinction by the greenhouse effect.
Solar and energy conservation have been media darlings since the energy crisis of the 1970s. President Barack Obama spent $100 billion on “green energy” in just one stimulus package. Yet there is little to show for it. World energy use is projected to grow rapidly. Solar accounts for only one percent of energy production.
Although I can’t agree with his conclusions, Director Jeff Gibbs did an outstanding job of skewering solar energy in 1921’s Planet of the Humans. (Michael Moore is executive producer.) Ethanol, hydrogen-powered cars, solar cells, and other supposedly renewable solutions are exposed as frauds that are dependent on fossil fuel once you scratch the surface.
Brazil’s forests are being converted to sugar cane and burned as part of the ethanol scam that Goldman Sachs promotes. The manufacturing process requires a great deal of electric power. There is an amusing scene in the film where a manager explains that Iowa is the perfect location for an ethanol plant because it is near coal deposits.
The closure of a coal-powered plant in Las Vegas is hailed as a victory for solar energy. But in fact, it was replaced with two natural gas-powered facilities.
“Some [solar] panels last only ten years,” a solar panel salesman told Gibbs. “I don’t know that it’s the solution.”
Solar cells are not made of sand but mined quartz and coal, which must be melted together in a high-temperature furnace. The furnace itself is likely coal-powered. Dust buildup can dramatically cut a panel’s efficiency.
The fact that solar panels can produce electricity only when the sun shines means that a backup solution is required to produce energy at night and when it’s cloudy. Energy professionals call this the “intermittency” problem. Unless you are willing to tolerate outages, solar energy will never allow you to turn a fossil fuel plant off.
Even a solar energy festival had to switch to the electric power grid as soon as rain started to fall, as Gibbs shows in another amusing sequence. Cycling power up and down only increases a generator’s carbon footprint. So, what’s the point of installing solar cells? Well, you can get a tax credit.
While it is often assumed that adding a megawatt of renewable power means that we will need a megawatt less of coal power, a peer-reviewed international comparison study by Richard York of the University of Oregon found that there was very little substitution of this type. For example, adding solar power to an electric grid reduces the need for fossil fuel by about one-tenth of the amount added.
No country emphasizes solar and renewables more than Germany. Yet only 1.5 percent of Germany’s energy is from solar and only 3.1 percent from wind, according to Gibbs.
When politicians talk about “green jobs,” what they mean is that solar and renewables are more labor-intensive than other energy sources. This is not an advantage! Lower energy prices are a far better way to generate jobs.
After Gibbs has exposed one eco-scam after another, the viewer begins to wonder if any environmental initiative is actually about improving the environment. Unlike Gibbs, I don’t think that the alternative to the solar energy fraud is human extinction. So, I am going to talk about nuclear power.
Continued at link
The Future Of Power Generation
By Peter Kauffner
The current consensus on energy and climate is both unserious and incoherent. Burning fossil fuels is said to be responsible for global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions. Although nuclear power is a carbon-free energy solution, much of the public seems to be more afraid of a reactor accident than extinction by the greenhouse effect.
Solar and energy conservation have been media darlings since the energy crisis of the 1970s. President Barack Obama spent $100 billion on “green energy” in just one stimulus package. Yet there is little to show for it. World energy use is projected to grow rapidly. Solar accounts for only one percent of energy production.
Although I can’t agree with his conclusions, Director Jeff Gibbs did an outstanding job of skewering solar energy in 1921’s Planet of the Humans. (Michael Moore is executive producer.) Ethanol, hydrogen-powered cars, solar cells, and other supposedly renewable solutions are exposed as frauds that are dependent on fossil fuel once you scratch the surface.
Brazil’s forests are being converted to sugar cane and burned as part of the ethanol scam that Goldman Sachs promotes. The manufacturing process requires a great deal of electric power. There is an amusing scene in the film where a manager explains that Iowa is the perfect location for an ethanol plant because it is near coal deposits.
The closure of a coal-powered plant in Las Vegas is hailed as a victory for solar energy. But in fact, it was replaced with two natural gas-powered facilities.
“Some [solar] panels last only ten years,” a solar panel salesman told Gibbs. “I don’t know that it’s the solution.”
Solar cells are not made of sand but mined quartz and coal, which must be melted together in a high-temperature furnace. The furnace itself is likely coal-powered. Dust buildup can dramatically cut a panel’s efficiency.
The fact that solar panels can produce electricity only when the sun shines means that a backup solution is required to produce energy at night and when it’s cloudy. Energy professionals call this the “intermittency” problem. Unless you are willing to tolerate outages, solar energy will never allow you to turn a fossil fuel plant off.
Even a solar energy festival had to switch to the electric power grid as soon as rain started to fall, as Gibbs shows in another amusing sequence. Cycling power up and down only increases a generator’s carbon footprint. So, what’s the point of installing solar cells? Well, you can get a tax credit.
While it is often assumed that adding a megawatt of renewable power means that we will need a megawatt less of coal power, a peer-reviewed international comparison study by Richard York of the University of Oregon found that there was very little substitution of this type. For example, adding solar power to an electric grid reduces the need for fossil fuel by about one-tenth of the amount added.
No country emphasizes solar and renewables more than Germany. Yet only 1.5 percent of Germany’s energy is from solar and only 3.1 percent from wind, according to Gibbs.
When politicians talk about “green jobs,” what they mean is that solar and renewables are more labor-intensive than other energy sources. This is not an advantage! Lower energy prices are a far better way to generate jobs.
After Gibbs has exposed one eco-scam after another, the viewer begins to wonder if any environmental initiative is actually about improving the environment. Unlike Gibbs, I don’t think that the alternative to the solar energy fraud is human extinction. So, I am going to talk about nuclear power.
Continued at link
