The Cost of Renewable Energy

The Jerusalem Post is proving an interesting source of information about is going on in Israel and how that country is reacting to what is going on in the world. However, in today's online edition, the following advertisement caught my eye:

Advertisement in The Jerusalem Post (online edition)
on Friday, February 8th 2019.

What is being advertised is a book, Dumb Energy by Norman Rogers, available on Amazon at only A$6.79. There is a free summary available and that's what I had a look at. A couple of paragraphs in particular caught my attention:

For certain scientific groups, green ideas and global warming alarmism are the geese that lay golden eggs. The golden eggs are not just money, but also prestige. Scientists, particularly climate scientists, benefit from global warming alarmism. They are reluctant, individually or as a group, to express skepticism or to critically examine the theories behind global warming alarmism. Peer pressure to conform is so great, that to contradict the group think is heresy, and likely professional suicide. Global warming has transformed climate scientists, formerly nerdy grinds toiling in an obscure corner of academia, into celebrity scientists. The pull of stardom and money has corrupted the scientific work. The statements that all climate scientists agree, or that predictions of global warming are absolutely solid – those things are propaganda.

I couldn't agree more with that statement but later I came across the following:

Renewable energy and its companion global warming alarmism have become a religion. There is a great danger that it will become an established religion forced on the people by the government and an elite establishment. Important believers include dignitaries such as Jerry Brown, the governor of California and Michael Bloomberg, billionaire and former mayor of New York. This is not a quiet religion. The believers don’t meditate. This is an angry religion.  

This got this me thinking. Previously, I had tended to regard the push for renewable energy sources as basically positive, not fully realising how closely this push is linked to its "companion", global warming alarmism. This led me to investigate a possible link between the rise of renewable energy sources and the rising price of electricity. I came across an article in THE CONVERSATION from January 2nd 2018 titled: A high price for policy failure: the ten-year story of spiralling electricity bills. The article looked at the rising cost of electricity bills in Australia. The following section I found particularly relevant:

Up until the late 2000s the market kept chugging along. Then two things happened. First, consumers started using less electricity. And second, the Renewable Energy Target (RET) was ramped up, pushing more supply into the market. 

Demand down and supply up meant even more oversupply, and continued low prices. But the combination of low prices and low demand put pressure on the finances of existing fossil fuel generators. Old generators were being asked to produce less electricity than before, for lower prices. Smaller power stations began to be mothballed or retired. 

Something had to give, and it did when both Alinta and Engie decided it was no longer financially viable to keep their power stations running. Far from being oversupplied, the market is now struggling to meet demand on hot days when people use the most electricity. The result is very high prices. 

A tight demand and supply balance with less coal-fired generation has meant that Australia increasingly relies on gas-fired generation, at a time when gas prices are astronomical, leading to accusations of price-gouging. 

Put simply, Australia has failed to build enough new generation over recent years to reliably replace ageing coal plants when they leave the market. 

Is it renewable energy’s fault that coal-fired power stations have closed? Yes, but this is what needs to happen if we are to reduce greenhouse emissions. Is it renewables’ fault that replacement generation has not been built? No. It’s the government’s fault for failing to provide the right environment for new investment.

The rising prices are a complex issue and the article does a good job of analysing the various components that make up an electricity bill have risen over the previous years. Nonetheless, it's clear that renewable energy initiatives have played a significant part in driving up prices. Of course, it's taken as a given that coal-fired power stations must be closed and that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced.

Getting back to the Dumb Energy summary, the author makes an interesting point when he notes:

The propagandists for wind and solar use fake photography to give the impression that smokestacks of conventional fossil fuel plants are belching toxic black smoke. This outright fakery says a lot about the ethics of the Sierra Club and similar organisations. The picture is an example that appeared on the Sierra Club website. The smokestack is actually belching harmless water vapour. When the water vapour or steam hits the cool air, it condenses into a white cloud. By photographing with the sun behind the smoke stack, the white cloud of water droplets can be made to appear black. It is revealing that, in the photo, there is no “smoke” immediately above the stack before the water vapour has mixed with the cool air sufficiently to condense. 

I don't know if that's true or not but its clear that the propaganda regarding man-made global warming and the need to develop renewable energy sources is driving up the price of electricity. There are few government's in the world that would challenge the core tenets of The Church of Climatology. The Trump administration has done so but that may prove more helpful in the long run to the global warming alarmists who can now put global warming deniers and Trump together in the same basket.

If it's true that carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to overheat, then of course a reduction in our dependance on fossil fuels makes sense. It's worth paying more for electricity in order to save our planet from possible catastrophe. If it's not true then why are we being led to believe that it is? Is there a hidden agenda? Cui bono? It's easy to suspect a profit motive because there is big money involved in alternative energy but, as with global elite initiative, the key issue is control. To quote from Natural Climate Change:

So where does the passion in support of the man-made global warming hoax originate? Freedom First Society believes that the best explanation for the widespread propaganda is that the “crisis” hoax supports an immense power grab. High-level internationalist insiders have selected the global warming scare as one pretext to help them drive forward their revolutionary “new world order.” In particular, they seek to persuade independent nations to submit to world government, cleverly controlled by an elite few from behind the scenes.

Incidentally, my research showed up an interesting site that curates news articles about climate change: TWTW (The Week That Was). I've signed up to receive their newsletter.

Screenshot from climate change change curation site:
http://www.sepp.org/the-week-that-was.cfm

One thing that this archive has already brought to my attention is that environmental degradation and man-made global warming are quite distinct. No one would deny that human activity has caused widespread environmental degradation. The mining, transportation and burning of fossil fuels have certainly damaged the environment but this does not mean that the use of fossil fuels needs to be totally abandoned. Any human activity has an impact on the environment.