Renewable energy is a hothouse plant, unable to grow and thrive without an artificial environment. The figures are conclusive. The end of subsidies would mean the end of renewable energy. Energy ‘Transition’: It’s a Federal Bribe (versus consumer demand) By Bill Peacock When politicians take over markets, bad things happen. Costs increase, consumer choices are thwarted, and well-connected businesses get rich off taxpayers. We see all these things happening in the U.S.… The U.S. Energy Information Administration calculated each form of subsidy for each fuel source for the years 2016 to 2022. Figure 2 shows that for the seven-year period covered in the EIA report, renewable subsidies were more than three times greater than subsidies for fossil fuels: $83.8 billion to $25.8 billion. This relationship of the subsidies in the EIA report is reflected in our research. . . . Bennett, et al. found that from 2010 to 2019, renewable energy subsidies were more than double the subsidies for fossil fuels, $74.1 billion to $37.9 billion. Today that gap is widening. From 2020 through 2029, subsidies for renewables are projected to be $244.9 billion compared to $22.5 billion for fossil fuels. Federal subsidies for fossil fuels have decreased by 40%, while renewable subsidies are up by 230%. . . . The shift to renewables has come at great cost to Americans. In California, for instance, wholesale electricity prices were the highest in the nation last year at $67 per megawatt hour. Residential prices in California are also the highest at 34.3 cents per kilowatt hour, more than double the national average of 16.4 cents. Texas is not far behind. Residential prices are up 27% since 2021, though at 14.7 cents still well behind California. But wholesale prices are a different matter. Wholesale prices last year were just behind California’s at $65. If Texas keeps that up, residential price hikes will follow. In Ohio, the cost of installing solar has reached $3.7 billion, a heavy price for generation facilities that are operational for less than half the day. Residential prices in Ohio are up 40% over the last decade, to 16.6 cents. The high cost of renewables extends to all Americans. Renewable subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $318 billion from 2010 through 2029 (see Figure 1). The average annual cost from 2023 to 2029 will be about $30 billion. The increased cost of electricity is not confined to price and tax hikes. The reliability of the U.S. grid is also taking a beating. It is a well-known fact that the reliability value of renewable energy declines as its grid penetration increases. This should not be surprising given the fact that renewables can only generate electricity when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. This “intermittent” nature of renewables imposes a great burden on grid reliability. Texas, with its Winter Storm Uri blackouts, is the current poster child for what renewables can do grid reliability, but California is no stranger to this. Reliability costs, however, go well beyond the economic costs of blackouts (estimated to be between $80 billion to $130 billion in Texas for Uri). Over the last 10 years, Texas politicians and regulators have forced consumers and taxpayers to pony up on average about $5.8 billion a year as they try to incentivize new natural gas-fired generation that can come online when renewables fail. And the reliability problems caused by a reliance on renewables are responsible for California’s sky high electricity prices. . . .
This entire mess seems to be an example of the “Big Lie” which Hitler described in Mein Kampf. We won’t be here but I would like to understand how the false enhanced CO2 effect hypothesis will be treated 100 years from now.
Subsidies for renewable energy will be expensive in Texas. Invasion Of The Water Snatchers Robert Bryce The punchline here is obvious: everything about the “green” hydrogen push is ridiculous. But billions in federal tax dollars are at stake. That much cash can purchase a heap of… Drought has hit Schleicher County hard. Lots of the stock tanks are dry. The only plants that appear to be thriving on this part of the Edwards Plateau are scrawny mesquite trees and the ever-present prickly pear cactus. As we turned onto County Road 339, the clouds of dust from the unpaved road were so thick that I slowed down to assure there was at least 100 yards between my vehicle and the tailgate of Ray and Sandra Pfeuffer’s pickup. It was the afternoon of August 15. The dashboard in our 4Runner showed the outside temperature was 103 F. The sun was relentless. There was almost no wind. A bare handful of clouds dotted the sky. The Pfeuffers, who raise goats and cattle on a 3,300-acre ranch about a dozen miles southeast of Christoval, led us to a remote spot in a remote county: the Carmelite Monastery of Our Lady of Grace. Sandra wanted me to meet the nuns at the monastery because, like the Pfeuffers and many others in Schleicher County, they were dead set against a “green” hydrogen project called Tierra Alta, that has been proposed for their neighborhood by ET Fuels, an Irish corporation that’s backed by private equity firms based in Zurich and Paris. At the monastery, we were warmly greeted by Sister Mary Grace and Sister Mary Michael. Both were quick to explain why they are opposing the project. Not only would it include dozens of wind turbines that would be visible from the monastery, it would also require lots of water. Sister Mary Grace spoke first. She told me, “We are all about prayer. We are all about justice. And we are all about people.” She went on to say the project would completely change the region’s character. Sister Mary Michael, who relied on a wheelchair, spoke softly but cut right to the chase: “We’re in a drought, and they want to take more water,” she said. “It’s a ridiculous amount of water.” “Ridiculous” is the right word. But the water needs of the proposed “green” hydrogen-to-methanol projects are only one absurdity in a corral-full of absurdities propelled by the outrageous amount of federal money available to corporate subsidy miners under the Inflation Reduction Act. (That legislation, you may recall, became law by a single vote, cast by Kamala Harris.) And those subsidy miners are eagerly aiming to feed at the trough. However, to collect the maximum amount of federal money under the IRA for “green” hydrogen, they will have to pave dozens, or even hundreds, of square miles of ranchland from San Angelo to Fort Stockton with wind turbines and solar panels. As I explained here on Substack last month, the subsidies for “green” hydrogen are 1,900 times larger than what’s given to nuclear. In that piece, I quoted the late Charlie Munger, who famously said, “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome.” I wrote, “Under rules published earlier this year by the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, hydrogen producers can collect $3 per kilogram of hydrogen under the production tax credit if they use electricity from low- or no-carbon sources.” As I noted, the energy content of hydrogen is about 120 megajoules (MJ) per kilogram. When converted into Btu, that works out to a subsidy of roughly $25 per million Btu. As seen above, that means that the subsidy for green hydrogen is 11 times the current market price for natural gas. . . . .