The Reason Renewables Can´t Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To
Forbes,
by
Michael Shellenberger
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
5/8/2019 5:19:57 AM
Over the last decade, journalists have held up Germany’s renewables energy transition, the Energiewende, as an environmental model for the world. “Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset,” thanks to the Energiewende, wrote a New York Times reporter in 2014. With Germany as inspiration, the United Nations and World Bank poured billions into renewables like wind, solar, and hydro in developing nations like Kenya.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Highlander 5/8/2019 6:37:56 AM (No. 81334)
I substituted for a teacher who had a video ready featuring “The Brain Game.” One of the games was to get people in a busy Vegas spot to line up for no reason other than to simply make a line. Short story: The point of this game was to have people join a line for no reason other than to be part of a group. All these countries, like the Vegas line-joiners, got on the renewable bandwagon, doing so purely out believing the proverbial snake-oil salesmen of renewables. Billions were spent on chasing a utopian dream. It’s all been a total farce.
27 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Marjbaldwin 5/8/2019 6:39:35 AM (No. 81338)
"Sustainability" is preached not by the well-intentioned who wish to sustain the Industrial Revolution, but by the ill-intentioned who plot to see it reversed.
13 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Condor44 5/8/2019 7:02:10 AM (No. 81341)
Back in the mid 70´s, I worked in Vienna,Austria for an international scientific organization known by the acronym IIASA. At that time there was a group studying various computer models of storing energy from solar power, After years they could not come to a conclusion on how to provide long term storage,
11 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
F15 Gork 5/8/2019 7:57:31 AM (No. 81323)
Germany’s track record for things not ending badly is pretty thin - don’t believe I’d follow them on much of anything.
8 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
MickTurn 5/8/2019 8:13:42 AM (No. 81343)
Renewables = Undependables, it´s that simple!
10 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 5/8/2019 8:57:53 AM (No. 81340)
Driving from Frankfurt to Hamburg a couple of years back, I was disgusted to see the once wonderful German countryside littered with those hideous beasts of man´s tortured psyche, wind turbines. They´re a blight on the landscape. Better wood burning stoves for heat and wax candles for light than to give up your bucolic scenery.
7 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
privateer 5/8/2019 9:06:58 AM (No. 81335)
There is no space in the liberal mind for the love of beauty...it is too crowded with hubris.
7 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
ROLFNader 5/8/2019 9:34:22 AM (No. 81324)
Windmills served a purpose when they pumped drinking water for livestock in remote ranging areas. Solar panels may be useful to sustain a very small motor home. In nearly seventy years on this earth, that is the only use I´ve experienced from this´technology´ that I´ve seen up close. The rest is nothing more that a plot from Watermelons to drain funds from useful endeavors.
7 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
walcb 5/8/2019 9:38:07 AM (No. 81327)
Two words--nuclear energy.
6 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
StormCnter 5/8/2019 10:39:38 AM (No. 81336)
#8, on our ranch, four of the water wells are powered by solar pumps. They are really efficient and dependable as long as we can keep the panels from getting tossed around in a West Texas wind.
2 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
bpl40 5/8/2019 11:06:56 AM (No. 81333)
Physics ALWAYS trumps marketing. No exception.
8 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
hershey 5/8/2019 11:21:45 AM (No. 81332)
Energie-weenie??? Ha...
0 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
coldoc 5/8/2019 11:23:11 AM (No. 81328)
#9 is correct. The rest of this stuff is nonsense. I lived on a sailboat for ten years dependent on wind and solar. A lot of work (maintenance) and money for little benefit. Useless without an diesel driven backup, unless we wanted to live like neanderthals.
13 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
HotRod 5/8/2019 11:26:07 AM (No. 81329)
Trees are great examples of storing energy from the Sun. Trees, then, provide a great source of renewable energy to humans. Humans discovered that fact many thousands of years ago.
Instead of windmill and solar farms, plant more trees for renewable energy!
35 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
jeffkinnh 5/8/2019 12:17:43 PM (No. 81330)
"many Germans appear to have believed that the billions they spent on renewables would redeem them"
Isn´t this the story of liberalism in general, people desperately in search of virtue. In fact, SO desperate they will ignore reality and reason because they "might" save the planet.
Personally, I have no problem in funding research for better sources of energy. When we find economically sound ways to produce energy in a better way, it will sell itself. We have already found out how to get more natural gas which burns cleaner than coal and is easier to get. That´s how the US has reduced emissions while the rest of the "virtuous" world has missed their goals, like Germany. Real improvements vs. virtue signaling stagnation. As pointed out, nuclear, especially modern designed plants, are a good alternative as well.
4 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
DVC 5/8/2019 1:19:07 PM (No. 81325)
#3, in the middle 70s, I did my graduate engineering research project on a hybrid bus. The same engineering dept team had already built a hybrid car prototype in 1973.
In any case, we also reviewed various forms of energy storage, and had it somewhat easier because we were looking for only a city bus sized storage, and fairly short term, minutes to a few hours.
The one issue that kept raising it´s (ugly) head was that many forms of energy storage have a non-trivial risk of sudden, uncontrolled release of the stored energy. Generally this was a fairly seriously cataclylsmic event, which would almost certanly involve a lot of mayhem, probably death.
The energy storage high RPM flywheel was discarded for this reason, no way to build a strong enough case to contain a flywheel fracture at high RPM that could be moved reasonably. Liquid hydrogen is similarly problematic, as are several other workable, but probably unsafe, schemes.
Here is a larger scale example of a central utility energy storage system gone awry. It was pure luck that nobody died. The damage was pretty amazing. And as these things go this was pretty tiny, actually, as far as capacity on a grid scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_Station
0 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
DVC 5/8/2019 1:22:05 PM (No. 81339)
#10, yes, I saw the same in RSA in the early 200s. But this is workable because the water is easily stored in large tanks, not necessary to have power all the time.
The same is true of the old windmills, it was OK to have no pumping for long periods, as long as the average pumping met needs.
Storage is not trivial for electricity, esp on a large scale.
0 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
john56 5/8/2019 1:59:43 PM (No. 81326)
Trouble is, the availability of renewables dont match up with the demand and is not economically or physically storable.
As an engineer friend of mine told me, you would need a battery farm the size of three cruise ships to strengthen capacity of a mid-sized power plant at an enormous cost. Plus, if those batteries malfunctioned, you´d have an explosion that would make Hiroshima look like a popped balloon.
0 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
zoidberg 5/8/2019 2:11:42 PM (No. 81331)
FTA: "The earliest and most sophisticated 20th Century case for renewables came from a German who is widely considered the most influential philosopher of the 20th Century, Martin Heidegger."
There´s something else that Heidegger made a case for. Nazism.
0 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
DVC 5/8/2019 2:22:00 PM (No. 81342)
#18, read the linked article in #16. Their storage system failed....big time.
0 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
NYbob 5/8/2019 2:48:59 PM (No. 81337)
Just do better on all fronts instead of giant spinning band aids that are more PC than functioning energy systems. IF we devoted half of the money spent on windmills, etc. to cleaner, more efficient burning of coal, we would have a dependable, economical, powerful energy generation system. Fluidized bed is one of several methods that would enable a coal system to be efficient with minimal emissions.
If landfills had a Pyrolysis system at the collection point a lot of waste could be processed, stay out of a landfill and provide useful end products as well as energy, depending on the tons per day capacity. Much better, proven tech out there vs windmills which need constant supervision and maintenance.
0 people like this.
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