Conflicting statements;
- “Renewables are so cheap. They’re the cheapest form of making electricity”.
- “Give us more money for Renewables”
Renewables are cheaper, within context: if you measure the electricity generated at peak time. But things make them not so cheap: their intermittency and the requirement for a whole new grid, electric power lines from where the solar and wind farms are to the cities.
Their intermittency: wind and solar generate only about 20-25% of the time. Vs nearly 100% of the time for nuclear, gas and coal. So for the same amount of effective installed capacity, you need four to five times the amount of installed capacity.
Power lines: these cost around $US 1-2 million per kilometre. Thousands of km are needed because the wind and solar farms are not where the old generating plants used to be. These add billions of dollars to the cost of any major renewable facility. People along the way are not at all keen on them, authorities are finding: eg in Australia.
China is very keen on renewables. It installs the more than anyone in the world, combined. It makes most of the world’s solar panels and turbines. Yet, even China does not install only wind and solar. Because of the factors above: the need for caseload power, the need for reliability and the need for huge amounts of land for Renewables.
Note how the article above casually mentions “TRILLIONS” of dollars per year. That’s percentage points of world GDP, which is around 100 Trillion. That’s not small beer.
Note too the mention of “progress is good” in converting to renewable. Then the “But”.... This is a trick. You can *always* say xxx “could have been/should have been: more, earlier, faster, harder, or still more”. It reflects never being satisfied. The fact is the world, apart from China, has been dropping CO2 emissions. All rests with China. China. Which has 47% more CO2 emissions than the US and the EU combined. Get on board with hammering China. Not the poor folks in the west, struggling to keep a car on the road and doesn’t want an EV, or struggling to keep a Boiler going with natural gas. All that stuff -- changing to EVs, changing boilers -- is small beer compared with the China challenge. And good luck with that.
