Renewable Energy is Facing Reality

Many countries are facing up to the reality that renewable energy is not cost effective without government subsidies. Only Canada is bucking the trend of ignoring carbon reduction targets established at the Paris Accord.Financial Post

This week it was Australia’s turn to desert the cause, when it rejected its Clean Energy Target (CET), a much-anticipated 200-page-plus proposal that would have forced electricity utilities to rely on renewables and other low-emission sources for a substantial percentage of their production, all in aid of meeting the country’s Paris commitment to dramatically cut carbon use by 2030.

Australians have learned by experience the folly of relying fully on renewable energy.

Australia’s confidence in climate gurus took a hit when South Australia, a state 40-per-cent larger than Texas that went on a renewables building binge, suffered a series of six major blackouts, including one last September that blacked out the entire state. 

While Trudeau’s Canada is shunning coal to live up to Paris, the rest of the world is embracing it: for every coal plant retired in 2015 and 2016, five others are being built. Three-dozen countries that were applauded in Paris for taking the anti-carbon pledge are now upping their construction of coal plants. While growth in renewables development tumbles, coal soars, with capacity slated to increase by 43 per cent.

Trudeau now stands almost alone in sincere support of Paris. The populist backlash — a revulsion at top-down governments laden with jet-setting politicians landing in posh places to preach restraint to the masses — has swept America with Trump’s election, Great Britain with Brexit, much of Europe, and Australia. In the process, global warming enthusiasts are being swept out. Canada is an outlier, to date immune to this populist wave. To date, oblivious to the lessons learned elsewhere.

As the Australians have learned, a country must have fossil fuel electric generators for those times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow!

Georgetown is safe from blackouts only as long as ERCOT and the electric generating industry keeps fossil fuel generators on-line and available.

Taken to its logical end, as the entire state relies more on renewable energy generators, fossil fuel generators will have to be maintained for when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Keeping two sets of electrical generating systems active will of course cause the price of electricity to the consumer to increase!

For those who think battery storage technology will save the day for renewable energy, consider that the most likely technology that is capable of currently being mass produced, is lithium based. This raises a whole host of environmental issues as lithium is toxic and requires special handling for manufacturing and disposal. It is also prone to overheating and catching fire as evidenced by battery fires in Boeing aircraft and Tesla automobiles. To overcome these issues will require significant investments whose costs will ultimately be passed along to the electric consumer. These costs are currently unknowable.