Climate Crusaders Weigh In On The Cost Of Energy From Renewables

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If you’ve been keeping up here, you know that my previous two posts have been “How Much Do The Climate Crusaders Plan To Increase Your Costs Of Electricity? -- Part III,” and “How Much Do The Climate Crusaders Plan To Increase Your Costs Of Electricity -- Part IV.” The basic issue is that the promoters of electricity from wind and solar sources don’t seem to have any idea of how big a problem intermittency poses. If you hypothesize an electricity system powered only by wind and solar sources, with batteries to store energy from times of excess generation and release it in times of low generation, how much will the costs of the necessary batteries increase your costs of electricity? It turns out that enormous amounts of energy must be stored, and the batteries become by far the driving cost of the overall system. Reasonable calculations based on currently-available battery technology, even with assumed cost declines from ongoing improvements, lead to results indicating that the cost of the batteries will increase your price of electricity by a factor of perhaps 15 or 20 or more — and that’s before solving a collection of additional engineering problems that may drive the cost up still further.

So surely the climate crusaders are on top of this issue, and are ready with an answer. Let’s tune in to a few of them and see what they have to say.

For example, the number one climate crusader of all is Tom Steyer, hedge fund genius and self-made multi-billionaire, who puts hundreds of millions of his personal wealth into political campaigns promoting “renewable” energy sources. . . .

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How Much Do The Climate Crusaders Plan To Increase Your Costs Of Electricity -- Part IV

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A couple of commenters on yesterday’s post raised interesting issues that I thought called for another post on the same subject.

Commenter Arthur proposes to solve the battery expense problem by having the 100% renewable system be in effect only from mid-March through July, which are the peak months for renewable generation in California as shown on the charts in yesterday’s post. Arthur concludes, “Battery expense solved!”, and presents a formula suggesting that mid-March to July is 37.5% of the year, so emissions would be reduced 37.5% without the battery expense.

Where to start? . . .

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How Much Do The Climate Crusaders Plan To Increase Your Costs Of Electricity? -- Part III

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How Much Do The Climate Crusaders Plan To Increase Your Costs Of Electricity? -- Part III

Now that Democrats are going to control the House starting in the new year, what’s the agenda? How about a “Green New Deal”! Naturally, new “it” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (my daughter lives in her district!) will be leading the charge. From Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s website:

The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall be developed in order to achieve the following goals, in each case in no longer than 10 years from the start of execution of the Plan: 1. 100% of national power generation from renewable sources. . . .

And that’s just the start of a long list of proposals. Of course, no costs are attached to any of this. Over in the progressive universe, they are already feeling the excitement. As one example among many, this is from Think Progress yesterday:

More and more Democrats are committing to supporting a sweeping, historic green effort that would transform the U.S. economy in an effort to fight climate change, in the latest indicator that environmental issues will be a dominant force in 2019. As of Wednesday morning, the Sunrise Movement, a climate group led by young people, said at least 15 Democrats are willing to sign onto supporting the formation of a select committee to create a “Green New Deal” endorsed by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). 

OK then. And how much will this increase your costs of electricity? Remarkably, in all the articles reporting on the Green New Deal proposal and the excitement surrounding it, I can’t find a single one even raising that question. Is this just beyond the bounds of polite conversation? If your costs of electricity were going to go up by even 10 or 20 percent, wouldn’t that be a critical piece of information that you would want to know? And how about if the prospective cost increase were much, much more?

I previously did my own back-of-the-envelope work on this issue, on which I reported in two posts in August 2016, “How Much Do The Climate Crusaders Plan To Increase Your Costs of Electricity” Part I and Part II. My very rough estimate was that the prospective increase to get to a 100% renewable grid would be at least in the range of multiplying the cost of electricity by a factor of 5 or 10. I also reported in August this year on some work from MIT researchers on the seasonality of wind and solar generation, which has a very large effect on the costs of getting to 100% renewable electricity. That work implied cost increases even greater than my own previous estimates, like a factor of 15 or more.

And now comes along a guy named Roger Andrews . . . .

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Is New York's "Safety Net" A Success?

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One of the many specialized publications here in New York is something called “Crain’s New York Business.” As its title suggests, Crain’s covers mostly the affairs of the business community, although from time to time it also dabbles in political and policy matters. Sometimes it even has some sensible things to say. And sometimes not.

This week’s issue of Crain’s is dominated by a cover story titled “The State of Inequality: A Program for Every Problem.” The article has the byline of Crain’s head editor Greg David (although I doubt he actually wrote it — it’s not his usual style at all). It purports to be a review of the state of the “safety net” and its many subsidiary programs here in New York, together with, to some degree, a comparison of same to similar programs in certain other states (Georgia, Texas, Washington).

This lengthy piece is a serious embarrassment to Crain’s. It could not be worse if they simply had published verbatim a pile of campaign propaganda fed to them by a Cuomo or a de Blasio — which may very well be what this actually is. I’ll first take you through what the article says, and then I’ll go over a few of the elephants standing around here that they have somehow missed.

The basic theme of the piece is that New York has the most extensive array of social safety net programs in the country, and THEY’RE WORKING !!!!!! And how do we know that THEY’RE WORKING !!!!! ? Because we have followed the basic journalistic technique of interviewing some of the beneficiaries of the programs, and some of the bureaucrats who run the programs. And, remarkably, those people are unanimous in declaring the great success of the programs that they benefit from and/or administer. QED! Now, has anyone thought to maybe go out and collect some data as to, for example, how New York compares to other jurisdictions in actually reducing poverty, or reducing income inequality, or (in the case of medical programs) extending life expectancy? Of course, you will not find any of that in this article. . . .

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Something To Be Thankful For: Fire (AKA Fossil Fuels)

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Something To Be Thankful For: Fire (AKA Fossil Fuels)

Before Thanksgiving weekend slips away, I want to pause to give thanks. Certainly I have many things to be thankful for — family (including a brand new grandson!), friends, reasonably good health, and plenty more. But this year I want to single out a particular thing that makes an enormous contribution to my well-being, productiveness, and enjoyment of life — and to everyone else’s well-being, productiveness, and enjoyment of life as well. I’m speaking of course about man’s control of fire. Or, as we say in up-to-date terminology, the use of fossil fuels.

We don’t know when early people first learned to control and use fire. But just the initial step without doubt brought large immediate benefits: the ability to cook food, and the ability to provide warmth in cold weather. Somewhat later, the use of fire also brought the ability to obtain metals like copper and then iron from rock. And it has been on up from there.

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The Idea That Just Won't Die: The Right Federal Program Can Solve Any Human Problem

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Let’s face it, our world is full of major human problems. Even very wealthy modern America has its share of these major human problems: poverty, drug addiction, homelessness, unaffordable health care, unaffordable housing, unaffordable education, and you could go on and on.

Now, how to address these problems? You could try this: Take a some of our very brightest thinkers. Send them to some top Ivy League or equivalent schools to get the very best educations. Then turn them loose into the policy arena, full of moral righteousness and energy and a burning passion to fix the world. And what will emerge? Remarkably, in every case you can find, what will emerge will be the exact same thing: a proposal for some new government “program” and spending that supposedly will fix whatever problem the particular guru may focus on at the moment.

The government in question will always be the federal government. Why not state governments (even all state governments) or local governments? My friend, have you no moral compass? Brilliant and righteous policy gurus do not go to Yale or Harvard or Princeton to think small. Fixing the world is going to require billions, and even trillions, and right now. Do not expect these experts to spend a decade or two in the wilderness in Nebraska trying go get some puny experimental program involving mere millions off the ground. These urgent problems must be fixed immediately, and all at once, and with whatever money it takes.

As you’ve been reading this introduction, likely the examples that have run through your mind include current progressive icons like free healthcare for all, free college for all, and so forth. And those are indeed excellent examples. But to illustrate the proposition of a new federal program as the solution to literally everything, let me take you on a tour through some op-eds and reviews that have appeared in the Wall Street Journal just over the past few days. . . .

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