President Joe Biden promises to lead a clean energy revolution to create “jobs, jobs, jobs.” But the cost of manufacturing wind turbines, solar panels and batteries with American union labor would drive up the costs of power, and delay implementation of environmentalists’ Utopian dreams.
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15 replies on “Democrats vs Democrats: Biden’s Clean Energy Dream Pits Unions Against Environmentalists”
Just stumbled on the clip about Oroville Dam in Cal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxNM4DGBRMU
Reminds me of an old poem
To be remembered forever:
Although the galley is above,
And the water is under it,
Still: the water rules!
Well, guys, I am with you that we’re not there yet with a lot of the renewables, and yes, we do need backup, and yes we are pushing off some unsequestering to other countries and thus the greenness of the energy is misrepresented.
I have a buddy … electrical engineer, who’s worked as an engineer in our city’s power generation. In the water-pump reservoir power generation example you gave, there are a few things we average people don’t know (I sure didn’t, and I have a background in science … Atmospheric Science).
One thing most people don’t know is that our electric plants are not “on demand” suppliers. When you turn on your welder, they can’t just instantaneously start producing just enough more energy for you to use your welder. They MUST be running and spinning all the time, no matter how much energy we’re using, to be able to supply the maximum (peak) demand during any time period. This is called spinning reserve, I think.
So this system, the water-pumping-to-reservoir and generating electricity with it during the day should be thought of as a kind of a “battery” that makes it so we are “wasting” less energy during off-peak periods, when power consumption is lower but we still have to keep the coal/gas powered generators spinning. We have to generate the energy anyway, might as well use the excess for something. Then, during the day, it can actually supplement the demand so that the carbon-burning plants don’t have to keep quite as high a spinning reserve. So they don’t need as much carbon fuel. It’s actually the kind of simple-solution ingenuity I like. It’s a little bit like how a hybrid car works, only the “battery” isn’t a conventional one.
As for solar panels and wind, clearly we always need backup for these. Going forward they’re looking at batteries, and frankly I don’t think we’ll get completely out of the carbon business for at least another century because we’ll need it to back up some of these things in the meantime, until we develop technology that makes it no longer necessary (gotta solve that nuclear waste problem … then we’ll be GOLDEN).
I am all for reducing pollution if we can (especially water and air). I also don’t believe the hype that we’re dooming the planet using carbon. I think over time we should probably find a way to get away from it, if only because there is a finite supply of it and it’s useful for many other things (like plastics, for instance) so we don’t really want to burn it all.
Anyway, some things to consider when making arguments. Sometimes things aren’t as simple as they appear on the surface.
Steve and Bill’s commentary on this was just gold!! Side note..sounds like Bill needs to take some days off talking. His voice is sounding like it’s on the straining edge again. Stay healthy Bill!
Read a great quote years ago….I’ll not get it quite right, but was basically “If wind power was efficient, oil tankers would use it”
Your comment triggered a funny image: imagine two ships about 10 miles apart, with an oil pipeline between them. Fill the pipeline with oil from the exporting country, move the ships and pipeline across the ocean, remove the oil at the importing country port. Of course this is sort of what oil tankers do already.
No one seems to discuss the long term need/goal to be able to use renewable energy to make the hardware for capturing renewable energy.
And almost no builders, home buyers, county officials, and precious few architects even bother to consider solar orientation, etc. when siting new houses and subdivisions. The Germans have been developing very promising passive heating/cooling homes for some time now. Not that much more expensive than normal – maybe less if you allow for reduced heating costs.
Pumped energy storage is not BS, it’s a great tool to help operation of the power grid and keep it balanced.
And things like that became kinda essential with greater percent of energy created by hard to control sources like wind/solar. Planning for the night is a no-brainer, it’s more of a challenge to deal when say you have clear sky all over Germany…
https://youtu.be/JSgd-QhLHRI?t=95
shows how it works. And what you need to construct it. And real numbers one can compare to whatever is planned in California.
Energy storage is only a reality because there is insufficient energy production capacity. If the nuclear plant was still online you wouldn’t need to pump water uphill to have a peaking water turbine in action during the day. The net from the water turbine is still a negative. Nuclear is clean energy, but that option seems to be off the table.
The true cost of both solar and wind should also include battery and turbine blade disposal and the toxicity of both.
Of course it should. OTOH, once we get to accounting all costs in a fair way, we’ll also need to account for the perishables.
Solar and wind is actually “renewable” in the sense it captures the energy coming from the sun right around now. While burning fossils releases the energy captured in the past. And every year we burn like what was collected in a million.
The reserves was told to exhaust by 2000 or 2050, and we found more — so the span may be extended for another 100 or 200 years, but eventually it will deplete. You can call it energy “production” but it really isn’t more production than your battery produces energy rather than releasing it. We’re borrowing it from our grandchildren. And a big portion is just wasted on stuff not giving them anything.
That is the true hurt from the climate alarmism and the “green” BS, it poisons the well and detracts attention from what actually matters.
Also, sure, the approach to nuclear is beyond stupid. But uranium is also in limited supply. And no one works on alternatives like thorium. While fusion remains beyond the horizon in the last 5 decades.
Answer the question why no one works on alternatives like Thorium and win the big prize.
If I had Jeff Bezos’ money, this is what I would be doing rather than dabbling in space.
Only the rich (or those successfully pulling off the con of borrowing beyond their means) can afford to be this stupid with life’s awesome bounty. Our atrocious stewardship is unforgivable.
Here in Washington State we declared Hydro Electric as non renewable so that we can sell it to California, who pay extra because they know it is renewable? The brilliance of Democrat control is amazing…Not.
The only way that we’re going to win this war, and it is war, against the leftist environmentalist nut jobs, is to refuse to allow these yahoos to drive their cars plug in their phones and turn on their light bulbs.
Simple solution – mandate that Washington, DC get all of its energy from solar & wind. I’d give it two weeks at most
I don’t know, they might get enough wind from Congress.
That indeed would be the closest thing humanity ever had to a perpetual motion machine. Congressional powered wind turbines……