I would say it removes jobs or its not financially viable.
It shifts jobs but always reduces jobs whilst doing that.
Productivity gains are what create wealth and that means more output per person not more people.
‘A lot of jobs’ on its own is not necessarily a good economic aim. If, for instance, renewable power creates more jobs to generate the same output, it’s obvious prices must go up. The economic aim is to employ the minimum number required to do the job, not the maximum. If power prices go up, every business and household suffers the detriment. Heavy users of electricity eg aluminium smelting become uneconomic and close or move offshore. Even light or moderate users suffer as an unavoidable cost rises and the cost of everything the business uses as inputs also rise.
The key to investment is value adding. Does the expenditure of this dollar return me the dollar and more because I’ve added value to my inputs before I sell them. To regard simple job creation as a benefit is thus flawed if the people employed don’t add sufficiently more than their cost to the product sold.
Likewise, stimulus packages are utter garbage for the most part as they try to add demand by sending people cheques for nothing. No value is added. It is a dead loss unless value well above the amount of the stimulus is added to the economy. Supply, not demand, drives economies.
Not so “universal”. Norway is 98% renewable in the form of hydro electric. The price is not higher than your coal fired electric power in Oz.
PS> the last 2% is from coal (only in Longyearbyen, Svalbard) and associated gas used by turbine generators on production platforms offshore. Solar and wind power MAY be 1%, so far.
BTW; The first commercial floating wind farm offshore Norway will supply power the the oil & gas producing facilities in the Tampen area. Other platforms are/will be getting power via cable from shore.
Jughead; before you say BS, look it up.
I have been referring to traditional forms of power which I defined as coal, oil, gas, hydro and nuclear and then often referring to ‘unreliable renewables’ and shortening it to ‘renewables’ by which I mean mostly solar and wind. If you are confused by the terminology, that’s the answer. Below I say in that comment right at the start,
You are clutching at straws. I stand by what I said. Sensible people know what I mean.
Sensible people stopped following this “discussion” since it went off the rails and devolved into a far more tedious and not at all amusing version of this.
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So renewable doesn’t include ALL renewables in your mind, only those that fits you opinion?
If I point out that that is wrong it is because I’m confused?
Could it be because you deliberatly confuse matters to suite your argument?
If you can’t understand plain English and persist in deliberately misrepresenting my point, why should I bother responding further?
No it is not “plain English” I have problem with, it your (Aussie) logic.
Cherry picking what renewable means is not part of my vocabulary though.
I defined what I meant, I provided the evidence, you read it. I’ll say it again in simple English.
Wherever unreliable renewables (which I define as those renewables unable to supply continuous all day, every day power) penetrate an existing grid of traditional power sources (coal, oil, gas, hydro and nuclear), the price always and everywhere rises. The further those sources penetrate the higher the cost of electricity and the lower the reliability of supply.
That’s what I mean. Prove me wrong.
You can misrepresent me if you insist. I won’t play.
Believe it or not, The Climate is Changing.
It seems more like watching the entire inventory of this to me.
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Same thing, but a more ironically named trailer.
That’s an interesting channel, I was watching it a couple of weeks ago when it popped up in my recommendations for some reason.
Apparently everyone always wonders why they don’t lower the road, but apparently there is a sewer and other services running under the road so it would be a multi million dollar operation to do.
If “the algorithm” is telling you your life is a truck wreck it’s time for some contemplative reflection…Same thing happened to me. Even though I haven’t been fishing since I was 13 years old apparently the algorithm wants me to start again.
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As much as I like trucks getting stuck under underpasses…
This paper presents the opposite view in a better way than I can. Basically the overcapacity requirement has existed long before wind/solar on account of widely varying demand levels throughout the year in various parts of the US. And that overcapacity is not 100% reliable all the time. Renewable penetration has the ability in some cases to add reliability. In the example below, the highest peak energy use times in Texas happens to fall when the sun is out and solar would add reliable capacity. Separately, during the highest peak times in the north east when everyone is running their A/C units, the wind is blowing consistently offshore. Excerpt below:
During winter months, average electricity demand in Texas’ ERCOT region can range between 30,000 and 40,000 mega- watts. By contrast, between 4:00pm and 5:00pm on Aug. 12, 2019, peak demand in the ERCOT region was 74,531 mega- watts—double what is typical during the winter.12
The lack of large-scale storage on the grid means that the market must maintain enough capacity to meet the yearly peak demand year round. This means that for the bulk of the year, a substantial amount of generation capacity must remain idle. However, this mostly idle back-up generation is not the result of wind or solar power being on the grid. The need for large amounts of back-up predate the entry of renewables onto the grid and would continue even if all renewable energy ceased production. It is variability of elec- tricity demand, not of wind and solar, that necessitates this spare capacity. In fact, the extent to which the addition of more wind and solar onto the grid raises the amount of spare capacity needed depends upon market design and other fac- tors like how well renewable production matches electric demand.
But as to reliability and capacity overall, it still must be a blend. Adding renewables allows that blend to phase out more pollution heavy sources.
If coal were so abundant as to be free, and power cost me mere pennies per kWh, I would still advocate for a cleaner power source even if it cost me more. You can call that entitlement of the well-off or pissing on the poor, but I think there is a certain price to pay for not destroying the environment. In this country we have programs that provide assistance for low-income families who need a little help keeping the lights on. I’m ok with that too.
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Thank you for taking down your original post, which was VERY insulting.
The Seam Study is worth looking into.
Here is where I vehemently disagree. CO2 is NOT pollution. It is the essential gas for all life. So I’ll NEVER accept that its reduction is a reasonable aim. There are numerous scientific papers to that effect. The earth is visibly greening now due to increased CO2. Geologists can easily associate times of much higher concentration to periods of abundant vegetation and animal life. A warmer world is preferable to a cooler world - we are geologically still in an ice age world with permanent ice. A world with more ice is not conducive to abundant life.
If you are talking about soot, ash, other gases and particles then those can be filtered and reduced efficiently. Enviro-advocates consistently have to doctor photos of coal fired power plants to simulate visible smoke including from cooling towers. You know this. There’s no unacceptable pollution from modern coal fired plants.
I utterly reject your lack of concern for the poor in demanding more expensive power to make the world cleaner. So I also utterly reject your deceptive use of the word “cleaner”. It’s a weasel-word coined by the zealots to sound nice and pure but have a false double meaning.
You aren’t alone. It’s not personal. Eventually common sense and truth will prevail but the disaster being inflicted on us all now will take a heavy toll. Trillions of dollars are being extracted from the taxpayers now to waste on useless, nugatory measures to dial up a perfect world temperature by twiddling the mythical CO2 knob. It idiocy … but you think it’s wonderful. These views can never be reconciled.
Talk to a meteorologist that works for a ( soft, as in crops) commodity broker.
They deal with real facts from real data on the ground and then make large bets on where to invest or not.
Several have told me their whole industry says climate change is a scam.
For every place with a higher average temp they have a place with lower average, same with rainfall.
No crops are disappearing only being moved if the local conditions have changed enough.
Its a weather cycle
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Nowhere in my comment did I single out CO2. Pollution and emissions (not necessarily the same thing) include CO2, but also CO, NOx, SOx, chemical introduction from processes like coal refining, such as bromine. Go to China where in some places the visibility is far less than a mile, or other industrial zones, and tell me there is no harm done by emissions. I don’t have to doctor photos, I’ve been there. Go to LA 20 years ago vs today and tell me reducing emissions has no effect. Jump in the Charles or St. Lawrence Rivers 30 years ago vs today and tell me reducing pollution has no effect on plant life, the very plants processing CO2.
As to CO2, it may be essential for life but doesn’t mean that unlimited levels in the atmosphere is ok. Oxygen is essential for human life, but varying ratio just a little bit kills people every single year in confined spaces on ships.
Scrubbing emissions doesn’t eliminate pollutants, it relocated them. Producing power through energy sources with reduced emissions and pollution necessarily makes a difference. If you don’t believe that than there is no point in this conversation.
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