“Hydrogen energy will cease to become viable when the subsidies provided to it by governments of the world dry up. Hopefully, the new Administration will recognize that hydrogen embrittlement applies not just to metals, but to our economy as well.”
Hydrogen. The first element in the Periodic Table and the most abundant element in the Universe. It is also the simplest element—the most common isotope has only one proton and one electron. It has been called the “Future of Energy”; after all, the Sun relies on hydrogen to keep emitting light and, if it is good enough for our Sun, why isn’t it good enough for us?
No doubt you have heard all the clamor associated with a hydrogen-based energy economy. Jeremy Rifkin published a book entitled The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth.…
Continue ReadingThis post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a free fortnightly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. The complete Newsletter for this post can be found here.
Unreliables: Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:
*** The loss of pollinators: The hidden ecological cost of Wind Turbines
Unreliables (General):
*** Introducing The Global Renewable Rejection Database: At Least 72 Rejections Of Wind/Solar Since 2023
Trump Drops Truth Bomb On Green Energy
A Key Federal Agency Stopped Approving New Renewables Projects
Wind Energy — Offshore:
*** Elon, it’s time to sic the DOGE on BOEM
*** The Collapse of Offshore Wind Power is Only the Beginning
Deficiencies in Dominion’s offshore wind permits
Opposition Grows to Offshore Lake Erie Wind Turbines
Media outlet is reporting possible data falsification at plant where defective Vineyard Wind turbine blades were manufactured
Wind Energy — Other:
*** Big Wind is in big trouble
GE closing wind blade factory with 1,000 jobs to go
Solar Energy:
Energy experts blast failed billion-dollar DOE solar project as ‘financial boondoggle,’ ‘disaster’
The Ivanpah Solar Power Monstrosity Bites the Taxpayers.…
Ed. Note: Four years ago, Storm Uri caused Texas’s centrally planned wholesale electricity market (ERCOT) to buckle, vindicating warnings about the state’s wind/solar reliance. The mainstream media implicated natural gas instead, failing to explore the why behind the why. Rather than deregulation, Texas has chosen to add wind, solar, and batteries, while subsidizing natural gas plants to counter intermittency. This duplicated grid is now driving rates up in a state that could have relied on surplus natural gas instead.
It was not so much the story of freak weather triggering a market failure writ large. It was a classic application of the political economy of government intervention: the seen and the unseen, expert/regulatory failure, and unintended consequences.
Don Lavoie, a preeminent thinker in the field of market-versus-government planning, once warned:
… Continue ReadingIf the guiding agency is less knowledgeable than the system it is trying to guide—and even worse, if its actions necessarily result in further undesired consequences in the working of that system—then what is going on is not planning at all but, rather, blind interference by some agents with the plans of others.”