Europe’s Crisis: Blame Green Energy Policy
By Steve Goreham -- June 28, 2023“The lesson from Europe is that reliance on wind, solar, and imported natural gas is expensive and risky energy policy. If you experience a low-wind year, a cold winter, an embargo, or a war, you can’t turn up the wind and solar.”
The year 2022 was an energy disaster for Europe. Citizens and businesses suffered from astronomical prices for natural gas and electricity, sky-high home energy bills, shuttered industrial plants, and bankrupt companies. Observers have blamed COVID-19 supply chain disruptions and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Europe’s green energy policies was the elephant in the room.
For the last two decades, closures of traditional power plants and renewable energy policies made European countries highly dependent upon a combination of intermittent wind and solar sources and natural gas. More than 100 nuclear plants had closed or were scheduled to close, including 30 in Germany and 34 in the United Kingdom.…
Continue ReadingPretty Industrial Wind Turbines? (eco-activist reports from the pristine)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 27, 2023UK Climate campaigner Andrew Griffiths, recently posted (with pictures) about his vacation bike tour.
One great things about cycling for hours at a time through beautiful countryside is your mind getting space to creatively wander. Over the last couple of days I found a few more parallel lessons that felt worth sharing…
Similarly in working life, when I have a large and daunting task (like manually coding the conditions for 50+ pieces of legislation in Planet Mark‘s soon to be launched Carbon Policy Tracker 🤫) I find it helpful to break down the task into the smallest possible pieces, ignore how much there is to do and just celebrate each little milestone as it comes before setting my sights on the next one.
The idyllic pictures of green mountains inspired me to comment:
… Continue ReadingNo wind turbines or solar farms … But greenery from CO2.
Wind Fails Texas Again
By Bill Peacock -- June 26, 2023“Texas problem with wind and solar generation has been growing for years. In 2022, wind farms generated 25% of the electricity used in ERCOT. Solar farms generated 5.65%. Ten years earlier, wind’s market share was 12.25% and solar’s 0.03%. This has placed a great strain on the grid because neither of these generation sources can be counted on when needed.
Source: Reuters
Reuters recently ran a story highlighting wind generation’s failure through the early months of 2023:
… Continue ReadingThe Texas power grid operator urged homes and businesses to conserve electricity on Tuesday as the first major heat wave of the season spurs residents to crank power-hungry air conditioners. Power prices for Tuesday topped $2,500 per megawatt hour (MWh) in the state’s day-ahead market on expectations that demand would reach record levels later in the day, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).