Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson     Red Bluff Daily News   3/19/2024

The high cost of “green” energy

News came of another apparently laudatory “green energy” proposal, a solar project on the south end of town near airport property. I sorted through the numbers, shown in “Cenergy Power proposes new solar farm in Red Bluff,” hoping the “global cost” would determine the cost per unit of electricity.

There’s the donation, in the $100,000 to $500,000 range, from Cenergy; the yearly lease per acre of $2,500, totaling $75,000 for 30 acres; and the “special inflation reduction act zone” which boosts the “tax credit funding” by 10%. What exactly, or even approximately, are the subsidies from state or federal coffers, that big “free lunch” of taxpayer money—meaning deficit spending+interest.

Fortunately, there is a chart for such costs: “Subsidies per Megawatthour Produced ($/MWh) for Each Energy Source.” “Based on data provided by the Energy Information Administration (EIA),” the chart was created by American Experiment. For solar power, that has ranged from $60+/MWh five years ago, $80/MWh in 2020 and about $50/MWh in 2022.

Since PG&E charges us 42 cents per kilowatt/hour (kwh), a $50 subsidy becomes a 5 cents per kwh subsidy. That doesn’t seem too bad, unless you compare it to our Bend, OR, rate of about 7 cents per kwh; if that subsidy is added to an electric bill, the PG&E rate goes up to 47 cents and the Oregon rate nearly doubles to 12 cents. But nobody pays for subsidies, right?

The ironic thing is that out of all energy sources—solar, wind, coal, natural gas and nuclear—solar exceeds $50 per MWh in subsidies. Wind has hovered around $10/MWh in subsidies for years; while coal has a slightly higher subsidy than natural gas or nuclear, they all approach $1 to $2 per MWh.

That’s right, solar gets over 20 times the subsidies of the coal, gas or nuclear power sources, which have 24-hour, 365 days-per-year reliability, not just daylight power generation. Reliance on solar—especially the expectation that solar will ever provide more than a rounding-error quantity of reliable electricity—is an idea so ludicrous that only addle-brained enviro-nuts and government-subsidy fans can believe it.

“Exploding the Myths of ‘Green Energy’” (powerlineblog.com) further provides concise breakdowns of how “Renewables increase the cost of electricity,” and “More wind and solar means more blackouts.” Americanexperiment.org writers Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr debunked renewable energy myths in “Three energy realities that renewable advocates can’t answer.”

The final economic “killer” for wind and solar is the “Levelized Cost of Energy,” including hidden costs of additional transmission, property tax, load balancing costs that come from the essential backup power plants, overbuilding and curtailment costs.

The indisputably lowest cost of additional power comes from existing coal, natural gas and nuclear plants compared to new wind and solar. That translates, in an included chart, to $40 to $46 per MWh, meaning it only costs around 4 cents per Kwh to get more electricity, so why does PG&E charge 42 cents? Here’s the answer: New wind projects cost over $272, and new solar costs over $470, per MWh—meaning you can’t get new wind power or new solar power for less than 27 to 47 cents per Kwh.

I don’t intend for your eyes to glaze, but it’s like the subsidies and hidden costs for Electric Vehicles that amount to $20,000 to $40,000 per vehicle, plus huge eventual battery replacement costs. It’s economically unsustainable; auto makers are fast figuring out how to extricate themselves from making and selling EVs. “EV Euphoria Is Dead: CNBC Declares Transition to Electric Vehicles Has Failed” (redstate.com).

Governments, politicians and bureaucrats have, without self-doubts, imposed “green” mandates like California’s; they’re creating economic waste and environmental pollution.

At some point, when people figure out that humans and our industrial, agricultural and meat production have no effect on miniscule temperature increases, natural disasters and climate change—common sense will prevail. Especially when the cost of “recycling” said industrial waste, formerly known as solar and wind “farms” comes due.

EV tires wear out faster: “An Inconvenient Truth—EVs Emit More Particulate Matter Than Gas-Powered Vehicles, According to Report.” From the Wall Street Journal: “Electric Cars Emit More Soot. They have greater tire wear, the source of most particulate matter. California is trying to conceal that fact.”

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The primary election having concluded, “What’s happening in California’s Elections Is a Disgrace” (3/14, townhall.com). Only 50 percent of ballots were counted by March 7, only 90 percent by last Thursday, the 14^th. Even left-leaning Glenn Greenwald added that “Brazil (population 215,000,000) counts all their ballots within hours—and they have mandatory voting for all persons over the age of 16.” Argentina hand-counted 99.9% of their 27 million paper ballots in less than 6 hours.

California’s Attorney General Xavier Bacerra, now Biden’s DHS Secretary, cited 10 million “immigrants” in California. “It is illegal for foreign nationals and even registered aliens to vote, but California’s ‘motor voter’ program registers false-documented illegals to vote when they get their driver’s license. Squads of ‘politiqueros’ bribe, coerce and threaten the illegals to vote ‘a certain way,’ code for Democrats” (“Important Voting Problems,” powerlineblog.com).