XPost: alt.politics.economics, alt.politics.green.party, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics
https://nypost.com/2024/08/11/opinion/we-are-wasting-2-trillion-a-year- chasing-green-fantasies/
Despite much hype, the much-vaunted green energy transition away from
fossil fuels isn’t happening.
Achieving a meaningful shift with current policies turns out to be unaffordable. We need to drastically change policy direction.
Globally, we are already spending almost $2 trillion annually to try to
force an energy transition. Over the past decade, solar and wind energy
use have increased to their highest-ever levels.
But it hasn’t reduced fossil fuels — on the contrary, we have added even
more fossil fuels over the same time.
Countless studies show that when societies add more renewable energy, most
of it never replaces coal, gas or oil. It simply adds to energy
consumption. Recent research shows that for every six units of new green energy, less than one unit displaces any fossil fuel. Analysis in the
United States shows that renewable energy subsidies simply lead to more
overall energy being used.
In other words, policies meant to boost green energy are leading to more emissions.
None of this should come as a surprise to any student of history. During
the transition from wood to coal during the 1800s, overall wood use
actually increased even while coal took over a greater percentage of
energy needs. The same thing happened when we shifted from coal to oil: By 1970, oil, coal, gas and wood all delivered more energy than ever.
Humans have an unquenchable thirst for affordable energy, which is
required for every aspect of modern life. In the past half-century, the
energy we get from oil and coal has again doubled, hydro power has
tripled, and gas has quadrupled — and we have experienced an explosion in
the use of nuclear, solar and wind. The whole world — and the average
person — has never had more energy available.
The grand plan underpinning today’s green energy transition mostly insists
that pushing heavily subsidized renewables everywhere will magically make fossil fuels go away.
But a recent study concluded that talk of a transition is “misleading.”
During every previous addition of a new energy source, the researchers
found, it has been “entirely unprecedented for these additions to cause a sustained decline in the use of established energy sources.”
What causes us to change our relative use of energy?
One study investigated 14 shifts that have taken place over the past five centuries, like when farmers went from plowing fields with animals to
fossil fuel-powered tractors. The main driver has always been that the new energy service is either better or cheaper.
Solar and wind fail on both counts. They are not better, because unlike
fossil fuels that can produce electricity whenever we need it, they can
only produce energy according to the vagaries of daylight and weather.
This means they are not cheaper, either. At best they are only cheaper
when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing at just the right speed.
The rest of the time, they are mostly useless and infinitely costly.
When we factor in the cost of just four hours of storage, wind and solar
energy solutions become uncompetitive compared to fossil fuels. Achieving
a real, sustainable transition to solar or wind would require orders of magnitude more storage, making these options incredibly unaffordable.
Moreover, solar and wind only address a small part of a vast challenge.
They are almost entirely deployed in the electricity sector, which makes
up just one-fifth of all global energy use.
We still struggle to find green solutions for most transport, and we
haven’t even begun with the vast energy needs of heating, manufacturing or agriculture. We are all but ignoring the hardest and most crucial sectors
like steel, cement, plastics and fertilizer.
Little wonder, then, that, for all the talk of the world undergoing an
energy transition, even the Biden administration finds that while
renewable energy sources will dramatically increase globally up to 2050,
oil, gas and coal will all keep increasing, too.
On this trajectory, we will never achieve an energy transition away from
fossil fuels. This would require vastly more subsidies for solar and wind,
as well as for batteries and hydrogen, and for us all to accept less
efficient technologies for important needs like steel and fertilizer.
But on top of that, a true transition would also require politicians to
impose massive taxes on fossil fuels to make them less desirable. McKinsey estimates the direct price tag to achieve a real transition at more than
$5 trillion annually. This splurge would slow economic growth, making the
real cost five times higher. Annual costs for people living in rich
countries could be higher than $13,000 per person per year.
Voters won’t agree to that pain.
The only realistic way to achieve a transition is to vastly improve green energy alternatives. This means more investment in green energy research
and development. Innovation is needed in wind and solar, but also in
storage, nuclear energy and many other possible solutions. Bringing
alternative energy costs below the price of fossil fuels is the only way
that green solutions can be implemented globally, and not just by the
elite in a few climate-concerned, wealthy countries.
When politicians tell you the green transition is here and we need to get
on board, they are really just asking voters to support them throwing more
good money after bad. We need to be much smarter.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of “False Alarm.”
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November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.
The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and
eradicated.
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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