IN THIS ISSUE:
- Recent Headlines Prove Wind, Solar Still Aren’t Ready for Prime Time
- River Action Muddies CO2 Attribution Claims
Recent Headlines Prove Wind, Solar Still Aren’t Ready for Prime Time
A colleague of mine, Chris Talgo, recently penned an op-ed titled “Windmills and Solar Panels Aren’t Ready for Prime Time,” a title similar to my own from CCW 462, “Green Technologies Are Dangerous, Not Ready for Prime Time.” Both articles, and others I have written periodically across the past couple of decades, make the point that renewable energy is neither green, by which I mean good for the environment, nor affordable.
The big-government push for wind and solar power began back in the mid- to late 1990s. The federal government started shoveling billions of taxpayer dollars at the “renewable” industry, and states were passing the first renewable portfolio standards, or as we at The Heartland Institute call them, renewable energy mandates. The public was told the wind and solar would be good for the environment, and government support would only be needed until the nascent technologies (which weren’t in fact new at all) became competitive with other energy sources.
Both claims were lies. Concerning the first claim, we at The Heartland Institute, and many of our allies, have documented over the years that wind and solar power have done and can do nothing to prevent climate change, and they positively cause more environmental harm, to species, to landscapes, to water quality and health, than other sources of power.
In this essay, it’s the latter claim, about affordability and cost competitiveness, that I want to focus on. Over the past decades I’ve seen dozens, if not hundreds, of stories and reports claiming solar and wind power are cheaper than conventional sources of electric power: here, here, and here, for example.
One recent story went so far as to claim Europe’s true electric power problem is not high prices, intermittency, or blackouts, but that electric power generation is just too darned cheap. The latter claim boggles the imagination since it is widely recognized that individual countries in the European Union—Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, to name just a few—have among the highest electric power prices in the world, largely as a result of their investments in renewable energy. What’s true for individual countries in the EU is true for the union as a whole, with the EU’s electric power rates, both residential and industrial, being significantly higher than are found in the United States or most of the world (which is one reason many companies have given for closing factories across the EU and expanding elsewhere).
In the United States, the mainstream media, left-leaning research institutes, and some in Congress have put out a torrent of stories and statements—for example, here, here, and here—claiming President Donald Trump’s energy policies, primarily the ending of government support for wind and solar in the big, beautiful budget bill he supports, and the reinvestment in traditional sources of electric power—you know, good old reliable, coal, hydropower, natural gas, and nuclear—will result in higher electricity costs for American homes and businesses.
They say this despite copious amounts of research showing that whether one compares the cost of existing baseload sources of electricity with renewables, or compares the cost of building new fossil fuel and nuclear power plants with new wind and solar, when all the variables (including subsidies, additional transmission lines, and backup power) are taken into account for an apples-to-apples comparison, solar energy is 10 times more expensive than natural gas and more than four times more expensive than coal. As to wind, well it’s cheaper than solar but comes in at nearly six times more expensive than natural gas and more than three times more expensive than coal.
EIA data show states that remain largely dependent on coal or hydropower have among the lowest residential, commercial, and industrial electric power rates in the nation, and states with rising renewable energy mandates and subsidies have among the highest and fastest-rising energy costs. The evidence is clear: the more “cheap” wind and solar are added to a state’s grid, the higher (and faster-rising) the energy costs.
My home state of Texas once had a lot of coal generation, with natural gas and some nuclear. Texas has abundant coal and natural gas, which was reflected in our rates, so there was no need to switch. We had the cheapest electric power rates in our region, and they started falling after deregulation. But as ever-more mandated and highly subsidized renewable energy was added to the grid, not only did our power supply become dangerously unstable, resulting in previously unheard-of widespread deadly winter blackouts, our electric rates began to skyrocket, to the extent that Texas now has the most expensive power in the region and has experienced among the fastest-rising electric power costs in the nation. Over the same time period, coal has been shuttered by federal regulations and huge federal and state subsidies for renewables and the additional transmission wires they required.
If one needs more proof that wind and solar still can’t compete with traditional sources of power or survive without generous government support, examine the history of the production tax credit (PTC). First offered in 1992, the PTC was supposed to lapse in 1999, giving the wind and solar industries a hand to compete with existing energy sources. It was extended more than 10 times by 2015 alone, and it was allowed to lapse five times. Every time the PTC lapsed, even for short periods, wind and solar factories, construction, planning, and permitting shut down mere hours after the lapse. A study described the impact of the waxing and waning of the PTC on the green energy industry as creating “a boom-and-bust cycle that followed the lapses and extensions of the tax credit.” Not a cycle, mind you, tied to the business cycle or the demand for energy. And that’s just one form of federal support. Pull out this one tax subsidy and the entire industry shuts down. That doesn’t sound like an industry ready to compete.
More recently, as President Trump’s executive orders and energy policies threaten to block new green funding and claw back previously approved funds, once again the industry is crying it’s the end of the world—but how can that be true if the energy produced is so cheap? Wind and solar projects and plans are being halted across the country even though Trump’s policies haven’t even been fully implemented or taken effect.
That’s how sensitive the “competitive” green electric power industry is to changes in taxpayer support. Regulations or unfair competition from subsidized renewables may close gas, coal, hydro, or nuclear power plants, but normal operating costs don’t; they can stand on their own without federal and state interference. The same can’t be said for wind and solar.
Those are the facts—evidence from academic research, the evidence from one’s own power bill, and what anyone can see in the headlines almost daily. There is no reason to believe or evidence to suggest that industrial wind and solar power will ever be able to stand on their own. They are too expensive to succeed in a competitive market, despite claims they are cheaper than other sources of electric power.
Sources: Energy at a Glance: Solar Power and the Environment; Energy at a Glance: Wind Power and the Environment; Townhall; Climate Change Weekly; The Heartland Institute; The Heartland Institute
River Action Muddies CO2 Attribution Claims
Recent research published in the journal Nature threatens to upend what many had claimed to be settled science concerning both the carbon (dioxide) cycle, meaning the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and climate model outputs based on assumptions about the carbon cycle.
One of the pillars of the claim that the rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over the past century or so is due largely to human fossil fuel use is an isotopic analysis of atmospheric CO2, which indicates that the increase in CO2 is made up primarily of old CO2, CO2 that is so old it can’t be measured through carbon dating because it has no half-life left. Such CO2 was drawn down out of the atmosphere over millions of years and has been stored in carbonaceous rocks, deep soil, and coal, oil, and gas deposits formed under pressure from organic matter millions of years old.
Newly cycled CO2 has a half-life that can be radio-carbon dated, unlike the CO2 released by ancient carbon sources. Thus the argument has been almost all ongoing ancient carbon being added to the atmosphere must be attributed to human activities releasing it from its long storage in the ground, both through fossil fuel burning and through cement/concrete production which involves the breaking up of limestone.
The new research in Nature plays havoc with that narrative. A team of 15 scientists from universities and research institutes in the United Kingdom (the lead author), Canada, China, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States found global river systems have been producing a large amount of old carbon dioxide that has previously been unaccounted for in carbon budget calculations. The abstract of the study states,
Rivers and streams are an important pathway in the global carbon cycle, releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) from their water surfaces to the atmosphere1,2. Until now, CO2 and CH4 emitted from rivers were thought to be predominantly derived from recent (sub-decadal) biomass production and, thus, part of ecosystem respiration3,4,5,6. Here we combine new and published measurements to create a global database of the radiocarbon content of river dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), CO2 and CH4. Isotopic mass balance of our database suggests that 59 ± 17% of global river CO2 emissions are derived from old carbon (millennial or older), the release of which is linked to river catchment lithology and biome. This previously unrecognized release of old, pre-industrial-aged carbon to the atmosphere from long-term soil, sediment and geologic carbon stores through lateral hydrological routing equates to 1.2 ± 0.3 Pg C year−1, similar in magnitude to terrestrial net ecosystem exchange. A consequence of this flux is a greater than expected net loss of carbon from aged organic matter stores on land. This requires a reassessment of the fate of anthropogenic carbon in terrestrial systems and in global carbon cycle budgets and models.
In short, river systems are producing old CO2 which has not been accounted for in climate models and assumptions about the sources of CO2. If that is true, a significant portion of the old CO2 previously attributed to human activities is actually a result of the natural action of rivers and streams.
In a post on Watts Up With That, Charles Rotter teases out various implications of these findings for the theory that humans are causing dangerous climate change, among which are the following (bold in original):
- The Carbon Budget Is a Fantasy. The entire idea of a “carbon budget” depends on the assumption that we can accurately track all natural and anthropogenic carbon sources and sinks. … [However, this research suggests scientists] were missing a carbon leak as big as the net carbon uptake of all land-based ecosystems. That’s like losing a financial ledger entry equivalent to your annual revenue and still claiming your books balance.
- Climate Models Can’t Model What They Didn’t Know Existed. This isn’t a rounding error. This is a previously invisible carbon flux at a planetary scale—entirely omitted from mainstream Earth system models.
- Climate Science Is Still in Diapers. If 59% of riverine CO2 emissions come from millennial or older carbon pools, then just how settled can the science be? The authors describe this as a “planetary-scale release” of old carbon.
- Anthropogenic Carbon Attribution Is Now a Shell Game. One of the central talking points of climate activists is that CO2 in the atmosphere is traceable and largely caused by human emissions. This study kicks that stool out from under them.
- So Much for Predicting the Future. The authors admit they don’t know whether the increase in old carbon emissions is from natural variability or anthropogenic disturbance. In their own words: “Whether or not anthropogenic perturbation has increased the leak of old carbon … remains a notable knowledge gap.”
This study confirms what I’ve written previously: the global climate system is complex, with many variables unknown or only poorly understood and accounted for at present. Climate models can only be as good, and useful for projections, as the assumptions and knowledge built into them, and our current understanding of the carbon budget, and any feedback mechanisms related to warming and CO2, are too rudimentary and uncertain to justify shaping public policy based on their projections.
Sources: Nature; Watts Up With That
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H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
