Don’t misunderstand, I support the use and expansion of alternatives, and definitely more than lots of Warmists/enviroweenies, since they support them in theory, but, there’s always some reason they do not support when being deployed. But, they seem to be driving up the price of energy, as Michael Shellenberger points out
If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?
Over the last year, the media have published story after story after storyabout the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines.
People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become.
And yet that’s not what’s happening. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Between 2009 and 2017, the price of solar panels per watt declined by 75 percent while the price of wind turbines per watt declined by 50 percent.
And yet — during the same period — the price of electricity in places that deployed significant quantities of renewables increased dramatically.
Shellenberger goes through the facts and figures, and I’ll leave that up to you to read it all. But, it’s not from the price of nuclear, coal, natural gas, and other tried and true, reliable energy sources rising. Nor the closure of nuclear plants. So, why?
In a paper for Energy Policy, Leon Hirth estimated that the economic value of wind and solar would decline significantly as they become a larger part of electricity supply.
The reason? Their fundamentally unreliable nature. Both solar and wind produce too much energy when societies don’t need it, and not enough when they do.
Solar and wind thus require that natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries or some other form of reliable power be ready at a moment’s notice to start churning out electricity when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining.
And that’s what’s happened. Many of these places pay others to take the unnecessary energy from wind and solar.
In 2017, the share of electricity coming from wind and solar was 53 percent in Denmark, 26 percent in Germany, and 23 percent in California. Denmark and Germany have the first and second most expensive electricity in Europe.
Food for thought.
Also, Nuke, Gas, and Coal are far cheaper to produce per KW. So even at half price, wind and solar and still ten times more expensive than the alternatives.