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There is no place to run. We must combat greenhouse gas emissions. We must sequester carbon. We must move to a non-fossil fuel energy economy. We must eat less meat. We must reduce consumption of carbon.There is no other choice but extinction for humans.The alarming new report you may have read about this week from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which examines just how much better 1.5 degrees of warming would be than 2 — echoes the charge. “Amplifies” may be the better term. Hundreds of millions of lives are at stake, the report declares, should the world warm more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, which it will do as soon as 2040, if current trends continue. Nearly all coral reefs would die out, wildfires and heat waves would sweep across the planet annually, and the interplay between drought and flooding and temperature would mean that the world’s food supply would become dramatically less secure. Avoiding that scale of suffering, the report says, requires such a thorough transformation of the world’s economy, agriculture, and culture that “there is no documented historical precedent.” The New York Times declared that the report showed a “strong risk” of climate crisis in the coming decades; in Grist, Eric Holthaus wrote that “civilization is at stake.”UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That.Pay attention.

I will stick with the US economy for this discussion, with the understanding that most of this applies to many other countries as well. Climate change is already impacting the US economy. Look at the massive wildfires in many western US states (Wildfires In California Will ‘Continue To Get Worse,’ Climate Change Experts Explore Why) and the series of hurricanes hitting the US (Record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season draws to an end). Look at the draughts and severe storms that have hit the midwest. Look at the fact that several US cities now experience flooding from rising sea levels even on sunny days (Cities around the US are flooding at high tide and on sunny days at record rates — here's what it's like).At the current rate of man-made global warming, global temperatures will be about 0.3 C (0.54 F) hotter. This might not sound like much, but it will be enough to tip the scales into even more severe weather. One effect will be poorer farm yields, resulting in higher food prices. Another will be a massive drain on the federal budget for disaster relief. Climate change induced disasters have already cost the US $350 billion in the last 10 years, so imagine how much more it will cost in the next 10 years as the world gets even hotter (Climate change is gonna be freakin’ expensive, government office warns. - Grist). Although it is hard to put an exact date like 2030 on it, eventually the cost of global warming will cause a perpetual recession (Climate Change Could Spark a Recession With No Recovery) and ultimately economic and social collapse (Climate Change Impacts Could Collapse Civilization By 2040, States UK Govt Report).

No. Wind and solar are not alternatives to fossil fuels because of intermittency that means any grid level power plant must also connect to a consistent and reliable fossil fuel source. See this ubiquitous photo showing the reality of wind power achilles heel.Double costs because of backup power by fossil fuels.On a market cost basis wind and solar are failing to have an impact while fossil fuel based energy is increasing its share of world energy needs.Why is the latest coal powered energy plant built by China in Dubai is non- renewables are financially unsustainable?CHINA’S DUPLICITOUS SUPPORT OF THE PARIS ACCORDWRITTEN BY AP ONOCT 23, 2020Despite Climate Pledges, China’s Building Dubai Its First Coal PlantA new wonder is rising in the southern desert of Dubai against the backdrop of Persian Gulf beaches, but it’s not another skyscraper to grace the futuristic sheikhdom.Instead, it’s one of mankind’s oldest power sources gaining its own space on the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula — a coal-fired power plant.The construction of the $3.4 billion Hassyan plant in Dubai appears puzzling, as the United Arab Emirates hosts the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency.It’s also building the peninsula’s first nuclear power plant and endlessly promotes its vast solar-power plant named after Dubai’s ruler. Dubai has also set the lofty goal of having the world’s lowest carbon footprint in the world by 2050 — something that would be impacted by burning coal.The coal plant’s arrival comes as Gulf Arab nations remain among the world’s hungriest for energy and amid political concerns over the use of natural gas imported from abroad, concerns underscored by a yearslong dispute with gas-producer Qatar, which is boycotted by four Arab nations, including the UAE.“Dubai was really saying we’re far too exposed on gas imports, those could be interrupted by all kinds of things, the cost is very high and so we have to do something else to diversify our fuel supply and bring down the total cost,” said Robin Mills, the CEO of Qamar Energy, a Dubai-based consulting company. “They got a very competitive offer on the coal plant … and so the decision was made.” …Enter the coal plant. The Hassyan power plant is being built in part by China, which describes the plant as a “major engineering project of the Belt and Road Initiative,” a project which seeks to expand its influence in Africa and Asia. China anticipates that the plant, which has General Electric Co. involved in its construction, will meet 20% of Dubai’s electrical demand.UKLawrence Solomon: Are solar and wind finally cheaper than fossil fuels? Not a chanceVirtually every major German solar producer has gone underA wind turbine spins amidst exhaust plumes from cooling towers at a coal-fired power station in Jaenschwalde, Germany.Getty ImagesLawrence SolomonApril 27, 20188:32 AM EDT“’Spectacular’ drop in renewable energy costs leads to record global boost,” The Guardian headline reported last year. “Clean Energy Is About to Become Cheaper Than Coal,” pronounced MIT’s Technology Review. “The cost of installing solar energy is going to plummet again,” echoed Grist, the environmental journal.Other sources declare that renewables are not only getting cheaper, they have already become cheaper than conventional power. The climate-crusading DeSmogBlog reports that “Falling Costs of Renewable Power Make (B.C.’s) Site C Dam Obsolete” and that “Coal Just Became Uneconomic in Canada.” It implores us to discover “What Canada Can Learn From Germany’s Renewable Revolution,” as does Energy Post, an authoritative European journal, which described “The spectacular success of the German Energiewende (energy transition).”Virtually every major German solar producer has gone underHere’s what Canada can learn from Germany, the poster child for the global warming movement. After the German government decided to reduce subsidies to the solar industry in 2012, the industry nose-dived. By this year, virtually every major German solar producer had gone under as new capacity declined by 90 per cent and new investment by 92 per cent. Some 80,000 workers — 70 per cent of the solar workforce — lost their jobs. Solar power’s market share is shrinking and solar panels, having outlived their usefulness, are being retired without being replaced.Wind power faces a similar fate. Germany has some 29,000 wind turbines, almost all of which have been benefitting from a 20-year subsidy program that began in 2000. Starting in 2020, when subsidies run out for some 5,700 wind turbines, thousands of them each year will lose government support, making the continued operation of most of them uneconomic based on current market prices. To make matters worse, with many of the turbines failing and becoming uneconomic to maintain, they represent an environmental liability and pose the possibility of abandonment. No funds have been set aside to dispose of the blades, which are unrecyclable, or to remove the turbines’ 3,000-tonne reinforced concrete bases, which reach depths of 20 metres, making them a hazard to the aquifers they pierce.The cost to the German economy of its transition to renewables is estimated to reach 2 to 3 trillion euros by 2050Those who hoped that Germany’s newest coalition government would provide the renewable industries with a reprieve were disappointed last week when Germany’s new economic minister indicated that there would be no turning back. All told, the cost to the German economy of its much-vaunted energy transition to renewables is estimated to reach 2 to 3 trillion euros by 2050.Germany’s experience is being replicated throughout Europe — as subsidies fall, so does investment in wind turbines and solar plants, and so do jobs in these industries.As Warren Buffett said wind farms don’t make sense without the tax creditIn the real world of business and commerce, the cost of renewables makes them unaffordable without intervention by the state. As Warren Buffet explained in 2014, “on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”In the imagined world of politicians and environmental ideologues, renewables are not only affordable, they are inevitable. The difference in cost cited by those in the real and imagined worlds is called wishful thinking. This wishfulness is propped up through academic exercises that provide a stamp of authority on the ideologues’ beliefs.One method for proving that renewables have arrived is something called “levelized cost of electricity,” which the U.S. Energy Information Administration says is “often cited as a convenient summary measure of the overall competiveness of different generating technologies.” Environmentalists cite levelized costs as if you can take them to the bank, but they are really no more than predictions of what the costs of various technologies will be over subsequent decades. By assuming that costs of producing solar panels and wind turbines will drop and the costs of fossil fuels will rise over the 30-, 40- or 50-year lifetime of a new plant a utility must build, and describing those levelized costs as if they were current costs, studies state authoritatively that renewables have become cheaper than fossil fuels.Today’s claims that renewables are cheap and getting cheaper are familiar. They harken back to the first Earth Day in 1970, whose message of “New Energy for a New Era” was all about accelerating the transition to renewable energy worldwide. Then, as now, the belief in the viability of a renewable energy future was twinned with the conviction that fossil fuels, being finite, would inevitably become scarce and price themselves out of the market. To the ideologues’ never-ending dismay, peak oil never comes. Instead comes shale gas, shale oil, and peak renewables.Lawrence Solomon executive director of Toronto-based Energy [email protected] Grant Matkin ·In the real world of business and commerce, the cost of renewables makes them unaffordable without intervention by the state." The data supports this conclusion of Lawrence Solomon. Australia, Denmark, Germany and Italy are highest in electricity costs and wind and solar output: > 40 Euros / Kwh. US is lowest in renewables and lowest in electricity costs: 15 Euros / Kwh. 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 unreliability requires solar- and/or wind-heavy places like Germany, California and Denmark to pay neighboring nations or states to take their solar and wind energy when they are producing too much of it.Hirth predicted that the economic value of wind on the European grid would decline 40 percent once it becomes 30 percent of electricity while the value of solar would drop by 50 percent when it got to just 15 percent.https://climatism.blog/.../clima...http://business.financialpost.co...Subsidies of wind and solar to encourage utilities to add these renewables to existing grid power has a devastating effect on the power by raising the price of electricity with research showing seniors must chose between eating and heating.UK poverty from renewable subsidies is a major health problem today.The more installed wind and solar capacity the more expensive is the residential price of electricity. YUK.The truth behind renewable energyGuest Blogger / 1 week ago October 18, 2020Previously published in the October 2020, issue of International Cement ReviewCan renewable energy sources supply the world with a large share of the energy it requires? While some environmentalists advocate the total replacement of fossil fuels by solar, wind and battery power, Dr Lars Schernikau explains why this is impossible.by Dr. Lars Schernikau, HMS Bergbau Group, Germany & SingaporePhoto: A young man burning electrical wires to recover copper at Agbogbloshie, September 2019; Wikipedia Free LicenseToday we hear and read about the climate crisis every day, driven by well-funded campaigns. But we hear little of the perils of switching from conventional energy to wind, solar and battery-powered vehicles. It appears that every second person has become an atmospheric physicist understanding that carbon dioxide is the main driver of global warming and switching to renewables will save us from devastating hurricanes and floods reaching the ceilings of our dream seaside properties. Every other person appears to be an energy specialist being certain that wind, solar and battery-powered vehicles will be a happy, safe and environmentally friendly way to power our everyday electricity and transportation needs. However, little could be farther from the truth.The author is all for sensible use of renewable energy and for reducing everyday energy waste. Society needs to invest in additional filtering systems, cleaner transportation and mining operations that minimise the negative impact on the planet. Moreover, many trees should be planted. However, are current climate actions good for the environment? Are today’s wind and solar technologies the solution to our energy problems? This article aims to take the reader on a journey away from current standard thinking.Current and future energy needsToday, close to 8bn people live on Earth and they feed 80 per cent of their hunger for energy with hydrocarbons or fossil fuels (see Figure 1). Wind and solar make up an estimated two per cent of 2018 primary energy, the remainder largely comes from nuclear, hydropower and some biomass. This is in sharp contrast with the 2bn people that inhabited the Earth only a 100 years ago and had just learnt how to spell “oil and gas”. Of today’s world population, there are at least 3bn with no or only erratic access to power. In the next 50 years, a further +3bn people could be added, and as a result, the pure number of people plus the additional air conditioning equipment, new electronic gadgets, cars, aeroplanes and space travel, will increase the demand for energy dramatically.Extrapolating the trends shown in Figure 1 to the future, it becomes questionable that non-hydro renewable sources such as wind and solar will provide the energy required in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way.The media says the share of solar and wind will grow exponentially but does not mention the growth of electronic waste shipped to Africa that comes with it. And it certainly does not mention that solar and wind technology can literally never be the main source for the world’s power generation due to their low energy density and the issues described below.Figure 1: A Life without Fossils is Decades Away[1]ERoEI, energy density and intermittency: en-masse deployment of wind and solar is detrimentalThe now-famous documentary “Planet of the Humans” from Michael Moore, which has 9m views on YouTube, illustrates this problem very well.Solar and wind power are not new energy sources – we had to “wean off” low efficiency wind- and solar-based power to fuel humanities technological revolution. While there is nothing extraordinary or revolutionary about these power sources, their efficiency has greatly improved over recent decades. Moreover, these sources are getting close to their physical limits. The Schockley-Queisser Law states that a maximum of 33 per cent of incoming photons can be converted into electrons in silicon photovoltaic (PV) with modern PV reaching 26 per cent. In wind power, the Betz Law states that a blade can capture up to 60 per cent of kinetic energy in air. Modern wind turbines reached 45 per cent.The era of 10-fold gains is over.[2] There is no Moore’s Law in energy and therefore, what is seen in the domain of computers, cannot be expected from energy. Costs will not continue dropping and it is time that a whole-system view is taken when looking at solar and wind or any form of power generation.The three key problems of wind and solar generation are:their variability, or intermittencyextraordinarily low energy return on energy invested (ERoEI)low energy density (see also Figure 2).Figure 2: Wind has very low energy density with density in Asia even lower than Europe[3]Virtually every solar panel and every windmill requires a back-up for times when the wind does not blow, or the sun does not shine. The German press proudly presented that at around 13.00h on 4 July 2020, 97 per cent of Germany’s power demand was sourced from renewables for one hour (see Figure 3). However, it was not reported that:During the same hour, 22 per cent (~15GW) of power demand was waste energy that had to be exported or dumped across German borders, likely at negative prices.At around 21.00h on 18 July 2020, ~16 per cent of Germany’s power demand was sourced from renewables for one hour (nil per cent from wind and solar, all from reliable biomass and hydro).During that hour on 18 July 2020, about nine per cent (~4GW) needed to be imported from surrounding countries at high prices because Germany did not produce enough power (see Figure 3).There is no area practically large enough to ensure that there is always wind or sun. It happens every few years, probably at least once a decade, when a continent such as North America experiences a full day or two of no sun or wind anywhere.The logical requirement for back-up capacity for all variable renewable energy (VRE) and all consequences that come with it need to be considered when costs are compared to fossil or nuclear power. However, virtually all cost comparisons published use the so-called levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) measure that only considers investment, operations and fuel costs. Fuel costs for wind and solar are of course virtually zero. However, LCOE fails to consider the other cost categories.Figure 3: Record: 97.2% renewable power in Germany on 4th of July 2020 (left) vs. a typical summer period in Germany during July 2020[4]The true cost of solar and wind has to include:Back-up costs (profile costs): cost originating from “temporal” deviation between generation and demand. Includes cost of batteries, decline in conventional power utilisation, increased ramping and cycling.Interconnection costs: costs originating from “spatial” deviation between generation of variable renewable energy (VRE) and power demand, includes grid/ interconnections management costs, and balancing costs.Material and energy costs: costs for energy and materials to build solar and wind capacity (the ERoEI is far too low for wind and solar).Efficiency losses: costs associated with efficiency losses from underutilisation of conventional backup power.Spatial costs: costs related to the space required for VRE (energy density is far too low), crop land, forests, effected bird and animal life, changing wind and local climate, noise pollution, etc.Recycling costs: higher recycling costs of VRE and back-up capacity after its useful life.Contrary to popular belief and press, costs for conventional energy as backup and the resulting efficiency losses of conventional energy explain, amongst others, why the total cost of variable renewable energy always increases with more installed capacity beyond a certain point. This point varies by country and region, but one thing is sure: Germany is far beyond this point, which explains the country’s high power prices (see Figure 4).Figure 4: Global prices for power – power in Germany is the most expensive[5]Figure 5 illustrates the misleading LCOE measure used in the popular press and by most governments, and compares it to the still incomplete but better value-adjusted LCOE (VALCOE) from the IEA, which was first published in 2019. In January 2020 the prestigious Institute of Energy Economics Japan (IEEJ) published its 280-page ‘IEEJ Energy Outlook 2020’ and raised concerns about renewables’ rising unaccounted-for integration costs, concluding that LCOE is not capable of capturing the true cost of wind and solar.Germany has become aware that it needs conventional power despite its large wind and solar capacity installed. However, Germany decided to exit coal power in addition to exiting nuclear power. Despite Germany’s Environment Minister, Svenja Schultze, proudly claiming in July 2020 “We will solely rely on wind and solar for our country’s power generation”, Germany, very quietly, is building new gas-fired power plants as back-up. Gas is a legitimate fuel with many positive properties, but Germany does not have any itself. Despite gas’ “clean” transportation and combustion, we know that gas is typically more expensive than coal, more difficult and expensive to transport than coal since it requires pipelines or LNG, and generally more difficult and sometimes dangerous to store. So, why is Germany shutting down its existing coal mines, coal-fired power and nuclear plants and is now building new, gas-fired ones? The response usually is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because gas emits about half the CO2/kWh during combustion than coal, so the switch is supposed to save the climate.If we adhere to the popular, but in the author’s view, misinterpreted global warming theory, what appears to be a lesser known fact is that gas supply results in methane leakages during production, processing and transportation (methane is an 84 times more potent GHG gas than CO2 over 20 years, and 28 times more potent over 100 years). This has been documented in several studies, including Poyry’s 2016 German study on ‘Comparison of greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired and gas-fired power plants. It was also picked up by Bloomberg in a January 2020 article discussing methane leakages associated with LNG. Methane emissions vary widely, but there are many instances – as also documented by a Total Gas sponsored study from 2016 – when GHG emissions are higher for gas than for coal. The study states that “with 95 per cent confidence, US shale gas may emit more GHGs than Colombian hard coal.”Gas emits about half of CO2 compared to coal during combustion.Gas emits more CO2eq (mostly in form of methane) during production, processing and transportation. This includes, but is not limited to, leakages and energy requirements for LNG processing and transportation.Total gas CO2eq emissions are on par with or higher than coal, depending on the turbine type, location and the source and type of gas.Gas is a good and necessary fuel in the power mix, but if global warming theory is to be believed in, one must be consistent and not spend tax payers’ money switching from coal and nuclear to gas when even by one’s own admission it will have no positive impact on ‘the climate’. Methane emissions are neither measured nor taxed. Is this fair for coal or for the environment or the everyday citizen that pays the taxes?Figure 5: Levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and value-adjusted LCOE (VALCOE) for solar PV and coal-fired power plants in India[6]Battery technology is not capable of grid storage for powerIf gas is not the solution, then what is? What about those great batteries? It is true that an affordable and sustainable storage system would be the solution to wind and solar’s intermittency issue (but not to the issues of energy density or ERoEI). Over the years, batteries have become far more efficient and the recent move towards electrical vehicles has driven large investments in battery “gigafactories” around the world.The largest known and discussed factory for batteries is Tesla’s US$5bn Gigafactory in Nevada, which is expected to provide an annual battery production output of 50GWh in 2020. By 2021 CATL in China is expected to double that. Berlin’s Gigafactory 4 will start producing electric vehicles in 2021-22. These factories will provide the batteries for our future cars and also provide backup batteries for houses, but what about their environmental and economic impact? Figures 6 and 7 summarise the environmental challenges of today’s battery technology. The three main issues with any known battery technology are:energy densitymaterial requirementsrecycling.Figure 6: Comparing mineral needs for renewable technology (IEA 2019 data)[7]Energy densityHydrocarbons such as oil, gas and coal are one of nature’s most efficient ways to store energy. Today’s most advanced battery technology can only store 2.5 per cent of the energy that coal can store. The energy that a 540kg, 85kWh Tesla battery can store equals 30kg of coal energy after combustion. A Tesla battery must then still be charged with power (often through the grid) while coal is already ‘charged’, albeit only once.In addition, you can calculate that one annual gigafactory production of 50GWh of Tesla batteries would be enough to provide back-up for 6min for the entire US power consumption (and then no Teslas to drive). Today’s battery technology cannot be the solution to intermittency.Material and energy requirementsNext comes the question of the energy inputs and materials required to produce a battery. The required materials include lithium, copper, cobalt, nickel, graphite, rare earths & bauxite, coal and iron ore (for aluminium and steel).Additionally, energy of 10-18MWh is required to build one Tesla battery, resulting in 15-20t of CO2emissions assuming 50 per cent renewable power. Assuming conservatively that 1-2 per cent of mined ores end up in the battery in the form of metals, one Tesla battery requires 25-50t of raw materials to be mined, transported and processed (see Figure 7).2RecyclingThis is slowly hitting the main-stream media.[8] The first larger batches of retired and unusable wind farms and solar panels are hitting landfills and insufficient recycling plant capacities. There is not yet an affordable, large-scale way to recycle wind blades. The electronic waste we create is already a devastating problem for landfills outside Accra (Ghana), Nairobi (Kenya) and Mombasa (Mozambique).Figure 7: case in point – energy density and environmental impact of Tesla batteriesA New Energy Revolution“What do we do now? Are we all doomed?” A young engineer asked the author this question after one of the latter’s presentations when he realised that currently there is simply no viable alternative to conventional energy from coal, oil, gas and nuclear. It is concerning that young people are taught in school to fear the slight warming of about 1˚C during the past 150 years. At least half of the past warming is natural, caused by the sun as we are coming out of the Little Ice Age that ended roughly 300 years ago. The other half, or less, may be ‘human-caused’, which includes the heat all consumed energy produces that is released into the biosphere plus the greenhouse-gas CO2. The additional greening – and therefore biomass – created by this additional CO2is rarely spoken of. That the warming effect of CO2declines logarithmically with higher CO2 levels is not published by mainstream media either. A catastrophe is not looming, but real pollutants to the environment and the waste created by humans are a concern – and this is where resources should be focussed.[9]On global warming and the upcoming catastrophe, the IPCC confirms as follows:IPCC 2020 Climate Change and Land, p9, A2.3: “Satellite observations have shown vegetation greening over the last three decades …. Causes of greening include combinations of an extended growing season, nitrogen deposition, carbon dioxide (CO2) fertilisation …”IPCC 2013 Climate Change, Chapter 2, p235: “There is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century.” ȗ IPCC 2018 Third Assessment Report 14, p771: “In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”On the tuning of climate models – that are the sole basis for today’s energy policy – the Max Planck Institute, Germany, writes in April 2020: “When we were faced with a model system that was bound to fail at reproducing the instrumental record warming, we chose an explicit approach where the past temperature trend is a tuning target.” Moreover, Bjørn Lomborg, who runs the Copenhagen Consensus Center thinktank, explains in his recent book ‘False Alarm’ many interesting scientific facts. He states “Climate change is real, but it’s not the apocalyptic threat that we’ve been told it is.”Either way, even if people believe that catastrophic predictions for global warming are the correct way to approach environmentalism, this article highlights that wind and solar – while certainly being appropriate for applications such as heating a pool, and thus earning a place in the energy mix – cannot and will not replace conventional power.As Michael Shellenberger, Time Magazine Hero of the Environment 2008, said in an article published in Forbes in May 2019: “The reason renewables cannot power modern civilisation is because they were never meant to. One interesting question is why anybody ever thought they could”. His recent book ‘Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All’ details his rationale.What is needed in the next one or two centuries is a ‘New Energy Revolution’. Future energy may be completely new, possibly more renewable, and fusion- or fission-based, but will have little to do with wind and photovoltaic. To reach this New Energy Revolution, more must be invested in education and base research (power generation, storage, supra-conductors, etc) while simultaneously investing in conventional power to make it more efficient and environmentally friendly. There will be the need to invest in fossils to clean them up, not divest from them. This is the most sensible path to save the planet from the negative impact that human existence has on it. However, please consider, humankind has never been better off than today. Shouldn’t we celebrate this fact?About the author:Dr. Lars Schernikau, born and raised in Berlin, Germany studied at New York University and INSEAD in France before earning his PhD in Energy Economics from Technical University in Berlin. Lars has extensive knowledge and experience in the raw material and energy sector. Lars has founded, worked for, and advised a number of companies and organizations in the energy, raw material, and coal sectors in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. Before joining the world of energy and raw materials over 15 years ago he worked at Boston Consulting Group in the US and Germany. He published two industry trade books on the Economics of the International Coal Trade (Springer, available on Amazon) in 2010 and 2017. He is a member of various economics, energy and environmental associations including the non-profit CO2Coalition in the US. He is a regular speaker at international energy and coal conferences and advised governments and leading energy organizations on energy policy. Lars can be reached at [email protected].[1] Prepared by Lars Schernikau: primary electricity converted by direct equivalent method. Source: data compiled by J David Hughes. Pre-1965 data from GRUBLER, A (1998) Technology and Global Change: Data Appendix. Post-1965 data from BP, Statistical Review of World Energy (annual publication).[2] MILLS, M (2019): The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking. New York, USA: Manhattan Institute, 26 March. www. http://manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible[3] Global Wind Atlas: Global Wind Atlas [Accessed 24 April 2020][4] Schernikau analysis based on Agora Energiewende – Agora Energiewende [Accessed 20 July 2020][5] STATISTA (2019): Global electricity prices in 2018, by select country – Statista - The Statistics Portal statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/[6] WANNER, B (2019): Is exponential growth of solar PV the obvious conclusion? – IEA – International Energy Agency commentaries/is-exponential-growth-of-solar-pv-the-obvious-conclusion[7] IEA (2020): Clean energy progress after the Covid-19 crisis will need reliable supplies of critical minerals – http://www.iea.org/articles/clean-energy-progress-after-the-covid-19-crisis-willneed-reliable-supplies-of-critical-minerals[8] MARTIN, C (2020): Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills – www. http://bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/ wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills[9] PETERSON, J (2020): What Greta Thunberg does not understand about climate change – https:// http://youtu.be/y564PsKvNZs”.The truth behind renewable energyGwyn Morgan: Liberals’ plan to replace fossil fuel with wind and solar is technically impossible and economically disastrousTrying to solve any problem with a fix that defies the laws of physics is bound to failAuthor of the article:Gwyn Morgan, Special to Financial PostPublishing date:Oct 27, 2020 •• 4 minute readSheep graze close to wind turbines in the German town of Husum. Germans know the hazards of pursuing a green power utopia all too well. PHOTO BY JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/GETTY IMAGESArticle SidebarShareTRENDINGArticle contentThe combination of wildfires along the U.S. Pacific Coast, two simultaneous hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, melting glaciers and peat bog fires in Canada and an unusually hot summer in Europe has raised global warming fears to frenzied proportions. Environmentalists are urging political leaders to legislate the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels. Curiously, the most extreme call for action came from the future King of England. Prince Charles urged a “warlike footing” that would require the implementation of a centralized global authority to save the planet from catastrophic climate change. Just how such an unelected regime would exert power over the Earth’s 7.8 billion inhabitants wasn’t clear.If Canada were to disappear from the face of the Earth, new coal plants would replace our 1.6% of global emissions in just a few monthsThe California and Oregon wildfires turned into a U.S. election issue, with Joe Biden pointing to Donald Trump’s pro-oil industry policies as a cause — even though American greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by over 14 per cent since 2005. Meanwhile, led by China and India, Asian emissions have doubled over the past decade and continue to grow. Overall, less than a third of global emissions now come from Western developed countries. China, India, Vietnam, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, all signatories to the Paris Climate Accord, are in various stages of constructing a total of 1,800 coal-fired power plants. If Canada were to disappear from the face of the Earth, those new plants would replace our 1.6 per cent of global emissions in just a few months.AdvertisementSTORY CONTINUES BELOWThis advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article content continuedDespite that reality, the Trudeau government continues its ideologically driven crusade to replace fossil fuels with so-called green energy, mainly wind and solar. The government’s throne speech virtually ignored the economic destitution its anti-oil policies have wrought in Alberta. Even the potential market access of Trans Mountain Pipeline was couched in terms of providing a bridge to a fossil-fuel free paradise.That green energy fixation was the focus of the Sept. 26 “Climate Issue” of the Globe and Mail. Columnist David Berman asserted that the cost of wind and solar power have “become attractive next to fossil fuels generating assets, particularly coal.” As evidence, he cited Tucson Electric Power’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation. U.S. Energy Administration data show that coal-fired plants are indeed being phased out, but they’re being replaced by natural gas. In fact, wind and solar provide less than one per cent of Arizona’s electricity requirements.Fellow columnist Eric Reguly stated that Canada’s share of renewables — i.e., hydro, wind, biomass, solar and ethanol — is above the OECD average. But as is often the case with selective fact statements from green power advocates, he fails to mention that Natural Resources Canada data show wind and solar accounting for just 2.3 per cent per cent of Canada’s electricity supply in 2019.The widely respected BP World Energy Outlook 2019 shows that, despite hundreds of billions of dollars invested, wind and solar contributed the same two per cent of world energy supplies, while the contribution of fossil fuels has actually increased to 84 per cent.Germans know the hazards of pursuing a green power utopia all too well. Their country’s decade-long attempt to replace coal and nuclear with wind and solar sent electricity costs soaring to the second highest in the EU. Despite hundreds of billions of Euros invested, the unreliability of wind and solar necessitated rehabilitating coal-fired power plants. In an ironic twist, the coal is sourced from the U.S. and is available only because of the conversion of American power plants to natural gas.Ontario’s McGuinty government also implemented a German-style green power and with equally disastrous results. Coal-fired power plants were shuttered and the planned expansion of nuclear plants cancelled. The government signed 25-year locked-in windmill and solar contracts at several times existing rates. Electricity prices more than doubled, taking Ontario from one of North America’s lowest-cost power jurisdictions to among the highest, with prices more than twice those in other provinces. As beleaguered homeowners struggled to pay their electricity bills, manufacturers decamped to low-cost states like Georgia and the Carolinas. Caterpillar, United Steel, Heinz, General Motors, Navistar, Kellogg’s, John Deere, Kraft Foods, Unilever and Bacardi closed some or all of their Ontario plants.Then there’s the impact on the land. More than 8,000 wind turbines were built, requiring three acres each on average. Many are near bird habitats, causing locals to label them “bird blenders.” And that’s only part of the story. Because (surprise!) the wind blows irregularly and solar panels are useless during Ontario’s long, dark winter nights, several new natural gas-fired power plants were needed to back up those unreliable wind and solar facilities, pushing power prices even higher. The only winners from this made-in-Ontario fiasco were the so-called “green-preneurs,” who became very wealthy as a result of those locked-in power contracts.The moral of this sad story is that the Liberals’ plan to replace fossil fuel with wind and solar is technically impossible and economically disastrous. Moreover, phasing out the oilsands would simply hand the market to such sterling global citizens as Russia and Iran, even as it threw more than a million Canadians out of work and destroyed the country’s largest source of wealth generation and export revenues — all at a time when that wealth generation is needed more than ever.Trying to solve any problem with a fix that defies the laws of physics is bound to fail. What can Canada actually do to reduce global emissions and help the economy? That, dear readers, will be the subject of next month’s column.Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who has been a director of five global corporations.