Breitbart:
Yes. That’s right. Slowly, deliciously, like a leech starved of blood, the renewable energy industry is withering away and dying. It can only survive through government enforced subsidies or bribe-incentives. Once those dry up, so does its trade.
I wish I could say it gave me no pleasure to see all those jobs being lost, all those businesses collapsing, all those investors losing their shirts. But I’d be lying. The jobs aren’t productive ones, the businesses are an ugly manifestation of crony capitalism, and the investors should have realized that in finance there’s no such thing as a one way bet. And in any case the victims of the renewable energy industry’s ongoing collapse will be far outnumbered by the victors. Renewables are, and always have been, a scam perpetrated by the few against the many.
A tiny minority – Elon Musk; Dale “Dog on a Rope” Vince; etc – get very, very rich. But the ordinary folk forced to use their “clean” energy (whether they like it or not) just see their bills go up or, in the worst cases die in fuel poverty, even while the planet we’re supposed to be saving gets carpeted in bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes and bird-frying solar arrays. more here
Elon Musk, a government made millionaire.
Never met a technology he didn’t steal.
Solar panels on the surplus/salvage market may eventually be a good buy, though.
Renewables aren’t the only electric energy sectors passing away. Environmentalism spurred to initiate death knells for coal-fired generation, driving costs up until these units could no longer compete, and nuclear is being decimated by the current low cost of shale gas-fired generation.
The US will continue to see coal plant closures, and numerous nukes are being considered, if not outright planned, for shut down due to unprofitability. Many nuclear generating companies are lobbying state governments for subsidies to continue operation under the guise of “zero emissions nuclear.”
Yes, wind and solar would never have become so widespread without government subsidies. Yes, nuclear will fade away without government subsidies. Yes, King Coal is no longer in vogue and it’s far too expensive at this time. That leaves us with whatever aging power generation we have in place, supplemented by an ever increasing fleet of gas-fired units.
As long as shale gas remains cheap, fine. As it is, there is a rush to extract and export as much of this gas as possible. The end result will be increasing gas prices as supply dwindles, and electric rates will soar as a result. Couple this with the fact that a disruption of the gas transmission system in any given area, especially in the winter, will reduce the amount of generating capacity, leaving the bulk electric system at risk.
One nice thing about coal plants is that, even if the rail system fails for a time, or the river freezes over, the plant has an appreciable stockpile of fuel to keep the fires burning until supply routes are re-established. With gas units, if the pipe breaks, they’re kaput.
My fear is that the stability of this great nations power infrastructure is rapidly moving toward a crisis. With that, our national security is at risk.
(note: “gas” as used above refers to methane, not gasoline)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmvuGpYd_9g
Wind turbine fail compilation.
@flip July 20, 2017 at 9:50 am
“the stability of this great nations power infrastructure is rapidly moving toward a crisis”
Fixing THAT is so simple it puts the financial system at risk. And THAT is a far more important thing than national security. Nations come and go. That’s the plan.
Driving through Texas last April, I drove through the largest wind farm in the world. It’s around the town of Sweetwater. There were literally thousands of huge wind turbines as far as the eye could see, and in Sweetwater, you can see for a long way. On my way back through Sweetwater, it was nighttime. Twenty miles outside of town, I cleared a ridge and saw a sea of red blinking lights from horizon to horizon. I couldn’t believe how many there were and then realized when I got closer that for every red light blinking atop a wind turbine, there were four more that didn’t have the blinking light. It was one of the ugliest sights I’ve ever seen.
good analysis, flip
National security considerations are beyond the damn narcissistic/solipsistic Libtards.
Steel, coal, uranium, even concrete, are invaluable to an non-nihilistic society.
Trump’s objectives contrast well with the Usurper’s.
spoke to my friend in Gillette Wyoming, a massive coal producing area with many surface mines. Things are looking up. All those employees that were laid off (in the low thousands) in the last 4 years have been rehired with hundreds of new employees also. He also said that BNSF (or whoever they are now, i dont recall) had 11000 locomotives sitting unused on sidings in that area.
I recently completed a vacation road trip from WA to UT and back via ID and MT, and in the course of the trip, I must’ve passed at least half a dozen wind generator farms. And the one thing they all had in common was that even when the wind was blowing, 90% of the generators were not spinning. I think the ugly secret of the wind generator industry is that those things break with a very high frequency.
@Hambone – ERCOT, Texas’s grid operator, relies heavily on wind, seeing as how TX has a lot of wind. The problem is that on occasion, when demand is high, the wind doesn’t blow. They about lost their grid back in 2008 when the wind unexpectedly stopped blowing. A simultaneous cold snap saw multitudes of oil-fired units unable to get on line.
Story: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-utilities-ercot-wind-idUSN2749522920080228
years ago they put up hundreds of those wind turbines outside of Palm Springs Ca. really messed up the beautiful desert landscape.
hope they all are taken apart soon….
Let’s make solar powered wind turbines.., now we are talking..! Btw, who’s gonna be the one, to pick up the tab for these derelicts, to be decommissioned.. , yes. Tongue in cheek.., of course it’s us the taxpayers..
There is hope. There is a steel scrap yard next to Amtrak station, Vancouver, Washington. At least an acre full of windmill bases being cut up.
Current projects near Hagerstown, MD has about a thousand acres of solar farm development and the County Commissioners and big contractors are the only ones who want them.
Big scams – a few years ago an acquaintance of mine who is a construction exec tried to get me to invest in solar – so glad I told him no.
Bill Nye told me that the Sun itself is wind-powered. Mike Degrassy Tyson nodded, yes, it’s true.
There were a couple of loudmouths at my favorite bar about 8 months ago, were in town starting a new solar project.
One of them tried to pick a fight with me because I said solar was shit.
They cleared off the acreage for the solar but never saw anything more.
Turns out, it got cut because the tax payoff was cut.
Making a turf farm there now.
I asked the bartender what ever happened to the two assholes, she said their membership was denied.
“You cannot come in here and threaten a member and then ask to be accepted.”
We’ve been amused to see the old Ducati dealership dry up, then turn into something else, then empty for a while, now a Tesla dealership.
We have a dead pool going for when it goes tits up too.
All over the world governments are slowly cancelling the subsidies and tax breaks for Tesla’s and sales are crashing. The Tesla is a fine southern city car (once you get past all pollution caused by it’s manufacture, especially the strip mining for the rare materiels that battary needs) as long as the electrical outlets can handle a charging load. But the conveniently forgotton dirty secret is where does the electricity come from. In the south it’s not likely (except for areas like Hoover Dam) hydro and that leaves oil, coal and nuclear. Two of which create the pollution that this wondercar was supposed to eliminate. The feds ought eliminate subsidies or any kind of cost support for the Tesla (that isn’t recieved by a Ford product) and add a surcharge in for the pollution it causes through the electrical generation it needs to run. Hell, explain it to some snowflake hippies how much of a polluter the car really is and give that to them as a project to stop. Then watch the fun begin.
Although I agree with all of the above comments, I would like to point out that people are actually innovating with solar, and I expect that sooner or later it will replace gas or electric powered utilities (but not necessarily other heavier things, such as cars)
Personal experience- I have a friend who is an “inventor” and has a patents and a working (revenue generating) solar lights company. At first they got (Chinese) government subsidies, but right now they are actually completely self funded.
You don’t get it. Once solar becomes economically viable the watermelons will complain of profiting from the Sun. It’s not the pollution they abhor, its the profit.
” its the profit.”
After all, electricity is a right.
We’ve got hundreds of years worth of fossil fuel reserves. Do these environMENTALists not believe that sometime between now and then science will “evolve” and find a new viable source of energy? Look at what we’ve done in a hundred years. Not very progressive are they?
Frank, that wind turbine fail compilation above is hilarious.
Remember, liberals LOVE any “alternative energy” provided that it doesn’t actually work. If someone comes up with an alternative way to drill called fracking and it works liberals oppose it.