Free Republic

Over in Europe, and particularly in those countries in the vanguard of the green energy transition, the enormous costs of this folly have begun to hit home. In the UK, average annual consumer energy bills were scheduled to rise as of October 1 to £3549/year, from only £1138/year just a year ago. (The figure may now get reduced somewhat by means of massive government subsidies, which only conceal, but do not obviate, the disastrous cost increases.) Germany’s regulated consumer gas bills are scheduled for an average annual increase on October 1 of about 480 euros, about 13%, from an already...

Every area of the U.S. could be in danger of experiencing power outages this summer amid a push to convert to renewable energy sources while taking traditional sources of power offline. "I think the entire country is incredibly vulnerable, because the entire country is facing a huge energy shortage and I don’t think there is any place that is truly safe," Daniel Turner, founder and executive director at Power the Future, told Fox News. At issue are blackouts that could become widespread across the country this summer as grid operators struggle to meet the increased demand, a problem that has...

Skyrocketing gas prices are sparking major concerns in the UK, with households bracing for higher bills and food prices. The energy crisis has already hit millions of Brits, but is set to hit more still. The UK is highly dependent on consumer spending to generate output, indicating the economy could still be in the mire heading into the spring. A wave of concern over the swelling cost of living is sweeping across Britain. While households are bracing for higher tax bills and are already being stung by food prices leaping, it is swelling energy costs that will hit hardest in...

At the COP26 U.N. climate change conference, a group of 450 financial firms pledged $130 trillion in capital to finance the transition to net-zero emissions. Government mandates have already driven large private capital flows into expanding renewable energy, and now financial firms are eager to kick the phaseout of fossil fuels into high gear. The finance industry’s palpable excitement is electrifying to climate activists and the politicians who cater to them. Wall Street is now squarely on their side. Yet the enthusiasm of asset managers and banks is hardly surprising. Any government mandate that a large amount of capital must...

The leaders of California and China have at least one thing in common: fear of blackouts. In late September, following widespread and economically debilitating losses of power, China’s vice premier Han Zheng ordered the country’s energy companies to ensure sufficient supplies before winter “at all costs” and added, ominously, that blackouts “won’t be tolerated.” A month earlier, California governor Gavin Newsom issued emergency orders to procure more natural gas-fired electrical capacity to avoid blackouts. And in a possible sign of more such moves to come, earlier in the summer, California’s electric grid operator “stole” electricity that Arizona utilities had purchased...

The Green New Deal is bearing down on us with irreversible consequences. This documentary destroys the lefts case for ruining the world with a sort of religion that doesn't work and has proven it doesn't work. The movie has been squelched by the left so the truth will never come to light. They show the lies and the money makers making money so we will never know what happened before all the money is made and the western countries collapse allowing China and other practical thinkers take over the gullible left. The left's idea of a solution, of course, is...

The oldest maxim in politics is “follow the money.” That maxim also applies to electric grids. Following the billions of dollars that have been spent on the Texas grid explains why the state continues to have electricity shortages. On Monday, ERCOT, the state’s troubled grid operator, asked Texans to reduce their electricity use. That request came exactly four months after Texas residents were asked to conserve electricity due to a massive winter storm. Before going further, I’ll give you the punchline: As I explained in these pages in April, about $66 billion was spent on wind and solar in Texas...

Virginia residents who want to do right by the planet are confronted with a bewildering array of renewable energy and “green power” options. Unfortunately, few of these programs actually deliver renewable energy. People who want the gold standard — electricity from new wind and solar projects — are completely out of luck if their utility is Dominion Energy Virginia or Appalachian Power. To understand how there can be so many options and none of them good, we first have to talk about renewable energy certificates. RECs are a topic that is way more interesting than it sounds because — well,...

Why are millions of Americans in the nation’s most energy-rich state without power and heat for days amid extreme winter weather? “The people who have fallen short with regard to the power are the private power generation companies,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott explained. Ah, yes, blame private power companies . . . that are regulated by government. The Republican sounds like California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who lambasted private utilities for rolling blackouts during a heat wave last summer. Power grids should be able to withstand extreme weather. But in both these bellwether states, state and federal energy policies have...

One of the Biden administration's key pledges is to have a "100 percent clean energy economy" and reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. A study released by Princeton researchers last week analyzed several scenarios detailing the herculean efforts required to achieve that goal. A prominent takeaway is the massive amount of land it would take to reimagine energy production and distribution nationally, including figuring out where to site a multitude of new solar arrays and wind turbines and constructing thousands of miles of transmission lines. "The current power grid took 150 years to build," one of the study researchers...

LA GRANDE, Ore.—In this small town in eastern Oregon, renewable energy is widely popular. But the power lines needed to transmit it aren’t. La Grande is one of many communities nationwide fighting against transmission lines being built to keep up with a surge in clean-power generation. “We need to develop more renewable energy, of course, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of damage to our last remaining wild places,” Brian Kelly, who helps lead a green group in the area, said of a proposed transmission line that would run through the nearby forest. Utilities are under pressure to put...

While the climate strike and Greta Thunberg may have the limelight this week, the unwavering truth of climate and energy policy remains: people are unwilling to pay the costs associated with reducing carbon dioxide emissions. A recent poll from the Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation shows that support for reducing carbon dioxide emissions withers under the slightest bit of scrutiny. The poll shows people favor taxing the wealthy to pay for increasing electricity costs, which is pretty much par for the course on every issue, and raising taxes on energy, even if that leads to higher prices. ... when people are...

If the official definitions of renewable energy were logical, renewable energy would be defined as energy that does not emit CO2 and that is not using a resource in danger of running out anytime soon. But the definitions written into the laws of many states are not logical. Hydroelectric energy is mostly banned because the environmental movement hates dams. Nuclear is banned ... Both nuclear and hydro don't emit CO2. Hydro doesn't need fuel. Nuclear fuel is cheap and plentiful. A large number of prominent global warming activists, such as James Hansen, Michael Shellenberger, and Stewart Brand have declared that...

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy would see its $2.3 billion budget slashed by about 70 percent, to $700 million, under President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget request, which is set to be released on Monday.

California Democrats pose as green saints, though their climate and social-justice values often conflict. The latest example is the legislature’s plan to banish fossil fuels from the state electrical grid, which progressives aim to export nationwide. Most states are enjoying flat or declining electricity rates thanks to shale fracking, which has sent natural gas prices plummeting. But not California, where rates have jumped 25% since 2013. Electricity prices in the Golden State are by far the highest in the continental western U.S. and twice as high as in Washington state. The reason: California requires that 50% of power be generated...

Leading Australian Politicians and economists are piling in against renewable political favouritism, comparing renewables to the Bernie Madoff and Enron scandals. Tony Abbott has doubled down on his scepticism of climate change science, reigniting a decade-old debate in a major speech in London after the Turnbull government moved yesterday to rule out proceeding with a clean ­energy target proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel. The former prime minister has labelled the likely backdown on a CET [clean energy target"] “belated” gesture and warned that the Coalition is courting a “political death wish” if it fails to put cost of living...

In 2001, Colorado electricity consumers enjoyed some of the lowest electric rates in the country. The 15 years since haven’t been so kind to ratepayers. For more than a decade, elected officials, PUC commissioners, industry and advocates have told Colorado ratepayers that they could transform the state’s electricity generation away from coal and toward industrial wind, solar and natural gas with little cost to ratepayers. However, the actual numbers tell a much different story. Colorado electricity rates have risen sharply – 62.1 percent – across residential, commercial and industrial sectors, despite a slight decrease in recent years. Colorado electricity rates...

A Germany nuclear plant was damaged because its operators increased and decreased its output to respond to energy grid fluctuations. The incident supports the theory that nuclear and renewable energy generation are incompatible. EURACTIV’s partner Der Tagesspiegel reports. The Brokdorf nuclear power station, located in northern Germany, was taken offline in February after maintenance showed its reactor’s fuel rods had begun to unexpectedly oxidise. A regional nuclear supervisory body has now ruled that the plant can be booted back up but only in “safe mode”, according to Schleswig-Holstein’s energy transition minister. State Minister for Energy Robert Habeck (Greens) added that...

After years of creating headaches for the oil-and-gas industry, the greater sage grouse is now standing in the way of renewable energy. The U.S. District Court in Portland on Wednesday killed a major wind-energy project slated for southeast Oregon over concerns about its impact on a local sage grouse population in a victory for environmental groups, which had fought the proposal for years. The 104-megawatt project, which would have spread up to 70 wind turbines and a transmission line across 10,500 acres in rural Harney County, was decried by environmentalists as an “industrial scale wind development” that would have disrupted...

The proliferation of renewable energy will never please environmentalists. In fact, the more efficient and inexpensive energies like solar and wind become, the more environmentalists will fear and eventually hate them.Currently, arguments against renewable energy are based on the accurate claim they are too inefficient to become widespread. The technology behind solar and wind power are just not where they need to be to justify widespread use. In October 2014, data revealed the massive Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert fell well short of its anticipated output. During an eight-month period in 2013, the solar plant...