Discussions on the Trade-Offs Between Renewables and Fossil Fuels Shows Galactic Level of Stupidity

Here’s an excerpt article published last week by Reuters that illustrates how galactically stupid the debate on energy has become.  Please read along and see where you think this goes completely off the rails for anyone with an IQ over that of a stalk of celery:

Wear-and-tear costs on coal and natural gas power plants from adding high levels of wind and solar energy in the U.S. West is small compared with the benefits of generating less power using fossil fuels, a federal study said Tuesday.

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory determined the western power grid could accommodate 30 percent wind and 5 percent solar energy in 2017.

But to keep the grid reliable when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, utilities will have to ramp their gas and coal-fired plants up and down more frequently, a process known in the power industry as cycling.

The NREL said cycling gas and coal plants would add about $35 million to $157 million per year in operating and maintenance expenses, depending on how much wind and solar is actually installed, by 2020.

“Increased cycling to accommodate high levels of wind and solar generation increases operating costs by 2 percent to 5 percent for the average fossil-fueled plant,” Debra Lew, NREL project manager for the study, said in a release.

However, that is well below the estimated $7 billion per year that the increased use of wind and solar power would save in gas and coal fuel costs, NREL said.

Ding ding ding!

So, for this to be a good deal, the cost of adding renewables needs to be less than the corresponding added cost to the fossil fuel infrastructure?

Let’s suppose that they were equal, and the cost of replacing coal with wind or solar is “a wash” (or “a push” as they’d say at the blackjack tables).  That wouldn’t be a good deal?  At no cost, you’d be shutting down an energy generation machine that pumps planet-killing greenhouse gases, along with sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, mercury, cadmium, etc. into the atmosphere – and that wouldn’t be a good thing?

Morons.