Some People Want Renewable Energy To Fail (And They're Not All in the Oil Business)
I may have mentioned that I get daily emails that cc: a huge number of people, promoting nuclear energy and denigrating renewables. Tonight, one of these people writes about his ultimate fantasy: the implosion of renewable energy:
Maybe, just maybe, there is a providential confluence of events coming. 1. Germany keeps pushing greater penetration of their electric grid by intermittent wind & solar. 2. France shuts down a few nuclear reactors as they start chasing that same renewables fairy. 3. Therefore France becomes less able to export their nuclear power during hours when Germany’s supply can’t meet demand, which kicks out the import prop that has been stabilizing the German grid. 4. The Germans finally realize that their Energiewende plan is unworkable. They announce to the world: “Our experimental attempt is complete, and it has failed.” 5. Everybody else who was harboring the same delusion gives up on it, and so turns to nuclear.
Are you telling me that this entire audience of email readers thinks that renewable energy has no place in the 21st Century? That the best minds of France and Germany are chasing a “fairy” and a “delusion?” That the huge international investment banks investing trillions of dollars in the subject are similarly delusional?
Take a moment out of your lives and look up “renewable energy (name of bank).” Try the huge investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank, then a few retail banks like Wells Fargo. You’ll see that most of them have entire business practices in this space. Note the title of the article linked above: “Credit Suisse Projects ~85% Of US Energy Demand Growth Coming From Renewables Through 2025.”
I don’t know, guys….. . You all strike me as far too wise for this.
You’re entitled to your opinion but many of the claims are essentially cherry-picked. The difficulty with integrating increasing amounts of renewable energy is ignored and the cost of nuclear energy is misrepresented. Maybe French politicians has seen the political writing on the wall, but government policy is allowed to defy the laws of physics and economics, whereas outcomes are not.
In India & China where there is less of this nonsense, nuclear is cheaper.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/464289/nuclear-power-way-cheaper-others.html
As to hoping the renewable energy bandwagon fails, if you believe its failure is inevitable, it might be the case of the sooner the better.
Realistically, the two best possible outcomes for the Energiewende are
1. It works as well as it proponents say and starts actually reducing carbon or
2. It works as badly as its opponents say, collapses soon and people release that nuclear is inevitable.
Thus far the truth is in between, but nearer 2