The renewable energy cow is getting gored - and not before time

 

Back in May, when renewable energy reforms were being debated in Congress, I wrote:

Son, if you can't make money on your product without taxpayers giving you thousands of dollars per installation, you don't deserve to be in business.  If you can't make a fair and reasonable profit without gouging others for it, you're the problem - not the government.

The entire alternative energy sphere is filled with subsidies and special-interest money like this.  I know one wind power project in Colorado that's been sold twice in the past decade or so.  Every time, the sale was at the end of a ten-year federal subsidy for wind energy for the "new" field - and the new owner got a renewed ten-year subsidy every time he/it/they bought the project.  It's basically a license to fleece taxpayers, and they get away with it every time, thanks to a complaisant Congress and the lobbyists who hand out money to politicians who support their favored schemes.

As far as I'm concerned, Congress should never have passed the subsidy in the first place.  Getting rid of it now is rather late, but at least we won't be hemorrhaging even more money that way in future.

There's more at the link.

Now, the Telegraph adds more insight into why the renewable energy industry is so upset.

The cat is out of the bag. Electricity made from renewable sources is not as “cheap” as its advocates sometimes claim. It evidently cannot survive without billions annually in tax credits.

That’s the message from the latest skirmish over America’s renewable energy future, where the House and Senate have unveiled duelling visions for the rollback of energy tax credits – each with its own tempo and tone. The vitriolic reaction from the green lobby, and the predictions of disaster for renewables should any of these changes be passed into law, have exposed just how economically unsustainable even the fiercest backers of these energy sources clearly accept them to be.

Supporters of renewable energy have assured us for years that the wind blows and the sun shines free of charge. But although these technologies have received hundreds of billions in subsidies globally over the past 20 years, proponents still demand more – for a few years, we’re told, until renewables can stand on their own feet.

. . .

One dirty little secret is that, on a state-by-state basis, nine out of the top 10 states in electricity prices in the United States in 2024 required renewable energy as part of their electricity mix. The bottom 10 states generally did not require renewable energy.

. . .

Taxpayers are paying multiple times for renewables. In their electricity bills, they pay not only for wind and solar, but for the backups to the wind and solar. In their tax bills, they pay for the energy tax credits. They also give up faster economic growth when electricity prices rise.

Another dirty secret is that renewable energy is often neither green nor clean. About 70 per cent of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and their components are made in China, which remains reliant on coal-fired power plants to fuel its industries. Wind turbines kill birds, and, when offshore, can harm sea mammals. Solar power can take over agricultural land, which is likely to drive up the price of food. Green and clean are marketing hype used to push renewables onto unsuspecting consumers.

. . .

With the end of these tax credits, Americans may well discover that the true costs of renewable energy are higher than utility companies are willing to bear. Developers are already saying that they will halt projects without the tax credits.

If the age of renewable energy tax credits is drawing to a close, Americans will be the beneficiaries. The question is how abruptly Washington will pull the plug – and whether other countries will follow.

Again, more at the link.

As always, follow the money.  He who screams the loudest when a government subsidy is reduced or eliminated is, in my book, automatically suspicious, because he's basically admitting he's been making money at taxpayer expense and hates the thought of losing it.

I can understand government subsidizing some new technology that will be of genuine long-term benefit to the nation.  In energy terms, pebble bed reactors and other advances in the nuclear field come to mind, because modern designs virtually eliminate the risk of accidental radiation release, and appear to generate much less nuclear waste.  However, solar and wind energy will always have the problem that they need backup power sources to fill in the gap when the winds don't blow or the sun doesn't shine.  To pay out literally hundreds of billions of dollars for a part-time resource that isn't consistently reliable seems utterly pointless to me.

Kill those subsidies, yesterday!

Peter