Exposing The Fossil Gas FUD About Renewable Power

Help CleanTechnica’s work by a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

On September 17, Canary Media printed a narrative a few latest public opinion survey performed for the Conservative Power Community by Cygnal in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. It discovered that voters in these states favored enlarging the utility grid and including extra renewable vitality to be able to restrict will increase of their utility payments.

Practically three quarters of probably voters mentioned they help increasing the electrical grid and about two-thirds had been in favor of including extra transmission strains to attach clear vitality and strengthen grid reliability. As well as, near 90 % of respondents mentioned they had been involved about rising vitality prices. A majority of surveyed Republicans, Democrats, and Independents mentioned they had been ?“very involved.”

“This isn’t a partisan concern. … You don’t need to attraction to at least one aspect or one other,” mentioned Chris Lane, a senior accomplice at Cygnal, who previewed the findings on the Nationwide Conservative Power Summit in Cleveland on August 25. He mentioned the outcomes stand out for his or her consistency between areas and amongst totally different teams and political events.

Knee-Jerk Response From Fossil Gas Crowd

That report set off alarm bells inside the fossil gasoline {industry}. They paid massive bucks to get somebody elected who would put the kibosh on all this renewable vitality nonsense. How dare these folks threaten their earnings! It’s downright unAmerican, that’s what it’s. And so the {industry} has introduced up its massive weapons to shoot down any suggestion that People actually need extra renewables.

We convey you what follows not as a result of we recommend the lies being instructed however as a result of our readers should know what the fossil gasoline {industry} is doing to suppress wind and solar energy. Later, we gives you the instruments you want to counteract these scurrilous distortions ought to anybody try and recommend there’s any fact to them.

One group that felt significantly aggrieved by the CEN survey was the so-called Institute for Power Analysiswhich had this to say:

“As a result of wind and photo voltaic crops are far much less environment friendly than fossil gasoline and nuclear energy crops, acting at considerably decrease capability components than conventional applied sciences, extra wind and photo voltaic capability is required to generate equal quantities of energy. Because of this, renewables eat orders of magnitude extra supplies for a similar electrical energy output.

“For instancechanging the vitality output of a 100-megawatt pure gas-fired turbine with wind requires 20 wind generators that occupy round 10 sq. miles of land, requiring monumental portions of concrete, metal, and fiberglass, together with uncommon earth parts, whose processing is dominated by China. That implies that wind and photo voltaic additionally require big will increase in mining.”

Don’t go away. There’s extra — way more. IER leaves no stone unturned relating to attacking renewables. Subsequent it targets uncooked supplies corresponding to metal and concrete, ignoring that each are additionally used to construct thermal producing stations. It’s a favourite tactic of the the fossil gasoline crazies.

They assault the usage of cobalt from the DRC to make batteries however by no means point out that cobalt is a vital a part of the oil refining course of. Nor do they point out that LFP batteries, which comprise no cobalt, are quickly changing into the batteries of alternative for vitality storage. The assault continues with this:

“In line with the Mackinac Middle, building supplies — metal, glass, and concrete — wanted for wind generators and photo voltaic panels are produced in vitality and emissions-intensive industriescorresponding to cement and metal manufacturing, which every account for 7% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. Fossil fuels are used to provide cement, plastics, and fiberglass to energy ships, vehicles, and building gear, and to offer lubricants for the gearboxes on generators.

“In line with Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute‘If wind generators had been to provide half the world’s electrical energy, practically 2 billion tons of coal (round one quarter of all international coal use) must be consumed to provide the concrete and metal, together with 1.5 billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades.’”

The China Card

Subsequent, it’s time to play the China card:

“Reliance on solar energy additionally means reliance on China, as China dominates the worldwide photo voltaic panel market and polysilicon manufacturingutilizing low-cost coal. Round half of the world’s polysilicon, a key ingredient in photo voltaic cells, is produced in Xinjiang, China, the place Uyghur Muslims are enslaved to provide it.

“Cobalt, wanted for the manufacture of storage batteries to backup wind and photo voltaic and to energy electrical automobiles, is principally produced within the Democratic Republic of Congousually utilizing little one labor with abysmal working situations. The Congo has nearly half of the world’s cobalt reserves, and China owns half of the massive cobalt mines.

“Wind and photo voltaic items should additionally get replaced a lot sooner than fossil gasoline or nuclear items, which means extra manufacturing and extra mining. The typical lifetime of wind and photo voltaic items is claimed to be 25 years, however in actuality, it’s a lot much lessand a few are even repowered after simply 10 years of operation. That compares to fossil gasoline and nuclear items whose working lives are 4, 5, or six many years. The shorter life means the method of extraction and manufacturing have to be renewed, and previous panels and generators have to be disposed of.”

However Wait, There’s Extra

Are we completed but? Not fairly. The IER wraps up its full frontal assault on renewables with this conclusion:

“The general public believes that wind and solar energy are low-cost and clear. Neither is the case. They require large quantities of fabric to provide the equal energy of fossil gasoline or nuclear energy crops, and require big quantities of land and mining. Disposal of used wind generators and photo voltaic panels requires particular dealing with as a result of measurement of the turbine blades and the toxicity of photo voltaic panels.

“Their reported prices are deceptive as a result of analysts usually concentrate on the levelized price of electrical energy metric, which excludes the price of backup methods and infrastructure, solely specializing in the price to construct and function a plant, not the worth of the plant to the grid.”

Data Is Energy

OK, that’s fairly damning, wouldn’t you say? You’ll be able to see this screed being repeated endlessly by Fake Information. So, what do you say when somebody challenges your help for renewables based mostly on this data? For the reply, we flip to Greenpeacewhich has the lowdown on the IER. It says:

“The Institute for Power Analysis was based by Charles Koch and CEO Robert Bradley, a former Enron government, in Texas below its former title, the Institute for Humane Research of Texas. Thomas Pyle, a former Koch and oil-industry lobbyist, is the President of IER and the American Power Alliance, the 501C4 counterpart to IER. Pyle is directing Donald Trump’s Power Division transition crew, after Trump cited an IER examine in a promise to broaden federal oil and fuel leasing.

“Politico reviews that Koch was amongst donors to $3.6 million promoting marketing campaign, run by AEA within the run as much as the 2012 U.S. presidential election, blaming President Barack Obama for top fuel costs. In line with ProPublica, AEA acquired $2,339,960 from organizations within the Koch community. This included nearly $1.5 million from Freedom Companions, a 50C6 enterprise league directed by most of the most outstanding members of the Koch brothers’ inside political circle (Richard Fink, Marc Brief, Wayne Gable, and Kevin Gentry) with nameless funding sources from attendees of ‘Koch World’ conferences.”

Greenpeace goes on to say: “IER promotes discredited analysis. IER supported and promoted the ‘Spanish’ and ‘Danish’ research crucial of unpolluted vitality jobs, each of which have been debunked. As of 2015, IER employees had been utilizing the ‘Spanish’ and ‘Danish’ research to foyer state legislators, in help of efforts to finish state legal guidelines requiring elevated era of unpolluted vitality, in any other case generally known as renewable portfolio requirements. One such effort succeeded in freezing Ohio’s clear vitality regulation.

“IER argued that efforts to curb international warming would accomplish little at too nice a price, promotes ACCF/NAM and Heritage Basis research that exaggerate the prices of local weather coverage, and discourages U.S. management on the worldwide stage.”

Now that extra concerning the IER, you should use that data to knock down any claims based mostly upon its unhinged ravings. And if you end up completed with this text, please take the time to learn the complete report from Propublica entitled “How Darkish Cash Flows Via the Koch Community.” Data is energy. Be happy to make use of it!