The decline of reneweable energy

[Skybird]

Such unfriendly numbers can really ruin your daydreams, eh?

http://www.project-syndicate.org/com...-bj-rn-lomborg

[BrucePartington]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Such unfriendly numbers can really ruin your daydreams, eh?

http://www.project-syndicate.org/com...-bj-rn-lomborg

I wouldn't dismiss it just yet. After all, this trend is still in its infancy.
Remember when a music CD cost a small fortune? And the CD player another small fortune?
We really need to keep moving forward.

[Skybird]

The current methods and ways are uneffective and only kill our fiscal options without achieving any significant effect.

To be sure, wind and solar have increased dramatically. Since 1990, wind-generated power has grown 26% per year and solar a phenomenal 48%. But the growth has been from almost nothing to slightly more than almost nothing. In 1990, wind produced 0.0038% of the world’s energy; it is now producing 0.29%. Solar-electric power has gone from essentially zero to 0.04%.

At that pace we will have exhausted our economic resources completely and then will have fallen off a cliff over producing the money needed to pay for this insane way of making energy. Wind and solar energy are simply too uneffective as if they could , in the forseeable future, become economic.

Economy and ecology must go together. Ecological measure must pay off, else the economy will not be able to stem them. If you erode the basis of social stability over excploding energy costs, not even socialist promises of coming utopias (all free) will manage to tempt the mob forever. The Greens have established a surrogate religion where economy and the big enemies of mankind, the "rich", are Satan, and believing the Green credo frees you from all sins and paves your way into recycled heaven with wholemeal manna and bio-produced ambrosia raining from heaven, all vegan of course.

According to International Energy Agency data, 13.12% of the world’s energy came from renewables in 1971, the first year that the IEA reported global statistics. In 2011, renewables’ share was actually lower, at 12.99%. Yet a new survey shows that Americans believe that the share of renewables in 2035 will be 30.2%. In reality, it will likely be 14.5%.

I do not question the need. But I question the methods used to adress it.

The solution is to innovate the price of renewables downward. We need a dramatic increase in funding for research and development to make the next generations of wind, solar, and biomass energy cheaper and more effective.
(...)
When green renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, they will take over the world. Instead of believing in the Tooth Fairy, we should start investing in green R&D.

[Dan D]

The author you have cited is probably Ideology-driven and/or on the payroll of fossil fuel vendors and nuke supporter?

10 Huge German Solar Energy Myths Bjørn Lomborg is Trumpeting
"Lomborg is infamous for denying the need for clean energy action to stop human-caused global warming, and for claiming that scientists’ concerns about global warming are overblown", says cleantechnica.com.

There is a political polarisation surrounding environmental issues.

If I may quote you for example when you say in the above posting:

"The Greens have established a surrogate religion where economy and the big enemies of mankind, the "rich", are Satan, and believing the Green credo frees you from all sins and paves your way into recycled heaven with wholemeal manna and bio-produced ambrosia raining from heaven, all vegan of course."

[Simmy]

The idea that wind and solar will replace oil has always been a pipe dream.
Its a nice though but not very practical. We would need to give up all of our farmland to put up windmills and solar panels.
Not to mention there are very powerful companies sitting on a whole lot of oil that don't want the world to run on anything but oil.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Dan D

The author you have cited is probably Ideology-driven and/or on the payroll of fossil fuel vendors and nuke supporter?

10 Huge German Solar Energy Myths Bjørn Lomborg is Trumpeting
"Lomborg is infamous for denying the need for clean energy action to stop human-caused global warming, and for claiming that scientists’ concerns about global warming are overblown", says cleantechnica.com.

There is a political polarisation surrounding environmental issues.

If I may quote you for example when you say in the above posting:

"The Greens have established a surrogate religion where economy and the big enemies of mankind, the "rich", are Satan, and believing the Green credo frees you from all sins and paves your way into recycled heaven with wholemeal manna and bio-produced ambrosia raining from heaven, all vegan of course."

The author is controversially received, because his opinions swims against the mainstream. Some of the ten points in the list you linked, are wrong and false in themselves.

He does not say to skip renewables, but he shows a trend that is oppsoite of many of the mondern believes held in public dicussions. He says that in the curreent format, Germany's Ernergiewende-model is unsustainable and that so heavily subsidized wind and solar power necessarily must mean to increasse its incompetitveness. Since I pay may own electroicity bill and see how it has coinstantly risen sharply due to the solar and win electriocty, and kn owing that our model makes power the more expensive the sunnier and windier the day is thanks to the state-intervention in price regulation, I think he is right.

What he wants is that more money if funded in technological research and innovation to make renewables what they currently are not: competitive. When they are cheaper than fossil and nuclear, then they will conquer the world.

If you do not like him, you will like this book even worse, although it is reasonably arguing and very substantially researched:

http://www.amazon.de/Die-kalte-Sonne...rds=Vahrenhold

http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschla...betrieben.html

Even the IPCC panel , highly dubious in itself, recently cautiously moved and admitted that the climate plateau of the past 15 years does no longer meet any of the so far used model'S predictions. This does not mean that Eath is not warming up, I think it still does, but it means that we have no solid understanding of how the process materialises over time in phases and symptoms (storing energy from sunlight not in the atmosphere but in the oceans, for example).

Too much fear-mongering, to recruit new believers and make them pay willingly. Also, it is about huge transfer payments from North to South.

I was forced to revise some of my earlier views from several years ago, when I realised that theories I based on no longer worked reliably, when certain timetables collapsed. It then is good scientific habit to admit that they do not work too well.

The truth may be out there, yes. But it is more complex than recently imagined. It is claimed to be heresy to say that, however. Too many interests, last but not least powerpolitical and financial interests, depend on the green dogma being kept alive in the form it was preached over the past 15 years.

[Dan D]

@electricity prices in Germany

"German Solar Bringing Down Price of Afternoon Electricity, Big Time! "(More Charts & Facts)

AND: Mr. Terium, the CEO of German Energy giant RWE:

CEO of Energy Giant RWE: 'The Nuclear Power Chapter Has Come to an End'


„Terium: The impact of current political decisions and market changes extends far beyond Germany. The large amounts of wind and solar energy that are being fed into the grid, together with the economic crisis, have led to a sharp decline in electricity prices.

SPIEGEL: But consumers in Germany now have to pay more for their electricity.

Terium: Yes, because government levies for new, renewable forms of energy, electricity grids and storage facilities drive up the price of electricity. The price we receive for generating power is currently so low that it's simply irresponsible to build an expensive nuclear power plant in Europe. The nuclear power chapter has come to an end for us.“ [in Germany]