Nuclear Power Advocates Claim Cheap Renewable Energy Is A Bad Thing
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/28/3802326/nuclear-power-renewables-cheap/by Joe Romm Jul 28, 2016 12:05 pm
[font size=3]Nuclear power advocates are trying a new line of attack on solar and wind energy — it’s too darn cheap!
In the real world, however, the unexpectedly rapid drop in the price of cleantech, especially renewable power and batteries, is a doubly miraculous game-changer that is already cutting greenhouse gas emissions globally and dramatically increasing the chances we can avoid catastrophic climate change.
As I detailed on Monday, the New York Times in particular keeps running slanted articles talking up nuclear and talking down renewables — articles that totally miss the forest for the trees. That culminated in a truly absurd piece last week, “How Renewable Energy Is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course,” which is the exact opposite of reality, as Goldman Sachs has detailed in its recent reports on “The Low Carbon Economy.”
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The big picture reality is this: The world is finally starting to take some serious action to avoid catastrophic climate change, which means first the electric grid will decarbonize, and then the transportation system. That means global coal use peaks or plateaus first — and then oil does.
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...and it's not even "renewable." There isn't enough cadmium to be dug on the planet to make the useless solar industry, for instance, able to produce ten of the 570 exajoules of energy that humanity consumes. Partially substituting the need for, for one example, neodymium for the need for petroleum is hardly an example of sustainability.
It's a useless shell game.
It's garbage, an unfortunate failure of the so called "renewable energy" industry has resulted in this result, which anyone but a dogmatic fool can see as clear as day: June 2016, 406.81 ppm.
It's very clear that 100% of the "renewables will save us" morons are stoned out of their minds.
This is the only way to account for the fact that these people can't even compare the electricity rates of Denmark and Germany with those of France:
European residential electricity prices increasing faster than prices in United States
Basically the so called "renewable energy" industry like its very name consists of a very shallow lie, very clearly an "Emperor's new clothes" scenario that is more and more delusional by the minute.
The result of the absurd faith in these obvious lies is that the planetary atmosphere collapsing at the fastest rate ever observed as the use of dangerous fossil fuels accelerates to ever higher usage.
Most people, including most opinion-makers and journalists covering energy and the environment, are not up-to-date on the “miraculous” and game-changing revolutions that have occurred just in the last couple of years with such core enabling climate solutions as solar power, wind power, LED lighting, batteries, and electric vehicles.
That’s why I launched my ongoing series “Almost Everything You Know About Climate Change Solutions Is Outdated.” As I wrote last week: If it surprises you that U.S. solar has jumped 100-fold in the last decade — and prices are now under 4 cents per kilowatt-hour — you should read this post.
I’m not going to repeat everything I’ve already written on this, especially since Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has repeatedly made the same point, as has the International Energy Agency (IEA), as has Goldman Sachs. But I haven’t written much about Goldman Sachs’ findings yet, so here’s their core conclusion from their new July 20 report, “The Low Carbon Economy: Our Thesis In 60 CHARTS” (emphasis in original):
In a debate that is often dominated by strong views on what should or could happen in the future, we let the numbers speak for themselves. In our eyes, a relatively clear picture is emerging from the data: Select low carbon technologies are rapidly taking market share in a number of sectors and are changing the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed across the global economy.
These technologies are now at a scale and growing at a pace that they deliver carbon emission savings at the gigatonne scale, but they are also transforming the competitive dynamics in industries like lighting, power generation and autos.
Renewables, efficiency, and electrification of transport have emerged as the big winners in the race to find the most affordable, scalable, carbon-free sources for power generation and travel. Many core technologies are growing exponentially while cost and performance steadily improve.
Here is what Goldman Sachs expects to happen just over the next decade:
The result of this revolution, they conclude, is that “On our wind and solar numbers, emissions in IEA scenarios could peak as early as c.2020, rather than 2030.”...
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/28/3802326/nuclear-power-renewables-cheap/
Goldman Sachs presentation “The Low Carbon Economy: Our Thesis In 60 CHARTS”
http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/new-energy-landscape-folder/report-the-low-carbon-economy/report.pdf
