…Editors and Obvious Misinformation…
Editors should be able to prevent publishing obvious errors.
Even though the left has turned words upside down Orwellian style, the left certainly can’t claim that an error is not an error.
A recent article made the following claim:
“Clean energy investments are rising as many sustainable options are already cost effective.”
But a chart accompanying the article clearly showed the statement was wrong.
While the chart purported to show that wind and solar were less costly than coal-fired or natural gas power plants for generating electricity, the footnote and another item on the chart made it clear wind and solar were not only more costly, but that they also weren’t capable of replacing coal-fired or natural gas power plants.
The note said that coal and natural gas included the cost of carbon when relevant. However, it’s clear the cost of carbon was included.
- The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the LCOE for natural gas was less than half the cost shown in the graph. The LCOE for traditional coal-fired power plants is also half the cost shown in the chart. Therefore the cost of carbon was included in the costs shown in the chart.
Wind and solar can’t operate without the backup provided by batteries, so the cost of batteries must be added to the cost of wind and solar to arrive at an accurate cost comparison with coal and natural gas.
- With the cost of batteries added to the cost of wind and solar, it’s obvious wind and solar cost more than coal or natural gas to supply the same amounts of electricity …Especially when the actual cost of coal and natural cost is roughly half that sown in the chart.
Finally, the footnote says the batteries only store electricity for four hours, which is not sufficient storage to ensure grid reliability.
- Blackouts are guaranteed when wind and solar aren’t available for several days on end.
Summary
The editor allowed an article to be published that was clearly in error and which spewed forth misinformation on a grand scale.
The readers of this financial newspaper deserve the truth.
Wind and solar cost more than coal-fired and natural gas power plants to provide the same amounts of electricity.
Wind and solar are unreliable, and without long-term battery storage, which hasn’t yet been invented, will result in dangerous, killer blackouts when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
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So that’s how they are going to push it now.
Compare that to
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Levelized_cost_of_energy
With degraded power grids, I agree killer blackouts will occur as winters get colder, like last year (Feb 2021). Hopefully Jacques Cousteau’s comments weren’t used when designing this new unreliable grid system, who once said that to help save the planet, “World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.” (1991 UNESCO Courier.)
Batteries are not essential for wind and solar backup. Gas, coal or nuclear could do this as well. And a 4-hour battery backup is nonsense. It must be days or weeks of capacity, not a few hours. So the actual cost of wind and solar with batteries would be well over $1,000 per megawatt hr. Utterly unaffordable.