Commentary
Regular readers will recall that I have devoted a great deal of commentary on the subject of climate change, and the flawed effort to end our dependence on fossil fuels in favor of renewable sources like solar and wind.
I have noted surveys showing strong pubic support for wind and solar energy, but there was always that doubt about just how much they would be willing to pay more for it.
Possibly because they recall former President Obama saying, “Under my plan … electricity would necessarily skyrocket.” It was at that time that he warned that he would bankrupt anybody wanting to build a coal-fired plant. Coincidentally, his energy secretary, Steven Chu was quoted regarding a need to “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels of Europe,” known to be much higher than that in the U.S.
After reading the story of a fast one pulled on Yonkers, New Yorker residents in an op-ed written by James Hanley in the Wall Street Journal, I thought it was time to revisit the subject of the cost of renewable energy.
Hanley wrote of a letter sent to Yonkers residents that could have easily been mistaken for junk mail even though it carried the city seal in the lower right corner of the envelope with the words, “Please Do Not Discard, Official Notification” in small print.
Those who didn’t discard the mailing and read it, learned that “The City is pleased to inform you that your household will be automatically switched from the utility’s standard supply into the Westchester Power 100% Renewable supply on your first meter read after 3/1/2022.”
There’s more. Buried deep in the fine print, the letter stated that homeowners who don’t opt out will see an average increase of nearly 19 percent in the price of electricity.
The column did not indicate the number of residents noting the “opt out” option, but did note that it will be especially unfair to Yonkers’ poorest residents, who already pay electricity rates more than 30 percent above the state average and almost twice the national average.
In the abstract of a 1999 study on the willingness to pay for renewable energy, it was noted that customers would be willing to pay “a modest amount” more per month for power from renewable sources. Seventy percent were willing to pay $5 per month more, 38 percent were willing to pay $10 per month more, and 21 percent were willing to pay $15 per month more.
More recently, in a December 2018 report, while 83 percent of registered voters supported requiring electric utilities to transition to renewable energy, just 39 percent believed that the cost of wind and solar would cost less than electricity from coal suggesting that Americans may be willing to pay more, but how much?
The report noted national surveys showing that 47 percent of voters would be willing to may more, while 50 percent would not be willing to pay a cent more.
Perhaps you have received one of those calls from your local utility, touting solar power to lower your cost for electric power, telling you the government will pay for the installation. I’ve had friends tell me how the installation of solar panels has brought their energy bills down.
That’s today, when the utilities still have fossil fuels they can rely on. As in the example cited earlier from Yonkers, New York, what will your costs be when your utility will depend solely on renewables?
Sooner or later, they will have to fess up for misleading you. It’s when those costs for storage and transmission hit the bottom line.
While following the research of Francis Menton, who is a member of the CO2 Coalition, I am able to stay current on wind and solar data presented in an understandable manner.
Menton recently wrote of studies to predict the cost of strictly renewable energy sources in the zero-emissions plan, but cited one by Ken Gregory in particular described in “The Cost of Net Zero Electrification of the USA,” is well-thought out. He goes into the intermittent sources and the actual generation required from wind and sun hour by hour throughout a year, calculating how much storage would be required to take the population through wind and sun droughts, including periods of calm, overcast, hot, cold, nights.
Here’s the bottom line. Gregory’s study finds that the battery costs for replacing all current fossil fuel-fired electricity with wind and solar generated electricity, using 2020 electricity data, would cost $433 trillion, or 20 times that of our 2019 gross domestic product.
There are a lot of questions not being asked of the those pushing zero-emissions in transition to wind and solar. The costs involved in battery storage and transmission are key.
We have already discovered the high cost of disposing of wind turbines that last about 10 years. Disposing of the gigantic blades costs about $500,000 per turbine.
Solar panels are another matter. By 2050, Mention explains, we will have had to dispose of 78 million tons of panels. Environmentalists won’t be happy to hear that they are not appropriate for landfills, as they contain hazardous and poison materials which can leech into the soil. Recycling is considerably more than the cost of the raw materials.
Who do you think is going to absorb all the costs of zero emissions through renewable sources, from the massive undertaking of battery storage, and transmission through replacement and disposal of wind turbines and solar panels?
Just as I recently asked if you were happy with the government plan to install vehicle battery charging stations across the nation; are you prepared to foot the bill for zero emissions?
Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America
