Why aren’t renewable energy costs being passed on to households? Taxpayers provided around 80 billion for renewables between 2016 and 2022 – these subsidized investments are already obsolete

Global installed wind power – now obsolete of course, as it is now known that installed turbines do not “tap” higher wind speeds at higher elevations – “go tall or pay more”!

From here:

Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2023 Edition Summary (energy.gov)

China installed four times more than the US in 2022 taking it to more than twice the generation capacity of the US. How much more in 2023?

Enquiring minds want to know if the Chinese use Russian oil to defrost their turbines during harsh winter – Scotland used North Sea oil?

Dozens of giant turbines at Scots windfarms powered by diesel generators | Wind Energy News (wind-watch.org)

Out of interest, here is a primer on land required for a windmill from the UK.

Dozens of giant turbines at Scots windfarms powered by diesel generators | Wind Energy News (wind-watch.org)

“. the land required for a wind turbine can be anything from 25-40 acres. When you consider that a typical wind farm requires between 2 to 40 acres per megawatt of capacity, we can get an idea of the overall acreage you’d need.”

And that is with the much smaller wind turbines used in the UK – see below.

Note the need for stable soil mentioned in the article below, as well as all the other rules and regulations. This gets important for claims of percentage of land available for siting wind farms. There is only a fraction of US land suitable for windfarms.

74 percent of wind turbine mass is in the foundation (americanexperiment.org)

“According to the report, wind turbine foundations consume between 243 to 400 tons of concrete per megawatt (MW) installed. This means a typical wind turbine, like the 2.5 MW turbines installed at the Palmer’s Creek Wind facility in Minnesota, required between 607 to 1,000 tons of concrete.”

I am reading that as 600-1,000 tons PER TURBINE – though I may be mistaken.

Offshore wind “farms” (ocean sequestrations?) grab more wind than land-based farms, but they destroy marine life (e.g. right whales) and have run into difficulties from rising costs.

Wind developer Ørsted bosses exit after £3bn-plus failure | Energy industry | The Guardian

A quick side-track to solar panels.

From here:

The US says it needs up to 22m acres for the solar energy transition – here’s what that looks like | US news | The Guardian

“The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees more of the public realm than any other federal government agency, has outlined exactly how much of western America should be made available for solar panels and their associated cables and transformers – up to 22m acres. That is roughly the size of Maine, or an area larger than Scotland.”

Just for western US. That “available” land may, or no be suitable for solar panel plantations.

Ok, that’s a “big picture”, let’s move on to how we got to where we are now.

Subsidies

From page 12 of 59 here:

Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Years 2016–2022 (eia.gov)

We have this (untitled?) chart.

Eyeballing that chart, it looks as if around 80 billion bucks has been paid over in subsidies. Hoe much since the year 2000? Probably at least the same again.

What is happening to wind powered turbines? Well, they are getting HUGE!!!

Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2022 Edition | Department of Energy

“Wind turbines continue to grow in size and power, with average nameplate capacity of newly installed wind turbines at 3 MW—up 9% from 2020.

In 2011, no turbines employed blades that were 115 meters in diameter or larger, but in 2021, 89% of newly installed turbines featured such rotors. And proposed projects indicate that total turbine height will continue to rise.”

115 metres – 125 yards – 375 feet. Assuming 8 feet per storey, that’s the equivalent of a 57-storey skyscraper or rather a “windscraper”.and not just one or two but thousands.

One can only hope that wind power is infinite and that draining power from the wind does not reduce its “life force” – i.e. that the earth keeps spinning and hot and cold air currents are not disrupted beyond the micro-climates that lie behind the windscraper monstrosities.

The height will continue to rise because there is more wind the higher up you go. The more wind, the more electricity and the cheaper it gets.

“Lower wind turbine pricing has pushed down installed project costs over the last decade. Wind turbine prices averaged $800–$950 per kilowatt (kW) in 2021.

The average installed cost of wind projects in 2021 was $1,500/kW, down more than 40% since the peak in 2010. Lower installation costs lead to energy produced at a lower cost, with the average levelized cost of energy for utility-scale wind power down to $32/MW-hours in 2021.”

Look at that last number – 32 bucks per megawatt hour = 3.2 cents per kilowatt hour.

Compare that to how much Americans pay for electricity.

How Much Does Electricity Cost in 2023? | EnergySage

Back in February 2023, the average household price per kilowatt hour was 23 cents.

So, the mark up is around 7 times.

Will electricity prices come down to reflect the “efficiency” of windscraper turbines? Or is that price only achievable bease of massive Federal susbsies?

Those numbers are at the Federal level. Although I could not easily find, the sorts of tax breaks and subsidies at the State level over the last one or two decades, these will be lrge, very large I “chicken little” States. Typical “schemes“ operated by States also provide subsidies, for example, from here:

California Solar Incentives: Tax Credits & Rebates (2024 Guide) – Forbes Home

“The Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) and Single-Family Affordable Solar Homes (SASH) program are among the current solar panel incentives in California.

The SGIP offers rebates to residential homes and businesses that install a solar battery with a rooftop panel system. Rebates vary according to battery storage capacity and the utility company.

Alternatively, SASH provides solar panel incentives for single-family homes.”

Good luck trying to find out the cumulative costs of California’s schemes over the last 25 years. It’s a secret.

Okay, let’s consider another factor. Opportunity cost.

Leave aside the fact that the land area could be planted with “green stuff” like trees and plants that could strip out CO2 and produce oxygen – which people could use to build stuff with and eat healthily.

There are 100’s of billions of dollars that have gone on to the national debt that could have been spent elsewhere – like on hospitals, veterans, crime fighting, border security, more teachers etc.

Or even, heaven forbid, technologies that reduce emissions! Like capturing car exhaust fumes and finding out how to recycle them or getting energy from manure and food waste or conducting clinical trials on vaccines to remove the caccines likely to be causing the rise I organ diseases.

I will end here and leave with a parting shot and that “Ecocide warrior” speaking at the WEF and wonder what here thoughts are on the environmental footprint of wind and solar – from manufacturing to construction.

Fishing, farming and energy production akin to genocide: Davos Panelist (youtube.com)

“Stop Ecocide International Co-Founder Jojo Mehta speaks at WEF 2024 in Davos where she claims farming, fishing and energy production should be considered "ecocide", a term which her organization aims to have "recognized legally as a serious crime", akin to genocide.”

Maybe she will incite followers to drive monster trucks over solar plantations and use weaponized drones to take down wind turbines.

Onwards!

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