[C8]

This is the way most advocates of renewable energy go about arguing for their cause. They go out into the internet and find favorable articles and post them. This is easy to do as there is a great deal of hype for renewables on the internet. This is why I always want to go back to the basics of logic.

Kublikhan said that fossil fuels have subsidies, this is true but what he neglects to mention is that fossil fuels did not have subsidies when they were first discovered- they were economically viable on their own That is a key distinction. Renewable energy has constantly relied on subsidies. If we're is profitable and useful as its advocates make it out to be, it would be flourishing in the US on its own. But this is clearly not the case.

Yes India has fossil fuel subsidies, but it also has an incredible amount of sunshine and yet still- with all this sun- renewable energy is not very prevalent. There is a reason for this, renewables take a great deal of space that can be used for food production. Renewables have intermittent power which makes them useless for many industrial applications purposes (unless you build wasteful redundant FF power plants). Renewables have a great upfront cost, not helpful for poorer communities. When they are spent in just two decades, renewables will create epic waste disposal problems.

But the final assessment for a renewable to simply this: can they survive on their own? Why don't we see solar panels being built by factories that are powered by solar panels completely? It's very easy to find articles on the internet and slap them up on a screen, but it is much harder to find the simple answers to these logical questions. Most renewable energy advocates dodge these logical questions. They also lump in with renewable energy hydroelectric (which has been around a long time) and biomass which is cutting down forest and destroying entire wilderness areas and ecosystems- sending many species to extinction. Why destroy nature to save nature?

The headlong rush into a mostly renewable power structure will be the greatest waste of energy, at a key moment, in US history. We will not necessarily get another chance to get it right.

[AdamB]

Because when dealing with intermittent sources, it would seem that whenever intermittency strikes, there would need to be a near instant on load balancing generation of some type. So the next question would be, how much instant on, probably FF based capacity needs to sit idle to make up for any dispatch factor on any given day being less than 1? Potentially, on a given day (versus average dispatch across a year where this 300 GW shows up), needing to provide 100% of whatever that 300 GW was powering? Isn't this an interesting question beyond just assuming how long renewable capacity ( even at an average daily dispatch percentage) can bump off all FF based generation?

Yes it is interesting. China already has more non-fossil fuel capacity than fossil fuel capacity. Yet because of the low capacity factors of renewables, China's actual generation of power is heavily in favor of fossil fuels:

Makes one wonder what the true cost of renewables will end up being to the consumer, if a matching amount of replacement dispatch (or significant fraction thereof) must be kept at the ready, and the attendant costs for it just sitting there ready..to always be...ready.

I still like the nuke base load idea that Tanada mentioned, and while you just can't use get new hydro everywhere, you could use some peaker plants to make up the difference that a bad day of no wind or sunshine might cause.

Thanks for all the references.

[AdamB]

Kublikhan said that fossil fuels have subsidies, this is true but what he neglects to mention is that fossil fuels did not have subsidies when they were first discovered- they were economically viable on their own That is a key distinction. Renewable energy has constantly relied on subsidies. If we're is profitable and useful as its advocates make it out to be, it would be flourishing in the US on its own. But this is clearly not the case.

Don't know that the origin stories of fossil fuels is involved other than in one way, you are quite right that it would be nice if the resource cost curve for renewable generation was lower than that of just burning stuff. Unfortunately, burning stuff is dirty, and unlike the Soviet Union the US twiddle dee's in charge of the joint can't just wave their hands and make it so. Plus, bad things happen when chuckleheads try and get around some basic economic facts of life.

So, the "free" world subsidizes "good" behavior, or in this case, just trying to burn less stuff. They tell lies about profitability and stuff because it probably isn't, otherwise it would bump off fossil fuels in the normal course of business. It doesn't make renewables bad, or lacking the advantages claimed (other than cost), it just means that politicians can't tell the truth, which is at the end of the day your use of energy will cost you more in order to be made of cleaner stuff.

Everything else is just who shot John. And that world is coming anyway, as fossil fuels are non-renewable, so those curves will one day naturally cross and suddenly everyone will be paying the higher costs and it will just be called "life". In the meantime, we will pollute because those curves haven't crossed, but economies of scale, technological improvements, all the things that caused the oil industry to filling up a bathtub with oil slowly with output from his well to a 20,000 bbl/d producer in the GOM are happening in the renewable industry. The curves will cross, might be doing it in certain combinations already, because they must.

But the final assessment for a renewable to simply this: can they survive on their own? Why don't we see solar panels being built by factories that are powered by solar panels completely?

For the same reason that EROEI analysis is a boatload of nonsense. Why do you exclude solar panel factories using nuke generated electricity? Tidal power? Wind? Hydrogen manufactured at a nuke plant to run fuel cells? Or mixing hydrogen with NG in US pipelines? And all the other combinations that are no-brainers? The answer is...because there is no need for solar panels to run smelting machinery to make the metals for more solar panels because there are other things in the mix that don't require replacing. Yet.

[kublikhan]

This is the way most advocates of renewable energy go about arguing for their cause. They go out into the internet and find favorable articles and post them. This is easy to do as there is a great deal of hype for renewables on the internet. This is why I always want to go back to the basics of logic.

If you try to apply logic using faulty facts you will arrive at an erroneous conclusion. Ex: When you made the claim that there was insufficient metals for an energy transition this was a faulty claim. The mining industry never said this. Or if your logic is faulty you will also arrive at an erroneous conclusion. Ex: When you made the claim that anti-drought initiatives mainly help the rich, and then backup your claim by pointing at articles discussing Tesla rebates. These are two different topics. You conflated them together:

Most of the "green" and anti-drought initiatives have helped the affluent more than the average citizen- check out this article:

Tesla, which produces sexy, scary-fast and very pricey battery-powered cars, has a handy website guide to the “incentives” its customers may claim.

Buying a Tesla earns one a $7,500 federal income tax credit, plus rebates and credits from states, including California, which offers a “$2,500 rebate and carpool lane access” to electric car owners.

Green legislation mainly helps the affluent

To me, it seems more like you are fishing for anti-green articles. I point out when I see something that sounds like hype. Ex:

Jun 29, 2021 -
If anything, I would argue the public is a bit drunk on the idea of renewables. 100% renewables sounds great, but I think there are technical problems in such an approach, especially in the short to medium term.
...
When these guys say "100% renewable energy" what they really mean is "100% renewable electricity". It is misleading. They are not the same thing. Just because some city gets 100% of it's electricity from renewable sources does not mean the city has 100% renewable energy. And just because some small city with a large hydro dam nearby can get all of it's electricity from renewables, that doesn't mean that same approach is viable for the country at large. And even that small city is not truly running on 100% renewable electricity.

But all of this is complicated and requires digging into the weeds of the issues to understand it. The public is not exactly know for doing this. Instead they simply see the strong points of renewables, the evils of fossil fuels, and then start waiving their "100% renewable energy" signs.

Re: "Fast Crash" vs. "Slow Crash"?

Kublikhan said that fossil fuels have subsidies, this is true but what he neglects to mention is that fossil fuels did not have subsidies when they were first discovered- they were economically viable on their own That is a key distinction.

I did not neglect this point, I addressed it. I guess you missed it. I'll repost it for you then:

U.S. government subsidies for energy are as old as the nation. Pfund and coauthor Ben Healey trace U.S. government energy incentives back to 1789. Using government documents, academic papers, and a mix of other data and reports, Pfund and Healey offer a historical perspective on today’s debate over energy subsidies. Their study finds a paucity of government support for renewable energy sources compared with past government investment in coal, gas, oil, or nuclear energy sources, which helped the country transition to new energy technologies and infrastructures.

In comparing current support for renewable energy with past aid for today’s traditional energy sources, the report focuses on two types of assistance: funding during the first 15 years of support and annualized expenditures over the life of the energy source. The first 15 years, the report says, are critical to developing new technologies. It finds that oil and gas subsidies, including tax breaks and government spending, were about five times as much as aid to renewables during their first 15 years of development; nuclear received 10 times as much support.

Coal, Pfund notes, benefits from a host of centuries-old programs that signal a rich history of aid, which is intertwined with the development of the nation. The aid runs deep and comes in many forms—state and federal tax breaks for mining and use; technological support for mining and exploration; national resource maps to encourage exploration and development; tariffs on foreign coal; and aid to steel smelters, railroads, and other industries that burn coal to encourage greater use and develop a steady market for coal.

“It has been a long heyday for coal,” she says, describing states and workers vying for jobs and business. Pfund and Healey also found that some types of government support—particularly tax breaks—don’t go away because they are embedded in the tax code. “These subsidies have been huge, and they are the gift that keeps on giving for many energy sources,” Pfund says. Temporary tax incentives intended to spur exploration or development of fossil fuels have become a permanent part of the country’s economic system, Pfund notes. For example, coal companies can still take advantage of a measure passed in 1950 that originally allowed them to “temporarily” avoid a tax increase enacted to help fund the Korean War, the study says.

Long History Of U.S. Energy Subsidies

Renewable energy has constantly relied on subsidies. If we're is profitable and useful as its advocates make it out to be, it would be flourishing in the US on its own. But this is clearly not the case.

Renewable subsidies have been winding down for years. The US Wind subsidy expired last year:

The renewable electricity production tax credit (PTC) is a per kilowatt-hour (kWh) federal tax credit. Electricity from wind, closed-loop biomass and geothermal resources receive as much as 2.5 cents/kWh. The PTC is phased down (40%) for wind facilities and expires for all renewable energy technologies commencing construction after December 31, 2021.

Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit Information

And yet wind turbines in the US continue to go up:

Like 2020, 2021 has been a record-breaking year for deployment in the renewable energy sector, and experts say the next year will follow that trend. With the low cost of solar and onshore wind, analysts and advocates alike see 2022 as a record-year in the making, although supply chain difficulties persist.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has announced planned deployments for 21.5 GW of solar and 7.6 GW of wind in the U.S. in 2022, based on surveys of developers through October 2021. For utility-scale solar, that would surpass the estimated 15.5 GW of solar additions in 2021.

Another dark spot for U.S. renewables is the uncertainty of federal legislation that clean energy advocates view as essential to decarbonization: the Build Back Better bill that has failed to advance in the Senate.

2022 Outlook: US solar and wind boom continues despite supply chain woes, Build Back Better uncertainty

China has also halted onshore wind subsidies and winded down other renewable subsidies:

11 Jun 2021 - China's central government will halt subsidies for some types of renewables, including new onshore wind projects, concentrated solar photovoltaic power plants and distributed solar photovoltaic projects for commercial use, effective Aug. 1, the National Development and Reform Commission said June 11.

The subsidies have been halted because these projects have developed rapidly, become cheap and can compete head-on with coal-fired electricity. The move will also relieve the central government's subsidy burden. The policy will apply to new projects in the pipeline and electricity generated from these plants will be sold at either local benchmark prices that compare with coal-fired power or market prices.

"The continued declining construction costs for wind and solar farms driven by tech innovation, and the reduced power curtailment based on government's requirement could help operators sustain their project return to a certain extent even without tariff subsidy," according to Apple Li, director and lead analyst for Global Infrastructure Ratings at S&P Global Ratings.

China to halt subsidies for some types of wind, solar projects

China too continues renewable deployments even without the subsidy:

China is set to install a record amount of wind and solar power capacity this year as the country strives to meet climate goals while reducing its reliance on the rest of the world for energy. China will add 140 gigawatts of capacity from the clean energy sources.

The forecast is the latest sign that China is racing ahead of its official target for renewable adoption as local governments, wind and solar equipment producers and state-owned utility giants continue to push ambitious plans. China is aiming for 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar generation capacity by 2030, and had 678 gigawatts by the end of last year.

China Is Planning Record Wind and Solar Power Additions This Year

But the final assessment for a renewable to simply this: can they survive on their own? Why don't we see solar panels being built by factories that are powered by solar panels completely? It's very easy to find articles on the internet and slap them up on a screen, but it is much harder to find the simple answers to these logical questions. Most renewable energy advocates dodge these logical questions.

Because they are intermittent. I have never dodged this question. I have posted on it numerous times:

the EIA warns that comparing non-dispatchable power sources like Solar PV and Wind to dispatchable power sources is problematic. They go into detailed reasons why this is so but don't expect your typical journalist to dig into the weeds like this when even the EIA doesn't give any kind of dollar value adjustment for dispatchable vs not-dispatchable. To be fair, their most recent report does make an effort to address this issue. They included a new category for Solar PV called "Solar Hybrid". That is Solar PV + 4 hours of battery storage. And surprise surprise, once you include the extra cost of the batteries solar is no longer cheaper and gas is the cheapest once again.

In AEO2022, solar LCOE, on average, is lower than natural gas-fired combined-cycle (CC) LCOE in 2027. However, more CC generating capacity is installed than solar PV between 2025 and 2027. We project more CC capacity to be installed than solar PV capacity because the relative value of adding CC to the system is greater than for solar PV, which LCOE does not capture.

Re: German Energiewende

Just because some wind farm is cost competitive with fossil fuels even without subsidies, doesn't mean it brings the same value to the grid as more reliable and dispatchable fossil fueled & nuclear sources. These kind of issues are not captured in LCOE. Of course, fossil fuels have their own issues not captured in LCOE: pollution, health costs, climate change, energy security, etc. Let's not forget why renewables were pushed in the first place, because of those very issues.

[C8]

The real world will answer all these questions. So far, renewables can't stand on their own legs w/o govt help after decades of subsidies and development. 20 years ago green boosters said it would all be different by now- yet it isn't. Hype is part of the environmentalist mindset- Miami is supposed to be underwater by now and the artic melted. Environmentalist are addicted to extreme thinking.

Green energy has three key flaws:

1. It has millions of components (solar panels, windmills, wiring, etc.). The more components an energy system has the more things can go wrong- wind damage, theft, trees growing in the path of the sun, snow covering panels, sabotage, dirt build up, etc.

2. Is is incredibly labor intensive compared to other energy forms. Millions of workers will be needed to mine, transport, install panels, maintain, clean, removes, dispose- its a small army. The more human effort is required to run an energy system, the more things can go wrong- strikes, accidents, boycotts, labor shortages, poor maintenance- thousands will die working on these things.

3. In has diseconomies of scale- the more that production increases, the more rare components will become even rarer and more expensive- supply chain issues will wreck havoc on this industry

[AdamB]

The real world will answer all these questions. So far, renewables can't stand on their own legs w/o govt help after decades of subsidies and development.

Of course they can. The PV panels on the roof of my garage there for 20 years now proves it. No government help required by me ever. Just like my EVs. But you might not like the price of non-subsidized anything.

20 years ago green boosters said it would all be different by now- yet it isn't. Hype is part of the environmentalist mindset- Miami is supposed to be underwater by now and the artic melted. Environmentalist are addicted to extreme thinking.

20 years ago peak oilers said we would all die within weeks of peak oil happening in 2002. Or 2005. And then became more careful afterwards, egg on face and all. You want to pretend anyone can predict the future?

Green energy has three key flaws:

1. It has millions of components (solar panels, windmills, wiring, etc.). The more components an energy system has the more things can go wrong- wind damage, theft, trees growing in the path of the sun, snow covering panels, sabotage, dirt build up, etc.

And no one will care if they are the only means available to continue powering the lifestyle of First World countries. More interestingly, you keep saying renewables, when there is zero requirement they be the only solution. Some reason you can't say "nuclear power"? Born near Three Mile Island? Read Hubbert's 1956 peak oil work, it wasn't titled "Peak oil for fools to fall for half a century from now", and in the title is the key to, you know, a perfectly reasonable chart demonstrating why you needn't get all lathered up over just renewables. Here... for those who want to pretend they've never seen it before.

2. Is is incredibly labor intensive compared to other energy forms. Millions of workers will be needed to mine, transport, install panels, maintain, clean, removes, dispose- its a small army. The more human effort is required to run an energy system, the more things can go wrong- strikes, accidents, boycotts, labor shortages, poor maintenance- thousands will die working on these things.

3. In has diseconomies of scale- the more that production increases, the more rare components will become even rarer and more expensive- supply chain issues will wreck havoc on this industry

Good thing we can use nukes for most energy needs then.

[kublikhan]

The real world will answer all these questions. So far, renewables can't stand on their own legs w/o govt help after decades of subsidies and development.

But many countries are phasing out renewable subsidies. Including China and the US, two of the biggest renewable markets. Meanwhile fossil fuels continue to drink from the subsidy trough. Do they fail to stand on their own legs too? They've been drinking from that trough deeper and for far longer than renewables have.

20 years ago green boosters said it would all be different by now- yet it isn't.

But it is different. Take a look at what kinds of power plants were getting put up 20 years ago vs what kind of plants are getting put up today:

US generation capacity additions
2002 Gas: 93% Wind: 2% Coal: 1%
2022 Solar PV: 46% Gas: 21% Wind: 17% batteries: 11%

Fossil fuels fell from 94% of the power plants getting built 20 years ago to 21% today. And that paltry natural gas getting added this year doesn't even cover the fossil fuel plants retiring this year. 9.6 GW of natural gas is getting added this year. But 13.8 GW of fossil fuels are retiring this year.

Hype is part of the environmentalist mindset- Miami is supposed to be underwater by now and the artic melted. Environmentalist are addicted to extreme thinking.

There are plenty of chicken littles crying the sky is going to fall tomorrow. Doesn't mean you should write off the entire environmental movement just because the chicken littles were wrong. There were plenty of chicken littles running around crying the sky is going to fall because of peak oil on this very website. Hell, there's still a few of them around. Doesn't mean we should write off resource depletion as a non-issue.

Green energy has three key flaws:

1. It has millions of components (solar panels, windmills, wiring, etc.). The more components an energy system has the more things can go wrong- wind damage, theft, trees growing in the path of the sun, snow covering panels, sabotage, dirt build up, etc.

Renewables do have higher fixed O&M costs compared to fossil fuels. However this is more than offset by having 0 fuel costs:

Code: Select all

Plant Type   O&M   variable cost(ex: fuel)
Gas CC     $1.68   $25.80
Coal       $5.71   $23.67
Solar PV   $6.34   $0
Wind       $7.44   $0
Nuclear   $16.15   $10.30


Levelized Costs of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2022

2. Is is incredibly labor intensive compared to other energy forms. Millions of workers will be needed to mine, transport, install panels, maintain, clean, removes, dispose- its a small army. The more human effort is required to run an energy system, the more things can go wrong- strikes, accidents, boycotts, labor shortages, poor maintenance- thousands will die working on these things.

Labor fatality statistics do not support your assertion. Renewable maintenance workers do not even make the list for highest fatality rates. Fossil fuels do however:

3. Derrick operators in oil, gas, and mining
BLS Category: Derrick, rotary drill, and service unit operators, oil, gas, and mining
Fatal injury rate: 46 per 100,000 workers

Top 25 most dangerous jobs in the United States

3. In has diseconomies of scale- the more that production increases, the more rare components will become even rarer and more expensive- supply chain issues will wreck havoc on this industry

Renewables do not rise in costs the greater the scale, they fall in cost:

Fossil fuels dominate the global power supply because until very recently electricity from fossil fuels was the cheapest. This has changed dramatically. In most places power from new renewables is now cheaper than new fossil fuels.

Do electricity prices follow learning curves?
Solar PV modules might very well follow a rapidly declining learning curve, but solar modules themselves are not what we want. We want the electricity that they produce. Does the price of solar electricity follow a learning curve?

The visualization shows the relevant data. On the vertical axis you see again the LCOE price for electricity and on the horizontal axis you now find the cumulative installed capacity. As in the solar module chart, both variables are plotted on logarithmic scales so that the line on the charts represents the learning rate for these technologies.

In bright orange you see the development for the price of power from solar PV over the last decade. The learning curve relationship that we saw for the price of solar modules also holds for the price of electricity. The learning rate is actually even faster: At each doubling of installed solar capacity the price of solar electricity declined by 36% – compared to 20% for solar modules.

Wind power – shown in blue – also follows a learning curve. The onshore wind industry achieved a learning rate of 23%. Every doubling of capacity was associated with a price decline of almost a quarter.

Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

Now sometimes demand outstrips supply and commodity prices shoot up. This happened around 2008-2011 with polysilicon. Even as the learning curve and greater economies of scale were lowering costs for solar, material prices were rising, as were overall costs. This wasn't a permanent state of affairs however. The Chinese were busy bringing massive amounts of new polysilicon supply online. They brought so much online there was a glut. Then the prices of polysilicon tanked in 2011 and were low for a decade. Then solar PV panels dropped in price sharply. They had 2 things lowering prices for them this time: the economies of scale price reduction and the fall in polysilicon prices. Now it looks like the glut has finally cleared and we are back in shortage territory, causing material prices and solar PV module costs to rise. Starting to see the pattern? As for the rare earths, it's in the same situation as the other metals I linked to. A near term shortage and rising prices in some rare earths is likely to be following by increased production, higher recycling rates, and substitution in the decades to come:

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The rise of electromobility and, to a lesser extent, growing deployments of wind turbines in the coming years will combine to boost demand for some REEs, notably those used in the manufacture of permanent magnets.

The industry will have to grow rapidly through 2030 to meet rapidly rising demand for the materials that go into permanent magnets. The problem of meeting demand would appear less serious in the long term (through 2050), as planned new mines will have come on stream. Also the role of recycling can increase in decades to come while certain waste streams can be mined to recover REE. As mineral deposits contain a mix of REE that varies, those that contain magnet materials are of special economic and strategic interest.

Efforts are ongoing to reduce dysprosium use in magnets and develop high performance magnets that do not need critical REE. However such innovative product designs generally reduce the performance. Scientific efforts to find new solutions are ongoing, but the outcome is uncertain and significant uptake of even the most successful solutions will take time.

In terms of supply growth the main challenge is not in the mining. The stumbling block is in processing, which is complex and requires special knowledge to separate individual REEs and convert them into high-quality permanent magnets.

CRITICAL MATERIALS FOR THE ENERGY TRANSITION: RARE EARTH ELEMENTS

[Doly]

There is a reason for this, renewables take a great deal of space that can be used for food production.

It's true that they use space, but not such a large amount. Windmills are mostly compatible with food production, and solar farms are reasonably compact.

Renewables have intermittent power which makes them useless for many industrial applications purposes

The grid can be used to compensate for this to a certain extent. Also, hydro can be built to compensate.

Why don't we see solar panels being built by factories that are powered by solar panels completely?

Here is a factory powered by solar panels. It's true that it only powers itself on sunny days, according to the article. But it's getting close:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/13/on-a-su ... power.html

They also lump in with renewable energy hydroelectric (which has been around a long time) and biomass which is cutting down forest and destroying entire wilderness areas and ecosystems- sending many species to extinction.

The definition of renewable is that it can continue operating indefinitely, because it doesn't use a fuel that will eventually run out, be it fossil fuels or nuclear. There is nothing in the definition that says it has to be green according to other criteria (like, not destroying ecosystems - as long as the biomass that is harvested can continue being harvested indefinitely, it's renewable). Also, there is nothing in the definition that says it has to be some sort of new thing. So hydro and biomass are definitely renewable.

Why destroy nature to save nature?

I agree that a lot of biomass projects aren't a good idea, and not just because they harm ecosystems, but also because for the amount of energy that they produce, they aren't a very good use of a piece of land a lot of the time. But any objections you have to biomass should be expressed in the correct terms. The problem with biomass isn't that it isn't renewable, it's other issues.

The headlong rush into a mostly renewable power structure will be the greatest waste of energy, at a key moment, in US history. We will not necessarily get another chance to get it right.

I completely agree that an energy strategy has to be well thought out. But you seem to be implying that powering the US with renewable energy isn't possible. If that's true, it's a real pity, because by definition, sooner or later it will be necessary. Fuels that run out will eventually run out.

[C8]

How many solar panels would it take to power the US?

from https://us.solarpanelsnetwork.com/blog/ ... r-the-u-s/

Therefore, in the USA, you will require 7.85 billion solar panels with the efficient capacity to generate electricity per KWh for every household.

Hence, the approximate 21,250 square miles is perfect to meet this requirement from solar power!

This is almost the size of West Virginia (24,229.76)

If you put up @ 8 billion solar panels, a lot of people are going to get seriously hurt. These things weigh about 40 lbs each and are difficult to get up and hoist onto roofs. They will require maintenance so it's not like just putting up a roof it's like putting up a roof you have to keep going up on b/c snow covers it, it gets dirty, leaves get stuck on it, and things like that- so more injuries and falls. Then there will be taking everything down when stuff needs to get replaced, its not like peeling off shingles, 40 pound units come down awkwardly- even more injuries.

I probably should mention that this is not exactly like putting up a roof, it is like putting up an electrified roof and many will get shocked and hurt on that.

There's no way you can put up eight billion solar panels not have massive worker injury and death. You have to be deep into Green Energy ideology to deny this (or maybe just not care about the working class)

[C8]

Here is the reality of renewable energy in the US

People will fight like hell with lawsuits to stop the installation of projects near them- just the court delays will wipe out many projects. People love Green Energy, except when it is near them. Constant spinning windmills irritate the eyes and create noise pollution, endless panels turn nature into a giant ugly industrial zone. (already happening)

Boycotts, protests and lawsuits will occur over the damage to wildlife. Mass media attention will be focused on the use of child labor to mine rare Earth metals from the Congo by children. Green activists will be quickly fold when accused of racism. (already happening)

Panels will be stolen on a large scale as they are worth thousands each (already happening)

The panels will wear out much faster than expected as overseas manufacturers cut corners realizing that it will be years before this problem is found out- panels and wind turbines are the perfect scam

Disposing of 8 billion panels will cause massive waste issue with toxic metal leakage- etc. Lawsuits will put entire industries out of business- we are a lawsuit happy nation. Recycling will be a far higher cost than the experts first estimated and much will simply be too damaged to be recycled anyway.

The vast infrastructure of brackets, bolts, wires, etc. will be abandoned as a giant sunk investment after we realize that the replacement panels, turbines, etc. are so much higher in price that they won't produce the energy to pay for themselves

[C8]

The US’s largest solar farm is canceled because Nevada locals don’t want to look at it
Michelle Lewis

- Jul. 26th 2021 10:37 am PT

@michelle0728

The Battle Born Solar Project in Nevada – what would have been the largest solar farm in the US – is now canceled because nearby residents said it would be an eyesore.

Huge Nevada solar is canceled
The 850 megawatt, 9,200-acre solar farm, which would have been constructed in southern Nevada’s Moapa Valley, was to sit on 14 square miles on the Mormon Mesa, a flat-topped hill around 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

California-based Arevia Power and Solar Partners VII LLC withdrew their application with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) last week in the face of opposition from a group called Save Our Mesa.

The group, which is made up of residents, environmentalists, and others, feels that the solar farm would hinder hiking, camping, driving off-highway vehicles, and horseback riding and deter tourists from visiting artist Michael Heizer’s environmental sculpture, “Double Negative” (1969).

Arevia told TV station KLAS that “the arrays would have been set back and not visible from the valley below. The company had estimated the project would create 2,600 jobs and provide daytime energy needs to 500,000 homes.”

Kirsten Cannon, a BLM spokesperson, said that the project did not have high priority [via the Las Vegas Review-Journal]:

The Battle Born project rated as low priority both in the initial ranking and after the proponent provided additional information and requested reconsideration.

8News Now in Las Vegas pointed out on February 25, 2021:

The Mormon Mesa is south of the site of the decommissioned Reid Gardner plant. The generation site closed in 2014, but its trunk lines to the power grid remain. A spokesperson for NV Energy said the company does not have a plan to buy power from Arevia, but it is required under law to move its electrons through its network.

Save Our Mesa’s objections
One Save Our Mesa supporter said in the KLAS video:

I’m not against renewable energy, I’m just against losing this beauty.

In a blog posted on July 24 on Save Our Mesa’s website, called “In our own words,” it says:

We have been called a whining NIMBY (not in my backyard) group, well this is mostly true because this project IS literally IN our backyard! The Battle Born Solar Project is being proposed to be built 8000’ from our homes and 2/3 of Manhattan can fit in its footprint!

And resident Suzy Rebich, who has solar panels on her roof, also wrote in a blog on Save Our Mesa’s website on July 24:

We have room on our property to easily install over 100 panels and help generate some clean energy for all, however, if you install too many panels and overproduce energy they will not buy it back from you and you will be fined. So it’s not OK for individuals to use their rooftops to generate green energy, but it’s OK for giant industrial corporations to take PUBLIC LAND and destroy/restrict it to put solar farms on and turn a profit??? We absolutely love our new solar panels and it would be nice to help out by installing extra. We’re not opposed to the giant solar farms, but we just don’t want them in anyone’s backyard – especially ours.

Arevia is building the 7,000-acre, 690 MW Gemini, which is Nevada’s largest solar farm. It’s around 20 miles away from Mormon Mesa.

Nevada’s target is to source 50% of its energy from renewables by 2030. Renewables currently make up 28% of Nevada’s utility-scale energy generation. Battle Born would have made up one-tenth of Nevada’s total energy capacity.

https://electrek.co/2021/07/26/us-large ... ook-at-it/

[C8]

Wind Power Is Collapsing In Germany
BY IER
AUGUST 20, 2019

New onshore wind energy is in a steep decline in Germany. The expansion of onshore wind power in the first half of this year is at its lowest level since the introduction of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act in 2000. There were only 231 megawatts of new onshore wind capacity installed in Germany during the first half of 2019—an 82 percent decline compared to the first half of 2018. Wind Europe, the region’s wind energy trade association, is expecting Germany to install between 1 gigawatt and 2 gigawatts of wind energy in 2019, which is significantly below the 4.3 gigawatts per year installed on average over the past 5 years.

It is also well below what Germany needs to meet its target of 65 percent renewable electricity by 2030 as part of its energy transition, Energiewende. Germany gets 40 percent of its electricity from renewables today. The European Union is counting on Germany to attain its target so that it can meet its own 32 percent renewable energy target. Furthermore, offshore wind cannot fill the gap, as Germany is scheduled to build less than 15 percent of what is required—about 730 megawatts per year of offshore wind through to 2030.

The Issues

Local residents protested in many state parliaments that wind farms needed to be a minimum distance from residential developments once people began to see the scale of industrial wind development. As a result, the licensing authorities have been acting much more cautiously. Permitting has gotten much slower, more complex and under-staffed in terms of processing wind applications. Only 400 megawatts of new wind farm permits were awarded in the first quarter of 2019, well below historic levels. The German permitting process used to take 10 months and now takes over two years for a new project to proceed through the civil service infrastructure. About 11,000 megawatts of wind energy capacity are currently in the permit backlog.

According to Wind Europe, Germany’s public authorities are not applying deadlines and many wind farm projects are getting stuck in legal disputes, with at least 750 megawatts of onshore wind projects currently in legal proceedings. Over 70 percent of the legal objections are based on species conservation, especially the threat to endangered bird species and bats, a growing concern around the world. Besides species protection, 17 percent of legal cases deal with noise protection. Another 6 percent of lawsuits deal with monument protection.

The German government also forced the wind power industry to cut costs, introducing a market-based tendering model. The economic and legal risks have made investors leery about investing in wind projects without the massive government-mandated subsidies that the wind industry enjoyed.

Since the federal government also removed some privileges they had provided for community wind farms, there are no longer enough participants for the public auctions. Of over 1,350 megawatts of wind power projects tendered this year, only 746 megawatts were slated for a project. At least three German onshore wind auctions were significantly undersubscribed. Also, in technology-neutral or combined auctions, onshore wind is continually outperformed. Recently, the country’s solar industry was awarded 210-megawatts of a 200-megawatt auction which was heavily oversubscribed with 719.5 megawatts of solar projects bidding for contracts.

In order to meet its 2030 target of 65 percent renewables, Germany needs to build 5 gigawatts of wind power each year. In the first quarter of 2019, no turbine orders were recorded. To fix this, proponents indicate that Germany needs to look at alternative site locations such as industrial sites similar to what the Dutch are doing or motorway sites similar to what France and Belgium are doing.

In 2021, thousands of wind turbines are expected to come to the end of their 20-year subsidy period as defined by Germany’s Renewable Energy Act. The wind industry is afraid that more wind turbines will be demolished than new ones will be built. Alternatives would be to repower these early wind farms or replace their turbines with modern ones that would double the capacity using one third fewer turbines.

Military concerns and FM radio beacons are also contributing to the lack of wind turbine orders. About 4,790 megawatts of wind power are blocked due to these concerns, of which 2,370 megawatts are blocked due to distance issues. Wind power projects are required to keep a distance of 10 to 15 kilometers away from stations that are used for navigation in aviation.

Conclusion

The Germans are finding out that there are many issues with wind farms that include noise pollution, wildlife and monument protection, military and radio conflicts, and NIMBY—not in my back yard—issues. These are on top of the economic fact that their current system is built upon government subsidies and mandates about which the public seems to be growing weary. German residential consumers pay about three times what U.S. residential consumers do for electricity.

These issues are also concerns in the United States, but the governments here have not changed the economic model and wind farms are still being built due to state mandates, state and federal subsidies, and wholesale pricing practices. If these were to go away or be less lucrative for wind power, wind auctions would be undersubscribed in the United States as Germany is seeing this year.

[C8]

The Dark Side of Solar Power
by Atalay Atasu, Serasu Duran, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove
June 18, 2021

It’s sunny times for solar power. In the U.S., home installations of solar panels have fully rebounded from the Covid slump, with analysts predicting more than 19 gigawatts of total capacity installed, compared to 13 gigawatts at the close of 2019. Over the next 10 years, that number may quadruple, according to industry research data. And that’s not even taking into consideration the further impact of possible new regulations and incentives launched by the green-friendly Biden administration.

Solar’s pandemic-proof performance is due in large part to the Solar Investment Tax Credit, which defrays 26% of solar-related expenses for all residential and commercial customers (just down from 30% during 2006–2019). After 2023, the tax credit will step down to a permanent 10% for commercial installers and will disappear entirely for home buyers. Therefore, sales of solar will probably burn even hotter in the coming months, as buyers race to cash in while they still can.

Tax subsidies are not the only reason for the solar explosion. The conversion efficiency of panels has improved by as much as 0.5% each year for the last 10 years, even as production costs (and thus prices) have sharply declined, thanks to several waves of manufacturing innovation mostly driven by industry-dominant Chinese panel producers. For the end consumer, this amounts to far lower up-front costs per kilowatt of energy generated.

This is all great news, not just for the industry but also for anyone who acknowledges the need to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for the sake of our planet’s future. But there’s a massive caveat that very few are talking about.

Panels, Panels Everywhere
Economic incentives are rapidly aligning to encourage customers to trade their existing panels for newer, cheaper, more efficient models. In an industry where circularity solutions such as recycling remain woefully inadequate, the sheer volume of discarded panels will soon pose a risk of existentially damaging proportions.

To be sure, this is not the story one gets from official industry and government sources. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)’s official projections assert that “large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s” and could total 78 million tonnes by the year 2050. That’s a staggering amount, undoubtedly. But with so many years to prepare, it describes a billion-dollar opportunity for recapture of valuable materials rather than a dire threat. The threat is hidden by the fact that IRENA’s predictions are premised upon customers keeping their panels in place for the entirety of their 30-year life cycle. They do not account for the possibility of widespread early replacement.

Our research does. Using real U.S. data, we modeled the incentives affecting consumers’ decisions whether to replace under various scenarios. We surmised that three variables were particularly salient in determining replacement decisions: installation price, compensation rate (i.e., the going rate for solar energy sold to the grid), and module efficiency. If the cost of trading up is low enough, and the efficiency and compensation rate are high enough, we posit that rational consumers will make the switch, regardless of whether their existing panels have lived out a full 30 years.

As an example, consider a hypothetical consumer (call her “Ms. Brown”) living in California who installed solar panels on her home in 2011. Theoretically, she could keep the panels in place for 30 years, i.e., until 2041. At the time of installation, the total cost was $40,800, 30% of which was tax deductible thanks to the Solar Investment Tax Credit. In 2011, Ms. Brown could expect to generate 12,000 kilowatts of energy through her solar panels, or roughly $2,100 worth of electricity. In each following year, the efficiency of her panel decreases by approximately one percent due to module degradation.

Now imagine that in the year 2026, halfway through the life cycle of her equipment, Ms. Brown starts to look at her solar options again. She’s heard the latest generation of panels are cheaper and more efficient — and when she does her homework, she finds that that is very much the case. Going by actual current projections, the Ms. Brown of 2026 will find that costs associated with buying and installing solar panels have fallen by 70% from where they were in 2011. Moreover, the new-generation panels will yield $2,800 in annual revenue, $700 more than her existing setup when it was new. All told, upgrading her panels now rather than waiting another 15 years will increase the net present value (NPV) of her solar rig by more than $3,000 in 2011 dollars. If Ms. Brown is a rational actor, she will opt for early replacement. And if she were especially shrewd in money matters, she would have come to that decision even sooner — our calculations for the Ms. Brown scenario show the replacement NPV overtaking that of panel retention starting in 2021.

The Solar Trash Wave. According to our research, cumulative waste projections will rise far sooner and more sharply than most analysts expect. A line graph shows the cumulative capacity of solar panel waste from 2020 to 2050 in three different scenarios. Assuming that no faults occur over the 30-year life cycle of the equipment, waste does not begin to accumulate until around 2040 and then rises sharply to nearly 20 gigawatts by 2050. A second scenario shows the official forecast from the International Renewable Energy Agency, known as IRENA, which allows for some replacements earlier in the life cycle. In this case, solar panel waste begins to accumulate around 2030, rising steadily to about 15 gigawatts by 2050. A third scenario, which represents waste projections predicted by our model and is based on early replacement of solar panels, shows waste beginning to accumulate almost immediately, by 2023, and rising sharply to reach nearly 20 gigawatts by 2040. Source: International Renewable Energy Agency, Electricity Data Browser, Global Solar Atlas.
See more HBR charts in Data & Visuals
If early replacements occur as predicted by our statistical model, they can produce 50 times more waste in just four years than IRENA anticipates. That figure translates to around 315,000 metric tonnes of waste, based on an estimate of 90 tonnes per MW weight-to-power ratio.

Alarming as they are, these stats may not do full justice to the crisis, as our analysis is restricted to residential installations. With commercial and industrial panels added to the picture, the scale of replacements could be much, much larger.

The High Cost of Solar Trash
The industry’s current circular capacity is woefully unprepared for the deluge of waste that is likely to come. The financial incentive to invest in recycling has never been very strong in solar. While panels contain small amounts of valuable materials such as silver, they are mostly made of glass, an extremely low-value material. The long life span of solar panels also serves to disincentivize innovation in this area.

As a result, solar’s production boom has left its recycling infrastructure in the dust. To give you some indication, First Solar is the sole U.S. panel manufacturer we know of with an up-and-running recycling initiative, which only applies to the company’s own products at a global capacity of two million panels per year. With the current capacity, it costs an estimated $20–$30 to recycle one panel. Sending that same panel to a landfill would cost a mere $1–$2.

The direct cost of recycling is only part of the end-of-life burden, however. Panels are delicate, bulky pieces of equipment usually installed on rooftops in the residential context. Specialized labor is required to detach and remove them, lest they shatter to smithereens before they make it onto the truck. In addition, some governments may classify solar panels as hazardous waste, due to the small amounts of heavy metals (cadmium, lead, etc.) they contain. This classification carries with it a string of expensive restrictions — hazardous waste can only be transported at designated times and via select routes, etc.

The totality of these unforeseen costs could crush industry competitiveness. If we plot future installations according to a logistic growth curve capped at 700 GW by 2050 (NREL’s estimated ceiling for the U.S. residential market) alongside the early-replacement curve, we see the volume of waste surpassing that of new installations by the year 2031. By 2035, discarded panels would outweigh new units sold by 2.56 times. In turn, this would catapult the LCOE (levelized cost of energy, a measure of the overall cost of an energy-producing asset over its lifetime) to four times the current projection. The economics of solar — so bright-seeming from the vantage point of 2021 — would darken quickly as the industry sinks under the weight of its own trash.

Who Pays the Bill?
It will almost certainly fall to regulators to decide who will bear the cleanup costs. As waste from the first wave of early replacements piles up in the next few years, the U.S. government — starting with the states, but surely escalating to the federal level — will introduce solar panel recycling legislation. Conceivably, future regulations in the U.S. will follow the model of the European Union’s WEEE Directive, a legal framework for the recycling and disposal of electronic waste throughout EU member states. The U.S. states that have enacted electronics-recycling legislation have mostly cleaved to the WEEE model. (The Directive was amended in 2014 to include solar panels.) In the EU, recycling responsibilities for past (historic) waste have been apportioned to manufacturers based on current market share.

A first step to forestalling disaster may be for solar panel producers to start lobbying for similar legislation in the United States immediately, instead of waiting for solar panels to start clogging landfills. In our experience drafting and implementing the revision of the original WEEE Directive in the late 2000s, we found one of the biggest challenges in those early years was assigning responsibility for the vast amount of accumulated waste generated by companies no longer in the electronics business (so-called orphan waste).

In the case of solar, the problem is made even thornier by new rules out of Beijing that shave subsidies for solar panel producers while increasing mandatory competitive bidding for new solar projects. In an industry dominated by Chinese players, this ramps up the uncertainty factor. With reduced support from the central government, it’s possible that some Chinese producers may fall out of the market. One of the reasons to push legislation now rather than later is to ensure that the responsibility for recycling the imminent first wave of waste is shared fairly by makers of the equipment concerned. If legislation comes too late, the remaining players may be forced to deal with the expensive mess that erstwhile Chinese producers left behind.

But first and foremost, the required solar panel recycling capacity has to be built, as part of a comprehensive end-of-life infrastructure also encompassing uninstallation, transportation, and (in the meantime) adequate storage facilities for solar waste. If even the most optimistic of our early-replacement forecasts are accurate, there may not be enough time for companies to accomplish this alone. Government subsidies are probably the only way to quickly develop capacity commensurate to the magnitude of the looming waste problem. Corporate lobbyists can make a convincing case for government intervention, centered on the idea that waste is a negative externality of the rapid innovation necessary for widespread adoption of new energy technologies such as solar. The cost of creating end-of-life infrastructure for solar, therefore, is an inescapable part of the R&D package that goes along with supporting green energy.

It’s Not Just Solar
The same problem is looming for other renewable-energy technologies. For example, barring a major increase in processing capability, experts expect that more than 720,000 tons worth of gargantuan wind-turbine blades will end up in U.S. landfills over the next 20 years. According to prevailing estimates, only five percent of electric-vehicle batteries are currently recycled — a lag that automakers are racing to rectify as sales figures for electric cars continue to rise as much as 40% year-on-year. The only essential difference between these green technologies and solar panels is that the latter doubles as a revenue-generating engine for the consumer. Two separate profit-seeking actors — panel producers and the end consumer — thus must be satisfied in order for adoption to occur at scale.

None of this should raise serious doubts about the future or necessity of renewables. The science is indisputable: Continuing to rely on fossil fuels to the extent we currently do will bequeath a damaged if not dying planet to future generations. Compared with all we stand to gain or lose, the four decades or so it will likely take for the economics of solar to stabilize to the point that consumers won’t feel compelled to cut short the life cycle of their panels seems decidedly small. But that lofty purpose doesn’t make the shift to renewable energy any easier in reality. Of all sectors, sustainable technology can least afford to be shortsighted about the waste it creates. A strategy for entering the circular economy is absolutely essential — and the sooner, the better.

https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power

[C8]

Solar energy projects are grinding to a halt in the US amid investigation into parts from China
By Ella Nilsen, CNN - May 6

The solar energy industry has been thrown into a panic and projects are grinding to a halt after the Biden administration launched an investigation that some solar CEOs worry could tank the industry.

The Commerce Department launched the probe in March into whether four countries in Southeast Asia that supply about 80% of US solar panels and parts -- Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam -- are using components from China that should be subject to US tariffs.

The fallout within the industry has been significant.

A survey in late April by the Solar Energy Industries Association, a non-profit trade association, found 318 solar projects in the US had already been delayed or canceled, and several CEOs told CNN they expect more to follow. Industry leaders fear the probe could also have a devastating impact on the solar workforce.

'The worst moment'
The Commerce probe comes on the heels of last year's ban on solar panels and parts that were suspected of having links to forced labor in China's Xinjiang Province.

The Department of Homeland Security directed US Customs and Border Protection to issue a Withhold Release Order, which banned imports made by Chinese company Hoshine Silicon Industry Co., after the government alleged the company uses forced Uyghur labor.

"Obviously, the industry absolutely needed to address any concerns about forced labor, but the implementation of that [order] was far from smooth," Solar Energy Industries Association President Abigail Ross Hopper told CNN.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/solar ... ar-AAWZ8hN

[C8]

More than half of 2022′s solar projects threatened by spiking costs, new report finds
PUBLISHED TUE, OCT 26 20213:37 PM EDT

Jumping raw material costs and supply chain bottlenecks are threatening solar developments, according to a new report.

Rystad Energy said Tuesday that 56% of next year’s expected 90 gigawatts of utility-scale solar buildout could be delayed or canceled thanks to surging costs.

Polysilicon, which is a core component of solar systems, has jumped more than 300%.

“The utility solar industry is facing one of its toughest challenges just days ahead of COP26,” said David Dixon, senior renewables analyst at Rystad Energy.

Surging solar costs, driven my raw material price increases and supply chain constraints, could delay or even cancel more than half of 2022′s expected utility-scale solar buildout, according to a new report from energy consultancy Rystad Energy.

Next year’s forecasts stand at 90 gigawatts of new utility-scale solar worldwide, and the firm said Tuesday that 56% of those projects are at risk amid the surge in prices. The spike means developers might try to negotiate higher power purchase agreements, or else absorb the costs themselves, leading to lower margins.

All told, the cost for photovoltaic modules has risen nearly 50% from under $0.20 per watt peak (Wp) in 2020 to between $0.26 and $0.28/Wp during the second half of 2021, according to Rystad. Watt peak measures maximum output.

A portion of the surging cost is thanks to the jump in polysilicon, which is a key component in solar systems. Rystad said that prices for the material are up 300% since July 2020. IHS Markit estimates a slightly smaller increase, saying polysilicon prices are up more than 200% between October 2020 and today.

And it’s not just polysilicon. Other components of solar systems including silver, copper, aluminum and glass are also increasing. Demand for raw materials is jumping as the world emerges from lockdown, pushing prices higher as supply remains tight.

“The utility solar industry is facing one of its toughest challenges just days ahead of COP26,” said David Dixon, senior renewables analyst at Rystad Energy. “The current bottlenecks are not expected to be relieved within the next 12 months, meaning developers and offtakers will have to decide whether to reduce their margins, delay projects or increase offtake prices to get projects to financial close,” he added.

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Rystad noted that it remains to be seen if these projects will ultimately just be postponed, or cancelled outright.

The firm added that elevated shipping prices and delays are also having a material impact, with these costs rising nearly 500% between September 2019 and today. Overall, shipping is causing “considerable challenges for developers and module suppliers.”

The jump in cost to make the modules themselves and then ship them are the largest expense for projects, generally costing between a quarter and a third of the total project capex.

Rystad said that elevated shipping costs have increased the levelized cost of electricity between 10% and 15%, a “major cost bump for most of the projects planned for 2022.” The levelized cost of electricity is used to compare prices across different forms of energy.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/more-th ... finds.html

[C8]

AEP cancels largest US wind project after Texas rejection
Published July 27, 2018

American Electric Power canceled its 2 GW Wind Catcher project on Friday after Texas utility regulators unanimously rejected it a day before, saying it did not provide enough benefit to customers.
AEP said timely regulatory approval was necessary so it could finish the project by 2020 and be eligible for the full value of federal production tax credits for wind energy. The project had already been approved by regulators in Louisiana and Arkansas, as well as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and a decision in Oklahoma was pending.
​AEP CEO Nick Akins said on an earnings call this week that the utility may be able to build more renewables through the individual resource plans of its utilities, but the larger project may be less costly.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/aep-ca ... on/528783/

[C8]

Winchester-area wind project cancelled because of bats?
on: January 13, 2020In: Featured News, News
By Connor Lynch

BRINSTON — The oft-contentious, partially-constructed Nation Rise Wind Project in North Stormont, north of Winchester, was suddenly cancelled by the province last month to protect bats.

Environment Minister Jeff Yurek announced in a letter sent to local opposition group Concerned Citizens of North Stormont in early December that the wind turbine project was cancelled. The 29-turbine project was partially completed. Six turbines were fully built and a dozen more were partially constructed. Parts were being trucked to the site from the Port of Johnstown starting in October.

Yurek pointed to an unquantified risk to bat populations in the area as the reason for his decision. EDP (Energias de Portugal) Renewables, which owns the project, had surveyed bat populations in the area in advance of the project.

Yurek’s decision was reminiscent of former ag minister Jeff Leal’s invocation of the precautionary principle against neonics. Said Yurek: “I choose to exercise precaution in determining the seriousness of this harm and whether it will be irreversible. In my view, the harm will be both serious and irreversible to animal life, given the relatively small bat species populations in the area.”

Yurek explained that his decision to quash the project was limited to the risk to human health or the environment because he was overruling the project’s approval by an Environmental Review Tribunal.

Until now, the Progressive Conservatives have argued that renewable energies like wind and solar are unnecessary money losers and Ontario already produces a surplus of electricity.

Margaret Benke, one of the leading voices of the local opposition group, said the group was surprised but very pleased.

EDP Renewables, the company that built the wind turbine project, didn’t take the news lying down. In a statement it argued that the province’s decision “contradicts scientific and expert findings and appears to exceed the minister’s legal jurisdiction under the Environmental Protection Act.”
EDP Renewables added that while it is “wholly perplexed by this unfounded decision on the part of the minister, it is prepared to pursue all legal courses of action . . . to resume the construction activities at Nation Rise Wind Farm.”

On Dec. 10, EDP Renewables filed an application for judicial review, asking the courts to review the decision to determine its legality.

Opposition to the project has been well-publicized. Cash crop farmers Arnie and Marion Hakvoort, who have one of the project’s wind turbines on their farm, said they have no objection to the objections. “Everything has its pros and cons,” Arnie Hakvoort said.

But with the project set to begin operation in February, this 11th hour reversal was hard to swallow. “It’s 80 per cent complete,” Hakvoort said. “To cancel it at this stage doesn’t make any sense at all.”

He added: “If this stays cancelled, there’s contracts where it has to be torn out and dismantled. The taxpayer will pay for that, with nothing to show for it.”

The Progressive Conservative government cancelled 758 renewable energy projects last year that had yet to receive final clearance from the Independent Energy System Operator (IESO), arguing that it would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in inflated hydro bills.

The North Stormont wind project received approval from the IESO just days before the provincial election, which some criticized as a breach of a government tradition not to make major decisions or announcements on the eve of an election.

Provincial Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk has agree to look into the cancellation costs.

https://farmersforum.com/winchester-are ... e-of-bats/

[C8]

State Lawmakers Approve Bill Aimed At Helping Victims Of Wildfires Sparked By Solar Panel

https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/video/6 ... lar-panel/

also

Solar Theft

The New York Times reports that in one case, someone tried to sell stolen solar panels worth almost $1,500 each on eBay for just $100 each. Detectives placed bids and won the panels, and arrested the man when he tried to complete the transaction.

Police recovered more than $70,000 worth of solar panels stolen from a private school in El Cerrito, Calif., according to the Mercury News. Police learned the location of most of the panels after capturing the 42-year-old man who managed to leave with 56 panels from the school’s roof. Replacement and repair has been estimated at $100,000.

California’s Napa Valley, with its endless vineyards that can hide ground-based solar arrays, is one of the areas hardest-hit by opportunistic solar thieves. According to National Public Radio (NPR), more than $400,000 worth of panels have been stolen from the area in the past year alone. NPR reports that Honig Winery fell victim to solar theft twice before the owner protected his array with an alarm system. When the thieves returned, they were promptly arrested.

https://www.nachi.org/solar-theft.htm

[mousepad]

Jumping raw material costs and supply chain bottlenecks are threatening solar developments, according to a new report.
Polysilicon, which is a core component of solar systems, has jumped more than 300%.

That's impossible. Consider kublikhans many reputable forecasts where he clearly shows that both costs are projected to fall significantly and installed capacity to dramatically increase. We're forecast to glide into a beautiful solar powered future. Are you telling me that forecasts could be wrong? That's a bummer.

[kublikhan]

Jumping raw material costs and supply chain bottlenecks are threatening solar developments, according to a new report.
Polysilicon, which is a core component of solar systems, has jumped more than 300%.

That's impossible. Consider kublikhans many reputable forecasts where he clearly shows that both costs are projected to fall significantly and installed capacity to dramatically increase. We're forecast to glide into a beautiful solar powered future. Are you telling me that forecasts could be wrong? That's a bummer.

Incorrect. I posted there was a shortage of polysilicon causing material and module prices to rise.

Now it looks like the glut has finally cleared and we are back in shortage territory, causing material prices and solar PV module costs to rise.

But hey, go ahead and pretend I said the exact opposite. Based on your posts it appears you want to twist my words to make me sound like some kind of renewable energy zealot. Like I told you before, just because I correct when someone posts BS on renewable energy does not mean I think resource depletion is a non-issue and renewables a panacea. There are real issues with renewable energy. But it appears you guys would rather just fish for every anti-renewable article you can get your hands on and give a hand waiving dismal of anything that goes against your personal bias. Well have fun then.