Texas power struggle: How the nation's top wind power state turned against renewable energy
Wind turbines cover hundreds of acres of farmland in Willacy County in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. Credit: Ben Lowy for The Texas Tribune
Texas power struggle: How the nation’s top wind power state turned against renewable energy
Texas Tribune | Emily Foxhall, Kai Elwood-Dieu and Zach Despart | May 25, 2023
After decades of support for renewable energy made Texas able to produce more wind power than any other state, its political leaders have turned against wind and solar. This year, they’re pushing through legislation to prop up fossil fuel-burning power plants instead.
What they decide could have lasting consequences by raising the cost of electricity and spurring the construction of gas-powered plants that will produce carbon emissions for decades.
“Right now, the wind blows strongly against renewables, and that’s where we are,” said Bill Miller, a longtime lobbyist in Austin...
...The about-face by Texas elected officials came after renewable energy got so big that it threatened coal- and gas-fueled power in the country’s biggest oil and gas state. Cheap electricity from wind turbines and solar panels provided about 26% of electricity in Texas last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, up from 0.7% in 2002...more
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/texas-energy-renewables-natural-gas-grid-politics/
Looks like this would be increasingly popular even here...Because we are told endlessly (by a few that claim to fight climate change) that wind turbines and solar panels are "worthless" !! How can you tell the difference between a D and an R when it comes to renewable energy?
= new reply since forum marked as read
...in the planetary atmosphere, in units of time, and not CO2 accumulations, about 20 years.
Over those 20 years, I've heard endless "percent talk" from advocates of so called "renewable energy" who want to define whether or not it is required to endorse this bullshit fantasy in order to be a member of the Democratic Party.
They come and go, like the wind, like the sunrise and the sunset.
I'm not a Democrat because I endorse cute, quaint, but extremely myopic consumer car cults, including the worthless hydrogen and battery fantasies, with specious uncritical uneducated blather. I'm a Democrat because I believe in human rights, because poverty matters to me, because I despise racism and because, unlike many blathering fools, I care deeply about the environment.
I was a Democrat before the founding of the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy in 1976, which has been publishing articles about a putative "hydrogen economy" for 47 years, even though it didn't arrive, isn't here, and because it requires ignoring engineering and science to make it a reality, will never be viable.
Forty seven years of chanting about hydrogen has not made it worth a damned thing.
Of course, the people hyping this crap, continuously posting cheap commercial advertising to raise more money to waste on fantasies, are disinterested in physical laws, and the engineering and science that depend on them, and are completely disinterested in climate change, except to offer disingenuous and dishonest apologetics to attempt to conceal their disinterest in the subject.
Now, of course, the people who carry on with this purely defensive posture to divert attention from their disinterest in climate change wouldn't know, and don't care, that in 1976, when the first edition of the Journal of Hydrogen Energy was published, the annual average concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste on this planet was 331.03 ppm, and as of yesterday it was 92 ppm higher.
May 24: 423.70 ppm
May 23: 423.87 ppm
May 22: 424.23 ppm
May 21: 423.74 ppm
May 20: 423.79 ppm
Last Updated: May 25, 2023
Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2
People who don't give a rat's ass about climate change, who just want to gaze admiringly at marketing videos of prototypes of consumer junk that will not matter to the more than 2 billion people on this planet who lack access to decent water don't look at numbers. I expect that they are incompetent to understand them, but at the end of the day, I really don't care what they think. I work at my ideas. I'm not admiringly gazing at cartoons.
Now as it happens, people who blindly and foolishly worship the wind and solar junk that has done nothing to address climate change love to cite their fellow scientific illiterates, journalists in our "but her emails" media often claiming, despite oodles of data, that solar and wind are "cheap."
Since they do not take time to read at a deep level, a level beyond comic books, they may not have a clue on how much money was spent on solar and wind junk in this century.
Since I do read on a deep level, I have that referenced data at my fingertips:
In the 21st century, we spent, invested on this reactionary fantasy, more than 3.3319 trillion dollars on solar and wind junk, almost all of which will be landfill in about 25 years. (The number 3.3319 trillion dollars refers to the period between 2004 and 2019 inclusive.)
Source: Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2020 (Figure 42, page 62).
Fifteen years, more than 3 trillion dollars spent on comic book level wishful thinking and delusion, this on a planet where 2 billion people don't have clean water, people who couldn't give a rat's ass about marketing videos of Potemkin hydrogen stations in China for cute demo hydrogen trucks, and here's where we are: In 2004, when we were convinced to embrace this trillion dollar reactionary scheme to return to the early 19th century, the mean average concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste was 377.30 ppm.
How do I define worthless? I have no apologies for stating clearly, unambiguously, without reservation that for energy systems, those which fail to address human needs, which fail to protect the environment, that do nothing more than soak up money to satisfy the tiresome reactionary daydreams of the poorly educated bourgeoisie are, just that, worthless.
The data is in for 2021 on how much energy this worthless junk produced after soaking up trillions of dollars, not even counting the cost, environmental, economic and health of the required redundancies.
Source: 2022 IEA World Energy Outlook Table A 1a, page 435
After 50 years, half a century, of mindless cheering, the entire combined solar and wind industry at 12 Exajoules built at these trillion dollar rates, was not even able to cover the increase in the use of dangerous natural gas, coal and oil - the source of the bulk of the world's hydrogen by the way - from 2020 to 2021, an 11 Exajoule increase for dangerous oil, a 7 Exajoule increase for dangerous natural gas, and an 8 Exajoule increase in the use of dangerous coal.
Now dumb journalists and the people who cite them like to pretend like to pretend that the solar and wind industries are about dangerous fossil fuels, but clearly they aren't. Journalists in the "but her emails" media can lie all they want - and they do lie all they want - but numbers don't lie.
Twelve Exajoules of energy per year at a cost of over three trillion dollars spent on consumer junk that will need replacement every twenty years has nothing to do with my Democratic values. For me the Democratic Party that I have supported for over half a century was never about endorsing dogmatic cult thinking, even when it's popular but pernicious, particularly consumer cult thinking, "Look at my car! Look at my truck," bullshit.
The planet is on fire. Clearly there are people who don't give a shit about that, and like Repukes, they feel that they have the right to criticize those who do care, and care a great deal.
There is worthless junk and there are worthless people; in general they tend to be linked to one another.
Once again, let me make this clear in case anyone missed it: Numbers don't lie. People lie, but numbers don't.
Have a nice day tomorrow and enjoy the holiday weekend.
