Over the past decades, I’ve seen hundreds ofstoriesandreportsclaiming solar and wind power are cheaper than conventional sources of electric power. Those stories were false.
A little more than two decades ago, when the government first got in the business of pushing renewable energy in the form of wind and solar power, later with battery backup, the public was told these were infant or orphan technologies that needed a boost to help them compete with traditional sources of electric power — reliable generating sources like coal and natural gas that were developed and came to dominate without government support.
This was a lie, and the proof is all around us.
Wind and solar are not new or untested technologies. Wind turbines have been around for hundreds of years, and thefirst solar panel was created in 1883.
They couldn’t compete then, except for specialized uses and isolated locations, and they can’t compete today. Also, wind and solar remain weather- and time-of-day dependent.
As more wind and solar have been added to the grid, it has become less stable, leading to increasing numbers of blackouts. This is why, absent government mandates and support, they never took off as grid-ready electric power sources.
Wind and solar power are enormously profitable, not because they can compete in the market, but due to governments granting developers a guaranteed rate of return for construction — the bigger the project, the greater the profit.
In this politicized environment, profits do not serve as evidence that the market is choosing wind and solar because they are cheaper or more reliable.
A recentarticletitled “The States Where Renewable Energy Is Now Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels” accurately points out that solar and wind are the fastest-growing electric power sources in the United States over the past few years, but falsely attributes this success to them being cheaper than coal and natural gas. Again, they are not.
A peer-reviewed study in thejournal Energy, accounting for all the up-front and hidden costs of competing power generation sources, allows an apples-to-apples comparison of affordability.
Source: VidNews » Feed
