T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
This article The Cool Down newsletter claims the following:
A recent study comparing the costs and benefits of coal-based power plants to those of wind and solar energy projects found a clear answer surrounding the future of our power grids.
The report, by the policy group Energy Innovation, found that nearly all of America’s coal plants — a whopping 99% — would cost more money to maintain than to simply replace. In this case, the money-saving replacement was either a wind or solar plant.
“All but one of the country’s 210 coal plants are more expensive to operate than either new wind or new solar,” the report states.
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/energy-innovation-coal-plant-renewables-solar-study/
It goes on to slather praise on wind and solar at length as you might expect.
Well, the "study" that they use to make this claim is found here:
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/energy-innovation-coal-plant-renewables-solar-study/
It was done by a Leftist environmentalist policy group called Energy Innovation out of San Francisco CA. What the group does is show that new EPA regulations implemented by the Bribem administration as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (a misnomer) and specifically designed to make coal fired power plants unaffordable to operate are making wind and solar alternatives "affordable." The report notes that:
Our analysis finds replacing these plants with local solar or wind would drive $589 billion in local capital investment that could support economic diversification, job creation, and tax revenue.
In other words, this group is claiming that shutting down coal plants would require something like over half-a-trillion in new investments in wind and solar to replace them. They argue not that existing coal plants are cheaper to operate, but rather than new coal plants--because of regulations put in place by the Bribem administration--would be too expensive to build, and much of their claim is entirely speculative.
And in the meantime, solar and wind projects are only getting cheaper to complete — now costing about 40% less than it takes to build coal or gas-powered plants.
All of this Energy Innovations bases on an unsupported and automatically accepted set of claims that it is necessary to transition to wind and solar because of Gorebal Warming.
Even they unwittingly admit their plan would be more costly without recognizing it:
We find that the savings generated by shifting to local solar could fund the addition of 137 GW of four-hour batteries across all plants, and 80 percent or more of the capacity at a third of existing coal plants
That is, they can't find a way to make their plan work 24/7 without exceeding the cost of coal because of the batteries even as they try to gloss that problem over. 20 hours of storage for 137 GW at $175 (battery storage currently runs about $225 a kwh installed) costs $4.8 trillion dollars. That's why they went with just 4 hours of storage which can't supply energy 24/7 and would require some sort of other generation in addition to wind and solar--like natural gas--to make it work.
Worse, they rely heavily on subsidies and tax credits to even get their plan across the finish line.
Bottom line here is, they are selling a big lie. They are getting it to be competitive by setting a very narrow set of specifications and ignoring the reality of 24 hour-a-day electrical generation.
A recent study comparing the costs and benefits of coal-based power plants to those of wind and solar energy projects found a clear answer surrounding the future of our power grids.
The report, by the policy group Energy Innovation, found that nearly all of America’s coal plants — a whopping 99% — would cost more money to maintain than to simply replace. In this case, the money-saving replacement was either a wind or solar plant.
“All but one of the country’s 210 coal plants are more expensive to operate than either new wind or new solar,” the report states.
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/energy-innovation-coal-plant-renewables-solar-study/
It goes on to slather praise on wind and solar at length as you might expect.
Well, the "study" that they use to make this claim is found here:
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/energy-innovation-coal-plant-renewables-solar-study/
It was done by a Leftist environmentalist policy group called Energy Innovation out of San Francisco CA. What the group does is show that new EPA regulations implemented by the Bribem administration as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (a misnomer) and specifically designed to make coal fired power plants unaffordable to operate are making wind and solar alternatives "affordable." The report notes that:
Our analysis finds replacing these plants with local solar or wind would drive $589 billion in local capital investment that could support economic diversification, job creation, and tax revenue.
In other words, this group is claiming that shutting down coal plants would require something like over half-a-trillion in new investments in wind and solar to replace them. They argue not that existing coal plants are cheaper to operate, but rather than new coal plants--because of regulations put in place by the Bribem administration--would be too expensive to build, and much of their claim is entirely speculative.
And in the meantime, solar and wind projects are only getting cheaper to complete — now costing about 40% less than it takes to build coal or gas-powered plants.
All of this Energy Innovations bases on an unsupported and automatically accepted set of claims that it is necessary to transition to wind and solar because of Gorebal Warming.
Even they unwittingly admit their plan would be more costly without recognizing it:
We find that the savings generated by shifting to local solar could fund the addition of 137 GW of four-hour batteries across all plants, and 80 percent or more of the capacity at a third of existing coal plants
That is, they can't find a way to make their plan work 24/7 without exceeding the cost of coal because of the batteries even as they try to gloss that problem over. 20 hours of storage for 137 GW at $175 (battery storage currently runs about $225 a kwh installed) costs $4.8 trillion dollars. That's why they went with just 4 hours of storage which can't supply energy 24/7 and would require some sort of other generation in addition to wind and solar--like natural gas--to make it work.
Worse, they rely heavily on subsidies and tax credits to even get their plan across the finish line.
Bottom line here is, they are selling a big lie. They are getting it to be competitive by setting a very narrow set of specifications and ignoring the reality of 24 hour-a-day electrical generation.
