The unspoken truths of clean energy are the important ones
Has any of our leaders uttered the word “rationing” when describing this new clean energy utopia they are constructing for us?
Lately the promise of reinventing our entire energy sector of our economy has been added to the yearly promises our leaders offer as justification to keep their jobs.
Community planning and renewal is tied with clean energy. Dirty energy – what we have now – must be retired. To circumvent the rough and tumble markets picking winners and losers, government needs to champion new technology with large budgets in order to successfully “launch projects successfully” and avoid delays. What is not commonly known nor publicly acknowledged is that the New Green Deal will require rationing of energy, in large qualities. These new technologies cannot provide nor sustain the same levels of energy that we require today. While the new and shiny technology is attractive, this underlying secret is quietly forgotten.
Michigan is designated as a center of manufacturing in the Fourth Industrial Wave, and to date 2 billion dollars of state tax dollars have been spent to bring this dream to fruition, with leaders openly stating that this is just the start of a long process. The following transcript is from an interview I had with Jason Hayes of the Mackinac Center. Jason is the director of Energy and Environmental Policy, and is a subject matter expert on the economic impact energy policy has on manufacturing and commerce.
In this exchange we uncover the reality of what Net Zero energy means for the environment. Jason also discusses the short comings of the wind and solar energy, the key components to our future manufacturing economy. In short, when you understand the capacity and utilization of solar and wind, it will translate to deforestation. Yes, in order to provide energy on par with what current energy resources provide, we will need to cut trees. Lots of trees.
Jason Hayes / JH:
So at the same time, our big plan then is to build wind and solar, which can’t provide
reliable electricity because the wind does not blow 24/7 and the sun does not shine 24 7.And so you have a situation where, for example, solar panels in the state of Michigan in January and February, December through February in Michigan. Solar panels have a 6 to 7% capacity factor. And so people will scratch their head and go capacity factor. What does that mean? If you take what the solar panel is made to produce? So if it was producing at 100%it would produce some number divide into that number, the total amount that it does produce and you get capacity factor.
So in Michigan in December through February,solar panels are basically 94% unused. So by that I mean, if you were talking about it in time, that’s not actually time bound, but it would mean that 94% of the time they effectively sit unused. Now some people will go “hang on”. That’s not exactly. But it’s just to give you an idea, it’s 94% of the capacity goes unused. So we’re just spending money for no real purpose. Because the way that you then in
quotes, fix, the problem is you build lots more solar panels you can lots more uh,
transmission lines to connect them all together. Because the only way that you do that is you carpet over farm fields.
Or I’ve literally, I’ve listened in senate hearings in the Michigan legislature listened to elected officials say, well, we should just cut down our state forests in the up because there’s so much land up there and use that land to put in solar panels.Really? You’re like, hang on.
The Mighty Humanzee / TMH:
Well, the other thing too that people don’t take into account is the attenuation of running electricity through a line over long distances. … I write software, right.I’m not an engineer, but I mean, I know some of this, I mean, this is like, this is common sense. So essentially we’re gonna go do what they did in Scotland.
JH:
What’s that?
TMH:
It’s so, essentially they’re saying, “hey, let’s just, they want to imitate what they did in Scotland.” … they estimate they’re gonna cut down 16,
16 million trees in Scotland and Scotland doesn’t have that many trees.
The complete exchange is here:
So you heard that correctly: in order to fulfill current capacity we will need to remove components of nature that we were told were the mechanism needed to offset carbon dioxide emissions, we need to cut down trees. Do you recall that a few years ago how many corporations made public pledges to plant trees as “carbon offsets” to the impact of fossil fuels on the environment? Suddenly those are not a concern.
The link to the complete interview is found below, I think you will find it fascinating how calculating the impact of this disruptive approach to energy acquisition escapes so many. We see countless studies that exclude factors of capacity. utilization and environment impact, as well as ignoring other solutions that do not require such drastic measures.
One approach that Jason describes in the full interview is supplementing our current clean coal plants with carbon capture technology, thereby saving the state billions of dollars without risking our future on technology that, in many estimations, is not an efficient substitute based on our current needs. The question that is not asked is why we are shutting down the potential backup energy systems while we build the riskier wind and solar? Clearly with variable source energy we need a secondary system ready to go in order to maintain current levels when solar and wind are unavailable. Or should we consider that the quest to shut down coal, natural gas and nuclear energy really indicates that there will be no alternative capacity, and we will consigned to a very different, impoverished society?
In our documentary Rationed State, we traced the roots of the Canadian health care system known as Community Care. The progenitor of the Community of Care is Daniel Callahan, and his central thesis was that in order to manage a society’s health as a system under population pressure, rationing was to be expected. In a sense, this is a Malthusian approach: growing population exceeds current resources so various constraints must be instilled to provide for all. This is the big secret that the clean energy proponents will never speak aloud, it is the uncomfortable truth that our leaders will never acknowledge. Yet the World Economic Forum speaks quite candidly that in the future, car ownership will be reduced 75%, as reported by the Mackinac Center and by the WEF itself.
Has that ever been uttered by our leaders or by the media?
You can find the complete interview here: