Massive Subsidies for Wind & Solar Power Failed to Reduce CO2 Gas Emission

by Rudy P. SysAdmin at howtofindthemoney

The one, nay the only, ‘justification’ for the $billions squandered on subsidised wind and solar power is ‘saving’ the planet from CO2 gas.

Except, that the wind and solar industries have never produced a shred of credible evidence that chaotic and intermittent wind & solar power have actually reduced CO2 gas emissions, anywhere on that planet.

If CO2’s your ‘poison’, wind and solar power are clearly no antidote.

No single country has thrown more money to the wind and the sun than Germany. And yet, in the mother of all ironies, CO2 gas emissions continue to rise.

Leaving aside arguments about whether CO2 is a toxic pollutant or a naturally occurring beneficial trace gas which plants crave, if the primary object of Germany’s ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future was cutting carbon dioxide gas emissions, the result has been a dismal failure – that’s cost Germans more than a €Trillion, so far.

By comparison, nuclear powered France enjoys power prices a fraction of those suffered by its eastern neighbour; and its CO2 emissions are tiny fraction of those being pumped out by notionally wind and solar powered Germany: Germany’s Renewable Energy Fail: German CO2 Emissions 10 Times Higher than Nuclear-Powered France

Even coal-powered Poland has managed to cut it CO2 emissions faster than the ever-virtuous Germany.

In wind and solar obsessed Australia, the results are no more impressive. Having spent tens of billions in subsidies on wind and solar and 20 years carpeting the country and windmills and solar panels, there has been practically no reduction in carbon dioxide gas emissions. Which was, after all, the justification for all the waste and destruction, in the first place.

Australia installs more renewables than anywhere else but national emissions stay the same

Australians are installing renewable energy, per capita, faster than any place on Earth, or at least we were until 2020 when the subsidies and schemes ran out.

Per capita, Australia (all shades of red) is installing renewables

The Quarterly update for the Greenhouse Gas inventory is out and we can see just how much difference all those renewables make, which is almost nothing. Emissions have flatlined.

Australians are paying record prices, risking blackouts, buying batteries and synchronous condensors, building new billion dollar interconnectors, losing companies overseas, and suffering voltage spikes. We’re playing chicken with our smelters, and party games with PeakSmart timers and extra domestic circuits so that electricity companies can manage our pool pumps and our air conditioners.

And this is all we get?

Emissions in Australia have flatlined

After adding so many wind farms and solar panels the electricity sector decreased emissions by only 1.2% on the year before.

Electricity sector emissions decreased 1.8 per cent in the June quarter of 2019 on a ‘seasonally adjusted and weather normalised’ P 8 P basis (Figure 6). This reflected strong increases in hydro and wind generation (42.0 and 14.8 per cent) and decreases in coal and natural gas generation (5.7 and 21.3 per cent) in the National Electricity Market (NEM). Over the year to June 2019, emissions from electricity decreased by 1.2 per cent compared with the year to June 2018.

The electricity sector is Australia’s largest single source of emissions, and some of the gains in the last decade have come from efficiency, not from renewables, and from making electricity so unaffordable that it scares people into not using their air conditioners.

Given all this, you might think the team at Reneweconomy might worry that renewables won’t save the planet and were a dismal and useless way to spend environmental money, but not so. They were pretty happy with a 2 percent fall in electricity emissions from Sept 2018 to Sept 2019.

They were not impressed that as our electricity emissions had fallen, our diesel emissions have gone up the other way. Mostly for truckers, they say.

How much of this is due to electrical generators?

Graph Australian Diesel emissions, decade, 2009 to 2019.

Per capita Australians are using 40% less CO2 than they were 30 years ago, and this is what the Opposition calls, “a policy vacuum”. Perhaps it is a vacuum — of achievement.

Australia has almost the fastest growing population in the West. Fifty percent population growth in 30 years, and we are aiming to cut emissions 27% on top of that?

Over the period from 1989-90 to June 2019, Australia’s population grew strongly from 17.0 million to around 25.4 million …. This reflects growth of 48.8 per cent.

The best way to keep Australian emissions down (apart from nukes) is to cut immigration, but left leaning politicians don’t want to discuss that, and nor apparently do left wing activist websites. Importing new left-leaning voters seems to be more important.

By picking the most expensive and ineffective methods it’s almost like none of the people driving renewables even care about the CO2 emissions.

The 10 largest coal producers and exporters in Indonesia: