Where wind turbines are born: just one of China’s rare earth plants.

For the uninitiated, the sight of snow white wind turbines flailing in the breeze in some green field reinforces that feel-good notion that wind power is the crème de la crème of ‘green energy’.

For those in the know, whenever the term ‘green energy’ is trotted out by some starry-eyed hipster or sandal wearing troglodyte, a sense of wild frustration ensues, followed by an urge to throw something solid at their antagonist or to throw them off the top of one of their beloved windmills.

To maintain their faith, the wind worshipper avoids facts like the plague. Mathematics and meaningful statistics are shunned by cultists, too.

Here’s CFACT’s Paul Driessen laying out the numbers and reaching the obvious conclusion that – in relation to so-called ‘green energy’ – the numbers can never stack up.

Monumental, unsustainable environmental impacts

Fun. But not real…

After a generation of claiming to be not only competitive with, but cheaper than, every form of conventional generation there is, wind and large-scale solar generators are still unable to wean themselves off the massive stream subsidies that created their so-called ‘industries’ – simply because, without those subsidies – coupled with mandated targets and punitive fines on retailers forcing them to take their skittish wares – there is no market for power that cannot be delivered 24 x 365, on demand.

For want of a better phrase, attempting to run sunshine and breezes is patent nonsense.

In this short, sharp piece the Editor of America’s National Economics Editorial makes precisely that point.

72.8% Of World’s Renewable Energy Is Made By Burning Wood & Dung—20x More Than Wind & Solar Energy
National Economics Editorial
The Editor
28 June 2017

Renewable energy advocates have claimed for decades…

96 year old Donathan Roe Key: one of the 25% who
can’t afford to heat their homes this winter.

Australia’s maniacal obsession with attempting to power itself on sunshine and breezes has led to ‘The Great Shame’: a 140% increase in the number of homes disconnected from the grid, no longer able to afford power prices rocketing, year-on year, at 16 to 20%, leaving 25% of households unable to heat their homes during the depth of an Australian winter.

Liberal MP, Craig Kelly quite rightly exposed the outrage, pointing to the increased risk of mortality amongst those sitting in homes they can no longer afford to heat: Australia’s Renewable Energy Disaster Puts Lives at Mortal Risk: More Powerless Pensioners Will Freeze to Death this Winter

For his trouble, Craig was attacked with the kind of maniacal zeal not seen since the Spanish Inquisition. Not only did the usual suspects from the…

America is in the process of unwinding an economic suicide pact drawn up by Barack Obama, which wedded the Land of the Free to sunshine and breezes, at the expense of reliable and affordable power.

Rick Perry Says Obama Policies ‘Threatened The Reliability’ Of The Electric Grid
Daily Caller
Michael Bastasch
27 June 2017

Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to make the U.S. electrical grid great again starts with rolling back the Obama administration’s “politically-driven policies” that forced coal and nuclear power plants to retire in recent years.

“These politically-driven policies, driven primarily by a hostility to coal, threatened the reliability and the stability of the greatest electrical grid in the world,” Perry said at an Energy Department conference in Washington, D.C. Tuesday morning.

“It’s not reasonable to rely exclusively on fossil fuels,” he said. “It’s not feasible to rely exclusively on renewables.”

Perry’s remarks came as his agency is…

So, like, my RET only adds $3bn a year to Australian
power bills and they still go up, huh? I just don’t get it?

On the battlefield for Australia’s wealth and future economic prosperity, the forces have been divided between those pushing for the retention of the suicidal renewable energy policies that have all but crippled Australian business – particularly energy hungry businesses, like mining, manufacturing and mineral processing – and those hoping to bring an end to the lunacy, keen to save what’s left of industry and the meaningful jobs and wealth thus created.

As with any historic battle, the words and puroprted wisdom of the protagonists become etched in stone: pored over by analysts, critics and historians for eons to come.

The battle for Australia’s economic future is not yet lost. However, with power costs to businesses tripling in just on two years, year-on-year retail power increases of…

Not for the first time and not for the last time, Australia’s PM, Malcolm Turnbull is facing a nemesis of his own creation.

The first time round, as Liberal opposition leader, Turnbull’s innate desire to pander to inner-city lefties had him snuggle up to Labor (the party he was naturally designed to lead) and advocate for a broad-based Federal tax on CO2 emissions.

That dalliance cost him the leadership, as Tony Abbott fronted the Liberal/National party room, vowed to reject any kind of ‘carbon tax’ put up by Labor and to repeal any such tax if in government: Abbott took the leadership baton by a single vote. Abbott went on to win a landslide victory in 2013 and scrapped Labor’s ‘carbon tax’ the following year.

This time round, Tony Abbott (having been knifed as a sitting PM by Turnbull in September 2015) is merrily throwing hand grenades from the back…

Germans are a relatively cool tempered bunch, keen for consensus and to avoid serious civil confrontation.

Which goes some way to explain why Germany was overrun by these things; with thousands of them speared all across their farms and forests. However, Germans quite obviously have their limits of tolerance.

During the winter just gone, with a total collapse in wind and solar poweroutput, Germany had to scramble to keep its lights on using coal-fired power plants, resurrected to deal with a grid on the brink of collapse and nuclear power imported from France.

Rocketing power prices have also taken their toll on the German sense of humour.

But, as with every community forced to live with these things, Germans are just as hostile: constant exposure to turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound is enough to rattle the resolve of even the most stoic.

And now that the victims…

Stephen Scherer and the bill that crushed 35 jobs.

Pensioners who can no longer afford power vote.

The adult children of those pensioners vote.

South Australian businessman, Stephen Scherer – owner of Plastic Granulating Services – who was forced to permanently shut the gates on an otherwise profitable business when his power bill went from $80,000 a month to $180,000 a month votes.

The 35 workers who lost their jobs as a result of the above vote.

Families struggling to pay retail power bills rising, year-on-year, by 20% vote.

The hundreds of thousands of workers in mining, mineral processing and heavy industry threatened by rocketing power prices vote.

The thousands of (former and maybe still hopeful) workers in the manufacturing sector whose jobs have already disappeared thanks to rocketing power prices vote.

We could go on.

The point is that Australia’s so-called ‘energy crisis’ was as perfectly predictable, as it…

Josh, they’ve worked it out. What’s your next bright idea?

As witless as they are gutless, the Federal Liberal/National Coalition government is tearing itself apart over energy.

In particular, renewable energy; and the choice between the existing annual 33,000 GWh Large-Scale RET – roughly 26% of annual consumption, which is already destroying businesses and punishing households with 20% year-on-year price increases (even though the annual target this year is a mere 26,000 GWh and doesn’t hit 33,000 until 2020) – and a 42% RET, which is the cornerstone of Alan Finkel’s fantasy of running Australia on sunshine, breezes and mythical grid-scale battery storage.

Conservatives within the Coalition, rallying behind their only hope, Angus Taylor, have finally tumbled to the fact that power prices matter; and that when power prices are exorbitant and rocketing, routine-load shedding and mass blackouts matter even more. This group have worked out that enough is enough…