VIDEO: ONTARIO DROWNING IN DEBT
Trying to get the low-informed voters to understand how serious Ontario’s debt is for the whole province.
Click to go to video link….
Liberal corruption and incompetence.
Kathleen Wynne doesn’t like to talk “DEFICIT”!
VIDEO: ONTARIO DROWNING IN DEBT
Trying to get the low-informed voters to understand how serious Ontario’s debt is for the whole province.
Click to go to video link….
Contracts signed for wind turbines favour the industry – NOT the farmers!
Contracts signed by more than 1,000 farmers for the collapsed midlands’ wind energy projects should be reviewed as a matter of urgency, a legal expert has warned.
While the midlands wind energy plans are in limbo following the failed energy export negotiations between the Irish and British governments, Nora Fagan – a member of the Law Society’s commercial business panel – says the lease options negotiated by energy companies could still have serious long-term consequences for farming families.
Ms Fagan, who outlined her concerns at a recent Law Society seminar in Tullamore, told the Farming Independent this week that the main legal problem centred on the contracted options.
“While the wind turbine companies may only be leasing a hectare of land from a contracting farmer to construct the wind turbine, the option is placed as a burden on the entire farm,” she said.
“This ensures that the energy companies have access to the land for the necessary cabling and ducting required for the transmission of electricity from the turbine, but it also has an impact on the zoning of the land.
“The effect of signing such an option essentially places the farm within a legal vacuum for the period of the option,” Ms Fagan claimed.
Many farmers who signed the agreements with Element Power and Mainstream Renewable Power believed they were only pledging one hectare of land for wind farm development, but Ms Fagan said a clause in the agreements meant no registrations could be made on the farm without the consent of the wind farm operators.
Restrictions
“These legal restrictions cover a wide range of issues including leases and mortgages and indeed farmers have recently discovered that the transfer of land for housing sites has been prohibited,” she claimed.
Ms Fagan also warned that the income from the wind farm leases – the bulk of them initially for five-year periods – will be treated as commercial income and not farm-related income.
“Many farmers have received a payment of €1,000 from wind farm companies for the execution of the option over their farm. These payments are fully taxable and do not qualify as income that can be set off against ordinary agricultural reliefs. Their net benefit after tax relative to the personal restrictions they impose on the farmer is questionable,” she said.
Some lease agreements reviewed by Ms Fagan suggest that the energy companies will indemnify farmers against the loss of certain reliefs.
However, she stressed that the reliefs identified were those which existed at the moment and that the farmer was not indemnified against any subsequent or amending reliefs which may be introduced in the future.
“Considering some of the lease agreements have a life of 30 years with an option of another 30 and the payments are fully taxable, farmers and their families may find themselves in a worse situation in the years to come than they are today.”
Fagan also insisted that the options currently owned by the energy companies were “fully assignable” without the prior consent of the landowner.
Options
“Wind farm companies are multinational and trade their options on the international markets so it is quite possible that the options could transfer to another company at some stage during the lease and the landowner will have no say in this transfer or how it may affect his or her farm,” she said.
She has called on the IFA, who assisted farmers with the wind farm lease option documents, to renegotiate the necessary amendments to these leases.
The wind farm proposals for themMidlands envisaged Element Power and Mainstream investing €8bn in the construction of 1,200 wind turbines in seven counties as part of a plan to export energy to Britain via an Irish Sea inter-connector.
Bord na Mona had also proposed investing over €1bn in a wind energy hub on cut-away bogs in the midlands. However, the semi-state company last week announced the project as originally planned would not proceed following the collapse of energy export negotiations between the Irish and British governments.
Energy Minister Pat Rabbitte stated last week that midlands project “would not proceed”, saying the negotiations stalled because of “the economic, policy and regulatory complexities involved”.
Reacting to Ms Fagan’s claims, Element Power told the Farming Independent that it does not publicly discuss its commercial arrangements with landowners.
“Element Power has entered into agreements with hundred of landowners across five midland counties.
“Each of these individuals has obtained their own independent legal advice.
“The format of the agreement was negotiated at length between Element Power and the Irish Farmers’ Association and its legal advisors and has since been reviewed by approximately one hundred different solicitors across the midlands,” said the statement.
Mainstream Renewable Power was contacted last week for a comment on Ms Fagan’s claims, but had not responded to our query before we went to press.
The IFA declined to comment when contacted.
Wind Turbines….a waste of land, money, and communities!
4TH GENERATION FARMER MAKES RATIONAL ARGUMENT AGAINST WIND TURBINES
Randy Williams — Rock River Times — April 22, 2014
This letter is intended to share some of the thoughts of a fourth-generation Boone County farmer in regards to the intention of the County to allow, and some neighbors to promote, wind turbines to be built in Northern Boone County.
It is important to recognize that the residents of this rural area have chosen to live in this rural area – to make their livings and to enjoy their lives – because of the residential and agricultural zoning that allows them separation from densely populated and designated industrial areas. The reason that designated industrial areas exist is to protect residential and agricultural areas from the byproducts associated with heavy industry, such as excessive sound, light, stray voltage, heavy traffic, and so on.
In bringing wind turbines to Boone County, some are essentially trying to disguise heavy industry as farming. Some have even had the audacity to call their decision to financially benefit from the wind turbines as “freedom to farm.” It would appear, in fact, that they are looking for freedom to have industry.
It seems to be not too far of a stretch to say that, if we have industrial turbines, why can’t we bring in some other industry? Maybe a big factory, like Motorola*, where they could make some electronics? If we call it an electronics farm, probably some industrious individuals could then say that qualified also as freedom to farm.
Someone else said, in the newspaper, “this could be Northern Boone County’s Chrysler.” Could it be that Northern Boone County does not need, nor does it want, a Chrysler? Aside from the logistical and financial untruths of this statement, the residents living in Northern Boone County have chosen to live in this rural environment because they enjoy the lifestyle offered here. If they wanted to live in the shadow of such a mecca of industry, they would live there.
So why, then, have some farmers agreed to the preposterous contract allowing wind turbines onto their property? One sentiment that could explain some of these behaviors is this: at a meeting last fall, someone said to the County Board “if you don’t give us these wind turbines, what are you going to do for us?” It seems to me that as a farmer, you are responsible for making a living by farming, not looking to the county to help you find a way to find subsidies, not demanding that the county allow you to benefit at the detriment of the health, financial well-being, and general lifestyles of your neighbors.
Last week, I drove to Spring Valley for some unrelated business which took me right past hundreds of windmills. It was interesting that on a nice, clear, breezy day, no wind turbines were turning, not one. I liken the wind turbines directly to Motorola, the story of the huge factory in Harvard being known only too well in this area, because of the similarity between the exciting promises made in building them, and the disappointing reality of both scenarios. I sadly wonder how much money was being made for those “farmers” from that day’s harvest,” just as I cringe at the supposed prosperity offered by the Motorola company for the communities in McHenry County.
It is my hope that members of the County Board will carefully consider the facts in making their decisions regarding the proposed zoning amendment and not be swayed by the unlikely promises or desperate pleas offered by wind turbine advocates.
Randy Williams
Poplar Grove, Ill.
Wind Power…..Good for NOTHING!
Wind Power Costs send Germans back to the Stone Age
April 22, 2014 by 1 Comment
![axeman_thumb[1]](http://stopthesethings.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/axeman_thumb1.jpg)
Power starved Germans take matters into their own hands.
If you’re going down to the German woods today, beware of a big surprise.
Although it won’t be cuddly Teddys with well-stocked picnic baskets and wonderful games to play – chances are it’ll be a power starved German armed with an axe, looking to filch a pile of timber to cook his bratwurst and warm his home.
In the last couple of posts we’ve looked at the social and economic disaster that is German renewables policy.
The Germans launched into massively subsidised wind and solar power with power prices rising 80 per cent in real terms in little over a decade. Unable to pay skyrocketing power bills, 800,000 German households have been disconnected from the grid – with that number growing by 300,000 each year. In addition, almost 7 million Germans are suffering “fuel poverty” – forced to choose between eating or heating.
Always a resourceful lot, power-starved Germans have grabbed their axes and have headed back to the woods in an effort to obtain that which their insane renewables policy denies: affordable energy. However, it seems their new timber-driven energy economy is premised on a “user-doesn’t-pay” model that has left German foresters unamused.
Here’s SpiegelOnline’s look at Germany’s return to the Stone Age.
Woodland Heists: Rising Energy Costs Drive Up Forest Thievery
Spiegel Online
Renuka Rayasam
17 January 2014
With energy costs escalating, more Germans are turning to wood burning stoves for heat. That, though, has also led to a rise in tree theft in the country’s forests. Woodsmen have become more watchful.
With snow blanketing the ground, it’s the perfect time of year to snuggle up in front of a fireplace. That, though, makes German foresters nervous. When the mercury falls, the theft of wood in the country’s woodlands goes up as people turn to cheaper ways to heat their homes.
“The forest is open for everyone to enter and people just think they can help themselves, but they can’t!” says Enno Rosenthal, head of the forest farmers association in the northeastern German state of Brandenburg. “Naturally, those log piles belong to someone and there is a lot of money and work that goes into them.”
The problem has been compounded this winter by rising energy costs. The Germany’s Renters Association estimates the heating costs will go up 22 percent this winter alone. A side effect is an increasing number of people turning to wood-burning stoves for warmth. Germans bought 400,000 such stoves in 2011, the German magazine FOCUS reported this week. It marks the continuation of a trend: The number of Germans buying heating devices that burn wood and coal has grown steadily since 2005, according to consumer research company GfK Group.
That increase in demand has now also boosted prices for wood, leading many to fuel their fires with theft.
Rosenthal said just last weekend someone stole an entire bundle of oak wood worth about €150 ($199) from a private forest in the town of Neuruppin outside of Berlin. “Many foresters come back to their wood piles and find them a little smaller or even gone,” he says.
A Gray Zone
About 10 percent of the firewood that comes out of Brandenburg’s forest every year is stolen, resulting in losses of about €500,000, Rosenthal estimates. In the southern German state of Bavaria some 5 percent is absconded with annually says Hans Bauer, head of the state’s forest owners association.
“A gray zone has developed,” says Rosenthal. “Normally if you sell sausages, you create a business and pay taxes, but with wood some people are laxer.” He says many people steal wood and then resell it via ads in the newspaper. Such sales, needless to say, tend to be of the under-the-table variety.
Other thieves are more spontaneous, says Bauer. Often people will just drive by a pile of wood and see it as invitation to steal, he says. “Drivers just stop, open up their trunks and put the wood in and drive off,” he says. “It’s that easy.”
Bauer says that a couple of years ago, a driver loaded up €2,000 worth of wood into a truck and drove off. He was eventually caught and paid a fine to the forest owner. But Bauer says such retribution is rare.
Extreme Measures
Bauer now advises foresters to keep wood deep in the forests away from busy thoroughfares and to make logs too large to fit in regular cars, keeping temptation for casual thieves at bay.
Often, however, even those measures aren’t enough. Rosenthal said that just a few years ago foresters would leave log piles in the forest for up to a year to dry. Now, though, he says they aren’t kept for more than a month before moving to more secure locales. “Keeping the wood under your own surveillance is the best protection,” says Rosenthal.
In the western German city of Hessisch Lichtenau other foresters are taking a more extreme approach, according to local daily theHessische/Niedersächsische Allegemeine. In recent years, two major tree heists have taken place in town and the state experiences losses of millions of euros as a result. The paper reports that now some foresters are outfitting log piles with GPS devices to track thieves.
Spiegel Online
With hundreds of thousands of (former) German power consumers with no power at all – millions struggling to pay for power – and no relief in sight – German foresters are fighting a losing battle. Deprive people of the basic necessities of life and they will do whatever it takes to replace them with the closest thing available.
Cooking a meal and warming a home were – until pretty recently – matters which Germans, no doubt, largely took for granted. Thanks to the insane cost of their renewable policy – for a substantial and growing number of German households – these basics are now beyond reach.
As we have pointed out before, the costs of wind power fall disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable in society (see our posts here and here).
What might make a few inner-city lefties feel good – for the few moments in their day (if ever) that they consider energy policy – carries with it the social cost of deprivation and exclusion that is a form of unjustified punishment. Access to affordable power is a matter of social equity: but social equity is now running a poor second to “green” ideology, as – thanks to the exorbitant cost of wind power – electricity has been turned into an “aspirational” good for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap.
With Australia following Germany’s lead on wind power policy, we’re well down the track to a return to the Stone Age. Australia’s “wind power capital”, South Australia (population 1.6 million) has more than 50,000 homes disconnected from the grid because they can no longer afford to pay their power bills – with more being cut-off daily. These people have taken to lighting their homes with candles – and cooking on wood stoves and barbeques. As to why South Australians suffer the highest power prices in the world (see our post here).
So, unless Australia scraps its insanely expensive, totally ineffective and, therefore, unsustainable Renewable Energy Target – like the Germans – we’ll be sharpening our axes and heading off on Stone Age timber gathering adventures of our own.
Wind power costs sends them back to the future.
A SPRING ELECTION IS IN THE CARDS!!! Ontario stands a chance!
ONW EXCLUSIVE: HORWATH, AIDES DECIDE TO FORCE SPRING ELECTION
By Susanna Kelley
Andrea Horwath and her most senior advisors have made the decision to pull the plug on the minority Liberal government and go to a spring election, sources have told OntarioNewsWatch.com.
Ms. Horwath and her inner circle have determined they cannot be seen to be propping up Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals now that criminal charges may be laid in connection with the alleged wiping of 24 computer hard drives in the Premier’s Office.
Senior NDP advisors believe that supporting the Liberals would give PC leader Tim Hudak “too much of a hammer” against Ms. Horwath and they don’t want to be put in that position in the public eye, says an inside source.
A major consideration is that it is the Conservatives that pose the biggest threat to new ridings won by the NDP since Ms. Horwath became leader – Niagara Falls, London West, Windsor-Tecumseh, Kitchener-Waterloo, Essex, and others.
An e-mail has gone out to riding associations offering them insurance for their campaign offices – a routine election procedure that is not usually done until a party has decided it is definitely going to the polls.
“They don’t want to give Hudak the ammunition” of accusing Ms. Horwath and NDP MPPs of propping up a government whose paid staffer has allegedly broken the law by facilitating the deletion of information such as that concerning the gas plants scandal.
As news of the decision spread at Queen’s Park, NDP’s media director Eion Callan called ONW to “deny the premise” of the story.
In an aggressive tone, Mr. Callan called it “irresponsible,” “grossly inaccurate speculation,” and said the proof of that would be seen eventually.
Asked if that meant the NDP would vote for the budget and continue supporting the Liberals, Mr. Callan evaded the question.
A statement by NDP house leader Gilles Bisson called the information that a decision has been made “a complete fabrication.” He did not deny that the NDP would defeat the upcoming budget.
ONW replied that it stands completely behind the story.
The Liberals under Dalton McGuinty cancelled the construction of two gas plants – in Oakville and Mississauga – at the eleventh hour, costing the taxpayers more than $1 billion. Critics charge they were cancelled in order to save five Liberal seats in the 2011 election, enabling the party to win a minority government.
Mr. Hudak has pushed hard for another election ever since then.
His efforts have ramped up strongly since the OPP revealed there may be charges laid against former McGuinty Chief of Staff David Livingston for allegedly providing an administrative password to an outside computer expert who the OPP allege wiped the computer.
Mr. Hudak and PC MPP Lisa MacLeod have charged that Ms. Horwath has lost the moral authority to continue supporting the Liberal minority government because of these developments.
Mr. Hudak is being sued by Ms. Wynne for libel after he commented that she “oversaw and possibly ordered” the wiping of the hard drives.
Ms. Wynne has denied that, launching a suit seeking $2 million dollars in damages against Mr. Hudak, Ms. MacLeod and the Conservative Party.
While pressure from labour (which is worried about consequences for working Ontarians and the unions themselves from a Tim Hudak government) and unforeseen events could still have an effect, there are other signs the NDP is full-up preparing for a spring election.
ONW has also confirmed reports by The Toronto Star’s Robert Benzie that the NDP is holding “intensive” campaign readiness training for senior campaign workers this week.
Posted date : April 21, 2014
Global warming fear is used as a tool of coercion!
Global Warming’s Upside-Down Narrative
NEW YORK – When politicians around the world tell the story of global warming, they cast it as humanity’s greatest challenge. But they also promise that it is a challenge that they can meet at low cost, while improving the world in countless other ways. We now know that is nonsense.
Political heavyweights from US Secretary of State John Kerry to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon call climate change “the greatest challenge of our generation.” If we fail to address it, Kerry says, the costs will be “catastrophic.” Indeed, this has been the standard assertion of politicians since the so-called Stern Review commissioned by the British government in 2006.
That report famously valued the damage caused by global warming at 5-20% of GDP – a major disruption “on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the twentieth century.”
Tackling climate change, we are told, would carry a much lower cost. The president of the European Commission promised that while the European Union’s climate policies are “not cost-free,” they would amount to just 0.5% of GDP. Indeed, politicians of all stripes have reiterated the Stern Review’s finding that global warming can be curtailed by policies costing just 1% of world GDP.
Climate policies, moreover, are said to help in many other ways. US President Barack Obama promised that policies to combat global warming would create five million new green jobs. The EU claimed that green energy would help “improve the EU’s security of energy supply.”
With the completion of the latest report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we can now see that this narrative is mostly wrong. The first installment of the IPCC report showed that there is indeed a climate problem – emissions of greenhouse gases, especially CO₂, lead to higher temperatures, which will eventually become a net problem for the world. This result was highly publicized.
But the report also showed that global warming has dramatically slowed or entirely stopped in the last decade and a half. Almost all climate models are running far too hot, meaning that the real challenge of global warming has been exaggerated. Germany and other governments called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted.
The second IPCC installment showed that the temperature rise that we are expected to see sometime around 2055-2080 will create a net cost of 0.2-2% of GDP – the equivalent of less than one year of recession. So, while the IPCC clearly establishes that global warming is a problem, the cost is obviously much less than that of the twentieth century’s two world wars and the Great Depression.
Again, not surprisingly, politicians tried to have this finding deleted. British officials found the peer-reviewed estimate “completely meaningless,” and, along with Belgium, Norway, Japan, and the US, wanted it rewritten or stricken. One academic speculated that governments possibly felt “a little embarrassed” that their previous exaggerated claims would be undercut by the UN.
The third installment of the IPCC report showed that strong climate policies would be more expensive than claimed as well – costing upwards of 4% of GDP in 2030, 6% in 2050, and 11% by 2100. And the real cost will likely be much higher, because these numbers assume smart policies, instantly enacted, with key technologies magically available.
Again, politicians tried to delete or change references to these high costs. British officials explained that they wanted such cost estimates cut because they “would give a boost to those who doubt action is needed.”
Green jobs have been created only with heavy subsidies, costing a similar number of jobs elsewhere. Indeed, each extra job created cost more than $11 million in the US. And facile claims that renewable sources can boost energy security look a lot less convincing after the crisis in Ukraine; Europe now understands that only large and stable energy supplies matter.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphClimate change has been portrayed as a huge catastrophe costing as much as 20% of world GDP, though brave politicians could counter it at a cost of just 1% of GDP. The reality is just the opposite: We now know that the damage cost will be perhaps 2% of world GDP, whereas climate policies can end up costing more than 11% of GDP.
What makes this story all the more amazing is that experts have known almost all of these facts for a long time. The Stern Review was produced by bureaucrats and never subjected to peer review. Economists knew that the damage costs had been extensively massaged, and that the estimates were outliers compared to the academic literature. The unfathomably low projections for policy costs were artifacts of ignoring most liabilities, again contradicting the academic literature. The media, eager for breathless headlines, share the blame with politicians for this state of affairs. Following the release of the Stern Review, one British newspaper reportedly wrote: “Act now or the world we know will be lost forever.” Being accurate is less sexy, but much more informative.
We live in a world where one in six deaths are caused by easily curable infectious diseases; one in eight deaths stem from air pollution, mostly from cooking indoors with dung and twigs; and billions of people live in abject poverty, with no electricity and little food. We ought never to have entertained the notion that the world’s greatest challenge could be to reduce temperature rises in our generation by a fraction of a degree.
The solution is to stop applauding politicians who warn of catastrophe and promote poor policies. Instead of subsidizing inefficient solar and wind power with little benefit, we need to invest in long-term green innovation. And we need to give more attention to all of the other problems. This is perhaps less entertaining, but it will do much more good.
Climate change is a sales gimmick for the Faux-green enterprises.
WHEN AN AGW BELIEVER TELLS YOU THAT NO ONE IS MAKING MONEY OFF OF CLIMATE CHANGE…..
Here’s some more ammunition for you. (Hint: They’re all Liberals)
Gore Pocketed ~$18 Million from Now-Defunct Chicago Climate Exchange
Although the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) collapsed and shut down this week, Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management LLP pocketed approximately $17.8 million on it’s 2.98% share of the exchange when it was sold to the publicly traded Intercontinental Exchange a mere 6 months ago.
According to news reports, the brainchild of the exchange, academic Richard Sandor, founded the exchange with a foundation gift of $1.1 million, and pocketed $98.5 million for his 16.5% share of the CCX. This would place the value of Gore’s firm’s stake at almost $18 million.
Note Gore is the founder, chairman, and largest shareholder in Generation Investment Management LLP. Barack Obama was on the Joyce Foundation Board when it provided the funding to establish the CCX. Maurice Strong, founding head of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), precursor to the IPCC, was a CCX board member.
Ed Barnes — November 2010
Collapse of Chicago Climate Exchange Means a Strategy Shift on Global Warming Curbs
By Ed Barnes Published November 09, 2010 | FoxNews.com
The closing this week of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was envisioned to be the key player in the trillion-dollar “cap and trade” market, was the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s effort to pass the controversial program meant to combat global warming.
“It is dead for the foreseeable future,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the Environment with the Competitive Energy Institute, which had fought the measure.
That assessment was echoed by environmentalists as well.
“Economy-wide cap and trade died of what amounts to natural causes in Washington,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, which had supported the plan.
The CCX was set up in 2000 in anticipation of the United States joining Europe and other countries around the world to create a market that would reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Under the system, factories, utilities and other businesses would be given an emissions target. Those that emitted less fewer regulated gases than their target could sell the “excess” to someone who was above target. Each year, the target figures would be reset lower. Continue reading here….
It’s all about the $$$$$. Wind whiners….
Wind industry under siege
Siege being defined as the low cost of gas and the end of federal subsidies.
This Bloomberg report in the Albuquerque Journal News describes the problems with building wind energy since the end of the Federal subsidies worth $23/MWh to the turbines and the drop in the cost of natural gas caused by the expansion of hydraulic fracturing. “Power-purchase agreements in the U.S. are under severe pricing pressure because of the shale gas boom,” said Jurgen Zeschky, CEO of Nordex, a German wind-turbine maker. “That’s putting pressure on prices for wind power and makes investments very difficult.” Congress is considering restoration of subsidies, but may not act during the election season.
I’m not sure how this article came up with construction costs, but EIA estimatesshow on-shore wind projects about twice the cost per kilowatt as gas projects. Wind projects seem to dry up when the subsidies dry up.
Wind and Solar…..destructive and unaffordable!
German Wind Power Policy: an Economic Suicide Pact
April 20, 2014 by 1 Comment
Follow the Germans and I see a dark and dismal future.
For anyone looking for a taste of Australia’s economic future, then look no further than Germany. For that reason, over the next few posts, STT is going to have a close look at the debacle that is German wind power policy and its disastrous impacts on German business and households.
Germany’s renewable policy – referred to as the “Energiewende” – has seen €billions in power/taxpayer subsidies thrown at wind and solar power at the expense of German industry, manufacturing and families.
Skyrocketing renewables driven power prices are sending once competitive manufacturers and industries to the USA to benefit from energy made cheap by its recent shale oil and gas bonanza (see our post here).
For the same reason, more than 800,000 German homes are without power simply because they can no longer afford to pay their bills (see our post here). That number can only escalate – from the pieces below something like 300,000 households are being disconnected from the grid annually. And, beyond that, an even larger number suffer from what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty” – which is where a household spends more than 10% of its disposable income on energy – leaving them with the stark choice of “heat or eat” – simply because they can no longer afford both.
The fact that – for all the €billions thrown at wind and solar power – German CO2 emissions have increased not decreased – as coal-fired plants are cranked-up to keep the grid from collapsing – simply adds insult to injury (see our post here).
Here are a couple of reports from NoTricksZone on the German wind power disaster.
Max Planck Institute Economist: Germany’s Energiewende “Bordering On Suicide”… “Unimaginably Expensive Folly”
NoTricksZone
P Gosselin
6 April 2014
Richard Tol tweeted here a link to an article appearing at the Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (German Business News) about the country’s much ballyhooed Energiewende, in English: transition to renewable energies. The title:
“Max Planck economist: ‘Transition To Renewable Energy Borders On Suicide’
Leading economic experts are firing harsh criticism at the energy policy of federal super minister Sigmar Gabriel. Germany as a friendly location for business is not only being weakened, the transition to renewable energy even borders on suicide and is an unimaginably expensive folly.”
Recently Angela Merkel’s grand coalition government just decided they would water down the scale-back in renewable energy subsidies. The Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten quotes Max Planck Institute researcher Axel Börsch-Supan, who has fired harsh words at Federal Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel:
“With their policy, the grand coalition is weakening Germany’s location as a place to do business. This is especially true when it comes to the Energiewende, which is bordering on suicide.”
According to the Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, other experts are also slamming Germany’s “Energiewende”. For example Ifo Institute director Hans-Werner Sinn calls it an “unimaginably expensive folly”. Marc Tüngler director of a German financial association, calls it “a planned economy without a plan” that makes the Energiewende “unbearably expensive”.
The Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten concludes:
According to experts, the big losers are the consumers, who will have to expect continued increasing electricity prices.
NoTricksZone
And what follows Germany’s insane wind and solar power policy?
Over to NoTricksZone again.
More Germans Getting Their Power Cut Off Because They Can’t Afford Paying Sky-High Green Electric Bills
NoTricksZone
P Gosselin
19 April 2014
Just a few days ago, the IPCC WG III report claimed that CO2 emissions could be curbed with little pain involved. Well, go tell it to the more than 300,000 Germans who have had their power shut off in a single year because they no longer can afford skyrocketing electric bills. And these people live in a rich country!
And imagine what expensive power means for poor, developing countries. In such countries it’s nothing short of widespread catastrophe and grinding misery.
The online site of German news television station NTV writes of a threatening energy poverty taking hold in Europe and that”more and more people are unable to pay for the electricity that they consume. More than 300,000 German citizens are going to have their power shut off each year.”
NTV cites a report from German nation daily Die Welt, which writes German power companies turned off the power for 321,539 people because of non-payment in 2012, up from 312,500 people in 2011.
The reason for the high prices? NTV writes:
“A reason for the increased number of power shutoffs is the rash expansion of renewable energies, which lead to higher energy prices.”
Two years ago NoTricksZone reported on an article also from Die Welt who claimed that 600,000 households were getting their power cut off. The figures on power service cutoffs vary broadly. Whichever figure is correct, the scale of the social disaster is immense no matter how you look at it.
It’s time to make energy affordable and attractive for every socioeconomic level, and not a luxury good for the upper classes.
NoTricksZone
Our current (and completely unsustainable) 41,000 GW/h annual mandatory Renewable Energy Target places Australia on the same path to economic suicide.
The cost of building wind power generating capacity – and the duplicated grid infrastructure to support it – will cost in excess of $80 billion (with that cost added to Australian power consumers’ power bills) and to subsidise this colossal rort – a further $54 billion worth of Renewable Energy Certificates would be issued to wind power generators between now and 2031 when the RET expires – which, as a Federal Tax on all Australian electricity consumers, will also be slapped on top of our power bills (see our post here).
By 2020, Australian power prices are forecast to double as a result of the current RET (see our post here).
All of this will simply render Australia’s energy intensive industries – such as mineral processors and manufacturers – economically uncompetitive.
But Australians don’t have to look to Germany to see what a disaster wind power is. South Australia is Australia’s “wind power capital” – with close to half of Australia’s total installed wind power generating capacity.
As a consequence of its “brilliant” wind power policy, SA pays the highest power prices in Australia by a substantial margin and jockeys with wind power mad Denmark and the Germans for the honour of having the highest power prices in the world. Some honour!
Following Germany’s lead, SA (population 1.6 million) has more than 50,000 homes disconnected from the grid because they can no longer afford to pay their power bills – – with more being cut-off daily. These people have taken to lighting their homes with candles – and cooking on wood stoves and barbeques. As to why South Australians suffer the highest power prices in the world (see our post here).
South Australia is going backwards as a result. Mining investment has more or less ground to a halt – the promised mining boom went out with a wimper; manufacturing is a dead duck – well, at least a lame one – with the carmaker Holden promising to limp along at Elizabeth for another year or two. After which, it’ll be a case of last man out turn out the lights.
South Australia not only suffers the highest power prices in Australia, it also recently snared the dubious honour of having the highest rate of unemployment on the mainland – rising from 6.7% to 7.1% – the highest level of unemployment among mainland states by a substantial margin (Western Australia’s rate is 4.9% – down from 5.9%).
So much for all those hollow wind industry promises of thousands of green jobs for South Australians.
The equation is simple: increase the cost of an essential input to businesses and those businesses will react by cutting their other operating costs in order to maintain a profit margin and stay in business.
That leaves a business with some options: employ fewer people, pay them less or relocate the business to countries with lower operating costs. And that is precisely what is happening in Germany and South Australia.
A bright young Scot, Adam Smith was all over the relationship between input costs, profits and employment over 240 years ago when he sat down to pen a little book with a big impact: An Inquiry into the Natureand Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
This is not rocket science – it’s Economics 101.
The fundamentals unchanged since Adam Smith nutted it out in 1776.
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