If you were dying of thirst in a desert and came upon a beautiful fresh water stream would you pass it by because it was not filtered water?
If you were a vegetarian and had not eaten for three days would you reject a hamburger that was offered to you?
This political cartoonist had another take with the same theme.
These are a few examples that come to mind as I try to process in my mind the apparent insanity that has taken hold in Germany and California.
I don't know any other way to describe the energy policies they are are following.
Germany's entire economy and society is on the brink of collapse due to high energy costs.
Last year Germany had announced plans to close its three remaining nuclear power plants by the end of this year.
In a sane world, you would think that Germany would reverse that policy and keep those nuclear plants running and generating electricity in light of its current energy challenges.
However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated this weeky that Germany will not reverse course on that decision.
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| Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/07/german-chancellor-rejects-calls-to-reverse-nuclear-power-plants-closure |
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has rejected calls for his government to commit to a longer-term extension of the life of the country’s nuclear power plants and insisted that Europe’s largest economy would have enough energy to get through the winter.
Perhaps they will have enough energy to get through the winter but at what cost?
Citizen protests are ramping up regarding the surging energy costs.
Something has to give.
German households cannot afford to pay energy costs that are many multiples of what they have been paying.
German businesses and industries simply cannot survive energy costs and keep producing at the recent levels for very long without going bankrupt.
Steel. Auto manufacturing. Chemicals. There is no future in Germany for these industries with these exorbitant energy price in their cost structures.
Keep an eye of Germany. I don't know where it is headed but it cannot be good.
The UK seems to be more in touch with reality.
New Prime Minister Liz Truss announced yesterday that the UK is cancelling the nation's moratorium on fracking.
It is not the first time in history that the UK has been sane and Germany insane.
In the meantime, what is happening in California?
California is the state that two weeks ago announced new rules that would totally ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles in the state by 2035. The 100% ban is being phased in over the next 13 years.
By the end of this decade, California is requiring that 68% of new vehicles sold in the state must be zero-emissions. That is just 8 years away.
Zero emission new car sales were 12% in 2021.
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| Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/25/california-bans-the-sale-of-new-gas-powered-cars-by-2035.html |
Less than a week later California was telling electric car owners to not charge their vehicles because of too much strain on the electric grid due to a heat wave.
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| Source: https://www.newsweek.com/californians-told-not-charge-electric-cars-gas-car-sales-ban-1738398 |
If California is telling electric car owners to not charge their cars now what is going to happen in 2026 or 2030, let alone 2035?
Does anyone know how long it takes to plan, get the permits and construct a new electric power generation plant? If you start now you might have something in 7-10 years if you are lucky.
Even if the electricity is generated it has to be interconnected to the electric grid and that has proven to be a major problem in California and elsewhere due to permit and bureaucracy delays. It currently takes 2.5 to 3 years just to move from an interconnection request to a connection agreement for most solar projects in the United States.
If you rely on solar energy there is also the problem of storing that power when the sun goes down. This requires the installation of gigantic and expensive reserve battery systems that can store the power until it is needed.
California has become increasingly reliant on solar power for its energy needs.
The problem is that the supply of renewable energy is down when the sun sets but residential demand is up in the evening hours when people are in their homes. When are people charging those electric cars at home?
This graph shows where the energy sources for the power generation came from in California on September 7 in 5-minute increments.
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| Source: https://www.caiso.com/todaysoutlook/Pages/supply.aspx |
As you can see, renewables (green line) are providing a fair amount of energy between 8 am and 6pm. It then it drops like a rock. As a result, California is heavily reliant on natural gas (orange line) for power generation when the sun is not shining.
Notice as well that natural gas is still the predominant source of supply for power generation all day long despite the strides California has made with renewables.
It should be noted that California is also pretty heavily reliant on imported energy (red line) from other states to keep the grid going.
All of this explains why these Flex Alerts have become common in California recently. At times of high demand there will not be enough electricity for all that need it. Rolling blackouts are then required.
Most people would also be surprised to learn that California is actually producing less zero-carbon electricity today than it did a decade ago. I know I was.
That is because of the shutdown of a large nuclear plant (San Onofre) that supplied 9% of total electricity needs in 2011 and less hydro power due to continuing drought conditions in California.
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| Credit: https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1567608757844344832 |
California has made big bets and advances in using solar and wind for power generation over the last decade.
However, despite this massive ramp up, only 16% of California's total power generation is coming from renewables today.
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| Source: https://www.californiadgstats.ca.gov |
It also needs to be noted that renewables, whether solar, wind, or hydroelectric, are fundamentally unreliable because they depend on the weather.
California is seeing that right now as Texas did in Winter, 2021 when its wind turbines froze up in cold weather.
Therefore, any grid that relies on renewables has to build in contingency generation sources based on nuclear, natural gas or coal or risk having the grid shut down. This is evident in looking at the Supply Trend graph referenced above.
It looks like Tesla owners have had to put their own contingency plans in place in California.
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| Credit: https://www.instagram.com/p/CiNiwmrOzaF/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=6c9c060a-ec9d-40db-bc25-010e98361f25 |
As in Germany, I don't know where this goes in California.
However, something has to give.
What they are attempting to do does not compute.
All of this is being done in the name of preventing climate change.
I don't know whether climate change is a real issue or not.
Or if it is, can it be said that man is the cause...or whether we can do anything about it in any event.
I do know that the climate has changed before and man had nothing to do with it.
Scientists say that at one time we had temperatures much higher than we have now. We then had an ice age. And then the ice melted. Some say we are just coming out of a mini-ice age that has lasted over the last couple hundred years.
We had much more severe weather conditions in the United States in the 1930's than anything we have seen recently.
We hear predictions made about threats to our survival from climate change 10, 30, 50 or 100 years from now. That is an 'inconvenient truth" I have written about before.
Of course, I am old enough to remember similar predictions made 20 years ago that have not come to pass.
I do know that at no time in human history have we ever abandoned affordable and workable energy sources without a practical solution to replace them to meet current needs.
I also know that no civilized and moral people have ever sacrificed people based on prophecies by false gods relating to the future
I am all for developing all of the energy sources we can from both renewable and non-renewable sources.
We should exclude nothing. I would like nothing better than a perpetual motion machine that generated all the energy we needed to power the world.
Without energy the prospects of our society and world is bleak.
However, a sane society does not unilaterally disarm itself.
Are Germany and California living in a sane world?
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