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The green insanity that has gripped California policy makers since erstwhile Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor is coming home to roost.
This week the Las Vegas Review Journal reported that two of the state’s public utilities, including Pacific Gas & Electric, were going to stop buying electrical power from the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mohave desert. The purchases had been locked in when the plant started operating in 2014 but it hasn’t worked—one reason: not enough sun in the desert. There have been a myriad of other problems.
The project uses huge arrays of mirrors to focus sunlight on giant towers where the energy boils water to create steam that then is used to generate power. The plant came online in 2014 and President Obama celebrated the green initiative in what otherwise was habitat for a few creatures near the California-Nevada line off Interstate 15. The project proved very successful at frying birds—to the expected horror of the Audubon Society and other wildlife defenders, but their protests went nowhere in the rush to renewable power.
It’s worthwhile to remember just how much taxpayer money went into this project with reporting by the Las Vegas Review Journal and James Freeman’s column in the Wall Street Journal. Obama’s Administration put a stunning $1.6 billion taxpayer dollars into the bird fryer not including a variety of tax credits and other breaks and a $535 million grant to pay back a loan that already was federally guaranteed.
Yes, that’s not a misprint. Paying off a loan that already is federally backed. Only in government. Remind you of Solyndra? How many other of these green scams have the Obama and Biden administrations supported around the country that have not seen sunlight in public?
Another note on the green front: the state air board retreated from its absurd push to eliminate diesel-powered tractor trucks in California. It was in tune with the board’s notion of requiring electric locomotives in place of diesel-powered engines—the trains have not been developed. Electric trucks exist and, for some uses such as local deliveries, could make economic and practical sense. The notion of long-haul electric likely will never come to pass or take a quantum leap in battery technology.
It’s worth remembering that trucks are designed to carry heavy loads and the weight of the battery diminishes either the weight of the payload or the delivery range.
The air board dropped its requirement a week before Donald Trump was sworn in as president seeing the writing on the wall for a regulation that may have made someone feel good, but was doomed to fail.
Nine days ago the LA times ran an article on Ivanpah which Tim is repackaging here as an original thought. The Ivanpah project was scaled down from its planned size to protect an endangered desert tortoise species. This type of solar thermal station was economically viable until the plummeting cost of solar panels made their operation prohibitively expensive. What Tim and the original LA times article omit is that the Ivanpah station runs a natural gas turbine at night thus generating energy 24 hours a day. Ivanpah was a public private partnership between Google, Kelvin Energy, and Brightsource Energy that brought hundreds of high-quality jobs to California.
Solar farms steal an enormous body of land, killing wildlife in its wake and providing us with little return. They still need beautiful God giving fossil fuels to stay in existence. Forget wind, absolute waste except for those filling their pockets with cash. Listen, I’m not against alternative energy, what I am against is making a weak energy source our only source. As said many times, nuclear energy would be the ultimate to transition to until something else can replace it. We have just experienced a miracle from heaven with President Trump having won the election. I just pray he keeps putting Newsom under the gun to behave and not destroy this state until we replace him with a Republican.
“We have just experienced a miracle from heaven with President Trump having won the election.” Jake, since you added something religious to Tim’s commentary, then: The Devil himself con 49 million Trump voters into thinking Trump was heaven-sent. To 48 million American voters, Trump is a disaster.
Also, “God giving fossil fuels” is a disaster. A necessary evil, yes, but so is war.
In August 2022, the power was out again for ten hours on a Saturday. The following Monday, I called the solar contractor for information and pricing.
The permits took ten weeks to get.
I am not a climate change person. PG&E cannot keep the power on. This neighborhood experiences as many as four power outages a week.
I received 9K tax credits, I do not have a PG&E electric bill, and I pay ten dollars month for natural gas in summer, and 90 dollars in winter.
There are natural phenomena causing climate change, the moon is shrinking moving inches every year away from Earth, impacting tides and climate, and Volcanoes erupt and impact climate.
The three courageous dam in China slowed the rotation of the Earth’s six milliseconds, China is building another dam that will double the slow down another six milliseconds allowing the sun to heat the earth with greater intensity. Space junk in low earth orbit over time will form rings around Earth impacting climate.
Other phenomena impacting climate, tectonic shift, solar variability, orbital changes, and ocean currents, natural green house gases.
Humm… Michael, you are a spacED-cowboy.
Cheers.