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"Renewables" are energy laundering

Reader comment on item: The End of Carbon Fuels?

Submitted by Ike Kiefer (United States), Jul 25, 2018 at 21:25

Anyone who understands the characteristics of energy density, power density, EROI, etc. required to mine and produce steel, concrete, glass, carbon fiber, aluminum, rare earths, etc., already knows that wind turbines and solar panels and biofuel plantations are monuments to fossil fuel energy and would themselves not exist except for energy borrowed from fossil fuels. Less than 1% of global energy comes from these fossil fuel-dependent "renewables," and energy demand is growing faster than renewable capacity, meaning non-renewable energy growth is outpacing RE growth. That is the real story.

Electricity is just the market place were these non-economic and high-environmental footprint rent-seekers go to launder their unreliable, low capacity factor, diffuse, remote, low-EROI, low-value intermittent power into real green cash via market distorting government mandates and subsidies.

Because of the low energy return on investment (EROI) of renewables ( 20:1), diversion of the latter to produce the former is a net loss to civilization that only increases the rate of consumption of the finite resource to produce final delivered energy less efficiently. If any significant amount of "renewable" electricity went into Burj Khalifa, it would only have served to increase the total amount of energy required to> 100% of what it would have been if done purely with fossil fuels.

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Reader comments (9) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
Carbon [59 words]AlbertE.Jan 6, 2019 18:23247005
"Renewables" are energy laundering [210 words]Ike KieferJul 25, 2018 21:25243877
2Governance of the seas and energy sufficiency fuel "First Israel victory, then peace" suggestion [170 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
Orestis SchinasJul 3, 2018 18:31243589
A pipe dream [51 words]Bob TankelJun 24, 2018 22:25243435
I bet the Stanford Professor is against fossil fuels on ideological grounds [242 words]AnonJun 22, 2018 10:58243389
Long term [122 words]Iddo WernickJun 20, 2018 13:52243363
the end of gas [2 words]Hessel MeilechJun 20, 2018 08:36243362
Great article! [17 words]Michael RachkovskyJun 19, 2018 23:44243348
Alternative scenario [89 words]Cary HillebrandJun 19, 2018 20:02243342

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