TLDR at the end > Companies have said that the cost of building wind farms has soared because of rising inflation and interest rates, while the maximum price t

TLDR at the end > Companies have said that the cost of building wind farms has soared because of rising inflation and interest rates, while the maximum price they can charge for the electricity they generate has been relatively low. There's a very subtle link between all of these, which perfectly exemplifies the need to think holistically/systemically. Let's break these statements down: 1. "rising inflation and interest rates" One might think that FED and ECB rule these, when they only follow the pace of the use of money. So what is money? It is a device to attribute value to products and services. So what is a product? It is matter that has been transported in your hands, and arranged in a very specific fashion, out of very specific materials. You know what is the only thing in the universe that can transport and arrange matter? Energy. The materials collected for a product are also energy, but not in the einstein sense, in the sense that if you had more energy you would be mining more of them. Nature gives us matter for free. It just lies there [1]. Money is created to try to make a 1:1 for energy. And as oil depletion is looming, as Russia attacked Ukraine, there's less available energy. We have: -energy -> +inflation 2. "cost of building wind farms has soared because of rising inflation and interest rates" Inflation is the fact that in money terms (also energy terms), products and services cost more. What's interesting is when you want to build energy producing things. So for wind farms, we have: +inflation -> -energy Now electrical energy is not the same as oil & gas energy. Except that it is. These become fungible on the electricity market, as gas can produce electricity. And using gas for electricity means not using gas for other things. Oil and gas prices are linked (being fungible for heat, and in chemical plants). So that means less oil, which is used in windfarm production heavily (transport of copper, transport and installation of the blades, etc.). So we have a loop: -energy -> +inflation -> -energy. This loop is a differential equation, and it has an exponential solution. It is exponentially decreasing or increasing? And also let's consider that we might want energy to do other things than building device to produce energy. Doing energy for the only sake of doing energy is not desirable, and some [2] call it the "Mordor economy". Which bring us to the EROI: Energy Return Over (Energy) Invested. That's what rules this exponential to increase or decrease. 3. "while the maximum price they can charge for the electricity they generate has been relatively low" Well isn't that talking about EROI? Meaning that market prices are not enough to sustain the differential equation in an increasing manner? The increase in price they got from the UK government just means one thing: the part of the economy dedicated to use energy to produce device producing energy must increase. They need it so that the wind loop is not exponentially decreasing. This also means the share for other uses for energy must decrease. This means less health services, fewer products, or lower quality ones. Less heating, less transport. But the wind energy will be sustained. ---- And this will get waaay worse: * There's gonna be less oil, less gas over the years * Even the gas-producing UK is saying they had to make more room for the wind farm sector * We'll want to electrify a lot more, which means even more share for the energy sector that might have EROI problems * That's without energy storage, which wind and solar need --- TLDR: This differential system is what, IMHO, is why we desperately need to change our minds towards systems that have a better EROI. Nuclear energy has a great EROI. [1] Energy is more slippery. It wants to spread out (that's called Entropy). You have to collect it and spend exponentially more (energy) the higher it is spread. For example the background radiation at 2.7 Kelvin will _never_ be useful. [2] I can't recommend enough the works of Nate Hagens and Jean-Marc Jancovici. Here is a primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=WYLKtz5A5pA https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=WYLKtz5A5pA