4 ms·

> And no, just claiming, again without evidence, that a site "peddles anti-renewable talking points" is not a refutation. In fact, it is a big nothing-burger.

> And no, just claiming, again without evidence, that a site "peddles anti-renewable talking points" is not a refutation. In fact, it is a big nothing-burger. It is not a nothing burger. If the rest of the site is full of falsehoods and fallacies (e.g. (front page article about the “large” amounts of waste from use wind turbine blades) then anything else they post is also dubious by default. I’m sure they also have articles about how much waste solar panels produce at the end of their life, or the whales “hurt” by offshore wind, or the birds hurt by onshore wind, or any number of other outright falsehoods or bad faith arguments. One does not have time to read every source and regenerate every figure themselves to verify, so picking reliable sources is important. > I am well aware of from other sources Then post it from a more reputable source. > And the energy crisis 2021-2023 affected the entire world, yet for some reason the countries with intermittent renewables were worst affected? Other than the US or Australia all the other countries are in Europe. Conspicuous given that this should be a trend that hold worldwide. The countries worst affected are those that are most reliant on fossil fuels but produce none of their own. “high fossil fuel prices were the main reason for upward pressure on global electricity prices, accounting for 90% of the rise in the average costs of electricity generation worldwide (natural gas alone for more than 50%).” [0] Feel free to pursue at your pleasure some articles on how renewables have positive impacts on the grid and lower costs. [1-5] > The numbers do add up for nuclear. Yes, unfortunately the cost does keep going up and up and up. > the numbers don't add up for intermittent renewables above a certain percentages of generation. Yes yes yes. A few years ago it was that renewables would never work. Then it was that it would have to be a very small percentage of the grid. Now it’s that it’s a certain (slightly higher percentage). Someone better tell the Chinese that they should slow down their exponential renewable rollout and instead wait for their slow nuclear one to hopefully catch up. In the meantime I hope us in the rest of the world don’t get left behind chasing a predatory delay strategy: why build renewables now when we can wait another decade or two for nuclear. “Look at China’s large nuclear buildout”, forget for a second that its orders of magnitude smaller than their renewable buildout. [0]: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-global-energy-crisis-pushed-fossil-fuel-consumption-subsidies-to-an-all-time-high https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-global-energy-crisis-pu... [1]: https://www.bde.es/f/webbe/SES/Secciones/Publicaciones/InformesBoletinesRevistas/BoletinEconomico/24/T3/Files/be2403-art09e.pdf https://www.bde.es/f/webbe/SES/Secciones/Publicaciones/Infor... [2]: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/utilities/dont-blame-clean-energy-for-rising-electric-bills https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/utilities/dont-blame-cl... [3]: https://ieefa.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/BN_Why%20are%20power%20bills%20higher%20now%20than%20they%20used%20to%20be_.pdf https://ieefa.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/BN_Why%20are%2... [4]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-025-01704-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-025-01704-0 [5]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26941899.2022.2158145 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26941899.2022.2...

mpweiher 1y ago
1. The global energy crisis of 2021-2023 was, er, global. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_energy_crisis_(2021–2023) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_energy_crisis_(2021–202... Here a summary of the regional effects in, er, all parts of the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_the_2021–2023_global_energy_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_the_2021–2... Including the US, including Asia and Africa and Europe. Hence "global energy crisis". It's kind of obvious from the name. 2. The site is correct about wind turbine blades whereas you are wrong. In fact, blades currently cannot be recycled, whereas the largest part by mass, the base, could be but routinely is not. So only a small part of a wind turbine is actually recycled. Applying your own standard, which you incorrectly applied to this site, should we now ignore everything else you write? 3. So a bunch of mostly advocacy sites trying to convince us that the higher prices that are invariably happening at the same time as we put in intermittent renewables are hand-wavingly but obviously caused by something else entirely. Riiiight. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544222018035 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... "...which challenges the economic sanity of 100% intermittent renewable targets." And of course you still haven't provided any "proof" that the chart, which is so "easily disproven", is actually wrong. Because you can't. Because that's empirical data across many countries and across time, none of which was addressed, never mind challenged by the stuff you posted. 4. The Chinese are massively investing in everything that produces electricity, including huge numbers of coal plants. They also just dropped some of their subsidies for PV, which resulted in the bottom falling out of that market, and massive layoffs. https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/chinas-solar-giants-face-massive-workforce-cuts-amid-industry-crisis/123036233 https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/c... "Solar panel installations in China fell precipitously in June..." https://www.semafor.com/article/07/29/2025/chinas-solar-installations-drop https://www.semafor.com/article/07/29/2025/chinas-solar-inst... Nothing to see here, move along! Oh, and China invests massively in nuclear, currently approving about 10 plants a year, rate increasing, plants that they build in around 5 years. And please don't make the usual mistake of confusing installed capacity with actual power delivery. Well, that actually works for nuclear, because of capacity factors usually in the 90% range, but not for wind and solar. In Germany, intermittent renewables actually produced less power than three years ago, despite a massive increase in capacity. Capacity factors are dropping, partly because of unfavorable weather (yikes!), partly because all the favorable locations are already gone. And partly because at this point, what we are building is overcapacity, IIRC correctly we already have 3x the maximum power usage installed. This overcapacity is almost entirely useless, as it has to be curtailed when sun and wind are cooperating, and still doesn't provide any electricity when they are not.

mpweiher 1y ago

1. The global energy crisis of 2021-2023 was, er, global. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_energy_crisis_(2021–2023) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_energy_crisis_(2021–202... Here a summary of the regional effects in, er, all parts of the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_the_2021–2023_global_energy_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_the_2021–2... Including the US, including Asia and Africa and Europe. Hence "global energy crisis". It's kind of obvious from the name. 2. The site is correct about wind turbine blades whereas you are wrong. In fact, blades currently cannot be recycled, whereas the largest part by mass, the base, could be but routinely is not. So only a small part of a wind turbine is actually recycled. Applying your own standard, which you incorrectly applied to this site, should we now ignore everything else you write? 3. So a bunch of mostly advocacy sites trying to convince us that the higher prices that are invariably happening at the same time as we put in intermittent renewables are hand-wavingly but obviously caused by something else entirely. Riiiight. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544222018035 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... "...which challenges the economic sanity of 100% intermittent renewable targets." And of course you still haven't provided any "proof" that the chart, which is so "easily disproven", is actually wrong. Because you can't. Because that's empirical data across many countries and across time, none of which was addressed, never mind challenged by the stuff you posted. 4. The Chinese are massively investing in everything that produces electricity, including huge numbers of coal plants. They also just dropped some of their subsidies for PV, which resulted in the bottom falling out of that market, and massive layoffs. https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/chinas-solar-giants-face-massive-workforce-cuts-amid-industry-crisis/123036233 https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/c... "Solar panel installations in China fell precipitously in June..." https://www.semafor.com/article/07/29/2025/chinas-solar-installations-drop https://www.semafor.com/article/07/29/2025/chinas-solar-inst... Nothing to see here, move along! Oh, and China invests massively in nuclear, currently approving about 10 plants a year, rate increasing, plants that they build in around 5 years. And please don't make the usual mistake of confusing installed capacity with actual power delivery. Well, that actually works for nuclear, because of capacity factors usually in the 90% range, but not for wind and solar. In Germany, intermittent renewables actually produced less power than three years ago, despite a massive increase in capacity. Capacity factors are dropping, partly because of unfavorable weather (yikes!), partly because all the favorable locations are already gone. And partly because at this point, what we are building is overcapacity, IIRC correctly we already have 3x the maximum power usage installed. This overcapacity is almost entirely useless, as it has to be curtailed when sun and wind are cooperating, and still doesn't provide any electricity when they are not.