Venezuela is known for the greatest oil reserves in the world. However, since it became socialist on February 2, 1999, what once was one of the world’s most prosperous independent nations now imports gasoline. Socialist California with world-renowned oil and other energy producing resources has also been importing fuel and power for years.
Like Venezuelans, most Californians cannot afford the state and many are leaving.
California energy policies have forced fossil fuel and nuclear utility plants to close in order to power the entire state on green energy (solar and wind). There is talk to also eliminate hydro-plants and dams to re-wild the rivers.
The interesting aspect of the current black-outs is that people are now learning that much of our energy/fuel is being imported from outside the state. The irony is that though liberal politicians are anti-fossil and hydro power they buy power from these same sources produced elsewhere.
California has always had the ability to be energy independent with phenomenal fossil fuel reserves, natural gas, geothermal and hydro power. However, liberal state policies have crippled the exploration and extraction of oil. Hydro is stymied because the state refuses to allow more dams for water storage. Nuclear is clean energy but has a stigma with liberals.
Legislators have mandated the eventual moratorium on the use of fossil fuels but they lack the know-how to switch to ‘green energy’ and not economically crash the state. The current black-outs occurred because we had a heat wave, there was no sun or wind to create electricity at night and insufficient oil and hydro-power to import.
Fossil and hydro sources produce consistent utility flows while green energy is sporadic so the utility grid buys energy from out–of state to meet routine shortages. During daytime hours on a sunny day there can be a glut of solar-produced energy but there are no battery fields large enough to store energy for the dark periods. The storage dilemma affects wind power, as well.
Energy experts say politicians can make policies but no one has an idea how going green will practically work in real life. And the truth is that renewable energy is not really renewable or green. It’s all a bit of a fraud and very expensive, but it sounds cool to liberals.
All machines require the mining and processing of millions of tons of primary materials to make and the disposal of hardware that inevitably wears out. Compared with fossil fuels, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy.
So, any significant expansion of today’s meager amount of green energy—currently less than 4% of the country’s total consumption (versus 56% from oil and gas)—will create an unprecedented increase in global mining for needed minerals, radically increase existing environmental and labor challenges in emerging markets (where many mines are located), and dramatically increase U.S. imports and the vulnerability of America’s energy supply chain.
Mark. P Mills, Energy and Tech expert at the Manhattan Institute offers some sobering facts showing California is poised for expensive energy and routine shortages.
Mills says, “Building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than 10 times the quantity of materials, compared with building machines using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy to society.”
“A single electric car contains more cobalt than 1,000 smartphone batteries; the blades on a single wind turbine have more plastic than 5 million smartphones; and a solar array that can power one data center uses more glass than 50 million phones.”
“Replacing hydrocarbons with green machines under current plans—never mind aspirations for far greater expansion—will vastly increase the mining of various critical minerals around the world. For example, a single electric car battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. Averaged over a battery’s life, each mile of driving an electric car “consumes” five pounds of earth. Using an internal combustion engine consumes about 0.2 pounds of liquids per mile.”
“Oil, natural gas, and coal are needed to produce the concrete, steel, plastics, and purified minerals used to build green machines. The energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil is used in the processes to fabricate a single battery that can store the equivalent of one barrel of oil.”
“By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels—much of it non-recyclable—will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage.”
Are any Sacramento policy-makers interested in science and facts?
(Get Lou’s podcast at “No Hostages Radio” and his articles at nohostagesradio.com)
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