Renewable Energy Propaganda from CNBC Fails Smell Test!

Let’s just pick out some of the highlights – or lowlights, if you prefer – from this piece.

You could start with the second sentence in the first paragraph, which reads:

In the United States, one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity production, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Here the writer of the piece parrots a standard bit of propaganda from the official and approved government/media energy transition narrative, which implies that the 4% or so of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans are actually the total of all greenhouse gas emissions. So, instead of telling the truth, which is that total US ghg emissions from electricity production come to about 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions, or a quarter of what humans cause, the writer – who may not even know any better – simply resorts to the propaganda shorthand, thus misleading the readers of the story.

That’s just the first of dozens of examples of rank misinformation in this story.

The very next sentence contains another:

Solar panels and wind farms can generate electricity without releasing any greenhouse gas emissions.

This is abject nonsense, a standard renewable energy industries ruse that pretends that all the mining, manufacturing, processing, assembly and transportation required to construct their windfarms simply doesn’t exist.

Of course, though, it does exist, and it produces a huge ghg footprint that is going to grow exponentially over time if the pushers of this energy transition have their way. But the writers of this story and the pushers of wind and solar demand that we all just ignore those key parts of their industry and focus on just the turning of the gargantuan, bird-killing windmills.

Several paragraphs later, we have this:

First of all, renewables have only recently become cost-competitive with fossil fuels for generating electricity.

Again, misinformation. Renewables are only “cost-competitive” with fossil fuels if one fails to consider all the costs involved in the mining, manufacturing, processing, assembly and transportation required, and one decides that the trillions of dollars in subsidies that governments are awarding to these industries are somehow cost-free. They aren’t cost free, though, are they?

Source: Appalachia First (click image to read the whole report)

Then there’s this paragraph further down the story:

One of the biggest barriers to a 100% renewable grid is the intermittency of many renewable power sources. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine — and the windiest and sunniest places are not close to all the country’s major population centers.

The truth, of course, is that saying “the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine” is putting the best face possible on these intermittent energy sources. The truth is that, even in the most ideal locations, the wind only blows and the sun only shines on average at sufficient levels for a few hours per day to really make these technologies work. In many parts of the world, installing solar or wind is nothing more than a government pork-fed boondoggle, something all Brits are very familiar with by now.

Next we have this gem from a fellow named Paul Denholm from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory:

Transmission lines are another limiting factor.

“We have been able to build a fair amount of wind and solar without adding new transmission” Denholm says.

This is nonsense. Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent in various states on transmission systems dedicated to moving wind-generated electricity from the wind farms’ remote locations to population centers hundreds of miles distant. Texas alone spent $7 billion on a transmission system a decade ago whose initial price tag was supposed to come in at about $1 billion. Now, state legislators will be considering plans to expand that system and invest billions more to accommodate the rent-seeking solar industry as well.

That’s just in Texas.

None of this is free, folks, no matter how much rank propaganda our news media puts out about it. It’s all very expensive, and guess who gets to bear ultimate cost of it all? The ratepayers. It’s a regressive tax on everyone who uses electricity, one that hits the poorest among us the hardest.

Also, renewables are not, contrary to what CNBC wants you to think, emissions-free. Far from it – they in fact generate an enormous emissions footprint, not to mention all the ecological devastation and human rights atrocities the mining of their critical minerals creates in China and the Congo. But we’re all supposed to just ignore all of that and avoid commenting on it, too.

Look, there is nothing wrong with wind and solar energy – both can be excellent sources of electricity when properly sited and managed, and competently integrated into a power grid. They have a role to play here, and the world is going to need more of all power generation sources if future demand is to be met, unless, of course, the Malthusian ghouls at the WEF end up having their way.

We ought to be able to talk about all energy sources in factual terms, without all the rank propaganda and half-truth talking points. Stories like this one from CNBC do nothing to advance an honest, fact-based debate, and do much to create confusion that make the formulation of good public policy around it all more difficult to achieve.

For some of us, the pretense of it all is just too much to stay quiet about. So, in the new year, I’ll just keep talking about it here because, hey, somebody’s got to do it.

This article originally appeared at the excellent Energy Transition Absurdities (subscribe today!) and is reposted here with the permission of the author.