Albuquerque’s City Councilors (you can contact them here) should oppose a resolution with the goal of the City of Albuquerque obtain 25% of its electricity from solar. A resolution is being voted on tonight (May 16, 2016) on this very issue.
I won’t rehash the economic challenges facing the City, but we all know they are real. And while the alleged creation of new jobs sounds great, the reality is that those “green jobs” have been dramatically-oversold.
What we do know is that PV solar costs considerably more than traditional energy sources (as seen in the chart below). If people want to buy their own solar, that is their choice, but the City of Albuquerque should not be foisting higher cost electricity on taxpayers in an already-struggling economy.
Every time I opine that no one is that stupid (About you-name-it), up jumps a bunch of someones to prove me wrong! Until we develop a battery the size of a footlocker that will power a city block for 72 hours, we should subsidize no power source that cannot be ramped up or down with a switch.
If renewables are green what trees produce them!
Mainstream media sources in the U.S. give us the impression that renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, are advancing smartly and soon will be providing 50% or more of the energy that is produced. The reality is very much the opposite. If you want to learn what’s really going on, you will never find out from reading the New York Times or Washington Post, whose missions in this area are basically to suppress all information that is important to know. What you need to read is the daily email put out by a guy named Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in England.
Billions upon billions of dollars spent — all going straight to the energy bills of the populace — with essentially no noticeable effect on global CO2 emissions, let alone global warming. You owe it to yourself to check this out.
Since the EU adopted its Emissions Trading Scheme in 2005, electricity prices in Europe have increased at about double the rate of increase in the U.S. — 63% in Europe vs. 32% in the U.S. But the increases have been far more dramatic in the countries that have intervened the most in their energy markets: “During 2008–12, Germany’s residential electricity rates increased by 78%, Spain’s rose by 111%, and the U.K.’s soared by 133%.” “In 2016 alone, German households will be forced to spend $29 billion on renewable electricity with a market value of $4 billion—more than $700 per household.”