“But the truth is that Ohio’s renewable energy mandates have largely benefited only one group: entrenched monopoly fossil utilities like AEP, Iberdrola, and corporate behemoths like GE.”
Senate Bill 310’s attempt to freeze Ohio’s renewable energy mandate has elicited the typical partisan howls from Ohio’s green energy profiteers. They have been quick to paint the supporters of SB310 as slavish supporters of the much maligned Koch Brothers, FirstEnergy or other “dark fossil corporate profiteers”.
Curiously, these environmental group’s normally exquisitely tuned “corporate conspiracy radar” appears to have developed a massive wind-turbine-sized blind spot.
Consider:
“Even with carbon emissions valued at $50 per metric ton, nuclear, hydro and natural gas combined cycle generation plants have far more net benefits than either wind or solar.”
The recent paper by Charles Frank of the Brookings Institution, “The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Electricity Technologies” provides a reasonably broad, detailed analysis of the lack of value in pursing policies of implementing wind and solar industrial-scale generation plants to reduce carbon emissions. This analysis, however, while on track, misses some very important considerations that strengthen the already negative verdict.
In summary, the paper finds:
It’s become almost common knowledge that global climate computer models used to project future temperatures based on assumptions about greenhouse gas emissions miss the mark. So common that much of the American public even knows it.
But the National Climate Assessment released May 6, 2014, uses them anyway to predict future climate changes and their impact for the United States.
How does it defend that? By claiming that the models “do a good job at reproducing the broad features of the present climate and changes in climate, including the significant warming that has occurred over the last 50 years” (p. 809, FAQ-R).
How does it substantiate that claim? With this graphic:…
