Paul Gaynor, CEO of Longroad Energy, a utility-scale wind and solar developer, recently said, “Pre-pandemic, there were great dreams and aspirations for a record-setting year.” Indeed, the renewable industry was well on its way this year to a new record: the $9 billion subsidy mark. Mr. Gaynor’s dreams and those of the industry are a burden to the rest of us.
Without the subsidies, it is almost certain [that wind and solar] would be only a niche industry, supplying perhaps a percent or two of our power, rather than the 26% it is currently supplying in Texas.
For the first time last year, electricity produced from wind in Texas almost equaled the amount produced from coal. This year, it appears as if wind is going to blow coal away.
Last year, each source produced about 20% of the electricity used on the grid.…
Roughly 3.3 billion people—about 45 percent of all the people on the planet—live in places where per-capita electricity consumption is less than 1,000 kilowatt-hours per year, or less than the amount used by my refrigerator.
By 2017, more than 6,600 coal-fired power plants, with a combined capacity of about 2,000 gigawatts, were operating around the globe…. Not only that, coal’s share of global electricity production has remained nearly constant, at about 40 percent, since the mid-1980s. Why is this? For the simple reason that coal is cheap and widely available.
Americans are currently facing significant uncertainty over how the drop in oil prices, the COVID-19 virus, and governments’ response to both will harm the economy and their long-term prosperity.
However, the harm caused by governments that limit access to affordable and reliable electricity is well understood.…