The Staggering Costs of Decreasing CO2 Emissions

Climate extremists, like other hucksters, usually emphasize how their favored policies (decarbonization in this case) will avoid various alleged disasters, which never seem to happen except in the distant future. Rarely do they explain what these efforts will cost. Rather, the true believers always claim that the costs are small, even though they actually are not. The costs include (1) higher prices for usable energy, (2) lower reliability of energy supply, (3) visual and other pollution and wildlife damage. Higher energy prices are the most easily measured and understood of these costs, and were the basis for the recent Yellow Vest riots in France.

(1) There is a dramatic relationship between wind and solar capacity per capita and electricity costs; wind and solar capacity explains 84 percent of electricity cost variations between different countries in Western Europe. This suggests that prices are highly sensitive to wind and solar capacity. Unfortunately, this is only rarely discussed in public media.

(2) The costs of reduced reliability are also quite substantial, but usually do not become apparent until there is a major supply outage. Most electricity consumers are aware of what energy supply outages can do to normal life. The result is that productivity takes a huge fall as everyone is thrown back to an earlier life where the primary objective is to survive. With modern electronics the impact is even higher than just a few decades ago. Some energy users attempt to mitigate it by buying and installing expensive alternative sources of energy such as electric generators. Measuring the costs of energy outages is quite difficult, but the higher the level of the technology, the higher the costs. Each time a fossil fuel or nuclear plant is “retired” or allowed to become less useful in meeting demand, reliability decreases, and electrical costs and rates increase.

(3) Both wind and solar create visual/aesthetic pollution a well as major adverse effects on wildlife. Vast expanses of solar panels and massive windmills are disliked by most observers. And disposal of huge windmills and toxic solar panels at the end of their useful lives present major problems whether they are cleaned up or not. There are also major adverse effects on wildlife, particularly birds.

Furthermore, if the climate extremists’ decarbonization efforts actually reduced atmospheric CO₂ levels, the results would have tragic effects on the natural world, particularly on plants, which do better at higher levels of CO₂. Fortunately CO₂ levels are determined by temperatures, not human-caused emissions, but this is not what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believes. So it is surprising that people who call themselves “environmentalists” would want to advocate actions that would reduce the viability of plant life on Earth.

The staggering costs of wind-generated electricity are dramatically illustrated by the newly approved offshore wind project in the Atlantic Ocean off Norfolk, VA. The costs are estimated to be 26 times the wholesale electricity costs in Virginia even though the resulting electricity will be much less useful since the availability of the resulting power will be substantially different than the demand for it. Virginia electricity users will pay the higher costs; they are not being given any choice. Could it possibly be that Virginia’s Governor, who is one of the leading advocates of the project, thinks that this might help him to get the Democratic nomination for President? Surely he cannot believe that this project will help Virginia electricity ratepayers, who will be stuck with the bill for this ultra expensive electricity.