Renewables investment set to drop off due to collapsing subsidies
At the 2017 UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Hon.Catherine McKenna, formed a coalition consisting of six countries that do not use coal and another 13 countries that use 3.5 per cent of global coal consumption to push for global phase-out of coal under the name of #PoweringPastCoal, as reported by The Guardian, Nov. 16, 2017.
Friends of Science says the entire thinking is flawed when some 30 per cent of the world’s energy is supplied by affordable, abundant coal, and “Global coal production and consumption grew sharply from about 2.3 billion tonnes of oil equivalent in 1991 to 3.8 billion tonnes of oil equivalent in 2013, before declining slightly” as reported in an Oct. 17, 2017 blog post by Robert Lyman, Ottawa energy policy consultant.
Renewables like intermittent wind and solar provide only about two per cent of the world’s energy and must be backed-up 24/7 by conventional power.
Friends of Science says this #PoweringPastCoal push appears to be a means of propping up renewables investments.
According to a Jan. 4, 2017 article in The Guardian, renewables investment in the UK is set to drop off by 95 per cent between 2017 and 2020 due to collapsing subsidies.
The Washington Times reported on July 20, 2015 that renewables investors had been funding the Sierra Club for millions of dollars to demarket coal.
Friends of Science Society says renewables cannot support even basic society.
They say Canadians should reject the addition of unviable European renewables in Canada where wind/solar subsidies have already skyrocketed into the billions of dollars, as outlined in their latest report: “Subsidies to Solar and Wind Energy In Canada – An Inventory.”
The cost of power in Alberta is set to triple, due to the phase-out of affordable, reliable coal, as foretold by this op-ed of April 8, 2016 in the Globe and Mail.
Renewables have negative consequences for large industry. Australian industry has been hit by massive blackouts and costs of >$105 US million in damages due to wide-scale addition of renewables to the grid and coal phase-out, as reported in Adelaide Now on Feb. 21, 2017.
The CEO of mining giant BHP Billiton is quoted as saying: “….latest outage shows Australia’s investability and jobs are placed in peril by the failure of policy to both reduce emissions and secure affordable, dispatchable and uninterrupted power,’’ he said.
As reported by MRS Journal, May 23, 2016 by Prof. Michael J. Kelly of Cambridge, wind and solar cannot support basic society, and does not address climate change. Canadian winter temperatures can dip to minus 40°C/F.
Coal is demonized as a large emitter of carbon dioxide. Friends of Science Society says that carbon dioxide is not the control knob on climate change; coal phase-out in Alberta will do nothing but make people poor, miserable and unemployed.
In the absent of equivalent, affordable, reliable energy, a #PoweringPastCoal global phase-out would cause worldwide chaos.
Friends of Science Society is an independent group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers, and citizens, celebrating its 15th year of offering climate science insights.
After a thorough review of a broad spectrum of literature on climate change, Friends of Science Society has concluded that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2).
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