October 11, 2023

Four headlines struck me, over my morning coffee, this week.  They are headlines that I think will change forever our understanding of energy sources.  From Germany comes “Wide-Scale Bankruptcies in the EU’s Solar Sector Now Seem Likely” and “Germany to Fire up ‘Brown Coal’ Power Plants because of Fears of Energy Shortage.”  From Sweden, “Sweden Embraces Nuclear Energy,” and from France, “Nuclear energy now non-negotiable.”

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All four headlines are courtesy of the E.U.’s disastrous missteps in solar — and successes in nuclear.  The disasters are the result of what I call “the seven dirty secrets of solar.”  Germany has led the way down this dark path, with a failed 32-year, quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar experiment, funded by taxpayers, which has left the country ranking among the worst polluters and highest electric bills in Europe, now also burning more brown coal for its grid than ever before, at 40% and climbing, with only 9% contributed by solar.  Germany is fast losing its leading role in energy initiatives to the nuclear successes in France (70% nuclear) and Sweden (40% nuclear).

Black Gardens: The Seven Dirty Secrets of Solar “Farms”

Secret number one: The sun is a lazy worker.

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This one is hardly a secret.  Everyone knows it, and everyone ignores it.  The sun is an intermittent, erratic, and untrustworthy worker.  It never works the night shift, takes off all rainy days, and doesn’t show up during cloudy seasons.  It is “off duty” for more than half the time.

Secret number two: Solar energy never replaces fossil fuels; it sits on top of them.

Behind every solar “farm” sits a silent, poisonous partner: an old-fashioned gas and oil electric factory.  Why is this?  Because of law number one: Someone has to fill in when the lazy sun isn’t working.  This is the elephant in the room when people talk about solar.

Not only are these factories carbon-spewers, but they can double your electric bill.  Because ramp-up and ramp-down times for these massive factories are so expensive, they have to be left running continually.  But why talk about negatives?

Secret number three: Old-fashioned gas and oil factories support solar because of the built-in backend revenue streams guaranteed to them.  Gas and oil never support nuclear; there’s no backend revenue stream for them.  Just follow the money

Secret number four: Solar, for the previous reasons, is thus a de facto permanent polluter of the atmosphere.  It will never solve carbon-emission problems (unless, of course, it is backed up by nuclear, which would make no sense.  Germany now, shamefully and quietly, is actually buying nuclear energy, electricity, from France, to back up its failed solar efforts, and trying to hide this.