Are Green Jobs an Economic Black Hole?

[twa]

when 1/5 of your electric bill(and expected to climb) is to subsidize inefficiency things get hinky, but I don't mind German firms fleeing here 

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/15502-tna-online-german-firms-flee-to-us-to-avoid-merkel-s-staggering-green-energy-costs

 

the flex plants are cool..and expensive ...and simply are combining back up into one plant(not eliminating the need)

I do agree they are better than most stand alone solar, but then how could they not be 

 

What Germany does with EEG will be telling in the future, the gaming of the market there is reaching critical stage

 

add

interestingly your combination plant will be......

 

 400MW of the 530 or so will be gas-powered in the beginning. The site will only have so much solar power capability to start with. As the region gets more renewable energy, like wind, solar, geothermal, etc., the natural gas usage by this plant will get lower and lower.

 

 

yay natural gas 

[twa]

speaking of comical....Germany getting renewable energy from Austrian(oops  Czech) nuke plant that pumps water to generate "renewable"

hydro power.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimpowell/2013/09/19/how-europes-economy-is-being-devastated-by-global-warming-orthodoxy/2/

 

Almost overnight, Germany switched from being an energy exporter to being an energy importer.  Ironically, although German politicians are avowed foes of nuclear power, the government has been importing nuclear power from France (which gets about 80 percent of its power from nuclear plants) and from the Czech Republic (about a third of its power from nuclear plants that have had problems).  In addition, Germany has been importing energy from Poland, produced in old coal-fired plants.  Also, Austria imports nuclear power from the Czech Republic to pump water uphill, then lets it flow downhill through turbines, generating hydropower for Germany.

 

yay team   

[PeterMP]

when 1/5 of your electric bill(and expected to climb) is to subsidize inefficiency things get hinky, but I don't mind German firms fleeing here 

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/15502-tna-online-german-firms-flee-to-us-to-avoid-merkel-s-staggering-green-energy-costs

 

 

Again though, your only talking about inefficiency with respect to economics (and even there for certain only short term economics)

 

I don't know anybody that lives that way, and I don't understand then why a nation should live that way.

 

The Germans have over whelmingly decided to take other things into account (CO2, long term conservation of resources, etc.).

 

If they can live that way and be happy more power to'em.

 

And nobody is really talking about doing that here.

 

I don't really have anything else to say on the Germans unless it becomes more philosophical/theological, and I don't want to derail this thread so unless something really changes there, I'm done talking about Germany.

[twa]

inefficient both economically and as a base supply.....some people care about costs and reliability

 

but hey ,it is green like a Telsa 

[China]

1st auction of solar rights on public lands in Colorado draws no bids

 

The federal Bureau of Land Management's plan to auction solar-energy rights on public lands got off to a rocky start Thursday when no bidders showed up for the first auction in Colorado.

 

Three parcels covering 3,700 acres in the San Luis Valley were offered, and five solar developers had expressed interest in the land, bureau officials said.

 

Nevertheless, no companies submitted sealed bids or showed up at the auction at BLM Colorado headquarters in Lakewood.

"We are going to have to regroup and figure out what didn't work," said Maryanne Kurtinaitis, renewable-energy program manager in the BLM's Colorado office.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[twa]

WHY ELECTRIC VEHICLES HAVE STALLED

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/10/why-electric-vehicles-have-stalled.html

 

None of this news pleases German. He wants E.V.s to succeed, and believes that they are a valid alternative—just not for mainstream consumers. That’s because E.V.s cost more than their gasoline equivalents, have a much shorter range, and take too long to recharge. “There’s a legitimate market there,” German said, “but only for people who already have one or two other cars, and can juggle their internal fleet when they need to take a longer trip.”

German’s opinion is not unique or heretical in the E.V. sector, which raises the question of why so much money was invested in the industry before batteries became cheap and powerful enough to compete with gasoline engines. One culprit could be the California mandate for zero-emissions vehicles: in 1990, the state required that, by 1998, two per cent of vehicles made by large manufacturers and sold in California be free of emissions, and that, by 2003, that proportion rise to ten per cent. (The state later scaled back those requirements.) One analyst I spoke to, who asked not to be identified, told me that because California is such a big market the requirements encouraged auto manufacturers to roll out E.V.s to meet the state’s regulations before the cars would appeal to a wide market. The combination of state-mandated sales targets and low consumer demand has forced manufacturers to reduce the price of their E.V.s and sell them at a loss.

“The big companies say, O.K., this is part of the cost of doing business in California, and they just write it off,” he told me. This is fine for huge firms like Nissan and Ford, but makes it nearly impossible for smaller companies, such as Fisker and Tesla, to compete in the mainstream market. “The one company that’s been able to succeed so far has been Tesla,” he said. “They’re not selling to normal consumers, but to the people who already have a Porsche in their garage. If Tesla is serious about going into the mass market, they’re going to have their head handed to them.”

[mcsluggo]

the answer to that is... well, no duh

 

 

when cars were were first being developed, it wasn't the walmart crowd of the day that were the first adapters, it was rich folk.

Personal computers?

Indoor outhouses?

cellphones?

 

 

name the innovation that had the poor as the first movers?

(maybe mobile banking? --- paying for things on your celphone)???

[twa]

did you miss this?

 

 before batteries became cheap and powerful enough to compete with gasoline engines

 

before you go to sell to the Walmart crowd ya got to solve the distance/charge time and costs, otherwise you are just a niche

[twa]

Ya'll made your bed with the hounds,now ya get to lie in it with the fleas   





The Great Green Meltdown
How Economic Arguments Against Nuclear Highlight Environmentalist Delusions

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/the-great-green-meltdown/

After the world's leading climate scientists called on environmentalists to support nuclear power two weeks ago, mainstream green groups went on CNN to declare atomic energy too expensive. The goal was to distance mainstream environmentalists from shrill antinuclear activists like Helen Caldicott (above left). But after decades of calling for higher energy prices through cap and trade or carbon pricing — as well as subsidies for expensive renewable energy — to prevent climate catastrophe, the economic arguments against the atom made by the NRDC's Ralph Cavanagh (above right) only further exposed the hypocrisy and delusion of the antinuclear environmentalism.
.




It was hard, at times, to tell whether the claims made about renewables in particular were purely cynical or just delusional. The Sierra Club's Brune claimed that declining US emissions over the last five years had been achieved thanks to wind and solar, a claim that has no plausible basis in fact. US emissions are down thanks to cheap gas, not renewables. Indeed, since the last US nuclear plant came on line in 1997, nuclear has avoided more emissions through simply increasing energy generation from existing nuclear plants than have been avoided by wind and solar power combined.

Brune, Bryk, and Jones all claimed that we don’t need nuclear because renewables are cheaper and solar costs have come down dramatically in recent years. But solar still reliably costs twice as much as nuclear according to the US Energy Information Agency, without accounting for the huge indirect costs rooftop solar shifts onto other ratepayers. A recent California PUC study estimated that by 2020, California's solar energy initiative would increase rates by a billion dollars annually for California energy consumers.

If green claims about renewables were pure sophistry, the claims about energy efficiency were simply out of touch. NRDC’s Bryk cheerily asserted that energy efficiency could obviate the need for vastly more energy consumption globally. But the reality is that more than a billion people around the world today lack access to modern energy at all. Billions more consume just a fraction of what developed world environmentalists consider their birthright, while smugly touting the benefits of conservation and efficiency. And the billion people who still depend upon wood and dung for energy have no electricity or gasoline to conserve.


Even with redoubled efforts to reduce wasted energy in developed countries, the world is going to consume vastly more energy in the coming decades than it does today. This is the basic math of the global climate and energy situation, and is the reason that James Hansen and his colleagues, who have long been closely aligned with the environmental movement, felt the need to call out their erstwhile allies for practicing their own peculiar brand of climate denial.

[mikered30]

Another US government loan gone bad. U.S. taxpayers lost $139 million of the $192 million Fisker received.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-22/fisker-to-sell-assets-in-bankruptcy-at-139-million-loss.html

[twa]

well the losses subsidizing rich peoples toys are bad,but nothing compared to the green energy ones that have us setting records for electricity prices.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/price-electricity-hit-record-october-42-decade

The price of electricity hit a record for the month of October, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That made October the eleventh straight month when the average price of electricity hit or matched the record level for that month. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/price-electricity-hit-record-october-42-decade#sthash.wBTpFa59.dpuf

 

 

but don't ya fret none, we are gonna make alt energy cheaper (by raising the cost of of conventional)

I feel liberated   

[PeterMP]

 

 

http://www.communityenergyinc.com/blog/are-long-term-electricity-prices-trending-downward/

[twa]

So you and your link agree electricity rates are rising and will continue?

 

and that taxes and fees not reflected in your chart also are rapidly rising?

[PeterMP]

So you and your link agree electricity rates are rising and will continue?

 

and that taxes and fees not reflected in your chart also are rapidly rising?

 

Yes, they continue to rise and have been rising for quite a while (over a decase), and without a massive global economic slow down, as long as we are dependent on fossil fuels for much of our electric production, I would expect that to continue as the things that we use to generate our electricity will be subject to global demand, which at least in the short terms appears to only like to increase (without a global economic slow down).

 

Taxes and fees to whom?

[twa]

The UK and Germany might disagree on the economic slowdown from it

 

to the state in most cases,though county and utilities and the feds usually collect as well

 http://energysaversblog.com/2013/11/04/electricity-taxes-fees-my-high-utility-bill/

 

NJ and others as well

http://www.njprofoundation.org/pdf/ffdenergy.pdf

 

the real fun is coming

[PeterMP]

The UK and Germany might disagree on the economic slowdown from it

 

to the state in most cases,though county and utilities and the feds usually collect as well

 http://energysaversblog.com/2013/11/04/electricity-taxes-fees-my-high-utility-bill/

 

NJ and others as well

http://www.njprofoundation.org/pdf/ffdenergy.pdf

 

the real fun is coming

 

I live in NJ.  The taxes to me (and what your link is talking about) haven't gone up.  The taxes and fees to providers may have gone up, but that is reflected in their costs to me (i.e. the retail price).

 

From your own link:

"Prior to deregulation, New Jersey ratepayers paid an "all-in" gross receipts tax of 13.5 percent. A primary goal of deregulation was to reduce New Jersey’s excessive energy tax approximately in half. The gross receipts tax was immediately replaced with the sales tax (then 6 percent) and the "temporary" TEFA, set at 6 percent and scheduled to phase out by 2001. Subsequently, State laws have been enacted extending the TEFA tax through 2014."

 

In other words, one tax went away and was replaced with two taxes that are essentially the same, and this was all done back in 1999 (well the law for deregulation was passed, different parts have been phased in at different times- but most of it was in place years ago so certainly recently hasn't affected by electric bill).

[twa]

I hope you continue to be happy with your bill as your 22.5% renewable mandate unfolds

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/eper_10.htm

 

but then most states aren't mainly nuclear sourced

[twa]

Seems the blinders are coming off

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cleantech-crash-60-minutes/

 

The Cleantech Crash

Despite billions invested by the U.S. government in so-called “Cleantech” energy, Washington and Silicon Valley have little to show for it

 

About a decade ago, the smart people who funded the Internet turned their attention to the energy sector, rallying tech engineers to invent ways to get us off fossil fuels, devise powerful solar panels, clean cars, and futuristic batteries. The idea got a catchy name: “Cleantech.” 

Silicon Valley got Washington excited about it. President Bush was an early supporter, but the federal purse strings truly loosened under President Obama.  Hoping to create innovation and jobs, he committed north of a $100 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks to Cleantech.  But instead of breakthroughs, the sector suffered a string of expensive tax-funded flops. Suddenly Cleantech was a dirty word.

Investor Vinod Khosla, known as the father of the Cleantech revolution, has poured over a billion dollars of his own money into some 50 energy startups. He took us to one in Columbus, Miss. KiOR is a biofuel company that’s replacing oil drilling with oil making.

Vinod Khosla: Nature takes a million years to produce our crude oil. KiOR can produce it in seconds.  

The company took over this old paper mill, where logs are picked up by a giant claw, dropped into a shredder and pulverized into woodchips.

 

Giant pile of woodchips at KiOR

 CBS NEWS

 Vinod Khosla: And we take that, add this magic catalyst-

 

Lesley Stahl: This is the secret sauce?

Vinod Khosla: Yeah.

Lesley Stahl: You throw that on top of the chips?

Vinod Khosla: And then, out comes something that looks that looks just like crude oil.

The crude is created through a thermo-chemical reaction in seconds. And by using wood instead of corn, this biofuel doesn’t raise food prices which was a concern with ethanol.  

Vinod Khosla: It smells like crude, it works like crude except it's 100 percent renewable.

Then it’s distilled onsite into… 

Lesley Stahl: Clean gasoline?

Vinod Khosla: Clean green gasoline.

Lesley Stahl: This goes right into the tank, right? You don’t have to build a new infrastructure?

Vinod Khosla: Absolutely.

Lesley Stahl: You make it sound almost – sorry – too good to be true. There must be a downside.

Vinod Khosla: There is no downside.

Well there is: first off, his clean green gasoline costs much more than what you pay at the pump.  And despite hundreds of millions of dollars invested – including 165 million of Khosla’s own money, KiOR is still in the red, and the manufacturing is so complex, it is riddled with delays.

Lesley Stahl: All kinds of glitches.

Vinod Khosla: That always happens but part of anything, whether you're building a refinery or a solar facility or a computer factory, you get exactly the same unanticipated glitches.

He’s downplaying the glitches. But the venture capital model is that for every 10 startups, nine go under. And he says he expects at least half of his energy companies will fail.  But Khosla can take that gamble.  He earned billions with two giant Silicon Valley winners: Sun Microsystems and Juniper Networks. It was successes like these that gave Khosla and the other Silicon Valley moneymen the moxie to jump into energy.

Steven Koonin: I think they saw it as a technical opportunity, thinking that the people in energy are just troglodytes and they don't understand what they're doing.

Former Energy Department under secretary, Physicist Steven Koonin, says there was a lot of arrogance. He thought the venture capitalists and Internet geniuses were underestimating the challenges of the energy sector....more@ link

[twa]

End Result of Germany’s Green Energy Policy: More Coal

Germany produced more energy by coal last year than it has in nearly a quarter century. King Coal’s return comes courtesy of theenergiewende—the policy put in place following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The plan was to phase out the country’s numerous nuclear reactors and jumpstart its fledgling renewable energy industry, but coal has been forced to fill the gap. The FT reports:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/01/09/end-result-of-germanys-green-energy-policy-more-coal/

 

Let’s reflect on what Germany’s energiewende has wrought: Electricity prices are significantly higher, thanks to the costs of the feed-in tariffs Berlin enacted to help spur solar and wind energy production. Those costs are so high that Germany’s Minister of Economics is nowpublicly warning that the country’s energy-intensive industry might jump ship for cheaper prices (say, in shale gas-rich America) if prices climb much higher. Yet for all that expense and all of that effort, German emissions continue to climb.

By either metric—green or economic—this energiewende has been aflop. That’s not surprising, given the costs of propping up renewables that can’t compete on price with fossil fuels, as well as the difficulty of replacing nuclear, which was effectively a zero-carbon energy source. Germany’s experience is a warning to other policymakers of the dangers of placing green dreams ahead of common sense.

 

[twa]

higher bills, higher emissions, more govt, jobs leaving

 

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21594336-germanys-new-super-minister-energy-and-economy-has-his-work-cut-out-sunny-windy-costly

 

The Energiewende has, in effect, upset the economics of building new conventional power plants, especially those fired by gas, which is cleaner but more expensive than coal. So existing coal plants are doing more duty. Last year electricity production from brown coal (lignite), the least efficient and dirtiest sort, reached its highest level since 1990. Gas-fired power production, by contrast, has been declining (see chart). In effect, the Energiewende has so far increased, not decreased, emissions of greenhouse gases.

[twa]

reality intrudes

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commission-move-away-from-climate-protection-goals-a-943664.html

 

Green Fade-Out: Europe to Ditch Climate Protection Goals

 

The EU's reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking -- jeopardizing Germany's touted energy revolution in the process.

[twa]

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/01/28/green-dream-turns-to-nightmare-for-german-workers/

 

 

A MILLION EMPTY PROMISESGreen Dream Turns to Nightmare for German Workers

Let’s call a spade a spade: Germany’s Energiewende is an unmitigated policy disaster. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported this morning that one in three workers in Germany’s solar industry lost their job last year. By November, there were a mere 4,800 employees left in the sector, the first time in four years that number has fallen below the 5,000-mark. That’s less than half 2012′s levels, when there were still 10,200 solar jobs. These revelations come hard on the heels of news that the $30 billion German taxpayers shuffled into green subsidies last year didn’t actually make the country any cleaner, and that more brown coal was burned there in 2013 than in any year since 1990.

This can hardly be what Germany’s Green Party had in mind when it spoke of a “green job miracle” ahead of last year’s federal elections, promising upwards of a million green jobs by 2025. The European Commission has already had to recalibrate renewables targets in the face of economic realities, but this latest report by the FAZ shows just how high a price is already being imposed on working families by pie-in-the-sky green policies.

Not everyone in Germany is quite so starry-eyed, of course. As the Financial Times reports today, Germany’s Finance Minister has already acknowledged that Berlin “may have gone too far in its attempts to protect the environment”:

Wolfgang Schäuble took issue with claims that the “green economy” will be a major driver of employment, saying Berlin’s decision two years ago to shutter its nuclear power plants and emphasise renewables needed to be re-examined.

“We did it too good and now we have to correct because otherwise we have an increasing of energy costs which will harm jobs in Germany in a serious way in the medium term,” Mr Schäuble said at a forum in Brussels, where he was attending a regular meeting of EU finance ministers. “Therefore, we have to rebalance.”

[twa]

THE COSTS OF GREEN DREAMSIEA: Energy Woes Will Hobble Europe for 20 Years

European industries currently pay double what their American counterparts pay for electricity, and the International Energy Agency is warning that this is not a temporary phenomenon. The costs of the subsidies propping up Europe’s nascent solar and wind industries, combined with the bloc’s increasing reliance on foreign sources of energy (such as American coal), have sent electricity prices soaring over the past six years. The IEA believes this will plague Europe’s ability to compete on the global market for the next two decades. The FT reports:

In findings likely to 

inflame claims

 EU climate change policies are damaging the bloc’s manufacturers, the 

International Energy Agency

 said Europe will lose a third of its global market share of energy-intensive exports over the next two decades because energy prices will stay stubbornly higher than those in the US.

 

A number of EU countries have 

embraced green energy subsidies

, shunned nuclear power and resisted the shale exploration that has fuelled a manufacturing renaissance in the US, prompting growing anger among industry leaders who say this has been a recipe for competitive ruin.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/01/31/iea-energy-woes-will-hobble-europe-for-20-years/

[mcsluggo]

the tradeoff between green and dirty power is a little more acute for the world's poor, i think.

 

 

THIS hold a little more water with me at least.  

 

 

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/08/bjorn-lomborg-africa-energy/5284631/

 

Lomborg: Obama energy policy hurts African poor

<:section id="module-position-M9ql2pKdIUA" class="storytopbar-bucket story-byline-module">

Bjørn Lomborg 7:41 a.m. EST February 8, 2014

..

..

...

..

A new paper by Todd Moss and Ben Leo from the nonprofit think tank, Center for Global Development, puts it very clearly. If Obama spends the next $10 billion on gas electrification, he can help lift 90 million people out of poverty. If he only uses renewables, the same $10 billion can help just 20 million-27 million people. Using renewables, we will deliberately choose to leave more than 60 million people in darkness and poverty.

..

..

..

..

 

 

 

it is a bit ridiculous to force higher renewables usage in africa than in the US or Europe...

[twa]

 

the tradeoff between green and dirty power is a little more acute for the world's poor, i think.

 

 

THIS hold a little more water with me at least.  

 

 

 

 

it is a bit ridiculous to force higher renewables usage in africa than in the US or Europe...

 

 

 

the same holds true here as far as cost to the poor....we do subsidize some of the poor here moreso than there though.

 

There are some areas renewables do make sense(isolated from transmission lines/fuel transport ect),but in general any large energy need is much more cost effective with traditional sources till more advances are made

 

a dollar wasted here is one less to be used elsewhere....or here

 

swapping truck lines and shipping to NG will reduce emissions and save money....the choices and directions ya take certainly matter