Renewable energy really means anti-establishment energy, or politically correct energy.  The energy is usually electricity that is distributed via the electric grid.  The source of energy has to be “natural.”

Solar and wind are the most popular types of renewable energy.  Hydroelectric energy derived from a big dam on a river might seem ideal, except that the promoters of renewable energy don’t like dams.  If you can figure out how to generate hydroelectricity without a dam, you can call it renewable.  Nuclear energy might seem like a good candidate except that nuclear energy is too scary and too good a fundraising tool to accept as renewable.

Solar energy costs about seven times as much as electricity from coal or natural gas.  Most of the cost is hidden in subsidies.  If that truth were not obscured by massive propaganda, hardly anyone would build solar energy or wind energy farms.

The renewable energy promoters are politically successful.  About half the U.S. states have renewable portfolio laws that mandate the amount of renewable electricity they use.  For example, California requires that 60% of its electricity be renewable by 2030.  That has increased and will increase the cost of electricity in California.  Many electric customers pay more than 50 cents per kilowatt-hour.

According to the promoters of renewable energy, it is well-suited for solving a multitude of imaginary problems.  The number-one imaginary problem is global warming, rechristened “climate change” when the globe failed to warm.

The Sierra Club is a leading promoter of renewable energy.  This is the pitch on one of their websites promoting renewable energy:

We are facing monumental threats to our planet’s future. We are fighting back with every tool at our disposal — but to face these challenges, we need your support. Make your gift today.

Even the New York Times has become critical of the Sierra Club, for reasons described in this video.

Solar and wind are erratically intermittent sources of electricity.  Solar quits at night and whenever a cloud obscures the sun.  Wind quits when the wind slows or stops.

When solar or wind electricity is introduced, it is supplementary to the existing electric infrastructure.  Solar or wind cannot replace existing generating plants because solar and wind  are intermittent sources of electricity.  The existing grid generating plants must be retained so they can supply electricity when solar or wind fails.  In order to compare the cost of solar and wind with the traditional fossil fuels, we need only to compare expenditure when the traditional plants are powering the grid with the expenditure when solar or wind is engaged.

When solar or wind is working backup, coal and gas plants are idling.  Every megawatt-hour of electricity not produced by a coal or gas plant reduces the cost of fuel by about $20.  Every megawatt-hour of electricity produced by a solar plant costs about $150, mostly amortization of the original cost of the plant.  The cost for wind is similar.  A spreadsheet showing a detailed calculation of the cost of solar energy can be downloaded here.

An investment advisory company, Lazard, produces periodic analyses of the cost of various forms of energy.  Lazard uses the measure levelized cost of energy (LCOE) to compare the cost of fossil fuel electricity with solar or wind electricity.  Nearly every apologist for wind or solar uses LCOE.

LCOE estimates the cost of electricity from a new generating plant to have two major components:

1. the amortization of the construction cost assigned  to each megawatt-hour of electricity produced and
2. the ongoing expenses, such as the cost of fuel and maintenance.

When wind or solar is added to an existing electric grid, the major cost saving is reduced fuel consumption in existing generating plants when solar or wind is working.  The amortization of the cost of an existing coal or gas generating plant is not affected.  The existing plant was already built, and the construction cost cannot be changed retroactively.  The only saving from the addition of renewable energy is a reduction in fuel consumption of about $20 per megawatt-hour for coal or natural gas.

Legal mandates requiring the use of renewable energy increase demand for renewable energy.  An increase in demand for a product normally causes the price of the product to rise.  But the opposite is true for wind or solar electricity.  Without the mandates, the market for solar or wind would be very small.  Wind and solar are too expensive compared to the alternatives.  But a small market is not no market.  For example, remote communities dependent on diesel generators might build supplementary solar or wind to reduce consumption of diesel fuel.  Electricity from diesel generators is extremely expensive due to fuel cost and the inefficient nature of small diesel engines.

Companies that build utility-scale solar or wind usually retain ownership of the facility and sell the electricity to the utility customer.  When the market is small, the providers must have a substantial return on investment — about 12 percent — to stay in business.

When many states pass renewable energy mandates, the market for solar and wind greatly expands.  The renewable energy providers enjoy economies of scale.  Their market power increases because electric utilities are forced to develop sources of renewable energy.  The handful of companies able to build large-scale renewable energy facilities bid against one another to win long-term contracts, often for 20 years, to build and operate wind or solar farms and sell the electricity to the utilities at a fixed price.  The mandates create a new market that is very lucrative for the energy developers.  They no longer need a 12-percent return on investment; 8 percent is enough.  That lowers the cost of electricity by one third as almost all the cost of solar or wind is amortization of the original investment.  Society pays for the subsidy by being forced to subsidize exorbitantly expensive electricity.  The wind or solar farms with 20-year guaranteed contracts backed by financially sound utilities become liquid properties, salable to infrastructure investors.

Renewable portfolio laws are not the only subsidy.  There are extensive additional federal subsidies for wind and solar.

The promoters of renewable energy were able to get renewable mandates adopted by systematically lying about the benefits and cost of renewable energy while exaggerating the dangers of coal and natural gas generation.  If the mandates were removed, the solar and wind industries would collapse.

Norman Rogers writes often on renewable energy topics.  He has a website: solarshame.com.

Image: max_gloin via Pixabay, Pixabay License.