Green energy promotes climate change, destroys biodiversity and makes the poor poorer
By: Mary West
Tags: Energy And Climate, Climate Action, Renewable Energy, Green Energy, Climate Change

Renewable energy is expensive, unreliable, means mass murder for wildlife, destroys landscapes, destabilizes the electricity grid, harms indigenous peoples, and damages the environment.

Thus, a comprehensive study by researchers from the United States and Ireland, published in the journal Energies, entitled Energy and Climate Policy: Estimating the Cost of Climate Change 2011–2018

(Energy and Climate Policy — An Evaluation of Climate Change Expenditure 2011–2018)

This is probably one of the most extensive meta-analyzes of green energy in recent times, writes James Delingpole on the Breitbart portal.

The study’s neutral summary asks: The reader may ask whether the zero-carbon transition policies proposed today, which are based primarily on wind and solar energy, are the panacea that the promoters of these technologies claim to be.

According to Delingpole, the study confirms the worst fears of the Green New Deal demanded by Democrats in the United States and the European Green Agreement formally targeted in the European Union.

The authors of the study prove that the production of green energy — mainly wind and solar energy, does if at all, do minimally to reduce CO2 emissions but spends a huge amount of taxpayers money.

Concerns about climate change are a key driver of new, transitional energy policies, which should lead to economic growth, energy security, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and the preservation of biodiversity. Since 2010, the think tank Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) has published annual reports entitled Global Landscape of Climate Finance. According to these reports, $ 3,660 billion has been spent on global climate change projects between 2011 and 2018. Fifty-five percent of this money is spent on wind and solar energy. According to world energy reports, the share of wind and solar energy in world energy consumption has increased from 0.5% to 3% during this period. At the same time, coal, oil, and gas accounted for 85% of world energy consumption. The rest of the consumption was mainly hydro and nuclear energy.

Coilín ÓhAeadeha, a leading researcher in the study, gives context to these costs: It took the world two trillion dollars to increase the share of wind and solar energy from half a percent to three percent, and it took eight years. What will it cost to increase the share of such energy to one hundred percent? How long will it take?

The study points out that, contrary to assumptions, both wind and solar energy are harmful to the environment at the local level. They change wind patterns, air temperature, rainfall, and even cause floods.

Directly, research in recent years has provided significant theoretical and empirical evidence that wind turbines have a significant impact on the local and regional climate. For example, Abbasi et al. The 2016 study explains that “large wind farms with high wind turbines can affect the weather, possibly also the climate, due to the combined effects of wind speed deficits, atmospheric turbulence patterns, and their amplified landscape roughness, the research found.

Green technologies are also very resource-intensive. Part of the problem is their weak energy density, which means how much land is needed to produce a certain amount of energy. The most energy-intensive is natural gas, followed by nuclear, oil, and coal. While fossil fuels can produce large amounts of energy on a relatively small area of ​​land, renewable energy sources, on the other hand, require a large amount of land to produce relatively small amounts of energy. Fossil fuels can produce an average of 1,000 times more energy per area.

Renewable energy also requires large amounts of minerals. For example, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson’s plan to make the country’s car fleet electric by 2030 is implemented.

Richard Herrington, head of the Earth Sciences Research Group at the London Museum of Natural History, says three-quarters of the world’s lithium production and at least half of world copper production. If we expand it to the two billion cars that traveled the world by 2018, neodymium and dysprosium mining should increase by 70 percent by 2050, copper production should more than double and cobalt at least three and a half times higher.

Such an increase in mining volumes is likely to have a severe social and environmental impact on poor countries, where these rare minerals are found.

A review of the study, published on the Medium portal, states: Cobalt mining, which is needed to produce e-car batteries, has a severe impact on the health of women and children in mining communities, where mining often takes place in small unregulated“ craft ”mines. Lithium mining, which is also needed to produce batteries, requires large amounts of water, which in turn can pollute local water and cause water shortages. ”

ÓhAiseadha points out: Some time ago, the whole world became aware of the conflict between the Standing Rock Siuu tribe and the builders of the Dacota Access pipeline. But what do we know about the impact of cobalt mining on indigenous peoples in the Democratic Republic of Congo? What is the impact of lithium mining in the Atacama Desert on people living there? Standing Rock’s new slogan was Mni Wicon! Water is life! This applies both to the Siuu tribe, which is concerned that the pipeline accident could pollute their river, and to the Atacama Desert, where lithium mining could pollute groundwater.

In summary, modern Western civilizations cannot feed modern Western civilization.

Co-author of the study, Dr. Ronan Connolly, writes:

The average household expects their refrigerators to work all the time, and to be able to turn on the light at any time. It would be time for the promoters of wind and solar energy to acknowledge that they are not able to provide the kind of sustainable electricity that every society is used to everywhere.

Renewable energy makes poor people even poorer, forcing them to use expensive clean electricity, while fossil fuels would be much cheaper and more efficient.

In our view, even in developed countries, CO2 reduction policies often work against the goals of improving the lives of the less well-off.

For example, one of the tools often mentioned as a means of reducing CO2 emissions is the introduction of so-called carbon taxes. There are many forms of carbon taxation, but they usually penalize the consumption of energy, the production of which emits large amounts of CO2. Researchers who have studied the socio-economic effects of different carbon taxes in many countries have found that carbon taxes tend to be regressive, perhaps the greatest burden on the poorest households.

The report concludes that if the aim is to protect biodiversity, ensure a stable and reliable electricity supply, increase economic growth, or reduce CO2 emissions, the answer for all is that green energy does not.