Bill Gates on 60 Minutes just now.

[NNadir]

25. A gigawatt for a system with 20-30% capacity utilization is not equivalent to a gigawatt...

...of a plant that operates at 90%-100% capacity.

The unit of energy is the joule, sometimes watt-hour, not the watt.

This big lie has been going on my whole life, and still is going on.

406 TWh is 1.68 exajoules of energy, out of 600 exajoules consumed by humanity each year.

Am I supposed to be impressed? A country with about 1.4 billion people is producing 33 watts of wind power, roughly, per person from wind energy, and not necessarily at the time when anyone needs it?

The capacity utilization of wind turbines in China - all of which will need to be replaced in 20 to 30 years - can thus be calculated from the data supplied above, to be 22%. That means 78% of the time, a redundant system will need to be in place and operating.

There is zero evidence that the wind turbines are producing energy when needed, and zero information about the efficiency losses that occur when the plants are shut down, making their fixed costs stranded costs.

There is, again, a reason, that the highest electricity prices in the OECD belong to that offshore oil and gas drilling hellhole Denmark, followed by its German neighbor, where nuclear power is "too dangerous, but air pollution isn't.

Every solar cell, and every wind turbine, including those shedding microplastics off their veins day in and day out whenever they operate, will need to be replaced within 30 years.

I know a fair number of Chinese scientists, many of whom I respect greatly, but to assume that they are immune from what is a failed fad, so called "renewable energy" is to suggest they are not human.

One of the fun things I used to experience when writing at the E&E forum, where I really shouldn't hang out, is the application of the logical fallacy of appeal to popularity. I once owned a Mercury Sable, the upscale version of the Ford Taurus, advertised, honestly at the time as "America's best selling car." It was the worst car I ever owned.

It is very, very, very, very, very popular, I concede, to claim that so called "renewable energy" is great. I've been hearing it my whole adult life, and my generation consists of entirely of old people who fucked up the world and allowed the concentration of carbon dioxide to increase by over 100 ppm in their lifetimes, all the time carrying on about how "green" they are.

My lifetime:



Atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory

At least I have the guts to be ashamed, particularly because for many years, being a "good liberal" I bought hook line and sinker into the value of so called "renewable energy." I was, frankly, a pathetic ass for doing so. It was, I think, a grotesque mistake.

China has an economic interest in marketing this claim, about so called "renewable energy" being wonderful since they dig almost all of the world's lanthanides - often under horrific conditions I might add - for all those magnets for the generator parts in wind turbines that are available 22% of the time in China, and at similar capacity utilization elsewhere. Probably the wind turbine junk is even cheaper in China, since they dig all the coal for all the coke for all the steel in all those wind turbine posts. They also dig most of the world's cadmium for cadmium selenide solar cells; their children eat the dust from those mines.

But the appeal to popularity argument doesn't hold water. That nuclear plant that came on line in China last week, the 50th, will likely be operating in the year 2080, if not longer. Since China has the worst air pollution in the world, those nuclear plants will saving lives when all those wind turbines are heaps of rotting junk leaching grease with shards of fiberglass coatings encased in the soil, um, forever.

World map of air pollution deaths, 2015:



The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale (Nature 525, 367–371 (17 September 2015)

I love those nice colors over Hamburg and the Rhineland, don't you?

The people who are building nuclear plants in China are doing good for humanity. Those who are building transitory junk that babies born today will need to haul away in 25 years, not so much.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.