I love this article, because it shows so much! I miss the days when we had people in power who had the foresight to accomplish tasks that required an understanding of facts. We are surrounded by "opinions" and "thought leaders" instead of people who think clearly and do things that really matter. Too much noise and too little signal.
More thoughts that make my blood boil. Nobody who could help the populace see reason will care about any of this because we live in a country of idiots and the easily fooled. When your news sources come out of daily Instagram or Facebook posts, "non political" news sites and CNN, you show yourself to be useful to powerful, corrupt forces. And so, I fully expect Democrats to take my tax dollars by proxy to prop up failing, grossly irrelevant energy companies and then tell me that I'm a MAGA Republican as part of the deal. I would like all of these clowns to have sex with themselves and put their hands in the pockets of the fools who voted for them. Leave me out of it.
Outstanding article. Thank you. I’ve been distracted with other news and have not kept up with my reading on this Substack page. I’ll be back more often from now on. I’ve read from many scientists in alternative media who are brave enough to say that the climate change challenge will always run head first into the laws of economics. And we see this phenomenon in this essay first hand. Wish I was smart enough to have shorted these companies. What really gets my goat is that we read nothing about new research to solve this problem. Surely the trillions we are spending for alternative energy: wind, solar, etc… can be invested by the global community to find a viable solution to this challenge. P.S. I am a NJ resident and happy to see Governor Murphy more than pissed off.
I’ll quibble with a couple of numbers in this excellent piece. In California the utility scale solar farms are replacing panels at 10-12 years, not 25. They degrade to the point where they can’t make contract amounts. The fact that you can’t amortize the over the assumed 25 years will cause rate to be even higher. California is perfect for wind and solar. Nonetheless both have capacity factors under 30%.
Grateful for your quibbling, Lee. We were being extremely generous and geographically generic with the capacity factors at best Tier 1 loc’s in ideal conditions. Same with best case for replacement times for each.
You key point is excellent and important: wearing out in half the time only makes the analysis worse and has to make rates even higher. We have no expectation any offshore turbines will last 20 years. We’ve spent lots of time offshore in salt water.
I thought the Siemens mills in the North Sea were lasting 10 years and had fairly significant maintenance issues during their lives, even at the much smaller size of a 2013 turbine vs what are being built now.
I suspect that some of Siemens troubles are salt water/air related. I've owned expensive things that sat in saltwater. Constant battle. Sea water will eat anything.
In addition it was European manufacturers drive to cut costs to try and be somewhat competitive with Chinese turbines. This led to corners being cut and quality taking a dump. And now their chickens are coming home to roost...
As always, excellent piece Mental. I really laughed at this line, “Danish Oil and Natural Gas aka DONG.” Your pieces are really top-notch! I anxiously await the next gem that passes the editing process.
I can't imagine what those rate requests will do to electric bills...OMG. It's bad enough taxpayer money will bail them out BUT to add insult, for our rates to skyrocket.
I'm in VA and NOT happy about the offshore projects or the hundreds of FOREIGN owned solar projects being pushed all over the state in RURAL areas...guess people don't care about about eating. 😡
California has mandatory time of use rates. On peak residential rates are over fifty cents per kWh. So when the poor people in the hot middle of the state need A/C it is really expensive. Gavin just signed legislation adding a surcharge to electric rates to further subsidize offshore wind
I was going to mention...a week late, that SD has some of the highest rates in the country. I'm trying to imagine the life of a working class person where I live seeing their energy bills quadruple. Bloodbath territory. I guess eating is optional under Gavin "Everyman" Newsom.
ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC article...can't wait to share.
My FIL worked in/on those German Nuclear plants in design and project management. He was saddened to hear they were being closed as he truly believed in them. He worked on many European projects.
We're going to need more men like him but we've made they younger generation who might have become them believe (wrongly!) that nuclear and oil/gas are dead ends b/c they're out of political favor. (killing the planet....running out.... take your pick)
So there are going to be far too few qualified engineers, esp. in the nuclear power space. This will likely play out through the EU and the U.S. Canada might have some advantage as first mover.
Another well researched and excellently written piece on this renewables fraud. I congratulate you!
Have you submitted this to the Wall Street Journal as a guest editorial? If not, please do so immediately. If any national newspaper would publish it, they may. This hideous movement needs to be exposed to the largest possible audience. The 1998 bailout of LTCM (and lack of public disclosure and disgust) led directly to the cornucopia of bailouts throughout 2008-2010 that society still pays for.
You are so right, cut the head from this serpent before it can multiply AGAIN!
With most investors placing their life savings and retirement funds in index funds such as the S&P 500 funds, I can’t help but wonder if many of them are like ticking time bombs for the financial future of ordinary Americans. The insanely flawed decision-making by some of these companies appears to make them assured to lose vast sums of money or just fail and they could take us down with them in our old age. The prospect of being relegated to eating cat food from a tin because an ideological delusion destroyed my retirement income is concerning to say the least. I wonder if there are any funds that specifically exclude these alternative energy boondoggles.
Another point about nuclear power and its over 90% uptime: Nuclear uptime is usually INDEPENDENT of weather.
A lot downtime at Nuke plants is refueling and maintenance that is SCHEDULED long in advance. This is usually during seasonal low power demand (late spring and early fall).
Yes, occasional unscheduled downtime happens, but the ability regularly plan over the long term is underrated.
Thank you for a marvelous article. However, if nuclear is so safe, why can't they buy liability insurance on the open market?
Instead we get the only Soviet Style institution in America; the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, which is an ongoing taxpayer subsidy since 1957.
Likely has to with magnitude of potential severity risk. Commercial enterprises could not purchase enough liability limits in the open insurance market (referred to as "capacity") at prices that would render the projects viable ($/Mwh electricity price).
There is some thought that some risks associated with CCS (see our last piece "The Master Abaters") may be too great even for the oil and gas industry to retain.
I suspect because it's a niche market. Only companies like Lloyd's and a few other will underwrite things the perceive as "risky". Nuclear has gotten lots of bad press and fear mongering. Chernobyl may be the exception as my Nuclear engineer FIL said their plans for a containment structure reminded him of a "Morton Building." His company refused to bid on it. He was proven right in 1986.
After getting worn out in the 1980s/1990s over asbestos claims (complicated, arcane issue about commercial insurance coverage prior to ~1986) they've been wary of environmental risks. U.S. domestic insurers are way better at underwriting complicated environmental risks than Lloyds.
Your reply may have been too succinct for my limited brain, but I think I denote cynicism, perhaps toward the environmentalist way of thinking as mercenary? Or did I miss your meaning entirely?
But - and only for you, Al - we're going to allow your unlimited use for your Substack. (However, if you turn it into a T-shirt or coffee mug, we expect a royalty (i.e. 2 XL t-shirts and 2 coffee mugs). And, the bling must have our logo on it - our Little Green Guy)
Ok, Al. We were just having fun there. It’s just a cheeky literary thing we learned (some might say “copycatted”) from Doomberg, the Substack we admire the most.
(Our Assistant Editor says we use it too much!!! And merch isn’t our thing…)
Its really unfortunate what has happened and is happening with Germany, its basically national suicide. From top to bottom, the people, corporations and governments have fully bought into the green grift like nowhere else and they have the energy poverty, industrial flight and spiraling debt to prove it. Siemens has been around since 1857 and they bet the company on this garbage, ditching the future with nuclear, i would love to sit in on board meetings to see if they are panicking or if they still think they are on the right path.
Is there a path back, when anyone who pushes back on this agenda is derided as "far right"? If the AFD is the only party of significance willing to push back against this green nonsense what choice to do sane sensible people have but to vote for them?
They can call people racists all they want, but if the choice is to vote for a party that does contain at least some racists, or lose your job and freeze to death in winter, its no choice.
I wonder how its going to go with Sunak and the conservatives in Britain, finally making small sensible sounds on the energy file, i think they are going to have to go all in to survive.
Have a sister in Berlin. Tragic what they've done.
From Energiewende to Merkel's nuclear knee-jerk to wind/solar, it's now 15 years of absurdity.
You'll know sea change is coming when you start to see other parties adopt energy and environmental sanity. Nuclear would be a canary in the (lignite!) coal mine, as absurd as that sounds having just shut their last reaction April 15 this year. Nuclear looks better than losing your job and freezing to death, even if AfD agrees with the policy.
I love this article, because it shows so much! I miss the days when we had people in power who had the foresight to accomplish tasks that required an understanding of facts. We are surrounded by "opinions" and "thought leaders" instead of people who think clearly and do things that really matter. Too much noise and too little signal.
More thoughts that make my blood boil. Nobody who could help the populace see reason will care about any of this because we live in a country of idiots and the easily fooled. When your news sources come out of daily Instagram or Facebook posts, "non political" news sites and CNN, you show yourself to be useful to powerful, corrupt forces. And so, I fully expect Democrats to take my tax dollars by proxy to prop up failing, grossly irrelevant energy companies and then tell me that I'm a MAGA Republican as part of the deal. I would like all of these clowns to have sex with themselves and put their hands in the pockets of the fools who voted for them. Leave me out of it.
Great historical references. Impressive post, thank you.
Outstanding article. Thank you. I’ve been distracted with other news and have not kept up with my reading on this Substack page. I’ll be back more often from now on. I’ve read from many scientists in alternative media who are brave enough to say that the climate change challenge will always run head first into the laws of economics. And we see this phenomenon in this essay first hand. Wish I was smart enough to have shorted these companies. What really gets my goat is that we read nothing about new research to solve this problem. Surely the trillions we are spending for alternative energy: wind, solar, etc… can be invested by the global community to find a viable solution to this challenge. P.S. I am a NJ resident and happy to see Governor Murphy more than pissed off.
This is a good one, indeed! And frightening. Definitely keeping a closer eye on this issue as its surely coming to reality.
I’ll quibble with a couple of numbers in this excellent piece. In California the utility scale solar farms are replacing panels at 10-12 years, not 25. They degrade to the point where they can’t make contract amounts. The fact that you can’t amortize the over the assumed 25 years will cause rate to be even higher. California is perfect for wind and solar. Nonetheless both have capacity factors under 30%.
Grateful for your quibbling, Lee. We were being extremely generous and geographically generic with the capacity factors at best Tier 1 loc’s in ideal conditions. Same with best case for replacement times for each.
You key point is excellent and important: wearing out in half the time only makes the analysis worse and has to make rates even higher. We have no expectation any offshore turbines will last 20 years. We’ve spent lots of time offshore in salt water.
I thought the Siemens mills in the North Sea were lasting 10 years and had fairly significant maintenance issues during their lives, even at the much smaller size of a 2013 turbine vs what are being built now.
I suspect that some of Siemens troubles are salt water/air related. I've owned expensive things that sat in saltwater. Constant battle. Sea water will eat anything.
In addition it was European manufacturers drive to cut costs to try and be somewhat competitive with Chinese turbines. This led to corners being cut and quality taking a dump. And now their chickens are coming home to roost...
As always, excellent piece Mental. I really laughed at this line, “Danish Oil and Natural Gas aka DONG.” Your pieces are really top-notch! I anxiously await the next gem that passes the editing process.
Thanks!
I can't imagine what those rate requests will do to electric bills...OMG. It's bad enough taxpayer money will bail them out BUT to add insult, for our rates to skyrocket.
I'm in VA and NOT happy about the offshore projects or the hundreds of FOREIGN owned solar projects being pushed all over the state in RURAL areas...guess people don't care about about eating. 😡
Here. We'll help!
(all below in cents/kilowatt hour or Kwh)
Residential rates
Aug2023 Aug2022
California 29.84 26.49
Georgia 14.14 15.97
VA 13.95 14.14
Mass. 27.83 26.46
Source: US Energy Information Administration (EIA) website - Electric Power Monthly
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
California has mandatory time of use rates. On peak residential rates are over fifty cents per kWh. So when the poor people in the hot middle of the state need A/C it is really expensive. Gavin just signed legislation adding a surcharge to electric rates to further subsidize offshore wind
Wow. Thanks, Lee. Didn’t know the peak was that Euro nosebleed high.
You’re right about center state (and even urban) people. 50 cents/Kwh is absurd. And a surcharge to bail out offshore wind in light of that pathetic.
Quite the political paradox Gavin is. Save Diablo Canyon recognizing the crisis, then sign this to placate the Marin County crowd. SMH.
Looking at the San Diego Gas and Electric rate tariff. They are the worst, but the others are in the same neighborhood
Summer on peak $0.66552
Summer off Peak $0.56906
Funny thing about averages. Never trust them.
I was going to mention...a week late, that SD has some of the highest rates in the country. I'm trying to imagine the life of a working class person where I live seeing their energy bills quadruple. Bloodbath territory. I guess eating is optional under Gavin "Everyman" Newsom.
ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC article...can't wait to share.
My FIL worked in/on those German Nuclear plants in design and project management. He was saddened to hear they were being closed as he truly believed in them. He worked on many European projects.
We're going to need more men like him but we've made they younger generation who might have become them believe (wrongly!) that nuclear and oil/gas are dead ends b/c they're out of political favor. (killing the planet....running out.... take your pick)
So there are going to be far too few qualified engineers, esp. in the nuclear power space. This will likely play out through the EU and the U.S. Canada might have some advantage as first mover.
This is another self-inflicted wound.
Another well researched and excellently written piece on this renewables fraud. I congratulate you!
Have you submitted this to the Wall Street Journal as a guest editorial? If not, please do so immediately. If any national newspaper would publish it, they may. This hideous movement needs to be exposed to the largest possible audience. The 1998 bailout of LTCM (and lack of public disclosure and disgust) led directly to the cornucopia of bailouts throughout 2008-2010 that society still pays for.
You are so right, cut the head from this serpent before it can multiply AGAIN!
Thanks!
WSJ would never print a guest editorial without the writers identifying themselves.
We're not seeking fame or fortune, just change. And, not getting doxxed in the process!
With most investors placing their life savings and retirement funds in index funds such as the S&P 500 funds, I can’t help but wonder if many of them are like ticking time bombs for the financial future of ordinary Americans. The insanely flawed decision-making by some of these companies appears to make them assured to lose vast sums of money or just fail and they could take us down with them in our old age. The prospect of being relegated to eating cat food from a tin because an ideological delusion destroyed my retirement income is concerning to say the least. I wonder if there are any funds that specifically exclude these alternative energy boondoggles.
It is worrisome. We are not a finance Substack so we avoid questions like these.
But, we're certain there are some out there (ETF's aplenty, index funds not so sure about...).
Last I heard, STRV and DRLL both do. Haven't kept up recently but that was the premise in the beginning.
Timely and well done piece.
Another point about nuclear power and its over 90% uptime: Nuclear uptime is usually INDEPENDENT of weather.
A lot downtime at Nuke plants is refueling and maintenance that is SCHEDULED long in advance. This is usually during seasonal low power demand (late spring and early fall).
Yes, occasional unscheduled downtime happens, but the ability regularly plan over the long term is underrated.
Thanks!
Bingo on your point.
Thank you for a marvelous article. However, if nuclear is so safe, why can't they buy liability insurance on the open market?
Instead we get the only Soviet Style institution in America; the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, which is an ongoing taxpayer subsidy since 1957.
Thanks!
Likely has to with magnitude of potential severity risk. Commercial enterprises could not purchase enough liability limits in the open insurance market (referred to as "capacity") at prices that would render the projects viable ($/Mwh electricity price).
There is some thought that some risks associated with CCS (see our last piece "The Master Abaters") may be too great even for the oil and gas industry to retain.
I suspect because it's a niche market. Only companies like Lloyd's and a few other will underwrite things the perceive as "risky". Nuclear has gotten lots of bad press and fear mongering. Chernobyl may be the exception as my Nuclear engineer FIL said their plans for a containment structure reminded him of a "Morton Building." His company refused to bid on it. He was proven right in 1986.
Not sure if Lloyds writes much nuclear risk.
After getting worn out in the 1980s/1990s over asbestos claims (complicated, arcane issue about commercial insurance coverage prior to ~1986) they've been wary of environmental risks. U.S. domestic insurers are way better at underwriting complicated environmental risks than Lloyds.
I sort of figured that, just using them as a week know risk insurer.
I honestly had never thought about Nuclear needing insurance.
Always something new to learn. 🙂
When it all collapses, will we agree that it is gone with the wind?
Ha! The loot? Yeah.
Frankly, I don't give a damn about the rest! :)
Your reply may have been too succinct for my limited brain, but I think I denote cynicism, perhaps toward the environmentalist way of thinking as mercenary? Or did I miss your meaning entirely?
Great article. Have you really patented your "Too Green to Fail" phrase? I want to use it!
Thanks!
Not patented, trademarked.
But - and only for you, Al - we're going to allow your unlimited use for your Substack. (However, if you turn it into a T-shirt or coffee mug, we expect a royalty (i.e. 2 XL t-shirts and 2 coffee mugs). And, the bling must have our logo on it - our Little Green Guy)
Deal?
Thank you! I'll use the trademark when quoting some of your substack wisdom. But I'll leave the T-shirts to you, and I might buy one!
Ok, Al. We were just having fun there. It’s just a cheeky literary thing we learned (some might say “copycatted”) from Doomberg, the Substack we admire the most.
(Our Assistant Editor says we use it too much!!! And merch isn’t our thing…)
Well said
Its really unfortunate what has happened and is happening with Germany, its basically national suicide. From top to bottom, the people, corporations and governments have fully bought into the green grift like nowhere else and they have the energy poverty, industrial flight and spiraling debt to prove it. Siemens has been around since 1857 and they bet the company on this garbage, ditching the future with nuclear, i would love to sit in on board meetings to see if they are panicking or if they still think they are on the right path.
Is there a path back, when anyone who pushes back on this agenda is derided as "far right"? If the AFD is the only party of significance willing to push back against this green nonsense what choice to do sane sensible people have but to vote for them?
They can call people racists all they want, but if the choice is to vote for a party that does contain at least some racists, or lose your job and freeze to death in winter, its no choice.
I wonder how its going to go with Sunak and the conservatives in Britain, finally making small sensible sounds on the energy file, i think they are going to have to go all in to survive.
Have a sister in Berlin. Tragic what they've done.
From Energiewende to Merkel's nuclear knee-jerk to wind/solar, it's now 15 years of absurdity.
You'll know sea change is coming when you start to see other parties adopt energy and environmental sanity. Nuclear would be a canary in the (lignite!) coal mine, as absurd as that sounds having just shut their last reaction April 15 this year. Nuclear looks better than losing your job and freezing to death, even if AfD agrees with the policy.