"Energy issues are boring to many people, full of the sort of things the current wizards of academia and the press consider “white privilege” and “patriarchal” thinking -- you know, the kind of thing in which correct answers matter more than subjective feelings.
Significant numbers of people escape into fantasy worlds ...
On the one hand, we have those hucksters who profit off our ignorance by providing dire forecasts, the daily frisson of horrific scenarios which appeal to the growing number of neurotics who need it as much as their morning coffee to jump start their sluggish mental systems, along with politicians who feather the nests of their buddies with expensive, non-functioning projects like Solyndra.
... On the other hand, the complexity of the issue induces others to seek less banal reality in fantasies in which free energy is there for the taking with no downsides.
Both fantasies operate in tandem:
We’re going to die any minute from the greenhouse effect caused by eating meat from animals that fart; by using electricity, pumping water and heating and cooling our homes and offices with energy generated by conventional means and driving our own gasoline-powered autos instead of using mass transit and electric cars.
The fantasy continues that we can only avoid it by blanketing the countryside with windmills and solar arrays and using hydro power.
... To take one example of such thinking -- there’s the claim that “just 0.1% of the heat content of Earth could supply humanity’s total energy needs for 2 million years.”
... We cannot tap 0.1% of the earth's heat content or even a meaningful fraction of .1% of it any more than we can or should want to coat the surface of the earth with solar panels.
If we had any damned brains ... we would build whatever is the cheapest energy source and enjoy the benefits of it, including a greening, wetter planet if one of the cheap source's side effects was increased CO2.
... In the real world, we have the choice of spending more money to harden conventional energy production and transmission or living with unreliable energy.
“Renewable intermittency is the new systematic challenge to grid reliability.”
The guilty party will be our choice not to invest in pipelines and backup gas plants to support our desired renewables in the face of cold spells a lot more predictable than those that landed on Texas.
... When the design performance limitations of utility systems come into play, it will always be in the interest of politicians and utility executives to change the subject to global warming.
Somehow voters have to focus on the fact that unless we spend money to improve reliability, we will face more $9,000 per megawatt hour (instead of $50 per megawatt hour) as Texas just did, an increase in the cost of electricity that consumers will be stuck paying for anyway.
The details of the Texas outage ...
On the reliability grading scale, natural gas scored highest even though some natural gas pipelines froze.
Monday through Thursday natural gas provided over 65 percent of all electricity generation.
What didn’t work?
“Green” energy: solar, wind and hydro.
Solar was irrelevant to energy production in the storm, wind was virtually irrelevant as well.
... there was little wind in this cold blast and, worse, when it gets really cold “they (wind turbines) draw power off the grid to heat their motors... they become consumers, not producers of energy.”
There are other steps to consider to increase reliability during these rare events, mostly weatherizing the energy infrastructure, but that will cost money and ...
-- once the disaster is over, it will be politically unfeasible to advance such a program.
Instead of real solutions, we see political leaders like Chuck Schumer blather on: “It’s long past time for our Senate to take a leading role in combatting the existential threat of our time: climate.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez equates the fight to mitigate “climate change” (just a short while ago that was “climate warming” which proved ridiculous because it wasn’t much) which she dubbed her generation’s “World War II.”
A year ago ... she proposed her fantasy “Green New Deal.
Here are some of the key ideas
Upgrade all existing buildings in the US
100% clean power
Support family farms
Universal access to healthy food
Zero-emission vehicle infrastructure
Remove greenhouse gasses form the atmosphere
Eliminate unfair competition
Affordable access to electricity
Create high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages
Guaranteeing a job with a family sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.
... Maybe it’s time to buy home generators."