Who will we thank for the green nirvana? The windmills of today are modern versions of those that powered industry several centuries ago. Within a few decades of the introduction of James Watt’s steam engine to assist the annual harvest in Europe, those old windmills ceased turning, for here was a new, flexible, portable and always ready-to-go form of energy. Nothing that has happened in recent decades has reduced that difference in utility. The laws of physics prevent it. We have become used to accessing energy when and where we want it. In the absence – now or in prospect – of any technology to store electricity at a massive scale for weeks, we need a 100% back-up capability of coal, oil, gas and nuclear electricity for when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
A forced priority to use wind and solar, sweetened by vast subsides (for they would not be spontaneously adopted by the free market) means that we have to run two grids side by side: one intermittent, the other firm. The last 20 years have seen only wasteful addition and some unwise subtractions, such as blowing up coal-fired power stations for show. We would not have been able to evolve our modern society if we had relied all along on wind and solar forms of energy. Just as we can’t buck the market because it bites back, so too we can’t buck the engineering principles of power generation for they too bite back. ...<<<Read More>>>...
