Renewable-energy advocates often cite increasing demand for steel, copper, nickel, and cobalt as a reason why Minnesotans on the Iron Range should support more renewable-energy mandates. There is no doubt that doubling the renewable-energy mandate would increase Minnesota's demand for these metals, but we won't be able to afford to mine them here....
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Bloomberg reports that El Niño has caused electricity generation from wind turbines to plummet by approximately 14 percent in the Midwest this year. Apparently, it is quite common that wind turbine generation falls during El Niño years. This begs the question, could a warmer world render Minnesota's wind turbines worthless? ...
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Minnesota currently has a law mandating that 25 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, by 2025. Some lawmakers have proposed doubling the renewable energy mandate (REM), requiring that 50 percent of our electricity be generated by renewable sources by the year 2030, and Governor Walz has proposed a 100 percent carbon-dioxide-free electric grid by 2050. This report chose to calculate the impact of a 50 percent REM, rather than a 100 percent REM, because research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows using wind, solar, and batteries to achieve 100 percent of electricity...
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Minnesota has spent well over $15 billion on wind, solar, transmission lines, and the profits utility companies make by putting these things in the ground, but we have no batteries capable of storing the electricity produced by wind turbines or solar panels and we're not likely to have them soon. Just 24 hours of battery storage in Minnesota would cost $133 billion, and that is not accounting for the loss in power experienced when it gets cold out, which tends to happen a lot here. In the end, we've blown billions of dollars building battery chargers when we have no batteries! ...
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I am told that at the recent CPAC 2020 gathering the President told a well-received joke aimed at the latest “Green” demands that we forgo dirty carbon-based energy and rely solely on wind and solar: “Darling, darling, is the wind blowing today? I would like to watch television, darling.” I thought about that joke when I turned on to a frontage road last Sunday. There was Tesla S blocking the road with the flashers on. It looked like it had been there all night; icicles had formed from the body down to the road and there was snow around it. When I...
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Kids around the country are skipping school to draw attention to climate change, but why don't these kids demand real solutions to a problem they find so severe they must skip school? Minnesota has it's own coalition of astroturf youth climate groups, iMatter, Climate Generation etc, but maybe these kids should read the article below rather than storming the capitol to support inefficient and unreliable wind and solar power. If these students are so concerned about climate change, why aren't they advocating for the legalization of new nuclear power plants in Minnesota? The following article was written by Bjorn Lomborg, and originally...
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If we want to compare the cost of different power sources, it is necessary to also consider the value they offer to the grid. If energy sources like wind and solar cost X amount but need other energy sources on standby that cost Y amount, then the true cost is not really X, is it?...
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Xcel Energy made headlines by announcing they would be the first electric utility to derive 100 percent of their electricity from sources that don't emit carbon dioxide by 2050. Earlier this month, the government-approved monopoly utility company released a 28-page report outlining their plan for "Building a Carbon-free Future." After reading the document, I was left with two nagging questions that should have been answered in the report: what would it cost, and how much future warming would it prevent?...
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Green countries around the world rely on two primary sources of electricity to keep CO2 emissions low - but they are not wind and solar. If reducing CO2 emissions is the goal, wouldn’t renewable energy advocates want to adopt power sources that have been proven to do so? ...
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A hike in energy prices will mean a real terms reduction in Minnesotans incomes. ...
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