In A Contest Between Photo voltaic & Ethanol, There Is One Clear Winner

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Photo voltaic United Neighbors is a neighborhood motion group working to carry extra clear power to Indiana. It has heard all that palaver about photo voltaic destroying the agricultural lifestyle by changing prime farmland to photo voltaic farms and it has the stats that show that may be a blivet — which is outlined as 10 kilos of horse puckey in a 5-pound pail.

Examine this out. The group says, “In 2024, 43% of Indiana’s corn went to ethanol manufacturing. However, by way of land use effectivity, photo voltaic beats ethanol in a number of metrics. Most significantly, photo voltaic is 20 occasions extra environment friendly than ethanol, even when accounting for helpful byproducts resembling animal feed. Harvesting photo voltaic power fairly than ethanol results in much less air pollution from fertilizer runoff and fewer erosion from tillage whereas offering a brand new drought resistant income stream.”

That’s fairly damning stuff. Photo voltaic farms are farming. They’re changing daylight into power simply as vegetation convert daylight into the power they should develop. Photo voltaic United Neighbors has extra arrows in its quiver. It claims photo voltaic is just not the first purpose for the lack of farmland.

That’s a subject that ought to be taken severely, however the actuality is that photo voltaic is just not the driving pressure behind it. SUN says, “Between 2013 and 2021, solely 5 % of misplaced Indiana farmland was transformed to power manufacturing (which incorporates new wind, pure gasoline, biomass, and photo voltaic manufacturing), whereas 68 % of misplaced agricultural land was developed into properties and neighborhoods. And photo voltaic, not like housing developments, might be returned to agricultural land on the finish of its helpful life.”

So right here’s what we need to know. The place are the protesters standing up a zoning conferences to oppose increasingly housing developments that suck up farmland and switch it into cul-de-sacs, golf programs, and roads? The place are the folks protesting that each one these tract homes are destroying the agricultural character of communities? To not put too high quality some extent on it, however there may be a lot hypocrisy behind the anti-solar gangs that it makes us gag.

Lies, Damned Lies, & NIMBY

5% versus 68% and other people need to blame photo voltaic for ruining rural life? Oh, please. Recover from yourselves together with your bleating and pretend concern for farmers, lots of whom have discovered the revenue they derive from photo voltaic farms is the distinction between staying in enterprise and promoting out to builders and going to reside in a one bed room apartment in Terre Haute. Spare us your faux piousness about your valuable rural character. That act has worn so skinny it’s threadbare. All people is aware of the agitators are funded — straight or not directly — by fossil gas pursuits, so recover from yourselves and go get an actual job.

Professor Mark Jacobson of Stanford has invested a variety of time serious about this very problem and has some pearls of knowledge he shares with us on this video.

Coal Is Soiled, Unreliable, & Expensive

One other drained outdated fantasy is that renewables are unreliable as a result of, as each one is aware of, the solar doesn’t at all times shine and the wind doesn’t at all times blow. The piece no person desires to speak about is battery storage, which is getting cheaper by the hour, it appears.

On his Substack weblog at the moment, Invoice McKibben factors out the declining price of power storage batteries has change into one of many greatest promoting factors for renewables. Photo voltaic plus batteries are credited with stabilizing the Texas grid this summer season throughout document excessive temperatures when demand for air-con soared.

“What doesn’t assist,” he requested? “Coal. The latest, greatest coal fired energy plant within the US, additionally in Texas, went offline after a catastrophic accident in April. It now seems it is going to be out of service till…April 2027.” Yikes!

Seth Feaster of the Institute For Power Economics and Monetary Evaluation says that outage is disturbingly much like working issues at Comanche 3, a 750 MW coal-fired unit in Colorado that got here on-line in 2010 and is majority owned by Xcel Power. Because it started working, it has had a historical past of surprising and dear outages that culminated in a 12 months lengthy closure beginning in January 2020 that was brought on by a catastrophic lack of lubricating oil, extensively damaging the turbine and generator.

Dealing with a backlash from ratepayers and the Colorado Public Utilities Fee, Xcel finally reached an settlement to shut the plant in 2030, some 40 years sooner than its initially deliberate retirement, Feaster reviews. As a part of that settlement, Xcel additionally agreed to progressively step down the usage of the plant between 2025 and 2030.

However the settlement is beneath risk from the US authorities, which is all of the sudden in love with coal once more. It made a variety of noise lately about opening federally owned land for coal extraction. How embarrassing, then, that the primary public sale, which passed off final week, drew only one bidder, who provided to purchase the coal for the magnificent sum of 1 tenth of a cent per ton! What a deal for US taxpayers!

Choosing Winners & Losers

The administration, which is top-heavy with true believers who declare authorities shouldn’t be selecting winners and losers within the market, is doing exactly that because it pressures utilities to maintain their coal-fired producing stations open whatever the price to ratepayers and the reliability of the vegetation. It’s all a part of the good rip-off often called the “power emergency” the administration has created our of entire material to please its beneficiant donors.

In the meantime, China continues to be the first provider of renewable power know-how and gear to the world, McKibben writes. Liz Thompson, a former UN assistant secretary-general and now local weather change ambassador for Barbados, stated lately that simply as climate-vulnerable states are hit by extra disasters, they’re hampered of their response due to a scarcity of entry to know-how and financing. “These challenges present compelling causes to work extra intently with China,” she stated.

Clear Power Is Making China A World Chief

Chinese language officers and enterprise leaders are eager to oblige, McKibben factors out. Zhang Shiguo, government director of China New Power Worldwide Alliance, a corporation backed by authorities associations and renewable firms, stated the nation’s inexperienced merchandise had already reached 170 nations. “The explanation China’s new power sector has carried out properly is the dedication to behave,” Zhang added.

And act it has. Bloomberg reported this week that the US, which has positioned itself as a significant fossil gas exporter, offered $80 billion in oil and gasoline overseas via July, the final month with information accessible. China exported $120 billion in inexperienced know-how over the identical interval. To which McKibben provides, “With that quantity, you may really feel world management passing from Washington to Beijing. It’s much more exceptional as a result of the issues that China is usually exporting — photo voltaic panels — preserve getting cheaper and cheaper.”

The madness and viciousness of the present administration is aware of no bounds. Russell Vought and the sycophants who help him won’t relaxation till the Structure has been rendered null and void with the lively concurrence of the Supreme Courtroom and the Repugnican Quislings in Congress who’re petrified to indicate they’ve a conscience.

The tip of American Exceptionalism is imminent.