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On September 17, Canary Media published a story about a recent public opinion survey conducted for the Conservative Energy Network by Cygnal in Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. It found that voters in those states favored enlarging the utility grid and adding more renewable energy in order to limit increases in their utility bills.
Nearly three quarters of likely voters said they support expanding the electric grid and about two-thirds were in favor of adding more transmission lines to connect clean energy and strengthen grid reliability. In addition, close to 90 percent of respondents said they were concerned about rising energy costs. A majority of surveyed Republicans, Democrats, and Independents said they were “very concerned.”
“This is not a partisan issue. … You don’t have to appeal to one side or another,” said Chris Lane, a senior partner at Cygnal, who previewed the findings at the National Conservative Energy Summit in Cleveland on August 25. He said the results stand out for their consistency between regions and among different groups and political parties.
Knee-Jerk Reaction From Fossil Fuel Crowd
That report set off alarm bells within the fossil fuel industry. They paid big bucks to get someone elected who would put the kibosh on all this renewable energy nonsense. How dare those people threaten their profits! It’s downright unAmerican, that’s what it is. And so the industry has brought up its big guns to shoot down any suggestion that Americans really want more renewables.
We bring you what follows not because we endorse the lies being told but because our readers deserve to know what the fossil fuel industry is doing to suppress wind and solar power. Later, we will give you the tools you need to counteract these scurrilous distortions should anyone attempt to suggest there is any truth to them.
One organization that felt particularly aggrieved by the CEN survey was the so-called Institute for Energy Research, which had this to say:
“Because wind and solar plants are far less efficient than fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, performing at significantly lower capacity factors than traditional technologies, more wind and solar capacity is required to generate equal amounts of power. As a result, renewables consume orders of magnitude more materials for the same electricity output.
“For example, replacing the energy output of a 100-megawatt natural gas-fired turbine with wind requires 20 wind turbines that occupy around 10 square miles of land, requiring enormous quantities of concrete, steel, and fiberglass, along with rare earth elements, whose processing is dominated by China. That means that wind and solar also require huge increases in mining.”
Don’t go away. There’s more — much more. IER leaves no stone unturned when it comes to attacking renewables. Next it targets raw materials such as steel and concrete, ignoring that both are also used to build thermal generating stations. It’s a favorite tactic of the the fossil fuel crazies.
They attack the use of cobalt from the DRC to make batteries but never mention that cobalt is an essential part of the oil refining process. Nor do they mention that LFP batteries, which contain no cobalt, are rapidly becoming the batteries of choice for energy storage. The attack continues with this:
“According to the Mackinac Center, construction materials — steel, glass, and concrete — needed for wind turbines and solar panels are produced in energy and emissions-intensive industries, such as cement and steel production, which each account for 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Fossil fuels are used to produce cement, plastics, and fiberglass to power ships, trucks, and construction equipment, and to provide lubricants for the gearboxes on turbines.
“According to Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute, ‘If wind turbines were to supply half the world’s electricity, nearly 2 billion tons of coal [around one quarter of all global coal use] would have to be consumed to produce the concrete and steel, along with 1.5 billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades.’”
The China Card
Next, it’s time to play the China card:
“Reliance on solar power also means reliance on China, as China dominates the global solar panel market and polysilicon production, using cheap coal. Around half of the world’s polysilicon, a key ingredient in solar cells, is produced in Xinjiang, China, where Uyghur Muslims are enslaved to produce it.
“Cobalt, needed for the manufacture of storage batteries to backup wind and solar and to power electric vehicles, is mostly produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, often using child labor with abysmal working conditions. The Congo has almost half of the world’s cobalt reserves, and China owns half of the large cobalt mines.
“Wind and solar units must also be replaced much faster than fossil fuel or nuclear units, meaning more manufacturing and more mining. The average life of wind and solar units is said to be 25 years, but in reality, it is much less, and some are even repowered after just 10 years of operation. That compares to fossil fuel and nuclear units whose operating lives are four, five, or six decades. The shorter life means the process of extraction and production must be renewed, and old panels and turbines must be disposed of.”
But Wait, There’s More
Are we done yet? Not quite. The IER wraps up its full frontal assault on renewables with this conclusion:
“The public believes that wind and solar power are cheap and clean. Neither is the case. They require massive amounts of material to produce the equivalent power of fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, and require huge amounts of land and mining. Disposal of used wind turbines and solar panels requires special handling due to the size of the turbine blades and the toxicity of solar panels.
“Their reported costs are misleading because analysts often focus on the levelized cost of electricity metric, which excludes the cost of backup systems and infrastructure, only focusing on the cost to build and operate a plant, not the value of the plant to the grid.”
Knowledge Is Power
OK, that is pretty damning, wouldn’t you say? You can see this screed being repeated endlessly by Faux News. So, what do you say when someone challenges your support for renewables based on this information? For the answer, we turn to Greenpeace, which has the lowdown on the IER. It says:
“The Institute for Energy Research was founded by Charles Koch and CEO Robert Bradley, a former Enron executive, in Texas under its former name, the Institute for Humane Studies of Texas. Thomas Pyle, a former Koch and oil-industry lobbyist, is the President of IER and the American Energy Alliance, the 501C4 counterpart to IER. Pyle is directing Donald Trump’s Energy Department transition team, after Trump cited an IER study in a promise to expand federal oil and gas leasing.
“Politico reports that Koch was among donors to $3.6 million advertising campaign, run by AEA in the run up to the 2012 U.S. presidential election, blaming President Barack Obama for high gas prices. According to ProPublica, AEA received $2,339,960 from organizations in the Koch network. This included almost $1.5 million from Freedom Partners, a 50C6 business league directed by many of the most prominent members of the Koch brothers’ inner political circle (Richard Fink, Marc Short, Wayne Gable, and Kevin Gentry) with anonymous funding sources from attendees of ‘Koch World’ meetings.”
Credit: ProPublica
Greenpeace goes on to say: “IER promotes discredited research. IER supported and promoted the ‘Spanish’ and ‘Danish’ studies critical of clean energy jobs, both of which have been debunked. As of 2015, IER staff were using the ‘Spanish’ and ‘Danish’ studies to lobby state legislators, in support of efforts to end state laws requiring increased generation of clean energy, otherwise known as renewable portfolio standards. One such effort succeeded in freezing Ohio’s clean energy law.
“IER argued that efforts to curb global warming would accomplish little at too great a cost, promotes ACCF/NAM and Heritage Foundation studies that exaggerate the costs of climate policy, and discourages U.S. leadership on the international stage.”
Now that you know more about the IER, you can use that knowledge to knock down any claims based upon its unhinged ravings. And when you are done with this article, please take the time to read the full report from ProPublica entitled “How Dark Money Flows Through the Koch Network.” Knowledge is power. Feel free to use it!
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