"Renewables" are energy laundering

Submitted by Ike Kiefer (United States), Jul 25, 2018 at 21:25

Anyone who understands the characteristics of energy density, power density, EROI, etc. required to mine and produce steel, concrete, glass, carbon fiber, aluminum, rare earths, etc., already knows that wind turbines and solar panels and biofuel plantations are monuments to fossil fuel energy and would themselves not exist except for energy borrowed from fossil fuels. Less than 1% of global energy comes from these fossil fuel-dependent "renewables," and energy demand is growing faster than renewable capacity, meaning non-renewable energy growth is outpacing RE growth. That is the real story.

Electricity is just the market place were these non-economic and high-environmental footprint rent-seekers go to launder their unreliable, low capacity factor, diffuse, remote, low-EROI, low-value intermittent power into real green cash via market distorting government mandates and subsidies.

Because of the low energy return on investment (EROI) of renewables ( 20:1), diversion of the latter to produce the former is a net loss to civilization that only increases the rate of consumption of the finite resource to produce final delivered energy less efficiently. If any significant amount of "renewable" electricity went into Burj Khalifa, it would only have served to increase the total amount of energy required to> 100% of what it would have been if done purely with fossil fuels.

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