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The Green Mistake
The headlong rush to zero carbon is a mistake. The move will happen, but it must happen at a sustainable pace.
The ongoing brutally cold weather in Europe is a clear warning sign to everyone.
From the lacklustre yet populist green parties that have hitherto enjoyed their time in the spotlight, the insipid politicians hanging onto the coat-tails of the campaigners and looking for reelection, to the most important group — the everyday people who’re suffering the consequences of the dreadful short-sighted ill thought out decisions that are making all of our lives a collective misery.
You see, when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining all the energy grids of the continent have to rely on are the safe, reliable, ever present, and zero emissions energy sources of hydro and nuclear power generation.
Oh, and gas. Always gas.
The fuel that became so cheap, with less carbon emissions than coal, and is just so easy to transport with the many new pipelines coming into existence — that every man and his dog was building gas fired power stations and making pots of cash. Until now.
Gas generation has the advantage that it’s quick to turn on and off and can supplement the grid when energy is in short supply — something that other existing power sources can’t match in terms of speed or capacity.
Sure, larger and larger batteries are coming online and there’s always pumped hydro, but they’re not available at the huge capacity required and won’t be anytime soon.
So the rush to ‘green energy’ got underway — renewables came online and everyone cheered the great achievements of the eco warriors when the aged and polluting, yet of course dependable and with massive resources at their disposal, were preemptively closed down.
Everyone relied on gas — the eggs were all set and were all lined up perfectly in the same golden basket.
Do you see the problem, something that’s always tied to the short term thinking of the political establishment, something that protesters do over and over again— omit to think of the long term implications of short term populist actions?
With the knee-jerk closure of the reliable large scale generation plants such as those…
