The inevitable crash of Net Zero
Guest articles
13 Mar
Bryan Leyland
Virtually every net-zero-by-2050 initiative is doomed.
Wind and solar power are very expensive when storage and other costs are included. They cannot function without large-scale, long-term energy storage because the wind doesn’t blow all the time, and sometimes, there is little or no wind for a week or more. Solar power goes off every night, and is seriously reduced on cloudy days. There is no existing technology that can provide long-term storage at a low cost. Until one is discovered, backing up large-scale wind and solar power will be unaffordable.
To give some idea of the scale of the problem, the cost of batteries would need to reduce by a factor of 20 or more for solar or wind power to be competitive with conventional generation. Other problems are that we need 2000 MW of wind power or 4000 MW of solar power plus back up to produce about the same amount of energy as a 1000 MW nuclear power station, which generates continuously and reliably. The fact that wind and solar developers continually clamour for more subsidies confirms that these technologies are seriously uneconomic. Many major offshore wind farms have been cancelled over the last few months. One developer has written off $4 billion rather than continue development.
If current policies persist, the result will be even higher consumer prices and frequent major blackouts.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/inevitable-crash-net-zero
