Germany is the first country to try green energy policies, decarbonize, and works towards zero emissions throughout their entire economy. What’s actually taken place for Germany is they have the highest electricity prices in the world. The international consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has deemed the German government and people’s green energy policies a significant threat to their national security and electrical generation capabilities.
The leading German newspaper Der Spiegel agreed with McKinsey’s findings while adding the term “disaster” to the green energy transition (termed Engerwiende). This is a crushing example of German citizens voting in and supporting green policymakers ignoring baseload electrical grid reality. California is doing the same thing, only worse since the State is the 5th largest economy in the world with global implications.
Energy to electricity policies based on intermittent renewables (mainly solar panels and wind turbines) comes from the premise the earth is warming over mankind’s activities referred to as anthropogenic global warming. So far, predictions of the earth’s demise from man’s activities have not come true.
Wind turbines environmental footprint is a major reason why California should stop relying on them for electricity. The picture below highlights the amount of materials it takes to make just one wind turbine; which Germany and California bank on to meet their green energy goals:
Source: MCA Coal – The Hard Facts – World Steel Association
Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker and well-known Democratic environmental activist Michael Moore filmed the complete destruction of biodiversity and the environment in his early 2020 documentary Planet of the Humans. Un-surprisingly, the climate alarmist movement, and financial beneficiaries of renewables – such as the German government, California environmentalists and billionaire Tom Steyer – hated Mr. Moore’s documentary.
The Merkel-led German government is wiping out entire German forests and habitats for a wind-powered electrical generation. California is following suit, and blighting entire scenic landscapes with wind turbines.
Most Californians are deeply worried about global emissions however, they are doing more harm than good to the environment since this generation’s wind turbine needs “45 tons of rebar and 481m3 of concrete, (making) its carbon footprint a massive 241.85 tons of CO2.”
All across Germany, and California is following this path “millions of acres of forest have been clear-felled and great swathes cut through others, to allow some 30,000 (wind turbines) be speared across Deutschland for tons of CO2 global warming emissions.” Begin with the assumption that all 30,000 wind turbines need to be replaced. California will have the same issue with older turbines.
Then the behemoth costs for disposal are unknown. German wind companies, utilities and ratepayers are plagued with high costs throughout the entire value chain. Feed-in requirements, which forces utilities and power providers to purchase expensive wind electricity is set to expire. This describes California’s plight for some of the highest electricity prices in the U.S. leading to increased poverty, homelessness and an anemic economy.
The inevitable course of action for many operators will be to shut down old wind turbine farms and let the courts decide their fate. Ancestry turbines are no longer valid for what the wind industry is producing. Blades “so large as to exceed the height limits placed on turbines by Germany’s planning rules. In the Lower Saxony region of Germany approximately 1,000 of 1,691 wind turbine site-farms are currently unavailable for repowering, according to Olaf Lies (SPD) the Lower Saxony Minister of Energy and Environment.
San Bernardino is California’s largest county, and “has banned the construction of large solar and wind farms of more than 1 million acres of private land.” Residents don’t want their rural desert community littered with renewables.
Renewable sites will eventually be deemed unprofitable and abandoned. California taxpayers will have paid out billions and received nothing in return, but toxic, rusting, useless, wind farms.
A sobering study published in Nature Communication conceded the mining and use of renewables will annihilate biodiversity by stating:
“Mining potentially influences 50 million km2 of Earth’s land surface, with 8% coinciding with Protected Areas, 7% with Key Biodiversity Areas, and 16% with Remaining Wilderness. Most mining areas (82%) target materials needed for renewable energy production, and areas that overlap with Protected Areas and Remaining Wilderness contain a greater density of mines (our indicator of threat severity) compared to the overlapping mining areas that target other materials.”
Nature Communications also added:
“Mining threats to biodiversity will increase as more mines target materials
for renewable energy production and, without strategic planning, these new threats to biodiversity may surpass those averted by climate change mitigation.”
Simply put, more problems will be caused by mining for rare earth minerals used in renewables and basing economies off wind turbines and solar panels than what they seek to mitigate or eliminate. If California voters understood these obstacles would they continue voting in policymakers who promote intermittent electricity from renewables versus zero-carbon nuclear energy to electricity power plants?
Abandoning renewables should be the goal since they are mathematically impossible, intermittent, toxic, cause higher emissions, are overly expensive, and underdeliver what they promise. Considering their undeniable reproach to humanity isn’t it time to cast them asunder? Ideological, bordering on fanatical or evil is how renewables for a California and German future should be viewed.
It takes a special kind of delusion to continue believing the wind and the sun will power Berlin, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Placating environmentalists, their lobbyists, and beneficiaries of their campaign contributions needs to be understood before they destroy California and the U.S. by replacing fossil fuels (mainly coal, natural gas, oil/petroleum) and nuclear with solar panels and wind turbines. Is this what California wants for their energy policies, environmental health, and economic future? Let’s hope the State doesn’t follow Germany into ruin.