Germany and Sweden Want to Reduce CO2 Emissions in the Worst Way–and Are Succeeding!

I’ve written often about the economic nightmare that are renewables, specifically wind and solar power. They are terribly inefficient because they are intermittent, and they are diffuse. The intermittency requires maintaining substantial backup capacity. Their diffuse nature means that they are incredibly land intensive. I should also add that renewable energy sources are not miraculously located where loads are. Indeed, they are often located far, far away from load, and therefore necessitate substantial investment in transmission.

How inefficient? This recent University of Chicago study documents that the difference in cost between renewable and conventional generation dwarfs any possible benefit from CO2 reduction. To reprise the old joke: governments that subsidize renewables want to reduce CO2 emissions in the worst way, and they have.

Heretofore the Germans have been the world’s leader in renewable idiocy, with their Energiewende debacle, which has raised power costs to among the world’s highest, and not led to decreases in CO2 emissions (due mainly to the intermittency problem mentioned above). Well played! So how are the Germans going to deal with this? Perhaps by making electricity MORE expensive, by adding a CO2 tax on top of the CO2 cap and trade scheme.

I would say that will be hard to top Germany’s leading position in the ranks of renewables retards, but the Swedes are giving it a gallant try. So get this. The Swedes are replacing cheap zero carbon power (from four nuclear plants) located near load centers like Stockholm with expensive zero carbon power produced my windmills in the frozen back of buggery in the far north of Sweden. One big problem, they are woefully short of transmission capacity from back of buggery to the places where Swedes actually live and work.

This will make power more expensive, and is already constraining economic activity in Sweden. Moreover, it is raising the risk of blackouts.

So the Swedes may be replacing reliable carbon free electricity with electricity free electricity. That will be fun in the winters, eh?

Realistic people who believe that it is necessary to reduce carbon emissions understand that nuclear power is the efficient way to do so, and will become even more efficient with the development of new reactor technologies. It would be far more economical to invest in improvements in nukes than vast wind and solar projects.

But the Swedes appear to still be in the thrall of post-Three Mile Island hysteria (note that the decision to close the plants was made in 1980, a year after TMI) just as the Germans responded to post-Fukushima hysteria by deciding to close all their nukes.

That is, the energy policies of supposedly sophisticated societies are being driven by bugbears and bogeymen–a morbid obsession with CO2, and a view of nuclear power shaped by a nearly 40 year old Jane Fonda movie. This is leading them to force people to rely energy sources that are monstrously inefficient, making said people poorer. (Not to mention that a monomaniacal focus on CO2 leads them to overlook the total environmental impact of wind and solar, which is not a pretty picture.)

The Swedes are also leaders in a modern-day Children’s Crusade (that worked out great the first time, right?) to impose their climate bogeymen on the rest of the world. A rather unfortunate Swedish teenager is going around lecturing the world on the need for drastic action on CO2 now. This is an emotionally manipulative use of children as a substitute for actual argument and analysis and facts. Cynically, it exploits the reluctance of people to criticize children (even though they know nothing, or next to it), especially ones (in the words of the immortal Hank Hill) that ain’t right.

And behold what policies the Swedes want to visit on the rest of us. What they do in Sweden is their business, but they should keep their noses out of everyone else’s.

Makes me more glad than ever that my ancestors bugged out for Minnesota 140 odd years ago. But recent research suggests that they are to blame for Sweden’s current idiocies! I’ve long hypothesized that more independent souls are far more likely to emigrate, leaving the conformists behind. And recent research focusing on Scandinavia provides support for this hypothesis:

The researchers suggest the migration flows, which were small relative to the native population of America but equivalent to about 25 per cent of the total population of Scandinavia, changed the character of Norwegian and Swedish society by removing the most ambitious and independently-minded people.

So Scandinavia’s loss was America’s gain. And if their energy policies are any indication, they are still paying the price today.