Yet Another Reason Why Wind And Solar Electricity Generation Will Never Work To Run An Economy

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  • If you don’t like fossil fuels — and who does? — our betters in academia and environmental NGOs have the perfect answer: we can just get our energy in the form of electricity from the wind and sun. The fuel is abundant and free for the taking. The New York Times has reported that the cost of electricity generated from wind and sun is now lower than the cost of generation from fossil fuel sources. And even as we save money on electricity, we’ll be saving the planet!

  • All the sociology and gender studies majors agree that we have a moral duty to switch our energy system away from fossil fuels to “clean and green” wind and solar electricity. Who could possibly be such a monster as to stand in the way?

  • At this website, I have devoted considerable attention to documenting major flaws in this narrative. In particular, I have written dozens of posts on the subject of the intermittency problem of wind and solar generation, which leads to a need for either full back-up at all times from another generation source, or alternatively for massive capacity of energy storage, in order to make a fully-functioning electricity system to power a grid without regular blackouts. As demonstrated in my Energy Storage Report of December 2022, providing sufficient energy storage in the form of batteries could multiply the cost of electricity from wind and sun by a factor of ten or more.

  • And it turns out that the intermittency problem is just one of the major issues with wind and solar generation that make those sources completely impractical and unaffordable to run an electrical grid. Another huge problem, which I have previously barely touched on here, is the problem of synchronization and inertia.

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New York Approaches The Green Energy Cliff With Morons In Charge

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The Democratic Socialists Of America Stand Up For Cuba!

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  • Word is that things are a little rough down in Cuba right now. In my post of February 23, I reported that Cuba had become the first nation in the world to achieve the climate activists’ Holy Grail of “Net Zero” carbon emissions.

  • I had looked around for news of the big celebration of Cuba’s achievement, but I couldn’t find any mention of it. If I had understood things correctly — and I think I had — Net Zero was supposed to deliver abundant and much cheaper electricity from the free wind and sun, lowering everybody’s energy costs and saving the planet in the process.

  • And yet, in a February 20 piece, the New York Times had revealed that the process of achieving Net Zero had somehow brought Cuba “to its knees.” Are we missing something here?

  • And then two days ago, March 16, the BBC (and many other sources) reported that the entire island of Cuba had been plunged into a blackout.

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How Bad Is It Living In New York?

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  • New York certainly has its problems, and I write frequently write about many of them. But is it really awful living here?

  • I believe in keeping these things in perspective. New York is actually a pretty great place to live, at least for now. The problem is that we have a class of idiotic politicians (and voters who put them in office) who pursue obviously destructive policies that make things much worse than they could be.

  • However, rather than an imminent collapse, what we face is an ongoing slow relative decline compared to other parts of the country that follow more sensible policies. The problem is not really that things are so bad, but that they could be so much better with so little effort.

  • It is a tremendous missed opportunity. I remain optimistic that things can be turned around, although that could take a long time.

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Dear Mayor Mamdani, Just Wondering, Are You Planning To Pay Your Own Millionaires' Tax?

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Dear Mayor Mamdani, Just Wondering, Are You Planning To Pay Your Own Millionaires' Tax?

  • Our new socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proposed many destructive initiatives. But if there is one that stands out above all the others as his signature issue, it is his plan to raise income taxes on the “ultra-wealthy,” which he has defined as those people earning $1 million of more per year.

  • The City of New York does not have the authority on its own to raise income tax rates, either at the State or City level, so he has requested that the State Legislature enact his proposed premium taxes on “millionaires.”

  • Here’s what I’m wondering: If the Legislature goes along with Mayor Mamdani’s request, does he plan to pay the new taxes himself?

  • We know the answer to that — of course he doesn’t intend to pay the premium “millionaire” rates. But why not?

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A New Line Of Attack On New York's Rent Regulation Regime

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  • In New York’s large suite of self-destructive public policies, it’s hard to choose which one is the very worst. But an excellent candidate is the regime for regulation of residential rents, mostly going by the name of Rent Stabilization.

  • Because of rent regulation, New York’s rental housing stock is older, more outdated, and less well-maintained than the housing of any other American city. If you got yourself into one of the regulated apartments a few decades ago, you likely enjoy a significant bargain on your monthly rent versus comparable space, to go along with your 30- or 40-year old kitchen and bathroom fixtures and appliances, and insufficient electricity to run a toaster and a hair-dryer at the same time. Try to upgrade to something a little more up-to-date and you will find that your rent will triple, so you are locked in to this one apartment for life. Meanwhile, kids just out of school who have gotten an entry-level job in New York and try to break into the rental market find that they face the highest rental prices in the country. In other words, it’s the progressive vision of perfect justice and fairness for all.

  • Another effect of the regulation regime has been to seriously degrade the value of the buildings and apartments subject to the rules. So you might ask, if the price control regime takes away all or most of the value of a property, doesn’t this at some point become a “taking” under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, giving the property owners the right to seek “just compensation” from the state for the loss of value?

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