The first two parts of this series were principally related to the efforts to electrify our transportation system with the use of batteries to power cars, buses for both transit systems and school systems. It pointed out, despite the billions of dollars taken from us taxpayers to push beliefs of the Church of the Climate Change Cult’s (CCCC) it is turning out to be a complete failure even with all the cash thrown at the members of the cult. This part will look at other aspects the CCCC has pushed to save the world from the reputed catastrophic effect of GHG emissions and how they continue to fail.
Ontario’s Growing Demand Forecast
To illustrate what decarbonisation will do to demand, just in Ontario, here is a screenshot from IESO’s annual forecast completed in December 2022 indicating demand will grow from 2024 to 2042 from less than 150 TWh (terawatt hours) to well over 200 TWh. They also note in their “Annual Planning Outlook” approximately 20,000 MW of contracts will expire by 2042 so not only will Ontario need additional power but will also need to either renegotiate expiring contracts or replace them with “non-emitting” generation sources! We Ontarians should all wonder; will that mean more wind and solar?
Offshore Wind
The CCCC have continually pushed the concept that IWT (industrial wind turbines) are one of the panaceas to replace fossil fuels and also support the move to position them offshore which several renewable energy companies have done. The result has generated considerable discussion related to the harm caused particularly after they are up and running. White whales and dolphins seem to be taking a beating off the New England coast as several reports have found, but politicians and bureaucrats deny the truth!
Another beating (financial) related to offshore IWT seems to affect the renewable energy companies including Orsted of Denmark the world’s largest offshore wind developer who have been hit with a US $5.6 billion impairment on halted US projects. Siemens Gamesa is the world’s largest manufacturer of offshore IWT and they too have just taken a big hit announcing a 4.6-billion-euro annual net loss.
Reputedly it is even worse than the foregoing as Barron’s reported; “At least eight multinational companies in three states have quietly started to back out of wind contracts, or ask to renegotiate deals in ways that will pass more costs to consumers. Beyond Shell (ticker: SHEL), they include BP (BP), Denmark’s Orsted (DNNGY), Norway’s Equinor (EQNR), Spain’s Iberdrola (IBDRY), Portugal’s Energias de Portugal (EDPFY), and France’s Engie (ENGIY) and state-owned Electricite de France. The projects those companies are building will collectively cost tens of billions of dollars to construct and connect to the grid. The cost problems they’re facing make offshore wind a dicey investment proposition today, with the potential for substantial write-downs ahead.“
Land Based Wind Turbines
Many of us will remember either being read tales or reading tales of the “enchanted forest” made famous in Grimms Fairy Tales and those enchanted forests can now be found in many places. A recent occurrence in Germany, however, has made many people upset as the CCCC have decided to continue their push for more IWT to save the world from “climate change”. Apparently the “cult” believe cutting down old growth forests which absorb CO 2 is not as good at saving the world from “climate change” as industrial wind turbines! Isn’t that ironic!
Of all places to pick for an IWT farm they have chosen Germany’s enchanted forest and commenced a deforestation effort. “The forest, which contains trees that are up to 200 years old, is now being cleared for highway-wide construction roads to facilitate the erection of 18 wind turbines around Sababurg Sleeping Beauty Castle. Nine of the eleven mayors from the neighboring municipalities, including the mayor of Wesertal, Cornelius Turrey (SPD), are campaigning against the construction of the wind turbines.“
According to an article in GWEC (Global Wind Energy Council) at the end of 2021 global wind capacity was 837 GW (gigawatts). To put some context on that if one assumes those 837,000 MW of IWT averaged 2.5 MW per turbine it would represent 334,800 turbines with 1.0 million non-recyclable blades. The average weight of each blade would be about 4 tonnes meaning when they reach their end-of-life the world would be forced to dispose of about 4.0 million tonnes of non-recyclable blades! No doubt anyone who has spent time either advocating for or fighting against industrial wind turbines have seen pictures such as the following demonstrating how when IWT reach their end of life they create huge mounds of unrecyclable turbine blades. Try to imagine what 4 million tonnes would look like!
What is apparently happening around the world in respect to IWT is their lives are being extended and one of the reasons may well be due to the problems associated with disposal of those glass-fibre or carbon-fibre blades. At the present time “most old blades are either dumped in landfill or incinerated. There had been capacity at a German plant to process them into cement, but this was limited and placed a very low value on the blades.“
Surely when they are “incinerated” they don’t emit any GHG (sarcasm intended)!
Renewable Energy Stocks Fall
Well, who would have thought that with the trillions of dollars being handed out by governments via grants or tax benefits to renewable energy companies their stock prices would fall but, its happened! It now appears the “bloom is off the rose” perhaps, due to the fact those companies benefiting from guaranteed rates for the energy they provide with their intermittent and variable electricity, leveraged their capital base by borrowing with short term debt. Apparently, they failed to realize delivering expensive energy would assist in the creation of inflation and result in central banks raising interest rates. The latter has hit them in the pocketbook depreciating their earnings which in turn has caused their share prices to fall. One quote from the linked article nicely summed up what those who took advantage of the CCCC pressure on governments and their bureaucrats noted: “Most important is that a lot of these companies disappointed in their profitability,” said David Souccar, a portfolio manager at Vontobel Asset Management Inc. “To support rapid growth, you need to keep leveraging the balance sheet or issue equity. In a zero-rate environment, this formula worked. In a higher-rate environment, it falls apart.”
Conclusion
The market drop of renewable energy stocks will inevitably cause those companies to ask the various politicians in power to increase their rates for the power they supply but we consumers and taxpayers should hope we have recently elected smarter politicians, and they simply say NO!
Only time will tell!
PS: More to come in the final Chapter so stay tuned and please share my rants!
Parker Gallant Energy Perspectives 
All good news. Unfortunately, I doubt it will cause Justanidiot and the wee criminal to rethink their obsession with saving the planet. In fact, I would expect these fools, and Knucklehead Ford, to double down.
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