I’ve posted multiple Twitter threads I’m converting over to substack. This is a much better platform. I’ve got a lot to say. I’m thinking about recording some podcasts.
It's gonna take days to digest the first one - slow down or you'll lose people and the comment threads will be less interesting... I need to get my copy of Shorting... back from the newspaper reporter I gave it to...
I have an article coming out this Friday that talks about the "Bullish or Bull***t" nature of alternative (renewable) energy. I think you would find it a good read. While I did hours of research and found LCOE numbers for solar and wind looking so low I was surprised.
What I was not surprised to find, however, that these numbers are easily manipulated and also don't account for things like... I don't know, the toxic waste solar panels create when their life spans are up. The hundreds of thousands of birds killed by wind turbines, or the EXTREME cost of building out storage to hold renewable energy power.
Well, you could flip this on its head, and say that for example coal and nuclear are very inflexible. It is only the sunk costs and propaganda machine that make this seem like an argument against renewables instead of bad technology for coal and nuclear. They could build more nimble designs (coal is no longer trying, but small modular nuclear might get there). If we were to start from zero today we would never build those like that again - and since they are effectively building from zero when existing plants are decommissioned they want to perpetuate the false image that massive inflexible "baseload" juggernauts are the natural order. No. You can build renewables along with the complementary storage cheaper than new coal. Gas is still propped up because it has become the go-to for storage-equivalent which fits the peaker model that baseload coal gave them (replacing oil peakers, now largely a forgotten footnote), but as storage for electricity and H2 ramps up this rationale will eventually ramp down.
You should also look at levelized cost of pollution. Coal has as estimated CO2 emissions cost of about $180 per MWh, and the fact that each time that cost is estimated it jumps higher shows that the true cost is worse. At the moment it gets a free ride in the USA. You have ignored it in your analysis but of course CO2 emissions are the main reason we need to eliminate coal, so ignoring its costs makes your analysis completely hollow.
So utilities are financial T-Rexes and a big one is funded from Omaha. The house always wins. Don't tilt against the windmill. Utilities are a business, not a charity and they have a successful business model.
I’ve posted multiple Twitter threads I’m converting over to substack. This is a much better platform. I’ve got a lot to say. I’m thinking about recording some podcasts.
It's gonna take days to digest the first one - slow down or you'll lose people and the comment threads will be less interesting... I need to get my copy of Shorting... back from the newspaper reporter I gave it to...
I have an article coming out this Friday that talks about the "Bullish or Bull***t" nature of alternative (renewable) energy. I think you would find it a good read. While I did hours of research and found LCOE numbers for solar and wind looking so low I was surprised.
What I was not surprised to find, however, that these numbers are easily manipulated and also don't account for things like... I don't know, the toxic waste solar panels create when their life spans are up. The hundreds of thousands of birds killed by wind turbines, or the EXTREME cost of building out storage to hold renewable energy power.
See a draft of my article here: https://thesimpleside.substack.com/p/4761bd2b-9862-438b-b52c-148a6565e542
Wind and solar are delivered in small pickup trucks.
Electricity from Gas is delivered in 18 wheelers.
Nuclear, coal and (big) hyrdo are delivered at scale by rail.
:-)
If you like rail, you'd enjoy my railroad stock analysis! https://open.substack.com/pub/thesimpleside/p/1-a-monthly-stock-deep-dive?r=21v4rh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Well, you could flip this on its head, and say that for example coal and nuclear are very inflexible. It is only the sunk costs and propaganda machine that make this seem like an argument against renewables instead of bad technology for coal and nuclear. They could build more nimble designs (coal is no longer trying, but small modular nuclear might get there). If we were to start from zero today we would never build those like that again - and since they are effectively building from zero when existing plants are decommissioned they want to perpetuate the false image that massive inflexible "baseload" juggernauts are the natural order. No. You can build renewables along with the complementary storage cheaper than new coal. Gas is still propped up because it has become the go-to for storage-equivalent which fits the peaker model that baseload coal gave them (replacing oil peakers, now largely a forgotten footnote), but as storage for electricity and H2 ramps up this rationale will eventually ramp down.
You should also look at levelized cost of pollution. Coal has as estimated CO2 emissions cost of about $180 per MWh, and the fact that each time that cost is estimated it jumps higher shows that the true cost is worse. At the moment it gets a free ride in the USA. You have ignored it in your analysis but of course CO2 emissions are the main reason we need to eliminate coal, so ignoring its costs makes your analysis completely hollow.
You obviously don't understand basic parts of how this works. Your construct is broken at every turn. Good luck.
Germany is all renewable (wind/solar) while France is all nuclear... guess who has double the CO2 output of the other country....
GERMANY. Well said Mr. Randall
May I suggest defining the acronyms? LCOE = levelized cost of energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
If you don't want to deal with jargon - check out The Simple Side ;)
So utilities are financial T-Rexes and a big one is funded from Omaha. The house always wins. Don't tilt against the windmill. Utilities are a business, not a charity and they have a successful business model.