The Manhattan Contrarian:

With war raging in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, there is a renewed concern in many quarters for “energy independence.” Until recently, the sophisticated countries of Europe had thought the whole idea to be passé. They built large numbers of wind turbines and solar arrays, while simultaneously banning fracking for natural gas and shuttering electricity plants that used coal and even those that used no-carbon nuclear. Suddenly, at the very worst possible time, they found themselves completely dependent on Russian gas for heat and reliable electricity. In the U.S. it’s not nearly so bad (yet), but the combination of the Ukraine invasion with the Biden administration’s resumption of Obama’s war on fossil fuels has also left the U.S. vulnerable to an oil and gas price spike on world markets, whose supply side has been artificially reduced by government hostility to production of fossil fuels.

So what’s the answer? If you are a member in good standing in American media/academia/environmentalist/Democratic Party society, the answer is obvious: Just build more wind turbines and solar arrays until you have enough. These facilities will count as “domestic” electricity generation, and therefore will quickly lead to “energy independence.” What could be easier?

So permit me to say the blindingly obvious: No amount of incremental wind and solar power can ever provide energy independence. Electricity gets consumed the instant it is generated. Electricity is consumed all the time, and therefore must be generated all the time. Indeed, some of the peak times for electricity consumption occur on winter evenings, when the sun has set, temperatures are very cold, the wind is often completely calm, and the need for energy for light, heat, cooking and more are high. During such times, a combined wind and solar generation system produces zero power. It doesn’t matter if you build a thousand wind turbines and solar panels, or a million, or a billion or a trillion. The output will still be zero.

And calm winter nights are just the most intense piece of the problem. A fully wind/solar generation system, with seemingly plenty of “capacity” to meet peak electricity demand, will also regularly and dramatically underproduce at random critical times throughout a year: for example, on heavily overcast and cold winter days; or on calm and hot summer evenings, when the sun has just set and air conditioning demand is high.

And thus it is time for a roundup of recent calls for massive building of wind and solar facilities in order to achieve energy independence.

From UK think tank Carbon Tracker, March 2: “It makes no sense to lock countries into fossil fuel dependent power grids over the medium term, . . . . Instead, Europe could rapidly reduce its reliance on Russian gas (and fossil fuels more broadly) by accelerating the implementation of . . . investments in renewable energy technologies as well as focusing on energy efficiency measures.”

From Sammy Roth at the LA Times, February 26: “[D]oubling down on oil and natural gas isn’t the answer [to dependence on Russia], some security experts say — and neither is energy independence. The war in Europe adds to the urgency of transitioning to clean energy sources such as solar and wind power that are harder for bad actors such as Russia to disrupt, those experts say.” (The article primarily relies on an “expert” named Erin Sikorsky of the Center for Climate and Security.)

From MarketWatch, February 26: “As grim as the reality of a conflict in Ukraine may be, economically, it may serve as a major catalyst for Europe’s decarbonization efforts, forcing governments to invest in earnest in greater zero-emissions renewable energy sources and the electrification of cars and homes. Doing so could secure energy independence from a Vladimir Putin-led Russia that’s proving to be a greater security threat by the day, say green-energy proponents and other global market-watchers.”

From Energy Monitor, March 7, reporting on statements from two think tanks called Ember and E3G: “Policies to further accelerate the roll-out of solar and wind power, and therefore reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, will not have any impact in the immediate term. ‘But renewables growth can be much higher than planned from 2024–25 onwards, provided the policy framework is put in place right now,’ says Moore [of Ember]. . . . In a briefing whose release coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the think tank E3G also advocates a ‘fast expansion of renewable energy and interconnections for the power sector”, which aims at “reducing structural gas dependence for system balancing.’”

From Scientific American, March 9, reporting on a statement from Frans Timmerman, chief “climate” official of the European Union: “The [EU’s] plan lends support to a package of legislation that aims to cut Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent by 2030, and it would also ease European concerns over its energy security, said E.U. climate chief Frans Timmermans. ‘Renewables give us the freedom to choose an energy source that is clean, cheap, reliable and ours,’ he told reporters yesterday.”

There is essentially an infinite supply of such completely ignorant statements out there on the internet if you choose to spend some time collecting them. The quoted statements and dozens or hundreds more of same just blithely assume, or assert without basis, that sufficient numbers of wind turbines and solar panels can liberate us from fossil fuels, without ever mentioning or discussing the issue of energy storage.

Continuing with what is completely obvious but unmentionable in polite society: Since combined wind and solar power facilities regularly produce no power at all when it is most needed, a wind and solar generation system will either be (1) dependent on fossil fuel backup, or (2) dependent on storage for backup, or (3) both. If it is taken as given that the whole idea is to move away from fossil fuel backup, then everything comes down to storage. A fossil-fuel-free system based on wind and solar generation is completely useless without sufficient storage to cover all times of insufficient simultaneous generation.

To propose energy independence based on wind and solar without fossil fuels, you must, repeat must, address storage. How much is needed? How much would that cost? What loss of energy will be incurred on the turnaround between charge and discharge? Is the cost feasible? How long must the energy be stored between generation and consumption? Do batteries or other storage devices exist that can store energy for such a period without most or all of it draining away? Has there ever been a demonstration of the feasibility of a fossil-fuel-free system based only on wind, solar and storage?

Try to find any mention of these issues in any of the pieces linked above, or in any of the many others you might find advocating more wind and solar facilities as the solution to dependence of Russian gas supplies. As to the feasibility and cost of a wind/solar generation system without fossil fuel backup, consider prior Manhattan Contrarian posts from February 1 here, and January 22 here.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Thousands are dying from Russian missiles and bombs in the suburbs of Ukraine.

In response, the Biden administration’s climate-change envoy, multimillionaire and private-jet-owning John Kerry, laments that Russian President Vladimir Putin might no longer remain his partner in reducing global warming.

“You’re going to lose people’s focus,” Kerry frets. “You’re going to lose big-country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact.”

“Impact”?

Did the global moralist Kerry mean by “impact” the over 650 Russian missiles that impacted Ukrainian buildings and tore apart children?

Are Russian soldiers losing their green “focus”? When Putin threatens nuclear war is he merely “diverted”? Would letting off a few nukes be “damaging” to the human environment?

Climate-change moralists love humanity so much in the abstract that they must shut down its life-giving gas, coal, and oil in the concrete. And they value humans so little that they don’t worry in the here and now that ensuing fuel shortages and exorbitant costs cause wars, spike inflation, and threaten people’s ability to travel or keep warm.

The Biden administration stopped all gas and oil production in the ANWR region of Alaska. It ended all new federal leases for drilling. It is canceling major new pipelines. It is leveraging lending agencies not to finance oil and gas drilling.

It helped force the cancellation of the EastMed pipeline that would have brought much-needed natural gas to southern Europe. And it has in just a year managed to turn the greatest oil and gas producer in the history of the world into a pathetic global fossil-fuel beggar.

Now gas is heading to well over $5 a gallon. In over-regulated blue states, it will likely hit $7.

The result is left-wing terror that the voters in the coming midterm election might rightly blame Democrats for hamstringing the American ability to travel, keep warm in winter and cool in summer, and buy affordable food.

But how will the Biden administration square the circle of its own ideological war against oil and natural gas versus handing the advantage to our oil- and gas-producing enemies, as Russia invades Ukraine?

Or put another way, when selfish theory hits deadly reality, who loses? Answer: the American people.

President Joe Biden lifted U.S. sanctions on the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline designed to provide green Germany with loathsome, but life-saving, natural gas.

But first Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. He has no problem with pipelines per se, just American ones.

While Biden doesn’t like the idea of Germany burning carbon fuel, or Putin reaping enormous profits from Berlin’s self-created dependency, or Germans importing liquified natural gas from America, Biden also does not like the idea of forcing German families to turn off their thermostats in mid-winter when there is Russian-fed war not far from Germany’s borders.

Here at home, Biden gets even crazier. As our enemies around the world reap huge profits from record high oil and gas prices, did Biden ask Alaska, North Dakota, or Texas to ramp up production?

In other words, did he ask Americans to save fellow cash-strapped Americans from a self-created energy crisis, in the way he assured the Germans that during war reality trumps theory?

Not at all.

Instead, Biden came up with the most lunatic idea in recent diplomatic history of begging autocratic and hostile regimes the world over to pump more oil to lower America’s gas prices.

For years, America has sanctioned the oil-rich Venezuelan dictatorship, a narco-terrorist state that wars on its own people and its neighbors. Now Biden is begging strongman Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to pump the supposedly dirty fuels America has in even greater abundance but finds it too icky to produce.

Biden also has beseeched the once sanctioned, terrorist Iranian government. He wants Tehran to help us out by upping the very oil and gas production that America has tried to curtail for years. In return, Iran is demanding a new “Iran Deal” that will soon ensure the now petro-rich theocracy the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

On the eve of the Russian invasion, Biden begged Putin to pump even more oil to supplement its current Russian imports to the United States.

Did Putin see that surreal request as yet another sign of American appeasement that might greenlight his upcoming planned invasion? In Russian eyes, was it more proof of American weakness and craziness after the humiliating flight from Afghanistan?

Biden has blasted the human rights record of Saudi Arabia’s royal family. Now he is begging the monarchy to pump more of its despised carbon-spewing oil to make up for what his administration shut down at home. Is that why the Saudi royals refused to take his call?

The moral of Biden’s oil madness?

Elite ideology divorced from reality impoverishes people and can get them killed.

A meme floating around social media says nothing is more tone-deaf than telling a single mother who can’t afford higher gas prices to buy an $80,000 electric car.