A certain degree of realism seems to be descending on climate alarmism, particularly when it comes to the supposedly effortless, gleaming, lucrative “green energy transition” that would make us all richer as well as happier, cleaner and more insufferably virtuous. For instance Canary Media reports on “Why Illinois has struggled to turn old coal sites into solar farms”. And doubtless you can think of a number of reasons from the generic incompetence of government to the reliability of coal versus the intermittence and feebleness of those panels. But it seems they can’t, so the newfound enlightenment is quite reminiscent of darkness. “The researchers stressed that the lackluster results don’t mean that redeveloping shuttered coal plants into clean energy hubs is a bad idea — it’s just that the design of this specific effort didn’t make the conversion attractive for developers.” Because it was a bad idea.
At first the piece seems promising. After giving the basic background on the Illinois “Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Initiative”, namely hype about taking advantage of existing grid infrastructure and so forth, with plans for “at least six significant solar and battery storage arrays and five larger stand-alone battery banks” that ended up producing “only three relatively small solar farms with storage were built, and no stand-alone storage”, the story brings in “a new report by the University of Illinois’ Climate Jobs Institute and the nonprofit Prairie Rivers Network” and says:
“‘It’s a kind of sexy idea – we’re building solar on coal plants. It’s a neat picture of the green transition,” said Roshan Krishnan, a report co-author and research specialist at the Climate Jobs Institute, which studies the impacts of state energy policies. ‘But in reality, it ends up being more complicated.’”
Ah yes. The dreaded complexity of reality stressed by conservatives from the invention of political philosophy on down, including Thomas Sowell’s mantra “reality is tricky.” But the imagination can simplify things marvellously provided contact with reality is kept modest. Hence readers of Canary Media are assured that: “The silver lining is that the results offer lessons for future coal-to-solar initiatives in Illinois and beyond.”
Such as what? One plausible one is that the thing was all about hidden subsidies which meld unaffordability with opacity so try to avoid those. Another is that it was designed by the intended recipients which is a recipe for boondoggles so try to avoid those:
“Only two companies had sites eligible for the Illinois program: NRG Energy and Vistra, which helped craft the initiative and pushed legislators to include it in the state’s 2021 clean energy law.”
A third is that it was a classic case of losing money on every sale but trying to make it up on volume, so try to avoid those. The absurd publicity for this hoorah’s nest of subsidies from Vistra (product may not be exactly as shown in pamphlet) eventually mentions that “These programs will be funded through a new statewide add-on charge to delivery service customers.” So the idea was to make power cheaper by making it more expensive. No wonder it wasn’t a private sector venture.
On the semi-waking-up front, for instance, Heatmap writes that:
“Governors Are Ratepayer Advocates Now/ As electricity prices rise, the stakes for the leaders of states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Indiana are only getting higher.”
Indeed. Self-government is a messy and often frustrating process, not least because of how often voters fall for free beer Thursday. But when the beer bill comes in, they can and do put pressure on their leaders in ways people cannot in more supposedly efficient systems. Not that the result is always pretty. Indeed, old habits die hard here too; as Heatmap also observes:
“Governors are increasingly throwing their weight around in the technocratic and often obscure utility ratemaking process. The latest example is Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who last week published a Washington Post op-ed announcing that she would intervene in the attempted acquisition of the state’s dominant utility, Dominion, by Florida utility and energy development company NextEra Energy. Spanberger is ‘deeply skeptical about whether selling our primary state-regulated utility to an out-of-state company is good for the commonwealth,’ she wrote. While she didn’t go so far as to oppose the merger, she did insist that NextEra maintain jobs in the state, comply with Virginia’s clean energy goals, and come up with cost savings for Virginians. And while the state’s utility regulators will make the ultimate decision themselves, she said, she wanted to use her leverage as the state’s highest ranking and most visible elected official ‘to make sure Virginians have a voice in the process.’”
Meaning, one presumes, somehow continuing to subsidize expensive alternative energy you’re certain is secretly cheaper, but somehow do it so nobody pays or at any rate realizes they’re paying. Because politicians can order things to be cheap (“cost savings for Virginians”) and even pass bills saying they’re cheap, but they can’t make them cheap and one of those dratted tricky things about reality is the money has to come from somewhere. And this affordability pea can only scuttle about for so long before citizens vote all those handling the cost-shifting shells out of office.
