Instead of taking on any of Louisiana's numerous problems governor John Bel Edwards has decided to waste his time on this.
I wonder why legislatures here in the Pelican State keep patting themselves on the back for these green energy policies? If wind and solar fail to provide adequate energy in places California and Texas where the sun is always shining and, in the case of California, the wind constantly blows how then is it going to work here in the south where it's mostly cloudy and the wind seldom blows?
From nola.com
Gov. Edwards' climate task force unanimously approves state greenhouse gas reduction planThe plan calls for various industries to use wind, solar and other renewable resources to power their operations. It also calls on companies to switch from carbon-based fuels to hydrogen-based fuels.
Members of Gov. John Bel Edwards' Climate Initiatives Task Force met for over a year to hammer out the plan’s particulars. The group included representatives of the electric, oil and gas and petrochemical industries, as well as environmental advocates and residents from diverse backgrounds.
The plan’s approval is just an initial step, task force members said; residents must press state leaders to ensure plan’s goals are implemented.
"The success of this is going to be dependent on the public engaging and really grappling with these issues and understanding and asking for more action," said Harry Vorhoff, chairman of the task force and deputy director of the Governor's Office of Coastal Activities.
In a prerecorded message to the task force before their vote, Edwards thanked its members for creating “the first statewide plan in the Deep South to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero from a top energy producing state.”
The final version of the plan, which was released publicly after the vote, includes an appendix listing dissents filed to the individual actions by task force members. According to Lindsay Cooper, a policy advisor in the governor's coastal activities office, dissents were filed on 29 of the plan's 84 action proposals. No action had more than five dissents; eighteen actions had only one person objecting to them.
Industry representatives voiced concerns that plans to substitute non-carbon fuels for natural gas or coal in the state's electricity industry might result in disruptions that will affect the economy. They also said that market forces, rather than state regulations, should be used to push greenhouse gas reductions, and that additional state regulations would disrupt existing and new manufacturing plants.
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This article from Forbes explains how green energy was never meant to be a primary source of power:
“Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset,” thanks to the Energiewende, wrote a New York Times reporter in 2014.
With Germany as inspiration, the United Nations and World Bank poured billions into renewables like wind, solar, and hydro in developing nations like Kenya.
But then, last year, Germany was forced to acknowledge that it had to delay its phase-out of coal, and would not meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction commitments. It announced plans to bulldoze an ancient church and forest in order to get at the coal underneath it.
But Germany didn’t just fall short of its climate targets. Its emissions have flat-lined since 2009.
Now comes a major article in the country’s largest newsweekly magazine, Der Spiegel, titled, “A Botched Job in Germany” ("Murks in Germany"). The magazine’s cover shows broken wind turbines and incomplete electrical transmission towers against a dark silhouette of Berlin.
“The Energiewende — the biggest political project since reunification — threatens to fail,” write Der Spiegel’s Frank Dohmen, Alexander Jung, Stefan Schultz, Gerald Traufetter in their a 5,700-word investigative story.
Over the past five years alone, the Energiewende has cost Germany €32 billion ($36 billion) annually, and opposition to renewables is growing in the German countryside.
“The politicians fear citizen resistance” Der Spiegel reports. “There is hardly a wind energy project that is not fought.”
... Der Spiegel cites a recent estimate that it would cost Germany “€3.4 trillion ($3.8 trillion),” or seven times more than it spent from 2000 to 2025, to increase solar and wind three to five-fold by 2050.
Between 2000 and 2019, Germany grew renewables from 7% to 35% of its electricity. And as much of Germany's renewable electricity comes from biomass, which scientists view as polluting and environmentally degrading, as from solar.
Of the 7,700 new kilometers of transmission lines needed, only 8% have been built, while large-scale electricity storage remains inefficient and expensive. “A large part of the energy used is lost,” the reporters note of a much-hyped hydrogen gas project, “and the efficiency is below 40%... No viable business model can be developed from this.”
Meanwhile, the 20-year subsidies granted to wind, solar, and biogas since 2000 will start coming to an end next year. “The wind power boom is over,” Der Spiegel concludes.
All of which raises a question: if renewables can’t cheaply power Germany, one of the richest and most technologically advanced countries in the world, how could a developing nation like Kenya ever expect them to allow it to “leapfrog” fossil fuels?
... Journalists reported breathlessly on the cost declines in batteries, imagining a tipping point at which conventional electricity utilities would be “disrupted.”
But no amount of marketing could change the poor physics of resource-intensive and land-intensive renewables. Solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear plants, and wind farms take 700 times more land than natural gas wells, to produce the same amount of energy.
Efforts to export the Energiewende to developing nations may prove even more devastating.
But no amount of marketing could change the poor physics of resource-intensive and land-intensive renewables. Solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear plants, and wind farms take 700 times more land than natural gas wells, to produce the same amount of energy.
Efforts to export the Energiewende to developing nations may prove even more devastating.
... Tragically, many Germans appear to have believed that the billions they spent on renewables would redeem them. “Germans would then at last feel that they have gone from being world-destroyers in the 20th century to world-saviors in the 21st,” noted a reporter.
Many Germans will, like Der Spiegel, claim the renewables transition was merely “botched,” but it wasn't. The transition to renewables was doomed because modern industrial people, no matter how Romantic they are, do not want to return to pre-modern life.
The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to. One interesting question is why anybody ever thought they could.
Many Germans will, like Der Spiegel, claim the renewables transition was merely “botched,” but it wasn't. The transition to renewables was doomed because modern industrial people, no matter how Romantic they are, do not want to return to pre-modern life.
The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to. One interesting question is why anybody ever thought they could.
I urge you to read the entire article - The Reason Renewables Can't Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To
Bottom line, green energy is really expensive, actually harms the environment and ultimately fails to provide adequate power. It is just plain financially irresponsible in a state as poor as Louisiana to pump billions of taxpayer dollars into a project that will cripple the state's primary source of revenue, the petrochemical industry, instead of taking on issues like poverty and failing infrastructure.
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