The greatest scam being perpetrated against taxpayers and consumers
is renewable energy, according to a new analysis published by the Australian, greater even
than Ponzi, Madoff and Enron.
While sinking enormous
financial resources into propping up renewable energy prospectors, national
governments are providing no perceptible benefits to their citizens, writes Judith
Sloan, a renowned Australian economist who has served on the Australian
government’s Productivity Commission.
“With very
few exceptions, governments all over the world have fallen into the trap of
paying renewable energy scammers on the basis that it is necessary, at least
politically, to be seen to be doing something about climate change,” Sloan
writes, before providing readers with an avalanche of economic data to back up
her assertion.
In
Australia, more than 2 billion taxpayer dollars a year are funneled to
renewable energy handlers by virtue of the operation of the renewable energy
target and the associated renewable energy certificates, Sloan observes.
At the same
time, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency “shovels out hundreds of millions
of dollars annually to subsidise renewable energy companies, many of which are
overseas-owned,” she states, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation was given
$10 billion in equity by the Gillard Labor government “to lend or grant money
to renewable energy companies.”
Despite this enormous taxpayer “investment,” so-called
renewable energy has yet to pay any dividends or to suggest it will be
economically viable for the foreseeable future.
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Sloan’s
grim analysis of the state of renewable energy as a financial sinkhole in
Australia is mirrored by other countries such as the United States.
According to Forbes, on a total dollar basis,
wind and solar together get more from the federal government than all
other energy sources
combined, despite the fact that neither is anywhere close to self-supporting.
Wind has received the greatest amount of federal subsidies. Solar is second.
Based on
production (subsidies per kWh of electricity produced), however, solar energy
“has gotten over ten times the subsidies of all other forms of energy sources
combined, including wind,” writes energy expert and planetary geologist Dr.
James Conca.
During the Obama years from
2010 through 2013, federal renewable energy subsidies increased by 54 percent—from $8.6 billion
to $13.2 billion—despite the fact that totalfederal energy subsidies declined by 23 percent during the same
period, from $38 billion to $29 billion.
In absolute terms, between
2010 and 2013 solar energy
alone saw a 500 percent increase in federal subsidies from $1.1 billion to $5.3
billion.
In this
same period, subsidies for fossil fuels decreased by 15 percent. from $4.0
billion to $3.4 billion, and subsidies for nuclear energy fell by 12 percent,
from $1.9 billion to $1.7 billion.
One of the more
pernicious side-effects of the enormous government subsidies for renewable
energy, Conca found, is that they actually increase the cost of energy. This
cost, however, is transferred from the energy consumer to the taxpayer, “and so
goes unnoticed by most Americans,” he stated.
While during the period
between 2010 and 2014 nuclear energy cost about 4¢ and 5¢ per kWh to produce,
solar energy cost between 80¢ and 100¢ per kWh, or 20 times as much to produce.
This despite the fact that nuclear energy
is “as renewable as wind” but doesn’t enjoy the same star status among
environmental activists.
Returning
to the case of Australia, Sloan argues that if one were to sum up all the taxpayer-funded
subsidies, grants, concessional loans, guarantees and the like the aggregate
amount “dwarfs any other government industry assistance aid.”
Something
similar has happened in Germany, Sloan states, where Chancellor Angela Merkel
decided to shut down all the country’s nuclear power plants, to be replaced
with “renewable energy.” The target for 2030 is for 50 percent of the nation’s
power to come from renewables.
The ill-fated Energiewende, the country’s program for
energy transition, has hit serious hurdles, Sloan notes, not least the
extraordinary cost that now totals some €650 billion.
In an odd twist of fate, late last year the wind
simply didn’t blow for several days and a thick fog surrounded many parts of
Germany, and thus the output from renewables fell to just 4 percent of total
demand. It was Poland, “with its black coal-fired electricity plants,” that
came to rescue Germany from its self-induced energy crisis.
The best approach for the future, Sloan
concludes, entails “acknowledging that enough is enough when it comes to
subsidising renewable energy.”
The sector has been showered with
favors with little to show for it, she observes, and it is high time “it stood
on its own two feet without any preferential treatment or financial
assistance.”