No Need To Speculate About The Green New Deal, We Can See Exactly What Happens.

Over the past few weeks there’s been a lot of speculation about just what effect the Green New Deal would have on our economy if we were to adopt it. Most people that actually are thinking it through would say it’s a laughable idea and can do pretty accurate projection of just how bad it would be. But projections are just that projections, if only there were some concrete examples in real life that we could point to and say this is what happens when you put these policies into place, just the same way we can point to socialist/communist countries and say these are the hellholes those ideas create.

Well it turns out there are examples that can show us exactly just how bad the energy ideas of the GND will be. Let’s look at the candidates. We want countries with developed industrial economies . Ideally they should either have recently adopted a large amount of renewable energy or be in the process of doing so. It should be of the same types of renewable energy as we would have to adopt, solar and wind. While Hydro is nice we have pretty much done most of what we can with it in this country, all you need to do is look at California to see what a nightmare water projects can be. (Maybe thirst will wind up motivating them to change). Geothermal is in the same category, it’s great but you need to be in a place where you can use it. As a kicker it should preferably be a good sized country with a mix of geography and unoccupied regions.

The Candidate Countries.

There’s three really good countries that can serve as models for us as to what will happen to our energy situation if we go green. Denmark which gets 60 % of its electric power from renewable sources and 70% of that from wind and solar. Germany which gets roughly 30% of its power from renewables and roughly 2/3rds of that from wind and solar. Finally there is Australia, in particular Australia which gets almost exactly the same percentage of it’s power from renewables as the U.S. 14.5 % as opposed to our 14.7% but gets the majority of their renewables from wind and solar as opposed to our of hydro power as the single biggest green energy provider.

The Numbers

Denmark 35 Cents /KWH

Germany 30 Cents /KWH

Southern Australia 45 cents/KWH Ouch

United States 12 Cents/KWH

If we have to rely on solar and wind power it’s already looking like this Green New Deal is going to be a pretty raw deal for most of us. But it gets worse because we have much more in common with Australia than we do with Germany and Denmark in terms of size and where we are in our relative energy portfolios. Germany managed to triple its cost of electricity in a little under a decade and Australia managed to double the retail cost (not including subsidies) in a little under 7 years the price increases have been the most bearable problems. Both countries now have unreliable power grids due to the nature of their power sources. Germany makes up for this by importing power from neighboring countries to make up shortfalls when wind and solar aren’t generating power, Australia like the U.S. is in a position where this simply isn’t possible. The effect on their power grid is catastrophic. For industrial users this can mean prices up to 14AU$/KWH Shutting down entire industries, to blackouts that leave civilization in the dark.

Doesn’t look pretty as a bonus though that electric car that’s currently cheaper to drive than a combustion engine, not so much. A Tesla Model S needs 34.4 KWH to go 100 miles, that would be 17 dollars worth of electricity @50 cents/KWH assuming you can still afford a car in the brave new world of the GND

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Drink up That’s it for the Watercooler today. As always it’s an open thread