THE HIGH COST OF WIND, SOLAR, AND BATTERIES

Bill Peacock

The Failed War Against Fossil Fuels

Key Points

• Renewables Can’t Compete: In the real world, the capital costs of wind generation per kilowatt are three times that of baseline natural gas generation; the costs of solar and batteries are more than four times greater

• War Against Fossil Fuels: Renewables are overwhelming the electric grid today because of a 50-year war against fossil fuels and hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies

• The No Fuel Cost Myth: Even with no fuel costs renewables still can’t overcome their high capital costs to become competitive with natural gas generation

• Electrification: The cost of meeting the electrification mandates in Oregon and Washington with renewable generation will cost $549 billion through 2050, more than 10 times the cost of using natural gas and nuclear generation

• Reliability Costs: the reliability costs of renewables increase dramatically because wind, solar and battery storage must be ‘overbuilt’ to account for their intermittency

Executive Summary

Recent studies make it clear that the only possible rationale for renewable energy—making significant reductions of CO2 emissions—cannot be achieved. The costs of attempting to do this with renewables are already imposing heavy costs on economies across the world and will rapidly escalate as the grid penetration of renewables increases. As several European countries have already experienced as they plunged into energy poverty, the costs are simply too great for any society to pay.