it doesn't reduce reliability of energy. Coal and natural gas provide most of the energy--how does adding energy (more watts available) make energy less reliable? Using your logic, energy has become less reliable as renewables have grown during the last decade. Does this sound right to you?
I shouldnt have to explain such simple economics. It's the same reason we subsidize oil: So we can make it readily available and when there is increased demand, there's a job to be done.
By subsidizing the green sector, it opens up money flow allowing companies to be created or allows pre-existing companies to hire more employees. Result: Unemployed and underemployed find a new avenue for work, and satisfying work if you believe in it. That's a blessing since most service and labor jobs are soul crushing monotony.
The green sector contains thousands of operations like zipcar, bike-share programs, improving waste management, and of course what you're think of: Solar and wind. It's much larger than just solar and wind; it's an approach on how to manage society more sensibly than we are, just like cutting millions of acres of old growth forests around the world is an approach to sustaining the demands of a consumer economy.
gnarly, first, welcome to usmb, and i hope you are enjoying the boards.
i think the essence of what you asked is "how does adding energy (more watts available) make energy less reliable?"
this is a lot more complex issue than you realize. A percentage of green energy businesses are greatly suspected to be quid-quo-pro political payoffs like solyndra likely was. 18 months after this business received over half a billion dollars, its owners deigned it fit to dump 1100+ employees overnight with the only notice being posted to the company's locked doors the day it officially quit business with bankruptcy pending. What's that? $535,000,000 of taxpayer's money immediately transferred to the company's owners who paid them back by running with the money and leaving the city of fremont, california and surrounding communities with a huge number of americans unemployed, all at the same time. After considerable sidestepping the obstructive american government, a few investigators who wanted to know what happened and who did what, found that the money was handed over to one of obama's largest supporter's investment portfolio, and some reimbursed others, including one of nancy pelosi's bils. It frankly, wreaked not only of nepotism, but quid-pro-quo thanks for supporting the obama campaign donors.
That said, here's what happens to a company that has invested all it has in public service to communities, businesses, hospitals, shopping malls, manufacturers, industries, and mining operations, and serving them with steady service, 24/7 with as few down line time as possible, which in my husband's service may have been nil to low most years (less than 15 minutes), and there was a 4 or 5 year period in which there were not any outages. One year, there was an 8-foot snow, which caused a few hour-long outages around the area, but the -40f year (in the 70s) caused country outages of 6 hours in some places, and less than an hour in the city limits. Fortunately, he had an astute team of professionals whose lives were dedicated to keeping people powered in cold weather, and they were in the top 2% of the nation in service and the bottom 2% in costs.
People who ran their own windmills (not many) spent an average of $40,000, and their return was $4.80 per month off on their bills for electricity that was produced. When it froze, their blades froze, too. When it was hot, the wind stopped blowing quite often. It wasn't the power company's fault. The people who invested all that money came to realize their payback on this primitive "green energy" plan wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
Can you imagine the horror of investing $40,000 in the market and getting back under $58.00 for the year.
It's gotten sillier than that. The government never, never contacted the people who basically wasted tens of thousands of dollars. Noooooo. Instead, using basically the same equipment, the government guaranteed to back certain people 100% with taxpayer's money, and you can better believe that at this point, billions and billions of dollars are being paid back for that foolhardy decision to give democrats a huge boost to their hurting image after carter, after clinton, and now after obama.
What does it take to convince the democrats that throwing the taxpayer's money away on nefarious failed green projects like windmill turbines in order to get votes by obfuscating the reality of the ripoff to the public is a good thing?
I'm just speechless that the democrats would engage in this kind of a ripoff of the american public "because we can!!!!"
i'm so not thrilled.
i hope you have an answer about how the democrats are going to pay back the america taxpayers holding the bag for this fiscal fiasco?
I'm all ears, honest.
