Building wind power, canceling coal -- it's all drowning under borrowing costs

[NickB79]

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/09/climate-talks-newest-threat-interest-rates-00130949

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Plans to push South Africa and Indonesia off coal sputtered. So have offshore wind farms on the New Jersey and British coasts, and a green hydrogen project in an Italian port city.

Climate projects around the world are sinking because of high borrowing costs driven by interest rates — jeopardizing a major plank of the international effort to prevent the most catastrophic damage from warming temperatures.

But rising interest rates have imperiled these goals.

Interest rates were one reason developers gave for canceling major offshore wind projects in recent months, including two projects near New Jersey by the Danish company Ørsted and a Swedish business’ project in the North Sea. In September, no bidders turned out for a September offshore wind energy auction in the U.K., also related to the effects of higher borrowing costs.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. On paper, every project has infinite profits when interest rates are zero

Too bad the economy can't convert empty office space to wind farms cheaply.

[Think. Again.]

2. Biden has made some great progress....

...toward assisting with the start up costs involved for the budding clean energy industry, but it's obvious we will also need private investment capital to jump on board.

With a strong enough push to make it very obvious that fossil fuels will be replaced by these young companies, more and more investors will realize that the potential profits of all these companies (that are individually so much smaller than the oil giants) will be virtually endless once we're safely past the clutches of the fossil fuel barons.

[hunter]

3. I won't cry if this industry dies.

Large scale solar and wind development are entirely dependent on fossil fuels, especially natural gas, for their economic viability. In the long run they will do nothing to reduce the total amount of greenhouse gasses humans dump into the atmosphere and oceans. It's clear to me that the fossil fuel companies know this.

In the short run wind and solar power are capital intensive. For every nameplate megawatt of solar or wind power you install and maintain you also have to install and maintain a megawatt of so-called backup power. Based on real world experience this backup power generally becomes the primary energy source simply because the sun's not shining brightly and the wind's not blowing briskly most of the time.

The entire wind industry is held together by accounting tricks, wishful thinking, and it's value as greenwash.

If the wind industry collapses tomorrow the negative environmental impacts on a global scale will be insignificant, and the environmental impacts on a local scale will be substantially positive.

Wind energy is not an existential threat to the fossil fuel industry and never will be.

We need to be promoting social, environmental, and energy policies that actually are existential threats to the fossil fuel industry.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. I know you passionately believe these things, but that doesn't make them true

Please, take just a little while, to do a bit of reading.

Start here: NREL: 100% Clean Electricity by 2035 Study

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Why are profits necessary?

“I have a way to save all life on the planet, but I haven’t figured out how to make money from it yet… Damn! I guess we can’’t do it…”

A century ago, the federal government thought it might be handy to have a decent network of roads in the United States. They would be built "on the taxpayer’s dime.” They were a tremendous success, and made a significant contribution to the climate crisis. Why are we depending on for-profit ventures to build a new energy system?