By Baron
Published January 16, 2025

When being realistic about the costs, wind and solar are destroying jobs and making energy unaffordable for households with misleading costs. Estimates for costs of wind and solar (Levelized costs of electricity, or LCOEs) are often contort costs and make fake numbers that are supposedly cheaper than thermal energy. Wind and solar are intermittent, meaning on and off, and the financial costs of depending on them as energy sources has caused energy prices to soar in countries that are serious proponents of wind and solar, and the economic output of wind and solar is just too small to harbor a pro-growth society and cultural mindset.

Capacity is one of the biggest flaws with wind and solar. Enormous amounts and quantities of wind turbines would have to be built to power a limited number of homes. According to Regen Power, 11 million solar panels power a city with a consumption level of 11,000,000 kwh/day. To put that in perspective, each kilowatt, in construction costs, is $1,588. Solar panels are not cost effective, which means the cost for them is not worth the output or results. Same goes for wind turbines. So much money goes into mining the resources necessary to build both wind turbines and solar panels. These materials also come from China. If you want to store the energy, you would have to build batteries. Batteries are a very costly option to answer to the under and overproduction of wind and solar, and are very costly. Batteries generally have very poor performance. Germany has about 52 GWh built up in storage in batteries. This is about enough to have normal power consumption for about 48 hours in Germany with a wind drought, or ‘Dunkelflaute’. Not enough to get through the winter, when there are bad solar conditions and wind is on and off. 

Proponents of solar and wind routinely present false calculations that show the costs are low for wind and solar. The Lcoes (Levelized cost of electricity) often misappropriate the actual costs of electricity, for they omit fixed and variable costs, intermittency and the costs of dispatchable backup power and the real capacity, which are significant. When the Lcoes state the capacity, it is based on the maximum possible output. For solar, that would be assuming that the summer sun is high up in the sky and there are no clouds. This, of course, cannot be the climate year round. For wind, that means highly intense winds in the right place and at the right time.

The LCOEs exclude intermittency. The wind won’t always blow to spin the turbine, and the sun is certainly not shining all day to power the solar panels. The only reason why the entire power grid doesn’t go out is because there are backup energy systems emitting carbon, idling all day so that there is power when the wind and solar go out, yet not producing any watts. When an economy is dependent on wind and solar, there are inevitable times when the systems don’t produce electricity, which causes energy prices to go through the roof. The only reason why the entire power grid doesn’t go out is because there are backup energy systems that emit carbon, which are often overlooked. Germany has just been hit by a Dunkelflaute, or a wind drought. Look what happens when wind energy fails.  

If you see the chart, you should notice Germany’s energy production of wind cratered 3 times in one week. Prices soared to 936 Euros per MWH hour. This was the highest price since 2022! Norway has had enough. They are cutting the cables that connect their power grid to mainland Europes, to protect them from the rapidly fluctuating energy market. Meanwhile, the hydro power remained constant and nat-gas was fluctuating less. In the event that a town were to be entirely powered by wind turbines and solar panels, assuming that the wind and solar levels fluctuate as Germany is showing it would, the town would have to rely on backup power, which emits carbon. This volatile market of wind and solar destroys jobs, because people can't go to work when the wind isn’t working, because it takes time for the coal and gas fired power plants to get back up to the new standard of increased wattage. When the workers can’t work, then they don’t get their pay, which upsets the balance of the well oiled German economy. Skyrocketing production can also have an impact on energy prices. When wind power overproduces, people simply cannot destroy the excess energy. This drives energy prices way down, often even negative. The government of Sweden has had to pay its citizens to use extra watts leftover. This happens in many countries such as Germany, Norway and Spain. The massively fluctuating energy prices simply do not fit the supply and demand curve. Demand is fixed, but the supply fluctuates when controlled by wind and solar. 

If these arguments are not enough to convince you that wind and solar are not all that they are cracked up to be, wind and solar have a negative environmental impact. A lot of resources are required to build wind turbines and solar panels have to be mined. Mining is a very destructive process. In open pit mining, a giant hole is blown in the ground, then trucks move deeper into the indentation and extract the materials. This destroys the habitats of many animals in the area, maybe accidentally killing some in the process. This is called open pit mining, it is usually used to gather metals buried near  the surface, or rare materials like lithium. Oftentimes, the mines aren’t properly restored, meaning they try to make it back into a natural landscape. This process often fails. According to the Government Accountability Office “There are at least 22,500 abandoned hardrock mine features—such as pits or tunnels— on federal lands. They pose risks to human health and the environment because they can leak toxic chemicals (like arsenic) into waterways.” The more materials mined for the batteries and solar panels, the more habitats destroyed and not restored responsibly. 

Wind turbines have their drawbacks too. An unbelievable amount of oil is needed to lubricate them, and the oil needed to power the construction machines is also significant. So much diesel is needed to mix the concrete, the wind turbines don’t reduce their own footprint. In Nantucket, Massachusetts, dead whales have been washing up on the beach. This is believed to be due to the wind turbines in Martha’s Vineyard, which is offshore. There is a theory that the noise of the wind turbines is causing these whales to die. The death tally is horrendous, with 25 minke whales, 37 humpbacks, and 2 critically endangered Right Whales documented by the Federal scientists. There are only about 360 right whales in existence. Even though the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) denied the evidence and announced “There are no known links” that show the development of the turbines offshore and whale casualties, the Guardian is raising questions about offshore wind. 

Even if there is no evidence to prove how the whales died, there are problems with the turbines. Just as  The Vineyard officials were boasting that it had become the largest operational offshore wind farm in the U.S. as it brought its 10th turbine online, when in July this year, the weekend of the 12th, a 107 meter long turbine fragment broke off and spilled an unprecedented amount of blue and green fiberglass into the ocean. According to the Vineyard Gazette, the blade bent over 20 meters from its base. The vineyard then shut down as Vineyard Wind and the turbine manufacturer, GE Veranova, led an investigation of  how the turbine fractured. According to Vineyard Wind, the company immediately set up a 500 meter safety zone around the turbine. 

I believe that the solution to the energy problem, as far as energy is concerned, is N2N, or natural gas to nuclear energy. Natural gas emits small amounts of carbon, and is very reliable. When natural gas is powering America, the capacity will be built up for nuclear to be built. Nuclear power is totally clean, and the wattage is huge compared to renewables. For example, solar takes 17 times as much more materials and 46 times as much land. Only a little uranium is needed to be mined to sustain the nuclear plant, and there is enough storage space for an ample amount of uranium. Casings for the uranium can be reused which saves a lot of metal. However, permitting is making it very hard to build new reactors, and nuclear power can be very dangerous if not constructed properly. Nuclear also provides the best paying jobs out of all forms of green energy. Even though according to the Federal and Vineyard, there is no evidence that the whales were killed by the turbines, I hope you've come to the conclusion that there are some drawbacks to green energy, specifically wind and solar, but it is up to you to decide whether these outweigh carbon free emissions.