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Monthly Archives: July 2021

Notes From the Spousal Shotgun Seat

29 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by Nuetzel in Driving

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Baboon Social Cohesion, Backseat Driving, Blind Spot, Blind Spots, Defensive Driving, Double Coincidence of Wants, Exit-Only Lanes, Green Light Etiquette, Marital Tranquility, Parking Etiquette, Passing Lane, Passing on Right, Rear Camera, Riding Shotgun, Right on Red, Roundabout Navigation, Three-Point Turns, Turn Signal

I’m on a road trip with my spouse and it means some time for me in the passenger seat. That’s because we are such an enlightened, sharing couple. I have mostly resisted temptations to offer driving tips to my spouse, but it can be very challenging. This time, I decided to catalogue my spouse’s driving “issues” as a simple exercise in the interest of preserving my sanity.

Much of what you’ll see below takes the form of advice, only I cannot say much of it out loud without blowing our domestic tranquility to smithereens! Bad move on a long trip! So despite frustrations, the reticent approach is probably all for the good. After all, even troops of baboons are said to move at speeds less than ergonomically optimal “in order to maintain social cohesion”. And it is just so in my marriage. Of course, this is about more than speed, but if I condense all of the issues into the single-most convenient dimension, it would come down to slower speeds. Like a long-striding baboon tolerating an angst similar to my own, I’m willing to sacrifice speed in order to keep the troop happy and together.

General Advice

Lest I be accused of favoring a certain recklessness, I’ll start by asserting that defensive driving does not mean you have to be timid. You’re not being hunted. Don’t constantly imagine a need for deference. Watch out for other vehicles, but take charge! Be deliberate. And fucking GO!

Ignore irrelevant information! If you’re trying to follow I-75, don’t freak every time you see signs for other roads or interstates, unless of course you’re trapped in an exit-only lane! You might not think this is a “thing” unless you’ve been on the road with a driver who’s unable to filter information!

Look Ahead

You wouldn’t walk down the sidewalk with your eyes fixed only on the area immediately before your feet. Don’t drive that way either! Plan and execute smooth transitions as circumstances and opportunities dictate. Look ahead!

My general mantra is, “The right lane is for losers!” Say it aloud! I actually managed to get a laugh out of my spouse with that line. Alright, when the right lane is empty, you should stay there, but…

Don’t get trapped in the right lane when you know traffic is entering the road just ahead of you.

Don’t get trapped in the right lane when you know it’s full of people planning to turn right, which is frequently the case!

Don’t get trapped in an exit-only lane! In general, if there’s a middle lane, you can improve your “optionality” by staying there.

If you’re changing to a middle lane, glance two lanes over before you move, not just one! This is exactly when drivers in different lanes don’t need a coincidence of wants. And don’t rely solely on your side mirrors.

Look Back

I can’t recount the number of times my spouse has been startled, dangerously, by drivers passing her at high speeds. “OhMyGOD!” This has happened to me too, and it can be quite dangerous. Try to glance in the rear view mirror on a regular basis to avoid nasty surprises like this, and don’t make sudden moves as other vehicles approach from behind unless you really want to confuse them!

Turns

Dual left turn lanes are especially tough for my spouse to negotiate. I think this stems from a failure to “look ahead”. Get a fix on the end point, and try to think of the whole turn… a sweeping curve. Do not search for each dashed line along the path. Just give cars turning alongside you a fair berth.

Right turns on red can be quick and painless. If, when you arrive at an intersection, the “oncoming” vehicles to your left are at a dead stop, then fucking GO! They will NOT suddenly leap across the intersection and smash into you. Of course, watch out for pedestrians near your corner!

And regarding right turns, if left-turning “blockers” are moving in the opposite direction, fucking GO!

You do not have to come to a near stop as you approach an empty roundabout! “Yield” matters only when there is someone to whom you might yield. So fucking GO!

When you have a dedicated or open lane to take after your turn, take it! Fucking GO!

Turn smoothly!! If you’re turning right, don’t get yourself out in the middle of the damn road before turning your wheels! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had my heart in my throat over this issue.

If you want to change lanes on a busy road, use your damn turn signal to indicate your intention to other drivers!

Stop Lights

As you approach a red light, always choose the lane with the fewest cars. PLEASE!

Never brake as you approach a green light. Fucking GO!

In a long line of cars at a light, don’t stop car-lengths behind the one in front of you (making allowances when on a steep incline). You probably do want to make the next green light, as do all the poor saps behind you.

When the light turns green, if you can go, fucking GO!

Make judicious use of your horn! Don’t be afraid to give it a little tap to rouse the distracted shmuck in front of you when the light turns green.

Parking and “Unparking”

Don’t park like an idiot! Park in one space between the fucking lines!

If you have a choice, don’t ever park next to anyone parked like an idiot.

On a hot day, don’t drive past shaded parking places in favor of spots in the blazing sun!

Refine your spacial orientation. It’s amazing how many two-point turns are made into three-plus point turns by drivers lacking these bearings. Get a handle on the fucking dimensions of your vehicle!

Use your rear camera and figure out what the colored lines mean.

Passing

Don’t linger alongside large tractor trailers, or any other vehicle for that matter. Especially do not linger toward the rear of those vehicles! Fucking pass them. Shoot the gap! GO!

And never linger on anyone’s right rear side … they don’t call it a blind spot for nothing!

When you pass, don’t shake the steering wheel back and forth as if you must thread a jumping needle!

If you are forced to pass on the right, get it done! Fucking GO!

Do NOT attempt to pass on the right if there’s an even slower vehicle ahead of you! You’ll get fucking trapped!

Don’t be shaken by drivers who would very much like to get around you. Use your turn signal and get out of the way at your earliest convenience.

Silence Not Always Golden

I don’t always suffer in silence while my spouse is behind the wheel, but I try to choose my spots wisely. Not that it’s easy! I react when I perceive danger, but there are times I regret it. And to be fair, my spouse hasn’t had an accident or a traffic citation of any kind in quite some time. That’s a big plus! My own driving record has a few … ahem … blemishes, but mostly speeding tickets, and it’s been a while.

I also note that this has nothing to do with gender. I have a few pals who are awful drivers. The difference is I can get in their ear about it without getting hours of the silent treatment!

We are hitting the road for home in a few days, and I’ll do my best to keep my nose out of the spouse’s driving when I’m riding shotgun. Hey, she’s my babe!!

Banished Illusions: They Screwed the People and the Country

22 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by Nuetzel in Constitution, Corruption, Election Fraud

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Tags

Adam Schiff, Biden Inc. Hunter Biden, Big Tech, Brett Kavanaugh, Capitol Police, COVID, Darryl Cooper, DNC, Donald Trump, Election Fraud, Insurrection, James Comey, John Brennan, MartyrMade, Pay-For-Play, Propaganda, Tyler O’Neil, Voting Procedures

There’s no shortage of nincompoops buying into the legitimacy of the Biden presidency and the bullshit narrative about “an insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6th. I’m sure they’re quite content in their ignorance — they refuse to even consider the evidence available regarding the lack of ballot integrity in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas, and elsewhere, and they continue to pretend the January 6th debacle was a real threat to our democracy, rather than a largely peaceful group of wide-eyed goofballs who were mostly waved through the barricades by the Capitol Police.

One of the best summaries I’ve read about the attitudes of those who feel disenfranchised by the 2020 election is this series of tweets by the of the MartyrMade podcast, Darryl Cooper. His tweets are also discussed here by Tyler O’Neil. It is Cooper’s “general theory” on the perspective of “Boomer tier” Trump supporters, as he calls them. Last year’s fraudulent election was only the culmination of events going back to the investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. The whole thread is interesting, but you must get past a little “soft cover” at the start that might have been intended to distract the speech police at Twitter. I’ll try to summarize here:

  • The intelligence community spied on the Trump campaign in 2016, and that’s a major transgression! The DNC was involved too, actually paying for fabricated evidence. James Comey falsely denied any knowledge of that fact. John Brennan and Adam Schiff also lied shamelessly in this affair.
  • By the time Trump supporters realized all the noise was fake, they naively expected justice to be served. But no, and so their faith in certain institutions was shaken.
  • The gaslighting continued, and the whole thing consumed energy and had a chilling effect on participation in the Trump Administration. This was an active kind of subversion crossing “all institutional boundaries”.
  • The participation of the press was the poison icing on the cake. The press is now viewed by much of the country as a propaganda arm of “The Regime”.
  • Many aren’t sure whether the election was fixed, but if it was, they know they’d be lied to about it. 
  • Voting procedures in many jurisdictions were changed using COVID as a pretext. 
  • The press smoke-screened the Biden, Inc. scandals, including evidence of pay-for-play and incredibly lurid information on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Instead, the press played-up gossip about Trump. 
  • Trump people rightly felt betrayed by the very institutions they’ve always trusted, but they voted in record numbers, and we’re not convinced all were counted.
  • “But when the four critical swing states went dark at midnight, they knew.”
  • Conspiracy theories abounded, but media and tech shut down discussion of real anomalies. Had the election gone Trump’s way, they would have cried foul! 
  • The courts were handcuffed by fear of political violence and retribution.

I agree with substantially all of Cooper’s thread. Our experience since Donald Trump became an active politician has been disillusioning in several respects: it has shown how flimsy our constitutional rights and our republic are when the wrong actors come to dominate certain institutions. It also shows how malleable are the “facts” that we are asked to accept by these actors. We are seemingly helpless to defend the rule of law, the Constitution, and social norms when an intransigent minority decides it can simply ignore them. This is how tyranny is borne.

Election integrity is not an outlandish objective. Neither is demanding fair treatment of diverse viewpoints from social media, Big Tech, and educational institutions. And neither is it outlandish to demand safe communities and adequate police protection; that our borders be enforced; that our public health officials speak honestly about risks; and that we should never, under any circumstances, be judged, punished, or rewarded based on the color of our skin. These are just a few of the things we must demand, and never take “no” for an answer.

Will Your Local School Get a “Wokey-Dokey”?

16 Friday Jul 2021

Posted by Nuetzel in Capital Markets, Education, Wokeness

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Academic Dilution, American Bar Association, Cobb County Georgia, Cognia, Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Environmental Social Governance Scores, Equity, ESG Scores, Fact-Checking, Forward Though Ferguson, Grant Making, Investor Activism, John O. McGinnis, Missouri Department of Education, Originalism, School Accreditation, Stacey Lennox, Woke Middlemen

“Middlemen” are often characterized as rip-off artists, or “takers” who somehow insinuate a role for themselves without adding value. They usually do perform valuable roles, however, in price discovery and in matching and routing product to willing consumers, as well as offering a feedback loop to producers. Still, it would be difficult to defend them if they routinely favored producers whose business practices had specific political objectives. Certain middlemen, whom we might broadly label “influencers”, play an indirect role in the transaction process that is sometimes formalized, but not always. They can be rating agents, personalities on social media, or funding sources. Increasingly they blend political criteria into their ratings, recommendations, and decisions. Unfortunately, a number of institutions (and consumers) are falling prey to the corrosive influence of “woke middlemen”, or have already, including education, capital markets, and even law enforcement. The list broadens considerably if we include the influencer roles often played by media more generally, and even government itself.

Grading Schools’ Wokeness

School accreditation at the K-12 levels is often in the hands of organizations that serve as “woke middlemen”. For example, those in charge of accreditation may be in a position to demand compliance with the tenets of critical race theory (CRT). If you haven’t seen it, read this post by Stacey Lennox on the impact that accreditors are having on schools in Cobb County, Georgia. It can be very painful for a school and its students to lose accreditation. Such a loss can happen as a result of legitimate academic decline, but it also can be used as a threat of political retribution, as the situation in Cobb County so aptly illustrates. The task of awarding accreditation is performed by different agents in different states, but often a state’s education department will contract out to firms like Cognia, Inc. This company’s treatment of the Cobb County schools is shocking, and Cobb County taxpayers pay more than $133,000 annually for Cognia “membership”.

The CEO of Cognia says its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion has prompted it to introduce a “new protocol” in its approach to education standards. Celebrating diversity is one thing, but the application of “equity” in the allocation of school or district resources is quite another. But have no fear! Cognia is happy to offer its consulting services to schools to help them meet these new standards. Lennox notes that a few interested parties in Georgia, including parents and state officials, are scrutinizing Cognia’s sinister role in the matter of the Cobb County schools. That can’t happen soon enough!

Cognia operates in a number of other states. In Missouri, for example, the company is intimately involved in the accreditation of private schools. The state Department of Education is mandated by law to handle accreditation of public schools. The DOE’s standards were recently revised, with input from a variety of “stakeholders”, especially the public education establishment. It also receives input from organizations like Forward Through Ferguson, which represents “stakeholders” affiliated with a school district that lost its accreditation several years ago. As the last link shows, that organization takes a strong position on matters of racial equity and justice. It should not come as a surprise that the latest school standards issued by the Missouri DoE in 2020, which are greatly revised and expanded, place specific emphasis on racial equity. It’s certainly not clear that promoting equity, as a distinct mission beyond assessing academic performance, is part of the DoE’s mandate under state law. 

The same dynamic is operative at higher levels of education. For example, John O. McGinnis reports on that august middleman known as the American Bar Association, which now proposes “new accrediting standards for law schools that would make them more race-conscious, more politically correct and less intellectually diverse.” This proposal reeks of a desire to downgrade law schools that treat originalist principles with respect. It’s as if we need more attorneys lacking any real understanding of the fundamental, individual rights recognized by and enshrined in our Constitution.

Back to the K-12 levels, the greater is the emphasis on equalizing outcomes, which is the ultimate goal of calls for academic “equity“, the less is the focus on academic excellence. Gifted programs are almost sure to receive fewer resources. Subjects like math and science are recalibrated toward a lower common denominator. Difficult reading assignments are put aside. Discipline suffers. And that’s all before we get to instruction in social justice and critical race theory! If they aren’t already in on it, today’s school leaders might well suffer from “Wokaphobia”, or fear of the consequences of insufficient wokeness.

Grading Corporations’ Wokeness

In the past I’ve written about “middleman” organizations assigning so-called “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) scores to public companies. These scores are marketed to activist investors, investment funds, and financial advisors as criteria for building “socially responsible” portfolios. ESGs are very much in vogue at the moment, and they have political and social objectives. A public company with a low ESG score, or a fund holding a portfolio of companies with a low average ESG score, may be penalized by the investment community. To avoid such an outcome, companies engage in all sorts of virtue signaling nonsense, not to mention misdirection of staff and assets on pursuits that have nothing to do with fundamental business objectives.

The same kind of corporate waste is motivated by attempts to gain positive media attention or even approval of so-called influencers. There is nothing new about public relations, but today, a veritable army of negative-PR activist “middlemen” hunt for corporate victims on which to prey. The slightest transgression, be it any direct or indirect association with carbon emissions, “cultural appropriation” in advertising, a gender/racial wage or hiring gap, a negative regulatory finding, or any disparate impact in pricing, can subject a company to withering condemnations on social media, in the community, and at the corporate gates. This excessive scrutiny does great social and economic damage, dominating attention and absorbing resources in a defensive posture, all at the expense of a proper focus on the value of product and the people who work honestly to produce it.

Woke Middlemen and Social Failure

Woke leftists performing reviews for school accreditation are dangerous to our children and the future of our republic, and there are other kinds of “middlemen” who are actively undermining schools, such as teachers’ unions. The ESG scores produced by middlemen from the woke investor community undermine business objectives and economic efficiency. We could add to the list of middlemen the corrupt “fact checkers” promoted by major media organizations, large political contributors who fund the campaigns of anti-police prosecutors, and climate-alarmist grant-making organizations. Conservatives and libertarians have varying levels of awareness of these influencers and middlemen, who have been broadly successful in institutionalizing their agendas. They sometimes operate behind the scenes, and they sometimes are cloaked in an ostensible legitimacy, but one must know one’s enemies. Like invasive weeds, they are difficult to root out. In a few cases they can simply be ignored, but their impact elsewhere will be hard to reverse unless they are challenged politically, in the courts, and in the marketplace.

Health Insurance Profits Are Not the Problem

08 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by Nuetzel in Health Insurance, Profit Motive

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Capitalization, COBRA, Community Rating, Cronyism, Death Spiral, Economies of Scale, Health Insurance, Medical Loss Ratio, Monopsony, Obamacare, Premium Subsidies, Profit, Profit Motive, Single-Payer System

My dentist said, “Oh well, these days it’s really only about whether the insurance company makes a profit….” A giant appliance was in my mouth at the time, propping it open, so I couldn’t respond. But I made a mental note because it reminded me of the hypocrisy so common in how people regard the concept of profit. That’s especially true of the Left, and I happen to know that my dentist, whom I personally like very much, stands well to my left. 

Profit Is Income

It’s worth pointing out that profit is merely compensation. My dentist collects revenue, often paid to him by insurers. If he runs an efficient practice, then he earns an income after paying staff, office rent, various suppliers, and for equipment, including interest on any debt outstanding. You wouldn’t be wrong to call that profit, and he does pretty well for himself, but somehow he thinks it’s different.

My dentist probably feels locked into an adversarial position with my insurer, and of course he is in the short run. He says his price is $750; the insurer says, “Sorry Charlie, you get $250”. So as far as he’s concerned, it’s a zero-sum game. Not so in the long run, however. He needs to partner with insurers to get and keep patients, so the exchange is mutually beneficial. And while he might do some picking and choosing among insurers, he’s essentially a price taker. His “price” of $750 is something of a fiction, as he’s clearly willing to do the work for the insurer’s reimbursement. 

I think the key qualitative difference between my dentist’s income and that of any wage earner is that his income is always at risk. After all, profit is often regarded as a return to entrepreneurial risk-taking. As it happens, he’s taking a loss on my new crown because it cracked as soon as he put it in. Then, he had to start from scratch with new impressions, after painstakingly removing the cemented, cracked pieces with what felt like a tiny circular saw.

Middling Profitability

But what about those profit-hungry health insurers? In fact, they are not known for outrageously high profits, and their earnings are typically not valued as highly by the market as those of other industries, dollar for dollar. Competition helps restrain pricing and enhance performance, of course. And since the advent of Obamacare, profits have been subject to a loose “cap” (more on that below).

The profitability of health insurers improved in 2020, however, because so many tests and elective procedures were postponed or foregone due to the coronavirus pandemic. That also prompted the government to make more generous subsidies available to consumers to pay COBRA insurance premiums.

Profits Drive Efficiency

I’ll put aside concerns about the crony capitalism inherent in the health system-insurer-regulator nexus, at least for a moment. The profit motive is the fundamental driver of efficiency in the production of insurance contracts and pooling of risks, as well as efficient servicing and administration of those contracts. Absent the possibility of profit, these tasks would become mere bureaucratic functions with little regard for cost and resource allocation. Furthermore, managing risk requires a deep pool of capital to ensure the ability of the insurer to meet future claims. Reinvestment and growth of the enterprise also requires capital. That capital is always at risk and it is costly because its owners demand a return as fair compensation. 

Poor Alternatives

Eliminating profit from the insurance function implies that resources must be put at risk without compensation. That’s one of the reasons why non-profit insurers, over the years, have tended to be thinly capitalized and unstable, or limited in their offerings to “health maintenance” benefits, like primary or preventative care, as opposed to insuring against catastrophic events. Capital grants to non-profits (private or governmental) usually come with strings attached, which can severely limit the effectiveness of the capital for meeting existing or future needs of the operation. Growth requires reinvestment, so a profit margin must be earned in order to grow with internal funds. Where non-profits are concerned, you can call the “margin” whatever you want, but it is functionally equivalent to a profit margin. 

On the other hand, insurance provided by the public sector puts the taxpayer at risk, and the potential liability to taxpayer “capital” is never rewarded nor indemnified. But it is not free. Now, you might insist that we’d all benefit from government-sponsored health insurance because of the broader risk pool. The problem with that perspective is that it turns the pricing of risk into a political exercise. We’ve already seen the destructive effects of community rating. Younger, healthier, but budget-constrained individuals tend to opt out due to excessive premiums, leading to a systemic “death spiral” of the pool.

Administrative Costs

A puzzling contention is that private insurers drive up administrative costs, presumably when compared to a single-payer system. Obamacare regulations limit the so-called Medical Loss Ratio of a health plan. To simplify a bit, this requires rebates to customers if premiums exceed claims by a certain threshold, which varies across individual, small, and large group markets. This regulation obviously places a loose cap on profits. It is also arbitrary and probably has hampered competition in the individual market. And of course there have always been suspicions that the ratio can be “gamed”. 

Nevertheless, under a single-payer system, it would be shocking if economies of scale were sufficient to reduce administrative costs to levels below those incurred by private insurers (especially if we exclude profit!). After all, scale is seldom a prescription for government efficiency, and that’s largely due to the absence of a profit motive and any semblance of competition! What administrative savings might be achieved by a monopsony public payer are likely to derive mainly from “one-size-fits-all” decision-making and product design, with little heed to consumer preferences and choice.

I’ll Take the Profit-Maker’s Coverage

There is plenty to criticize about the health insurance industry. In important ways, it has already succeeded in shifting risks to taxpayers with the help of its policy-making cronies. The insurers are further protected by a flow of government premium subsidies to the individual market; and the largest insurers have benefitted from Obamacare regulations, which encourages increased market power by large hospital networks, which are happy to negotiate charges that benefit themselves and insurers. All else equal, however, I’d rather have a few choices from profit-making health insurers than a single, community-rated choice from the government. I’d rather see risk priced correctly, with direct subsidies made available to individuals in high-risk segments unable to afford their premiums. And I’d rather see less government involvement in health care delivery and insurance. We’d all be better off, including my dentist!

Renewable Power Gains, Costs, and Fantasies

01 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by Nuetzel in Electric Power, Renewable Energy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Baseload, Blackouts, California, Combined-Cycle Gas, Dispatchable Power, Disposal Costs, Dung Burning, Energy Information Administration, External Costs, Fossil fuels, Francis Menton, Germany, Green Propaganda, Interrmittency, Levelized Costs, Modern Renewables, Peak Demand, Plant Utilization, Renewable energy, Solar Power, Texas, The Manhattan Contrarian, Willis Eschenbach, Wind Power

“Modern” renewable energy sources made large gains in providing for global energy consumption over the ten years from 2009-19, according to a recent report, but that “headline” is highly misleading. So is a separate report on the costs of solar and wind power, which claims those sources are now cheaper than any fossil fuel. The underlying facts will receive little critical examination by a hopelessly naive press, nor among analysts with more technical wherewithal. Of course, “green” activists will go on using misinformation like this to have their way with policy makers.

Extinguishing Dung Fires

The “Renewables Global Status Report” was published in mid-June by an organization called REN21: Renewables Now. Francis Menton has a good discussion of the report on his blog, The Manhattan Contrarian. The big finding is a large increase in the global use of “modern” renewable energy sources, from 8.7% of total consumption in 2009 to 11.2% in 2019. The “modern” qualifier is critical: it distinguishes renewables that made gains from those that might be considered antiquated, like dung chips, the burning of which is an energy staple in many underdeveloped parts of the world. In fact, the share of those “non-modern renewables” declined from 11.0% to 8.7%, almost fully accounting for the displacement caused by “modern renewables”. The share of fossil fuels was almost unchanged, down from 80.3% in 2009 to 80.2% in 2019. Whatever the benefits of wind, solar, and other modern green power sources, they did not make much headway in displacing reliable fossil fuel energy.

I certainly can’t argue that replacing dung power with wind, solar, or hydro is a bad thing (but there are more sophisticated ways of converting dung to energy than open flame). However, I contend that replacing open dung fires with fossil-fuel or nuclear capacity would be better than renewables from both a cost and an environmental perspective. Be that as it may, the adoption of “modern renewables” over the ten-year period was not at the expense of fossil fuels, as might be expected if the latter was at a cost disadvantage, and remember that renewables were already given an edge via intense government efforts to subsidize and even require the use of wind and solar power.

The near-term limits on our ability to substitute renewables for fossil fuels should be fairly obvious. For one thing, renewable power is intermittent, so it cannot be relied upon for baseload generation. The chart at the top of this post demonstrates this reality, though the chart is “optimistic” in the sense that planners have to consider worst-case intermittency, not merely average production by time-of-day. Reliable power sources must be maintained in order to prevent the kinds of disasters like we saw in Texas last winter when demand spiked and output from renewables plunged. This is an area of considerable denialism: a search on “intermittent renewables” gets you an unending list of rosy assessments of energy storage technologies, and very little realistic commentary on today’s needs for meeting base-load or weather-induced demands.

While renewables account for about 29% of global electricity generation, there is another limit on adoption: certain jobs just can’t be done with renewables short of major advances in battery technology. As Menton says:

“Steel mills and tractor trailer trucks and airplanes powered by solar panels? Not happening. … I think these people really believe that if governments will just do the right thing and require airplanes to run on solar panels, then it will promptly happen.”

Cost and Intermittency

Again, we’d expect to see more rapid conversion to renewable energy, at least in compatible applications, as the cost of renewables drops relative to fossil fuels. And major components of their costs have indeed dropped, so much so that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) now says they are cheaper than fossil fuels in terms of the “levelized cost” of new electric generating capacity. That’s the average cost per megawatt-hour produced over the life of a new installation. The EIA’s calculations are distorted on at least two counts, however, as Willis Eschenbach ably explains here.

The EIA’s cost figures reflect a “capacity factor” that adjusts the megawatts produced to presumed “real world” conditions. It’s more like a utilization adjustment made necessary by a variety of realities (intermittency as well as other technical imperfections) that cause output to run lower than the maximum under ideal conditions. Eschenbach reports that the factors applied by the EIA for solar and wind, at 30% and 41%, respectively, are overstated drastically, which reduces their cost estimates by overstating output. For solar, he cites a more realistic value of 14%, which would more than double the levelized cost of solar. For wind, he quotes a figure of 30%, which would increase the cost of wind power by more than a third. That puts the cost of those renewables well above that of a “combined-cycle gas” plant, which uses exhaust from gas turbines to generate additional power via steam.

The true costs of renewables are likely much higher than nuclear power as well, based on earlier comparisons of nuclear to combined-cycle gas. The EIA does not report a cost for nuclear power, however, because the report is for new capacity, and no additions of nuclear capacity are expected.

The Cost of Back-Up Capacity

Eschenbach notes a second major problem with the EIA cost comparisons. As discussed above, the intermittency of solar and wind power means that their deployment cannot provide for base loads. Other “dispatchable” power technologies, on which production can be ramped up or down at discretion, must be available to meet power needs when renewables are off-line, as is frequently the case. The more we attempt to rely on renewables, the more significant the intermittency problem becomes, as Germany, Texas, and California are discovering.

How to account for the extra cost of dispatchable power required to smooth production or meet peak demand? Renewables are simply incapable of doing so reliably, and back-up capacity ain’t free! Meeting demand at all times requires equivalent dispatchable capacity in the power mix. It requires not just dispatchable baseload capacity, but surge capacity! Meeting long-term growth in demand with renewables implies that new back-up capacity is required as well, and the levelized cost should reflect it. After all, those costs won’t be saved by virtue of adding renewable capacity, unless you plan on blackouts. Thus, the EIA’s levelized cost comparisons of wind, solar and fossil fuel electricity generation are completely phony.

Conclusion

Growth in wind and solar power increased their contribution to global energy needs to more than 11% in 2019, but their gains over the previous ten years came largely at the expense of more “primitive” renewable energy sources, not fossil fuels. And despite impressive declines in the installation costs of wind and solar power, and despite low variable costs, the economics of power generation still favors fossil fuels rather substantially. In popular discussions, this point is often obscured by the heavy subsidies granted to renewables. 

In truth, the “name-plate” capacities of wind and solar installations far exceed typical output, so installation costs are spread over less output than is widely believed. Furthermore, the intermittency of production from these renewable sources means that back-up capacity is still required, almost always from plants fired by fossil fuels. Properly considered, this represents a significant incremental cost of renewable power sources, but it is one that is routinely ignored by environmentalists and even in official reports. It’s also worth noting that “modern” renewables carry significant external costs to the environment both during the useful life of plant and at disposal (and see here). It’s tempting to say all these distortions and omissions are deliberate contributions to the propaganda in favor of government mandates for renewables.

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Blogs I Follow

  • Ominous The Spirit
  • Passive Income Kickstart
  • onlyfinance.net/
  • TLC Cholesterol
  • Nintil
  • kendunning.net
  • DCWhispers.com
  • Hoong-Wai in the UK
  • Marginal REVOLUTION
  • Stlouis
  • Watts Up With That?
  • Aussie Nationalist Blog
  • American Elephants
  • The View from Alexandria
  • The Gymnasium
  • A Force for Good
  • Notes On Liberty
  • troymo
  • SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers
  • Miss Lou Acquiring Lore
  • Your Well Wisher Program
  • Objectivism In Depth
  • RobotEnomics
  • Orderstatistic
  • Paradigm Library

Blog at WordPress.com.

Ominous The Spirit

Ominous The Spirit is an artist that makes music, paints, and creates photography. He donates 100% of profits to charity.

Passive Income Kickstart

onlyfinance.net/

TLC Cholesterol

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The future is ours to create.

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

Stlouis

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

The Gymnasium

A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

A Force for Good

How economics, morality, and markets combine

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers

Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

Miss Lou Acquiring Lore

Gallery of Life...

Your Well Wisher Program

Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

Objectivism In Depth

Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

RobotEnomics

(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

Orderstatistic

Economics, chess and anything else on my mind.

Paradigm Library

OODA Looping

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