Solar Power, Wind Power, and Population Reduction, Can it Work?

Power generation is not a favorite subject of many people, so I'll try to keep this part short, while still touching on some of the most important points.

First of all let's take a look at how much power is produced, on average, in the US. Then we can brake it down by production type to get a better idea of where we stand with varying types of technologies.

What are considered "fossil fuels" (petroleum, natural gas, and coal) make up 79% of the total energy production. Renewable energy sources make up 13% of the total.

Solar only makes up 14.2% of the total for renewable energy, that's around 1.85% of the total energy production of the country.

Wind makes up 29% of the total for renewable energy, that's around 3.78% of the total energy production of the country.

Wood makes up 16% of the total renewable energy, around 2.08% of the total energy production of the country.

Considering that the Biden regime wants to push for net-zero emissions by 2050, we've got a long way to go.

The only possible way to catch up, based on current technology, is nuclear power.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In support of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a request for proposals (RFP) for uranium enrichment services to help establish a reliable domestic supply of fuels using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)—a crucial material needed to deploy advanced nuclear reactors, which will help reach President Biden’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, increase energy security, create good-paying jobs, and strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness. Currently, HALEU is not commercially available from U.S.-based suppliers, and boosting domestic supply could spur the development and deployment of advanced reactors in the United States.

If US suppliers can't produce HALEU, then who can?

The current fleet of nuclear reactors runs primarily on uranium fuel enriched up to 5% uranium-235 (U-235). High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) is defined as uranium enriched to greater than 5% and less than 20% of the U-235 isotope. Applications for HALEU are today limited to research reactors and medical isotope production. However, HALEU will be needed for many advanced power reactor fuels, and more than half of the small modular reactor (SMR) designs in development. HALEU is not yet widely available commercially. At present only Russia and China have the infrastructure to produce HALEU at scale. Centrus Energy, in the United States, began producing HALEU from a demonstration-scale cascade in October 2023.

This is why energy policy is vitally important and should be handled by serious people. Russia and China have the fuel that we might need for new advanced commercial nuclear reactors -- but we can't yet produce it at scale. This illustrates the lack of seriousness as it relates to energy policy. If any of these people pushing for net-zero energy production were serious, they would have been pushing for the production of HALEU domestically decades ago.

Solar Power

Here's my personal experience with solar power.

They are trying to sell solar panels everywhere in Florida right now. So, I decided to do some research. I found out there are two kinds of systems. Ones where you have your own batteries, and you basically go "off-the-grid." Or, you can have a system that runs the house on solar when there's enough sunlight, and you get to sell the "leftover" power back to the power company. They use a Net Meter to do that. After calling around, and talking with the people at our power company, I found out that they don't even have any of the Net Meters available. They are made by Landis and Gyr (Siemens), and there's a supply issue. They don't even know when they are going to get more.

To make a long story a little shorter. The engineer from the power company said that solar started out in Florida at about $10 per kW [this was many years ago]. It went down at one point to $3 per kW, and now it's back up to $5 per kW. When you do Net Metering, you do still draw from the grid at night, so the power that you sell them during the day is supposed to offset what you use at night. But, he pointed out that there's an issue with that, because unless the cost of the solar system is less than $2.56 per kW, you're going to end up spending more money with the solar system, and the utility bill than you would if you just stayed with the utility. In other words, it's a scam. But man are they trying hard to sell it.

A system big enough to power my house would run us about $86,000. So we would have a payment of around $286 per month for the solar loan, and we would still have a utility bill. Making things worse, we can't do Net Metering, because they don't even have the meters. LOL It's crazy, the reason I was looking into it is because we had a power bill that was $335. Which is the highest we've had in this house, and I don' think that the cost of fuel is going to go down any time soon. But alas, it's a wash. We're just going to stay on-grid, and use our generator if we have to. But at least we know what we're looking at now.

After all, we can always cut back on our power usage.

Most residential solar power is to offset peak usage during the day, the majority of houses are not self sufficient, they don't have enough energy storage capacity. In order to go "off-grid" the systems require large battery storage systems. They're warrantied for many years, but if there's a supply issue, you're going to be out of power, with no quick option to switch back to utility power.

Smart Grid Technology

I'm sure you've heard of smart grid technology by now. The basic concept is that electrical meters and switching devices controlled by the power company can have two-way communication. They can also be controlled remotely. What advantage does this afford the home owner, or end user? There's very little benefit to either. What smart grid technology does is put more control in the hands of the utility company.

Smart grid technology allows them to balance loads more easily, and control the overall system capacity. Most importantly, it allows them to do this remotely -- and with greatly reduced manpower.

If we're to be serious about renewable energy replacing fossil fuel energy sources, a few things have to happen. Large scale manufacturing would have to stop world-wide, because that's where the majority of energy is expended. I've written about this before. Some of the world's most efficient manufacturing facilities can't run 5-days a week, because the cost of energy is too high.

Supply will not be able to keep up with demand, with cutbacks to large-scale manufacturing. People will just have to make due without those products. There is no aspect of large scale manufacturing that doesn't require fossil fuels along the production and supply chain.

In order for wind and solar power to be sufficient, many things would have to happen. Manufacturing would have to be localized, pretty much everywhere. You would have to produce most of the things you need -- where you are. Think "Little House on The Prairie." Everyday life would change drastically.

While that might not sound too bad, there are many things to be considered. Producing goods closer to where they are needed is not always possible. There are many goods produced where they are, because location is a requirement of production. Not all crops grow in all places. You can't grow oranges outside of greenhouses if you go too far north. Some plants won't reproduce, or bloom, without being exposed to sunlight and/or darkness for the correct amount of time. The latitude at which these plants are grown determines this.

Where does depopulation fit in?

This professor at Stanford University, Paul Ehrlich, seems to think there are too many people in the world. And he's been vocal about it for (56) years as of this writing. A quick internet search will reveal that this is not some “fringe” belief either.

The world's most renowned population analyst has called for a massive reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor.

Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London which this morning said that physical numbers were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed.

The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian.

William Rees from the University of British Columbia in Canada, also thinks that there are too many people on earth, and that something is going to happen to "correct" this problem.

Today, there are around 8 billion people on the planet.

That sort of growth is unsustainable for our ecosphere, risking a 'population correction' that according to a new study could occur before the century is out.

The prediction is the work of population ecologist William Rees from the University of British Columbia in Canada. He argues that we're using up Earth's resources at an unsustainable rate, and that our natural tendencies as humans make it difficult for us to correct this "advanced ecological overshoot".

The result could be some kind of civilizational collapse that 'corrects' the world's population, Rees says – one that could happen before the end of the century in a worst-case scenario.

...

The question is whether improvements in technology – in everything from combating climate change to increasing food production – are capable of keeping pace with the growing demands our consumption places on the planet.

If innovation can't provide solutions, food shortages, habitat instability, war, and disease may well start to make an impact in population numbers, this study predicts.

If the global population is drastically decreased, many things can become a lot easier to manage.

Consider, all of the heavy labor will have already been completed by people -- while the population was still high. There will be an excess of manufactured materials at the ready. All of those smart grid houses will still be producing power through their solar cells, regardless of whether or not someone is living in them.

The truth is that the proposed energy and food solutions won't support the current population, much less a larger population in the future. Combine that with all of those people at the highest levels of government and the scientific community, repeating year after year, "The global population is too large. If we don't reduce it we'll destroy the planet."

Why would anyone not consider that population reduction would be part of the "Master Plan for Humanity" as the Chinese Communist Party put it?

The Chinese Communist Party boasted that it played a “crucial role” in the SDG plan, which UN leaders said represents a “master plan for humanity” that will “transform our world.”

Remember the UN SDGs?

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also referred to as UN Agenda 2030, represent a comprehensive global effort to reform governance and the economy to be more in line with what the UN considers to be sustainable.

I would guess that most people would think that all of these initiatives are "conspiracy theories." But that doesn't fly anymore. You can go straight to the UN website, and read all about it.

What do you think?

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