The dishonest crusade for solar and wind

Supplying 80% of the world’s primary energy, coal, oil, and natural gas make up the lifeblood of modern civilization. Yet, there continue to be calls for the abandonment of these fuels without any feasible, scalable replacement in sight.

It is dishonest for “green” lobbyists to claim that electricity from wind and solar can replace fossil fuels when, currently, most of the energy used in the world is not even in the form of electricity.

Electricity represents only about 20% of global final energy consumption. That means four-fifths of the world’s energy use comes from fuels that power ships, planes, trucks, and industrial furnaces. Oil fuels vehicles, natural gas provides heat for homes and industry, and coal is critically important for manufacturing steel from iron.

Demand for hydrocarbons is expected to exceed that of electricity for many decades.

You’ve probably heard it before: “Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels.” This is a falsehood supported by a misleading metric—the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE).

LCOE purports to present an apples-to-apples comparison between various energy sources. However, the measure is meaningless because it ignores key costs such as those of providing backup power to compensate for the intermittency of solar and wind. Something must be available to step up when the wind and sun are not available for power generation.

While it may be true that sunshine and wind are “free,” converting them to a form of energy that works with modern power grids and integrating them into the 24-hour operation of electrical systems supplying millions of customers is difficult and expensive.

A 2022 study by Robert Idel exposes LCOE’s flaws. First, LCOE assumes constant output, but solar and wind produce only 20%-30% of their designed capacity, compared to 80%-90% for plants running on coal, natural gas, or nuclear fuel.

Second, integrating solar and wind requires expensive infrastructure, including new transmission lines between population centers and remote industrial installations of wind turbines or solar panels, or to natural gas plants standing by as backups.

Third, LCOE ignores more subtle but, nonetheless, important operational considerations. For instance, as the output of solar and wind rises and falls with changes in the weather or the daily westward progression of the sun, fossil fuel plants must ramp up or down, reducing efficiency and raising costs.

The rosy numbers of LCOE don’t reflect the reality of electricity bills. In California, where so-called renewables make up more than 50% of electricity generation, residential rates hit 30 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023—more than double the U.S. average.

Higher energy prices infiltrate every corner of life—manufacturing, logistics, heating, cooling, farming, data storage, and more.

For developing economies, abandoning fossil fuels is nothing short of an unthinkable abomination, a cruel denial of access to life-sustaining energy. While much of the world talks of net-zero targets, hundreds of millions remain trapped in profound poverty and deprivation for lack of energy.

Solar and wind are technologically incapable of replacing hydrocarbons across the full spectrum of human needs. Moreover, solar and wind depend on weather, geography, and diurnal cycles. A cloudy day in Germany or a calm night in India slashes output.

Industrial grids demand stability and are allergic to fluctuations. Batteries, touted as a solution, are troublesome and expensive compared to fossil fuels that provide power on demand anywhere.

People need energy that works—reliable, affordable, and plenty of it. Common sense dictates that replacing something that works requires a functional replacement. That’s not the case here.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.

Image: David