By Lloyd Leugner

A series of three Friends of Science¹ articles, titled “Broken Promises,” “Empty Wallets,” and “Grid Scale Battery Storage,” challenged the climate crisis crowd’s deceptive argument that wind and solar energy will replace coal and natural gas by 2050. In fact, every green energy technology, including wind and solar, requires traditional coal or natural gas as back up when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun don’t shine. The claim that the cost of these technologies is reaching parity with fossil energy is an illusion.

The first wind farm in Alberta was built in 1993. How many Albertans know that the 500 KV transmission line from the Pincher Creek wind farm to Calgary is 213 KM long and costs the taxpayers $2.2 Billion dollars to provide only 4% of Alberta’s power intermittently and cumulatively for only 30% of the time? After 27 years, are we to believe that we will obtain any more than 4% of Alberta’s energy needs by any combination of wind and solar? Compare that with Calgary’s Shepherd Energy Centre Natural gas plant that cost $1.4 Billion and provides 800 MW of available power 24/7! It is a deception to believe that wind and solar energy will ever replace natural gas.

The Battery Storage article describes how green energy supporters deceptively claim that excess wind or solar energy can be stored in batteries and used to provide the energy needed when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

These statements are revealing:

• “The national power demand that could be stored in all utility scaled batteries plus all of the batteries in one million electric cars in America would barely provide two hours of supply.”
• “All of the batteries produced annually in the Tesla Giga Factory (the world’s largest battery factory), can store only 3 minutes worth of the annual electricity demand in the US.”
• “To manufacture enough batteries to store just 2 days’ worth of US electrical demand would require 1,000 years of production at the Tesla factory.”
• “To provide enough battery storage for one cold winter day in Alberta would cost approximately $69 Billion dollars and wouldn’t be enough to provide even weeks of the storage needed to maintain a reliable grid.”

Wind and solar facilities are subsidized by taxpayers, so who is responsible for their recycling after their useful life? Are Canadians aware that the propellers used on wind turbines cannot be recycled and must be buried in landfills? About 500,000 solar panels are installed every day, either on buildings or solar energy farms. Recycling these panels was ignored by environmentalists, and although the frames, glass, and wiring can be recycled, more often than not, these panels end up in landfills, where the heavy metals, lead, copper and cadmium, and rare earth elements, gallium and indium only extend ecological problems.

Based on this research, can anyone explain why the imposition of so-called clean green wind and solar energy are nothing more that illusions and deceptions?

1. friendsofscience.org

Lloyd “Tex” Leugner, CD, Warrant Officer (Ret’d), is a member of Royal Canadian Electrical Mechanical Engineers and Veterans4Freedom, an author, and recipient of the Governor General’s Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers in helping improve the quality of life for Alberta Veterans suffering from PTSD. Lloyd is also the meeting facilitator for the Cochrane Freedom Alliance, formed in 2019.