The party that is now claiming they are rescuing the Ivanpah they mandated to exist was scheduled to be closed this year – because its low costs were always a pipe dream and its maintenance estimates were the optimism no scientists believed.
But California ignores scientists. We ignore them about 80,000 Prop 65 cancer warning labels on harmless products, we ignore them on pesticides, and we ignore them on energy.
In California, electricity pricing is controlled by government. You may read complaints about awful PG&E and Erin Brockovich and wildfires but it is nonsense. All of it.(1) Government told PG&E to raise rates 100 percent to fund solar power subsidies(2) in the last decade and when it comes to fires, government bans mitigation and prevention and tells the company to settle and then approves another rate increase to pay for it.(3)
Ivanpah is not science, it is a Who’s Who of Democratic party activists, heralded by California media and political allies nationwide. None of whom questioned its viability. The Obama administration gave them federal land(!) and $1.6 billion(!!) to build it.
Kooky anti-science progressives cooed about how futuristic it was while scientists were left scratching their heads at how making energy for $1 and selling for $0.34 was going to work due to high volume.
Its impressive-sounding gimmick is using mirrors to concentrate solar energy. The brains behind it were from progressives California darling Brightsource Energy, which was immediately declared a Top 10 Green Energy company despite never delivering on a marketing claim. Even Google kicked in an investment.
Yet 11 years later the maintenance costs continued to escalate, the prices never came down, and PG&E, the largest utility in California, is being besieged by consumer complaints due to 100 percent increases in electricity costs mandated by the California Public Utilities Commission, so they said they were canceling the contract. The company immediately announced they were closing the plant.
As is always the case with solar, if the mandates and subsidies aren’t there, these companies close. They can’t compete in the real market, despite what social media influencers who are paid flunkies claim.
Then the CPUC canceled PG&E canceling of the contract. California government has such a stranglehold on energy that PG&E can’t even cancel a wildly unprofitable contract without government permission. Like wildfire and chemical lawsuits, this was probably arranged in advance by the CPUC and PG&E, and another round of rate increases was always happening.
The government will say it is essential for grid reliability and energy demands; the same reason Democrats abandoned their plans to finally shutter the state’s last remaining nuclear plant – a plant they had been trying to close since the Clinton administration, who led during the apex of Boomer Science Denial, effectively banned nuclear in 1994.
Maybe they actually believed solar could work or maybe they just go with the political flow, the way Honda did with electric cars. That company has taken its first loss since the 1950s because subsidies and mandates don’t create demand, they hinder it. They don’t spur innovation, they prevent it.
Ivanpah
generates electricity at over 300 percent the cost of natural gas. Like the Obama administration’s first Energy Secretary, who wanted gasoline at $9 per gallon to make electric cars competitive, the business model relied on everything else getting more expensive. That viability hasn’t happened, the only thing up is taxes and fees for the poor. But Dr. Chu would be happy that at least in California, government policies have made gasoline over $6 per gallon.
NOTES:
(1) California told PG&E to settle and then raised rates on customers to pay for it. There were and are no more deaths in Hinckley residents then or now. All it did was drive people from their homes. Scientists said averages occur because highs and lows happen statistically, not every deviation from the average is a conspiracy. Residents got very little money from that settlement, up to $10 million in ‘extra’ fees were also tacked on before they got anything at all. The lawyers got $133 million, approved by a politically-allied judge in advance, at the expense of children. One of the lawyers later went to prison for overtly defrauding people in other settlement cases, but no science or predatort legal skullduggery made it into the Julie Roberts film.
Guess what did?
(2) Rich homeowners in Malibu are getting discounts paid for by poor renters in Fresno.
(3) California won’t allow fire mitigation and risk reduction under environmental laws. Why Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass kept fire hydrants empty is more of a mystery. She claimed it was state law mandating river flow rates into the Pacific Ocean but that doesn’t apply to the Colorado River, where LA gets most of its water. Â