The Real Climate 'Deniers' Are the Greens

While renewables subsidies have punished Europe, shale gas has cut U.S. emissions.

WSJ article by Robert Bryce, 2-3-14. Excerpts:

"In September 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama claimed at a speech in Golden, Colo., that his planned investments in "green" energy would create "five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced."

It was all bunk."

"the European Union and the German government announced separately that they were both rolling back aggressive subsidies and mandates for renewable energy. The reason: staggering costs. Spain has racked up some $35 billion in debt—known as the "tariff deficit"—thanks to excessive renewable-energy subsidies. In Germany, renewable-energy subsidies are now costing German consumers and industry about $32 billion a year."

"European steelmakers are paying twice as much for electricity and four times as much for natural gas as their U.S. competitors. In Denmark, that wonderland for wind-energy enthusiasts, residential electricity now costs about 41 cents per kilowatt-hour, more than three times the U.S. average rate"

"In 2013, thanks largely to the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in shale formations, U.S. natural-gas production averaged 70 billion cubic feet a day, a record, and a 41% increase over 2005 levels. Lower-cost gas is reducing the domestic use of coal, which is cutting emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that natural-gas-fired power plants emit about half as much carbon dioxide as comparable coal-fired ones. 

Thanks to the shale revolution, the U.S. is also reducing emissions faster, at far lower cost, than the EU."

"Even though Germany has spent more than $100 billion subsidizing renewables since 2000, the country's coal use is rising, as are its carbon-dioxide emissions,"

" between 2008 and 2035 the shale revolution will add an average of $473 billion a year to the U.S. economy—or about 3% of current GDP."