RE Rent Seekers Become Virus Victims: Wind & Solar Investment Collapses Post-Pandemic

Desperate times, call for desperate measures and there’s no group more desperate than the wind and solar ‘industries’. With the global economy in meltdown – thanks to crippling and seemingly interminable coronavirus lockdowns – investment in the unreliables has plummeted.

In the USA, the wind and solar sector lost 106,000 jobs in March, with many more jobs lost since then. That slaughter prompted a march on Washington, as rent seekers clamoured for relevance and cash; only to be rebuffed and sent packing without a penny: Corona Mania: US Wind & Solar Industries Demand $Billions In Subsidies From Virus Stimulus Package

Now that they’re faced with their very own doomsday, the ‘End of Days’ rhetoric has changed course. As JoNova reports.

In the pandemic, investors fled from “Green Energy”. Desperate industry predicts 40 deaths a month in wake
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
24 June 2020

Is that the dark smell of desperation?

Green energy is so essential and profitable that when the chips are down, investors ran a mile.

IEA: COVID-19 crisis causing the biggest fall in global energy investment in history
31 May 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has set in motion the largest drop in global energy investment in history, with spending expected to plunge in every major sector this year—from fossil fuels to renewables and efficiency—the International Energy Agency said in a new report.

The unparalleled decline is staggering in both its scale and swiftness, with serious potential implications for energy security and clean energy transitions.

Global investment is now expected to plummet by 20%, or almost $400 billion, compared with last year, according to the IEA’s World Energy Investment 2020 report.

Not only has the money gone, but renewables have been out-competed at the thing they are supposed to do best.

The Global Pandemic is the world’s greatest carbon reduction program since the Black Plague:

Those short-term benefits [of the Coronavirus] have been substantial. Consumption for jet fuel and gasoline, for example, declined by 50 and 30 percent, respectively, from early March to June 7, while electricity demand fell by 10 percent.

Fans of green investments must be feeling squeezed out of the public arena as well as out of investors wallets.

The industry dependent on death threats from climate models has been crushed by real deaths from Coronavirus. Realizing they are in danger of dropping right off the Radar of Death, they have reshuffled advertising memes. The new approach is to convert the usual extinction-extortion into Pandemic-speak, which means trying to compete with the pandemic in deaths per million, or failing that, deaths per month. Remember Coronavirus has killed 476,000 people (so far). But, by saving all the Avgas and petrol, the lockdown is saving, wait for it… “an estimated 200 lives per month”.

So fighting for relevancy, the Green Blob’s new tack is to plead for subsidies and help because if investors don’t keep pushing money into windmills and solar panels, 40 people a month will die:

Under a worst-case — but realistic — scenario, they predict an additional 2,500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — or the equivalent of nearly 3 trillion pounds of coal burned — could be emitted, causing 40 more deaths per month, through 2035.

They must be very worried, and so they should be. Humans did the ultimate Paris Lockdown, and CO2 hits record high anyway. The renewables industry is pointless every which way. It doesn’t make much money, or energy, or save much CO2. The CO2 it does save makes no difference to global CO2, and the global CO2 makes no measureable difference to the climate.
Jo Nova Blog