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Energy Poverty Kills

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From Center for Industrial Progress by Alex Epstein Last week we looked at the need for a process of producing energy that is cheap, plentiful, and reliable—and we saw that solar and wind cannot produce cheap, reliable energy. How Germany embraced solar and wind and ended up in energy poverty Let’s take a look at this in practice. Germany is considered by some to be the best success story in the world of effective solar and wind use, and you’ll often hear that they get a large percentage of their energy from solar and wind. You can see here on this chart how this claim was made and why it’s not accurate. First of all, this is just a chart of electricity. Solar and wind are only producing electricity and half of Germany’s energy needs also include fuel and heating. So solar and wind never contribute half as much to Germany’s energy needs as this chart would imply. But that’s not the biggest problem. What you notice here is that there’s certain days and times where there are large spikes, but there are also periods where there’s relatively little. What that means is that you can’t rely on solar and wind ever. You always have to have an infrastructure that can produce all of your electricity independent of the solar and wind because you can always go a long period with very little solar and wind. So then why are the solar and wind necessary? Well, you could argue that they’re not and that adding them onto the grid will impose a lot of costs. In Germany, electricity prices have more than doubled since 2000 when solar and wind started receiving massive subsidies and favorable regulations, and their electricity prices are three to four times what we would pay in […]

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Energy Clarity: Our need for cheap, plentiful, reliable energy

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By Alex Epstein From Center for Industrial Progress When making energy choices, there are three major criteria that need to be considered: 1. Is it cheap? Simply put, if you can’t afford energy, then you don’t have energy. 2. Is it plentiful? If energy is scarce, then many people will have little to no energy. 3. Is it reliable? If energy is unreliable, then you won’t have it when you need it. In other words, energy is only valuable to the extent that it is cheap, plentiful, and reliable. And to make it that way, we have to discover cheap, plentiful, reliable processes for generating energy. Energy is a process Energy is a process. Whether it’s coal, oil, gas, solar, wind, we describe them as materials, but they’re really processes. The materials are just one part of the process, but the whole process can include things like mining, refining, manufacturing, transportation, operation, maintenance, and disposal. And then you have to look at how the whole process adds up. When we see something in the marketplace being cheaper or more expensive that reflects the whole process. The general reason why certain forms of energy are not adopted is because the process to produce them is too expensive or it’s not reliable. Let’s look at some examples of this. Jimmy Fallon’s irrefutable case against “renewables” For this first example, I’m going to let comedian Jimmy Fallon do the talking. “New Scientist Magazine reported on Wednesday that in the future, cars can be powered by hazelnuts. That’s encouraging considering an eight ounce jar of hazelnuts costs about nine dollars. Yeah, I got an idea for a car that runs on bald eagle heads and Faberge eggs.” So you may be thinking, “Isn’t hazelnut energy renewable? Doesn’t it come from the sun? Isn’t the

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Chinese Copycat Motrac Unicorn 800 thinks it’s an MV Agusta Superveloce

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by Pradeep Shah from https://www.financialexpress.com China does it again! The home country of Covid-19 is now in the news headlines for one more shameful reason and that is copycat bikes. Here is one more example! Chinese are very well known for copying designs of some highly respected products and coming out with cheap clones. Auto manufacturers in China have been doing this for years now and very recently, we have come across one more example. This time around, the very gorgeous-looking MV Agusta Superveloce 800 falls prey to this copycat treatment in China. The clone bike is better known as the Motrac Unicorn 800. The Hong Kong-based brand also had the guts to showcase this bike publically at this year’s Chongqing Auto Show in China. Starting with the front section, the bike gets the same circular headlamp as the Superveloce and the front fairing looks quite similar too, however, it fails to make a mark because well, a copy is always a copy. As you proceed towards the rear, things start to turn ugly as the bike gets a quite regular box-section swingarm compared to the single-sided unit that further adds to the enchanting visuals of the MV Agusta Superveloce. The dual exhausts on the right look no less than an eyesore as well and the rounded rear tail lamp mimics the rear end of the Agusta, however, this again fails to look half as pleasing and doesn’t gel well with the overall design. Speaking of the cycle parts, the bike gets 17-inch wheels at both ends paired with a 140-section front and chunky 200-section rear tyres. The Motrac Unicorn 800 gets its stopping duties done with the help of twin 320mm discs upfront along with a single 300mm disc unit at the rear, coupled to a standard dual-channel ABS.

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