Green New Deal Is Unachievable -- From Geoff Simon's Top ND Energy Stories -- February 21, 2021

From Geoff Simon's top North Dakota energy stories: 

An energy sector analyst says ideas such as the Green New Deal that promote the notion that the wind and sun could provide 100% of America’s energy needs, "is simply not possible, any more than it’s possible to use airplanes to fly to the moon."

Mark Mills, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told members of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change last week that the cost of complete grid restructuring would be far greater than popularly acknowledged.

"The Administration has proposed spending $2 trillion on climate programs across seven domains," Mills said, "But for the electric grid alone, analyses show we’d need at least $5 to $6 trillion in wind/solar and battery systems to replace existing hydrocarbon generation."

Mills said doing so by 2035 would require a continuous construction program at least 600% bigger than any single peak year for utility construction that has occurred in the U.S., China or Germany over the past half-century. He said it would also require an enormous expansion of the grid if a significant share of cars shift from oil to electricity.

Mills said grid restructuring and using more electric cars means exporting jobs and offshoring environmental consequences.

"Some 90% of solar panels are imported, as are 80% of the key components for wind turbines," Mills said. "Asian companies dominate global battery production and account for 80% of all planned factories, and even if we expand domestic manufacturing, our import dependencies remain for critical energy minerals."