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We must read with caution the Chinese Communist Party’s claims about how much wind and solar generation it has achieved.

China likes to present itself as “green” before the eyes of the international community by, for instance, justifying its massive increase in coal-fired power plants by saying they are needed to back up the additional wind and solar plants (Ronald Stein and George Harris “Stop the ‘green hallucinationists’ plan to close all 200 coal power plants”, America Out Loud News).

However, coal-fired power stations are unsuitable to back up weather-dependent renewables, as they cannot ramp up fast enough to maintain stability on a power grid when the Sun or wind decide to go away. Thus, either the Chinese renewable generation figures are way lower than those that are published or China is using inefficient gas generation on a large scale to back up its 1,050 Gigawatts installed wind and solar capacity.

In 2023, China generated 15.5% of its electricity (some 1470 TWh of “sustainable” generation out of 9460 TWh in total) by wind and solar power. Given its installed capacity and its average capacity factor, this generation fraction places China on the edge of the limit above which “renewables” begin to lose their efficacy, that is, when the nameplate wind and solar generation capacity exceeds the mean hourly demand on the grid.

So far, China has not committed the Western economic hara-kiri of pointlessly exceeding this limit. Once the installed nameplate capacity of wind and solar power has exceeded the limit, further wind and solar installations will contribute little or nothing to saving the planet from non-existent, catastrophic manmade global warming, while the contribution of the additional wind and solar generation actually dispatched to the grid decays exponentially and both the excess installed generating capacity and the cost of electricity (already the costliest of all forms of generation) exponentially increase.

This is only the beginning. In this scenario, both new and existing wind and solar generators will receive less revenue per GW of installed capacity. This is where government bailouts, on top of initial investment subsidies, kick in. Thus, the cost of electricity is greatly aggravated by the introduction of expensive and damaging market interferences such as cancellation, curtailment or constraint generation orders and capacity payments that have the effect of subsidizing wind and solar generators for an ever-increasing non-existent delivery of power into the grid. It is the customers who pay.

While the United States is currently exempt from this Western nonsense, the U.K., Europe, Australia and Canada are not. Nor is a tiny country like Chile, which, back in 1998, Bill Clinton called “the most precious jewel in the Latin American crown” and which, according to Al Gore and the UN, is the most aggressive developing country in the world in its climate mitigation measures. In plain English, Chile is increasing its “sustainable” generating capacity while “sustainably” destroying its economy.

Yet, the U.S., under Biden, was desperate to join the exclusive European green suicide pact.

In 2023, China had 1,142 coal-fired power plants in operation, by far the world’s highest number. India comes in second place with 282 and the U.S. in third place with 210. However, Stein’s article reveals that the Biden administration is not only increasing power prices by subsidizing costly wind and solar generation: it is also imposing onerous regulations under which some 170 of the 210 remaining coal-fired plants in the U.S. are scheduled to be decommissioned by 2030. However, the necessary corresponding increase in backup gas-fired generating capacity is nowhere to be seen.

And what is the potential cost of the United States’ following Europe in destroying the free market in electricity generation?

The dismantling of coal-fired generation – the most affordable, abundant and stable source – and its replacement by wind and solar farms that hike electricity prices, taxes, subsidies and regulations while destabilizing the grid and rendering it internationally uncompetitive, will inevitably precipitate a severe decline in economic growth.

The resultant crippling terms-of-trade disadvantage will drive an abrupt collapse of capital investment and an exodus of manufacturing industries and jobs, accompanied by inflation, unemployment and an increase in the gap between rich and poor in America.

Doesn’t all of this sound familiar?

Over the past seven years, for every unit of coal-fired generating capacity decommissioned worldwide, 2.3 units of that same capacity have been added in China and India. In the United States, that ratio is 3.2.

Any hope?

With President Donald Trump back in office, he will have four years to overturn this willful and yet pointless economic suicide and restore America’s international competitiveness.

This is a smart first step toward making “America great again.”

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This article was published by CFACT, the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.