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Solar’s Dirty Secret: Expensive and Unfit for the Grid

Published

1 year ago

4 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Ian Madsen

To store twelve hours worth of the 1.6 TW total installed global solar power capacity would cost about 12.9 trillion Canadian dollars

Solar energy’s promise of a green, abundant future is captivating—but beneath the shiny panels lies a story of unreliability, hidden costs, and grid instability.

Green enthusiasts endorse solar energy to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from traditional energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. The source of solar power, the sun, is free, abundant, and always available somewhere. However, these claims are misleading. Solar energy is costly and unreliable in ways its proponents commonly disguise. If adopted extensively, solar energy will generally make energy and electric power grids more unreliable and expensive.

The solar industry has burgeoned remarkably, with an estimated average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 39 percent from 2021 to 2024. Earlier this century, the growth rate was even faster. As a result, global installed solar capacity has reached 1.6 terawatts (TW), according to the U.S. Energy Department. This capacity is theoretically sufficient to power a billion homes at 1.5 kilowatts per home. However, the term “theoretically” poses a significant challenge. Solar power, without affordable energy storage solutions, is only available during daylight hours.

The minimum amount of storage required to make global solar power truly “dispatchable”—i.e., independent of other backup energy sources—would be twelve hours of storage. Options include batteries, pumped hydro, compressed air, or other technologies. Since batteries are today’s standard method, the following calculation estimates the cost of the minimum amount of battery storage to ensure reliable solar power.

Twelve hours per day multiplied by 1.6 terawatts and dividing the result by one kilowatt-hour (kWh), we arrive at a final requirement of 19.2 billion kWh of storage. According to a meta-study by the National Renewable Energy Lab, the utility-grade cost of battery storage is C$670.99 per kWh.

To store twelve hours worth of the 1.6 TW total installed global solar power capacity would cost about 12.9 trillion Canadian dollars; a safer twenty-four hours’ storage would be double that. Total storage available in 2023 was, the International Energy Agency notes, approximately two hundred and sixty gigawatts (GW) of power – a tiny fraction of power production of 3.2 million GW in 2022, using figures from Statista.

No firms or governments can have the necessary storage to make solar viable even if the entire globe was involved, as the total global GDP was about C$148 trillion in 2023, according to World Bank figures. That is not solar’s only problem. The most harmful effect is how it undermines power grids. The misleading, ‘levelized’ near-zero cost undercuts traditional, reliable on-demand energy sources such as coal, natural gas and nuclear power.

Importantly, high solar and wind power output can make prices turn negative, as an Institute for Energy Research article noted, but can swiftly revert to high prices when winds calm or the sun sets, as the fixed costs of traditional power plants are spread over lower production.  Baseload traditional energy sources are essential because the frequent unavailability of renewables can be dangerous. Consequently, overall costs for customers are higher when renewables are included in the energy mix. Solar mandates in California made its power supply wildly erratic.

Without affordable energy storage, solar is a seductive illusion; its unchecked adoption risks turning power grids into unreliable, costly experiments at the expense of energy stability.

Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Carney Hears A Who: Here Comes The Grinch

Published on December 11, 2025

By

It’s a big day for the Who’s of Whoville. Mayor Augustus Maywho is now polling at 62 percent approval. Cindy Lou Who and Martha May Whovier can barely contain their trans-loving heart that finally the Pierre The Grinch is done.

Okay it’s not WhoVille. It’s Canada and it is leader Mark Carney who’s zooming in the polls against Pierre Poilievre. But it might as well be the real nation that Carney commands today. As 2025 comes to a conclusion Donald Trump seems the least of Whoville’s perils. For example:

The NDP government in B.C. has now declared that future legislation must be interpreted through the lens of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. According to Chief Bent Knee (David Eby) this means that the province cannot act independently of the progressive diktats of Sudan, Nepal, Moldova and other international titans. Having been informed of Canada’s “genocidal” behaviour by Trudeau in the Rez Graves pantomime, the UN folk will no doubt look on Canadians as worthy of punishment.

The UNDRIP menace has been around since the days when Skippy Trudeau was wielding the mace in Parliament. On June 20, 2021 the federal government passed UNDRIP into law by a vote of 210 to 118. (The Liberals, NDP and Bloc all voted in favour.) The only party that opposed it were the Conservatives. In defence of those hapless boobs none of them voting yes ever expected a province to align itself with such legislation. That’s the Canadian way. Act on conscience. Retract on self preservation.

But on the heels of Eby’s unopposed capitulation to B.C.’s many “peoples” in recent land settlements, ones that threaten the legal right to properties of home owners, the wholesale framework for governing the province now will be determined by appeal to the UN.

The Carney crew — who act as though Canada’s indigenous communities are now equal partners in Confederation— assure Canadians that judicious lawyering by government savants has everything under control, but anyone trusting the Liberals after the past decade is in need of counselling.

The B.C. conundrum plays into another of the challenges (read: disasters) faced in B.C. by the Elbows Up brigade. Namely the much-heralded memorandum of understanding on energy policy between the feds and Alberta. Canadians were assured by Ottawa that this federal government sees pipelines as a priority, and getting Alberta’s product to tidewater as an urgent infrastructure need. Carney described the MOU as if it were a love-letter to the restless West. How is he going to get pipelines through to the B.C. coast when Eby and the indigenous said it was a no-go? Trust us, said Carney.

Before you could say Wetaskiwin dark clouds gathered on the deal. Smith took it in the ear from Alberta separatists for compromising anything to the feds. Carney, meanwhile, ran into the predictable roadblock from B.C. Eby talked of maybe allowing pipelines in the future, but the ban on shipping off the province’s shoreline was verboten.

To test the resilience of the MOU the federal Conservatives (remember them?) put forward a motion to build the pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast. Even though the motion used the same language of the MOU between Danielle Smith and Mark Carney, the Liberals and their hand maidens defeated the motion. Carney himself abstained because, hey look at that shiny object.

Immediately the Trudeaupian Deflection Shield was employed. Here’s Liberal Indigenous Service minister and proud Cree operative Mandy Gull Masty “Today’s motion that’s being put on the floor is not a no vote for the MOU. It’s a no vote against the Conservatives playing games and creating optics and wasting parliamentary time when they should be voting on things that are way more important.”

Robert Fife, the highly rated G&M scribbler who just won some big award, led the media pack, “Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country.” Run a country? Into the ground?

Let’s not forget the $1.5 billion bloviators at CBC. They, too, say the vote is a big loss for the Tories. “It risks putting them offside, what is a very top priority and frankly, was considered a big win for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.’” said Janyce McGregor. Here’s Martin Patriquin on one of the Ceeb’s endless panels. “It’s embarrassing, man. I don’t see any sort of political advantage to what happened today.”

Embarrassing? The Libs have committed to re-building gas pipelines in Ukraine, even as they stall on developing pipelines in Canada. Luckily CBC washrooms have no mirrors. And there’s always Donald Trump to deflect from the pantomimes of Canadians Laurentian debating club.

Here, CTV hair-and-teeth Scott Reid is nursing a Reuters poll that has Trump’s approval at historic lows of 36 percent. Reuters is a firm that predicted Kamala winning the presidency. Until she didn’t on Nov.4. Meanwhile Rasmussen, which correctly had Trump ahead the entire campaign, has his current approval at 44 percent while the RCP average is 43.9.

But corrupt data to make Trump seem odious is no sin in WhoVille Ottawa. Keep feeding the Karens bad data.  At least Canadians have their beloved healthcare to fall back on. Or maybe their beloved MAID. A Saskatchewan woman suffering from parathyroid disease has revealed that she is considering assisted suicide, because she cannot get the surgery she needs.

“Jolene Van Alstine, from Saskatchewan, has extreme bone pain, nausea and vomiting. She requires surgery to remove a remaining parathyroid, but no surgeons in the province are able to perform the operation.  In order to be referred to another province for the operation, Van Alstine must first be seen by an endocrinologist, yet no Saskatchewan endocrinologists are currently accepting new patients.

The pain has become so unbearable that she has been approved for Canada’s euthanasia and assisted suicide program, with the ending of her life scheduled to take place on 7 January 2026.”

Well. Happy New Year, Canada. May no one offer you MAID in the next twelve months.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Daily Caller

US Supreme Court Has Chance To End Climate Lawfare

Published on December 10, 2025

By

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

All eyes will be on the Supreme Court later this week when the justices conference on Friday to decide whether to grant a petition for writ of certiorari on a high-stakes climate lawsuit out of Colorado. The case is a part of the long-running lawfare campaign seeking to extract billions of dollars in jury awards from oil companies on claims of nebulous damages caused by carbon emissions.

In Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc., et al. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, major American energy companies are asking the Supreme Court to decide whether federal law precludes state law nuisance claims targeting interstate and global emissions. This comes as the City and County of Boulder, Colo. sued a long list of energy companies under Colorado state nuisance law for alleged impacts from global climate change.

The Colorado Supreme Court allowed a lower state trial court decision to go through, improbably finding that federal law did not preempt state law claims. The central question hangs on whether the federal Clean Air Act (CAA) preempts state common law public nuisance claims related to the regulation of carbon emissions. In this case, as in at least 10 other cases that have been decided in favor of the defendant companies, the CAA clearly does preempt Colorado law. It seems inevitable that the Supreme Court, if it grants the cert petition, would make the same ruling.

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Such a finding by the Supreme Court would reinforce a 2021 ruling by the Second Circuit Appeals Court that also upheld this longstanding principle of federal law. In City of New York v. Chevron Corp. (2021), the Second Circuit ruled that municipalities may not use state tort law to hold multinational companies liable for climate damages, since global warming is a uniquely international concern that touches upon issues of federalism and foreign policy. Consequently, the court called for the explicit application of federal common law, with the CAA granting the Environmental Protection Agency – not federal courts – the authority to regulate domestic greenhouse gas emissions. This Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, should weigh in here and find in the same way.

Boulder-associated attorneys have become increasingly open to acknowledging the judicial lawfare inherent in their case, as they try to supplant federal regulatory jurisdiction with litigation meant to force higher energy prices rise for consumers. David Bookbinder, an environmental lawyer associated with the Boulder legal team, said the quiet part out loud in a recent Federalist Society webinar titled “Can State Courts Set Global Climate Policy. “Tort liability is an indirect carbon tax,” Bookbinder stated plainly. “You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable. The oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products … The people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products.”

Oh.

While Bookbinder recently distanced himself from the case, no notice of withdrawal had appeared in the court’s records as of this writing. Bookbinder also writes that “Gas prices and climate change policy have become political footballs because neither party in Congress has had the courage to stand up to the oil and gas lobby. Both sides fear the spin machine, so consumers get stuck paying the bill.”

Let’s be honest: The “spin machine” works in all directions. Make no mistake about it, consumers are already getting stuck paying the bill related to this long running lawfare campaign even though the defendants have repeatedly been found not to be liable in case after case. The many millions of dollars in needless legal costs sustained by the dozens of defendants named in these cases ultimately get passed to consumers via higher energy costs. This isn’t some evil conspiracy by the oil companies: It is Business Management 101.

Because the climate alarm lobby hasn’t been able to force its long-sought national carbon tax through the legislative process, sympathetic activists and plaintiff firms now pursue this backdoor effort in the nation’s courts. But their problem is that the law on this is crystal clear, and it is long past time for the Supreme Court to step in and put a stop to this serial abuse of the system.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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