The IPCC and Greenpeace: The Implausible Case for 80% Renewables

The IPCC and Greenpeace: The Implausible Case for 80% Renewables

from The Nuclear Green Revolution by Charles Barton
Renewables advocates including the anti-nuclear fanatics of Greenpeace live in a land of unreality. Brave New Climate has recently published yet another Ted Trainer critique of renewables, this one of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group 111, Mitigation of Climate Change, Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Mitigation. June, 2011. Greeenpeace actually was a major source of the IPCC Renewables report and Trainer wastes no time in demonstrating that the report is an example of the sort of problematic energy planning we have grown to expect from Greenpeace. Trainer states,

The report does not show that renewable sources can meet future energy demand, or a large fraction of it. It is not that its attempt to show this is unsatisfactory; the point is that it does not offer a case; it does not attempt to show what proportion of demand could be met by renewables. It presents much evidence relevant to the issue, but this is not put together into a case which sets out reasoning leading to the conclusion that the necessary quantities could be provided, how they could be provided, and that the difficulties could be overcome. The report merely presents the results of some studies which state conclusions about renewable energy’s potential, without attempting to assess their worth. It is argued below that the main such study, on which the WG3 report relies heavily, is deeply flawed, is of little or no value and does not establish its claims.

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