Regretfully, too many electrons have been burned delineating the multifaceted failings of the Jeff Gibbs written / edited / produced and Michael Moore promoted Planet of the Humans. This mockumentary (in this case, a mockery of a documentary), sadly, has topped more than 7 million YouTube clicks*. Amid the myriad of problems is the dated nature of much of the information, with one example falsely showing the supposed futility of electric vehicles since the demonstration PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) Chevy Volt was being charged off an electric grid which derived 95 percent of its electricity from coal-fired generation.
While even a decade ago that didn’t represent the US grid which was, at that time, roughly 50 (not 95) percent coal, April 2020 was a particularly absurd moment when it came to this.
In April 2020 …
In the United States, for the first time essentially ever, renewable electricity sources (hydropower, wind, solar) contributed more electrons to the grid than did coal-fired plants.
In the United Kingdom, coal disappeared from the grid for an extended period. As of 10 May, 31 straight days where coal generating 0.00% of UK electrons.
In Planet of the Humans, amid his parroting fossil foolish talking points, Gibbs asserts that renewables can’t replace fossil fuels. Rather absurd to be releasing a mockumentary making this dated (and never truthful) assertion amid milestone moments making clear that it isn’t just possible for renewables to replace fossil fuels, but a milestone month making clear that this is happening … and at an accelerating pace.
As Ketan Joshi put it in the third of his posts about POTH,
The deceptions in the film build towards a single claim about renewables: they are technically incapable of decreasing emissions. They pile on top of existing output instead of cutting downwards, they encourage over-consumption and the fossil fuels required to build them are far greater than anything they could displace.
It’s all wrong. The past decade has proven that renewables can kill coal, and increasingly, gas too. 2019 was, in fact, the first year that low carbon sources out-generated coal …
And, again, April 2020 provided a milestone month making clear how the world has changed since Gibbs conceived the film and, seemingly, locked into stone every ‘fact’ even though the decade since has seen dramatic change in the clean-energy sector.
* The YouTube count algorithm can end up actual “views” if the same person clicks in multiple times. On the other hand, as with “TV” versus viewers, it can’t catch if there are multiple people watching on the same screen. Thus ‘clicks’ used rather than ‘views’.
2 responses so far ↓
1 John Egan // May 11, 2020 at 2:57 pm
Adam – You seem either unable or unwilling to understand baseload power.
there can be a zillion GW solar / wind capacity, but on a windless mibus 20F night you are goind to need something else. Conversely, on a sunny, breezy 65F spring day there can be massive solar / wind production, but it will have zero value on electricity exchanges.
I suspect the latter is what you trumpet whne you talk about how cheap renewables have become. What it actually means is that it is almost impossible for renewables to recover costs without massive subsidies.
Moore is perfectly right in asking the Chevy executive, “So where does the electricity come from?”
2 John Egan // May 12, 2020 at 11:22 am
One word response to the above – –
“Ivanpah”.