A little bit of honesty

About two weeks ago, Reuters enthusiastically informed us that the Netherlands had become the transition equivalent of Employee of the Month by generating a massive amount of electricity from non-hydrocarbon sources in 2023.

But if you think it’s a success story of wind power, it’s not. Somewhat surprisingly, at least to me, the status of “shining” transitioner was attributed by the author of the report to… solar.

Citing data from Ember, the Reuters report said the Netherlands had generated 20.63 TWh of electricity from solar installations. Again, I was a bit surprised. Sunshine is not exactly what the Netherlands is famous for. Yet the data looked so very professionally organised in neat little charts showing a veritable surge. So I headed to the Ember website to learn a bit about their methodology.

Here’s what I found: “2023 data is an estimate of gross generation, based on net generation gathered from monthly data. This estimate is calculated by applying absolute changes in net generation to the most recent gross baseline.” Well, that’s all right then, and the Netherlands is doing better than Spain in solar.

Honesty is not the strong suit of the climate crusaders. In fact, it is among their weakest points. Easy – and tempting – as it is to mock this, there comes a time when mocking is not enough. Because a lot of people are being literally deceived into believing untruths and paying for it. Through the nose. For obvious reasons, this is not a state of affairs that is, not to put too fine a point on it, sustainable.

Before we dive into the photon-rich cesspool of today’s rant, here are two fun facts about solar and the Netherlands.

Fun fact 1, courtesy of Reuters: “Massive imports of solar panels and components from China have been the main driver fuelling the solar push in the Netherlands in recent years.

For the past three years, the Netherlands has been the largest single market for Chinese solar panel and module exports, accounting for an average of just over 23% of China's solar capacity exports since 2021.”

Fun fact 2, courtesy of electricityMaps:

Okay, let’s go.