Politicians must realize wind and solar power are not totally reliable

For decades California politicians, mostly Democrats and environmental activists—these days you really can’t tell them apart—have been hell-bent on eliminating fossil fuel as a source of energy.

Their claims have been that natural power from the wind and sun was the way to go; isn’t there plenty of each in a state the size of California, they say. Many have said this doesn’t take into consideration times when neither are present in sufficient quantity to produce a reliable power supply.

They also didn’t like nuclear power plants and closed all but one, Diablo Canyon, because of shrieking activists screaming that the end of the world was near. But the Diablo Canyon plant has been in operation for four decades without impacting the Earth.

Shutting down all reliable sources of power is causing concern. Steve Frank, a political commentator, says, “Experts say the state’s renewable energy policies could produce a 21.2 percent power shortfall by 2045, putting Californians’ energy and economic security at risk.”

But just saying it doesn’t make it so. We need some tangible evidence that this prediction could occur. We’ve had some evidence in the form of frozen wind turbines in Texas a couple of years ago, and battery bank fires that impacted the ability to store “renewable energy” and caused widespread evacuations in several locations.

The latest testament to the lack of reliability of wind and solar power sources occurred in Spain and Portugal a couple of weeks ago. 

These nations were totally shut down for 18 hours because their governments had placed “all their eggs in one basket” thus relying on wind and solar power. The only reliable sources of energy, no matter what country or state you live in or what political party you support, are from either nuclear or fossil fuel-based sources.

Steve Frank added, “This is going to be California. [Govs.] Newsom, Arnold [Schwarzenegger], and Jerry Brown cut out nuclear and coal power—cheap and reliable. Newsom, just for the year of 2025, has killed off 20 percent of our refineries—with no replacements for the lost energy. Replacement? Very expensive and very unreliable solar panels and wind turbines. How unreliable? Look at Spain and Portugal.”

I realize that younger generations have been programmed in public schools to believe the mantra that global warming is caused by using fossil fuels and the need to eliminate their use at all costs to save the Earth. That cost includes the ability of a modern society to function, for industry to continue producing the things we need in our daily lives, and the nation to protect itself from foreign enemies.

Sometimes it’s hard to accept facts, especially those that conflict with what you’ve been led to believe by public school educators, internet influencers, or environmental activists who try to convince you that they are experts but provide no tangible evidence, only conjecture to support their claims.

But it’s time to wake up and pay attention to the actual results of policy decisions based on the assumption that wind and solar power will save the Earth. In case you haven’t noticed, sometimes the wind blows and sometimes it doesn’t; sometimes the sun doesn’t shine for long periods of time, such as in the winter months and every night or when it’s overcast.

Unless there are some immediate drastic changes in the way decision makers approach the creation of energy it may be too late to reverse course. It takes years to build power plants, so we better get started.

But when we start, it should be real experts who guide these projects, engineers skilled in providing power and reliably conveying it to their users, not sound-bite seeking politicians reacting to poorly informed activists.

Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send a letter for publication to letters@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in May 15-25, 2025.