YOU WANT GREEN ENERGY, YOU GET CHAOS: Sooner or later (usually sooner), nations that decarbonize face civil tumult because the costs of reliable energy skyrocket as the supplies dwindle into scarcity, according to Chuck DeVore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, writing in The Federalist.

DeVore make the case for the proposition that the reliability and abundance of carbon-based energy is ignored in market valuations, while the absence of those same characteristics are discounted when “renewable” energy sources are considered.

“Texas’s energy-only market relies on prices alone to incentivize new investment, and subsidies for more variable energy mean that the reliability of coal, natural gas, and nuclear is not properly valued. As a result, year after year, wind and solar capacity grow while coal and natural gas generation atrophy,” he writes.

But that has some seriously negative consequences:

“As this happens, the grid becomes more and more prone to blackouts — unless backup power sources are constructed. The question is, who pays? So far, reliability costs have been borne by consumers, giving unreliable wind and solar generators a free ride to produce electricity whenever they can and not paying for the cost of backup power or other costs arising from their volatility.”

As Glenn regularly reminds us all, what cannot continue, won’t.