Your update is misleading. You have, indeed, made the same point repeatedly. You have made that point in error, repeatedly. I have left comments to correct you. Repeatedly.

You completely mischaracterize the use of spinning reserves. You insinuate that spinning backup plants burn fuel at 100% even when they output at much lower levels. This is not the case. Not to mention that the grid requires significant spinning reserves regardless of the existence of wind.

Plus you confuse output with capacity. Increased wind penetration will, as you note, barely reduce the capacity requirements of fossil generation, but it will reduce the capacity factor of that generation.

- Nobrainer

The fundamental fallacy underlying all of these ridiculous “movements” is that prices are inaccurate informational signals (i.e. they do not take into account [fake] costs such as carbon externalities, etc.) and that economic resources are not effectively distributed by markets.

If I only had time to write a book about this nonsense…

I found the German CO2 situation amusing, because without any kind of government mandate, the country that made the most progress in decreasing fossil fuel usage per person was the USA. We did this just because individuals and businesses like to save money.

I very much doubt that the companies I was refering to were getting any government subsidies.

1. These companies existed more than 30 years ago, before the government had any interest in recycling.

2. Infact these companies have suffered from government mandated recycling. The flood of extra recycled aluminum on the market caused a drop in the prices. Before government recycling mandates they were paying some where between $1-$2 per pound. Afer government mandated recycling, the last time I went to a private recycler with alluminum cans (post government mandated recycling) the price I got was more like $0.25 per pound.

3. Everything I have read on recycling, has said that recycling of metals in general is economical.

were those private aluminum recyclers getting government money/tax benefits/subsidies/subsidized loans?

did they benefit from some other coercive government involvement like requiring x% of aluminum content in products to be from recycled sources?

while perhaps they were not and your point is correct, it can be dangerous to assume that just because private companies are doing something that it’s economic.

the possibility also exists that the initial aluminum recyclers were just wrong in their business plan projections and that the profit they anticipated failed to materialize.

there are lots of private ethanol refiners despite that fact that they cannot operate profitably without subsidy/mandate.