Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; You would think after spending uncounted trillions on renewables, there should be some evidence of decoupling between electricity prices and the cost of fossil fuel.
Andrew Dessler is the Director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies and the Reta A. Haynes Chair in Geosciences.
Dessler thinks he is demonstrating why we need more renewables. The problem with this position is Dessler is ignoring the trillions of dollars the USA and the rest of the world have already spent on renewables.
A reasonable expectation would be that all the previous investments in renewables should have yielded some value. But the graph provided by Dessler says it all – when the price of gas goes up, the price of electricity goes up in lockstep.
Renewables are doing nothing to liberate us from the pain of high gas prices.
Some of the smarter politicians have noticed – smart politicians are busy butt covering, making excuses about why the price of electricity is still tied to the price of fuel, acting like government intervention is required to correct the market. But surely they must know the truth – renewables are useless.
All the trillions of dollars spent on building and installing renewables have been a total waste of money.
Thank you Andrew Dessler, for helping to make our case for us.
Update: h/t DonM – Dessler explaining the USA needs to keep fossil fuel for domestic use rather than exporting, to prevent further price rises.
“Renewables” are WORSE than useless.
Well said Janice. Absolutely true, when you count the opportunity cost of all that wasted money.
And time that could have been spent on improving ways to find, recover, and refine fossil fuels and to use them with less waste.
Add cheap, safe reliable, clean nuclear research to the list of wasted opportunity
The misallocation of capital is the greatest evil of green policies.
The folks in San Diego who live a few miles from the coast are paying a fortune this summer to cool their homes (over 40 cents a kWh).
Seattle area residents on the other had are paying close to the lowest rates in the country (12 cents a kWh).
https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices_selectedareas_table.htm
Seattle, lots of cheap hydro power.
San Diego, not so much.
Yes, sometimes they’re deadly if you are depending on them.
They will perform better in Australia if the government (read taxpayers) funds (trillion dollars plus estimated) a new electricity grid to improve renewable energy transmission efficiency.
/sarc.
Ah, Oz the poster child for renewables, especially solar.
One day they will realize that solar can never fulfill peak demand. That means solar will always need backup. That backup need is seldom recognized when selling renewables. Therfore, every renewable added to a grid, adds costs to the grid.
All of which leads to renewables need thermal backups, but thermal sources DO NOT NEED RENEWABLES.
Australia is a solar subsidy nirvana. My 30kw solar gets finished next week. Total cost A$13,400. Now I just have to wait for some super cheap battery paid for by the taxpayer. It’s coming only a matter of time. My only rule payback has to be under 2 years.
What can I say the Australian taxpayer are mugs.
At this point everyone should see thru this. So called Greens are financed by Big Oil monopolies – Exxon+ Chevron, British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell.
They are clearly making billions on this.
Greens is their Antifa – they hate and shut down any real alternatives to oil, such as Nuclear and Coal – greens hate nuclear and coal. And so called “renewables” are useless.
Big oil benefits from them shutting down any alternatives – clearly paid agents of the oil industry.
They don’t need to pay them. Plenty of useful idiots doing them a big favor.
Wind in particular diverts funding from dispatchable sources.
Then they make it up on the backswing, when wind and solar drops. Regulatory hostility stops newcomers from entering the market to compete with incumbents, which might otherwise bring down prices a little.
In the future students will study this period of insanity, to learn how not to run an energy market.
It blows.
I didn’t think it was possible, but wind power both sucks and blows.
It depends on which side you’re on….
It even defies science by blowing AND sucking at the same time!
No it does it sucks up money and blow on energy budget. No surprising since there is no net payback in what energy it took to produce and what it can produce.
It sucks – the whole fiasco. Stemming from Manabe’s incompetence in the 1960’s to the present day. Trillions wasted and countless habitats destroyed. Truly a sad time in human history.
There needs to be some serious due diligence before the land surfaces are reduced to arid dust.
Not to mention unreliable – Texans froze in the dark when the valentine freeze put all the renewables out,of commission
Actually, it was the high-pressure cell that settled over the mid-continent from Canada to South Texas, with virtually no wind that put the wind farms out of commission. Freezing turbines was a minor problem for wind turbines.
The wind farms were not out of commissions except those with too much ice on the blades. They were doing what windmills always do — highly variable unpredictable power output, which is why windmills make no sense attached to electric grids, where reliability is very important. Windmills belong in museums.
Alongside other Medieval artifacts.
Are there any in Warehouse 13?
Alongside renewable energy sailing vessels and other wind reliant applications,
Baloney
The entire Texas energy infrastructure can not withstand extremely cold weather. That was true in February 2011 too. Buying windmills did not help the problems described in the August 2011 FERC report on the February 2011 rolling blackouts that affected 3.2 million Texans. The 2021 freeze only put about half the Texas windmills out of commission — because they were not equipped with optional blade deicers. Windmills regularly have hours of very low output — that’s why you need 100% fossil fuel backup that works properly in extremely cold weather. Texas did not have that.
Texas did not have that because green regulations forced the pumps for gas to be electric instead of the more sensible gas-powered pumps that would have worked because the gas was actually there and available, unlike the electricity.
The whole fiasco was driven by Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming GOVERNMENTAL POLICY, and nothing else.
Texas energy infrastructure had had growing problems with very cold weather since the 1980s. They keep making the problem worse, like that was their goal. Maybe they thought climate change meant Texas would never have very cold weather again? Or maybe there was money to be made building windmills?
Because of so many windmills, Texas needs 100% fossil fuel backup that works in very cold weather, spare fossil fuel generation capacity well above average, as a safety margin and high capacity interconnectors with other grids for emergencies.
In fact, Texas had half the national average of spare fossil fuel capacity and very low interconnector capacity with other grids. It’s amazing that they went 10 years, from February 2011 to February 2021, between blackouts.
Now they are close to the edge in very hot Summer weather, and perhaps in the future unusual Spring and Fall weather will be risky too. More unreliables = more problems.
Texas is the “poster child” for Greene’s Windmill Equations:
One windmill + no wind = no electricity
One bazillion windmills + no wind = no electricity
The ERCOT electric grid is run by Forrest Gump
Don’t forget all the electricity generated by the solar farms between sunset and sunrise.
Recall supporting conversion of natural gas engines for gas pipeline pumps. Capital and maintenance costs for natural gas engines were much higher than for electric motor/pumps. Conversion costs had quick paybacks.
Looked real good on paper now, didn’t it?
Don’t forget to add in the deaths to that cost/benefit analysis.
Reminds me of the time I became stuck in Houston many years ago, all because of freezing rain. The company had just been taken over, and a new manager from NY had been appointed. Trying to save some money he cancelled all the de-icing contracts, after all Houston is a hot place, right? Sadly he came undone that first winter, as, on that occasion, when the aircraft came to depart, we had no de-icing contract. Took about 4 days to get it sorted. Never seen such thick ice on the wings before (or everything else for that matter). Always learning something new I guess.
The freeze put the fossil fuel plant out of commission!
An avoidable accident…
Griff finally hits on a truth. It was an avoidable accident partly due to your own beliefs that renewables can replace thermal sources. They do not. At their best they may augment, but when added to a grid they always add costs.
Fossil fuel plant (gas) was shut down because the gas pipelines stopped working.
The gas pipelines stopped working because green regulations required them to stop using gas powered pumps and start using electric powered pumps.
Absent the green regulations, the pipelines would have worked using the gas powered pumps and the fossil fuel plants would have worked.
This has been explained to griff dozens of times. This is one of those facts he’s not allowed to know.
Electricity from gas surged 400%, but because of some freezes, fell back to 300% of normal output.
Wind/solar fell to 0%. More than gas could cover.
This wasn’t a failure of gas – it was a failure of intermittents.
Dessler says that that having fossil fuels are an economic disaster.
And, he says getting rid of some of the fossil fuels in the U.S. will be an economic disaster (for the U.S.A.)
Andrew Dessler
@AndrewDessler
·
Jul 30
“more evidence that fossil fuels are an economic disaster in addition to being an environmental disaster”
Jul 30
” fossil fuel companies are building LNG export infrastructure here, which will let us export more gas to Europe. this will lower the cost there and raise the cost here. it’s going to be an economic disaster for the U.S. “
So, my question for him, of any of his acolytes, will it be a disaster if we get rid all of the fossil fuels?
Or, how about producing more fossil fuels, and exporting just enough to keep Germany wallowing in their green dreams (or from freezing; or from being dependent on Russia)?
And, where is the proof (or even reasonable indication) of the environmental disaster that are fossil fuels?
Hilarious 🙂
Maaaate! Seriously? Answer Dessler’s question.
Dessler isn’t posing any questions.
DonM is merely pointing out that Dessler is stating that fossil fuels are a disaster for the US, while at the same time stating that not enough fossil fuels will be a disaster for the US.
sorry George, I’m not good at formatting (or really communicating)
The last three paragraphs are mine.
(I think the only question that Dessler has is ‘Who is going to pay me for my next appearance/performance?’)
… and “Where is the closest doughnut shop?”
Why bother with Germany at all !? Let Russia own their azzes.
If Russia controls Germany it controls all of the EU.
It would make the Cold War a waste of time. The USA could have just surrendered at the time of the Berlin Airlift.
Russia does not control Germany
Gazprom wants to sell Germany as much gas as possible
They want Nordstream 2 to open to sell even more gas to Europe = very profitable for Gazprom shareholders
But banking sanctions make Euros worthless to Gazprom
LIKE MONOPOLY MONEY
So Gazprom demands payments in Rubles.
Some nations agree — it’s not complicated
Germany refuses.
Gazprom reduces gas shipments to Germany as a result.
May eventually cut them to zero natural gas
This is ENTIRELY Germany’s fault
They decided to punish Russia by punishing themselves.
Exactly. And if Germany then want to buy LNG from the USA. It is bound to be more expensive than the Russian gas (otherwise they’d already be buying it). And it will be profitable for US companies to sell it.
We really must be living in Wonderland if Dressler can be believed that the USA is selling gas to Europe and that this is costing the USA. They aren’t being forced to sell the stuff, build the terminals and ship it out!
It’s almost as if this whole war thing in Europe is a benefit to the USA in trade of gas, and weapons…..but no that couldn’t be! It’s not as if it hasn’t all happened before….hang on
I like your response, but I’ll give a serious answer.
Because, given the freedom to do so, through development and use of USA resources (they are not really resources if they are not used), we could own part of their azzes.
And the additional return of the indirect impact to Russia would be worth 25% of what we are wasting trying to ‘fight’ Russia in Ukraine.
So, my question for him…
If you ask on Twitter, he’ll block you. After announcing to the world that he’s blocking you.
He works at Texas A&M in College Station, Texas. College Station suffered during the freeze, so he must know he’s talking out of his butt.
“Dessler is ignoring the trillions of dollars the USA and the rest of the world have already spent on renewables.”
Here is an IEA plot of energy investment:
Renewables are about 20% of total investment.
The reason electricity prices follow gas (and coal) prices is that cost of fuel is by far the greatest recurrent cost of generation. That would be true even if renewables were a much larger fraction of power source than they are.
All that investment and still nothing to show for it…
“All that investment and still nothing to show for it…”
Nope. According to the IEA, they are 23.42% of global power generation (2019). And of course the cumulative investment in fossil fuels is far higher.
The recurrent costs of power generation, which determine prices, are overwhelmingly the cost of fuel for that 77%.
Own goal that 23% has not brought the price down. So if they haven’t brought the cost down at 23% when will it?
Well lets look for an answer with Germany they produced 43% by renewables (Year to date) according to the PR spin … yet look at German electricity price which has risen 40% in the last 12 months 🙂
So when the world gets to 47% we still don’t get any price decrease!!!!!
So Nick use all your statistics and give us an answer what percentage can we expect to see these much touted savings?
I will give you what seems to be a fact. Renewable energy policy is driving up the cost of fossil fuels. As renewable generation is still dependent on fosil fuel generation any alleged savings by renewables is quickly out paced by the increased fossil fuel cost.Energy cost based on this stupid policy is going to get a lot worse.
All Eric’s graph tells is that since Jan 2021, electricity prices have been rising in parallel with gas prices. That is because gas is the big cost of generation. The increase in renewables in that short time has not been enough to offset it.
Gas would not be this expensive if you alarmists hadn’t been doing everything in your power to prevent the finding and development of natural gas.
Add to that the way renewables make fossil fuel plants less efficient and therefore more expensive.
That is part of the problem the other is stupid and incompetent State regulations to reserve domestic supply.
Renewables have no influence on the gas price rise due to post covid demand or the actions of Putin in conducting economic warfare
Not big on reading comprehension, are you?
The increase in renewables in that short time has not been enough to offset it because they are not dispatchable.
When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun sets you have to shutdown the modern world or switch to reliable fossil fuels.
Unless France has some spare nuclear energy or the Scandinavians need to lower the water level in their reservoirs.
At that point the reliable providers need to cover their costs for when the unreliable sources displaced them. The costs and demand for profits are the same as if the unreliables had never been used.
So there can never be a point where renewables decouple energy cost from fossil fuels.
And as the graph shows, that is the case.
The gas/coal price in Australia is set by local conditions except if you are retarded like some Eastern States and have to buy it back from exports because you didn’t reserve any.
Even with Eastern States stupidity Gas is only 20% of generation and yet East State power costs have increase 20% this year alone.
The second part of that is if Gas cost was increasing why not simply switch mix? …. Oh wait you aren’t allowed to build other fossil fuel generation
See the stupid trap the Eastern States has itself in which is entirely self inflicted.
Nick, I’ll quote Prof Helm to you again. The reason I keep doing so is because he is by no means a climate change sceptic but he is an acknowledged expert on energy policy.
“This is the first net zero energy price crisis because decarbonisation policies have not taken account of the consequence of not only the intermittency of wind, but also the consequences of that intermittency rendering everything else intermittent too. It requires much more capacity to meet any given demand to ensure that when the wind does not blow there is something else to take up the strain. It also makes that ‘something else’ much more expensive because the back up power stations cannot rely on running at base load to recover their costs and the contracts for gas supply are more costly to deliver because the timing and volume of demand are dependent on when the wind blows too”
In other words the intermittency of unreliables is forcing up the price of gas.
‘The retreat from net zero’ (4th July 2022)
http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/energy/climate-change/the-retreat-from-net-zero/
Yes. The point is, you have to plan the energy supply for the country, as a system. Just putting in some unreliable and intermittent generation, and then increasing the amount of it, is not planning the system.
When you look at it like this you see two things, one you cannot get there from here – you can’t supply the grid from renewables as the policies require. The second is that to make the system work at all you have to have a parallel generating network.
So although its being sold as renewables backed up by gas, what is actually being installed is gas supplemented by renewables when they are available. And then it becomes clear that leaving out the renewables will lower costs and increase reliability.
The test is to produce a financial analysis comparing the system being proposed, fossil + renewables, to one which is fossil only. You can be sure, from the lack of any such studies, that fossil only wins out by a mile.
I see that Nick, much like griff and the rest of the alarmists still don’t understand the difference between peak and average. He also completely ignores the difference between face plate and actual.
That 23.42% figure is misleading, by ‘renewables’ many would assume you are referring to wind and solar.
According to BP ~16% comes from hydro and China is the world leader as well as the world leader in practically every other source, notably coal, merely because of size.
Globally: wind ~5%, solar ~3% (BP).
Of total global energy consumption: wind ~2%, solar ~1% (2020 BP).
Yea and trillions spend on it. Even more disturbing it renewables percentage of gain are not due to a net increase of energy of renewables but a net production decrease of fossil fuels input with an overall lost of generation capacity. How on God green earth is that going to work out? A lot of cold, dark, nights with no power from what I can figure.
Excellent point Chris, a further one is that the addition of wind and solar barely keeps up with the annual incremental increase in energy demand globally.
It is the figure that corresponds to the investment amount that Eric queried.
Nick, you and the other warmunists keep misunderstanding the value of ruinables (wind and solar) vs reliables (FF, nuclear, hydro, biowaste & etc.). That 20 or so percent of ruinables delivered whenever available is worth far less to electrical systems and consumers than an equivalent amount of reliables that are delivered when actually needed. Your comparisons of investments are meaningless.
That the figure is non-responsive to the point that Eric made is completely lost on Nick. Or perhaps he just hasn’t given up on this diversin yet.
The more renewable energy a country has installed, the higher its cost of electricity.
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/the-high-cost-of-electricity-from-wind-and-solar-generation/
As multi-billionaire US citizen Warren Buffet commented, without subsidies for incentive to invest nobody would invest in wind and solar
energy supply businesses.
The UK demonstrates that .
The higher the amount of unreliables the greater the effect of their intermittency on making other forms of generation intermittent too. This increases the costs of those other forms of generation and also pushes up the price of gas contracts because the gas supply has effectively been made intermittent too.
Nick,
you say:- “The recurrent costs of power generation, which determine prices, are overwhelmingly the cost of fuel for that 77%.”
Nothing to do with the fact that however much renewable capacity is installed there must be an equivalent amount of reliable dispatchable capacity also available at all times.
Nothing to do with the fact that this reliable capacity does all the work in keeping the grid in load and supply balance which means running less economically than otherwise would be the case. A certain amount will be running, connected to the grid but not contributing to the load (spinning reserve).
Nothing to do with the fact that large subsidies are paid.
Nick forgets that recurrent costs increase because of the shorter lifespan of ruinables. Full LCOE reflects that, not just the LCOE propaganda now spewed out by politicized governments and NGOs.
Additionally, short-term fluctuations in commodity prices do not reflect long-term economics. What you are seeing now is a result of decades-long concerted effort by Western governments to wildly inflate the costs of FFs. The economic and strategic dominance of China, India and the rest of Asia will change those idiotic policies eventually. The question is will the Leftists delay the change to a point before or after you are forced to learn Mandarin.
Nameplate Capacity or achievable when the wind blows Capacity Factor?
Is that 23.4% of nameplate capacity or 23.4% of energy actually consumed?
It doesn’t matter: 23.4% of ruinables energy is far less valuable than an equivalent amount of FF, nuclear, hydro and biofuels energy.
““All that investment and still nothing to show for it…”
Nope. According to the IEA, they are 23.42% of global power generation (2019). And of course the cumulative investment in fossil fuels is far higher.”
Don’t you mean 23.42% of global power generation only 23.42% of the time? 😎
Maaaate! Again, refute what Stokes has written about electricity prices following coal and gas prices. If necessary, refer to the Australian Energy Market data. How hard can it be?
Look at the electricity prices of nations with high-penetrations of ruinables in relation to those with lower penetrations. Short-term market fluctuations mean nothing. All it shows is Leftist governments’ ability to screw up their economies, all to citizens’ long-term detriment.
Completely ignoring the huge additional costs added to real energy generation when having to repeatedly step down to accommodate the weather dependent production of sunbeams from cucumbers.
It hasn’t occurred, perhaps that coal, gas, oil, uranium are no more expensive at source than wind or sunshine. It is extracting the energy and making it useful that is the primary cost.
Having expensive plant and skilled staff sitting around because the wind has decided to blow for a bit helps no-one except the GangGreen chancers.
How many ships are under sail these days? How many trucks or trains have to park up when the sun goes down?
That’s Nick the cherry picker…only use facts that fit the fantacy
“the huge additional costs added to real energy generation when having to repeatedly step down”
Overstated. In fact demand varies hugely during the day, so a lot of generation has to step down because of that. That has generally been the task of gas.
As usual, you present less than half the known facts.
The reality is that demand changes slowly and at consistent times of the day.
What has changed is the extra supply that is coming from wind and solar at times that are pretty much random.
That ^^^^
A cities load is easily predictable and varies slowly because of inbuilt network inertia.
You just proved you know nothing of the subject. Stick to statistics and stop talking on this because it’s about as good as your science understanding.
Not to mention that unreliables require fossil fuels to back them up. Often requiring the fossil fuel generators to run at their most inefficient, thus further driving up the cost of unreliables
Not only driving up costs, but resulting in almost as much CO2 being generated as there would have been had there been no unreliables in the first place.
I would GUESS that with unreliables thrown in, the TOTAL CO2 generated far exceeds that of a system without unreliables due to the CO2 generated during the manufacture, transportation to site and installation of the unreliables.
If all that money wasted on renewables had been spent developing coal and gas instead, coal and gas would be a lot less expensive.
Not to mention advanced nuclear.
Agree
So you are willing to spend 4 dollars of you energy budget to get a dollar worth of energy back. Say are you interested in buying a bridge?
Consequently, we need more fossil fuel as with more supply the price will decline. Thanks for pointing that out.
Missing from your graph, Nick, is the amount of energy produced per dollar of investment. If that were shown, the utility of renewables, or rather the lack thereof, would be clear.
The always dishonest Mr. Stroker strikes again:
Of total global energy consumption:
wind ~2%, solar ~1% (2020 BP).
And who do you think is paying for massive redundant
wind and solar farm construction?
Not the electric utility customers?
Not the US taxpayers?
However, the fleet capital costs of a mostly coal utility with generating stations and transmission lines depreciated over estimated lifetimes provided coal generation ranging from $0.02-0.06 per kWh up until the 1990’s “deregulation”.
The vertically integrated utility had the benefit of financing with a set ratio of cash (from billing), long mortgage bonds, and selling stock.
The utility operated in the lowest-cost dispatch PJM regional grid system where the lowest actual cost units operated as base load (the $0.02 above) through the intermediate units (the $0.06), and peaking units ( $0.10+ the most expensive–gas,oil ).
The 40 year war on coal and nuclear..now all fossil fuels, through ever more draconian regulations and “green” take mandates, has shutdown our industrial companies and the towns and families that they supported.
Utility deregulation was a money-maker for the money men. Everybody else suffers from shortages and astronomical prices. Likewise for governmental subsidies to ruinables: Crony capitalists make out like bandits.
I know. I spent 40 years in the industry and watched the disaster unfolding before my eyes. Nobody in power would listen to us in the know. You can thank the Leftist movements and governments. It was and is sad to watch as normal peoples’ standards of living decline year-by-year while the financiers grow wealthy.
‘Renewables are about 20% of total investment.’
This is misleading if one wants to know the relative investment in installed generating capacity, i.e., solar and wind vs. coal, gas and oil. Even better, exclude from these categories what China, India and the rest of the world that is pursuing reliable energy are installing and I bet ‘Renewable power’ makes up a much greater percentage.
Typical propaganda piece. Accuse the opposition of causing a problem that you are responsible for. Rules for Radicals 101.
It’s not about money,it’s about destroying capitalism and making everyone in the world equally miserable
Except for our dear leaders and their flunkies, Doug.
As usual, Dessler completely ignores everything he and his fellow alarmists have done to make natural gas more expensive.
“Dessler thinks he is demonstrating why we need more renewables. The problem with this position is Dessler is ignoring the trillions of dollars the USA and the rest of the world have already spent on renewables.”
*********
All of this implosion — everything involving the grid and electricity prices that is happening in California, Europe and Australia — can be boiled down to the fact that a feasibility study was never done at the very beginning of this renewable energy fad. No demonstration projects, nothing. The environmental movement barked with a renewables bark, and governments all jumped. No consideration for the poor energy density, the intermittency and unreliability, etc.
I recall a study that was finally done a few years back that concluded that billions of solar panels would be required to displace all fossil fuel (and maybe nuclear) power plants in the U.S. I also seem to recall that Google engineers did one as well, and they concluded that the transition to renewables would not work. Google probably buried it. The environmental movement would not be denied.
To err is human, but to really screw things up requires government.
Andrew Dessler, Climate Howler
with shifty eyes
There’s an oxymoron, right there
In the UK, our parliament and the Misleadia is full to the brim with oxymorons or is it just morons
Dr. Dressler is a supporter of going nuclear.
Doesn’t talk like a fan of nuclear.
https://twitter.com/andrewdessler/status/1546919773145124866
https://twitter.com/andrewdessler/status/1129543086013657096
So let Europe freeze to enable USA embargoes on Russia. Sounds like good foreign policy. Let your friends freeze to death while meeting your foreign policy objective sounds like a good way to lose friends and gain more enemies.
The current price of gas has nothing to do with the cost of extracting it.
It is purely down to supply and demand.
Correct .. explain that to Nick Stokes.
If a state or country owns the reserves the price they should be paying is the extraction price plus a small profit. However when idiot or corrupt politicians get involved and let the locals pay the export cost then it’s bad government NOT a fault of the fossil fuel companies.
The failure of every socialist economy (not enforced by guns in small countries) in world history should strongly indicate to everybody your idea is a bad one, LdB. Governments must stay out of supply and pricing in functioning economies. If you think insulated politicians and faceless bureaucrats will run things effectively you ignore all of history.
And demand ensures that gas wherever extracted tends to the world price and isn’t available more cheaply locally/for the producing nation
Wrong. Gas is more expensive in Europe than the US. There is no “world price”.
Just because the media uses a benchmark, doesn’t mean that’s what everyone is paying.
Griffy, I happen to know a supplier that, if you sign up for a contracted amount, can vastly undercut the ‘world price’ and in large quantities as well, interested? You just have to be prepared to pay in Roubles!
So what, Griff?
If local demand exceeds local supply, then the local price can easily exceed the world price.
That’s ANOTHER one of your hit and run outright lies, griffter. The current price of Nat Gas is $3.70 per million BTUs in the US, $38.00 in Europe. There is NO world price, you liar. The reason being that the cost is high and there is insufficient capacity to move large quantities of Nat Gas across the oceans.
Your tendency to make stuff up has destroyed your credibility. If you were ever to stumble upon the truth, nobody is going to believe you.
YOU sir have kicked a FAIL!!!!
Countries or States that own the gas control how or indeed if it can be exported. Your statement is thus not only factually wrong it is dropkick stupid.
And the price was rising way before the Ukraine war which is now used as the political smokescreen. The price hit an average of about 200p/therm from September 2021 and although the war has created enormous volatility, the price has stayed around that level.
Natural gas – BBC News
In the UK we had a slew of 26 “energy supplier” bankruptcies, but they all occurred September 2021 to January 2022. Russian invaded Ukraine late February 2022.
The bankruptcies were all newer energy suppliers in the market who thought they could be clever and buy gas on the spot market and not hedge as the majors do. Makes you a nice fat profit when the price is falling, as it was generally from September 2018, but puts you out of business very quickly when the prices start rising. The longer trend in rising gas prices started around February 2021, a year before Ukraine was invaded and was enough to put those badly managed companies out of business very quickly once the price went above 100p/therm in August 2021. The director’s of those firms should be sued for financial malfeasance.
Meanwhile the oil price has been rising steadily since November 2020, just when Biden was elected. Since the Ukraine invasion by Russia the price has been volatile but is not really trending upwards.
Oil – BBC News
You may need to click the”5yr” icon to get the longer time period.
The National Audit Office report ‘The energy supplier market BEIS and Ofgem’ 20th June 2022 found
29 suppliers failed since July 2021
It cost £2.7bn to transfer the customers of those failed businesses to other suppliers and this cost has been passed on to ALL electricity bill payers.
It was scathing about the role of Ofgem (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets)
saying that though it could not have prevented the increase in wholesale prices from affecting consumers it
“did not do enough in previous years to ensure suppliers could resist external shocks.”
“Allowed many suppliers to enter the market and operate with weak financial resilience”
“allowed a market to develop that was vulnerable to large scale shocks where risk was largely with the customer/consumer who picked up the costs in event of failure”
To date I don’t think any heads have rolled at Ofgem
Thanks for highlighting that report – very interesting.
It shows clearly that the wholesale price went from about £18 /MWhr to £70/MWhr between March and October 2021, an increase of 388%. Absolutely nothing to do with Ukraine. It also shows that Ukraine spiked the price for a month or two but it then fell back to about £65/MWhr ie similar to the level at the end of 2021.
I spotted a rather frightening point in the footnotes to Figure 8 which shows the cost breakdown for the “typical” bill. The “typical” values used are:
12,000 kWh/yr Gas
2,900 kWh/yr Electric
So at the current price cap of 7p for gas and 28p for electric the energy charge for the “typical” bill is £1652 per year.
But if the government goes ahead and forces gas out of domestic use and compels everyone to use electricity it will cost…..£4172 per year, a 250% increase, far more than the increased cost of gas.
Roll on Net Zero eh? /sarc
He’s trying to distract from the unspoken fact that the almighty dollar dollar dollar now rules everything
Everything now has a dollar/monetary value ##
The problem is endemic, absolutely pervasive and all encompassing.
Even among skeptix
Recall notso long ago, Homewood put up a piece about ‘How things are never better’ on the subject of Global Food Production
At first sight of the lovely graphic, everything seemed to be ‘On The Up’
But Homewood expressed that ‘upness’ in terms of the dollar value of the ‘food’
Not the quantity in pounds, ounces grams or whatever, not the calories or protein or fat or vitamins or trace-elements or micronutrients.
No. just the supposedly inflation adjusted value in terms of money.
i.e. An actual self proclaimed and supposed skeptik came on here and asserted that all that mattered for World Food production was that the Dollar Value had never been greater
While ignoring that if a Warmist came along here and presented a relentlessly rising Trend Line, they’d be summarily slaughtered.
## Some may argue, me included, that the fixation with money (we all know the cliche even if we nearly always get it wrong) will be the end of civilisation.
Indirectly, because placing a monetary value on ‘things’ and ‘stuff’ causes their eventual complete destruction and we follow soon after.
And that is because, as a settled civilisation, we create an ‘elite’
Not looking at anyone name of either Boris, Brandon, Michael or Andrew right now. Oh no.
We need people with power to keep the rest of the rabble under control.
People to create and uphold Law. for example
But with power and control, always comes money.
Now, consider A Resource, Any resource.
They are all limited in extent and The Market operates
But as they are consumed, The Market causes their monetary value to rise.
OK, this puts off the non-elites and so they buy and consume less.
(We all know that that does not apply to certain things but no matter now)
But as The Resource goes into scarcity and its monetary value rises, The Elite can continue to buy and in fact with the way humans are, the more expensive it becomes, the more desirable it becomes.
Thus, The Resource, no matter what it was, will be completely consumed,.
Or in the case or ‘renewable’ resources like plants, animals and soils, pushed beyond their capacity to actually do that renewing.
e.g. If someone popped up on the news right now claiming to be the owner of a mating pair of Dodo, or an actual living T-Rex or garden full of Sylphium – what would that person ‘be worth’?
Just asking:
Do the Nenet, Evenki, Innuit or Bushman have those sorts of problems?
So even before we started eating sugar, drinking alcohol and smoking weed, we had the seed of our own destruction planted nicely in very fertile soil.
The fixation on CO2 is symptomatic of ‘something else’
Some members of our tribe have ‘a sensitivity to things’
That’s why they’ve stopped making babies.
Thank God you don’t run the world, Peta. You’re “not even wrong.”
You were able to figure out what he’s talking about?
Remember all those greentards like Griff and dropkick academics telling us about these stranded fossil fuel assets?
The fossil fuel companies had the last laugh and now we have to do something about it 🙂
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/opinion/big-oil-is-wringing-humanity-dry-we-need-a-fossil-fuel-non-proliferation-treaty/ar-AA10fO0o?li=AAaeSy5
Remember Griff told us these companies would all go broke … perhaps he can explain what happened 🙂
So Griff I think you have some explaining to do if you expect us to believe anything else you claim.
There is no doubt that fossil fuel assets will turn toxic at some point.
Is anyone seriously interested in US coal plants these days?
Er, yes, and they’re making huge returns:
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/they-ve-absolutely-exploded-coal-investors-win-triple-digit-us-stock-gains-70051407
Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong, every single time?
Griffy was born to be a failure, a loser and just plain wrong on all counts. It’s a left-wing trademark.
Perhaps not but China, India and Indonesia and others are very interested in coal powered energy. Remember too that worldwide coal fired power production doubled between 2000 and 2020
Worldwide coal consumption in 2021 increased to 7947 million tonnes (Mt) taking it very close to its all time high.
Coal demand in China rose to an all time high of 4230Mt with coal consumption for power rising by c.16%.
Coal consumption in India reached a new record of 1053Mt three quarters of which was for electricity production.
There was a significant increase in coal consumption in the US (+15%) and EU (+14%). Germany accounted for the largest increase in consumption in the EU.
Indonesia was the world’s largest exporter of thermal coal rising to 434Mt over twice as much as Australia (199Mt)
In the first six months of 2022 China’s domestic coal production increased 11%
ALL information from ‘IEA Coal Market Update – July 2022’
Actually there is a lot of doubt, which is why governments have to try and ban new investment in them.
Would you expect anything else from a socialist UK newspaper?
In case you need cheering up:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/video/news/burning-wind-turbine-spins-smoke-corkscrew-in-texas/vi-AAZT9K5
How did just the end of one blade catch fire?
The USAF puts on shows with “The Blue Angels”.
Is this a show put on by “The Green Unicorns”?
Will someone pose this question for the professor: “Why has the price for a 100% Renewable residential energy contract in TX risen along with non-renewable contracts?”
From today’s Texas “Power-To-Choose” website, here are lowest quotes for electric energy prices:
500kWh, 12-month fixed
Non-renewable: 16.8 cents per kWh
100% Renewable : 19.7 cents per kWh
Additional question: 1) Does the purchaser of a 100% renewable contract lose power when the wind dies?
Does the purchaser of a 100% renewable contract lose power when the wind dies?
No renewables are 100% dispatchable. It’s just that sometimes we fulfill your needs from the gas plant down the road because you wouldn’t like the price we’d charge for those times and we’re only thinking of your hip pocket. If they let you down you’ll have to take that up with them.
Nearly 120 wind turbines catch fire each year in the UK, according to research in 2014 – ten times the number reported by the industry.
As you were folks as it’s only near a chemical manufacturing plant and not a hydrogen plant.
Hull wind turbine catches fire and sends acrid black smoke billowing across city | Daily Mail Online
It was a German Repower MM82. What is it with these single German turbines failing recently – it was only a few days ago that one in America lost a blade.
Tik Tok reports from climate deniers that we in the planet saving industry are engaging in cheap shonky decommissioning practices are outrageous fake news and we are working closely with the UN and social media giants to have them taken down and excommunicated.
“Andrew Dessler is the Director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies and the Reta A. Haynes Chair in Geosciences.”
Andrew Dessler is far above his “Peter Principal” capability.
Especially in areas he has no expertise, lacking education and practical experience in electric power systems.
Renewables do not set the price for electricity. Look up your undergrad Econ 101 notes. Renewables are not the marginal supply and probably never will be.
This is the problem with having someone like Mr. Dessler directing a “Climate Studies” program at a Tier I research university: he has degrees in physics (BA) and chemistry (PhD) but apparently absolutely no training in, or understanding of, economics.
And thus is demonstrated the asininity of academic “Climate Studies” programs.
Maybe Marxist economics?
The engineering axiom that you can’t build a reliable system from unreliable componentry is a white male heteronormative capitalist power construct to be overturned. Oh and Marx was a gay person of colour.
This is a dumb analysis.
Every electricity market in the US sets the price based on the highest bid that’s needed in order to be reliable.
If you clear the market with 100% gas plants, a gas plant will set the market price. If you clear with 99.9999% wind and 0.0001% gas, a gas plant will still set the market price.
Wow, coal will be price competitive …. AGAIN.
lol they are now literally re-enacting Babylon Bee headlines
Biden Vows To Lower Energy Prices By Shutting Down Extraction Of Overpriced Fossil Fuels
if you needed any more proof it was a cult
ROFL 🙂
In my view Dressler is a fool. Evil greens have artificially created demand for wind and solar, they have plans to eliminate fossil fuels and in the process have screwed up our energy system. You purposely limit supply then attack the very people you blocked from doing their job. Dressler and all of his cronies are despicable.
Am I missing something? Looking at the posted graph, it looks like if there is any causal relationship between electricity price and gas, it’s that changes in the price of electricity drive the changes in gas prices, not the other way around.
Electricity spikes in May 2019 and gas has a spike a couple of months later. Electricity jumps in April 2020 and the declining gas price trend doesn’t change until July. Gas drops shortly thereafter and electricity drops a few months later – the only place on the graph where electricity change follows gas.
Then gas has the biggest spike of either commodity in January 2021 with absolutely no reaction in the trend in price for electricity. And then we repeat earlier experience in August-September 2022.
So if anything, this graph shows that increases in the price of electricity result in increases in the price of fossil fuels, not vice versa. Power prices go up when it is in short supply and gas prices go up when there is more demand for it to produce electricity and you can get a great price for it.
The mandates will be renewable too deplorables-
Spain bans setting the AC below 27 degrees Celsius (msn.com)
Only an economically illiterate leftist with a fixed pie size mentality would think that exporting more of a product would be an economic disaster.