At The Register, Andrew Orlowski attended the talk and has a news article describing Steve McIntyre’s talk at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, which was an event hosted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
McIntyre’s statement on wind power is interesting:
The entire rationale of policy in US and Europe has been to ignore what’s happening in China and India and hope that petty acts of virtuous behaviour in both countries will cure the problem,” he said. “Even if you install windmills you’re not going to change the trend of overall CO2 emissions.”
Actually, it is worse than that. As Bishop Hill reports, it turns out that windmills in the UK at net positive for CO2 emissions. He writes:
Ever since Gordon Hughes’ report noted that wind power was more likely to produce more carbon dioxide emissions than [natural] gas, I have been looking for the figures behind the claim. In the comments, someone has now posted some details that seem to meet the bill. Although these are not Hughes’ own numbers -they were submitted in evidence to Parliament by an engineer – I assume they are similar.
[A]s wind rarely produces more than 25% of its faceplate capacity it needs 75% backup – which due to the necessity of fast response times needs OCGT generation (CCGT can respond quickly but the heat-exchanger systems upon which their increased efficiency relies, cannot – so CCGT behaves like OCGT under these circumstances). CCGT produces 0.4 tonnes of CO2 per MWh, OCGT produces 0.6 tonnes. Thus 0.6 tonnes x 75% = 0.45 tonnes. Conclusion: Wind + OCGT backup produces more 0.05 tonnes of CO2 per MWh than continuous CCGT.
In case you are not familiar with the terms:
OCGT = Open Cycle Gas Turbine
- In a gas turbine, large volumes of filtered air are fed in the compressor section of the engine. In an OCGT the multistage compressor squeezes the air to from normal pressure up to 40 times atmospheric pressure depending on the type of turbine.
- Fuel is distributed to the various combustion chambers surrounding the gas turbine. This then mixes with the compressed air and ignition and combustion takes place.
- The combustion gasses expand rapidly and this energy is transmitted to the axial turbine blades which drive the rotor shaft.
- The rotor torque is transmitted to both the compressor section of the gas turbine and the external electrical generator.
In a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT), the hot exhaust gases of a gas turbine, or turbines, are used to provide all, or a portion of, the heat source for a heat exchanger (called a heat recovery steam generator) to supply a steam turbine.
So I think the time has come to stop tilting at windmills. End the subsidies that make them temporarily attractive and let shale gas step in and help solve the emissions problem as it has already been doing:
PITTSBURGH (AP) — In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-co2-emissions-us-drop-20-low-174616030–finance.html
Everyone acts so surprised by this news, but I had it on WUWT over a month ago.
USA CO2 emissions may drop to 1990 levels this year
I predict that in a few years, when the subsidies run out, many wind farms will look like this one in Hawaii, now abandoned because it it too expensive to maintain:
Related, via Jo Nova:
Hydroelectricity produces 16% of the total. But all the vanity renewables bundled together make about 3.5% of total. Wind power is a major global industry but it’s only making 1.4% of total electricity. And solar is so pathetically low that it needs to be bundled with ‘tidal & wave’ power to even rate 0.1% (after rounding up). If world’s solar powered units all broke tonight, it would not dent global electricity production a jot. No one connected to a grid would notice.
UPDATE: Hans Labohm writes in with a supporting study:
Dear Anthony,
In The Netherlands Kees le Pair (Dutchman) has recently completed his
analysis on wind energy over here.
It confirms the conclusions of Hughes.
The English version of his report can be found here:
http://www.clepair.net/statlineanalyse201208.html
FYI.
Best,
Hans H.J. Labohm
Richard Courtney:
I was aware of the 5 hour 2788MW limit for the UK — but you missed the point. Using that capacity with wind supplying the water pumping would make possible supplying 2788MW continuous power with standby power that could be cold, until that five hour reserve dropped to 1 hour, say, whereupon backup plants would be brought online and less power taken from the battery as the backups begin operating efficiently. The backups would continue until energy reserves are recovered with a return of the wind/solar intermittents.
To make a concept such as this work, part of your “battery” might involve people who volunteer to be taken off the grid for short intervals in return for reduced rates (demand reduction as part of the reserve need) and there are other energy storage technologies other than hydro (wind energy to melt salt). You might also consider that the UK isn’t the only place a hydro-battery might be considered. The US has many times the UK’s capacity.
I’m aware of the cost issues involved. If cost were the only issue involved, we would not be discussing alternatives to fossil fuels. I presume reduction of CO2 emissions have a value offsetting added costs of wind and solar power. Perhaps you might try to determine from those who value CO2 reductions this offset, so a rational cost limit could be set for alternative power plants.
With no value for CO2 reductions, rational discussions are difficult.
Phil Lee
@ur momisugly richardscourtney:
Careful! Making a false accusation of slander is indeed defamatory.
I shall retrieve your earlier statement when I have access to a non-smart phone system.
JohnC said:
August 18, 2012 at 11:48 am
Mr. Sowell & Lee both seem to miss the point in their comments . . . . Battery, pumped hydro, molten salt, and other energy storage devices cannot compete economically with building a conventional power plant. Once they can, they will.
If this is a discussion only about economics, I did miss the point and so did JohnC. The only reason this discussion is being held is that some people place a value on CO2 emission reduction. That value is not given anywhere in these discussions.
Ignoring that value has led people to argue wind doesn’t reduce CO2 using a flawed backup scheme. The real issue is what is that value and what can be engineered to provide a net benefit.
But you guy carry on with you snidisms.
Whoops! several errors — try again.
JohnC said:
August 18, 2012 at 11:48 am
Mr. Sowell & Lee both seem to miss the point in their comments . . . . Battery, pumped hydro, molten salt, and other energy storage devices cannot compete economically with building a conventional power plant. Once they can, they will.
If this is a discussion only about economics, I did miss the point and so did JohnC. The only reason this discussion is being held is that some people place a value on CO2 emission reduction. That value is not given anywhere in these discussions.
Ignoring that value has led people to argue wind doesn’t reduce CO2 using a flawed backup scheme. The real issue is what is that value and what can be engineered to provide a net benefit.
But you guys carry on with your snidisms.
Philip Lee:
Thankyou for your post at August 18, 2012 at 2:08 pm concerning ‘pumped storage’. It includes this
Firstly, as I said, ‘pumped storage’ facilities exist to reduce the need for power stations to operate as reserve so they can provide power to meet the very short periods of peak demand’. So, any transfer of the ‘pumped storage’ for ‘smoothing’ output from windfarms would increase the need for power stations to operate as reserve and, thus, would increase CO2 emissions unless the power stations were nuclear. The only alternative would be to construct additional ‘pumped storage’ but, as I also said, there are few locations for such additional ‘pumped storage’ facilities. This true everywhere.
Importantly, the above article specifically refers to the use of windpower in the UK. There are no sites for additional ‘pumped storage’ in the UK and the UK’s nuclear plants operate to provide base load.
I addressed the issue of CO2 emission reductions form use of windpower in my above post at August 18, 2012 at 12:13 pm. Use of windpower cannot make any significant reductions to CO2 emissions from power generation and usually increases the emissions. The same is true for solar power – or any other intermittent electricity source – and for the same reasons.
Richard
There appears to be a misconception about the effective wind energy output being 25% of the installed capacity and that therefor 75% backup would be needed. The 25% value is the average over the year. However, windfarm output can vary from less than 5% of rated power to 100% during a single day. This means that backup always has to be OCGT/CCGT because only these plants can ramp up and down fast enough.
Last week in the UK the total wind energy output was less than 100MW (one hundred megawatt) whereas the installed capacity is 4648 MW. In the current situation, where almost all countries have wind contributions below 4% there is hardly any need for backup because the grid can cope with this variability.
However, the amount of backup has to be almost 100% when the total wind energy contribution increases to more than 10% of total electricity demand, because for long periods wind in large areas can be close to zero, like in the UK last week.
Check out the IEA Wind 2010 annual report table 3 for an overview of national wind energy generation: http://www.ieawind.org/index_page_postings/IEA%20Wind%202010%20AR_cover.pdf
Check out http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ to get an idea of wind energy contribution in a reasonably large country. This site shows graphs of all the used electricity generation types and the wind energy graph is very, very spikey…
the assumption that wind needs backing up by OCGT is wrong. wind can be backed up by coal, CCGT or in fact anything else. what is important is to predict the wind power correctly. it is errors in the prediction that may need meeting with faster acting reserve (or demand management etc).
like or loathe wind turbines, they are a low carbon source of power.
I do not know about the rest of you but I really dislike being herded to a predetermined conclusion and then told it is a “Compromise” and that is exactly what I see happening here in slow motion. I also see many here falling for it without recognizing they are being lead.
People in the USA have caught the US government bureaucrats Using the Delphi Technique to Achieve Consensus: How it is leading us away from representative government to an illusion of citizen participation The whole idea is to reach a predetermined “Consensus” but still leave the masses thinking they had participated in the decision making so the governed will feel they have “Ownership” of the decisions.
Pascal Lamy, World Trade Organization Director General in his talks on global governance has addressed the need for “Legitimacy” it is a common thread as can be seen here and here and here and especially here So after the failure of the Soviet Union they must have wised up and now consider “Legitimacy” or “Ownership” a concern for governance.
This is all part of the Hegelian/Marxian dialectic where a thesis (CAGW) and the anti-thesis (“Deniers” position) “played a part in the creation of a new synthetic phenomenon.” The only problem is we are not playing our part we have not moved on. We are still fighting tooth and nail over the temperature records and the science and that is why we are now called “DENIERS” in an attempt to marginalize us and remove us from the bargaining table.
That was what Fred Krupp’s article in the Wall Street Journal was all about: A New Climate-Change Consensus: It’s time for conservatives to compete with liberals to devise the best, most cost-effective climate solutions. It is an attempt to move forward to the next step, the predetermined “Synthesis” But that is alright, our politicians have already gotten the message even if we have not, so we have this from Presidential candidate Mitt Romney:
Well you get the idea, good ole’ Mitt is already compromising just like a good little puppet.
The really laughable part of this is the parts played by the World Bank. Robert Watson an employee of the World Bank was chair of the IPCC. The World Bank has all sorts of goodie two shoes “Sustainablility” propaganda such as Sustainable development is fundamental to the World Bank Group’s mission to reduce poverty. The Sustainable Development Network works with clients to encourage inclusive, green growth that can lead to sustainable development. We also know at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, the so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement,… hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol… and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions…
Obviously the World Bank is neck deep in CAGW. so what is the World Bank’s position on dirty nasty coal?
Well it looks like there is more than one way for the central bankers to put a leash on the third world countries. This spending is forty times that of 2009 Graph Interesting that those loans came AFTER the 2009 Copenhagen mess. See Forbes analysis of the mindset of the World Bank.
richardscourtney says:
August 18, 2012 at 2:02 pm
> On reflection, I am disappointed at your not having snipped the slanderous posting from Roger Sowell. The entire post is offensive innuendo and untrue based on a stated falsehood.
You seem to be doing a pretty good job defending yourself. There are enough comments on this thread so that most people have moved on.
A) I don’t get what you are driving at (you might be making a point to others that I do not follow).
B) The use of low-loss DC transmission around the world is a lot more prevalent than people know –
HVDC transmission lines – a compilation of projects:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:HVDC_transmission_lines
C) On long lines, the few disadvantages of DC are far outweighed by the benefits with regard to AC. You might be unawares that AC suffers from dielectric losses, requires substations variably every 200 miles, and the generation and final grid destination MUST be synchronized (aside from critical phase angle issues) … issues that DC does away with …
An ABB presentation titled:
HVDC Transmission
An economical complement to AC transmission
ABB
States their case simply for DC over AC on long lines
.
steve says:
August 18, 2012 at 2:33 pm
the assumption that wind needs backing up by OCGT is wrong. wind can be backed up by coal, CCGT or in fact anything else. what is important is to predict the wind power correctly.
=========================================================================
There is no way to predict wind energy output accurately, because it has a non-linear relation with wind force. On http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm attempts are made continuously to predict wind, but in most cases the results are pathetic. Also, predictive control systems are generally unstable, which is unsuitable for electric power supply.
@ur momisugly richardscourtney, poor little guy…. wanting to see his patently false statement from an earlier thread…whining on and on about slander and inept moderators. Sorry, but it took me awhile to stop laughing….. [for the record, the moderation at WUWT is outstanding, an exemplar for other blogs]
But, here is the reference, from
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/09/wind-power-not-coming-through-for-california-power-alert-issued-by-the-caiso/#comments
richardscourtney says:
August 10, 2012 at 4:25 am
.
.
.
“And the windfarms contribute no useful electricity to the grid at any time. ” [note, bold in the original. – R Sowell]
[end quote and reference]
The above statement by richardscourtney is indeed false, because for it to be true the First Law of Thermodynamics must be violated. I wrote as much in the comments to that thread.
Again, richardscourtney, it must be wonderful to live in a fairy land, and to make such ridiculous statements as the above. I laugh at you. Perhaps it would be more charitable for me to pity you.
And for the record, that same comment of yours from August 10, 2012 at 4:25 a.m. had a number of other false assertions, many of which I refuted in my comments on that thread. I don’t have the time nor the inclination to follow around behind you, pointing out your many false statements and laughing at you. But, it would certainly be entertaining!
It has a ‘consumer’ origin (IOW, no real basis) to it that I simply can’t stomach, Richard.
Today, it seems that everybody ‘feels’ they are qualified to ‘practice’ and pass judgement on everybody else’s technical field anytime they feel like it, dam-ned be the facts or history or painful engineering lessons learned along the way. I don’t practice brain surgery for a reason and I think power system planning might possibly be a field you should avoid …
.
Roger Sowell;
“And the windfarms contribute no useful electricity to the grid at any time. ” [note, bold in the original. – R Sowell]
[end quote and reference]
The above statement by richardscourtney is indeed false, because for it to be true the First Law of Thermodynamics must be violated. I wrote as much in the comments to that thread.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I read richarscourtney’s comment in its entirety, and it is very clear his remark was in context of wind power temporarily displacing capacity which must be built in order to backup wind power, and that it made far more sense just to build the capacity and rely on it instead. From that perpective, wind power indeed provides nothing useful to the power grid and in fact has a substantive negative impact on over all economics of the grid. There is nothing in that entire comment that has anything to do with physics from an energy balance perspective, and certainly nothing at all to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
You’r out of context quote and subsequent accusation can, in my opinion, be taken as either a deliberate misrepresentation that amounts to an egregious ad hominem attack, or a complete and total misundersanding of the argument being presented to you.
Either way Roger Sowell, you owe richardscourtney an apology. Failure to provide one will only damage your persona further.
_Jim;
For the most part I was agreeing with you, just making the point that there are limitations and in the context of wind power, dc transmission is impractical. Apologies if you meant your point to stand outside of the windpower discussion itself because I’d agree with you 100% there. We humans have progressed our capabilities to the point where we can control a considerable portion of our environment, and it drives me nuts when alarmists wail away about all the bad things that are going to happen to us as climate changes. No, we can’t stop a hurricane in its tracks obviously (yet) but for the most part we can control the things we need to. We can divert rivers, level mountains, and yes, move power from anywhere it is to anywhere we want it.
According to the BP Statistical Revue wind power in Spain and Portugal exceeds 15% of power generation. However there is an interesting proviso:
“Because of the unreliability of wind power (reflected in a low, ~25% utilisation factor), adding more wind generation capacity to the grid increases the need to boost the percentage of overall plant capacity set aside to provide ancillary services.
“Power generation from wind turbines in Spain and Portugal actually fell in 2011, despite continued growth in capacity, due to lower than average wind speeds.”
http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9041566&contentId=7075262
http://www.bp.com/sectionbodycopy.do?categoryId=7500&contentId=7068481
Despite hugely increasing their wind energy production, Chinese oil companies such as the China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), Sinopec, and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)
have recently been signing oil contracts in Iraq, Venezuela and Ghana. CNOOC tried to take over the US-based Unocal, the 9th largest energy company in the world, but withdrew their bid due to political opposition.
China’s CNOOC have recently bid $15 billion for Nexen, a Canadian oil and gas company based in Calgary, Alberta. “It has operations located around the world, including the North Sea in Europe, Colombia, the Gulf of Mexico, and Alberta’s Athabasca Oil Sands.” If successful they will gain control of significant oil sands reserves in Canada and no doubt hope to gain control of much more.
While western politicians are martyrs to climate change and renewable energy politics, much of the oil reserves in North America, without the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, could conceivably be piped to the west coast of Canada and be shipped to China.
Roger Sowell:
At August 18, 2012 at 1:30 pmI objected to your lie at August 18, 2012 at 1:01 pm that asserted of me
I pointed out that
You have compounded your lie at August 18, 2012 at 3:04 pm by claiming I said it at August 10, 2012 at 4:25 am in the thread at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/09/wind-power-not-coming-through-for-california-power-alert-issued-by-the-caiso/
That is a lie and anybody can check it is a lie with a click of a mouse.
I repeat
RETRACT AND APOLOGISE.
I copy what I actually said below.
Richard
…
The remainder of your post is meaningless twaddle.
You make silly dispute of my accurate statement that said
Your silly dispute ignores that my statement concerned useful electricity and I explained that this as follows.
And the windfarms contribute no useful electricity to the grid at any time .
The power stations need to provide all the power supplied from the grid when the windfarms are not supplying to the grid. When windfarms do supply electricity then they displace the power stations
(a) onto ‘spinning standby’ (so they continue to consume their fuel and emit their emissions)
or
(b) to operate at lower output. This reduces their efficiency so they increase their use of fuel and increase their emissions (this like driving a car at 10 mph in fifth gear: it can be done but it uses much fuel).
steve says:
August 18, 2012 at 2:33 pm
……like or loathe wind turbines, they are a low carbon source of power.
_____________________________–
That is a myth.
They are called a low carbon source of power because no one does an analysis of the real amount of energy used to produce a wind turbine, ship it and erect and maintain it vs the amount of energy it actually NET (without standby power) produces.
It is a bait and switch. The old fashion windmills made of wood and sail cloth were a low CO2 source of power. I certainly can see no reason they can not be introduced in the third world and built by the natives out of native materials in suitable places if applicable. However the bird slicing monstrosities are not low CO2. It takes a lot of energy to mine, smelt and forge steel and then ship it from China to wherever. It takes a lot of energy to bulldoze roads and pour concrete platforms. It takes a lot of energy to maintain them. The blades are so heavy they must be rotated USING ENERGY if their is no wind.
This is from Charles S. Opalek, PE (Professional Engineer)
And please call it low CO2 not low carbon. “Carbon (Diamonds) are a girl’s best friend, CO2 is a tree’s best friend”
_Jim:
I write to to answer the only point in your post addressed to me at August 18, 2012 at 3:24 pm.
I, too, am glad you do not practice brain surgery.
Richard
_Jim says: Really!!??
Yeah, really. There’s an equation I heard of called Ohm’s Law that, amazingly, seems to work for both AC and DC!
A look at pumped storage:
An example can be seen using Wikipedia and Google Earth. Of interest is the “pumped storage” associated with Kinzua (kin-zoo) Dam in northern Pennsylvania. Read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Dam
Use these coordinates [ 41.839736 n, 79.002619 w ] to get a better look. Zoom out until you can see the entire reservoir and compare it to the small circular storage basin on the ridge-top to the south. Can you scale this up to be really helpful? In whose back yard?
Be sure to read the section titled “Displacements” in the wiki link. Did then, and still do, have family from this area. Visited while the reservoir area was being cleaned out, and filling, and while the circular storage area was being hollowed out.
Has McIntyre become more sceptical of the science and public policy over the years? I’m detecting a sardonic overtone in his work. He used to be more neutral.
davidmhoffer says:
August 18, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Your (Roger Sowell’s) out of context quote and subsequent accusation can, in my opinion, be taken as either a deliberate misrepresentation that amounts to an egregious ad hominem attack, or a complete and total misundersanding of the argument being presented to you.
Either way Roger Sowell, you owe richardscourtney an apology. Failure to provide one will only damage your persona further.
======================================================
The two were in a fencing match. The actual points in the argument aside, Roger took something Richard had said and presented here earlier what he, Roger, thought of Richard’s comment as if Richard had actually stated that thought.
Again, the actual points in the argument aside, Roger can apoligize for this tactic without admitting Richard was right.
MikeM;
Yeah, really. There’s an equation I heard of called Ohm’s Law that, amazingly, seems to work for both AC and DC!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Are you certain? If you took the average voltage of an AC circuit, it would be zero. Yup, zero. AC differs from DC not only in that it has a cycle that is 1/2 negative and 1/2 positive, but also in that AC has a peak voltage considerably higher than the “effective” voltage. Since current rises and falls with voltage, but power rises and falls with the current squared, power losses in an AC circuit are much much much higher than in a DC circuit of the same effective voltage. In addition, there is a certain amount of capacitance in a long stretch of wire, which is nearly meaningless in a DC cirquit but which can become significant in a AC circuit.
If windmills increase CO2, I’m all for them. The earth is currently CO2-deprived, compared to its past history. More CO2 is good for biodiversity!