Newsbytes from the GWPF, Lies, Damn Lies And Green Statistics
Almost all predictions about the expansion and cost of German wind turbines and solar panels have turned out to be wrong – at least by a factor of two, sometimes by a factor of five. –Daniel Wentzel, Die Welt, 20 October 2012
When Germany’s power grid operator announced the exact amount of next year’s green energy levy on Monday, it came as a shock to the country. The cost burden for consumers and industry have reached a “barely tolerable level that threatens the de-industrialization of Germany”, outraged business organisations said. Since then politicians, business representatives and green energy supporters have been arguing about who is to blame for the “electricity price hammer”. After all, did not Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) promise that green energy subsidies would not be more than 3.6 cents per kilowatt hour? Now, however, German citizens have to support renewable energy by more than EUR 20 billion – instead of 14 billion Euros. How could Merkel be so wrong? –Daniel Wentzel, Die Welt, 20 October 2012
Cheaper natural gas prices in the U.S. could spell trouble for European chemical companies, as their rivals across the Atlantic benefit from lower costs. The U.S. shale-gas revolution has made natural gas roughly three times cheaper there than in Europe, and the U.S. chemical industry is reaping the benefits through cheaper energy and feedstock, leaving the European sector under the threat of increased competition. –Alessandro Torello, The Wall Street Journal, 24 October 2012
Peter Lilley MP has been appointed to the energy and climate change select committee, provoking an angry response from climate change campaigners. “The addition of climate change sceptic and oil company director Peter Lilley to the energy and climate change select committee is part of a growing picture,” said Greenpeace policy director Joss Garman. “With Owen Paterson as environment secretary and anti-wind campaigner John Hayes now energy minister, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Tories are gearing up to assault the Climate Change Act and increase the UK’s reliance on expensive, imported, polluting fossil fuels.” –Charles Maggs, Politics.co.uk, 25 October 2012
Last week, David Cameron chaired a meeting of the Quad — the coalition’s decision-making body — at which senior ministers attempted, and failed, to agree the precise content of the Energy Bill. According to a report in The Times, it could result in a cap on new onshore wind farm developments. –James Murray, GreenBusiness, 24 October 2012
Next month, the coalition government in Britain intends to publish its new energy bill. The coalition partners, however, are increasingly at odds over the direction of the United Kingdom’s energy policy. In view of growing antagonism, it remains unclear whether the bill can be salvaged or whether the increasing friction will lead to its delay. It is doubtful that an energy bill fudge would actually be workable, let alone economically viable. There is a growing risk that it will prove to be highly unpopular as the costs of these measures are likely to further inflate energy bills artificially. In this case, the crisis of energy policy making could quickly turn into a veritable government fiasco. –Benny Peiser, Public Service Europe, 22 October 2012
Poland’s use of a veto to block the EU’s draft energy roadmap for 2050 has no legal basis, according to internal legal documents from the Council of the European Union. There is only one problem with this interpretation: It is outdated. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, Article 194 (2) gives member states a veto over the choice between different energy sources and the general structure of energy supply. –Benny Peiser, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 25 October 2012
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The Germans got so many things right that it is hard to understand how they got wind economics so wrong. I don’t have a snappy answer and most are trite anyway. But it is worth looking at this deeply. That an advanced nation would place itself so completely at risk of collapsing its entire energy supply, at vast expense or not, indicates a massive failure on a technical basis. We always respected the Germans for the very thing they are failing at now. My how times have changed.
It doesn’t help that our Prime Minister has a Father in Law that has massive investments in Wind Turbine projects. We know how women are the power behind any successful male politician.
David Cameron must bite the bullet and scrap wind power energy generation. I don’t think he has the guts to do it. We have 400 years of coal reserves, massive frakkable gas sources and yet we the taxpayers are still subsidising Cameron’s Father in Law, oh! and also HM the Queen who gets a massive handout each year for owning the UK sea floor out to 12 miles so all those inefficient/expensive off shore wind farms are costing us dear. 38 Million quid to the Queen each year……..
Faux Science Slayer said @ur momisugly October 25, 2012 at 9:44 am
Faux, where, apart from your writing, will I find any evidence that “Ammonium Chloridadized Silicon” even exists, let alone being “a toxic carcinogen”?
“The elephant in the wind turbine”
“Most turbines require significant repairs and even complete overhauls in the 5-7 year range”
“Wind turbine gearboxes have yet to achieve their original design life goals of 20 years.”
http://www.stle.org/assets/news/document/Cover_Story_06-10.pdf
Yes, yes, but see how much carbon dioxide has been removed from the planet’s atmosphere, thereby making each and every one of us, our children and polar bears that bit less catastrophisized ……
…. hold on a sec !!
Global Warming scare is finished – There is no doubt that the global warming scare is over now that even the most warmist of newspapers, the Guardian, has realised that.
Renewable energy has turned sour for ethical investors.
http://scef.org.uk/news/1-latest-news/345-global-warming-scare-is-finished
Climate changes: the importance of supra-national institutions in nurturing the paradigm shifts of scientific development.
BY MIKE HASELER BSC MBA
Scottish Climate & Energy Forum, 7 Poplar Drive, Lenzie, UK
“Arguably that the only group that has significantly benefited from “man-made” climate change has been the commercial interests in renewables whose lobbying has diverted huge public subsidies to themselves. This has enriched a few in the developed nations at the expense of both the developed nations poor (who pay disproportionately for energy) and the developed world. They have suffered as the focus has been diverted from life saving work tackling healthcare problems from climate catastrophe whatever the cause.”
“In contrast, to this robust science for CO2 greenhouse warming, the climate models also include massive “feedbacks”, which add up to 500% to the CO2 effect to make models fit past data. Their use is far from explicit and very opaque to the policy makers who use these models. The state of knowledge of these feedbacks is very immature and certainly not scientifically validated (Collins et al., 2006). Indeed there is strong evidence that feedbacks are far smaller than those used in the climate models (Spencer & Braswell 2011, Lindzen & Choi 2011, Allan 2011, Asten 2012).”
“Agreement does seem to be coalescing around the idea that whilst the certainty of man-made effects of CO2 may have been overstated, we should continue to research the potential range of climate scenarios and understand the potential risks, particularly where those risks are having a direct impact today or are reasonably short-term enough to give confidence in detailed predictions.”
http://scef.org.uk/attachments/article/106/Climate%20changes.pdf
fenbeagleblog says:
October 25, 2012 at 10:22 am
…
Well said (I hope there’s a cartoon to go with that!)
We don’t need a Merkel, we need a miracle….(sadly enough…)
@David Wells
You got your AC/DC mixed up….windmills & solar cells produce DC, which was the original Edison system with high line voltage/wattage drops. Constant RPM hydro and turbine generators can produce AC which is the Tesla/Westinghouse system that the whole world uses.
@PompousGit
My “Green Prince” article was written and posted at Canada Free Press in July 2010 and the Amnionium Chloridadized waste fact was in my notes and added when posted at my website. Unfortunately i did not realize then how malleable the web was, i did not always footnote which i discovered was a problem. Then when i did get more meticulous about footnoting, i found the links were deleted or suddenly paywalled. I have authored ~150 articles on a wide range of science and history subjects, researched on-line and from my 1000 pg/month “book habit”. I’ve gotten better on footnoting, and NO material is single sourced at this time, but it would be impossible to save/retrieve every fact. My opinions are clearly stated, and serve as a basis for you to expand with your own research. I was baffled by the “magic” of photocells until i discovered that this is a one-time, one-way molecular erosion which never produces even a fraction of the input energy and results in enormous amounts of production and future waste. Please, do your own research, the world in in great need of teachers of Truth.
J Martin says:
October 25, 2012 at 11:51 am
Deutschland Uber Alles
to
Deutschland Unter Alles
in one easy renewable lesson.
Next up, the UK.
…
reminds me of the P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) piece Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice:
“It’s Alice, it’s Alice, it’s Alice über (ueber) Deutschland”….
with the watermelons, er, Greens, it looks to be getting that way…..
just have a look at the saga of Stuttgart 21…nice train station (Stuttgart) cut into
a third, at an enormous cost…whatever were they thinking (or were they thinking at all….)….
Bird choppers going up all over Baden Wuerttemberg…but no real infrastructure to back
them up (though coal will probably end up carrying the load, so to speak).
(Where’s Kohl when we need him….)….
Faux Science Slayer said @ur momisugly October 25, 2012 at 3:56 pm
in response to my query re the mysterious “Ammonium Chloridadized Silicon, a toxic carcinogen”
Aah, the Phil Jones response. The irony…
How could Merkel be so wrong?
——————-
1. She is an idiot. 2. She is a politician so she was probably lying.
Faux, elemental silicon used in semiconductors and solar cells is made by reduction of silicon dioxide with carbon, at a very elevated temperature. The reaction is:
SiO2 + 2C => Si + 2CO
The carbon is high purity charcoal; typically from wood.
No ammonium chloridadized silicon waste will be produced by this reaction. As a chemist, I can also say that “chloridadized” is not a valid chemical term. Chlorinated, maybe.
One major production method for photovoltaic-quality high-purity silicon involves using silicon tetrachloride (SiCl4), some of which ends up in the waste stream. Maybe you meant that? However, SiCl4 will react with ammonium (NH4), and so ammonium clorosilicates such as (NH4)2SiCl6 will not exist as pure discrete compounds.
It’s possible that you might have meant to describe the waste that’s produced by the semiconductor industry in processing silicon wafers during manufacture of semiconductor devices. One of these wastes is ammonium hexafluorosilicate, with the formula (NH4)2SiF6. See here.
I see The Pompus Git called this out already. I had taken a different tack, but your response is remarkable, so I’ll remark.
This is ridiculous.
I’m happy to accept that you wrote Chloridadized in your notes, I have trouble believing you blindly accepted or didn’t ask about the chemistry to figure out what you should have written.
I’m mystified at what you mean by how “malleable the web was” – Chloridadized is simply not a word. I Googled |Ammonium “Chloridadized” Silicon| and got three hits:
wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/25/an-ill-wind-blows-from-wind-turbiines/
wattsupwiththat.com/…/americas-clean-energy-policies-need-a-reality-check-say-stanford-researchers/
http://www.fauxscienceslayer.com/pdf/Green_Prince.pdf
Three references, they’re all your mispelling.
“My opinions are clearly stated,” we’ve noticed, and we’ve found them wanting.
“i discovered that this is a one-time, one-way molecular erosion” you mentioned phosphorus before, I assumed you were trying to refer to doping the silicon to create the P-N junctions where photons knock off excess electrons. Or were you referring to how PV cells degrade over time. I’m not sure what happens there, but I doubt it’s “one-time, one-way molecular erosion”. Besides, it’s not really molecules, it’s more like cubic silicon crystals with defects.
“Please, do your own research, the world [is] in great need of teachers of Truth.” Yeah, I can agree with that, but you haven’t convinced me researching your teachings is anything but a wild goose chase!
Faux Science Slayer says:
October 25, 2012 at 3:56 pm
I did look into this a bit. You said in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/02/americas-clean-energy-policies-need-a-reality-check-say-stanford-researchers/#comment-974283 :
Sigh. Have you ever wondered why a solar cell has two wires?
Did you read George Smith’s reply less than an hour later? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/02/americas-clean-energy-policies-need-a-reality-check-say-stanford-researchers/#comment-974320 In case you haven’t figured it out, George is one of those “teachers of truth” you’re looking for. Please learn from him.
1) Just like rural china skipping land lines for cellular, photo-voltaic has valid applications far from generating centers. Africa and Mid-East are good examples.
2) Where coal-fired plants exist, have differentiated fees added to a) pay for any pollution control by lovers of fossil fuels, and have lovers of renew ables pay the entire subsidy costs for their favorite.
So there!
Pat Frank said @ur momisugly October 25, 2012 at 5:11 pm several things that made sense in light of my request of Faux. Thanks Pat. I always enjoy your posts 🙂
I believe Europe needs to double down on green energy. Some people’s purpose in life is to simply serve as a warning to others. Last century it was the USSR’s and China’s turn. This century it’s Europe’s turn.
Let’s take a broader ‘system’ view on this, shall we?
What’s needed for local ‘feed’ to the power distribution/’collection’ network (the plethora of 3-phase lines running between wind turbines back to a switch/transformer yard):
. . AC – For step up and step down transformers, switch-gear AC switches (there is
. . . . . . . no easy ‘break’ with a DC switch so HV is a little more difficult to ‘interrupt’)
What’s needed for ‘transport’ of electrical power *under water*;
. . . DC – on account of zero capacitive ‘load’ seen. A HV AC transmission system
. . . . . . . . would see a heavily capacitive ‘power factor’ load when sending AC via
. . . . . . . . underground ‘shielded’ cables
What do the BIG generators output:
. . . . AC – from switched-excited (inverters feeding either the rotors or the stators and
. . . . . . . . then sometimes another inverter after that depending on the architecture)
.
Let’s take a look at the big GE units to see the varied techniques used to excite, extract or convert ‘output’ electrical energy:
AC Excited rotor (AC-DC-AC converter drives the excited rotor) produces AC directly:
http://www.ge-energy.com/content/multimedia/_files/downloads/GE%20WTG%20Modeling-v4.5.pdf
A posted-generated inverter design that produces AC from the DC in the nacelle:
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/09/start/turning-towards-efficient-energy
.
Ric Werme said @ur momisugly October 25, 2012 at 5:51 pm
George’s response to Faux: “You and Myrrh should get together for a Science Jamboree.”
Priceless! That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all week :-))))))))
I’m no fan of “wind power”, but Germany’s power grid operators are a winy bunch, and more importantly greedy bastards.They will not refrain from any propaganda if it helps them to justify the shameless prices they ask, or to further increase their already ludicrous profits they pocket – so any claims of “de-industrialization of Germany” should be take with lots of grains of salt.
Crispin in Jakarta says:
October 25, 2012 at 1:10 pm
“The Germans got so many things right that it is hard to understand how they got wind economics so wrong. I don’t have a snappy answer and most are trite anyway. But it is worth looking at this deeply. That an advanced nation would place itself so completely at risk of collapsing its entire energy supply, at vast expense or not, indicates a massive failure on a technical basis. We always respected the Germans for the very thing they are failing at now.”
Hi I’m German.
1) How we got the wind economics wrong? Simple. Most Germans know squat about economics.
2) While the populace at large is easily deluded by green and socialist pied pipers (after believing in Waldsterben and acid rain for 10 years, they went on to believe in Global Warming, etc., what’s next? Ah well, frighten them with Fukushima or with GM food, that always works) the engineers develop a plethora of solutions; from Methane synthesis, Li Ion battery buffers, to micro cogeneration systems, for instance gas powered VW motors as apartment building heaters/generators.
Don’t be confused by the wind turbines. Wind and Solar produce only 1.5 percent of German primary energy consumption. Their only significance is in moving 20 billion Euros a year from the ratepayer’s pocket to the generator’s pocket. Energetically they are OF NO CONCERN WHATSOEVER.
As for the 20billion lost/moved around a year: A very rich country can do very stupid things for a very long time.
David Wells says:
October 25, 2012 at 12:16 pm
“Germany has 13,750 1st generation wind turbines that need to be replaced but there is no money to fund it so they will be left to rot as they expire a blot on the landscape.”
In Germany the operator of wind turbines gets a permit for 20 years. It can be renewed but if the authorities decide not to, the operator has the duty of removing the structure after expiration.
BTW, they look beautiful when they’re not turning. I travelled 400 km 2 days ago; they stood like giant works of art in the mist, pointing in different directions, not moving. A blocking high… I wouldn’t mind keeping them as a reminder of a huge failure.
“In the UK we cant plant another 30,000 by 2015 when our coal permits expire so we are in a fix if Germany can burn coal now and is building new coal why is the UK different??”
Kyoto, designed by the German Bundestag, gave Germany an advantage by defining 1990 as reference point. We were able to fullfill our obligations by wrecking the ancient plants of the DDR. Under Kyoto and the EU’s 20:20:20 plan, all nations except Germany are therefore forced to de-industrialize.
If I were you, I would exit the EU; it would be a very wise move.
outtheback says:
October 25, 2012 at 10:36 am
“Depending on how one does the numbers I think that Germany will find that they have to increase the levels of subsidies even further in about 5 years as the solar panels installed pre 2007 will start to reduce their output and will need to be replaced if the output per panel is to be kept up. ”
No; every FAILING renewable energy contraption makes our power CHEAPER. (That’s the nature of inefficient, subsidized systems – when they go, more efficient solutions can take their place)
SandyInLimousin says:
October 25, 2012 at 10:40 am
“sergeiMK
Quote in article is “more than EUR 20 billion” so using your 545×10^9 kWh and the figure of the subsidy given in the link as 5.3 € cents per kWh that gives 28.8 billion €, more than 20 billion € I think. For the author more than 20 sounded better than less than 30 I should tink.”
No, it’s only 20 bn a year. The reason for the discrepancy is probably that from the start, heavy industrial electricity users like Aluminum smelters, copper smelters, steelworks were exempt from paying the subsidy per kWh as long as they were subject to international competition. These exemptions have been expanded; the government wants to prevent factory closures.
There is a lot of unhappiness over the hike in energy prices here in Germany at the moment. Figures in the daily Zeitung this morning suggest that it will cost every household between €90 and €150 per year more for any household using 3,500 kW per year. It may not sound much, but taken with all the other rising prices and static incomes, it hurts. It’s too early to say the ‘Green Dream’ is about to unravel, but I suspect it is getting close. A few ‘brown-outs’ or real ‘blackouts’ this winter could be the tipping point.