Guest essay by Eric Worrall
It would all be so simple if engineers just got on with it and solved the problems.
Science can succeed on climate change where politics fails
And if someone makes money from finding a solution, who cares?
NICK BUTLERFor the past 20 years the orthodox response to the threat of climate change has been focused on the search for a global agreement to reduce emissions. Such an approach is entirely logical and rational. Climate change is a global risk and so everyone should be involved in the response. The only problem is that the approach has failed. The Paris conference in 2015 brought people together and collected a range of loose promises from almost every country in the world. Those promises in aggregate were inadequate, and some have already been forgotten as regimes have changed, not least in the US. Many countries are taking action to mitigate climate change, but these actions don’t add up to an answer. Potential global solutions such as a universal carbon tax remain off the agenda.
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What is the alternative? The best hope for limiting emissions comes from the application of science to the energy market. That means finding sources of energy that can be made available to all the world’s citizens, at a price they can afford, enabling them to switch away from the carbon-intensive fuels such as coal that are the main source of the problem. If politics cannot solve climate change, perhaps science and economics can do better.
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Some years ago a group of scientists launched the Global Apollo Programme to Combat Climate Change at the London School of Economics — a concept designed in the belief that science could produce answers to a clear challenge just as happened in the 1960s space programme in the US. This initiative needs to be made global. It should begin with an open-minded approach and a willingness to fund work which offers the prospect of practical answers.
Politics may have failed, but rationality has not. If one approach does not work, the logic is to try another.
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/217fff44-d2d6-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5
Trying to apply logic to green claims can be entertaining, as long as you don’t take their claims too seriously.
For example, greens claim renewable prices are falling rapidly, that renewables are already cheaper than coal – so why is government intervention needed? Why not just wait a few years for prices to fall to the point that the economic case for switching to renewables is utterly overwhelming? Why is that green “Apollo Project” still considered so necessary?
Greens claim Climate Change is an existential threat – so are so many greens anti-nuclear? We could replace most dispatchable coal and gas with dispatchable nuclear power in less than a decade, cut global CO2 emissions in half with minimal economic disruption, by copying the 1970s French Nuclear Programme.
Greens claim the threat of dangerous anthropogenic climate change is settled science – so why do greens put up such a fight when other scientists ask to see their data?
And of course, my new personal favourite – we can switch to renewables, when engineers solve the problems.
Nothing about the mainstream green position on climate change and renewable energy makes sense.
As proof of these people’s utter ignorance, they don’t even seem to be aware of the advanced nuclear technology
represented by molten salt reactors. The Chinese understand the revolutionary technology and so do the Indians and both govts are forging ahead full speed to commercialize -as are about half a dozen companies.
Moltex Energy has provided an estimate of the economics of their design, which cleverly makes use of some existing nuclear reactor components already in production.They claim a levelized cost of less than 4 cents per kWhr, cheaper than any othe energy technology. Production of the reactrs will occur in factories, and site
preparation is minimal, no coling body of water needed – they can be sited anywhere – within cities, etc. Totally safe and able to load follow, these reactors replace not only baseload generators, but peak load generators as well. Build costs roughly $2 1/2 billion per gigawatt. This is proven technology, been around for 60 plus years, but never practical when saddled with carbon moderators or stainless steel reactors vessels. There are a dozen or more distinct designs, which solve the practicality issue in a variety of ways. Moltex Energy forsakes expensive advanced reactor metalurgy and uses existing stainless steel fuel rods, in a sacrificial manner – they are removed from the system and replaced when 5 years old. Brilliant.
“We can switch to renewables when engineers solve the problems”.
Yes, and had we WAITED, we would not have wasted BILLIONS on non-working solutions. Yet, here we are, wasting away. WHY?
I think we need to canvas the U.S. forests with live cam continuous video images of clear cut forest operations with cutting, hauling, loading, shipping, and unloading at UK boilers. Some pictures of displaced animals would also be helpful.
“Politics may have failed but rationality has not.”(!)
What did poli fail at? A Stalinesque decree backed up by force? Gulags for sceptics? Do we have a new definition of rationality? Here is the old one from Oxford:
“the ability to think clearly and make decisions based on reason rather than emotions”
Is there any sort of “Green Energy” that does not arguably have some effect on the weather/climate?
I read all the other comments first and I can’t believe no one has mentioned this:
Except there is no problem to be solved. While I’ll agree CO2 is a GHG, the modern temperature record shows temperature goes up and temperature goes down and temperature stays steady all while atmospheric CO2 levels increase at a steady pace, so CO2 clearly does not control temperature. The only other coincident response is a greening of the Earth. There. Problem solved.
Well, now that the climate obsessed have made it clear to the engineers what they want I’m sure it will happen overnight. The magical thinking it takes to be a climate extremist would embarrass a medieval Inquisition priest.
I priced three different solar Companies for 10 m2 panels on my roof in Ontario. All cited $30,000 to do it and could not connect to the grid. I would still get a bill, no rebate. It would never be paid off while the panels aged and died. The point is, Ontario is/was a centre for corrupt renewable businesses. We’ll probably never get our money back. A big box furniture store covered its entire roof with panels at my expense. I think the worst of it is that there is no need for R&D if the old tech is supported by subsidies. We gloriously and triumphantly voted the Liberal Party out the last election but the damage has been done by snowflakes and environmental lobby groups and their True Believers.
Ontario also previously drove out the lowest cost providers of panels with its local content rules. The politicos and special interest knew exactly what they were doing with that. Cost effiency and competition is the last thing on their mind.
Nobody in the world is trying to come up with a different energy source. Nope, nobody. The greens seem to think that the solution will just magically appear when faced with .. ‘ you’ve been bad. No more heat for you in the winter ‘ ….. Greens, are not scientists or engineers. How long has the world been working on nuclear fusion? I am certain that if it worked, it’d be deployed big time. And it may in time, and when it does, it will replace fossil fuels. By way of comparison, it is like asking the Wright brothers to design an F 22 raptor when flight hasn’t been developed or to develop a quantum computer when we are still working with radio tubes for transistors. Many different technologies have to develop before a new level of product occurs.
I ‘just know’ the greens are sitting on how to make a square gravity wave. If only they would tell the scientific community how to do it!
They can’t even decide if the “problem” of energy is one of science or of engineering.
It is neither. It s a problem of not having enough socialism, or at least that’s their goal.
Our universities were polarised. Engineers went to work and artsies went into government. It’s the way of the nanny state.
If you actually wanted to solve climate change by finding ways to minimise disruption to our present societies and economies whilst maximising the reduction of emission, large scale international agreements are absolutely the worst thing to do. The best way to do it is to set a carbon tax and incentive (i) efficient energy usage and (ii) new ways to generate or produce non-C02 emitting energy.
The solutions are best found by 1,000s of people with the right incentives trying all sorts of things, not some massive, government-directed plan. The comparisons with the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Programme are misguided – and Apollo was probably very inefficient anyway.
But of course the goal of most activists is not to actually solve the problem but to use the problem to change the world to what they want.
The image is missing the money going into someone’s pocket.
Turning CO2 into money is what we are trying to do. Carbon Capture Utilization. We transform the CO2 into useable-saleable products. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQRQ7S92_lo&authuser=0
Not only is this good for the economy, but if preventing the CO2 from going into the atmosphere is good for the environment, then our CCU System is also good for the environment.
And there is more particulates in combusted coal exhaust that can also be recovered and sold. The coal ash has a number of uses. More jobs created.
Greens opposing nuclear power don’t support renewable energy because of any climate threat. No one puts their economy at risk because they trust climate scientists on a ‘more likely than not‘ bet of dangerous climate change in 50 years time. Greens ‘believe in’ dangerous climate change because it’s a convenient way to sell renewable energy (to themselves as well as others). Our prior motives often drive our belief systems. Their commitment to renewables was based on neo-Malthusian, naturalism & scarcity obsessed worldview. They believe in wind and solar power because these forms are defined as ‘sustainable’. They believe sustainable energy is not limited by their fears of resource limits. It’s more like religious faith, or political commitment. A faith the nature is right. Nuclear power is seen are profoundly anti-nature. Their commitment to renewables preceded their climate concern. So greens fear of climate change is more a collectively induced hallucination. They will still oppose nuclear power on the basis nuclear power is unsustainable and polluting. That’s what they believe, whether it’s true or not.
Renewable energy is also their primary vehicle for climate optimism. Limits obsessives often become pessimistic. Pessimism leads to inaction not action. So they need to believe in sustainable, renewables just to keep going.
“Nothing about the mainstream green position on climate change and renewable energy makes sense.”
Actually, it makes a great deal of sense. If the world is going to adopt wind and solar energy on a really large scale, we are looking at costs in excess of $100 trillion. Anyone associated in any way with such expenditures is likely to end up rich beyond dreams of avarice. From this point of view it makes a great deal of sense to be anti-coal, anti-nuclear, indeed anti anything that would detract from the continued and expanded use of wind and solar.
If you follow the money, most things are explained.
The world is not going to adopt wind and solar energy on a really large scale. Because it is impossible. Wind and solar only make sense for electricity when they are free-riding other Dispatchable energy sources.
…we can switch to renewables when engineers solve the problems.”
Sounds reasonable to me. Rollback green energy programs now, founding only research until we find power sources that work better than fossil fuels and nuclear.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf
In 2010 Mark Jacobsen and Mark Delucchi wrote the above 2 papers on going 100% green.
They didn’t dare to actually put in the TOTAL COST of going that route. It took subsequent analyzers to figure it out and they came to a number of $90 trillion. However even at that the paper had enormous flaws. I quote
1) ” and find that with
pumped hydro storage or sufficiently large water reservoirs, the
combination of wind and hydropower could virtually eliminate
back-up generation from gas-fired plants.”
1) This statement was made on the basis of 1 study on 1 location. Assuming that there are a lot of places where the above is not possible, then the whole concept dies.
2) “Interconnecting geographically disperse wind, solar, or wave
farms to a common transmission grid smoothes out electricity
supply – and demand – significantly”
2) The authors fail to mention the transmission losses over long distances and do not adequately account for the total capital costs of interconnecting by ignoring the head and regional office costs .
3) “The use of EV batteries to store electrical energy, known as
‘‘vehicle-to-grid,’’ or V2G, is especially promising, albeit not
necessarily easy to implement”
3) The authors gloss over all the problems involved including the non availability of massive storage batteries.
4) “Forecast weather to plan energy supply needs better”
4) Even 1 day weather forecasts can be wrong. Also winds are a very local phenomena. It is impossible to forecast total wind supply for any area.
5) “No such optimization analysis has been done for a 100% WWS
system in a major region of the world (let alone for all regions of the world) so this clearly is a critical area for new research. Although
we do not know exactly what the lowest-cost 100% WWS system
will look like in any particular region”
5) The authors condemn their own study with the above 2 statements.
6) “How-
ever, it appears that eliminating fossil-fuel subsidies and charging
environmental-damage taxes would compensate for the extra cost
of the currently most expensive WWS systems only if climate-
change damage was valued at the upper end of the range of
estimates in the literature. ”
6) Since there are NOT going to be any climate change /global warming costs, this alone makes their whole study conclusion of a less costly future 100% renewable power system bogus.
7) ” Assuming that it is politically
infeasible to add to fossil-fuel generation carbon taxes that would
more than double the price of electricity, eliminating subsidies and
charging environmental damage taxes cannot by themselves make
the currently most expensive WWS options economical.”
7) The authors condemn their own study
8) “improving the efficiency of end use or substituting low-energy
activities and technologies for high-energy ones, directly reduces
the pressure on energy supply, which means less need for higher
cost, less environmentally suitable resources.”
8) The authors don’t understand my 4th law of economics
My 4th law states that any attempt by governments to lower energy usage by promoting energy efficiency is doomed to failure. the reason is simple. If an individual saves money by increased efficiency on energy ; that individual will either put the saved money in the bank or spend it. If he/she spends it it will involve using energy of some sort. If he/she puts it into the bank, then the bank will lend that money to someone else that will use the money to either buy products that use energy or some service that uses energy. Either way energy is not saved in the end.
9) “With sensible broad-based
policies and social changes, it may be possible to convert 25% of
the current energy system to WWS in 10–15 years and 85% in
20–30 years, and 100% by 2050.”
9) The authors numbers don’t add up. By 2030 the % of installed capacity of renewables will be only 40% according to the authors own figures. However their whole report is based on costs associated with 100% installed capacity by 2030.
We can only save energy by not doing things or making energy use more efficient. This will lead to Jevons’ paradox, because we aren’t about to stop doing useful things. When energy efficiency improves, energy use will increase. This is an observation first described by Jevons over 100 years ago.
Energy use also increases when doing NOT useful things. I would say that a large % of energy use in an advanced industrial society is spent on frivolous uses.
We don’t we just develop teleportation? It would be even more “fossil free”.
For the rest of energy needs, just invest in mutant giant hamster.
Your comments added a lot to the discussion. NOT
Who are you, again?
Never mind. Nobody cares.
[?? Not called for. .mod]
[?? Not called for. .mod]
Nor were the MANY vicious repeated attacks against me.
About which you never seemed to care. Sad!
Hello,
In a few years it will be a runaway climate, unless we are able to extract CO from the atmosphere and convert it to a harmless substance, and our society will terminate itself.
The best way to do this quickly and affordably is with mass tree planting. It absorbs CO and water and makes the planet cooler… Why are politicians so corrupt they only think of economy and jobs when our environment is the most valuable asset we have on this planet?
[???? Carbon Monoxide = CO. .mod]
The “wreckeconomics” of wind power. We keep getting told that wind generated electricity is getting cheaper. Simple engineering really, sticking a 4 MW generator atop a 100 metre high tower with 80 metre long blades blowing in the wind, and scattering hundreds across the countryside.
But what happens when the wind doesn’t blow? That requires 100% backup by reliable coal/gas generators so we now have 200% of required capacity – double the investment, with the only saving when the wind is blowing is the fuel cost for coal/gas.
What’s that you say? Cheaper batteries are the answer. So let’s double the number of wind generators to store energy for those windless days. Dream on.
As with so many things allegedly green or eco-sensible, this statement is pure fiction.
Without stopping at the first fiction premise where CO₂ is demonized and condemned and focusing strictly on energy production, this snippet is strictly fantasy nonsense. As so many other commenters point out above, Financial Times is pushing unicorns.
1) Greens and other eco-looney ignore all of the seriously major problems with most renewables while pushing this fiction.
a) A key eco-feature is to deny rational thought preceding any consideration of a renewable energy installation. Instead, greens and eco-looney push construction over any other choice.
— i) A practice that means no engineers have prepared lists of dangers, problems, concerns or issues with renewable energy installations.
— ii) Even when serious problems with renewable energy installations are identified, greens, leftists and politicians utterly ignore the problems
Renewables are massively land inefficient while producing unreliable poor quality electricity.
A very apt statement that highlights greens, leftists and the eco-looney whole approach to climate and energy, even today.
* The problem being that economics are ignored, except when enticing renewable energy investors while scamming ordinary consumers.
* Politicians are involved, because they have been bought themselves, either through funds or through the enticing allure of greater political power.
* While science, i.e. real science, has been ignored, or demonized when inconvenient findings have conflicted with politician and eco-green zealots.
An International effort — likened to an Apollo-like effort to put man on the Moon — but aimed at cheap clean energy for all is an excellent and probably necessary idea.
It has no downside, if the money for it is transferred from the currently mis-spent billions wasted on “global warming research”. Regardless of one’s position on the AGW issue, discovering a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy that does not pollute or use up our environment is a WIN WIN WIN.
Some newer technologies are close and just need to be pushed over the hump — some have not even been imagined yet.
We should get on with it.
We already have the solution to provide cheap and reliable electrity generation. It’s called nuclear energy. All we need to do is to get an international agreement to build all plants to the same design and it will become super cheap because the parts can then be mass produced, instead of using expensive one off components as now. The design can be arrived at by examining existing plants to find which design offers a solution which is cheap, reliable, durable, and safe. Of course the greens won’t agree because they do not want a solution. It would negate their argument that we need to destroy capitalism, which is their real aim That is why they are so anti nuclear.
They have a blind faith in BEVs replacing ICE cars and there’s no doubt there’s some excellent technology and engineering in putting thousands of Lithium battery cells together to add up to safe reliable battery modules and further combine those into a total car battery pack. The Tesla3 is cutting edge in that respect but you really need to delve into the battery module to appreciate the nature of the mountain they’re trying to climb-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=TdUqQZC2dcE
No matter blind faith in technology solving the problem and just like solar panels it will all become really cheap for the masses once they ramp up production with economies of scale they cry. It’s nonsense when you recognise those lego brick individual Lithium cells are already mature technology and made in vast numbers and here’s the man close to the problem speaking heresy for the true believers-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/motoring/news/why-youll-always-pay-extra-for-evs/ar-BBO5c2C
Not to worry as these cheap BEVs for the masses are all going to be charged with solar and wind power one day and you just have to do some imagineering to see the future clearly like they do although you might like a wee bit more down to earth comparisons with the current state of play-
https://insideevs.com/6-electric-cars-cost-least-per-kilowatt-hour/
Artsies went into government and engineers went to work.