Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
From the Spectator:
Japan has just raised its target for reducing carbon emissions from 26 per cent to 46 per cent (by 2030 from 2013 levels). But how was this figure arrived at, environment minister Shinjiro Koizumi was asked? Through a careful analysis of the threat and a realistic assessment of what could be achieved, taking all relevant factors into consideration? Well, er no, according to Koizumi, the number 46 just appeared to him in ‘silhouette’ in a sort of vision.
Shinjiro Koizumi, son of former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, made the comments in an interview with the TV station TBS last weekend. The interviewer, despite her face mask, was clearly stunned by the revelation that the country’s emission target did not appear to have any scientific basis. She asked the minister to confirm what he had said; and he did.
Clearly, the country is in the best of hands …
So once again I take up my quixotic quest to stop countries from emulating lemmings and following each other jumping off the cliff. Here is the ugly truth.
In 2013, Japan emitted 1.3 gigatonnes (GT, 109 metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide (CO2). In the most recent year, Japan emitted 1.1 GT of CO2. To get to the magic number of 54% of 2013 emissions, they have to cut emissions down to where they’re emitting 709 megatonnes (Mt, 106 metric tonnes) per year. So they need to reduce their emissions by 396 Mt/yr. (Note that this does not mean reducing emissions by 396 Mt every year. It means reducing their yearly emission rate by 396 Mt.)
How much do they need to reduce their fossil fuel use to do this? Well, Japan emits about 245,000 tonnes of CO2 per terawatt-hour (TWh, or 1012 watt-hours) of fossil fuel energy use. That means that they’ll have to reduce fossil fuel use by about 1,620 TWh per year. (Current Japanese fossil-fuel use for energy is about 4,540 TWh/yr.)
To calculate the extra CO2-emission-free generation capacity they’ll need, we have to divide the terawatt-hours/year by 8,760 hours per year to convert to TWh of generation capacity … and then double it.
Why double it? Because that’s average usage, and any electrical grid needs to be able to handle peak use plus have reserves available for when some part of the generation system inevitably fails or needs maintenance. You need about double the average usage to cover peak use plus required reserves. So that means they’ll need about 369 gigawatts (GW, or 109 watts) of new emission-free generation capacity.
Now, the only currently available CO2-emission-free baseline power source is nuclear power. Oh, you can add meaningless expensive unreliable intermittent renewables to it if you wish, wind and solar. But you still need the baseline power for when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow …
From now until the first day of 2030 is 452 weeks. Japan needs 369 additional GW of nuclear power to meet the goal.
And that means that to achieve Minister Koizumi’s dream-driven target, Japan would have to find a site for, get all permits and licenses for, excavate, manufacture, install, test, and commission a brand-new 1.6 GW nuclear plant every two weeks from now until 2030. (By comparison, each of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant was half of that, 0.8 GW …)
A. New. Nuclear. Plant. Every. Two. Weeks. Until. 2030.
Yeah, that’s totally legit …
In the US, from the preliminary feasibility studies to the final hookup of a nuclear power plant typically takes more than ten years. Here’s an overview of the process … and people in the industry have said it’s optimistic.
Not only that, but switching from burning fossil fuels to nuclear power for heating and transportation means that the entire electrical grid will have to be upsized, including substations, switching, transmission lines, transformers, and power lines both into and around the houses. The costs of building the nuclear plants plus upsizing the electrical grid will be a stupendous burden for generations to come.
Look, somebody in charge has got to stand up and say “This is airy-fairy impossible feel-good madness!” Me’n my gorgeous ex-fiancee are watching “The Right Stuff” tonight … how did we ever get from that kind of personal strength to our current politicians who perfectly embody “The Wrong Stuff”? Very few of these modern pussycats have the albondigas that Maggie Thatcher had—they just like to prance, and pose for the camera, and virtue signal with noble-sounding woke policies that can never be implemented.
As I’ve said about this claim in other countries, Minister Koizumi’s vision-given plan is like a 12-year-old boy putting on blue tights with red skivvies on top of them, donning a cape, proudly declaring he’s Superman, and jumping out of a fourth-story window …
…
…
… ain’t gonna fly, and there’s going to be lots of pain for everyone involved.
And all of this to fight an imaginary “climate emergency”.
Sigh … sadly, it seems innumeracy roolz …
Regards to all,
w.
My Previous Equally Quixotic Analyses: The calculations for the world going to net-zero by 2050 are in my post Bright Green Impossibilities. The calculations for the US to get to 50% of 2005 CO2 emissions by 2030 are in The Latest US CO2 Fantasy.
And the unmeasurably-small theoretical cooling by 2050 if the US went to zero CO2 emissions tomorrow is calculated in Going To Zero. TL;DR version—as you go up in altitude the air gets cooler. The US going to zero emissions tomorrow would theoretically cool the globe by 2050 by the same amount as you’d get by climbing up three flights of stairs …
My Usual Request: When you comment please quote the exact words you are discussing. This avoids at least some of the misunderstandings that plague the intarwebs.
Data: All of the data for these analyses are available from Max Roser’s most informative website, “Our World In Data”. Fossil fuel use is here, and CO2 emissions are here.
Lemmings: Yeah, I know they aren’t lining up to jump off a cliff to their deaths, that was just a Disney fantasy … but the US, UK, Japan, and many other countries sure are.
Whenever you read something such as this, it is always useful to take a careful look at
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html
and consider the long term trend.
Peter W,
There seems to be a time gap so that many sources of CO2 abundance in air are reporting only up to a year ago, sometimes better at a couple of months delay.
It is getting harder to obtain daily CO2 data.
Have you noticed this and/or found a reason for it?
Apart from the usual explanation of not releasing it until the checking has been done. (Can you imagine a geochemical analysis laboratory or a shipping export lab working for client explorers or exporters, with a delay of months excused by a need to check? Geoff S
I suspect there’re politics driving this. News last week is that Kansai Electric has received approval to restart 3 reactors.
No how do you do that in a frightened country? Why, you frighten them with something else that’s even more frightful. So by increasing the CO2 emissions target the pollies can now say look! look! we have to do it to save us all from a fate worser even than Covid and radiation put together. (Which is all rubbish, but the millennial-on-the-street is just as clueless in Japan as anywhere.)
Hopefully next time they build a reactor though they’ll put the emergency coolant pumps high up on top of the sheds, and they stock up on transportable pumps.
Surely “emulating lemmings” should be “lemulating”?
Nuclear is old, well known, simple tech. Why would building NPP be long or complicated?
Isn’t that a picture of Diablo Canyon in California at the head of this post?
Yep.
w.
Success!!!
The California ISO announced yesterday that last Saturday, 24 April, 2021, the California state grid was supplied 95% by renewable energy at 2:30 PM. This result lasted for 4 seconds!!!! They did not mention what the typical renewable supply level is.
The ISO also proudly announced that we, the people, are goiung to be runnign a fantatstic experiment this summer when 2,000 megawatts of lithium-ion battery goes on line to power the state, in part, when the sun goes down.
The future of renewable energy has arrived. The Globe is Saved.
Quote:”Well, er no, according to Koizumi, the number 46 just appeared to him in ‘silhouette’ in a sort of vision.”
YMMV (and I really do think that that is The Problem) but, this is pure Monty Python
Koizumi has a sense of humour, and Good One at that;
The guy is taking the piss out of the whole boon doggle dingle dangle doodly woodly boodly woodly woodly Train Wreck that is Climate Science
Quote:”The interviewer, despite her face mask, was clearly stunned by the revelation”
Yes she would be. The ability to say & do the unexpected, the agile mind and the self-confidence are all exactly what every girl on this planet is looking for in a potential/actual mate.
And she would laugh in any normal boy meets girl situation.
The TV interview would not count as ‘normal’
We all know the saying/cliche:
“If you can make her laugh, you’re half-way there”
He ‘scored’
It’s why girls all ask for a ‘GSOH‘ in dating ads.
The actual problem in the world now is that girls need to ask.
An agile and quick-thinking mind is what defines a successful ‘hunter’ = one who could ‘bring home the bacon’
Not a successful gatherer. One hardly needs an agile mind and quick thinking to gather a few seeds or nuts.
Gatherers are fails in all ways, mentally, physically, socially and especially in their ability to ‘provide’. For the girl and her baby.
Thus a GSOH should be intrinsic in every male of the human variety.
So why do the girls have such a hard time finding one these days?
THAT is The Problem of our Modern Time
Because that is where all the babies have gone – disappeared exactly in parallel with, what should be, the intrinsic ability of boys to make girls laugh.
Geddit now?
Money and education, supposedly the cause of the baby demise, are things that you ‘gather’
Why have we become a society of gatherers (fails) rather than hunters (successful providers)
What happened?
Trouble is, as witnessed in dating adverts, Gatherers are now in the majority.
i.e. Emotional touchy-feely wimps supposedly ‘in touch with their feminine side’
Or, guys who claim to be.
Girls don’t ‘do’ liars. Folks with a GSOH have no need for mendacity, they can handle themselves (and others) without fakery or buck-passing.
When a Good Hunter does show his face, Gatherers feel threatened. He frightens them, not least they know he could, if he wanted, steal not only their ‘food’ in its broadest sense, but also their mates.
They don’t like that.
Its an experiment anyone can do.
Do two consecutive Dry January, dry in between times, then, visit a crowded pub or bar near closing time.
Feel the vibe.
It is truly scary.
They see you and they ‘know’. The menace is palpable
And what you see are unpredictable zombies, out of their bodies as much as out of their minds.
The real scare comes when you next visit a busy supermarket, side-walk or shopping-mall. The zombies are all still there, patently not drunk, but still zombie.
The menace is real, as Mr Trump discovered.
He had to be replaced with a Gatherer. i.e. A fail.
Sorry Joe.
But I think you know that. I think there is, or certainly was, a GSOH in there somewhere.
We all get old, or did the gatherers starve you of Vitamin B? Did you make the mistake of thinking you were somehow immune, or that you could ‘handle it’?
As they’re trying to do with everyone via the requirement for a Meat-Free Diet so as to Save The Planet.
There is The Really Scary Bit
Meanwhile in Oz the lefties aren’t happy with Scomo offering a sop with hydrogen-
The government’s embrace of ‘clean hydrogen’ helps no one but the fossil fuel industry (msn.com)
It’s not a bad flanking move to keep lukewarm climate change voters on side when you know full well battery transport will never cut it particularly for heavy transport. Politics is a numbers game and you don’t get to hold lefties at bay in Opposition. That was Trump’s folly.
What is it about 2030? It seems this magic number is appearing everywhere.
CAGW is being tied into this THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development (un.org)
‘plus have reserves available for when some part of the generation system inevitably fails or needs maintenance. ‘
Yes, grid scale batteries and other strategies cover the failures – and quicker and more effectively than the old ‘spinning reserve’
griff, you say “Grid scale batteries”? You are credulous, aren’t you?
Let’s suppose that after everything in Japan is electrified, 10% of Japan’s generation goes out for a week from a combination of failure and maintenance. Japan uses about 5.5PWh/year, which is 106 TWh/week. 10% of that is 10.6 TWh of storage needed.
The world’s largest storage battery is located where I used to fish commercially out of, Moss Landing, California. It’s 1300 megawatt-hours of storage.
So to supply 10% of Japan’s energy needs for just one week, they’d need 8,100 copies of the world’s largest storage battery. Current costs for those batteries would be about $6.3 trillion dollars … which is 20% larger than Japan’s GDP.
Yeah, that’s totally believable.
w.
The coal expansion in Japan isn’t happening…
Last year, the Japanese government signalled it will decommission about 100 inefficient coal-fired power units. It aims to reduce coal’s share of the power mix to 26% by 2030 – down from 32% in the 2018 financial year. Japan’s biggest power generator JERA said in October it will shut down all inefficient coal-fired power plants in Japan by 2030 and it aims to achieve net zero emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050 to tackle climate change. Closing inefficient coal power stations is in line with government policy but this was the first time a power company declared an intention to match that policy. By 2030, JERA aims to cut 20% more carbon emission intensity of thermal power plants than the government’s current reduction target for those plants across the nation. And new build is also seeing cancellations: Osaka Gas withdrew plans to build a 1.2 gigawatt (GW) coal plant in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Tokyo Gas, Kyushu Electric and Idemitsu also abandoned plans to build a 2GW coal plant in Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo. In total, 30% of planned investment in coal power has been scrapped since 2016.
Yes, Griffie-poo, they are acting exactly like other energy lemmings, closing perfectly good, reliable energy plants and refusing to build others, in favor of expensive, and unreliable energy. Uber dumb, in other words, which by coincidence describes you to a T as well.
So these 45 are not being built then Japanese government planning to build 45 new coal fired power stations to diversify supply – ABC News
Then you look at China with it’s 1082 coal plants, and currently building another 92, and another 135 in pre-construction, and it kind of makes you think what all the fuss is about.
Japan could produce all it’s energy from the water wheel and it wouldn’t change a thing.
… “will decommission” … “aims to reduce” … “will shut down” … aims to achieve” … “aims to cut” …
Funny how so many people think that claims of action equal action …
Meanwhile, Japan shut down nuclear and is only gradually reopening, and renewables are less than they were in 1965.
w.
i read theyre recommissioning older nuke plants
two? are being scrapped but the 40+yr old ones are getting a tidy up..
You can sure build nuclear power plants fast in the US! The only one we are building in the UK is Hinkley C – the go ahead was given by the government in 2008 after many years planning, build started in 2018, due to be online by mid 2020s. In theory, it should have been easy as it is alongside A and B so planning permission, consultations should have been faster.