Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
OCTOBER 24, 2021
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
The Committee on Climate Change have been caught cheating:
Modelling used to justify the “feasibility” of the net zero target assumed a dramatic fall in the number of days of calm weather, when many turbines stand still, according to new analysis.
Data obtained from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the official advisory body, following a legal battle, shows that a series of assumptions underpinning its advice to ministers included a projection that in 2050 there would be just seven days on which wind turbines would produce less than 10 per cent of their potential electricity output. So far this year, there have already been 65 such days, and in 2016 there were as many as 78.
On Saturday night the disclosure prompted questions over the accuracy of the CCC’s claims in 2019 about the feasibility of meeting a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Ministers rely heavily on the CCC’s advice and modelling, and last week its chief executive, Chris Stark heralded Boris Johnson’s new Net Zero Strategy as “largely mirroring the CCC advice”.
It comes as an analysis by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) think tank warns that the “quality of the CCC’s advice is questionable”, particularly in relation to the 2050 target adopted by Theresa May in 2019.
“[The CCC] advised that this target was feasible but refused to disclose the calculations on which its costs figures were based, and it became clear that the scale of the challenge of net zero was not well understood when the target was passed into law,” states the report, which is published today. The IEA report also accuses the body of having expanded an initial remit as an independent advisory body delivering balanced advice, to becoming a “pressure group”.
Mr Stark used a newspaper interview on Friday to say that the Government should be urging people to “understand what they can do” about climate change, including “flying less, eating less meat”.
Back-up power could be required from more reliable sources
Craig Mackinlay, the leader of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Conservative MPs and a member of the public accounts committee, warned that if the committee had significantly overestimated the amount of power that turbines would generate, significantly more back-up power could be required from more reliable sources.
He said: “These predictions appear somewhat fanciful. The Climate Change Committee seem to be looking at the whole project through rose-tinted spectacles to try and minimalise the unpalatable costs of this whole enterprise.”
Analysis of CCC data obtained following a legal battle by the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF), a climate sceptic think tank, found that the body’s assumptions as part of modelling included that the UK would experience just one day in 2050 on which wind turbines would operate at less than five per cent of the industry’s overall capacity. That compares with 20 days so far in 2021 – which has seen particularly low wind speeds – ten days in 2020, nine in 2019 and 21 in 2018.
Wind energy varies throughout the year
The CCC’s modelling, which drew on a study by Imperial College London, also included an assumption that, in 2050, there would be just seven days on which wind turbines produced less than 10 per cent of their overall capacity. That compares to 65 such days so far this year, 30 in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018, according to analysis by Net Zero Watch, a campaign of the GWPF.
A spokesman for the CCC declined to explain the disparity, saying: “Detailed assumptions on power generation were made in 2019 as part of an extensive body of modelling and analysis to inform our advice to government on net zero. We stand by these insights.
“This information, including the study undertaken by Imperial College London, is published in full on our website. We have no further comment to make.”
The CCC has previously said that the UK’s future energy supply should come from a “portfolio of technologies” including nuclear and hydrogen power, but insisted that the costs associated with the intermittent nature of wind “represent a small proportion of overall system costs.” Experts have also suggested that placing turbines in a wider variety of locations around the UK would increase the overall yield when the wind fails to blow in particular areas.
Victoria Hewson, a solicitor and the IEA’s head of regulatory affairs, said: “The scale and impact of the areas covered by the advice of the Climate Change Committee is vast… Far from being treated as an irreproachable source of truth, the CCC should be challenged and scrutinised more than any other regulator or advisory body.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/23/net-zero-target-relies-rise-windy-days/
Whether the CCC assumptions are realistic or not, the simple truth is that British weather is not the same year in year out. You only need one year, or for that matter one month, of low wind speeds, and the electricity grid is broken if you have not got back up in place.
It is highly irresponsible of the CCC to have not allowed for this in their planning – in other words planning for the worst case. As such they have grossly misled the government and Parliament.
I can only assume they have done so in the knowledge that their Net Zero Plan would have lost all credibility otherwise.
This makes total sense, the CCC used The Imperial College London wind modeling results. These ICL chaps did a stellar job modeling the covid pandemic. Looks like they used the same excellent model code to predict the wind.
The CCC are nearly as delusional as the latest Government plan.
See here:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1028157/net-zero-strategy.pdf
It is not a strategy, just an impossible wish list. This is my comment elsewhere, the webite of the Engineering Institution which has not even been consulted, or at least the Electrical Engineers have not:
https://communities.theiet.org/discussions/viewtopic/807/29377
You can see the questions I want to ask!
It’s good to see sensible questions being asked on an engineering institution’s website. I’m not aware of any such institution which doesn’t, as a matter of policy, actively promote eco-lunacy.
This surely depends on how many turbines and where they are?
UK’s turbines will mostly be large turbines off shore in areas with higher wind capacity
“What in Pete’s name is “higher wind capacity”?
Faster wind? More consistent wind?
What happens “off shore” quite a lot? Got any kind of a clue?
Doesn’t matter Griffy. It honestly doesn’t make one single damnable bit of difference. Low wind is determined by air pressure systems – frankly the whole of the UK isn’t big enough to be in more than one pressure system at a time – they really don’t get that close. If we’re in a pressure system giving us low wind speed then you’d have to be several hundred miles offshore to get something different. I’m disappointed in your sheer stupidity and ignorance – have you no idea what all of this deceit and corruption is leading to? Are you really that gullible that you can’t see that this entrenched greed is going to lead to monumental suffering? Can’t you even see that what you’re doing is wrong, that your attitudes are part of the problem? I’m sorry to break this to you but when the butchers bill comes due – it’s going to be due to you and people like you. You have blood on your hands and no amount of washing will ever get rid of it.
When will you learn, Griff, mate?
(It’s a rhetorical question)
The larger the turbine, the faster the wind needs to blow before they start working, and the more reliable electricity they use to spin when the wind isn’t fast enough.
They made ‘detailed assumptions’ that are demonstrated to be wrong, and they refuse to accept that they even might be wrong. You should get a job there, griff, it matches your skill set.
How much higher?
Do you know? Do you care?
In Australia official wind turbine Capacity Factor percentage of Nameplate Capacity is 30% to 35% however private monitoring of the AEMO dashboard actual performance over time indicated that the average is 28.5% and for solar even less at 17.5%
Not only unreliably intermittent performers but a huge waste of land area, and then add the land for feeder transmission lines to connect to grids and ancillary back up equipment, and without subsidies no investor would risk money.
Doesn’t matter how many wind turbines exist if the wind isn’t blowing. Multiply the total nameplate capacity by zero and you’ll always get the same result.
“ as part of an extensive body of modelling and analysis”
Once again – models ALL THE WAY DOWN!
No measurement data, just models. Models full of subjective assumptions instead of reality.
““[The CCC] advised that this target was feasible but refused to disclose the calculations on which its costs figures were based, and it became clear that the scale of the challenge of net zero was not well understood when the target was passed into law,” states the report” (bolding mine, tpg)
Is *anyone* surprised?
Not just windy days, but windy days within a safe and inclusive boundary.
The following chart shows UK daily average estimated wind farm capacity factors for offshore and onshore for 1980 to 2016, based on estimates derived from historic weather data with re-estimation based on actual wind farm performance where known: credit Staffell, Iain and Pfenninger, Stefan (2016). Using Bias-Corrected Reanalysis to Simulate Current and Future Wind Power Output. Energy 114, pp. 1224-1239. doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.08.068
It is scatter plotted against daily average temperature – a total of over 26,000 data points. It clearly shows how inadequate the assumptions used by the CCC are. At a minimum, they should have used this sort of history to show that their plans were workable. Instead, they simply decided to commission work that showed the system might be able to survive a very short term unfavourable weather event. There was no consideration of the effects of persistent underperformance or indeed overperformance (which leads to substantial curtailment, because storage is uneconomic).
Great graph.
It clearly shows, the capacity’s factor of wind very often is less than 10%
The average CF is about 30%.
It is important to note wind power is the cube of wind speed
In addition, at very low CFs, say 3 to 4%, with winds at 4 mph and less, the wind turbine is producing about as much as it is consuming, i.e., no net feed to the grid. Yikes
The graph shows a lot of red at low CFs, meaning onshore winds are frequently very weak.
The RE clowns at CCC are of-the-charts fabricators of lies.
They should be drawn and quartered
[It doesn’t add up…] reply
Excellent post and reference. I read through the paper, which is easily available via the link provided. From the referenced paper, section 4.4, Figure 13, shows the hourly output of German wind power Jan – July of 2014, both actual and modeled (showing that their model is pretty good).
This graph represents the reality of what is discussed in this overall post. The worst of the wind proponents will simply draw an average line through the random output graph and declare wind a great resource (you know who you are..:) ). The CCC simply assume that most of those nasty zeros (or 5 % and less) will go away with better siting. The reality is that no matter where the wind farm is, its actual output will always look something like the above graph, ie unusable as anything but a random output generator, best suited for the modernistic wing of an art library….
Wind power, absent the “Star Trek” magic battery, will always effectively require near 100 % backup, making its utility in the real world an expensive fantasy. The “green” public will be happy with that, so long as the reliable backup power is kept hidden away, out of the larger public eye. Government subsidies will keep electricity price seemingly low, to keep the illusion of wind power alive. What we really get is electricity at twice the price of just having the reliable sources, and lots of art deco windmills to mesmerize the green washed public.
We can think of all this wind power stuff as a really expensive art exhibit 🙂
GCR, high speed cosmic mostly protons, creates ions in the upper stratosphere and those ions when they move in the wind, experience a tangential force due to earth’s magnetic field which creates Cyclone storms … in the winter, fall, and spring. In the past high GCR only occurred during solar minimum.
At the end of the past D-O warming periods there is a sudden increase in dust from the Sahara Desert deposited on the Greenland ice sheets which indicates that some mechanism is suddenly causing massive cyclones in the atmosphere. The strong the cooling the more dust is deposited. This indicates the mechanism that causes the dust to be deposited is causing the cooling and the cooling is directly correlated with the increase in the GCR.
During solar cycle 23/24 coronal holes suddenly appeared during solar cycle minimums at low latitude regions on the sun.
The coronal holes produce a rapid change in wind speed. The change in wind speed (high steady solar wind speed does not cause the change in the ionosphere) causes a space charge differential in the ionosphere which removes ions which cause a reduction in cloud cover and warming in specific regions.
Ironically, the cyclones will occur regularly (just had the first set of cyclones of the west coast of North America complete with high rainfall) and the winds will be strong enough (hurricane like) to destroy coastal wind turbines.
Observational it is fact, that the solar cycle 25 sunspots are disappearing. Sunspot groups use to have a typical life of 22 days. Now most sunspot groups are so weak magnetically that they cannot be seen visibly. Those sunspot groups that can be seen, have an average lifetime of about 10 days. Solar cycle 25 is failing. The Maunder minimum was also proceeded by a failed solar cycle.
The cyclic D-O warming periods occur in both interglacial period and the glacial period. D-O periods always end with an abrupt drop in temperature.
The Maunder minimums, are cyclic events, a period of 30 to 70 years, when the sun does not produce sunspots and as we just found out the coronal holes which normally appear at low latitudes, move up to the solar poles.
The Maunder minimum causes the solar heliosphere to shrinks in size (for 30 to 70 years) and it has less magnetic flux in it to deflect cosmic particles which are called galactic cosmic rays (GCR).
There have been 9 D-O warmings (also called Bond events) during this interglacial period. Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
This is from Wikipedia.
Dansgaard–Oeschger events (often abbreviated D–O events), named after palaeoclimatologists Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger, are rapid climate fluctuations that occurred 25 times during the last glacial period. Some scientists say that the events occur quasi-periodically with a recurrence time being a multiple of 1,470 years… ….The comparable climate cyclicity during the Holocene is referred to as Bond events.
“future energy supply from a “ ‘portfolio of technologies’ including nuclear and hydrogen power”….. Hydrogen is only a conversion of energy from other sources. I hope the article mis-represented the intent of the quote, if this is the standard of analysis displayed by CCC god help the UK, quite apart from fibbing about windless days.
Maybe they could use diesel generators to turn the windmills to produce energy?
Redge,
They can’t! The generators are already tasked with powering searchlights to keep the solar panels producing through cloudy spells and night!
The problem here is not a failure of the wind-harvesting technology, but a failure of the wind resource itself. Building addition wind turbines won’t work, only reliable alternate back-up power will do. This raises the perpetual question: If you need a full-capacity, fully-maintained standby system, what value does the wind power system add?
Why don’t the “modelers” who try to predict how much electricity can be generated by wind power study past wind measurements at potential turbine sites? Such data are readily available from airports and other weather stations, where the average wind speed and direction are normally recorded hourly, and converted into a “wind rose” (frequency table of winds from any of 16 directions, and for several ranges of wind speed).
There is no reason to believe that future years will be any more or less windy than past years, so if someone wanted to get a reasonable idea of the total power output from a wind turbine per year, they just have to get a wind rose of the frequency of wind speeds in a given range. Multiply the frequency of each wind speed range by the anticipated kW generated in that range, and that results in average annual kW (then multiply by 8,760 hours/yr to get kWh per year).
So why do these so-called “modelers” think there will be fewer calm days per year in the future than during recent years?
Back in the 1970’s, I used to participate in weekly races of Sunfish sailboats on a lake in the Pocono mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania during the summer. The land around the lake was not much higher in elevation than the lake itself, so that the lake was considered a fairly windy place. The more exciting races were during relatively strong winds either ahead of a cold front (winds out of the south) or just after a cold front (winds out of the northwest). But for every exciting race in windy weather, there were always at least two “drifters”–very light winds where everyone baked in the sun searching the lake for the slightest ripples indicating a breeze, and a typical race lasted two hours instead of a half hour in a good wind (along the same course).
Of course, the people there always liked telling stories about the windy races, about how they almost capsized (or possibly an opponent did capsize). There weren’t too many stories about drifters, which everyone would rather forget.
The British climate modelers may have suffered from the same bias as the Pocono Sunfish sailors. They probably remember many storms with gale-force winds, and wonder how many kW those wind turbines would generate in such a storm. The problem is, a wind turbine that can endure such a storm without being blown apart will turn slowly in light winds, and not at all on a “drifter” day (or night, and wind speeds are usually slower at night, when few people are outside to notice). Most people are glad to enjoy the outdoors, and don’t care much about the wind on a calm, sunny day, and they may not notice the wind turbines sitting still.
But someone who wants to generate power from the wind has to measure the wind 24/7/365, and take into account those “drifter” times when little or no power will be produced.
Ignoring the huge problem with storage what do we know about windpower:
1. Payback is about 10 years.
2. Lifetime is about 20 years.
So for the first 10 years the turbine is simply offsetting the CO2 it took to produce it.
Then in the second 10 years if everything goes well, you could start to reduce CO2.
But in fact you cant because in the second 10 years all your energy must be used to produce a replacement turbine.
so for 20 years after you install a turbine there is no net reduction in CO2.
Even from then on you are only getting half the reduction you would expect, because of the energy required to replace the turbines ar end of life.
I think your numbers are off by quite a bit. Payback is around 30 years, lifetime is around 15 years, 20 if you have plenty of spares and are lucky. There is no conceivable way that these things will ever replace the energy used to make them. They are inefficient, unreliable energy sinks which are only good for one purpose – getting government subsidies; without those they are just useless blights on the landscape.
You are very likely correct. I was being charitable in my numbers.
The point is that there is not enough surplus energy in a windmill to create new windmills. So the switch to windmills will end up creating CO2, not reducing CO2.
The same problem is even worse for solar.
“The CCC’s modelling, which drew on a study by Imperial College London” – let me guess -was it from the Grantham Institute ???
Pay no attention to the 4 feet of BS I’m currently standing in…I will stand by the lies we told a few years ago.
Well, that’s all you need to know, that bastion of ‘top class’ modelling. Maybe Neil Fergusson was the modeller ?
Well what would you expect? It’s Gummer, the best possible reason for reform of the HOL.
One member if the CCC is also big in the Behavioural Insights Unit a private company which exists to advise HMG
about how to lead the sheeple. What’s he doing there?
JF
Net zero by 2050 without much more nuclear power is not possible unless millions of people are going to starve or freeze to death. It should be obvious.
Imperial College modelling…
What could go wrong eh….?
Isn’t that called “parameterising the model”?
It’s a bit of a shocker!
The BBC HAS NOT covered this story of the Climate change committee (fibbing/lying/corruptly being creative/stupidly – delete as necessary) not using clearly sensible figures for it’s predictions of financial costs then fighting to keep secret the calculations and methods of how the got the incorrect answers.
If the BBC (and most other news media) fail to cover a major government committee failure, deliberate or otherwise, then the BBC believe in the CCC corruptly doctoring the data.
I have just had a comment removed by the BBC news website on this issue.
Interesting times.
There appears to be some belief now that as the world warms wind speeds will drop. ‘Stilling’ I believe they call it.
“Hydrogen power” is NOT a source of energy, so ZERO energy supply can “come from” it.
I think we should start referring to renewables as intermittents from now on.