From the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin
Leading German economist Hans Werner Sinn sees 6 major problems with Europe’s green energy transition (Energiewende) and warns other nations against following the German energy model.
Problem no. 1: The Paris Accord is non-binding
The Paris Accord in fact has been signed by only 61 of 191 nations and so pledge to reduce their emissions, i.e. more than two thirds of the globe’s nations are not obliged to do anything.
This will simply allow the rich signatories to outsource their emissions to unconstrained nations. China and India both end up with a free pass. The Paris Accord will have no effect on global emissions and citizens of rich countries will be forced to make huge sacrifices. We’re seeing it today already.
Problem No. 2: EU targets are “utopian”
The former IFO head calls the EU’s targets “utopian” and adds: “Germany at the same time wants to exit coal and nuclear power, thus making itself dependent on other nations.” Like Russia.
The belief that the EU can power itself solely using volatile renewables like wind and sun is kept alive purely by “propaganda media”. In fact it is doomed to fail.
Problem No. 3: Volatile energy supply
Prof. Sinn explains that another major problem is: “Electricity from wind and sun is too volatile to assure an affordable and complete power supply. Even if Germany doubles it’s current wind and solar production capacity, doing so will only double the volatility of the supply:
As the chart above shows, a doubling of the 2019 wind and solar capacity would lead to numerous times of severe oversupply and periods of extreme undersupply for Germany’s roughly average 60 GW of demand. Chart cropped here.
Problem No. 4: Innovation through government decreed central planning?
“Europe is squeezing out the auto industry and violating the law of ‘one price’. The market as a discovery process to innovate low CO2 technologies is being shut down,” Sinn explains.
Instead of allowing the market to naturally find the best and most efficient solutions, Brussels is simply doing it by decree. In the end, we’ll end up with a failed centrally-planned economy.
Problem No. 5: E-cars are not clean
One problem today already, using Germany’s current electric energy supply mix, electric cars are emitting far more CO2 over their lifetimes than conventional combustion engine vehicles.
Even after 150,000 km of driving, a diesel Golf-class car emits less CO2. Chart: H.W. Sinn.
Yet, governments are aiming to force citizens to drive e-cars. In many countries, this will lead to more CO2 emissions, and not less.
Problem No. 6: Europe going without fossil fuels will have zero global impact
According to Prof. Sinn: “With tradable fossil fuels, Europe going without will not have just a tiny effect, but rather have no effect.”
Whatever fuels Europe opts not to use, other countries will simply burn them instead. As long as global oil production keeps growing, so will CO2 emissions – no matter what Europe does, decrees or decides
Summary
Sinn wraps up his presentation with a warning for Europe: “Europe’s unilateralism with climate policy will undermine the competitiveness of its industries, initiate its downfall and thus discourage other countries from following the the European – and especially the German – approach.”
It is astonishing that this simple explanation, which has been obvious to all on this side of the hill, is still invisible to Brussels. Do they have a secret agenda? There must be something that keeps them barreling down the luge they have created?
Their agenda is driven by their misanthropy. Simple as that. They are a bunch of psychopaths.
They are just playing their game, tricking people into believing that their concerns about the world and society are sincere. They pretend to care while in reality, they only want more power and money.
https://csglobe.com/many-psychopaths-positions-power/
Brussels bureaucrats are smart asses that want to “level the playing field” by saddling the US with expensive wind, solar and batteries,
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
The US would be shoved into a black hole from which it would not be able to escape.
However, the US used NATO and Ukraine as a useful barking dog to provoke Russia.
Russia finally attacked Ukraine, and that greatly upset the Brussels game plan regarding shoving the US into a black hole
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-plot-is-thickening-with-germany-and-france-no-longer-in
Now Brussels has to frantically hustle up the low-cost oil, gas and coal, and other materials, it is no longer buying from Russia, because Brussels was forced by the US to go along with long-planned US sanctions on Russia.
However, instead of “weakening Russia”, the opposite happened, because Russia will no longer sell it goods for worthless, printed dollars.
It now sells for rubles tied to gold at 5,000 RU per gram.
Brussels has to cave to Russia for at least the next few years
The Russian move has started a tsunami towards a multipolar world, with a new G-8 replacing BRISC.
This bodes ill for the US/EU/NATO troika, because “their-rules-based-BAU”, that enriched them at the expense of others, is being dismantled.
So much paranoia, so much love of dictators.
Willem has a point. Putin might be the devil reincarnated, but diabolical stupidity on the Great Reset side of EU, US and the rest of the ‘West’ is promising to be a hell of a lot worse for us. Our governments are 100% responsible for defunding and destroying its own the oil and gas industry and wasting 10s of trillions in order to bleed us of tens of trillions more!
Like this fact or not, this (the stupidity and ruination of the O&G industry and the Reset) and Russia’s response to sanctions fed directly into Russia’s huge economic windfall that is flooding the Russian treasury and created a crushing recession in the West with a possible famine in the coming winter for many in ‘First World Nations’.
The ruble with sanctions first fell precipitously. Forced to find another way to be paid for its exported goods with the banking sanctions, they tied the ruble to gold and insisted on direct payments to a Russian bank in rubles. The ruble rebounded on foreign forex markets, jumping off the bottom and setting new highs, 30% greater than pre-sanction.
It seems we need oil and gas after all! The band of dumbest heads of state the world has ever known (first generation of the great dumbing down in our education system) seemed oblivious to the fact that gas is needed to make nitrogen fertilizers! Of course now these are 10x as expensive.
Send me as many “worthless, printed dollars” as possible. I’ll be glad to take them off of your hands.
Because of pre-planned sanctions, dollars became useless to Russia.
Russia insists to be paid in Rubles.
Remember, this applies only to unfriendly countries.
If an unfriendly country, such as Poland, Bulgaria, and Finland, refuses to pay with Rubles, their gas gets cut off.
All friendly countries can pay with their own currency, not with dollars
This regimen will become permanent and will be adopted by other countries to other materials, such as fertilizer, potash, tungsten, copper,
Even Donald Trump remarked that Biden and EU- UK sanctions (which he called $2 sanctions) were weighed by Putin and he concluded it was worth carrying out his objectives in Ukraine. He knew that there would be no combatants from these countries because they had already destroyed there own economies and even the sanctioners would harm themselves more than they would Russia.
Indeed Russia is booming with the demand for oil and gas, fertilizers, grain, nickel … paid for in rubles which have increased in value over 30% greater than pre-war values over the US$ and other currencies. By contrast the West is headed for deep recession and UK-EU is scrambling to ward off a famine and poor people freezing to de@th 100% as a result of feckless reckless government policies.
I’m predicting that with the interruption in “solutions” to the imagined Global Warming crisis to deal with a very real one caused by clowns, this is the end of ruinables, the meme, the end of global governance … The pretty much know there CO2 theory has been debunked by sceptics and Mother Nature.
It’s because they are Socialists and thus are relentlessly chronically overspent & bankrupt – as Mrs Thatcher (and Ronald Reagan) alluded to when she talked of ‘Other people’s money‘
The climate scam is a vast new source of:
It is the megalomaniac tyrant’s Wet Dream come true
don’t overcomplicate it – as our ‘economist friend’ here has done.
C’mon peeps, for those of us who weren’t born yesterday, when did any economist ever get anything right?
Friedrich Hayek did pretty good. So did Milton Friedman and his fellows at UC.
Thomas Sowell
Don’t forget Richard Lindzen.
Walter Williams
Adam Smith.
Ludwig von Mises.
“I told you zis vould happen vith socialism”…
von Mises – another of my heros!
See also Frederic Bastiat.
“Electricity from wind and sun is too volatile to assure an affordable and complete power supply.”
People make these assertions blithely, but without ever measuring the cost of volatility against the huge cost that fossil fuels bear, which is the cost of fuel.
The IEA has a site with an LCOE calculator here
You can haggle about the assumed discount rates etc, but the dominance of the fuel cost is stark. I’ve extracted from their big table some relevant Australian comparisons, and underlined the key cases with fuel cost (all in USD) in red, and combined capital/running cost in blue. The fuel is at 2020 prices; it would be near double that now.
But even then for gas CCGT (the practical case) fuel cost per MwH at $56 alone exceeded the total of onshore wind at $43 or solar PV at $38. You could lumber the cost of solar with the full cost of building, running and keeping idle a gas generator ($17.70) and still come close to that 2020 cost of fuel.
Does this include costs associated with having to have fossil fuels on standby for when the sun doesn’t shine and there’s not enough/too much wind, green levies not imposed on unreliables?
As I pointed out, you could include for say solar PV the cost of building and maintaining a CCGT gas generator (without fuel cost) and still be competitive with the 2020 cost of fuel, and far less than current fuel cost.
And the green levies, which are 25.48% of a typical electricity bill in the UK?
They come under the “cost of carbon” column attributed to the FF generators. I am just comparing actual production costs.
So on the sheet slide the carbon cost to zero 🙂
You can have a ball with all the sliders I can make that crap say anything I want just by twitching the sliders.
That really isn’t the cost of carbon. It’s the cost of the bureaucrats.
Nick,
Your post is totally off the mark.
You clearly are not an engineer.
Read this article to get some good information.
COST SHIFTING IS THE NAME OF THE GAME REGARDING WIND AND SOLAR
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-name-of-the-game-regarding-wind-and-solar
“You clearly are not an engineer.”
No, I’m a mathematician. But I can add up.
And the IEA has plenty of engineers.
Anyone with a calculator can ‘add up’, even engineers. The result depends on what is entered into the calculator. Your math seems to me to be missing some important inputs. Historically, your forecasts have often missed reality.
Would you please expand on those “missing inputs”?
Word salad Bob is in the house.
The LOCE numbers are just nonsense propaganda. Capacity factors show that an overbuild of 3X to 6X is required to assure meeting the average demand. Average doesn’t work, however, because sometimes the actual output drops to near, or actual zero. Thus storage is required, which, if storage were actually possible, available (but hardly affordable), means additional generating capacity is required to keep the storage charged and available. I’ve probably left out some expensive requirements, such as shorter lifetimes of many components. Also, in general, extra transmission capacity over extra long distances is required. None of this really addresses the necessary stability and frequency synchronization that is fundamentally required and not exactly cheap.
The IEA is a Brussels mouthpiece.
It would be best to ignore it.
BTW, almost everyone can add, but only energy systems analysts with many years of hands-on experience, are qualified to analyze and comment energy systems
A mathematician does not qualify
“A mathematician does not qualify”
Nor does anyone here. But the IEA does. And no-one seems to have any other quantification.
As far as I can see, you are a priest. You have a religious belief that running (with associated ownership costs) two duplicate parallel forms of electricity generation can be cheaper than running one.
We have always run multiple duplicate parallel forms (eg coal, hydro, nuke). The grid has diversity.
“And the IEA has plenty of engineers”
The trick with these sorts of exercise is to find the right engineers who agree with your view.
Nor are you an economist. Engineers doing cost studies to minimize prices and maximize reliability over a long term period have been trained to understand Net Present Value of overall costs. Apparently you have not had the appropriate education to understand.
I’ll give just one example. Distribution costs.
Poles, conduits, cable, insulators, transformers, switches, breakers, phase compensating capacitors, etc.
These are amortized over long periods of times to reduce the costs electricity users must pay for their maintenance and replacements. Most power companies in the U.S. are required to provide this equipment and Public Utility Commissions are petitioned to raise electric rates when necessary. In most cases here, wind and solar providers do not participate in supporting any of these costs. Yet, as the percent of the power provided rises, they should be providing support for these items in their rates.
As wind and solar percentages rises they must begin to support their share of distribution costs and expenses in their rates. Not providing this economic support in the cost of production is just one way that wind and solar find a way to minimize their “costs” and penalize existing coal and gas.
You just wave arms. You have no numbers to offer.
Adding is one thing.
You can obviously multiply too, and zero times anything is zero, which is often the amount of energy produced by wind and solar generators.
Adding up is arithmetic whereas mathematics involves induction. The question is with demand for lithium battery resources already going skyward what dollar figures will you be adding up for your net zero grid plus transport in future?
Here let me help you with your pesky paradox already while renewable prices including lithium batteries were actually declining in cost-
The Paradox of Declining Renewable Costs and Rising Electricity Prices (forbes.com)
No, the IEA only has politicians. Some of which pretend to do math, most of which just use whatever intelligence they do have to support the agenda their masters tell them to support.
yes, plenty of engineers who will say what the IEA wants them to say….. get real !
Unfortunately, you CAN’T cost the fossil-fuel generator equipment in ‘without fuel cost’. They have to be kept maintained and running, even if they are not being used as ‘spinning reserve’. And this kind of running is the least efficient possible….
If they are running and using fuel, then they should be paying there way in electricity generated.
But regulations, in general, forbid this in many places.
But Nick your backup CCGT gas generator is hardly emission free, and just think of all the food crops you cant grow under the solar panels really it is all rather Non Net Zero
Indeed. But if you have a mix of half renewables, you halve the emissions and halve the fuel costs. Not perfect, but much better.
Coming half way to meet the spawn of Satan. There is hope for you yet Nick
So you know math but not budgeting and accounting.
But the back ups would burn a lot of fuel.
What am I missing? The LCOE for coal and gas covers everything to assure pretty much continuous power with grid stability. What extra costs do wind and solar carry to assure the same outcome? I do not see that included. I often wonder too if this is a level paying field assessment. A modern coal fired power generator has a lifespan of about 50-60 years. I think you’d need to undertake major plant replacement at least once, perhaps twice, to get the same length of generation out of a wind/solar farm, wouldn’t you?
“ to assure pretty much continuous power”
No, it is the cost per MwH, which is what the market deals with.
“wouldn’t you?”
The IEA takes into account the lifetimes of equipment in assessing capital cost. You can argue about it, but it doesn’t change the dominance of fuel cost.
But it is to assure continuous power, not just a per MwH value. No-one cares about an individual MwH, what they care about is assurance of supply over time. For a coal fired generator, the costs are capital cost, operating cost and fuel. And for that the generator effectively produces a continuous supply. Wind and solar do not do that, instead requiring additional services (eg storage) to assure the same thing.It’s the cost per MwH of continuous supply that matters for evaluating total cost to consumers.In terms of capital cost over lifecycle, are you sure the calculation isn’t just taking the costs for term of life and dividing that by MwH?
“No-one cares about an individual MwH, what they care about is assurance of supply over time.”
What I pointed out is that even if you require the renewable to bear the cost of building and maintaining an equivalent gas production capability (excluding cost of gas), that just brings the cost per MwH up to the cost of fuel alone for gas.
Except the figures are junk.
It was a projection so run a validation of the numbers if you want us to take that crap seriously.
Oh wait the sliders allow any outcome you like see if you can find the values that match todays reality.
At least in the U.S. in most cases, the electricity provider also covers the cost of distribution. The rates are set by the Public Utility Commision. If you don’t include the costs of this onto the production provider, then you are not covering the costs to the end user.
Of course the wind and the sun are free. Just looking at the cost of fuel is minimizing the total costs of providing electricity to the end user. It is putting your head in the sand. Sooner or later, these costs will be picked up by the wind and solar producers.
Isn’t it also the case that wind and solar costs do not adequately address decommissioning, remediation and disposal of systems at their end of life?
Professor Helm says you are talking rubbish Nick. Despite all the comments on ,now two blogs, you are still apparently unable to understand that unreliables need to have back up available all the time and this increases the costs.
Why do you think that electricity supply costs keep rising whilst we are constantly told by the industry that wind and solar are cheap?
“ you are still apparently unable to understand”
You are apparently unable to read. I said
“What I pointed out is that even if you require the renewable to bear the cost of building and maintaining an equivalent gas production capability (excluding cost of gas), that just brings the cost per MwH up to the cost of fuel alone for gas.”
Intermittency increases the costs. Paying for fuel increases the costs. What is needed is quantification. How do they relate?
Prof Helm doesn’t think renewables are bad. He just thinks that the role of backup can’t be borne solely by the dispatchable generators. (and so government should take responsibility).
Since it is necessary to use the gas backup, in general, more than half the time, and since there are considerable costs for the gas run facilities even when it is not allowed to produce electricity, the real cost of that unreliability facility, plus, in general, extra high transmission, stability, and synchronization costs, mean the LCOE per MwH are still unrealistically low by a considerable amount.
This same analysis would work for the lowest cost solution for ERCOT power requirements, factoring in the 12 $ figures and over 100 lives lost in 2/21. Girding up gas facilities to provide peak power requirements in all weather, coupled with continuing wind development and more interconnection is the best solution. That they are arm waved away by Abbott nd his acolytes is between him and Texas later this year.
Another loon enters the fray.
Word salad Bob is never one to find a low cost energy solution. Complexity, even in his words, is his game 😉
You have implicitly (almost explicitly but not quite) acknowledged that ruinables are perfectly worthless and not fit for purpose unless fossil fuel backup is available.
For once we are in the same chapter if not quite on the same page.
Now if the backup that is absolutely necessary to make your windmills and solar panels viable is skyrocketing in cost, somehow in your mind that makes ruinables the lower-cost solution?
Sure if you drive up the cost of fossil fuel to outrageous levels through unsustainable policy shenanigans then it will be RELATIVELY cheaper to use ruinables backed up by astronomically expensive fossil fuel generation, than to only use the exorbitant fossils. But what about the comparison to nuclear power?
You need some additional sophistry to sustain your fantasy, Nick old boy!
More like three times.
Lazards LCOE only includes initial capitol and lifetime running costs.
LCOE specifically does not include storage, back-up, distribution or, unless specified, decommissioning costs.
They do include storage in their “LCOE + Storage” analysis.
Below is a direct quote from the Lazard report.
Energy Resources—Matrix of Applications
L A Z A R D ’ S L E V E L I Z E D C O S T O F E N E R G Y A N A L Y S I S — V E R S I O N 1 3 . 0
Despite convergence in the LCOE between certain renewable energy and conventional generation technologies, direct comparisons must take into account issues such as location (e.g., centralized vs. distributed) and dispatch characteristics (e.g., baseload and/or dispatchable intermediate capacity vs. those of peaking or intermittent technologies)
Nick, it looks like the solar and wind “plant type” ratings are in MW (Mega Watt), therefore they do not reflect the actual MWH (Mega Watt Hour) production. So, multiply the solar and wind LCOE by at least 3 and maybe 4 to get to true cost, due to poor availability (and stop using numbers from where the sun doesn’t shine).
All figures in the table are in USD per MwH delivered.
Conveniently omitting the inconvenient fact that many of those MwH will not be produced when needed.
It doesn’t matter how many MwH they produce, it matters if that “production” matches demand. It never will, so all your cost calculations are meaningless.
I used to live in a medium sized town in the US SW that built an experimental solar array. It didn’t save anywhere near as much on electricity costs as projected because the utility pays not only for the amount of electricity used from the grid but also a multiplier based on the peak electricity demand. The solar array didn’t help cut peak demand because the peak was in the early evening when people got home from work, started cooking and turned on their air conditioners but the solar array had dropped off to almost nothing at that time.
So what did they do to try to save the experiment? Adding battery backup would have raised the cost of solar to several times the going rate. Instead, they pushed “smart” meters – meters that could turn off your AC (often right when you need it). I was smart enough to refuse the meter on my home, but my employer signed up my building. No problem, as workers would be home when the building’s AC shut down, right? Wrong. The building’s AC also shut down during summer in the day too when monsoon clouds built up blocking the solar array. It got so hot in the building at times, 85 plus, and my employer wouldn’t back out on the “smart” meter, so I had no choice but to quit and take a job in a different building with a wall-mounted AC that they couldn’t turn off. The desire to make the solar experiment look like a success cost my employer far more than it saved.
Nick Stokes may be able to add but he’s still ignorant and unable to think
If wind and solar produce cheap power and cheap power is the lifeblood of Capitalism, why then are the Marxists so hot for wind and solar?
It makes no sense.
Do you have data on the hotness of Marxists?
They’re 6% wetter…
Why Nick, do you not own a thermometer? The rectal ones are said to be the most accurate. Let us know your results, will you?
Oh if we follow our inner Stokes sophist we first have to define hotness and Marxist
“Lumber”?
Is that an Oz-ish usage of English that has eluded me, Nick?
Where does the IEA account for the capital and operating costs of maintaining backup generators or batteries in their LCOE? As you must acknowledge, they simply assume that they exist at zero cost. (Which is why you want to encumber them —or “lumber” them—to make the levelized cost more level?)
So if the cost of unreliable/ruinables depends on backup generation that is skyrocketing in cost, how do you reconcile “the maths”?
Question Two:
If all fossil fuel use is to be ended, how will your CCGT operate?
ROFL what a crock of BullSh$t … written by researchers not in living in the real world.
The biggest issue for Australia is transmission. You still have to pay for the long run transmission line run from the backup and base-load generation and whatever flirty unreliables you connect. That is part of the reason Western Australia will never connect to the retarded Eastern States electrical network.
Lets leave aside that data is two years out of date and pre Ukraine and power crisis. The fact it just lumps countries costs including Australia as just one cost lets you know it’s complete crap. The cost of power varies from State to State and area to area in a country and this sort of simplification is only for fools.
Sorry I don’t accept or believe any of that garbage.
But of course you have no numbers to offer at all.
No numbers is the about the same as the numbers you are pushing and at least it’s honest.
I should also point out your trash is a series of numbers depending on what assumption you put on the sliders … you publish one set but do not mention the sliders (some might call that deceptive). Drilling deeper into those assumptions many of them would appear to be massively out of date. If you push me for a number I would have to go with 42.
There is no cost to CO2, it’s a huge benefit for the planet.
Nick, once again you are using LCOE. Once again I will explain why this is not a legitimate test of cost.
To calculate LCOE you take all the cash flows out associated with an installation, installation, maintenance etc, and discount them to get the Net Present Value (NPV) of those cash flows.
You then take the total MWh generated over the lifetime of the installation, divide, and get a cost per MWh.
That’s it.
The thing that is missing is that wind and solar do not produce the same MWh as conventional or nuclear. You are comparing the cost of two things that are quite different. One is continuous and predictable, the other is intermittent and unpredictable. They are not comparable. They don’t have equal functionality in meeting demand. You have to provide backup or storage to make them comparable.
And when you calculate the output in the above for LCOE, you also have to reduce the MWh that you use for the output to take account of the fact that a lot of this is produced when its not usable. LCOE calculations never do this.
To make two different generating systems comparable you need to do the following.
One way is to provide enough storage or backup that the two products are comparable. This means, including in wind costs everything it will take to make the supply as consistent and predictable as the costs of conventional. This adaptation is sometimes referred to as the Levelised Cost of Storage. And its a very big number. It can double the costs of the intermittent supply. And you would also have to include on the wind side any additional transmission costs which the conventional solution doesn’t need.
When you do this, you’ll also find you need more wind than is budgeted for by the initial calculation. Normally LCOE calculations assume that capacity is capacity and is all usable to supply demand. But it is not, in the case of wind. Because you have to budget enough wind power to recharge storage after a calm spell, in addition to at the same time supplying the full demand load.
In the UK as an example this would require you to have two full weeks usable supply in storage, and you would also have to have enough power surplus when the wind picks up to recharge that storage in two weeks. You’d also have to drop the output figure in the calculation by the amount occurring when its not usable.
None of this is included in LCOE.
The second way you can do it is to compare two total systems. To do this you start with demand, then figure the costs of meeting that demand with wind, solar and whatever backup is needed. Then compare it with the costs of a conventional installation. I know of no serious proof that in a given specific case for a given grid you reduce the cost of supply by adding intermittent sources of generation. But maybe there are some. If so, produce them.
When you do this you also have to reduce the MWh that you use for the output to take account of the fact that a lot of this is produced when its not usable.
The fact that wind costs nothing, ie that there is no fuel cost to a turbine, is irrelevant. There is no fuel cost for a sailing ship. That does not mean it is a cost effective alternative to steam or diesel for freight. Especially if its blowing in the wrong direction!
This is not a problem in mathematics, the math is trivial. This is a problem in accounting. Get all the costs properly included and use a proper accounting methodology. The result is not what you say.
And this is basically proven everywhere its been tried, because everywhere intermittent generation has to be either subsidized or made obligatory to buy or both, or no-one would invest in it, because no-one would buy it.
The real problem with intermittency is this. Even if there is a climate crisis, moving to intermittent power generation is not possible at any affordable cost, and even if it were, it would not solve the supposed problem. Unfortunately lots of smart people like yourself who desperately want to believe its the answer or part of the answer keep persuading themselves, by doing false accounting, that its affordable.
You sound like an engineer with some education in electric power generation and distribution.
Nick has been given this lecture many times. Yet he keeps using the discredited LCOE. It’s almost as if he knows he’s spouting garbage, but doesn’t care.
Education is not his goal. Indoctrination is.
Warmistas have perfected the disingenuous rhetorical strategy of starting every discussion as if it is the first time the subject has ever been broached.
One reason this is such a great strategy for them is that a huge amount of time and words, and hence mental energy and attention, must be expended just to counter the BS premises of their initial statements.
Bingo!
The objective is to influence newbies that have not read the previous 17 times the argument has been refuted.
Your analogy of Renewable and Thermal with sailing ships and turbine/diesel ships is brilliant.
This ^
“...lots of smart people like yourself…” You give too much credit to the “mathematician”, otherwise were good summary of the issue with the wind (and solar) energy.
As expected, any deflection will do to avoid a boring old, all in, incremental economic analysis of your numbers. I especially like the “engineers” who forgot that such analyses are a core part of their jobs.
Funny how BoB actually ignores those who are doing the boring old analysis. It’s almost as if he, like Nick, is just here to push an agenda, and is willing to say whatever it takes to convince himself that he is making a difference.
“Funny how BoB actually ignores those who are doing the boring old analysis”.
If you show me any, I’ll check out their analyses. And the backup for the numbers, per the exhaustive EIA documentation.
C’mon Word Salad…you know better.
Germany has the world’s highest cost
for electricity.
Yes, but most of the difference is in retail costs and taxes. Wholesale cost, which reflects generating cost, is mid-range for Europe.
Where does the money for the Wind and Solar subsidies come from?
Lol
Wholesale costs are not the entire issue. Do those cheaper wholesale prices pay for any of the sunk costs of distribution or just the generating costs? Sooner or later, wind and solar are going to have to pay their way in providing the distribution of electricity. Right now, existing electric companies with fossil fuel generating plants are still doing that making their costs that much more significant. The Public Utility Commissions will eventually get around to requiring every MWh to fully support these costs. When you add in spreading backup costs to wind and solar, they will no longer look so inviting. Politicians will rue the day they listened to folks who know nothing about 99.9% reliable power generation and delivery.
There have been ongoing farm subsidies, and others, almost the entire lifetime of the US. Wind, solar, etc. subsidies will not go away even if unreliabiles totally replace thermals and nuclear.
Yup, Andy. Never let a
crisissubsidy go to waste.In the table, renewables and fossil fuel are costed on the same basis. Distribution has the same costs, however it was generated. But none of this changes the basic fact that the cost difference is dominated by the cost of fuel.
Nick, you need to start at the beginning not somewhere in the middle**. I took an alt
energy course 40+ years ago & the only realistically viable options were hydro,
nuclear & geothermal. Everything else was still pie-in-the-sky dreaming. When oil
plunged in ’85, energy use became less important. Support for ethanol was a
boondoggle to buy farmers’ votes during the 80s & 90s collapse of farm prices.
Since the Greenies lost economic reasons to support their boondoggle, they came up
with the Glow-bull Warming scheme to STEAL OUR MONEY, with Hansen’s Capitol lies
being the first move. AlGore jumped on board & the rest is history. Companies got
OPM to do all the research that had no economic returns. Car companies never
pursued the tech that hybrids now use today cuz there was no ROI. They then got
subsidies to create the artificial demand which made it profitable.
Supply/demand still rules energy costs. By limiting 24/7 solar, hydro, & nuclear supply &
flooding the markets with USELESS alt energy to destroy demand makes alt energy
look cheap. It’s all strings & mirrors, just like your arguments!!!
** h/t Thomas Sowell
The more wind and solar capacity that a country has installed, the higher its price of electricity.
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/the-high-cost-of-electricity-from-wind-and-solar-generation/
Nick, if your figures for renewable energy were correct, why does renewable energy require subsidies at all? In Britain, renewable energy subsidies make up a significant and rising part of the price of electricity. Something doesn’t add up here. The only reasonable conclusion is that the figures you quote are wrong. Note that the subsidies in Britain don’t even require solar and wind farms to produce energy all of of the time, but just when the wind blows and the sun shines. All of the additional costs of coping with the intermittency of wind and solar power add to the cost of running the electricity grid. Those costs are not included in your quoted figures.
Again, no numbers. But in most places in the world, subsidies are diminishing, and I would expect in the UK too.
The IEA numbers are based on actual costs, regardless of who pays for them. The only notion of subsidy in the calculation is the column for carbon costs, but that was not part of my calculation.
“Again, no numbers. But in most places in the world, subsidies are diminishing, and I would expect in the UK too”.
You have just admitted that renewable energy still requires subsidies which means that your quoted costs are nonsense. That was a surprisingly easy argument to win.
No, costs are costs, as in the table. Subsidies just affect who pays them.
In Australia, at least, there is a huge level of subsidy built in to fossil fuel generation. Governments actually built and paid for the power stations and transmission lines.
Without subsidies, no renewable energy would have been built in Britain at all because the cost of renewable energy is too high. Your admission that renewable energy still requires subsidies kills your argument stone dead and means that your quoted costs are wrong. You appear to be one of those people who cannot admit that you are wrong.
It doesn’t still require subsidies. There are of course residual elements of subsidy, for all kinds of generation, which the owners no doubt gratefully receive. As I said elsewhere, the biggest subsidy for fossil fuel electricity generation here is that the government built the generators and transmission grid in the first place. They were not built for profit, and were made available to private operators at far less than their original cost.
You have refuted your own argument. Anything else you say is just mindless drivel designed to obscure your failure. You are now just embarrassing yourself.
“Without subsidies, no renewable energy would have been built in Britain at all”
Nor coal or nuclear. Most of those stations were in fact built directly and paid for by the UK government (eg CEGB).
If Wind and Solar are so superior to Thermal, why do they need subsidies in the first place?
How is that a subsidy? Are you saying that the state governments built and paid for assets that they then handed over to private companies to operate? If the government invested in the assets and continues to own and operate them then that is just a state-owned enterprise, not a subsidy.
“Are you saying that the state governments built and paid for assets that they then handed over to private companies to operate?”
Yes. And it sure sounds like a subsidy to me.
If your facts are accurate, a big ‘if’, then it sounds like a subsidy to me as well. But judging by your past claims, I’m guessing someone will dispute your facts pretty soon now.
Like for example you wouldn’t be claiming the government “paid for” thermal plants when you really mean that government allowed utility companies to depreciate their assets, reducing their current taxable income, would you? Because that’s what the Green Socialists in the US try to claim—that the standard tax code shouldn’t apply for evil fossil fuel users.
“when you really mean that government allowed utility companies”
No, I mean the governments literally paid for the plants. They borrowed the money, acquired the land, and built the plants with a government work force. Plus the distribution network.
Much later, they were handed over to private operators (but without the debt). The ownership status varied, but it was basically an auction with a small number of bidders.
I think Kogan Creek (Qld, 2007) is the only coal fired station to be built in Australia by a private company.
I can just imagine what you would be saying about subsidy if governments were actually building wind farms and passing them on to private firms to operate.
To be honest that would be cheaper and better at least the cost is then fixed and doesn’t go on into the future and you know exactly what you are paying for.
Ah Nicko! So the truth will out. What you’re actually going on about is that there was a privitisation scheme.
The horror! Imagine the state surrendering the commanding heights of the economy to grubby capitalists!
Do you have any kind of evidence that the buyers didn’t pay fair market value?
Preemptively, let me stipulate that it’s totally irrelevant if the government (ever inefficient) borrowed and spent far more than the assets were worth at the time of sale.
Pretty much every state enterprise wastes vast sums enriching connected cronies and builds schlock that they then fail to maintain properly. It’s what socialists do, innit?
“Yes. And it sure sounds like a subsidy to me.”
So not return on investment 🙂
You are a nutcase who like to dribble about things you know nothing about.
You have clearly never heard of hedging.
So, Nick, you are saying that government subsidies for renewables, generous feed-in tariffs for solar panels, preferential access to markets for renewables etc are unnecessary. Ergo, you would strongly support the removal of all such market distortions because these renewables will easily out-compete fossil fuels on a level playing field.
Hey Nick, where does all the glass, iron, steel, silicon, concrete needed for these come from?
Nick, can you point me to a paper or some sort of research that shows it is possible to maintain the frequency of a large A/C grid that consists solely of tens of thousands of independent point sources like solar arrays and windmills? Hopefully said source would also explain how to black-start such a grid. If those two very real engineering problems are not solved, building a grid from only “renewables” is not possible and all the other arguments are simply distractions.
You need a controller. But you don’t need a paper. It’s happening right now in South Australia. They have the capability to run on 100% wind/solar. They used to require control via the flywheel of a gas turbine. But then they figured this would be better done by a battery (Hornsdale). That worked, and now the battery provides frequency control for the SA network, and beyond. They can and do run stably on near 100% wind/solar.
You do realize that battery can only assert frequency control for short duration times like minutes, right? Lose a major component on the grid and it will be over very quickly.
I don’t think you guys know much about power grid operation and what frequency control can do. It is more than just synchronous devices, although that is important. Frequency is a major component is recognizing a supply/demand mismatch. If supply is insufficient, voltage can drop which causes current to rise. Rising current can trip substation breakers and switches causing black outs. rising frequency can indicate too much supply with rising voltage and can cause a lot of damage also.
Frequency control is just needed for seconds but also for major failures on a grid that can last for a significant amount of time.
Only 6?
Germany is continuing to implement programs that reduce CO2, and is committing economic suicide while doing it.
Has anyone figured out what effect reducing “carbon emissions” would have on global temperature?
Yes, actually they have.
There is MAGICC: Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse‐gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC was developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research under funding by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).
Using MAGICC, you can evaluate the effects of various emission strategies on temperature change over time. The results are quite interesting.
See https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/12/going-to-zero/
For an analysis of the entire US going to net zero carbon emissions.
It works out to 0.1 degree C by 2050.
One-tenth of a degree, if the entire USA goes to net zero!
WTF?
Is there a way to sue Brussels for malfeasance?
And that excludes any assessment of the cost of having reduced Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. Having gone to considerable lengths to reduce it, when the non-technical politicians wake up there will be a massive cost to GENERATE carbon dioxide to remedy the shortage. Well, that’s if they managed to reduce it in the first place – of which I have doubts!
“Is there a way to sue Brussels for malfeasance”?
Can you elect an EU Commissioner?
No.
That leaves out point 7 and 8
7. There are lots of essential derivatives from fossil fuel as many are only just learning with the current fertilizer problem. Many of those derivatives are in some ways more important than fossil fuel as an energy source.
8. There will be countries that won’t play ball with ditching fossil fuels and will end up with a huge trade advantage that will attract industries to relocate from the more totalitarian greentard countries. The only stick that could be waved is trade taxes and that sets off a trade war likely breaking world trade into two halves. China and Russia will happily encourage that to break traditional alliances.
China, India and Russia have huge reserves of coal
India and China Coal Production Surging By 700 Million Metric Tons Per Year: That’s Greater Than All U.S. Coal Outputhttps://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/india-and-china-coal-production-surging-by-700-million-metric
India has huge reserves in Australia 🙂
AoDaLiYa being in the extended South China Sea, that coal belongs to China. You waiguoren will be moved off Chinese territory in due course.
Not much wind and not much Sun today
Boris is clinging to Carrie’s petticoat. Presumably she agreed to this
“Ministers quietly abandon ‘green crap’ as focus shifts to food security”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6a7f63fa-e8f4-11ec-9c30-501fb7a77d48?shareToken=b891599f40918a2121c7ef61fb83d033
“…kept alive purely by “propaganda media”.
the Harrabin stratagem
Carrie MUST go, along with Boris!
Re Problem #1: A slight correction – NONE of the nations are obliged to do anything at all. It is obvious that 61 of 191 were merely virtue-signaling, and will do a minimum to try to continue to fool the others..
Many governments believe in renewable energy ‘utopia’ not because they know much about it but because it is done thing, or to put it more ‘scientifically’ it is the most socially acceptable way to behave.
Regretfully, don’t expect much of a change in foreseeable future since the young generations are brainwashed into believing in it.The most frightening of all it is the brain genetic cognitive setup being gradually altered.
Ptolomaic system lasted hundreds of years, and many religion cannons of questionable value, thousands of years later still permeate believes of even the most industrial advanced soceities.
Hi Vuk
Cannon = топова
Canon = канон
I don’t know about you, but I’d like to see a few politicians “cannonized”
Top – singular
Topovi – plural
Thanks! Montenegrin isn’t a language option on Google Translate. I had to go with Serbian and trust the results.
‘In Monte Negro’ ( ‘U Crnoj Gori’, locativ of Crna Gora, two words, gora=forested mountain) two languages spoken are Serbian (dialect of) and ‘Albanesi’ ( 🙂 ) as in Aussie’s new PM/sarc.
Dialect concerns only certain words with letter ‘e’ which in MN is pronounced as ‘iye’- ije. (white = belo & bijelo)
‘topovi’ is plural in both, while ‘topova’ is genitiv of the plural.
There are seven declensions alltogether, nominativ, genitiv, dativ, acusativ, vocativ, instrumental & locativ, both in singular and plural.
Whatever you do don’t bother to learn Serbian or Croat (almost the same thing), as it was known as Serbo-Croat until 20 years ago, when they had a go at each other with cannons.
There you have it.
With cannons, dative case then?
I’m still in favor of cannonizing a bunch of politicians.
Thanks for the language discussion – a favorite topic for me.
I went a bit too far, but you are welcome.
The author treats these reasons not to do The Big Green Thing as if The Big Green Thing is actually a thing that can be done and worth doing well. It still placates the greens.
“As long as global oil production keeps growing …”
Economic illiteracy is strong in this one. He writes as if he believes that production drives demand. No, idiot, companies produce oil because there is demand. Don’t pretend this is something to blame on oil producers.
Yes, this is the fundamental point. No-one whose emissions are large enough to make a difference believes it. All of them are raising them as fast as they can grow their economies. Nothing Europe does, nothing that the West does, is going to affect the supposed problem.
This is the fundamental dishonesty in all the climate policy proposals in Europe, Australia and the US.
A classic instance recently is Jacinda Arden’s proposal to tax lamb and cattle production. Make absolutely no difference.
I’ll bet there are those is the islands that will have warm, fuzzy feelings because of the tax, not to mention the politicos who can’t wait to get their hands on the inflow.
I agree the Paris Climate Accord is non binding and essentially a toothless/useless agreement. However, everything I have read indicates more than 180 nations have signed/ratified the agmt. While I won’t trust the UN and many in the MSM, I could not find any report indicating only 61 nations have signed the agmt.
I think this is correct, actually think its more than 180. However signing is one thing. The important question is what they signed up to.
Very few nations signed up to real reductions in emissions in any reasonably short timescale, eg by 2035 or 2040. But almost any signing up to anything, even if it was only to look hard at the question, is often counted as having signed it.
Vell done for asking ze kvestions that Merkel Schroder and Scholtz should have asked. or maybe they did ask the questions and made up their own answers to please the Green Blob. We harangue our numpty politicians here in the UK with the same questions and get answered with Bidenesque vacuity
The net effect of solutions based entirely on utopian ideology are always negative. Ideologues don’t care about unintended consequences. When things don’t work as planned or expected, they always double down.
The Germans are smart people. It’s amazing that they don’t see the climate fraud being perpetrated against them.
Don’t mention the war. I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.
Germany already has 200% of grid load of installed renewables, widely spread across all of germany already to take maximum advantage of any “wind resource”.
It supplied 40% of electricity generated last year.
As there is no more germany in which to put the next 200-% it can only be interspersed with the existing, meaning no more power.
It’s so simple
Edit: To his #1, according to the UN there are 193 parties (192 countries plus the EU as a party) that have signed the Paris agreement.
In the video, the claim he makes is that only 61 parties have committed to emissions reductions.
Nitpicking, maybe. But the #1 as it stands now is not correct.
Only 61 of the 193 have agreed to reduce emissions. The rest either are “looking” at the “problem” or have their hands out.
Problem 1b: The Paris “Agreement” was an Obama publicity stunt that included massive media buys leading up to it.