A recurring theme here at Manhattan Contrarian is that the “smart” people who seek to run the world are not really very smart. They may have gotten high scores on the SATs, and they may have attended fancy universities, but when it comes to practical knowledge of how the world works, they are often complete idiots.
A special case of this phenomenon is that the highest gurus of high finance — the people who are most trusted to have mastered basic numeracy, and who get to pass out trillions of dollars of public funds — are completely innumerate.
I come to this issue today as a result of the recently-completed briefing in CHECC v. EPA, the DC Circuit case challenging EPA’s “finding” that atmospheric CO2 is a “danger to human health and welfare.” The group challenging the Endangerment Finding, the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, asserts standing on the ground that increasing the amount of solar and wind “renewable” generation on the grid necessarily drives up consumer electricity bills. The reasons why this is so have been discussed many times on this blog. Perhaps the most detailed discussion appears in the Articles section, titled “The Disastrous Economics Of Trying To Power an Electrical Grid With 100% Intermittent Renewables.” This subject does require some thought to understand, but certainly no advanced math. The main point is that intermittent renewables cannot power a grid on their own, and as their grid penetration increases, large amounts of some combination of backup, storage, and overbuilding are required, all of which add to the cost of the system. All of this is easily demonstrated with basic arithmetic. Anyone who successfully finished the sixth grade should grasp it immediately.
As obvious as the conclusion of increasing electricity prices may be, our government, represented by EPA and the Justice Department, either claims, or pretends, not to recognize that conclusion. Could seemingly smart people really be so dense?
Well, consider the case of the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. These are the people at the top of the knowledge pyramid of international finance. They get hundreds of billions of dollars of funding from governments in developed countries, and are given the authority to hand out those funds, let alone to educate and instruct governments in developing countries how to run their economies and their monetary policies correctly. This monetary policy stuff is all arithmetic, some of it fairly complicated. Surely, if anyone in the world can do basic arithmetic, these are the people.
So consider the piece from the IMF’s online journal Finance & Development by Bob Keefe, from December 2022, titled “The Price of Energy Insecurity.” According to this guy, wind and solar are the obvious route to inexpensive electricity:
[T]hanks to previous policies and the advance of technology, solar and wind are the cheapest sources of power available in most parts of the world. Electric vehicles are cheaper to operate, especially when gas prices soar. Energy-efficient products—LED lighting, high-efficiency heat pumps and hot water heaters, and better windows and insulation—can save consumers and businesses money with every monthly power bill. And making clean energy at home, from fuel that’s free for the taking, makes a nation more secure.
And it’s not just Keefe and the IMF who have gotten the message. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is fully on board:
“Ending our dependency on Russian fossil fuels is only the first step,” [von der Leyen] said at the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia. “The skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing, for different reasons, the limitations of our current electricity market design. It was developed under completely different circumstances and for completely different purposes. It is no longer fit for purpose.”
And don’t forget about the World Bank, the IMF’s partners in global high finance. From the World Bank’s “Energy” page, September 26, 2022:
Renewables Are the Key to Green, Secure, Affordable Energy. Renewable energy can help countries mitigate climate change, build resilience to volatile prices, and lower energy costs—this is especially critical now as spiking fossil fuel costs are debilitating poor energy importing countries. Solar and wind technologies can become a game changer for many developing countries as solar and wind are abundant, cost-competitive, and a source of reliable power when combined with battery storage.
Or, from the UN’s International Renewable Energy Agency, July 13, 2022:
“Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2021,” published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) today, shows that almost two-thirds or 163 gigawatts (GW) of newly installed renewable power in 2021 had lower costs than the world’s cheapest coal-fired option in the G20. IRENA estimates that, given the current high fossil fuel prices, the renewable power added in 2021 saves around USD 55 billion from global energy generation costs in 2022.
So what is happening in the real world? A guy named Mike Jonas at Watts Up With That yesterday has compiled the latest data that he could find on the relationship between wind and solar penetration in primary energy consumption in a country versus consumer electricity prices. The wind/solar generation percent data come from 2021; the consumer electricity prices are from June 2022. Here is the chart:
Commenters at WUWT point out, correctly, that this chart hides many complications, particularly the extent to which each country either lowers consumer electricity costs with massive subsidies, or raises them by embedding taxes. Nevertheless, the strong correlation between increasing wind/solar penetration and increasing consumer prices is clear.
To me one of the most striking things about the chart is the low level of penetration of wind- and solar-based electricity in primary energy consumption in every country, even after decades of massive subsidies and extreme political pressure to “save the planet” by means of an energy transition. The only country that has gotten materially past 15% wind/solar energy production is Denmark at about 24%; and that is at a cost of consumer electricity prices well over 50 cents/kWh — about 5 times the U.S. average price. (Commenters point out that Denmark has unusually high amounts of taxes embedded in electricity prices, but it would still be an outlier without them.). Germany and the UK, after many years of vast subsidies and an extraordinary push toward green energy have only achieved 10% and 12% respectively of primary energy from wind and solar, with electricity prices over 4 times the average U.S. level. Greece seems to be some kind of a best case for wind and solar, with close to 15% penetration and electricity prices less than double the U.S. average; but check out this Reuters piece about Greece’s vast subsidies to lower prices to consumers.
I won’t claim that the final real world results are yet in. But if wind and solar could actually provide reliable electricity for lower cost than the fossil fuel alternative, this chart would show correlation with a directly opposite slope. Let’s see some country achieve 50%, or for that matter 85% of primary energy from wind and solar (as many countries are supposedly promising by 2050), and let’s see what the costs are.
” Let’s see some country achieve 50%, or for that matter 85% of primary energy from wind and solar”
There seems to be some rank innumeracy here. Primary energy means energy generated of all kinds. Coal for boilers, gasoline for vehicles etc.
Electricity generated is only maybe a quarter of primary energy. The numbers in the graph are fraction of primary energy, not of electricity generation.
And ‘Net Zero’ doesn’t apply to Coal for boilers, gasoline for vehicles etc.? Of course it does. Those will be coming into the picture, but electricity moved first. So the data used is pretty relevant. It would be nice to have everything tallying precisely, including all the government spendings and machinations, but data tends not to be like that. In the meantime, the data I used is about the best available, and it does paint a pretty clear picture.
Fraction of primary energy was OK for your use, because you are just ranking countries. But Francis Menton, starting with
“To me one of the most striking things about the chart is the low level of penetration of wind- and solar-based electricity in primary energy consumption in every country”
is clearly confusing primary energy with total electricity generation. If total primary energy is the denominator, then of course the penetration is lower. The fraction electricity/primary energy is only about 25%, although larger with the equivalent primary energy that is used in your plot. Denmark is actually 60% electricity from W&S, which is pretty good penetration. Your data has it at 25% of equivalent primary energy.
Interconnectors with neighbouring countries allow them to balance out the wind unreliability ….and pay through the nose for the privilege
House heating is often done by district heating plants (2/3 of homes) , extremely rare in many other western countries that use electricity for each house or only supply heat for a single building
Most are fossil fuels.
We have cogen fire plants in France (cogeneration = electricity + heat), but they are subsidized. They seem very uneconomical.
The Gravelines nuke makes warm water for the Dunkerque LNG terminal:
https://www.fluxys.com/fr/company/dunkerque-lng/infrastructure
“pay through the nose for the privilege”
They figure it is cheaper than paying through the nose for gas. And, of course, much cheaper than paying through the nose for gas when the wind is blowing.
No, they dont Nick. People on power make huge amounts of money, it is passed to green pressure groups and the population are powerless.
And once again Nick demonstrates his ability to argue two opposing positions, often at the same time.
For weeks he’s been proclaiming that the only reason why electricity prices have been so high is because of a short term run up in gas prices that was already ending. Now he is claiming that high gas prices are an endemic thing.
Of course he completely (once again) ignores the fact that the main reason why fossil fuel prices are rising is because he and his fellow acolytes are doing everything in their power to block the production of fossil fuels.
Nick is alway’s picking cherries when it isnt his nose.
Here in France, since I was young all I heard was pro wind energy talking points, notably:
Nukes are remote plants, wind is everywhere and next to the consumer.
And now with more wind, all we hear is:
There is always wind somewhere. In Europe, there is never zero wind in Spain and Norway. You only need some cables.
(And some people aren’t barfing. Apparently.)
This grossly overstates W&S impact on Denmark electricity generation because that 60% figure is not 100% utilised within Denmark. Denmark imports 18% of its electricity from Sweden and these interconnects are used to cover for the variability of W&S. The 60% is the gross production which when it exceeds consumption is exported because of a lack of storage.
W&S as a % of production within the country is the usual measure of penetration.
Except unlike other forms of generation, unreliables produce energy out of step with consumption, so unless it can be stored it overstates its actual impact on that economy’s needs. Proponents of unreliables prefer this metric because it makes their “product” look better, but in time unreliables will increase to the point of claiming 100% while the economy is still having to import electricity to cover their needs.
For a local example, my roof PV produces more than 100% of my usage, however I import more than 50% of my usage because storage is impractically expensive and my usage doesn’t match the times when the sun is shining.
“For a local example, my roof PV produces more than 100% of my usage, however I import more than 50% of my usage because storage is impractically expensive and my usage doesn’t match the times when the sun is shining.”
And poor people living in apartments subsidize your system by paying for your excess output when THEY don’t need it.
NOW if you went ahead and installed the storage so that your 50% was not “stored” at the utility, then you would stop stealing (legally) from the poor for your own enrichment.
Nothing against you personally but like everything “renewable energy” home rooftop solar is just another transfer of wealth form the poor to the well to do.
Yes, I enjoy being credited $0.32kwh for my moderate temperature midday rooftop solar electricity that has a market value of $0.03kwh. But it’s gross stupidity that should never been allowed. I don’t vote for the Party that causes this Cali mess, I just “do what you gotta do.”
Of course, since such a metric hides the amount wasted because wind and solar cannot be produced on demand, thereby overstating it utility and value.
This is not informative but deceptive, so it shouldn’t be defended as a meaningful ‘metric.’
With a country where trade forms such an important part of the picture that can never really be so. There are of course various ways of looking at the data, but they should include all the flows. This chart shows exports as negative, and compares total export against total wind production to show that it is arguable that most wind is in fact exported. Complicating matters slightly is the fact that to a certain extent Denmark is just a transit country between Sweden and Norway on the one hand and Germany and the Netherlands on the other.
However when you look at hourly data it is clear that indeed exports are associated with high wind production, and imports and conventional power with low wind production.
http://pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/graphics/monthly/2022_12_dk_prod.jpg
Chart from PF Bach
I don’t understand down votes for that true statement
A similar story applies to Scotland where First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed:
“We’ve virtually decarbonised our electricity supply. Just short of 100% of all the electricity we use is from renewable sources.”
NICOLA STURGEON, 1 NOVEMBER 2021.
Here are the facts:
https://fullfact.org/environment/scotland-renewable-energy/
A similar story applies to Scotland where First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed:
“We’ve virtually decarbonised our electricity supply. Just short of 100% of all the electricity we use is from renewable sources.”
Sounds fishy to me. And wasn’t her first major hit “Like a Sturgeon”?
Exported at extremely low prices which helps explain why Denmark has the highest priced electricity.
With electric vehicle (EV) numbers expanding rapidly (or so we are told), wind and solar must already be providing some power for EVs. So wind and solar are already into transport. Presumably, into some electric boilers too. The more price competitive the wind and solar power is, the more it will be used. Nothing is stopping it, apart from its own limitations.
The article was about secondary energy, but the author skipped to primary energy a few times, which made no sense.
Nick the Stroker gets a gold star.
In the UK new gas boilers have already been banned in new homes from 2025
It will be interesting but I suspect that getting a mortgage on these properties may be difficult. The reason is quite simple and obvious, we are short of Electricity in the UK, whatever the wind is doing, as the infrastructure to transport it to houses is inadequate and near breaking point. We only have 1-2kW per house if we all use electricity at once, and that is exactly what electric heating does (whatever type). Note 25 million homes, total capacity about 50 GW = 2kW each, ignoring all other users!
UK grid is already telling new unreliables that it will take many years to connect them to the grid and in some cases perhaps 15 years.
Fortunately I’ve just had a new one fitted
Ah, yes!
More of that specious sophistry, at which you think you are so good.
No. The whole of Menton’s quantitative commentary, from
“To me one of the most striking things about the chart is the low level of penetration of wind- and solar-based electricity in primary energy consumption in every country”
on, is based on not understanding that total primary energy is a much larger number than total electricity generated.
Thus, making actual wind and solar contributions even poorer.
No. Total primary energy is a much larger denominator than total electricity generated.
Sou-u-u-u-urce?
Source? Wiki is good enough. They give world primary energy at 162,000 TWh. World electricity generation is about 23,000 TWh.
The IEA estimate electricity’s share of total final energy will be c.21% by 2025.
The IEA is a “little biased” toward renewable electricity. If world electricity consumption in 2022 was14%, as Nick reports, (I thought it was 20%) of primary energy consumption it won’t be 25% in 2025.
21% was the figure mentioned
As long as all countries are compared using the same standard, there is no problem.
Most arent like Denmark with interconnectors larger markets to do the hard work when the wind doesnt cooperate with demand.
2/3 of homes use district heating , mostly with fossil fueled boilers. That also cuts electricity demand in winter compared to other countries (like me all electric)
The particulars of piss-ant countries like Denmark cannot be used to guide policies in larger, more diverse countries.
Which is what makes the net zero electrification programme even more innumerate. You are proving Menton’s case.
Your fellow acolytes are demanding that everything be eliminated except electricity.
Electric cars
Electric heaters
Electric stoves
The method is legitimate, even if it makes your religion look bad.
Yes, we need to make all of the world’s energy needs dependent on one type of energy. If you imagine energy supplies as eggs, then the world’s needs like a basket, then…maybe electricity is the basket and the eggs are…hmmm. Well, what could possibly go wrong?
Yes. It must be total energy because we must de-carbonize – everywhere – according to the church of climate, which of course will not happen. No oil, no gas, no coal, no wood – nothing. Only electricity generated from the ruinable unreliables allowed for the entire planet..
While the inconvenient fact that one can’t construct windmills or solar panels without fossil fuels is conveniently ignored…
“Primary energy means energy generated of all kinds.”
I actually meant energy used. It’s an important distinction, because it includes wastage.
Like selling solar and wind output when the prices are low or negative?
No, not like that.
Yes, like that.
You can’t just ignore any factor that makes your arguments look bad.
The numbers in the graph are fraction of primary energy, not of electricity generation.
Are you claiming that the labels are incorrect? They certainly seem to be about grid electricity, not about some other energy catagory.
The y-axis is correctly labelled as W&S as % of primary energy. Mike Jonas more correctly described it as equivalent primary energy, which allows for the gap between primary energy used and electricity generated (if you are generating electricity).
Nick, don’t you think it’s about time Chris Bowen published a detailed resource-loaded plan and schedule for exactly how and when Australia will be reaching Net Zero in the power sector?
And if this plan is to have credibility, shouldn’t that plan include a hard-target schedule for the closure of Australia’s coal-fired and gas-fired power plants, one which specifically identifies each targeted facility and the date by which it is to be retired?
The coal-fired plants are being retired for the cogent reason that they are getting old, and too expensive to run. The owners make the decision, not Bowen. To the extent governments are involved, that will be the state governments. In the near term with coal, mostly NSW.
Nick,
This is clearly a subject area (renewable energy) you are very familiar with.
Can you name a country that has increased the renewable generation inputs to the grid in that country, while at the same time reducing the cost of electricity to the consumer.
I am genuinely interested to know if such a place exists.
Those places only exist in computer models and the minds of climate alarmists.
That place is Australia – right now — in Chris Bowens head.
—————-
Nick Stokes reply to Beta Blocker: “The coal-fired plants are being retired for the cogent reason that they are getting old, and too expensive to run. The owners make the decision, not Bowen. To the extent governments are involved, that will be the state governments. In the near term with coal, mostly NSW.”
—————-
Bloody hell, mate, nothing prevents Chris Bowen from proposing a voluntary agreement among the Australian state governments in which the central government acts as a coordinator and facilitator for implementing a firmly-committed, highly-detailed plan of action for quickly moving Australia into a Net Zero energy future.
In his role as the central coordinator for implementing Australia’s Net Zero future, Chris Bowen would develop and publish a detailed resource-loaded plan and schedule for exactly how and when Australia would be reaching Net Zero, starting with the electric power sector and moving on from there.
For this plan to have credibility, the plan must include a hard-target schedule for the closure of Australia’s coal-fired and gas-fired power plants, one which specifically identifies each targeted facility and the date by which it is to be retired.
Without having this kind of Net Zero action plan in place — it doesn’t have to be dictated by the central government, it can be implemented through a mutual agreement among the states — then everything Chris Bowen says about the need to reduce Australia’s GHG emissions is mere virtue signaling happy talk.
Here is an account of the negotiations about the closure of Eraring. The owner, who wants to close, is Origin Energy. The Minister involved is NSW Liberal, Matt Kean. There was no role for the feds. Bowen was in opposition then; Morrison was PM, and of course, Energy Minister.
Which simply shows how even more stupid net zero aspirations are.
Fine, lets just see some country achieve 85% of electricity generation used from wind and solar. And lets see what it costs.
If its such a wonderful idea there should be examples, and if there are none, then what is needed is a pilot. Before the rest of us drive our countries down the road. Lets see how it works out for a given country.
And if its going to be the UK that is the pilot, have to say that the signs so far are so discouraging that any sane political class would be backing off at speed.
People who want the whole world to do this have to make the case that its possible technically and feasible economically. I don’t know of any such a case for a given country. And there is no functioning example.
Absent either, why do you think its a good idea?
Also, they can’t use interconnectors to import electricity for those times when wind and solar aren’t producing.
The author was writing about electricity — secondary energy — and made errors by saying primary energy. In the conclusion, I believe he meant 50% to 75% of electricity — secondary energy — from wind and solar by 2035, That would have made sense since the article was about electricity.
I recommended the article at my blog anyway, because no article is perfect. Nick the Stroker searches for errors like a hungry junkyard dog searches for a bone. Any comments on the rest of the article? Any punctuation errors?
Honest Climate Science and Energy
Having just suffered through a SE Michigan blackout from 7:30pm last night until 4:30 pm today, thanks to a global warming ice storm, I am thinking about blackouts. Our DTE Energy uses 58% coal to make electricity, so the supply is steady. But the wires and trees near them are vulnerable. A transformer exploded behind our home last night and I almost hit the ceiling. It sounded like a war zone. Then no power.
The problems with Nut Zero will not only be higher costs — they can be subsidized away. The main problem will be when individual electric utilities reach their Flounder Limits. That limit is a high percentage of unreliables that makes their supply of electricity unable to match demand minute by minute.
The utility will become unmanageable and will flounder when bad weather conditions for solar and wind energy (no wind at breakfast time or dinner time) happen during peak Duck Curve demand hours. And then there will be controlled or uncontrolled blackouts. Enough blackouts and pro-Nut Zero politicians will lose their jobs.
It was 55 degrees in the house when I started typing this comment. People will notice Nut Zero effects when they have blackouts. Nut Zero costs can be somewhat hidden by subsidies or avoided by conservation. My own natural gas cost per unit is up +33% this year, for example, but I am using less gas by setting my thermostat at 68 degrees F., after using 70 degrees F. for the past 36 years in the same home, with the same furnace. The wife is not happy at 68 degrees F. I’m okay. But our cat sits on a hot air floor vent waiting for the furnace to go on.
“In the conclusion, I believe he meant 50% to 75% of electricity — secondary energy — from wind and solar by 2035, “
“Any comments on the rest of the article? Any punctuation errors?”
There isn’t much in the article but commentary on the low degree of penetration. And he got that by looking at the percentage of primary energy. It isn’t that he mixed up words; he mixed up the meaning of figures. That is why it is rank innumeracy.
He probably did mean 50 to 85% of electricity generated. But there is the innumeracy. He said:
“Let’s see some country achieve 50%, or for that matter 85% of primary energy from wind and solar (as many countries are supposedly promising by 2050)”
and it is meaningless on any words. If secondary, then Denmark (and South Australia) are well over 50% now. If primary, then using entirely renewables would not get you over 40%.
Rank innumaracy.
>If primary, then using entirely renewables would not get you over 40%.
But isn’t that the whole premise of Net Zero? That we have to electrify everything and generate that electricity from low-emitting generators. That does mean that we have to be getting 85% (or more) of primary energy from wind and solar, with a little bit of legacy hydro and winding down nuclear as it wears out. (The Suzuki Foundation plan for Canada involved pretty much that, as does Jacobson’s proposals.)
I take your point that confounding primary energy with electricity causes confusion, especially since generating electricity with heat engines (as now) involves heat losses that have to be accounted for. But in the end, it has to be all electricity anyway and all with wind and solar (practically.)
Glad you have your power back on, Richard. We’re just far enough north of you that we got no ice, just heavy wet freezing snow. Like wet cement to shovel. Power stayed on. Windsor area got ice.
Ice storms (and snow like this) used to be unusual in Jan and Feb, usually not till March or even April. The winter has been milder, which is good except when you get 15 mm ice instead of 15 cm of dry snow.
Like your new blog.
Way less snow last winter and this winter than in the 1970s. We keep track of that because the wife shovels the 100 foot driveway for the past 37 years for exercise while I pretend to be having a heart attack. I offer to hire a snow plow service like everyone else in the subdivision but she insists on doing it herself. Global warming made the winters warmer with less snow in SE Michigan but ice on the wires seems more likely.
These people say electrify everything. Don’t built houses with chimneys.
But when I was a teen, it was: how DARE you build houses with no chimneys?
(I’m French.)
Seriously, it was EDF’s fault people were making homes with electric heating: it was a plot to sell nuclear energy.
“EDF = bad, electric = bad” was I grew up with in the (pro enviro) mass media.
It is more that any grid with more than 15% unreliables, like wind and solar,is fragile.Spending most of a week with intermittent power, and no water supply, was rather unpleasant in Texas Feb 2021.
They are stupid or they are liars.
Embrace the power of and.
Could be both…
Feynman described them as “pompous fools”.
‘But if wind and solar could actually provide reliable electricity for lower cost than the fossil fuel alternative,
this chart would show correlation with a directly opposite slopethere would be absolutely no reason to either subsidize or mandate their use.’Last week a local politician held a town hall meeting for the public to hear from our local utility about the future of our utilities. I thought the push towards 100% renewables would be a main topic of discussion. It never even came up during the time allotted for the public to ask questions. The meeting ended before I was even able to ask during the open Q&A. I was able to put the question directly to the utility representatives before the meeting and all I got was some happy talk about batteries. They are essentially required by law to put out plans which show us going to 100% renewables, but the plans are hopelessly vague on how it actually gets done and what it will cost. They have just a little over ten years before they are supposed to be at 100% and they are talking about modular nukes, pumped hydro, and flow batteries, none of which will get here in time to help them (us). I think some of them know but are not really allowed to speak the truth to the public. It’s bizarre. One thing prominently on display in the plan is DSM.
‘I think some of them know but are not really allowed to speak the truth to the public.’
Outside of HR, they all know. And just like the monthly D&I meetings, they all know it’s a crock. But it’s like storming a well fortified position during the Middle Ages – the first assailants know they won’t survive.
DSM?
Dichroic stupid managers?
Demand Side Management is cutting off people’s power to manage a shortage caused by Leftist control of the planning of our energy systems.
<$80 bbl crude and $2.17mcf natural gas and we have an unaffordable energy crisis that can only be solved with wind, solar, and battery storage? Battery storage for a few days of cloudy and calm weather costs 10x more than than the panels and turbines. Hello?
Windmills and Solar should be required to install full battery backup and include that cost in the cost of the windmills and solar before they are allowed on the Grid. Including that cost would make Windmills and Solar the most expensive alternative available. The alarmists couldn’t talk their way out of that one.
That would be (falsely) argued as targeting renewables to favor other sources of power. Just require that all sources to the grid be required to provide their their bid MW in 4, 8, or 12 hour blocks and face steep fines when they fall short. Same effect, but the rule applies across the board. Wind & solar would either install batteries or pay for the other sources to back them up.
I like that idea, too.
They are wealthy globalists with zero intention of helping peons like us. As long as their investments are reaping millions they could care less about ordinary people having reasonable energy costs.
Meanwhile, tomorrow in Boulder, a new low temperature record for the date, last set in 1899, will be beaten. Will it be by 2 degrees or more?
It’s looks like the new record low for the date will be -10F. The old record was -5F.
It’s currently warmed up at my house to -9F.
That’s chilly!
The jet stream is cutting across the middle of the United States letting cold air come down into the northern parts of the U.S., while preventing the cold air from penetrating farther south.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-88.86,40.05,264/loc=-1.483,53.909
Here’s where the cold air is located:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-88.86,40.05,264/loc=-1.483,53.909
Speaking of rank innumeracy; The IMF does not “hand out” funds, it loans the money to “client states” at usurious interest, designed to usurp said client state’s natural resources and absorb what army they have into the UN as corporate henchmen, occupying said forfeited resources.
In 2020 25% of electricity consumed in Denmark was imported, 33% of total market value.
“Large volumes of import and export are consequences of the large share of wind energy and the missing flexibility in the Danish power system”.
http://www.pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/references/pfb_danish_electricity_balance_2020_2021_04_27.pdf
Indeed so. And it has got worse.
These people are not incinerate. They are indeed very smart.
The mistake this writer makes is thinking that smartness means that they will deliver things that are good for the population at large. It does not. It means that they will deliver things that are good for THEMSELVES…..
A bit OT but lots to do with Energy and Insanity: From the Land of The Moonbat, (and Prince of Chuckles as was) here’s how to reduce emissions, electricity consumption and everything.
Why didn’t anyone else think of it.
Headline:Welsh government cancels all major road building projects over fears of more cars and emissions
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/welsh-government-cancels-all-major-road-building-projects/
It is being run by a load of leftist idiots. It also has terrible health and education results. The population will all leave soon.
I wonder if anyone has attempted to cost electricity prices based on the primacy of wind and solar generation, now and in the future for all energy demands less a proportion of nuclear baseline, on the basis that those two become totally responsible for funding and delivering standby/backup systems for when their outputs fail to provide a designated safety margin of generation over a worst-case demand (including for a hypothetical period of global cooling).
Take the UK as a for instance.
The plan, supported by Conservatives, Labour, Greens, Liberals, SNP and Plaid Cymru, is to take the UK to Net Zero by way of taking all its energy use to electricity.
So, as of 2025 gas boilers in new build homes will be banned. At the same time the replacement of oil boilers in existing homes will be banned. The idea is to move these uses to heat pumps.
As of 2030 the sale of new ICE cars will be banned. New hybrids will still be allowed to be sold until 2035, after which all new cars sold must be EVs.
Also in 2035 the sale of replacement gas boilers is to be banned subject to some conditions about comparative costs.
I don’t know what the plans are for industrial uses of energy or for trucks, if there are any, but the logic of the plan is all those move to electricity also.
This is a plan to move the power use of the country away from its present mix of gas, gasoline and mainly conventionally generated electricity to a future in which all energy use will be electricity, and all electricity will be generated from wind and solar.
The question for Nick and other enthusiasts is: show us a case where some country or region has done just the first part of this. The first part is moving all electricity generation to wind and solar. Show a case where some country or region has done it.
Nick will say that the UK is well on its way, and that the case proves his point, because the recent dead calms were met by imports, so this shows it can be done. Denmark too, he will say, makes up its dead periods with imports. So it shows it can be done. And he claims, like the UN, that the great thing is, fuel during the day and high winds is free.
One refutation of this argument is price. When the UK went through its recent wind drought (in the middle of the annual winter solar drought), it had to import to avoid blackouts. Look up what the price of spot imports rose to during that episode. Astronomical.
The second refutation is that what the activists want is to have everyone on Net Zero and converted to wind and solar. And if this were to happen there would be no power to buy at any price on a calm winter evening. There would be no imports.
But now we go on a step. There is no country that has converted its electricity supply to Net Zero at current levels of demand. Convert to heat pumps and EVs and most estimates are that this will double or triple electricity demand.
Show the case that this can be done at the same time as converting power generation to wind and solar.
The comparison of electricity generation by wind and solar to total energy consumption is perfectly legitimate, more, its vital to do. The reason is that the political establishment really is bent on converting all energy consumption to electricity at the same time as converting the generation to wind and solar.
This is totally irrational. But measures such as the proportion of power generation that is wind and solar do not catch the true scale of the craziness.
Actually in the recent calms, most, 90%, came from gas and coal, and the Grid was tottering on the edge of failure. Wind was about 4%.
Lesson: Gambling on chaotic systems is a no win situation, you will lose. Sooner or later the UK Grid will collapse, and the guess is that they will blame consumers for using too much electricity! In fact they already did ask us to cut consumption in peak periods. Electric cars only, will add 50% to present consumption, electric heating at least another 100%. It cannot work ever however many windmills the build without Grid Scale batteries. There are not the raw materials available to make a grid scale battery, even for just the UK.
Currently there is a big push in the UK to persuade people to switch to smart meters, meaning that their electricity supply can be switched off remotely. Alarming.
Yes, only conceivable ways to make this work are
— cut demand to comply with intermittency
— install huge amounts of gas
They seem to be tiptoeing to doing both. Because climate!
Although Centrica is reusing part of the Rough gas storage field the UK is still woefully short of gas storage and as far as I can tell there are no real plans to increase such storage – insane!
Storage has to pay for itself. That means there must be a big enough difference between the price at which you can fill it and the price at which you can redeliver from it to pay for the cost of the facility and the round trip losses. Shipping flexibility and a large LNG discharge capacity have replaced a chunk the previous flexibility in seasonal production from the North Sea, where the fields themselves were the storage and flex redelivery capacity. Extra physical storage is now ships awaiting discharge, or slow steaming.
Even so, the storage is not quite as bad as it is often painted. There’s almost 14TWh of LNG tankage ashore and another 26TWh in cavern storage and Rough.
http://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/DailySummaryReport
Thanks for the info.
Good article. My favorite line: “Could seemingly smart people really be so dense?”
Yes. At least some are. The remainder think WE are the dense ones who will buy the “cheaper” sales pitch. No, we will check the math.
I think you need to understand Ursula Vonda Liar’s mumblings in the light of a predecessor – Jean Claud Juncker’s – rare moment of Candour…
“When things get difficult, you just have to lie”
I am still amazed that people still expect a politician or a party or a political class to be actually looking out for them, or the planet. Noblesse oblige died with the landed gentry as the source of wealth – gentry, whose peasants made them rich and powerful, through their labour.
That social contract no longer exists.
Today’s crop of jumped up middle managers with no class whatsoever, have zero idea of what one might call the bigger picture, The only function of the plebs is to vote them into power, and public politics is simply the manipulation of various narratives – climate change being one – so as to get voted into power and justify use of it for personal ends.
All political elites in the world are the same. The one who has revealed his face, because he is dying and no longer cares, and doesn’t depend on a democracy to keep him in power, is Vladimir Putin.
The EU models itself on the Russian federation. It would dearly love to emulate Russia in respect of Ukraine, with a ‘special military exercise’ in the United Kingdom, but it lacks the power. But it, too, genuinely believes that the UK really wants to be part of its undemocratic empire, and the people were ‘misled’ by ‘right wing populists’ in breaking away.
So it isn’t a question of innumeracy. The greasy cabal of bureacrats and pressure groups behind the scenes have decided on a policy to rape the plebs, and the job of the Vonda Liars is to sell it to the plebs. Propagandists cherry pick extremely economical truths,or barefaced lies and hand it to paid propagandists like our own Nick Stokes, and the public at large is simply unwilling to admit that it’s been fooled and is being fooled and has always been fooled since forever, into the strange notion that anyone who has fought their way up the bloody steps of political power actually has any interest left in truth, or the people, or in fact anything else. Or is not compromised by bribery or blackmail.
I reiterate Roger Scruton. It isn’t logic driving this narrative, it is power, greed and money.
And pointing out logical flaws is simply of no interest to anyone involved in it.
I mean who is the target audience? Nick Stokes? he drank the Koolaid and is either being rewarded handsomely or is a complete fool. It doesnt matter which.
By definition, people here already know its scientific bunk. And if they can lie about climate change they can sure lie about renewable energy.
The real issue is how to exploit what political and media tools exist to convert the peole who don’t read WUWT, and dethrone the existing elites and replace them with anything that is better.
But who will bell the cat?
I sometimes suspect that it’s no so much “completely innumerate”, but the uncontrollable urge of ‘creative numeracy’. They are so convinced of the solution, they’ll twist and massage the numbers until they fit the desired goal, however inconceivable or impossible the result is.
I find that the evangelists for net zero are completely unwilling to recognise the total lack of realism of their underlying assumptions. They are pseudo numerate, but care nothing for things like proper costs, whether you can keep on imposing demand response day after day in a cold snap, whether the wind will blow stronger and more steadily in future, how much storage their ideas would need to make them workable and so forth.
From the article: “Could seemingly smart people really be so dense?”
Yes, they can be. We have seen it on countless occasions.
The real question to ask is “Why does this happen?”
Take Human-caused Climate Change for an example. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that alarmist climate science is not based on established facts but rather on speculation. Yet some really smart people are convinced it is real based on nothing more than this speculation.
Why does it happen?: I think human psychology has a lot to do with it. Even smart people can fool themselves into believing things that are not true, if they want those things to be true.
Why would they want those things to be true, that are not true? Various reasons.
While the chart is accurate, the message is not quite so clear.
Texas, for example, has the largest percentage of wind and solar electricity among the US states – and Texas also has the 15th cheapest electricity among the 50 US States: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
I would note, however, that Texas’ low electricity price is far more a function of cheap natural gas from fracking than it is from wind and solar. The majority of Texas’ electricity comes from natural gas, and these natural gas plants – both peaker and primary – also provides enormous dispatchable resources to offset the intermittency of wind and solar.
In contrast, California has the 4th most wind+solar but the 2nd most expensive price (49th of 50 cheapest), with only oil burning Hawaii being worse.
The other 2 states between California and Texas in volume of wind and solar: Florida (33 of 50 cheapest/18th most expensive) and Pennsylvania (25 of 50 cheapest/26th most expensive). Pennsylvania also has fracking of natural gas…
It is very hard to make a person understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Any body else think it is ironic that the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, which produced over 2,600,500 barrels of oil a day Jan – Dec 2022? 🙂
Not ironic, just pragmatic – they don’t want their good work to be interrupted by power outages 😉
The article says “Commenters point out that Denmark has unusually high amounts of taxes embedded in electricity prices, but it would still be an outlier without them.“. However, if the Danish government is simply trying to recoup its own capital expenditure on wind then it would be fair to leave the taxes in the equation.
Incidentally, I think that Germany is still subsidising industry at the expense of households, so the household electricity price is higher than the overall price. It really is difficult to get precisely comparable data on everything.
Indeed: historically, the Public Service Obligation formed most of the tax on electricity, and was used to finance renewables, including such things as subsidising connection and balancing charges. Overall subsidy grew like topsy. See this chart
A recurring theme here at Manhattan Contrarian is that the “smart” people who seek to run the world are not really very smart. They may have gotten high scores on the SATs, and they may have attended fancy universities, but when it comes to practical knowledge of how the world works, they are often complete idiots.
New Republican President MUST NOT nominate any Ivy League graduate for any federal position including judicial, especially judicial, unless their conservative bonfides are unimpeachable.
Take a look at this PowerPoint presentation concerning the current five-year power resource and reliability plan for the US Northwest:
Recap of the Northwest Power & Conservation Council’s 2021 Power Plan
Here are some of my thoughts and opinions concerning the Council’s latest five-year plan:
The Future Market Price of Electricity in the US Northwest
One of the key assumptions underpinning the Council’s five year power plan is that the market price of electricity will fall, not rise, as wind and solar gain an ever-larger share of the region’s power supply, part of which now comes from coal-fired generation located outside the planning region of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.
The assumption the Council makes that market prices for electricity will fall in the US Northwest is based on a wind and solar cost projection the Western Electricity Coordination Council (WECC) has made for the entire Western Interconnect as a whole; i.e., that the market price of electricity generated in and for the Western Interconnect will fall between now and 2045.
WECC is the agency based in California which FERC charters to coordinate and manage planning for the reliability of the Western Interconnect. As it applies to the responsibilities delegated by FERC to the WECC, the Northwest Power Planning and Conservation Council falls under WECC’s jurisdiction.
I don’t believe WECC’s predictions for the future cost of electricity inside the Western Interconnect, and no else should either.
However, the NP&CC’s staff cannot, and will not, make any basic assumptions in its power planning activities for the US Northwest which are not in close alignment with the assumptions WECC makes for the Western Interconnect as a whole.
The Adequacy and Reliability of the Future Supply of Electricity in the US Northwest
The Power Council’s current five-year plan is geared towards supporting the long-term decarbonization of the power grid now serving the US Northwest. The plan states that for the long term future, the supply of electricity in the US Northwest will remain adequate as long as these two main criteria are in force:
— New sources of generation are being added more or less continuously, most all of this new capacity identified as wind & solar. Projects involving new-build gas-fired generation will not be undertaken. Nuclear will play a small role, but only a small role.
— An integrated program of energy efficiency measures and demand management measures is being implemented in order to keep load and supply in balance. E.g., hHeat pumps for residential and institutional heating, a variety of energy efficiency measures for industrial processes, and the use of smart metering for controlling demand in real time.
Intermittency battery storage doesn’t play nearly a large a role as one might expect in the plan, probably because the region has a wealth of hydropower generation resources to draw upon.
As is documented in their monthly Regional Technical Forums, members of several stakeholder organizations including the power utilities are in deep discussions as to which energy efficiency measures and which demand management measures can be used to to keep load and supply in balance.
With the near certain situation that the region’s coal-fired capacity will be retired early, and without adequate replacement, I do not see how it is possible to procure and install the wind & solar capacity the plan calls for, or at the pace the plan calls for.
The upshot is that the US Northwest’s future supply of electricity will fall short of demand with the consequence that energy efficiency measures and demand management measures will come to dominate the region’s decarbonization planning.
The ever-increasing cost of electricity in the region will become the primary incentive for business, industrial, institutional, and residential electricity consumers to adopt the energy efficiency measures and the demand management measures needed to keep load and supply in balance.
When I was young, two claims bothered me the most:
running society on wind and solar;men have a lot more (roughly double) sex partners than female;Both being sooooooooo clearly bonkers for me (as a teen), it frightened me a bit, leaving me wondering how normally integrated adults, even people presenting the news on TV, could utter such absolute crap.
The wind and solar seemed like a joke, and the sex thing… martians?
EDIT:
Another insane one, but more recent:
At Roissy CDG, there is about one take off per minute. Say one every two minute for each “terminal”.
Yet we are told it’s justify to wait for hours for “security”. Wait in line. Wait for WHAT? What the hell are they doing?
And people aren’t screaming about the wait times. They are getting people impeached over wait time in airports. I don’t get it.
Since I was at a university in Paris, where I saw a lot of cheaters in math exams, and I was told I was impolite, and lack respect, for not showing clear notes to people being me, so they could copy my answers (but I can barely read back my own notes, and that’s when I still have in mind my proofs, one day after I absolutely can’t read my notes), I have been wondering how much cheating exists: I knew of quite a lot of cheating, even people who used to make not one paper, but two or three during an exam, so three students had their names on writings of one student… how much cheating that I never knew about existed in my university?
The difference is between quite a lot of student cheat and most cheat during exams.
There was always a doubt in my mind.
Now that I know that at bac+5 (18+5 = 23 years of normal age) of math (or “equivalents”) studies, many people fail basic math questions (like “is x+3y = 6 the equation of a line in 3D space?”), I doubt nearly every exam sincerity in France.