From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t It doesn’t add up
This is a very good overview of the state of our current energy policy by Kathryn Porter, who is an energy consultant:
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Energy Industries Club dinner on the subject of energy security…here is a copy of my remarks…
Good evening everyone, I’m delighted to be here for the inaugural evening meeting of the Energy Industries Club.
I feel under some pressure with a dinner-time speech to be entertaining. I was scarred a few years ago at a dinner where an EU Commissioner gave a speech between the starter and main course. He wasn’t brief. By the time the charred remnants of the main course were served even the most die-hard Remainers were dreaming of Brexit!
So we successfully avoided that pitfall, but I still feel the pressure. I might be tempted to throw in the odd joke or witty one-liner. I’ll do my best…
As you may know, following the recent Budget, we have a new approach to energy policy: Gaslighting.
It’s kind of you to laugh but that’s not actually a joke. That really is how I feel about large parts of our energy policy at the moment.
It goes something like this: we’re going to have cheap, reliable renewable energy based on wind and solar but we’ll need subsidies to get it going. What’s that? The weather isn’t reliable? Good point, OK right, so we’ll need subsidies for non-renewable energy to come on when it’s not windy and sunny. OK then.
Not OK? Something about grid infrastructure? Oh yes, I guess we don’t have a much of that in the sea. Good point, we’ll have to build some more. But we can delay some of it to keep costs down for consumers. Sorry what? Curtailment? We have to pay wind farms if we can’t use the electricity they want to generate. Oh, that’s annoying. I’m sure it’s still cheap though.
OK now what? Balancing? It’s more expensive to balance the grid when generation varies with the weather.
OK I don’t care. Renewables are cheap and reliable. End of.
Does anyone else feel like they’re being gas-lit?
The full speech is here.
It covers a lot of ground, although it gets a bit wishy washy at the end, with talk of the “need to do something”. She also seems to think more demand side response will make a big difference, though in my view this you cannot control grid frequency by hoping that people switch their electrical devices off.
The next speaker will apparently be Chris Stark, CEO of the Committee on Climate Change. I can give a pretty good guess about what he will have to say:
- We must get to Net Zero
- Renewables are much cheaper
- Clean energy is good – dirty energy is bad
- Lots and lots of green jobs
- We must lead the world
Let me know if I have missed anything!
________________________________
Tearing down our current fossil fuel fired and nuclear power stations and then claiming that new jobs are created is buying into the broken window economic fallacy.
Lots and lots of what we are told are well-paid green jobs.
It is obvious that increasing well-compensated headcount will save money.
/sarc
“well-paid green jobs”
In a letter (22nd Feb 2022) to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, Wind Europe, appealing for more subsidies since all of Europe’s five turbine manufacturers were operating at considerable loss and laying people off, noted that “Germany alone has lost over 50,000 jobs in the last six years”
When an 18 acre solar “farm” was built right next to my ‘hood in north central Woke-achusetts- the builder hired something like 30 licensed electricians- not sure why they needed licensed electricians- but, it took a few months to complete, then they were gone. So, the electricians are now like agricultural workers- move from site to site with a good deal of down time. These are not full time jobs. I filmed the entire process.
Thanks, Joseph Zorzin, for filming this. People need to see this and try to imagine how they would react if it was happening in their rural neighbourhood.
Near one of the most geographically beautiful destinations in Ontario, Collingwood, there’s a solar ‘farm’ with broken panels…..a shocking eyesore. In Ontario, rural residents who spoke out about the visual impact of industrial scale renewables in otherwise beautiful pastoral settings, were/are accused of being NIMBYs. They insisted that this should not be happening in anyone’s backyard.
People need to see this too.
https://news.sky.com/story/clean-energys-dirty-secret-pond-filled-with-toxic-material-in-northern-china-is-by-product-of-rare-earth-processing-12592342
My wife and I sued the town planning board and the company building it. We wanted to stop it but the company wasn’t going to give up. At the planning board meetings- I saw a number of Asian men with haircuts like Moe of the 3 stooges- a sure sign they came direct from China. The front man for them, a nice, friendly 36 year old dude- asked to meet with us in a big meeting room in a big hotel- just the 3 of us. He asked us what we’d settle for because if we didn’t they were going to persist regardless of costs. I asked where he is from- he said “southern CT”. I said, “oh, I have some cousins down that way- Mario and Guido and a few others” with the implication they are Mafia (of course I just made that up). I then pounded the table as hard as I could and said, “OK, push it back 100′ from our back yards and you’re going to have to spend some money to help all of us landscape our back yards- and you’re going to buy and install 400 arborvitae trees to hide your installation”. He agreed and we settled. My wife teaches a college course online as an adjunct at a very low pay- but she found time to get dozens of law books at a nearby college, study them, then write the law suit- which a lawyer friend of mine said was an exceptionally well written document. After we settled, that dude said, “is Joe violent?”. Guess I really scared the guy- not bad for an old peace loving flower child who grew up in a town half Irish and half Italian- resulting in a wild bunch great at sports when not fighting.
Looks like a lot of fossil fuels consumed building this!
It was, as its defenders say, a gravel mine- torn up pretty bad. But, most of that was done decades ago- and maybe half of it had grown back to a pine forest. All those machines were needed to re-level the site and to remove the young forest. And, that had to bring in countless big trucks loaded with more gravel and sand to fill low spots. The owner of the site had removed much of the topsoil but much remained in small hills- and he removed all that since it’s valuable- leaving the entire site nothing but pure sand- which is the subsoil since the site is a glacial outwash plain. They made no effort to restore the soil- which fact is half of why I hate it so much. The only upside to it is that the off road vehicles no longer can get it there. That was part of the settlement we made with that company and the town. I suspect some town officials were paid off because the planning board praised the project- said it was a nice improvement to the community! There were “rare and endangered species” on the site which we documented but which were ignored by the state and the town- yet, as a forester, if I manage a timber harvest- the state’s “Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program” will swoop in and find some bug on the site is rare and stop the job- that agency, part of the state’s fish and wildlife agency, are real fascists. I’ve had several wars with them. They are hated by the entire forestry community and all developers- yet, since the state was pushing “clean and green energy” a decade ago- they ignored the rare species, ignored that it was right next to a neighborhood, ignored that it is on a watershed for town water. And yes, they used a lot of diesel.
news tip
Joe Biden’s Climate Envoy John Kerry sat down for an interview with Yahoo News Senior Climate Editor Ben Adler to discuss climate change.
The interviewer began by admitting Biden’s so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ is actually a Marxist ‘Climate Change’ bill.
Ben Adler asked John Kerry if the Biden Regime will be taking more aggressive climate action in addition to what is already in the ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’
“We are doing a lot more than just the IRA. The IRA is a package that in and of itself could get to 40% but in addition to that, the president is issuing executive orders, there will be changes on automobile, on light truck, heavy truck…a number of initiatives are being made,”
Looks like a major push against us all .
John Kerry is in the grip of Ceauşescu-itis. He excuses his fat life because he’s working so hard for the people — who will endure poverty if he has any say in it.
The guy is an ethical deformity.
and we remember what happened to Ceauşescu
Let me know if I have missed anything!
Welcome to changing the climate with renewables deplorables-
More than 94,000 prepayment meters forcibly installed in Britain in 2022 (msn.com)
Gaslighting may be a new energy policy, but it has always been an integral part of the “climate change” movement.
Interesting. Who is the speaker? You have to look in the comments at the link to see it is Kathryn Porter of Watt-Logic.
“The full speech is here.“
I see Kathryn Porter’s name appears in the head posting here now.
Finally, the climate change issue produces a genuine hockey stick – wholesale gas and electricity prices. I knew they could do it!
When I saw the title of the head post, I read “Club” as a verb and the title as a statement of the moral collapse of Shell, Chevron and Exxon.
So has the war on honest energy degraded expectations.
The speaker at the next meeting is due to be Chris Stark, CEO of the Climate Change Committee. It is a shame that they don’t get to debate, because I know who would win, and it wouldn’t be him.
Do jobs in dirty, polluting factories in China making windmill components mined by child labor using the worst environmental protection standards ever count as green jobs? If so, we’re golden, baby!
I’ve got net zero patience with alarmists
then don’t move to Woke-achusetts- it’s loaded with them- in every town and city- in all of the media- nobody dares speak against “the emergency”
It covers a lot of ground, although it gets a bit wishy washy at the end, with talk of the “need to do something”.
I agree – and you can see that she is keeping herself out of trouble by only responding to comments that are not too controversial.
You have to ask why there was no due diligence on this “plan” 20 years ago – there isn’t anything new in this speech (althought it is very good) – successive governments are guilty of a terrible dereliction of duty and with delusion and ignorance adding a helping hand.
The only solution appears to be that we have to keep spreading the word.
Once again this sort of story laid bare would be funny if it wasn’t so depressing.
Did they try to: Please all the people all the time
A similar sort of thing to ‘Fooling some of the people some of the time’
This went past on the BBC recently- it sheds (some) light….
Why high UK energy bills were decades in the making
To all intents, nobody had the guts to actually do anything – apart from assume that there was a never ending supply of cheap gas, from Russia ultimately although many will assert ‘from Norway’
Nuclear was The Thing To Do
(I just checked EnergyNumbers: Right now as of 20:02BST,
Wind is: 2.4GW
European Interconnect(French nuclear): 3.7GW
Gas: 18.7
Solar: 0.1GW (Insane, the sun set 45 minutes ago)
Norway inter: 1.1GW
Pumped Hydro: 2.0GW
I expect the hydro will be recharged with French nuclear overnight
“””””though in my view this you cannot control grid frequency by hoping that people switch their electrical devices off.”””””
Or, switch them on to absorb extra power. How do you think bureaucrats will recommend reducing curtailment expenses?
since everything will soon be “netcentric” and hooked to the net via wifi- they’ll have AI send signals to our devices and appliances and furnaces as to when they can be turned on or not
seems crazy but it’s possible- so they’ll grant approval to use our stuff when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing- otherwise, be thankful you’re helping to save the planet from burning and the oceans from boiling /sarc
Unfortunately I wasn’t invited to speak at The Energy Industries Club. If I was invited my speech would be short. Crank up fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, refurbish those that need it, build new fossil fuel and nuclear plants and last but not least remove all wind and solar from the grid. Thank you for your attention.
“refurbish those that need it”
that’s why the first thing they do is knock down the smokestacks
The whole speech is pretty good.
The idea of ‘renewable energy’ is a version of the crack-pottery of perpetual motion devices.