By Douglas Pollock
Advocates of wind and solar power confidently assert that using it to replace a coal-fired power plant will abate all the CO2 formerly emitted by the coal station, because unreliables do not emit CO2.
Not quite.
To keep the lights on when we need them, wind and solar requires backup from flexible sources, such as natural gas, that can react quickly when the Sun rises or sets, or when the wind drops or blows a gale.
This thermal backup emits CO2. Worse, when thermal stations are on standby, known in the trade as rotating reserve, they burn fuel without feeding any power to the grid and, when needed, they must be suddenly ramped up to full load capacity, thus emitting far more in the process than when running permanently at full load. Their emissions must thus be subtracted from the reductions achieved by decommissioned coal-fired capacity.
Why would anyone bother with wind and solar power? The fastest way to reduce grid emissions is to switch from coal-fired to gas-fired generation without using unreliables at all. That coal-to-gas switch cuts CO2 emissions by the difference between the products of the CO2 output emission rates and outputs of coal – a far greater reduction than that which is achieved by replacing coal with renewables backed up by thermal sources.
For instance, in 2019 US grid emissions abated would have been almost 18% greater if all coal-fired power replaced thus far by gas-backed wind and solar had instead simply been directly replaced by gas-fired power.
However, the US also uses a fraction of oil and coal generation to backup renewables. Since these fuels emit almost three times as much CO2 as natural gas, grid emissions abated would have been more than 90% greater if coal had been directly replaced by natural gas generation instead of renewables backed up by the current thermal-reserve mix.
Reductions in grid CO2 emissions (even if they were desirable) have come not from adding wind and solar power to the grid but from replacing coal-fired power directly by natural gas generation. Wind and solar power actually hinder emissions abatement.
The next time you see a wind or solar farm being installed, while a coal-fired plant somewhere else is dismantled in the name of Saving The Planet, praise the gas-fired station hidden behind those renewables. Without it, they could not exist, and nearly all the modest emissions reduction currently but falsely attributed to unreliables would never have occurred.
The most significant effects of adding wind and solar power to any grid are to destabilize it and greatly to increase the cost of electricity for homes and businesses everywhere. In those countries where the installed nameplate capacity of wind and solar – their output in ideal weather – exceeds the total mean hourly demand on the grid, adding more wind and solar will not reduce emissions at all, unless absurdly expensive battery backup is also installed. Wind and solar are a pointless, costly, environmentally-destructive dead end.
Another article pointing out the honest truth that won’t be seen or written about on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, National Geographic, and others. Outfits like Covering Climate Now make sure that doesn’t happen.
That Covering Climate Now is really ugly!
As so often, just rambling ranting, no numbers or quantification. Take for example
“This thermal backup emits CO2. Worse, when thermal stations are on standby, known in the trade as rotating reserve, they burn fuel without feeding any power to the grid”
How much backup is actually on at any time. And how much fuel is it actually burning? Because the W&S that is actually producing the power is producing none.
But as usual with these rants, there is absolutely no arithmetic to back the claim that “Replacing Coal Power with Wind and Solar Increases Net CO2 Emissions”No numbers or logic at all.
Here are the actual emissions from electricity generation in Australia, measured as gm CO2/KWh. It’s very obviously going down as renewables are added.
No it’s going down as people cut their usage of electricity as they can no longer afford it.
The key number would be pounds of CO2/MW of electricity generated. As usual, Nick uses the statistic that supports his case, not the statistic that would show real information.
“The key number would be pounds of CO2/MW of electricity generated.”
As I explicitly said, that is the data I showed (well, gm CO2/KWh).
Here is a question for you Nick.
Why should countries stop using coal fired electricity which pushes up the price of electricity making many industries uneconomic to continue manufacturing while China and India are using vast amounts of coal and expanding their heavy industry .
Here is a fact for you Nick .
China alone is using well over 5 billion tonnes of coal per annum which is more than the whole world used just 12 years ago .
How can that reduce emissions on a world basis?
The answer is that it is actually pushing emissions up at a very fast rate as 12 years ago world coal use was stable at 4.7 billion tonnes .
World coal use has exceeded 8 billion tonnes in two years since then .
I’ve pointed out to Nick on several recent posts that coal use worldwide has almost doubled since 2000 and that China.India and Indonesia are the three largest coal producers in the world and the only way their use of coal is going is up.
He has steadfastly ignored that and keeps referencing Australia for some reason as if what happens in Australia is important to the world as a whole.
That’s a bit of a shell game. Did you include the CO2 needed to make those wind and solar plants?
Kind of like saying the solution to polluting cars is to have a solar car that runs when the sun is shing, another wind car that runs when the wind is blowing, but still having to have that gas car for the times when it is not sunny and windy. How environmentally friendly is it to have to build 3 times the amount of cars necessary just to go about your daily business?
Going down perhaps as gas replaces coal or better yet possibly as older coal plants are replaced by using existing gas plants at higher capacity factor — i.e. less curtailment of simple cycle gas plants. All of these stats are not entirely clear because there are too many degrees of freedom.
Thermal plants have a lower limit at which they can be run, and so, as long as they are required to balance renewables or even to provide needed inertia you are stuck with that lower limit. The addition of renewables has caused grids to be operated in ways not imagined when the thermal plants were built much to their detriment.
The fact is that actual emissions are going down, hugely in the UK. And it coincides with the growth in renewables, not the growth in gas. UK is down by a factor of 3. You can’t get that by replacing C by CH4.
And look what is happening to the UK.
Sitting on the razor edge of self-destruction. !
As usual, Nick’s care for anything “human” is basically nil.
Yep. All old mate Nicholas sees is numbers. As stated before, he is a devout disciple of the church of climate.
For the disciples, CAGW is real, it is a fact, the science fiction models have spoken, it is settled…human emissions of co2 are killing the planet, and it does not matter at what cost to humanity, these emissions must be eliminated.
It’s the CAGW zealots equivalent of “flattening the curve”. A totalitarian mass delusion driven by fear, scientism, and the elites.
Well said! And true! 🙂
Nick,
are you saying that CO2 emissions form generation are 2/3rds of what they were. What are your start and end dates?
I do not believe it, and expect emissions from genertaion to rise as the uptake of evs and heat pump gathers pace.
The years are marked on the x axis. The reduction is less than 2/3. It measures intensity, ie gm CO2 per KWh, so isn’t reflecting an absolute increase in use.
Carbon dioxide emissions have certainly fallen in the UK over the last 30 years. The reasons are the replacement of coal fired power stations with gas and the export of all of Britain’s heavy industry to the developing world. Renewable energy has nothing to do with it.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/21/britain-is-g7s-biggest-net-importer-of-co2-emissions-per-capita-says-ons
“replacement of coal fired power stations with gas”
I set out the arithmetic of that here. The fact is that most of the drop in emissions happened since 2012. And although coal use dropped radically, gas use didn’t increase that much. It was renewables that replaced coal. JUst 3 Mtons CO2/year can be attributed to that switch.
“the export of all of Britain’s heavy industry to the developing world”
That doesn’t explain the halving of emissions intensity (Kg/MWh). That is just a function of what power systems take in and what they put out.
You should have taken the trouble to read the article I linked to. Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions are not falling at all if you allow for the carbon footprint of imports. The article is from 2019. Since then, Britain has lost even more of its manufacturing base because of high energy prices caused by renewable energy. So the situation continues to deteriorate and it is likely that Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions are now rising because the carbon footprint of imports is greater than goods produced domestically..
That article was not about electricity generation, which is the topic of this post. There is a clear statement in the title
“Replacing Coal Power with Wind and Solar Increases Net CO2 Emissions”and it is false. As always here, people can’t keep to topic.
I was replying to your statement “The fact is that actual emissions are going down, hugely in the UK”. When you factor in the carbon footprint of Britain’s imports, this is clearly not true. If you want to make a point, it might help your case if you stopped making obviously false statements, otherwise known as lying.
Increasing CO2 from current levels is a good thing. Nick you really can’t be so ignorant of the data can you?
No, it isn’t. Porky pies again
UK industrial demand for electricity has fallen by 20% since 2000 largely because much of our heavy industry has been outsourced to China etc. That’s why UK emissions have fallen, nothing to do with unreliables.
“UK industrial demand for electricity has fallen by 20%”
But emissions have fallen by about 70%. Demand fall won’t explain it. I’ve shown below the fall in CO2/MWh.
The rest of the fall in carbon dioxide emissions can be explained by the closing of coal power stations, the increase in biomass burning, the increase in gas power generation and the large increase in power received from interconnectors to other countries.
Any minor effect from renewables is negated by the colossal carbon footprint involved in the building of wind turbines, solar panels and the extra transmission lines required for these white elephants.
“ the large increase in power received from interconnectors to other countries.”
Actually, just recently GB bcame a net exporter. But it usually imports, but of the order of 20 TWh/year, with total generation over 300 TWh/year.
“Any minor effect from renewables is negated by the colossal carbon footprint involved in the building of wind turbines”
Endlessly repeated here, but never with data. It just isn’t true.
You are now claiming that there is no carbon footprint from building all of these useless wind turbines and thousands of miles of extra transmission lines required for them? Even for you, this is a ludicrous position.
“You are now claiming that there is no carbon footprint”
So what is it? Numbers, please. And how does it compare with 20 years of gas generation?
Since I am Scottish, I am particularly concerned about windfarms in Scotland. Scottish windfarms generate more carbon dioxide emissions than they save and this is before allowing for the carbon footprint of building extra transmission lines for these bird mincing monstrosities.
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/climate-change/study-uk-wind-farms-devastate-peatlands-produce-high-carbon-emissions/
The one thing we can be sure of is, the people in charge of compiling and disseminating such data would never lie, especially if telling the truth completely undermined their entire narrative and proved conclusively that all the money that is being spent is simply being wasted *rolls the eyes*.
This is just for the electricity generation in Australia. It omits all the coal Australia sent to China to make all the stuff needed to produce the weather dependent electricity in Australia. Australia no longer makes anything. It all gets made in China. So the only valid analysis for CO2 output is global. And that continues to climb, which is a good thing of course.
The “transition”. requires de-industrialising as observed in UK and Australia and shifting heavy industry and manufacturing to mostly China and other countries that have not succumb to the CO2 warming religious zealotry.
You need to also show the mix of generating sources involved – during the same period the US was making huge strides in CO2 reduction because of the move to the then cheaper and more efficient natural gas that the fracking revolution provided. Fracking has provided more environmental benefits than all of the eco groups, wind turbines and solar panels combined.
As we all know, CO2 emissions are very important for plant life and have zero impact on climate. (Nick doesn’t care, so long as it follows his climate cult ideology)
As we know, Australian electricity prices are getting higher and higher as the grid become more and more unreliable and unstable.
This is pushing up costs of basically everything throughout Australia, making life more and more unaffordable for many people. (NIck doesn’t care, so long as it follows his climate cult ideology)
Blowing up coal fired power stations might also have contributed to that decline. So might rooftop solar which Australia is big into – nor do I have a problem with individual householders using solar, it’s their choice.
Fiddling the numbers, something that Aussie officials seem rather adept at, could also have something to do with it. So might the decline in Australian manufacturing and, of course, the manufacture of all those luverly wind turbines is probably done in China, the CO2 involved in their production is simply displaced.
MarkW makes the point that, as usual, you use the statistic that supports your case, not the statistic that would show real information.
Nick also conveniently ignores the fact that world population is around 8.4 billion whilst Australia’s population is 25.5 million. So what Australia does means little in world terms.
Yup, a huge sparsely inhabited desert with about as many people as Florida (if you count the Canadians).
And the majority of whom seem strangely willing to do whatever dumb crap they are told.
If they cannot make net zero work using only solar and wind, it is a for sure true fact that no one can.
BTW, average cost of electricity in Australia is over 34 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Florida, with zero wind and very little solar, averages about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Population density here is over 353 per square mile, Australia is about 3 per square mile.
Yes Nick but like Norway with their oil largesse Oz can afford to export its coal so the likes of China can burn it to sell us back solar panels wind turbines and lithium batteries to virtue signal with that graph-
Coal exports forecast to smash record with value set to break $100 billion this financial year – ABC News
Never mind local struggletown as they have to grapple with some of the highest power prices in the world in the process (around 56c AUD per kWhr peak rate after 25% approved price hikes come july1)
Greenies get mugged by reality with a ‘very sobering experience’ when they finally get into power and have to make real decisions about poor folks freezing in the dark with their net zero fantasy-
German Greens in doldrums over bitter compromises (msn.com)
Not to worry Nick as we have plenty of Lithium and rare earth minerals too if that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
The problem is Nick, that those figures are not holistic. REAL data from eirgrid shows that in terms of gas burnt, renewables reduce it by about half of what is calculated, the other half is in terms of the actual carbon cost of building and maintaining not only renewable energy plants themselves, but the uprated grids to take the massive flow fluctuations , and enable transport of renewable energy from remote locations to renewable free cities, where it is needed.
The planet doesn’t care about g/kWh at the power stains themselves, it cares about total emissions of a country using a renewable grid, and the German figures show that actually their g/kWh as a whole country increased as more renewables were deployed.
“REAL data from eirgrid”
Link please? I’m dubious.
Nick,to be meaningful to the consumer, your gm CO2/KWh chart be overlaid with the price KWh paid. Show us that cost/benefit!
Also show a graph of ALL-IN household electric rates, c/kWh, including fees, taxes and surcharges.
The CO2 reduction is overstated, because it does not take into account the inefficiencies ADDED to the entire grid due to more and more wind.
Australia is an island grid,
All the balancing is within Australia.
IRELAND FUEL AND CO2 REDUCTIONS DUE TO WIND ENERGY LESS THAN CLAIMED
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
EXCERPT
The variable outputs of heavily-subsidized wind and solar are totally unusable, could not be fed into the grid, without the presence of a fleet of quick-reacting power plants, such as CCGTs, to counteract to ups and downs of these outputs, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, year after year.
The more wind and solar systems tied to the grid, the larger the fleet of counteracting plants, that need to fueled, staffed, kept in good-working order. Such a fleet costs many c/kWh to own and operate.
Heavily-subsidized wind and solar are a black hole money pit, from day one, i.e., never profitable, except for the Warren Buffett folks with lucrative tax shelters, even at low penetration levels, on an A-to-Z, mine-to-waste-dump, basis.
A black hole getting wider and deeper, as more wind and solar are added to the grid.
Warren Buffett Quote: “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit, if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/even-warren-buffet-admits-wind-energy-is-a-bad-investment
Curtailments are a feature of wind and solar on the grid
The more wind and solar tied to the grid, the greater, and more frequent, the curtailments.
This can be readily analyzed, and predicted, using standard 15-minute grid operating data, and daily demand curves, and weather data
Wind and Solar Add Inefficiencies to the Entire Grid
Wind proponents often claim one kWh of clean wind generation displaces one kWh of dirty fossil fuel generation, which is true.
However, the inefficiencies introduced into the electrical system by variable, intermittent wind, results in wind being less effective at reducing CO2 than claimed.
The more wind percent on the grid, the more the inefficiencies.
Ireland’s Power System
Eirgrid, the operator of the grid, publishes ¼-hour data regarding CO2 emissions, wind electricity production, fuel consumption and total electricity generation.
Drs. Udo and Wheatley made several analyses, based on the operating data of the Irish grid in 2012 and earlier, that show the effectiveness of CO2 emission reduction is decreasing with increasing annual wind electricity percentages on the grid.
The Wheatley Study of the Irish Grid; A Devastating Verdict Against Wind (and Solar)
Wind energy CO2 reduction effectiveness = (CO2 intensity, metric ton/MWh, with 17% wind)/(CO2 intensity, with no wind) = (0.279, with 17% wind)/(0.530, with no wind) = 0.526, based on ¼-hour, operating data of each power plant connected to the Irish grid, as collected by SEMO.
Each power plant has a performance curve of fuel used, Btu, vs electricity produced.
That performance curve is determined from plant test operation.
Thus, the fuel used and electricity produced are known for each 1/4-hour, for each power plant
More and more annual wind percent on the grid leads to less and less annual CO2 reduction effectiveness, i.e., the 0.526 gets smaller and smaller
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-potential-pitfalls-of-offshore-wind-lessons-from-the-uk
The UK major electricity sources were 38.5% from natural gas and 26.8% from wind in 2022.
The variable output of wind caused major inefficiencies of the rest of the grid, which means the gas turbine plants, mostly CCGTs, which performed almost all of the counteracting of the variable output of wind, used more Btu/kWh, and emitted more CO2/kWh
In Ireland, at 17% annual wind, the effectiveness of wind turbines for reducing CO2 was 0.526
In the UK, at 26.8% annual wind, the effectiveness of wind turbines for reducing CO2 was about 0.40, or less.
That means the official CO2 data for 2022, and prior years, grossly overstate the effectiveness of wind for reducing CO2
As usual, Mr Stokes has failed to read the head posting with due care and attention. He has not realized that it is the switch from coal to gas that has reduced emissions. Wind and solar have very little to do with it, except that they are disproportionately expensive and destabilize the grid, as well as causing far more environmental damage per TWh generated than any other form of electrical power.
“ He has not realized that it is the switch from coal to gas that has reduced emissions.”
Again, totally non-quantitative, like the post. I actually did the arithmetic on that here. I’ll set it out again. Basically, coal reduced, but gas did not increase much. The replacement was renewables:
Nick,
You ignored:
1) The excerpt of my quantitative article, based on actual Irish grid operating data, and
2) My comment regarding the CO2 reduction of wind being grossly overstated, because those government folks did not account for the inefficiencies of wind imposed on the entire grid
Nick,
That graph grossly overstates the CO2 reduction of wind, because wind imposes inefficiencies on the entire grid, as proven in the Irish system. This is due to the CCGT power plants
1) Counteracting wind output variations, MWh, and
2) Having increased start/stops, and
3) Being in increased hot, synchronous standby mode, to be ready, at a moment’s notice, to supply electricity too the grid
This means the CCGT plants have to operate less efficiently (more Btu/kWh. more CO2/kWh, mere wear and tear) to counteract the variable, intermittent wind output.
That leads to less annual gas reductions than claimed by wind proponents
That leads to less annual CO2 reduction than claimed by wind proponents.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
“That graph grossly overstates the CO2 reduction of wind, because wind imposes inefficiencies on the entire grid, as proven in the Irish system.”
I’ve never seen a direct link to that proof. If I follow through your links to your various posts, I get to an article written by Joseph Wheatley in 2012. But he doesn’t have the Irish data either. The best I could find there was from 2004.
Nick,
Thank you looking at my sources.
Here are some more, which are also in my referenced article.
The people writing these reports are leading energy systems analysts, most with doctor’s degrees.
I have know some of them for over 20 years.
My article states how EU Brussels bureaucrats “solved” the irish problem by “dilution”. i.e., make it disappear in the noise of the UK and French grids
http://www.wartsila.com/energy/learning-center/technical-comparisons/combustion-engine-vs-gas-turbine-part-load-efficiency-and-flexibility
http://docs.wind-watch.org/Wheatley-Ireland-CO2.pdf
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/89476/wind-energy-co2-emissions-are-overstated
http://www.seai.ie/Publications/Statistics_Publications/Energy_in_Ireland/Energy_in_Ireland_Key_Statistics/Energy-in-Ireland-Key-Statistics-2014.pdf
http://www.clepair.net/Udo20150831-e.html
http://fredudo.home.xs4all.nl/Zwaaipalen/17E_Wind_in_the_Irish_grid_SEAI_report_2015.html
http://joewheatley.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/sub348_Wheatley.pdf
http://joewheatley.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/report.pdf
http://joewheatley.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/co2_nem.pdf
The Australia report is interesting, but still from 2015. And it totally contradicts the claim by Dr Pollock here that there is no reduction in emissions with increase of wind. It says that the reduction in emissions is a little bit less than total as penetration increases. Here is his key diagram
Emissions are certainly coming down. As I understand it, he’s saying that it is 71% of the decrease you might expect. If true, that still isn’t nothing.
CO2 is reduced due to many reasons, as detailed in the 2021 report. See URL
Here is an excerpt from my article
Australia
The Australian electrical system has no connections to nearby grids, i.e., it is an “island system”. In that respect it is similar to the Ireland electrical system.
Dr. Wheatley made studies of the grid operating data of the Australian system. See URLs. His report states:
– At 4.5% wind, CO2 reduction was about 3.5%, i.e., the effectiveness was about 3.5/4.5 = 78% in 2014.
– At 9% wind, CO2 reduction was about 6.3%, i.e., the effectiveness was about 6.3/9 = 70%, in 2021. See pg. 3 of URL.
https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/Australian%20Energy%20Statistics%202022%20Energy%20Update%20Report.pdf
By straight line extrapolation,
– At 13.5% wind, effectiveness would be about 62%
– At 18% wind, effectiveness would be about 54%
The 54% would be similar to the 52.6% at 17% wind of Ireland electrical system.
Thus, the more wind, the less its effectiveness regarding reducing CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.
The laws of physics apply to Ireland, Australia, the UK, Germany, etc.
http://joewheatley.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/sub348_Wheatley.pdf
http://joewheatley.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/report.pdf
http://joewheatley.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/co2_nem.pdf
I don’t understand why the Mafia does not report the exact amount of money they made in their protection rackets? Why don’t honest people give an exact accounting of the true number?
The people with access to the actual numbers are the ones running the green energy scam.
Take it up with them why they need to hide the real world figures from the public to perpetuate the grift?
Do you and I both agree that running a plant while producing no energy is a colossal waste? (Therefore any process that requires MORE spinning reserves must account for the additional waste.)
“The people with access to the actual numbers are the ones running the green energy scam.”
An excuse for making claims with no backing at all
“Therefore any process that requires MORE spinning reserves must account for the additional waste.”
The numbers I quoted are for all emissions for generation, including spinning reserve (calculated from fuel use).
Here are the figures for total emissions for the UK from the power sector. Down by a factor of nearly 3.
How much electricity was imported?
Here is a plot of emission intensity – Kg CO2/MWh actually generated. That is independent of import
But it still doesn’t include the externalities. As a measure of total emissions associated with electricity generation, it’s meaningless
Nick, how has your decrease in Au, and UK Kg CO2/MWh affected the climate?
We are approximately neutral on imports.
That graph reflects the closure of coal power stations, and the failure to calculate the rise in carbon emissions associated with the manufacture, deployment, maintenance, backup porivisions and battery stabilistion, and linkage of renewable energy to the uprated grid.
Every green advocated ignores the cost in money and in emissions of providing all the paraphernalia that a renewable grid needs to work. Just as they focus on tailpipe emissions of BEVs, and ingnore the pollution from its manufacture, it’s tyres , the deployment of charge points and the necessary grid extensions., or the power stations providing it with electricity.
The moment they are challenged and refuse to acknowledge this, their contributions loses all value.
Nick is simply a climate and renewable denier. Not an original reseercher. Merely a culler of ‘facts’ that apparently (but not actually) support his thesis that man made climate change is significant and that renewable energy actually has some value.
Neither are, on close inspection, true.
Ergo we can simply disregard anything he says as biased disinformation.
UK currently using 61% GAS, 18% nuclear, 6% wind.
Won’t they have fun next winter. ! 😉
Not as I write
Yes; the CO2 chart is reflected in the demise of UK manufacturing. Steel import quotes and tariffs have been imposed to protect what is left of the UK steel industry. Without that protection it would now be gone. UK has been a net importer of steel since it started its journey to economic oblivion by robbing wind energy from the climate system.
But quotas and tariffs are highly inflationary making the rest of the economy less efficient. UK has no mining to hide behind like Australia. It is no longer Great Britain. Rather a country in rapid decline as they chase a fantasy in energy supply based on a fairy tale on how Earth maintain’s its energy balance. The UK’s international indebtedness continues on its upward trend:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/articles/understandingtheuksnetinternationalinvestmentposition/2020-04-27
Excellent comment.
Nick,
the U.K. had about 32 Gigawatt capacity of coal fired generation in 2008, now it is about 2 or 3. It is the change from coal to gas that has driven most of that fall. Note how it is rising again after 2020, lockdown decreased emissions but as demand increases emissions will increase again.
The effect from renewables is minor due to the actual generation as opposed to nameplate value is relatively small.
As value for money, renewables are abysmal.
“It is the change from coal to gas that has driven most of that fall”
No. The fall in CO2 intensity happened after 2012. Below is the fuel mix plot. In 2012 coal generated 144 THh, gas 100 TWh. In 2021, coal generated 7.5 TWh, gas 124. Only 24 TWh switched from coal to gas.
Coal emits 338 tons/GWh, gas 200. So that switch would have saved 3.3 Mtons CO2/annum. But UK emissions droped by 100 Mt/annum
Here (from IEA) is the chart of fuel types for UK over the years
Peroration …
I actually have a lot of sympathy for you after the exchange above about Australian CO2 emissions intensity.
Nick Stokes : … measured as gm CO2/KWh
MarkW : The key number would be pounds of CO2/MW …
Mark BLR : WTF ?!?
– – – – –
Moving on to this post, however …
Your BEIS link is to the PDF file of the “summary report” for UK GHG emissions.
The actual data (provisional for 2022) can be found in the “data tables” links at the bottom of the following webpage :
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/provisional-uk-greenhouse-gas-emissions-national-statistics-2022
Using the data on lines 12 to 17 of the “Table2” tab, “UK territorial carbon dioxide emissions by sector and fuel type … Energy supply … from power stations”, and aligning the “Total” line to the “Coal” value for 2012, I got the graph attached below.
Notes
1) The Y-axis ranges are both 190 MtCO2e, it’s just the starting level that changes for the “Total” line (right-hand axis).
2) The reduction in “Coal” emissions from 2012 to 2022 was roughly 115 MtCO2e.
3) The “Total” reduction from 2012 to 2022 was just over 104 MtCO2e.
4) The increase for “Gaseous fuels” was just over 8 MtCO2e.
– – – – –
The reduction in “GHG emissions from UK power stations” from 2012 to 2022 was dominated by the reduction resulting from the second wave of closures of “Coal” power stations, though it is true that most of the (+11 MtCO2e) difference is accounted for by the (order of magnitude smaller) increase in emissions from “Gas”.
“the reduction resulting from the second wave of closures of “Coal” power stations, though it is true that most of the (+11 MtCO2e) difference is accounted for by the (order of magnitude smaller) increase in emissions from “Gas”.”
What does “accounted for” mean there? In fact your graph shows that Coal emissions went way down, and gas emissions rose by a small amount. It wasn’t a switch from coal to gas. It was mostly a replacement of coal electricity by renewables.
Reminder : Your OP said the following :
It doesn’t matter what the “mix of sources” is, or how it has evolved over time, your original post was about how much CO2 is emitted by UK power stations each year.
– – – – –
My apologies. I committed one of my “pet peeves” about other posters, and assumed that something “obvious” to me was automatically “obvious” to them as well.
Attached is a screenshot of the BEIS “data tables” spreadsheet’s “Table2” tab, with the title shifted from cell A1 to (merged) cells W1:AI1 and the data for UK power stations from 2012 to 2022 “highlighted”.
One of my first “training videos” on entering the workforce (a loooooooong time ago now !) was about “Pareto analysis” (which you may have been introduced to using a different label ???), which says that when analysing some “bad” phenomenon you should sort the input factors by size, and focus on “correcting” the issue using a “biggest first” approach.
Here the “bad thing” is “total CO2 emissions from UK power stations“.
From 2012 to 2022 the top 3 lines of a “Pareto analysis” of the data, in MtCO2e per year, are :
Source .. 2012 .. 2022 … Delta
Total ….. 158 … 53.7 … -104.3
Coal ….. 120.8 .. 4.8 ….. -116
“Gas” ….. 33.7 … 42 ….. +8.3
Shutting “Coal” power stations from 2012 to 2022 reduced CO2 emissions by 116 (MtCO2e per year) … but the “Total” only went down by 104.3.
A combination of factors must be found to “account for” the difference between the “Total” number and the “biggest factor” (coal), i.e. an 11.7 (MtCO2e per year) increase in CO2 emissions.
“Gas” increased by 8.3 …
8.3 / 11.7 ~= 71%. 71% of something constitutes “most of” it for the vast majority of people.
That’s why I wrote that :
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Does this clarify your confusion about precisely what I was “accounting for” in this specific case ?
Along with that chart, we need one that shows the number of companies that have left the UK because of high energy costs due to adding windmills and solar to the UK grid. To put things in perspective, don’t you see.
Whether or not an article is packed with numbers does not make that article trustworthy, realiable, true, false or fake. How about 80 pages of numbers? Would that amount be enough for you to be satisfied since it seems that, for you, my sin or heresy would consist in not having put them all here? Well, that is the number of pages of numbers (coefficients, parameters and equations) that support this article. And those numbers, in turn, are based on information provided by the EIA and the EPA, for this purpose mainly baseload and non-baseload generation and CO2 output emission rates.
When I glanced at the title of this article, I figured that Nitpick Nick Stokes would be all over it with his usual FUD. I was of course correct.
He must sit in front of the computer hours each day hitting reload over and over on WUWT.
“How much backup is actually on at any time. And how much fuel is it actually burning? ”
Now I’m curious- what are the answers to those questions? Anybody?
I was curious too. The UK has recently replaced its Fast Reserve program with another scheme, with batteries in mind. In commentary, I found this
”
For a grid that averages about 40 GW, that isn’t much.
Ah Averages. How well that went in Germany. 😉
“in stable conditions”
How about in unstable conditions?
Up to 1.4 GW. In a 40 GW grid.
oops– I didn’t read your previous comment carefully- thanks for clarifying that
Where are “numbers” for the “emissions” for the production of all the windmills? The solar panels? The batteries?
And don’t forget, those “emissions” will be repeated every 20 years.
And all of which are probably made in China with the highest “emission” energy sources, not that “emissions” matter.
Massively difficult to quantify. And irrelevant when EU legislation is not couched in terms of emission reductions, but in terms of renewable energy deployed.
This enabled Germany to carry on emitting huge quantities of CO2 to support manufacturing while virtue signalling the number of windmills.
I only found two studies on actual emission reductions – the Eirgrid one that measured actual gas used versus levels of wind power produced.
And discovered that half the claimed gains were lost in terms of the energy used to ramp the gas up and down. And another study done by a massively coal intensive Baltic state, which demonstrated that the likely gains would be nil, as firing up a coal power station takes a lot of coal, all of which energy is lost if you shut it down in high wind scenarios
And that is before we start to measure the actual fossil fuel used to cointruct and maintain an overall ‘renewable grid’ all of which is totally ignored by renewable energy protagonists, but appears on the bottom line of everyone’s electricity bill. And on the total global emissions.
What Nick should do is chart global use of coal oil and gas products versus GWh on a global scale, where I bet you will find that overall carbon efficiency of electric power when analysed alone, has not resulted in any overall lowering of carbon fuel consumption.
In 2022 China alone used almost as much coal as the whole world did in 2000 and in August 2022 coal powered generation in China increased by around 150% year on year to over 500TWh. This monthly level of generation was higher than the total annual coal power generation of any other country except India and the US.
Coal use worldwide in 2022 was expected to be 8038Mt of which China, India and the rest of Asia accounted for 6257Mt (75+%)
China, India and Indonesia are the three largest producers of coal and their consumption is only going in one direction.
What Australia or the UK do re emissions is largely irrelevant in world terms.
See IEA ‘Coal 2022 Analysis and Forecast to 2025’ Dec 2022
All your protestations aside. What individual countries do is beside the point. The real measure of what is happening is global emissions and the reason for its increase. The fact that major shifts of manufacturing is being sourced to China just simply being the monkeys that don’t see, hear, or speak of what they see when it comes to total worldwide emissions.
Nick, you can tout the reduction in small countries emissions all you want, but that virtue signaling is just whistling past the graveyard.
If you really want to promote Australia, then you should trumpet the closing of all coal exports to China. That is what would reduce world wide emissions.
Good article!
“Why would anyone bother with wind and solar power?”
Yes, especially with such a short equipment life – say 20 years – and all the land impacts, the interconnection costs, and system operation issues of these intermittent sources.
We are nuts to keep peppering the landscape with shiny panels and whirling energy harvesters that will all be junk before long.
““Why would anyone bother with wind and solar power?”
Yes, especially with such a short equipment life – say 20 years ”
Yeah, and then ALL that hardward has to be replaced. Every 20 years! Hundreds of thousands of windmills! Every 20 years!
Do you see a problem with this plan?
Climate Alarmist are insane.
“Yeah, and then ALL that hardward has to be replaced.”
Or just junked or abandoned. By that time, the uselessness of intermittent wind and solar should be more obvious to more folks, and the climate claims should lose traction.
In every scenario I calculated, I stopped when the cost exceeded the cost of nuclear. I ran out of technologies apart from hydro and nuclear.
story tip
Nuclear is becoming a common topic in regard to electrical generation. This is the only place I’ve seen anything about the nuclear fuel crunch
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/no-u?publication_id=630873&post_id=126996374&isFreemail=true
From your link: “The nuclear renaissance needs dozens of tons of nuclear fuel. We don’t have it.”
We need dozens of tons? That’s it?
No need to read the rest of the article, thanks anyway.
Research thorium reactors and getting uranium from sea water – we’ll never run out of nuclear energy.
You are quite wrong. The difficulty has nothing to do with the existence on the planet of uranium or any other nuclear material. It has to do with the very limited actives sources, the intense competition for the products of those limited sources, and the absolute refusal of western governments, particularly the Biden gang, to allow mining and processing (except for the limited amount coming out of Australia for now). It somewhat like Biden asking the middle east to pretty please pump more petroleum because we don’t want to dirty our own hands with the stuff.
Some reactor development projects have already been shut down or put on hold because of the lack of fuel in the foreseeable future. Mining and processing are multi-billion $ projects, not to be invested in on a whim when the tyrants are likely to cancel your project after you have sunk you life savings into it.
So it is a political, not a physical problem. Yet another attempt to strangle nuclear power.
Well, change the politicians then.
This may interest serious readers. It is clear that there is a powerful anti-nuclear lobby in the USA.
But that does not invalidate the technology or the cost in absolute terms
In part of what I said is wrong? Your comment and the beginning part of the linked article made it sound like one of those peak-oil-end-of-life doomsday articles.
But the real core issue is government interference and stupidity. That never runs out, is totally renewable, and must be breeding more in some secret fast-breeder stupidity reactor hidden in D.C. somewhere – hidden in every capital in the world.
That said, the lack of domestic or reliable friendly-country imports for HALEU and low-enriched fuel is a serious concern, and the anti-mining and production stance of most governments shows how fake their concern for the climate really is, and that political change is urgently required.
You dismissed the problem, a real and large difficulty, by assuming the “supposed” problem was something that it is not rather than finding out what it actually is. You admitted that yourself in your post. The nuclear fuel issue is not unlike the FF issue discussed in today’s article
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/17/the-beatings-will-continue-until-morale-improves-should-not-be-a-template-for-energy-policy/
There is plenty of uranium. The only crunch is regulatory unwillingness.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx
We have 8 billion tonnes of nuclear fuel, It’s cheap as chips. Uranium mines are closing from lack of demand…
An EDF factoid was that a finished, manufactured fuel rod represented only 15% of nuclear power cost, the actual raw Uranium cost was a tiny fraction of that.
In short the ceiling that Uranium could climb to before it impacted electricity prices significantly is simply enormous.
Which makes around 10,000 years worth of fissionable material for an all-nuclear world viable economically.
Anyone who says differently is trying to discredit nuclear
In a way, it’s like wind and solar – the fuel cost isn’t a consideration.
And that’s especially true in nuclear reactors since they have a life span that can reach almost a century.
No so much for unreliables that struggle to meet their tiny 25 year lifespan.
So you believe the problems discussed in the article (a quite pro nuclear article) are blantant lies and that the reactor development projects being closed or indefinitely ‘paused’ for lack of fuel never happened? Its all a big lie? For what purpose?
Using the word “fraction” suggests this balancing with coal is minor. It may be larger than people think. I’ve looked at what goes on in the Northwest here, and while natural gas is used almost exclusively to balance solar (correlation coefficient between them is -82% a combination of coal, natural gas, and hydro appear to be the most cost effective balance for wind (correlation is -30% or so).
Sometime soon the utilities and PUCs are going to have to address exactly how they intend to balance once coal and gas are gone (yes, the current IRPs almost all state clearly plants to retire all combustion plants, even gas, by 2035, which is not so demented as the IRPs from two years ago planning retirements by 2030 or so). People can’t keep using the magic phrases “wind+storage” or “solar+batteries” under oath without stating clearly what they intend or this will soon become intent to deceive.
Kevin, the IRPs are as much political documents written in response to political pressures as they are technical resource planning documents written in response to the regulatory requirements imposed by public service commissions.
We will not be seeing the utilities and the PUCs discussing in explicit terms how they intend to balance the grid once coal and gas are gone. The region’s politicians, their appointees in the PUC’s and in the power planning councils, and the utility CEO’s will not allow this discussion to be held.
What will happen instead is that emphasis on energy conservation will be given an increasingly larger priority as time goes on. In the planning documents, the use of megawatt-hours conserved as being directly equivalent to megawatt-hours generated will be given a larger role inside the demand forecast models.
In other words, cherry-picked assumptions made in the planning models will pencil-whip the problem away. We can observe this trend in the planning documents and in the interim status reports produced by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
What does the next decade hold? Here in the US Northwest, we will not see a definitive inflection point where an acute crisis suddenly emerges. This is so in large part because we have a number of large hydro-electric dams which can buffer the intermittency of wind and solar. What we will probably see instead is a steady increase in the price of electricity combined with a steady decrease in the supply.
Unless of course I’m wrong …… For example, if we have a three-year drought which reduces the supply of water available to the region’s large hydro-electric dams and the whole problem of an unreliable supply of electricity blows wide open.
i always appreciate your views on this. There is a lot of silly stuff in the 2023 IRP from PacifiCorp, so your observation about politics here is right, but reality demands something be done about aging coal plants soon, and while everyone points toward natural gas the reality is that our overlords interfere with it as much as they can — see e.g. pipelines.
I am figuring an acute problem developing in PACE, or perhaps IPCO as IPCO doesn’t have enough hydro of its own, although the Boardman to Hemingway HV line will aid in transfers, but currently imports a steady 500MW from Wyoming. PACE is always sending nearly 500MW from Wyoming to PACW but I suspect this is mostly coal or maybe some wind and PacifiCorp will shut down coal because they can’t invest in replacements exceptfor gas fired simple cycle. Eventually they’ll shut down gas too.
In the U.S. we have at least 500 years of coal and lignite and surely at least a 100 years of natural gas at the current rate of consumption. Nuclear will replace most hydrocarbon consumption by 2123. Scarcity of resource is a non-issue; the real issue is the cost of capital. At “the current rate of consumption” $100 trillion of national debt by 2100 should put an end to any type energy construction.
By “gone” I didn’t mean the resource had been expended but that the plants were retired without replacement.
Like I said, all this green BS takes even more FF to do the same thing. As usual, leftists have everything backwards!
And for all the pain, atmospheric CO2 continues to rise.
Thank goodness it continues to rise, we need more of it
I liked this video. Dougla Pollock interview with Tom Nelson. 1 hour, 7 minutes.
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Douglas Pollock on big problems with wind and solar power
A study done by Eirgrid suggested that with their particular model of existing gas turbine power stations, approximately 50% of the putative gains of wind power were being lost in the extra ramping up and down of the CCGT power stations.
But they never got around to analysing just how much fossil fuel it takes to make, transport, install and maintain wind power farms.
A study done by a Baltic country years ago showed that using coal as backup almost certainly resulted in no carbon gains whatsoever.
The only way to optimise this is with a free market constrained only one way, by increasing – artificially or naturally – the price of fossil fuel.
Naturally, since the purpose of green energy is not to reduce CO2 emissions, no nation in the world has actually done this…
But it is happening anyway as a result of increasing global shortages of easily accessible hydrocarbon fuel.
And that is reflected in the race to be the first SMR on the market.The self evident truth that renewables are pure excrement, and add nothing but cost and instability, is being brought into focus (in Europe at least) by the Ukraine war.
The US is still relatively rich in carbon fuels, so is lagging somewhat.
But even so, a recent poll suggests (slightly) more Americans favour nuclear than oppose it. It could be an election winner…
But even so more people believe that renewable energy helps climate change than think it’s a scam. That is still regarded as a stupid ‘far right’ conspiracy theory.
“A study done by Eirgrid suggested”
More myth building. Do you have a link? When I have tried to drill through the many items of Willem Post, I only find something impressively labelled the Wheatley report. But Wheatley turns out to be just a blogger, writing in 2012. I haven’t found anything actually from Eirgrid.
Before the issue of CO2 amounts, some electric service and electric grid facts:
Electric service is designed to provide all customers with continuous voltage and instantly match each customer’s current (and future) demands.
Electric service is designed at the distribution and transmission levels to minimize unforseen outages from lightning, wind, hail, snow, ice, trees, vehicle collisions, ambient temperature fluctuations, load fluctuations, and equipment failures.
The grid, including distribution networks and transmission lines and equipment, is designed to support the above electric service requirements–full time, available, adequate (to meet instantly changing demands) and stable (voltage, current, power factor) at every moment.
Wind and solar do not meet grid requirements in that they don’t produce continuous generation and cannot be dispatched on either economic or grid demands.
To be equivalent to conventional generation each generator must have its own make-up generation (natural gas, batteries,..) and fuel reserves on-site, that match grid operational requirements.
All the costs and performance factors for each generator would then be added/subtracted from the grid as needed for continuous customer service.
All other issues like CO2, questionable modeled future temperatures, all-in-costs, political regulations, extraneous regulations, economy changing mandates, livelihood changing mandates, subsidies, rebates, tax credits or penalties…..are secondary.
The first objective of electric service is to provide for the needs and well-being of every customer (residential, corporate, health care, safety, industrial, rural..)
Raising costs and decreasing service is unacceptable!
Our national security and economy requires an available, reliable, stable, predictable, economic electric service.
Wind and solar as currently politically required does not fit the above.
Our current energy/electric policies are reducing our national security and putting our livelihoods at risk.
The ruling class are not yet cognizant of the limitations of solar and wind. Those renewables of wind and solar only generate occasional electricity, but manufacture nothing for society.
The ruling class in wealthy countries are not cognizant that the planet populated from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years, and that population explosion began right after the discovery of oil. That growth in the population was not just based on crude oil by itself, as crude oil is useless until it can be manufactured into something useable.
Today, through human ingenuity, we have manufactured that useless oil into more than 6,000 products that are currently benefiting society and fuels for the 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs.
But ridding the world of oil, without a replacement in mind, would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths. Shortages of fossil fuel products would necessitate lifestyles being mandated back to the horse and buggy days of the 1800’s, and could be the greatest threat to the planet’s eight billion residents.
Going online to find how many kg of coal is required per kw of solar capacity I find, “solar panels begin as silicon wafers”. No they don’t, they start with millions of tons of raw quartz that requires mining and millions of gallons of acid for cleaning.
Anyone have any real data?