Wind power: It’s clean. It’s free. It’s renewable. Google the subject, and you will quickly find fifty articles claiming that electricity from wind is now cheaper than electricity from those evil, dirty fossil fuels. So why doesn’t some country somewhere get all of its electricity from wind?
In fact, despite now several decades of breakneck building of wind turbines, no country seems to be able to get even half of its electricity from wind when averaged over the course of a year, and no country has really even begun to solve the problem of needing full backup when the wind doesn’t blow.
Germany is the current world champion at trying to get its electricity from wind. (It also gets a small contribution from solar panels, but since it is the world’s cloudiest country, those don’t help much.). According to Clean Energy Wire, December 2022, in 2020 Germany got 45.2% of its electricity from wind and sun. Then that declined to 41% in 2021, due to lack of wind. In 2022 they appear to have bounced back to 46%. Germany has enough wind turbines that they produce big surpluses of electricity when the wind blows at full strength. But they still haven’t cracked the threshold of meeting 50% of electricity demand with wind and sun over the course of a year.
It’s no better over in the territory of co-climate crusader UK. Despite a crash program to build wind turbines (also accompanied by a smidgeon of solar panels), the UK’s percent of power from wind in 2022 was 26.8%, according to the BBC on January 6, 2023. Solar added a paltry 4.4%.
Well, maybe this project isn’t as easy as the central planners thought it would be. News of the past week brings to light a few more speed bumps on the road to energy utopia.
At the website Not A Lot Of People Know That, Paul Homewood on June 21 presents a calculation for the UK of how much wind turbine capacity would be necessary to supply the country with all its electricity needs by building extra wind capacity and using it to electrolyze water into hydrogen. The calculation was initially prepared by a guy named John Brown, and provided to Paul. For those interested in reviewing the calculation, it is available by emailing Mr. Brown at jbxcagwnz@gmail.com.
For starters, Homewood notes that average demand in the UK was 29 GW in 2022, and it has 28 GW of wind turbine capacity already. As you can immediately see, the fact that 28 GW of “capacity” only supplied 26.8% of average demand of 29 GW indicates an average capacity factor of under 30% for the wind turbines. The total demand for the year came to 262 TWh, but the wind turbines only produced 62 TWh.
Brown then calculates how much wind turbine capacity would be needed to generate enough electricity to supply all of the demand, either directly, or by electrolyzing water to make hydrogen and burning the hydrogen. He comes up with 370 TWh of total production needed from the wind turbines — 262 TWh to supply existing demand, and another 108 TWh for the various losses in the processes of electrolysis and then burning the hydrogen. The 370 TWh is about 6 times the current wind turbine capacity of the UK. Homewood:
The reason why the total generation needed, 370 TWh, is so much higher than demand is the hopelessly inefficiency of the hydrogen process. John has assumed that electrolysers work at 52% efficiency, and that burning hydrogen in a thermal generator works at 40% efficiency. Both assumptions seem reasonable. In other words, the efficiency rate for the full cycle is 20.8%. In simple terms, you need 5 units of wind power to make 1 unit of power from hydrogen.
Brown and Homewood do not go into detail on the costs of this project, other than to note that the cost of the wind turbines alone for the UK would be about 1 trillion pounds (or $1.3 trillion). Since the U.S. is more than five times the population, that would mean more than $6.5 trillion for us. And that’s before you get to the cost of building the electrolyzers for the hydrogen, the costs of transporting and storing the stuff, and so forth. Let alone dealing with doubling the demands on the grid by electrifying all home heating, automobiles, transportation, etc. A multiplying of costs of electricity by around a factor of 5 to 10 would be a good rough estimate.
In other words, this is never going to happen. The only question is how far down the road we get before the plug gets pulled. As I wrote in my energy storage report, the only thing to be said for hydrogen as the means of backup for a decarbonized economy is that it is less stupid than using batteries as the backup.
And in other news relating to the future utopia of wind power, we have a piece in the Wall Street Journal of June 23 with the headline, “Clean Energy’s Latest Problem Is Creaky Wind Turbines.” The first sentence is “The ill wind blowing for clean-energy windmills just got stronger.” The article reports that shares of German wind turbine giant Siemens Energy fell 36% on Friday after the company withdrew profit guidance for the rest of the year and stated that components of its installed turbines are wearing out much faster than previously anticipated. Thus costs of fulfilling warranties will greatly increase; but also, the expected replacement cycle for the turbines needs to be shortened. The writer (Carol Ryan) comments, “The news isn’t just a blow for the company’s shareholders, but for all investors and policy makers betting on the rapid rollout of renewable power.”
Barron’s on the same date (June 23) quotes the CEO of Siemens wind turbine subsidiary Siemens Gamesa as follows:
In a call with reporters, Siemens Gamesa CEO Jochen Eickholt said “the quality problems go well beyond what had been known hitherto. . . . The result of the current review will be much worse than even what I would have thought possible,” he added.
And then there’s the comment from parent company CEO Christian Bruch:
In the call with reporters, Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch called the developments “bitter” and “a huge setback.”
Those are by no means the usual types of words uttered by ever-optimistic public company CEOs.
In the short run, don’t expect the climate doom cult to walk away from any of their grand plans. The immediate answer will be more, and still more government subsidies to keep the wind power dream alive. But at some point this becomes, as they say, unsustainable.
The thing about wind and Sun on a day like, yesterday, today, and even tomorrow is there’s precious little of either. It’s 10:15am (BST)…
Demand – 32.11 GW
Wind – 2.13 GW (7%)
Solar – 2.1 GW (7%)
Gas – 13.81 GW (43%)
etc
The interconnectors are all humming along… ~(23%)
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
It’s an awfully expensive mess…
“Rishi Sunak to hit households with £170 net-zero green levy”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/24/levy-net-zero-green-tory-rishi-sunak-this-week-170-pounds/
And it’s never enough for the real eco-headbangers
“Lord Deben, the chair of the CCC, said the UK had “lost the leadership” on climate action shown at Cop26 in 2021 and done “a number of things” – such as greenlighting a new coal mine and new oil and gasfields in the North Sea – that were “utterly unacceptable”.
He said the committee’s confidence that the government would meet its shorter-term carbon-cutting goals by 2030 was even lower than last year”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/28/uk-has-made-no-progress-on-climate-plan-say-governments-own-advisers
Against the backdrop of constant self-inflicted doom and gloom (aka degrowth) there is, believe it or not, some good news.
John Selwyn Gumboot is standing down at the end of June as chair of the CCC
Trebles all round!
Chances are that he will be replaced by a bigger idiot though.
Nah, having listened to John Gummer or Lord Deben as he now calls himself, I can think of none that are a bigger idiot than he.
I thought that when i) Major was given the beating he deserved; ii) Bliar got his; iii) Brown was buried; iv) Cameron resigned; v) May resigned …….
One might think “peak idiot” would eventually be reached, but there must be some new technology producing more and more.
The idiot chosen to replace him on an interim basis is Prof Piers Forster. They have spent 2 years trying to find a replacement while Gummer kept on gumming up the works of the economy.
https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/see/staff/1267/professor-piers-forster
(Claimed) Areas of expertise: climate change; climate modelling; climate mitigation; climate risks; climate adaptation; atmospheric physics; radiative forcing; aviation and climate; climate policy, carbon budgets
He should have gone sometime in September or October last year but its taken 9 months to find his replacement. Perhaps the people approached were all too sensible to be appointed. Still some idiot eventually turns up.
Climate change activism in the UK cannot affect China, India or therefore the planet. So the only reason to get involved is for self-interest.
There are lots of ways to get rich if you are at the top of the green scare. But they do dry up when embezzled too long.
Who thinks that John Selwyn Gummer would leave any gravy for anyone else? If you can get this job you could also get one that hasn’t been sucked dry.
That’s why this role was hard to fill.
Yes. I don’t know how anyone looking at the charts on gridwatch can still think this technology is a viable means of powering a country.
And remember, its not just the fact that it goes offline for longish periods at unpredictable intervals. Its also that the percentage of power supplied by wind is only that high because of the compulsory purchase obligation. Without that there is no way companies would be turning their gas generation on and off to accomodate it, and wind contribution would be much lower.
What really is “utterly unacceptable” is that the idiot Gummer should have any influence whatsoever on national policy. Good riddance to him. But economic realities being what they are, I can only stretch to a double in celebration of his long-awaited departure. And he’ll be replaced by another moron – having any common sense is a disqualification for membership of the CCC – so the stupidity will continue.
I don’t understand how Gummer has been able to avoid investigation and a jail sentence for official corruption.
This is the principle of diminishing returns happening before our eyes.
A few years back when wind energy was the go to energy option, (providing governments paid for it that is) the turbines were around the 1MW nameplate power. Then it became common to think 3MW to 5MW units. recently the unit size has increased still further to 7MW and the latest option being a proposed 15MW unit. This is a Chinese proposal and if delivered it will represent the ultimate construction of folly.
If we have 15 units of 1MW each spinning in the breeze and a bearing fails in a single unit, we lose just under 7% of potential supply. The logic behind the big 15MW unit is reduced maintenance costs, as it’s just one unit to look after, not fifteen.
The down side is, if a bearing fails on such a unit you can’t just pop down to Walmart and pick up a new one. The other issue is, the whole 15 MW is now off line even though it is just the one unit down. Eggs in one basket comes to mind.
At some point the penny will drop.
If wind turbines were the energy answer, they would have happened decades ago and without state support.
The renewables energy industry is falling apart, literally falling apart and the state systems that once supported those follies is also falling apart.
Maybe, there is a lesson governments need to learn here?….
“ultimate construction of folly…”
We’ve had quite a few of those. Here’s the Brabazon
Well where is the Brabant haven’t seen it since it was a. Centre spread in the Eagle comic back in 1958. We do have a proud british tradition. Of epensive white elephants foisted on us, presumably by Whitehall mandarins with a dose of hubristic ignorance nd fostered by cushy retirement synecures.y
Thinking about Comet 4, ConcordE, TSR2,HS2,Crappy oil fuelled airraft carriers hich spend more time in port than being fixed than at sea, Channel Tunnel, Lots of chip making ventures (remember the 240K DRAM in the seventies), any government funded and sponsored IT venture. Someone could write a good article on theses and other vanity projects
“ultimate construction of folly…”
Like I said…. we’ve had quite a few of those. And there are more in the pipeline.
And let us not forget Titanic.
That was reckless driving!
And bad rivets.
No. The start of climate change 🙂
Quite, The lure of the Blue Ribbon was greater than the safety of the passengers. A fine though tragic example of the danger of hubris ignoring nature.
As we see today there will only ever be one winner.
That was a commercial enterprise.
Dreamers will always exist. It is when they start distributing other peoples money the the problems arise.
The Comet 4 wasn’t really as bad as you make out once they had understood about stress in airframes (square portholes a real no-no). Indeed, the Comet programme really established RAE Farnborough as an insituation with real expertise. I flew in them (4B variant) in the 60s. Later they became the airframe for the Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft which were in service until just a few years ago.
Big (and bigger) shafts with one-bearing support. Recipe for failure.
Perhaps Siemens Energy is about to provide a much-needed lesson!
Shares in Greencoat UK Wind ( https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-search-results/g/greencoat-uk-wind-plc-ordinary-shares ) have certainly tanked a bit of late…
On Monday this week I sailed across the North Sea from Ijmuiden in the Netherlands. On the way, we passed a wind facility. Some of the blades were turning rapidly. Some were turning more slowly. And some weren’t moving at all. So, clearly, when the wind was blowing quite strongly, this wind facility was producing considerably less electricity than its total capability.
Why the difference from one wind machine to the next?
Like Austin Maestros.
Some worked, after a fashion. Others, not so much.
You could find someone to tinker with a duff Maestro.
Tinkering with a wind turbine in the middle of the North Sea, is more of a challenge.
I wonder how many actual human beings have already died erecting or maintaining Wind Turbines.
The information seems hard to find. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more in this Century than Coal, Gas, Hydro, Nuclear put together since 1950.
Try the ‘Turbine Accident Statistics’ from the ‘Scotland against Spin’ website.
Heard the expression, “Having the wind taken out of one’s sails”?
I’ve witnessed this phenomenon in a 10-array windfarm near here.
Nor is there any justification for wind.
https://www.cfact.org/2023/06/26/offshore-wind-is-a-terrible-way-to-reduce-co2-emissions/
Burning H2 to generate power is not a practical option at these efficiencies, generating power using a fuel cell would be the go to option. Either way this is an impractical solution at the scale being talked about, not to mention the amount of water required to generate all of this H2 and then compression and storage
Lots of other problems with the electrolyzing idea. If you try to use sea water, you release lots of chlorine gas as well. Fresh water is a limited resource in many areas that would like to go down this road. Stills to make pure water would make the process even less efficient.
Then you have tons of hydrogen around, which cannot be mixed with tracer gases as they do with natural gas. It burns with almost no visible flame. It embrittles steel containers and piping, making it hard to store and use. Hydrogen powered vehicles have been a pipe dream for decades but are not currently practical. Remember the Hindenburg.
So we end up still needing petroleum to grow our food, make pharmaceuticals and clothing and for transportation. Hydrogen is a lose-lose proposition.
Many of the problems of hydrogen as a fuel can be solved by combining it with carbon, heh, heh!
Basically, you never get something-for-nothing in physics…
While technology for handling Hydrogen safely is known, this too can be said about petroleum products. But schist happens.
Search for : Roslyn Inns building leveled by suspected gas explosion
The house of friends was whacked by this explosion. Apparently, snow slid off a roof and damaged pipes (maybe the connecting joints) and propane leaked into the building.
I suppose the occasional Hydrogen boom will, likewise, be taken in stride.
Well, maybe this project isn’t as easy as the central planners thought it would be. News of the past week brings to light a few more speed bumps on the road to energy utopia.
It was in Sweden in 2023 when the Great Awakening began children-
Sweden abandons 100% renewable energy goal – Scandasia
Prior to the Great Tarring and Feathering…..
They got that by not locking their people down….
Everyone, including the Gang Green knows that it’s all going down. They knew it before they began duct-taping the dream with hydrogen after haywiring it with batteries.
Aunty in Oz tries to calm the horses-
High energy prices expected as renewables take over | Watch (msn.com)
Don’t panic! The unreliables will be cheaper in the long run like we promised folks.
But experts are warning that until the transition is largely complete in another decade, higher prices could be the new normal.
Honestly, you just shake your head, experts, experts everywhere. All of them make zero sense. 82% renewable energy by 2030.LOL!!
Nothing is working out according to the pipe dream, but that will all get straightened out once the transition is completed!
I really have no idea what goes on inside the minds of the people who demand an end to fossil fuels immediately, etc?
The ones who make up arbitrary deadlines for getting rid of all ICE vehicles, getting to net zero, etc, without having any plan for exactly how this might be achieved, are operating on the same mentality, but a different time frame.
I can understand the abject ignorance of all things technical and practical, because I have known people like that my entire life.
And I can understand colossal arrogance, because I have also known people like that my entire life.
I can even understand the complete lack of any ability to think anything through to a logical conclusion, because, again, I have known people like that my entire life as well.
What I cannot understand is, how all three of those traits get rolled up into the minds of an entire political persuasion which comprises about one third to one half of the population, and how the hell people so utterly empty headed wound up in charge of everything, everywhere?
Nicholas,
Some are genuinely ignorant of the technological problems of the renewables fantasy but for many it is irresistible urge to throw a wrench into the well-oiled works of our fossil fuel economy. These types are excited by the thought of the Western world in chaos and the rebuilding of society on a communistic and social justice model with the “woke” (namely them) ascending to absolute power. One can easily identify the type. When you cite any fact which might shed doubt on the catastrophic climate change mantra, they cover their ears and pray to St. Greta.
Story Tip —
Just Stop Cricket protesters invade Lords test match.
Just Stop Cricket
Excellent stuff Watch from the very first second from the right…. More rugby than cricket!
https://twitter.com/BallCarrier_/status/1662469649445933060?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1662469649445933060%7Ctwgr%5E7ed8b3a9a033479f8b84f6ec09a14541d293f94d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Feurope%2F2023%2F06%2F28%2Fwatch-players-foil-just-stop-oil-protest-at-lords-cricket-test%2F
Poms decided to bowl??. Aussies going alright just before lunch. 72-0
Thank God for Joe Root.
We had dull overcast skies, perfect for swing bowling, but couldn’t take advantage. These are the traditional English conditions, that our game has evolved to exploit, since the 19th century.
Which probably says something about the slow rate of climate change.
And maybe the slow decline of Jimmy Anderson.
From the article: “In other words, this is never going to happen. The only question is how far down the road we get before the plug gets pulled.”
That’s exactly right.
Let’s hope the crash-test dummy countries/states serve to wake the rest of our politicians up about the impossibility of reining in CO2.
CO2 is a benign gas, essential for life on Earth, and no evidence has ever been presented showing CO2 needs to be reduced or regulated in any way.
This unwarranted obsession with controlling CO2 is destroying our lives.
Precisely. +1000!
If this was really all about CO2, then nuclear is the obvious solution. But CO2 and other greenhouse gases are a sideshow, not the main event.
ScienceAlert.com
Dear God in Heaven … Is it really a lie if the author didn’t know any better?
OKAY Bec Crew (author of the article), what do we do for electricity when the wind doesn’t blow? Tiny Denmark can get away with no fossil fueled backup because it’s hooked up to the German grid from which the majority of the electricity is generated using fossil fuels.
Even if they got 200% of required capacity on one day, that doesn’t prove that fossil fuels are unnecessary. Well duh! I suppose EROEI is beyond poor Bec’s grasp. Sigh.
NB : My understanding is that Denmark is mostly “backed up” by Sweden’s (and possibly Norway’s ?) hydro power stations. Someone (much) more knowledgeable than myself on the subject will no doubt soon arrive to correct my “misinformation” …
I have some “aggregator” websites for European electricity production in my “Bookmarks” file, which eventually led me to the following URL :
http://www.emd.dk/el/
NB : It has a “Not allowed to be disseminated without reference to the EMD International A/S” disclaimer on each graphic produced, which I am respecting by not attaching a screenshot to this post.
Set it up for “14 days” with a (start-)date of ” 06 / 14 / 2023 “, and then click to only leave the “Electricity consumption”, “Wind turbines” and “Photovoltaic options” …
… I don’t think you can “rely” on wind to supply “between 116 and 140 percent of the national electricity requirements” for extended periods of time.
Well I’ll give one Dane some credit. Story goes, that Utzon got the inspiration for the sails from slicing an orange in quarters.
Denmark has less people than New York City.
People whose only windmill experience is with the picturesque and creaky old things around farms, don’t realize that their water was pumped into holding tanks so the humans and cattle would have something to drink when the wind wasn’t blowing.
Siemens Gamesa CEO Jochen Eickholt said “the quality problems go well beyond what had been known hitherto. . . . The result of the current review will be much worse than even what I would have thought possible,”
I’m pretty sure lots of people had highlighted reliability and maintenance issues with wind mills as a problem – maybe you and your team should have paid attention Jochen!
BTW – the ones in salt water are going to be even more well beyond what you know.
Nice to see him accidentally using the meme “… it’s worse than we thought!” 😀
Quality problems going well beyond what had been known sounds like maybe they employed climate modelling techniques for their reliability predictions and of course, as above, maybe they should have done a bit more investigation and due diligence up front rather than just taking the money and hoping for the best. maybe the shareholders can claim negligence (or stupidity)?
All in all the wind story is truly depressing, a distinct lack of even the most basic knowledge and planning is leading us down a a route where we pay more and more in order to keep a cult alive.
I think that the UK deserves a special award for stupidity, here.
Blow up not only coal mines but coal fired power stations at the very earliest opportunity and get a “Conservative” Government Minister to fire the charges.
Remember the old Chinese proverb:-
“Never throw away your old shoes until you are sure you are happy with the new ones!”
Even the Germans had enough sense to mothball some coal fired plant!
Totally agree but it’s not a problem – we just get a few more green levies on our bills!
Net zero works best when you’re not investing your own money!
Remember Maggie Thatcher started the whole global warming thing after the Miner’s Strike to save the coal industry was lost and the Tories argument that they weren’t trying to close the pits for party political reasons had been debunked by a few years’ history.
If Chernobyl hadn’t blown up they might have got away with saying nuclear was the way forward. But with an area the size of the UK suddenly irradiated they needed a reason why coal was even more dangerous.
Lord Deben is a typical Tory.
Perhaps one of the problems is the turbine manufacturers have been trying to outdo one another in size, output etc to meet the demands of unrealistic politicians, rather than concentrating on quality.
Yep, commercial willy-waving…
“ don’t expect the climate doom cult to walk away from any of their grand plans. The immediate answer will be more, and still more government subsidies to keep the wind power dream alive. But at some point this becomes, as they say, unsustainable.”
Yes, If you call catastrophic anthropogenic global ruin unsustainable, And about that time the planet will be having a cooling trend and we’ll have to save ourselves all over again through world-wide unrepresentative authoritarian government.
I would be glad if we can get all our electricity out renewables one day.
But how???
The central question here: IS WIND POWER “RENEWABLE”?
Where comes the wind from? Is there enough wind power to produce our electricity?
What happens with the climate, if we do use too much wind???
The problem with the wind: the wind is our climate!
Not only it controls the local temperatures, It brings moisture to the continents!
When we use wind, we actually STOP it. We extract its kinetic energy.
Let us assume for a moment, the Germans do build the projected 300 GW offshore wind farms in the North Sea and Baltics.
But this is exactly the corridor, through which water-carrying clouds pass from the Atlantics towards the Eurasia. What happens if Germans stop these clouds?
I guess, the climatic impact on Europe and North-Asia will be devastating.
As a simple person, I’d expect heat waves stalling in Spain and France.
Catastrophic floods in North-Italy and Balkans. may be even in Turkey.
Turbulent climate in Germany itself as the air will flow either from the south (heat waves and dry) or from north (cold snaps and rain/snow).
Anything to the east from Germany will experience less humidity and finally become a desert.
This is a true man-made climate change!
The worst part of these units failing prematurely, is that all of the economics of the original investments were based on a certain lifespan.
As investments go, it was a terrible one to begin with. All the proof anyone needs of that basic fact is what happens to retail power prices whenever wind turbines get installed.
So it was already going to be a massively expensive, wasteful, and ultimately useless boondoggle even if the turbines lasted as long as they were promised to last.
Trillions of dollars spent, and the net effect was to raise power prices by hundreds of percent while doing almost nothing to reduce CO2 production.
It was never going to be one time expense either, as once they wear out, they need to be replaced with new ones.
But if they wear out prematurely, which they are doing, then they will need to be replaced before they have paid for themselves, or even produced as much energy as it took to make them.
Because let’s not forget what a BS metric “levelized cost of power” is.
A far more realistic estimate of the true cost is to use the metric of “Energy Returned On Energy Invested”. By that metric, it was debatable if they would make as much as they cost to build if they lasted their full designed lifespan of 25 years or so.
They are going to be in a situation before long, where the turbines no longer work and need to be replaced, just as the true economics of them becomes impossible to deny or ignore.
At that point, what choice will there be to produce the power needed to keep the economy from crashing and people from freezing in the dark?
They have not been exploring for supplies of fossil fuels, and it takes a long time to get a fleet of new nuclear power plants up and running from scratch.
They have banned fracking for natural gas.
The wind turbine manufacturers will be bankrupt.
The only choice will be to burn coal in newly build coal power plants.
As for this whole green hydrogen plan, I am gonna be very surprised if anyone manages to make it work, at any cost, and at any efficiency, at the scale required for grid scale energy storage. Besides for the awful mathematics of the thermodynamic losses of conversion, is the issue of scalability.
It will take a massive industry to make all that hydrogen. One that does not exist, and would have to be built from scratch. Scalability has been the insurmountable hurdle with one alternative energy scheme after another. How to make hydrogen from electricity is no secret or mystery. So why after all this time is no one doing it at the massive scale required to store grid scale power? Because it does not scale well, and the hydrogen winds up being incredibly expensive.
The configuration of wind turbines should be a huge clue about one problem they face: one long shaft supported by bearing(s) on one end of the shaft, with a huge weight on the other end, the impeller. Any wear in the bearing will cascade over time, getting worse and worse. If the shaft was supported on both ends the problem would be greatly reduced, but this isn’t a practical design.
the Texas Valentine day freeze should have been a wake-up call but it was completely ignored – doubling down on this unreliable source
Story Tip: [Ridiculae] [Bad Science]
1 Degree Increase in Temperatures Increases Domestic and Sexual Violence by 6%
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/28/climate-crisis-linked-to-rising-domestic-violence-in-south-asia-study-finds
The hotter it is, the more windows and doors are open.
Recorded domestic abuse probably is correlated with temperature.
Who knows what happens behind closed doors?
Welcome to the California of Oz in Danistan with the worst of the delusionals-
‘Global warming politicians’ are destroying our electricity system (msn.com)
Judith Sloan is a rational economist who keeps knocking on blockheads to no avail.
“replaceable generator” energy … not renewable energy … should really be “expensive replaceable generator” … all of which generate HUGE amounts of CO2 to produce/build with minerals we don’t begin to have enough of …
+42 x 1042 for the Caddyshack reference!!!
20% efficient only covers electrolyzing water and then burning it to create electricity.
Unless you put one hydrogen conversion plant next to each solar and wind field, you are going to have to transmit the electricity from where it is generated to where it is converted. That is going to involve energy losses.
Beyond that 108TWh surplus does not sound like anywhere near enough to store enough hydrogen to power the country through a week without wind.
Finally, how do they plan to store the hydrogen and what are the associated storage losses?
The NHS and green energy have a lot in common. They both cost billions, have a lot of vociferous proponents, and are never available when you need them.
Every entity that claims wind is cheaper than fossil fuels should immediately have all subsidies, grants and tax incentives withdrawn.
There is a small detail in this scheme not mentioned.
This will involve converting a lot of water into water vapor. Water vapor is the major greenhouse gas.
I suppose they think all that extra water vapor will quickly fall back to the Earth as rain. Any evidence that this is true?
BTW, the electric grid only accounts for 1/3rd of the energy use in the UK. So, you will have to triple all the numbers to go netzero.
Simple madness.