From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
It is hard to underestimate the significance of this new revelation:
Britain’s climate watchdog has privately admitted that a number of its key net zero recommendations may have relied on insufficient data, it has been claimed.
Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, said that the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero.
“They have conceded privately that that was a mistake,” Sir Chris said in a presentation seen by this newspaper. In contrast, the Royal Society review examined 37 years worth of weather data.
Last week Sir Chris, an emeritus professor and former director of energy research at Oxford University, said that the remarks to which he was referring were made by Chris Stark, the Climate Change Committee’s chief executive. He said: “Might be best to say that Chris Stark conceded that my comment that the CCC relied on modelling that only uses a single year of weather data … is ‘an entirely valid criticism’.”
The CCC said that Sir Chris’s comments, in a presentation given in a personal capacity in October, following the publication of his review, related solely to a particular report it published last year on how to deliver “a reliable decarbonised power system”.
Enshrined in law
But, in response to further questions from this newspaper, the body admitted that its original recommendations in 2019 about the feasibility of meeting the 2050 net zero target, were also based on just one year’s worth of weather data. The recommendations were heavily relied on by ministers when Theresa May enshrined the 2050 target into law. A CCC spokesman said: “We stand by the analysis.”
In October 2021 The Sunday Telegraph revealed that assumptions underpinning the committee’s 2019 advice to ministers included a projection that in 2050 there would be just seven days on which wind turbines would produce less than 10 per cent of their potential electricity output. That compared to 30 such days in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018, according to analysis by Net Zero Watch, a campaign group.
Sir Chris’s report for the Royal Society, published in September, concluded that a vast network of hydrogen-filled caves was needed to guard against the risk of blackouts under the shift to wind and solar generation, which the Royal Society described as “volatile” because it depends on wind and sun to produce energy.
The report was one of the starkest warnings to date of the risks faced when relying on intermittent weather-dependent energy sources without sufficient backup.
Overestimate
It stated: “The UK’s need for long-term energy storage has been seriously underestimated… Studies that do not consider long sequences of years underestimate the need for long-term storage. Studies of single years cannot cast light directly on the need for storage lasting over 12 months and overestimate the need for other supplies.”
In a presentation delivered on Oct 31 2023, Sir Chris said: “By looking at one year you underestimate storage and you grossly overestimate the need for everything else. That’s exactly what the Committee on Climate Change have done.”
He added: “The Committee on Climate Change, as I already said, looked at a single year and they have conceded privately that that was a mistake. But they are still saying they don’t differ that much from us. Well that’s not quite true.”
The Royal Society report found that up to 100 Terawatt-hours (TWh) of storage will be needed by 2050, to mitigate variations in wind and sunshine. This was based on 37 years of weather data rather than the single year relied on by the CCC.
Real weather data
The report noted that the CCC model required “a much greater level of supply … from other sources, and/or wind and solar than would have been required if storage had been allowed to transfer energy between years.”
A CCC spokesman said: “Our recent report modelled the 12-month operation of Britain’s power system in 2035 using hourly energy demand and real weather data from a low-wind year, stress-tested to simulate a 30-day wind drought.
“We welcome Sir Chris’ work, which considers other aspects of the energy challenge in 2050, under different assumptions about the future energy mix.” Asked if the CCC disputed Sir Chris’s account, the spokesman said: “We’ve got nothing further to add.”
Although the CCC are busy trying to backtrack away from this incompetence (some would say fraud), it is plain that none of their planning or costings have built in the 100 TWh of storage that the RS feels is necessary – a third of current electricity generation.This is also the sort of figure which many independent energy experts have suggested.
This is evident from their projections of grid capacities, faithfully repeated by the National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios.
It is now clear that Parliament authorised Net Zero without any proper assessment, whether financial or energy, and the whole Net Zero legislation must now be suspended until a full independent assessment is carried out.
In addition, the whole of the CC should now be disbanded. Unfortunately it is still required by law, but it should now be staffed by truly independent members, with a remit to prioritise energy security and cost/benefit goals. The ideological pursuit of Net Zero must not override the wellbeing of the British public, put its energy security at risk or make the public worse off.
But the current and past members of the CCC who have overseen this attempt to bamboozle and defraud the public must be held to account, and excluded from any further influence over the country’s energy policy, or indeed on any issue of public policy.
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Net Zero was always a stalking horse for deindustrialization. The Green Blob does not want reliable electric supplies, as “conservation” is regarded as a positive good.
Wear your sandals and eat your bugs.
Hair shirt?
Burlap undies, as they are likely to be vegans.
I would assume that vegans eschew bugs?
They eschew them and then they esSwallow them.
Oh, no, and to think I tossed all those wonderful Madras T-shirts years ago.
Never zero 2050!
Story tip?
Try linking to this.
Wrong URL –
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/21/thus-claims-by-alarmists-attributing-rising-co2-to-any-loss-of-arctic-sea-ice-and-so-called-arctic-amplification-is-not-supported-by-the-evidence/
Auto
Yeah, that happened during post creation and I forgot to fix the incorrect slug. Nothing to be done about it now as it will break social media links to the story.
Charles, Thanks.
Auto
disciples of Kaczynski
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=unibomber&atb=v344-1&ia=web
“It is hard to underestimate the significance of this new revelation:”
Since it’ll never be mentioned in the MSM, it’ll be easy to underestimate.
And that is how energy policy, and many other policies, are made in the UK.
No wonder, the UK has become an ungovernable, debt-ridden, economic travesty.
That is a long descend from being an INDUSTRIAL POWERHOUSE in the 1800s
Then came a debilitating WW1, then the Depression, then a devastating WW2, and then came the post-war malaise
The UK is good at saber-rattling to distract the people from solving their real problems
Hate to say it, but you’re probably very likely right.
Hate to say it, but Wilpost is right
The same link I put into the Open Thread this morning…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/20/climate-change-wind-farms-royal-society-green-energy/
Is the Telegraph considered MSM? Usually, I thought, such conservative papers aren’t seen by most people, like the big boys, the BBC, The Guardian, the WSJ, WP, NYT.
The Sun, Times and Telegraph titles which have all chosen to keep their ABC circulations private since the start of 2020. The Guardian and Observer joined them in September 2021.
The last ABC figures we have for these titles are as follows:
The Sun: 1,210,915 (March 2020)
The Sun on Sunday: 1,013,777 (March 2020)
The Sunday Times: 647,622 (March 2020)
The Times: 365,880 (March 2020)
Daily Telegraph: 317,817 (December 2019)
Sunday Telegraph: 248,288 (December 2019)
The Observer: 136,656 (July 2021)
The Guardian: 105,134 (July 2021)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/most-popular-newspapers-uk-abc-monthly-circulation-figures-2/
Peta,
All responsibility is dead in the UK.
Look at the Post Office – Horizon IT scandal.
See this, also – Child Sexual Abuse:
https://reaction.life/rochdale-grooming-scandal-report-shames-britain/
In just one town.
Auto
Joseph, the Telegraph is part of the MSM.
This is a far bigger scandal than the Post Office one. I hate to think what measures the establishment will try to take to stop the truth getting out.
Well …
Try linking to this.
Wrong URL –
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/21/thus-claims-by-alarmists-attributing-rising-co2-to-any-loss-of-arctic-sea-ice-
More likely a glitch that the establishment getting naughty.
Auto.
It is a glitch. Charles a
has commented, above. Auto
The article appeared in The Telegraph, which is a mainstream newspaper. However, you can be sure that the BBC will avoid all mention until it is completely unavoidable.
Nothing at their ‘Climate’ tab at 1950Z, 21st.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cmj34zmwm1zt
Auto – not greatly astonished!
” … the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data … “
They were looking for cherries to pick and found one.
And it’s always worse than they thought.
Which proves they can’t think because they never got it right the first time.
The nimrods probably rejected several unfavorable years to get the ‘dope’ for their climate models. Interesting that they chose 30 days of slow wind when recently it actually went for 56 days – likely more than two std deviations greater low wind days. I’d like to see if these innumerate clods actually used an average!!
After this 40yr Dark Age for science, surely a remedy for it will include a written, enforceable code of ethics and standards for practice of science. All universities should be required to re-apply for certification for teaching science and conducting scientific research.
Required to be re-certified by whom, their eco-cult buddies from other universities?
Maybe by the scientists at Indian universities – they seem to still understand basic concepts of truth and honesty, the scientific method, etc.
I’m an engineer (Canadian) and am obliged to operate under a provincial statute. The Association of Engineers in each province are a self administered body under the legislation. There is a strict code of ethics and standards for competency. You can be brought before a disciplinary panel of engineers for any breaches of the code or for substandard practice. You can have your license to practice taken away. It is the same for doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants, … It is the reason a bridge, a building and other engineered works can be so relied upon.
I don’t understand why I was voted down for suggesting a similar requirement for professional scientists given their enabling of the multi-trillion dollar economic
damage and untold millions of casualties caused globally to zero benefit! Ask yourself if you still trust science like you do engineering.
Because such internal ethics enforcement has far too often been mainly a professional society protection activity.
Think the ABA and their recommendations for federal judgeships, all leftists are “highly qualified”.
Look at Brandon’s last nominated and confirmed “I am not a biologist” answer re what is a woman.
SCOTUS injustice, to complete the thought.
““I am not a biologist” answer re what is a woman.”
A crazy answer. And she is now sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court.
We live in crazy times, brought to us by crazy radical Democrats.
I assure you it’s not a professional society protection activity in Canada. You are correct about this for professional societies in general these dark days, but engineering in Canada at least, is strict on protecting the public and malpracticing in Canada has seen numbers of engineers every year stripped of their licenses to practice, many permanently.
This has been a fixture in Canada for more than a century. Their is a high degree of boyscoutliness in this country not to be found anywhere else. I do admit that with willy nilly immigration flooding the country over the past couple of decades, I worry that this trait may not be ‘sustainable’!
I haven’t trusted science since 2000 when my youngest son studying microbiology at university and his advisor told him not to worry about taking any math classes – if he needed a statistical analysis done for a study data to just find a math major in statistics to do the analysis.
It would have been a case of the blind leading the blind – the biology student not knowing statistical analysis and the statistics major not understanding science. You don’t get synergy from such an arrangement. That perfectly describes climate science today – scientists that have absolutely no understanding of how to do statistical analysis and statistician/computer programmers that have absolutely no understanding of science. It’s why you get averages with no understanding of the underlying data, i.e. variances, kurtosis, skewness, measurement uncertainty, etc. It’s the reason for the climate science meme of “everything is random, Gaussian, and stated values are always 100% accurate”.
I encouraged my son to take both calculus and statistics and it has stood him in good stead throughout his current career. You simply wouldn’t believe some of the stories he has to tell.
Look at how all the so called professional organizations have been captured by the politicians and now completely support the climate warming myth. Not a single one of these organizations polled their members before taking these positions.
If history is any guide, within a generation, anyone who opposes the government position will have their professional licenses pulled.
While total windhours is important, contiguous low windhours is a major factor for calculating backup/storage requirements
Yes, of course it is. But the Dark Side has a long history of cherry picking what fits its divine ends.
Even if they calculate the backup/storage requirements properly, they can’t supply the backup/storage with current technology.
how much sugar was put in that pie?
Making stuff up with impunity is another demonstration of power.
And should be a sign to the rest of us that something is very wrong with our leadership. Change is needed.
Any professional engineer whose career is based on power production for the grid could have told them beforehand….plus produce a report in a couple of weeks with facts and figures showing how implausible ”Net Zero” really is. They’ve probably done this.
But it’s hidden underneath the think tank report labelled “Wedge Issues for Vote Collection Optimization in Social Media Enabled Society”.
I think politicians try to collect votes from what they feel is an eco-sensitized public, and then find themselves trapped into making it look like they are doing something…when actually they can do the numbers themselves or easily hire engineering companies to do them, and are just waffling and waiting for the public to become sane.
They’re now into the real of diminishing returns. To achieve just a few pathetic extra points, in the realm of hundredths, are going to cripple the country.
The significance of this, is you can bet your life that all the rest of this multi-$trillion shiteree for lower primates is similarly concocted. Global class actions anyone.
I think it’s worse than that – they could have appeased the watermelons with non-binding targets and subsidies, leaving the infrastructure alone and making sure that it’s still available when the wind stops blowing on a cloudy day.
But the fact they went full blast to the illusionary utopia of NetZero means that they believed their own propaganda and lies, or were stupid enough to believe the lies of others who don’t have our best interests at heart.
Net-Zero = Zero-Life.
“We’ve got nothing further to add.” = “we don’t care either, it’s business as usual”
If this took place in the United States, Republican U.S. House members would call for an investigation.
Will anything like that happen in the UK?
Speaking of investigations.
It seems that forensic investigation of House of Representative computers, discovered that over 100 encrypted files covering the “January 6th” investigations were erased before the files were turned over to the Republicans after the Republicans gained control of the House.
I’m not surprised. Radical Democrats have no morals. We should expect they will be dishonest. They have a proven track record. They are willing to do what it takes, legally or illegally, to get what they want: Supreme Political Power.
We are not dealing with fair-minded people when it comes to radical Democrats.
In other news….they are killing the bears in Alaska….and some wolves…and seals…..why? Climate change of course……3500 brown and black bears over last 15 years….plus hunting because the caribou numbers are declining…Alaska is warming at twice the rate….save the bears?
The caribou must have been doing very well previously if they supported a large carnivore population. Typical “fox and hare”, “boom and bust” cycle – but the humans panic when they see the caribou numbers drop when the carnivore population gets too big, but they would have to act to protect the populace, who don’t want to be on the menu.
This would happen regardless of the weather outside.
It’s not just carnivores reducing population but destructive feeding on vegetation and disease spread in a large population.
Alaska temps… looks like cooling since about 1983
“vast network of hydrogen-filled caves” – Do they really expect those caves to retain the hydrogen? Hydrogen is a wily beast. It’ll seep out of those caves in no time flat, especially if it’s under pressure. I can just see a hydrogen torch roaring out of a crack in the ground. If you think a Li-ion fire is bad, wait to you see a hydrogen flare from a pressurized cave.
Seems like it’ll screw with bats’ echo-location.
Ignoring the problem of breathing, but would bats be able to fly in a pure hydrogen atmosphere?
There are hydrogen caverns that have been in operations for some decades in salt formations. They tend to operate at rather lower pressures than their methane siblings, which combined with the much lower energy density of hydrogen at a given pressure means you need about 5 times the storage volume as would be needed to store the same energy as methane. The motivation for the lower operating pressure is not too hard to guess.
Wouldn’t the hydrogen permeate the salt, like it does in metals?
Another reason to keep the pressure low?
wait to you see a hydrogen flare from a pressurized cave.
Would you see it?
I guess they checked to see if this accident eager to happen won’t exceed 0.5 on the Richter Scale threshold they have recently set for preventing fracking.
I’m sure they would grant them an exemption.
““vast network of hydrogen-filled caves””
It’s unbelievable that they would bet the future of the UK on “hydorgen-filled caves”. Somebody told the politicians this might work and enable their Net Zero aspirations, so they grabbed it, whether it would do what was claimed or not.
Now, they have been found out.
So what’s the plan now?
It’s time for the UK to reexamine this Net Zero issue. So far, all they have managed with the Net Zero effort is to bring the UK to the brink of bankruptcy, while making a few Fat Cats richer.
The Climate Change Committee has also never done a cost – benefit analysis of net zero because it is “too complicated”
In 2022 the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published a report on ‘Achieving Net Zero: Follow Up’
It said “Treasury witnesses were reluctant to be drawn on future costs of achieving net zero cautioning that the Climate Change Committee’s estimates contain ‘heroic assumptions’ with errors potentially compounding over very long periods.”
So the errors and lies were already known almost 2 years ago but the government plays “happy climate cult”, as long as they get to claim “leader in the fight against climate change” they don’t care what the disasterous ramifications of their plans are. Get elected, get cushy jobs with Orsted, Siemens other green companies, screw the voters – let them eat cake.
Balancing a checkbook is too complicated for them, so pretty much everything is too complicated (or just made up).
They should just do a brief review of US EPA procedures for favored regulations: greatly overestimate the benefits while greatly underestimating the costs. This only requires being able to recognize which number is larger and in which box to put that number.
“The Climate Change Committee has also never done a cost – benefit analysis of net zero because it is “too complicated”
and
“Climate Change Committee’s estimates contain ‘heroic assumptions”
I guess that’s why the UK is in such bad shape financially. They are going down the Net Zero Road in the dark.
The sad part is many of us have our headlights on and we can see the Net Zero Road is leading to economic and societal disaster, but the Powers-that-Be are not listening. Up until now, anyway.
CO2-phobia is dooming the UK.
UK authorities proudly announce Nut Zero actually is based on far more data than CAGW. They forget to say CAGW is not based on any data at all. It is just an imaginary climate prediction unlike any climate in the past. Always coming in ten years, since the 1970s. Would be here by now but got lost in Scotland
It fell off the cliff with the other lemmings.
Britain’s climate watchdog has privately admitted that a number of its key net zero recommendations may have relied on insufficient data, it has been claimed.
Well then homogenise and pasteurise it and fill in the data gaps with gridded values like you usually do and run it through the computer models again until you get the left answers you want. You’re not getting nervous Steyn will win with Mike’s Nature tricks are you?
The data are not merely insufficient: most of them are invented. That includes fantasies about being able to control demand, the effectiveness of V2G, the future efficiency of wind turbines and the sunniness of the UK, that CCS will actually work and be economic, that the wind always blows again when you need it to, that heat pumps scan work in the UK housing stock effectively, that BEVs will be cheap and consume little energy per mile (or that people will be prohibited from travel) and much else besides.
It’s pure fiction.
Completely right – it boggles the mind that governments around the world were setting NetZero into LAW as though the technology was mature. Even if the tech was as mature as nuclear, forced migration is a recipe for disaster. Any competent project/program manager knows you have to go step-by-step, complete smaller projects that eventually complete the full vision.
Any economist, account, engineer knows the forced push would also distort the labour and resource markets – driving costs sky high.
Maybe that was on the minds of those behind the scenes, the ones pulling the strings with all the parties, to get NetZero approved without proper analysis.
“Completely right – it boggles the mind that governments around the world were setting NetZero into LAW as though the technology was mature.”
That’s exactly what they did, and exactly what is going on to this day.
Net Zero is politics/ideology, not science.
Net Zero is destructive to the economies of the nations, and regions within them, trying to implement it.
It’s time for a reset.
Sounds a bit like the ‘great groundnut disaster’
Cant find much about it, but wiki has it as the ‘Tanganyika groundnut scheme’
Perfect – I was wondering if there were historical equivalents to the stupidity of NetZero – and I see that the label NutZero is very appropriate!
Modern day Fabian peanuts of the world take note-
Tanganyika groundnut scheme – Wikipedia
story tip
The Daily Telegraph has two other interesting stories today.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/21/britain-wargames-china-shock-to-net-zero-plans/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/21/energy-bills-must-rise-pay-for-net-zero-siemens/
An interesting juxtaposition and perhaps clever political spin to soften up the electorate for more green slushfunding to the likes of Siemens. All in the name of national security you understand folks and nothing to do with the fibs we told about the real cost of unreliables.
The Siemens chief has perhaps only privately worked out the real alternative: we must abandon net zero.
NetZero is Siemens’ bread and butter, they would never recommend that.
That would be like the car dealer telling you you don’t need a new car, keep your current one in good shape and it will serve you well.
But obviously they’ve worked out that they need more subsidies to keep playing the eco game.
Isn’t there another glaring problem with their assumptions about wind and solar in getting to net-zero by 2050? Besides using only one year’s data for solar and wind, how did they adjust for climate change over the next thirty years? Less clouds (more droughts), more clouds (more floods)? Less wind, more wind? Too much wind (more storms)? If they assumed these things will be unchanged after thirty years then their climate change has virtually no impact on the climate, and they can forget about the entire issue.
They took 2018 weather and assumed it was constant.
They say publicly that the weather is changing and dangerous, but privately they assume that the weather is constant over decades – what does that tell us? 😋
It tells what we’ve known all along – politicians are shortsighted morons.
The burning of fossil fuels contributes less than five percent to the average global concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Natural emissions from tropical oceans are. al least. 20 times greater than all emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Cold water is the main sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide. The coldest water is mostly in clouds and polar oceans. Therefore, any model of atmospheric carbon dioxide, should consider these facts.
Most smoke stake emissions are returned to the surface in rain. What little that comes out the top of thunder clouds is delivered to the poles via jet streams, where it is readily absorbed by the cold open waters.
Tail pipe emissions are more likely to be absorbed by nearby vegetation.
The observed changes in global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are the result of changes in natural emission and sink rates; and not the result of year-to-year changes in emissions from burning fossil fuels. There is no year-to-year accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide; either natural or from burning fossil fuels.
Nature has it’s own “net zero”.
How much closer to “zero” do they think it’s possible to get? CO2 is currently around 420 parts per million, increased from 280 ppm in 1850. That’s a difference of 140 ppm, or in terms more readily understood by the layman, the composition of the atmosphere has changed by 0.014% (14 thousandths of 1%) in the last 170 years. Less than 1 thousandth of 1% per decade! What else in nature is calculated to this level of “accuracy”? This is equivalent to claiming you know the exact number of blades of grass in a 10 acre meadow by counting the number in 1 square centimetre. The whole thing is smoke and mirrors.
“Net Zero” is reached ever year because substantially all CO2 emissions emitted during a year (both natural and from burning fossil fuels) are absorbed by sinks within the year. Atmospheric concentrations have continued to rise as natural emission rates have continued to increase. I expect atmospheric concentrations to continue to rise for several years regardless of what we do with fossil fuel burning.
the more you think about that, the worse it gets…..
Just for starters, where does it leave the predicted/expected performance of not only Heat Pumps but Lithium Ion batteries (electric cars)
(haha) Out In The Cold perhaps
Do be warned ‘data averagers‘ = Users of Low Pass Filters
Because that is what they did – they said/assumed that UK weather from one year to the next is little different from The Average
Esp: Things that are ‘expected to’ or conform to the average don’t kill you, it’s the ‘bolt from the blue‘ that does the damage = variability is the killer.
When high pass filtering your data, you see variability clearly
In matters concerning living things, plants, critters, people or even soil bacteria, you only ever get one chance
Climate science doesn’t even know if their data is Gaussian or not, let alone the variance of the data.
We are entering the biggest “ I told you so” era of modern times; maybe in the history of modern civilization. And not just relating to the climate change topic. There are and have been some very good studies done on the vulnerability of approximately 75% of the population to herd mentality group think.
let us hope our civilizations make it to the “ what the hell were we thing” phase ASAP.
What the hell were they thinking? Anyway
There were/are many motivations for why things were/are done. One would have to read WUWT articles over the last 15 years to get a good idea about all the delusional thinking that goes into efforts by people to control CO2.
One thing we do know: None of these people have any evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
They want to control CO2 for one reason or another, but they can’t show any proof that this is necessary in the first place.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped them from taking actions harmful to our economies and to individuals who live in those economies.
It should be pointed out that for all it looked at 37 years of refactored weather data to estimate renewables generation the Royal Society itself only looked at a single year of demand data which was largely constructed by the CCC sock puppet constultants set up by Bryony Worthington (co-author of the Climate Change Act), EMBER. It used 2018 – hardly a difficult demand year compared with a cold winter like 2010/11 – and then allowed for extensive demand side curtailment whenever demand got a bit more difficult to meet. Thus it grossly underestimates demand in a tough winter, where heat pumps would struggle and COP factors fall, with additional resistive heating called on to make good; V2G supply would also drop because car batteries would hold much less charge, and owners would be very reluctant to share that with the grid anyway; and fails to reveal the real problem of Dunkelflaute that it tends to coincide with periods of high demand, and increases the stresses on storage up to the multi year level in consequence.
Those who live in glass houses….
Yes, impossible. The result of seriously trying will be nationwide blackouts.
The CCC should submit any future Net Zero plans to the WUWT audience for a realistic critique, before taking any future actions.
“…up to 100 Terawatt-hours (TWh) of storage will be needed by 2050.” Presumably this would comprise Li-ion battery facilities. A quick internet search reveals that the largest that currently exists is Moss Landing Storage Facility, Monterey County CA with a capacity of 3000 MWh as of August 2023, so 120,000 of those then. Expressing it slightly differently, 100 TWh is equivalent to 86 Megatons TNT – hope they don’t build one near me.
No. Their plan is for hydrogen caverns, supplemented by small volumes of batteries, compressed/liquid air storage etc. to better optimise shorter term fluctuations.
They used only one year of wind data to calculate the path to net zero!!!!
““They have conceded privately that that was a mistake,” Sir Chris said in a presentation seen by this newspaper….’
In Canada, I would’ve been brought before a disciplinary committee of the engineering association and had my license taken from me. They wouldn’t even recommend I take remedial studies for such a flagrant disregard for the most fundamental duty of an engineer. Even the Royal Society study should never have been entrusted to a physicist. This is why so many “breakthroughs” in scientific research on energy are never heard of again. A back of envelope costing by a real engineer is usually enough to bury the breakthrough
At least it’s an improvement on a biologist specialising in snails.
Staggering incompetence and gross violation of the Law of Small Numbers by CCC and how is this refuted? By any rational suggestion from a committee considered competent to do so? Hardly, we’re treated to Sir Chris’s science fiction of this network of hydrogen filled caverns? Where are they then? Explain the logistics and costs of all this claptrap… best to ignore it’s ‘carbon footprint’ though.
Perhpas I should add the the Royal Society swallowed hook line and sinker all the other elaborate fantasies that lie behind the CCC and DESNZ projections, including wind generation at 63% capacity factor, ever cheaper renewables (already shown to be substantially more than double the cost per MW of capacity), heavy demand side control, high efficiency heat pumps in a suddenly Passivhaus insulated UK housing stock, much reduced travel, etc.
They also got a lot of ‘splaining to do.
No head will roll.
Auto.
Depressed about the state of the UK, but realistic about cover-ups.
Even when there’s a TV drama [Post Office Horizon scandal].
Our system is robust.
You’re the only one reporting this problem
The Post Office
Did someone say a vast network of hydrogen filled caves would be required. What possibly go wrong?
The bigger question is how all this hydrogen would be produced, the caves aren’t magically going to fill themselves.
There are most likely periods where wind and solar are at max production and the excess generation would be used to create hydrogen through electrolysis. But dollars to donuts they didn’t completely account for energy losses in the creation, transportation, and storage processes.
IIRC the highest wind turbine production was 56% of the electrical demand at the time. Excess generation? Only if you toss non-renewables into the mix.