From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Four national institutions have failed to model the 2050 energy system correctly, and all of them in ways that lead to understatement of the costs of Net Zero.
Over the weekend, the Sunday Telegraph reported that the Climate Change Committee has got its energy system modelling wrong. The revelation was made by Sir Christopher Llewellyn Smith, the lead author of the recent Royal Society report on electricity storage, in remarks made at a seminar at Oxford.
According to Sir Christopher, the Climate Change Committee’s estimates of the costs of Net Zero are fundamentally flawed because they have only modelled isolated years. As he pointed out in the seminar, low-wind years can happen back to back, which means that the Climate Change Committee need twice as much storage capacity as they thought. As a result, they have underestimated the costs.
However, the Sunday Telegraph didn’t mention that it’s not just the Climate Change Committee that has made this mistake. In the same seminar, Sir Christopher pointed out that the National Infrastructure Commission has done the same thing, despite being warned of the problem of clusters of low-wind years. So they too will have underestimated the costs.
The National Infrastructure Assessment…is also based on one year…they were told by the Met Office ‘you can get extreme events’…it’s not enough to look at one. They looked at one, so they got the answer wrong. The Met Office are really angry, because they told them ‘don’t do it’, but they did it.
I can also reveal that National Grid ESO, in its Future Energy Scenarios, has done the same thing. I wrote to the NGESO team to ask how they did things, and was told that their models are prepared using weather conditions in 2013, which they describe as an “average year”. They are starting to run tests against low-wind conditions (so-called ‘dunkelflautes’), but back-to-back wind droughts don’t seem to be on their radar yet:
The generation provided from renewables, as well as the demand profile, is typically based on an average weather year (2013).
For FES23, we also conducted an initial piece of analysis looking at abnormal weather conditions (resulting in abnormal supply and demand patterns), the results of which can be found in our FES23 publication under the title Dunkelflaute Period. We took a period of extreme weather, in this case between Jan-Feb 1985, and applied it to our Consumer Transformation scenario in 2050, to look at how the system would respond to a sustained period low renewable output…
We are planning on looking at abnormal supply and exceptional demand in more detail going forward as well as the effects of more extreme weather.
That means that they too will have underestimated the cost of Net Zero.
The Royal Society is to be congratulated for clarifying the problem. However, it turns out that their own modelling is fundamentally flawed too. That’s because, while they model 37 years of different wind speeds, they assume that electricity demand is always the same. Sir Christopher has admitted that this is not correct, in a podcast broadcast last year. As he put it then:
And now I confess something that is a bit of a weakness in our report. We’ve got this model of one year of demand…based in the weather in 2018…We simply repeat that 37 times.
This is clearly wrong, because in 2050 it is imagined that we will all heat our homes with electric heat pumps. Electricity demand will therefore be much higher in cold years than in mild ones, and if we have back to back cold years, we are going to need much more storage.
So, four well funded national institutions have failed to model the 2050 correctly, and all of them in ways that low-balls the cost of Net Zero. That’s a remarkable coincidence, and one that should probably raise alarm bells about the extent of the rot in the British establishment.
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The “dismal science” remains just that.
To extend it to formalise a relationship between human economic activity and global ‘average temperature’ is patently ridiculous.
Except GDP growth correlates well with CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions correlate well with the global average temperature since 1975 when CO2 emissions became large enough to make a difference.
My son was born in 1976 and his increase in height correlates well with the increase in CO2. Did one cause the other?
Well, the warmistas use the logic that, since Tuesday follows Monday, therefore Monday caused Tuesday.
Have that brilliant comment framed and sens a copy to yo’ mama
Spurious correlations are only science when they support the alarmists agenda.
That such a stupid comment gets 24 upvotes is why this website never gets taken seriously by climate scientists, especially the comments/
Why does the paleontology record show that CO2 was far higher at times with no human emissions, and the world didn’t end then?
I never said the world would end from manmade CO2 emissions.
The world benefits from CO2 emissions.
Since 1997 I have advocated for a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere — at least double — to boost C3 plant growth.
The CO2 level in the atmosphere has most likely been in a downtrend for 4.5 billion years.
The 180ppm about 20,000 years ago was dangerously low.
Our C3 plants (85% OF ALL SPECIES) evolved in about 1000ppm CO2 and prefer 1000ppm CO2.
Greenhouse owners have known that fct many decades.
More CO2 is good news
More warming is good news
Nut Zero is a waste of money
The statistical expertise of climate scientists is pretty much zero and any correlations should be considered with a great deal of cynicism. For instance, I’ve never seen confidence intervals quoted for any modelling results despite this being the most basic requirement of any scientific study.
This correlation proves absolutely nothing and anyone claiming otherwise is simply revealing their ignorance of the most basic of statistical knowledge.
CO2 was proven to be a greenhouse gas over a century ago, with the ability to impede Earth’s ability to cool itself. In over a century no scientists have refuted that theory based on lab measurements.
Atmospheric measurements of the expected downwelling long wav radiation (back radiation) have been added evidence of an increasing greenhouse effect.
The global warming from the +27% increase of atmospheric CO2 happened as expected. More evidence.
Antarctica failed to warm.. More evidence.
There were more increases of TMION than TMAX. More evidence.
But evidence that CO2 increases the greenhouse effect and evidence the greenhouse effect is increasing mean nothing to a science denier like you.
You are right about scientific ignorance — just look into a mirror to observe such ignorance,
CO2 has risen at a reasonably constant rate since around 1950.
Temperatures since 1950 have gone up, down and sidewise since 1950, though they have gone up more often than not.
That hardly counts as “correlate well”. Beyond that, for the rest of history, including the proxy records, there is little to no correlation between CO2 and global temperatures.
CO2 follows temperature in the geological record. When the oceans warm they can’t hold as much CO2 and release that extra CO2 into the atmosphere. When the oceans cool the same thing happens in reverse and CO2 drops.
Irrelevant
You are conflating a very slow natural process where CO2 is a feedback with a much faster manmade CO2 process where CO2 is a forcing. Common conservative myth.
“CO2 has risen at a reasonably constant rate since around 1950.”
You start with a lie and then go downhill
CO2 increased only +7% from 1940 to 1975 and +27% after 1975. Big difference
CO2 was a feedback for 4.5 billion years. Did not become a significant forcing until about 1975.
Earth’s history with NO manmade CO2 emissions forcing can not be used for any conclusions about the climate forcing effect of manmade CO2 emissions. That is a stupid conservative myth.
Richard, the first lesson I ever took in stats – which you probably never took – explained that just because the increase in the amount of manure in the country correlated with the number of cars sold was not necessarily a true match.
A manure insult post. Brilliant.
Some smart people say warming temperatures cause rising CO2. Not me, as I’m not an expert on any climate subject- only an expert on forestry.
Warming oceans appear to increase CO2 by 100pp, per +5 degrees warming in a 100,000 year cycle seen in the ice core climate reconstructions
The slow, process would still be happening is humans had not added so much CO2 to the atmosphere since 1850 — about a +50% increase.
The oceans arer absorbing enough of that manmade CO2 emissions, but a little less absorption — perhaps 17ppm less — because the oceans have warmed about +1 degree C. since 1850 and can not hold as much CO2 as when they were colder.
All CO2 increases since 1860 are from manmade CO2 emissions and nature (oceans, land and plants) are net CO2 absorbers.
Again, I know little about climate science- and wanting to learn. So, when you say the oceans have warmed 1 deg, do you mean the entire ocean, on average? All the way to the bottom- or just the top layer? I understand the deep ocean is very cold so over the long term, currents spread that extra heat to deep layers. Just guessing on this.
20 downvites for stating two well known correlations. This is a comment section dominated by science deniers, CO2 Does Nothing Nutters, and even correlation deniers when no causation was mentioned in my comment.
Not everyone here thinks CO2 does nothing- I bet most will agree it does something- the problem is nobody knows how much. So, your constant attack on everyone- that they’re all climate deniers (the entire comment section) is crazy, and obnoxious. Maybe the few who argue with you think it does nothing. And maybe they’re right- but I bet most people active here don’t agree but we don’t mind hearing the opinions of those who think it does nothing, ’cause, who knows- nobody knows for sure- not until “the science is settled” which it aint. Maybe some here argue with you because they’re irritated that you’re so certain of your own opinions. Anyone too certain of their climate science opinions needs to be suspected of self delusion.
The British establishment has been rotten for a long time. Blair is one reason.
In the US it started with Clinton, who was a good buddy of Blair
And the Tories being Labour 2 doesn’t help. I personally think Boris J. has been the best leader Labour ever had.
You know what they say: “Ask 4 economists a question and you’ll get 5 different answers.” And, of course, there’s no guarantee that any of them are right!.
Trouble is, they asked 4 economists who gave 4 remarkably consistent answers; suspiciously consistent making almost exactly the same mistakes. Putting it into perspective, it’s a kind of Harvard President’s mistake.
Go with the flow
Most of the time, but sometimes I flow with the go.
And the only thing less reliable than the opinion of one economist is the consensus opinion from a group of economists.
In the US, economists as a group have never predicted a recession. Not once in history. I wrote the economics newsletter ECONOMIC LOGIC for 43 years and wrote about that once every year.
The US economy typically has one recession every decade. If you never predict a recession you can hope to be 90% “correct” over a decade. If you predict a recession that does not show up, you could lose your job.
The only prediction for a centrally controlled economic system is that it will collapse.
Well, admittedly just out of morbid curiosity, what were the estimated costs of Net Zero?
The OBR gave a figure of £321 billion. Given the article, this is likely a few trillion undercosted.
(unattributed) I have seen claims of over £3trillion
The way money is printed to kick the imploding economic can a little bit further down the road no predictions can be given. It all depends on when the people had enough and have nothing to lose.
Prof Michael Kelly (Electronic Electrical Engineering Camb U) had already estimated to somewhere in the same figure.
Ron, it depends on not just who you ask, but when you ask.
Not many years ago they were still predicting that warming would produce net economic benefits until at least the middle of the century.
Of course, that doesn’t sit well with people who want to do something NOW, for their own personal reasons. So the calculations get adjusted, just like all the other forecasts/predictions.
“We are planning on looking at abnormal supply and exceptional demand in more detail going forward as well as the effects of more extreme weather.”
Wow. What are they expecting, a round of applause and a chorus of ‘well done’? This is the job they should have done from day one, they have failed completely in their assessment and should be censured and held to account for this. If any other company or institution had failed to do their job properly on a scale of this magnitude, we would see heads rolling and, possibly, those companies penalised by government or their shareholders. This is a completely unforgiveable – they are admitting to driving us all over a cliff after putting on a blindfold.
“”What are they expecting,
Nothing less than what they’re guaranteed to get = big phat comfortable index-linked taxpayer-funded pensions
This is The Blob at work
Musing whether anybody or company has suffered a financial loss through relying on these erroneous reports for strategy and investments ? Seems to me they may have a case for compensation.
Just adding, that if one holds themselves out to be experts and offers this kind of advice / opinion, and it is relied upon by others … you don’t need a direct contract, you can still be held liable for damages.
If the Royal Society has based demand on just one year (2018) and repeated it 37 times, then it cannot take into account the government mandated increase in EV use. Based on current (no pun intended) technology the average EV driving the UK average for daily car usage of 40 miles will require 10kWh of energy. That just happens to be the same amount of energy used daily by a three-bedroom house with an average family but excluding heating.
Given most families have a car and those that do not are offset by multicar households, there should be at least a doubling of energy demand for when EVs become the norm (if that ever happens).
“It is beyond coincidence that all these errors should be in the same direction.”
Dr (lord). Matt Ridley – Angus Millar lecture to the Royal Society – Edinburgh – Nov 1st 2011
Give it two apartment buildings burning down to the ground because of charging EVs in the basement and it will be over. The public will refuse to buy them. Insurance companies will refuse to insure them no ferry no channel tunnel no parking etc.
It sort of does. They assume roughy double present levels of demand on an annual basis. Much more problematic is they take no account of extra demand from cold weather when we’re supposed to be running heat pumps. So peak demand is grossly underestimated, especially since they think that demand management will mean that the peak demand can simply be lopped off..
Math is hard.
Being logical is hard.
Math is easy
Being honest is hard if you can’t provide the ‘correct’ answer.
While they’re in absolute denial of how UK weather/climate actually works – how it is hugely affected by what happens over Europe.
As the barometer hanging in your (UK, esp SE England) hallway will tell, Europe is disappearing under ever deepening high-pressure weather systems that persist from early spring to late fall.
The one last year only broke up in the week before Christmas and is struggling to reform itself even now.
As Europe is progressively dessicated (Aridified) , not least via the actions of ‘Net Zero’, those ridges will expand ever outward over the eastern Atlantic, the UK and especially the North Sea = where UK is planting vast numbers of windmills.
Those high pressure ridges don’t take prisoners and the calm & settled weather (The Mediterranean Climate) will see those ‘mills sitting for months doing nothing.
When those ridges do collapse, ‘all weather he11‘ will break out (as we see now with a procession of named storms) and the ‘mills will be switched off because it will be too windy for them.
The absolute denial of how farmers, city-builders and foresters affect the landscape (thus weather) is creating The Perfect Disaster
I’d like you to tell me, a forester for 50 years, how foresters affect the landscape.
more intent to deceive or outright stupidity?
I tend to think the prior
Four of Britain’s Top Institutions Have Made Erroneous Estimates of the Cost of Net Zero
[And the rest….]
One disaster that the CCC got clean away with…
“…following government instructions. As the 2008 Climate Change Act made clear, ‘it is the duty of the secretary of state to ensure that the net UK carbon account for the year 2050 is at least 80 per cent lower than the 1990 baseline’. The act also created the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme, which presented the refurbishment of social housing as one quick fix to cutting CO2 emissions.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2017/06/26/grenfell-clad-in-climate-change-politics/
The CCC has been headless since Gumboot went back to his eco manor house, which prompted some outrage from the usual congregation of eco-activists and hacks etc. And then Sunak appointed David Frost to the CCC…
“A TORY peer who made a “dangerously stupid” claim that rising temperatures could benefit the UK is to be appointed to a key parliamentary committee on the climate crisis”
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24068241.tory-peer-david-frost-appointed-key-climate-change-committee/
Dangerously stupid? What did he say?
“Rising temperatures are “likely to be beneficial” for Britain as more people die of cold than heat in this country”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/britain-lord-brexit-government-athens-b2381122.html
Crime of the century, eh. Or was it Grenfell tower? Either way, [contrary] data is a bit of an inconvenience when you’re absolutely right. There’s the tiresome need to prove it….
“models are prepared” – and in this paradigm they are the gospel truth, my son. What other ‘evidence’ do you need?
I have found it difficult to find a costing for our impending economic suicide, but I did find this. In woke lefty circles, the address 55 Tufton Street is conspiracy catnip.
“55 Tufton Street: The other black door shaping British politics”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63039558
“Just Stop Oil protesters have sprayed orange paint over the front of 55 Tufton Street in London, an address that is home to fossil fuel lobby groups and right-wing think tanks.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/55-tufton-street-the-house-westminster-uk-economy-think-tanks-b1033807.html
So, what did I find? A costing for net zero.
“How a thinktank got the cost of net zero for the UK wildly wrong
Along with Civitas, 55 Tufton Street also houses the climate-sceptic lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation and its campaigning arm Net Zero Watch. These groups previously attempted to spark an “honest debate about the cost of net-zero” in 2020.
The Civitas report claims to offer a “realistic” £4.5tn estimate of the cost of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 and says “the government need to be honest with the British people”.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/29/how-a-thinktank-got-the-cost-of-net-zero-for-the-uk-wildly-wrong
Has anyone got any other figure[s]
Painful as it always is to follow a Guardian link, it’s nevertheless illuminating to read their ‘logic’. One thing the Guardian hack complained about is that Civitas didn’t account for certain cost savings:
“The CCC also found that reaching net zero would generate savings in the form of lower fossil fuel bills worth £1.1tn, resulting in a net cost of £0.3tn.”
Really?
The Civitas figure is about 3 times the CCC figure. Simply from the record of government-driven mega projects it is a reasonable assumption that the final cost will be a lot more than the original estimate so we could come up with something in the region of the Civitas figure without doing any fancy calculations.
But it’s all abstract – no-one knows what the cost will be.
Given the Uk’s unique, nay legendary, bureaucratic ability to make any [public] project cost far, far more and take much, much longer to complete, I’d say the Civitas figures could yet be an underestimation.
When the workers get thrown out at Port Talbot they’ll go onto the Universal Credit list and they won’t be getting a job anytime soon as the steelworks was the employer.
Nobody has costed the reduction in real jobs in going green.
The UK is longer unique in this regard, Canada is nipping closely on its heels thanks to that cockwomble , Trudeau.
As is Australia !
In 1924 nobody knew that 1939-1940 would change every prediction made for 1950.
Without the election of FDR and the existence of the US Federal Reserve, most 1924 predictions for 1950 would have been in the ballpark.
It took exceptional presidential and fed effort to make a recession become a depression and last 10 years.
Obama’s presidency and Democrat actions were able to turn a recession onto the “Great Recession”, but the massive amount of printed money given directly to people (welfare, extended unemployment “insurance” payments, SS, food stamps, etc.) would not allow a depression to occur.
Economic downturns will always happen, it takes government action to stretch them out.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191734/us-civilian-labor-force-participation-rate-since-1990/
Look at the Obama years, 2008 to 2015. Yep, he did a good impression of FDR. By paying people to NOT work you get a lower labor participation rate. Remember when “they” calculate the unemployment rate, those NOT LOOKING FOR A JOB are not counted. Labor participation gives you the rest of the story.
Bloomberg estimates $US200 trillion for the world to stop warming by 2050.
There are about 2 billion households in the world. That means about $100,000 per household.
Around 90 percent of the world’s households, mostly in the developing world, can’t afford anything extra.
That means that the 10 percent or so, mostly in the developed world, will have to pay 10 times as much or $1 million per household.
The UK has about 28 million households, times $1 million per household gives about $28 trillion, using Bloomberg’s figure.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-05/-200-trillion-is-needed-to-stop-global-warming-that-s-a-bargain
His manor house isn’t very eco. It’s Grade I listed, equals very poor insulation. He has a big open fire in his living room, with stacks of logs alongside. Lots of particulates from that, no doubt.
in another part of the wood, Reform is now polling at 13%, up a point from last month. Conservatives 20%, Labour 47%.
As the Telegraph says:
“The worst case scenario would be a replay of the 1993 Canadian general election, when the ruling Progressive Conservatives were wiped out, holding just two seats on 16 per cent, thanks to the emergence of a new Right-wing party appropriately called Reform, which grabbed 18 per cent and 52 seats. The parallels with the present situation are uncanny: the Progressive Tories had triumphed in the previous election with 43 per cent of the vote, exactly Boris Johnson’s share. ”
Under 100 seats in November, out of a total of 650, is seeming a real possibility. And it could, as the Telegraph conjectures, be even worse.
<i>“The worst case scenario would be a replay of the 1993 Canadian general election</i>
That, my friend is utter nonsense. You should realise why.
What do you think the result would be if current trends continue? If Reform gets up to (for instance) 18-20%. Conservatives fall to something similar or lower. Then owing to the FPTP system Reform gets very few seats, but they do well enough to reduce Conservatives to… what? Below 100, probably. Is going down to 50 possible? Don’t know, not very likely, but yes, possible.
No, its not a repeat of Canada. But it rhymes.
You need to look a little further into the ramifications of the 93 election, yes the conservative vote was split but that split led to a drive to unite the right and a new Conservative party was formed from the victorious Reform party and the remnants of the old conservative party. That led to conservative victory in the ensuing years. Since that time the conservatives lost their way, were deposed and Trudeau came to power but the shine is off that particular bauble and the Conservatives are on the rebound.
Agreed that if it happens (a Conservative drop below 100 seats) the longer term UK effects are just about impossible to predict. The Canadian experience of the long term effects is probably not applicable.
There are two British examples, but from over 100 years ago, and they point in opposite directions. One is the fall of the Liberal Party in the first quarter of the 20c. This was gradual and eventually led to its extinction. The other was the election of 1906, which led to a huge Liberal majority and only 133 Conservative MPs. But it was followed by a Conservative revival. As was the election of 1945 which was a somewhat similar landslide for Labour.
The longer term consequences, if it happens in Britain in November, seem unpredictable. But I think there’s a real possibility of a landslide of similar scale happening, caused by a mixture of disaffection with Conservatives and a move to Reform.
Sunak might have time to turn it around, at least partly. But he shows no sign of knowing how, and the party itself shows no sign of knowing how. Or, if they know, being prepared to act.
Isn’t The Tory party just Labour 2. So what do voters think will change voting Labour1 ?
This is the point, isn’t it? Labour will still get its core vote, probably recover a lot of those that switched to Conservative at the last election. But Reform may take a lot of the remaining Conservative vote. Enough to allow Labour to take lots of seats because the anti-Labour vote is split.
Its not people particularly voting Labour in huge numbers. Its Reform splitting the small ‘c’ conservative vote. There is real dissatisfaction among conservative voters with the Conservative Party, and its similarity to at least the public stance of Labour. Labour is actually, under the surface, far to the left of the Conservative Party. But its not that people are going to change from Conservative to Labour. They are going to change from Conservative at the last election to Reform. It can happen.
Now, in the end, in November, these people may blink. But there is a good and increasing chance they do not.
There is also a very good chance that the only reason the Lib Dems have been doing well is on the strength of a protest vote – not voting for either of the big 2 but only slightly better than spoiling your ballot. If the protest vote goes to Reform instead, the Lib Dems could get wiped out (or down to a tiny handful of seats) as well as grabbing more votes from the big 2. It’s a very interesting situation and I don’t think anyone’s able to call who’ll get the vote share of the next election with any accuracy.
Agreed, its very much up in the air. There is some chance, at this one or the one after, that there is a revolt against Net Zero as the implications become clear. This ought to tell heavily against the Lib Dems, and in favor of Reform as the only party in the UK that is opposing Net Zero. So agreed that Reform, if it continues to get momentum, may threaten the Lib Dems as well as the Conservatives.
It may also threaten Labour’s hopes of reviving their traditional vote in those constituencies which turned Conservative at the last election, but which are now wavering as the last government hasn’t met their expectations. They may turn to Reform for their protest this time.
It is going to be very interesting. I still think the most likely outcome, hard as it is to forecast, you are right about that, is a very large Labour majority but no very large presence for Reform. I can see Labour getting 400-500 seats.
And then swerving sharp left.
Story Tip
Another burning bus in London
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/25/electric-bus-flames-fire-putney-go-ahead-london-garage/
I’d never heard of a bus spontaneously combusting until the last few years.
They used to break down once in an inconvenient while, now they self-destruct. Bad news for the public purse.
“Electric cars cost twice as much to insure as petrol and diesel vehicles”https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/01/24/electric-cars-cost-twice-as-much-to-insure-as-petrol-and-diesel-vehicles/
Buses are housed in large garages…. that won’t make it cheaper.
Wow. Weird. I posted a link to a Larry the Cable Guy “that right there is funny, I don’t care who you are” utube, and that showed up.
But 3 London busses in 2 weeks, not that IS funny.
Have they also considered a demographic change from Producers to Takers? That alone will dramatically alter use patterns since the Replacement Population isn’t as keen on adopting the Western religion of Climate Change. They aren’t going to suffer the increased costs, and will start burning furniture if need be to keep warm on those days of poor energy supply. (More likely the politicians will sacrifice further the replaced population by redistributing their wealth and income to the ungrateful newcomers)
People who understand Mimetic Theory should also know that a massive propaganda campaign must be pushed to the Replacement Population so that they desire sacrificing their own lifestyle because they also desire the goals of the Elite to create a massive chasm between the top and lower class. That is Mission Impossible.
From what I can tell, much immigration is based on the whole principle of sacrificing everything to obtain an upgraded lifestyle, they want to adopt the advertised luxury and ease of the former Western Culture/Economy – quite opposite of what the Davos Cult have delusionally imagined. It might get sporty and kinetic when that opportunity is deprived.
Then again, that might be The Plan.
All four UK entities did the underestimating on purpose, so they present a “United Front” to the impoverished, over-exploited, over-regulated, long-suffering lay UK people, who are screwed over and over again by the insider entities.
The Biden folks passed a $390 billion IRA energy bill to subsidize wind, solar, batteries, EVs, etc., with loose provisions so the cost will be about $1.2 TRILLION, per Goldman Sachs
We have to elect Trump by a landslide, so he can quickly put an end to all this BS, reduce taxes, drill for fuels, and lower inflation, and CLOSE OUR BORDERS TO UNVETTED MISFITS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD
The US is a big fuel exporter now.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
It is not a matter of cost. The question is whether or not it is at all possible.
Nut Zero can not go according to plan, because there is no plan. Just a BS vision statement and arbitray completion date.
Picking a windy year may not be relevant. Each electric utility must study at least 50 years of weather conditions to determine the worst periods for solar and wind energy. Years are irrelevant. One minute without sun or wind could be a disaster. Maybe you’d need expemsive batteries to carry the full load for 3 days in a row a disaster.
Electricity consumption will be higher with EVs too.
It is impossible to estimate the cost of Nut Zero. It is not feasible so the cost is infinite and the timing is forever. Proponents do not seem to care. They are mainly interested in controlling people and the private sector of the economy..
25 years ago I was involved in developing a corporate plan to develop a new pickup truck costing about one billion dollars for the project.
.
A real plan needs costable assumptions, required for feasibility studies, cost estimates and critical path timing studies. Our group was mainly involved in reducing product development timing by up to one year, from 4.5 years to 3.5 years, to match Toyota. That was a big deal and was mainly “accomplished” by changing the definition of the start date and end date of the process.
The start date became when there were 50 or more engineers working on the project, cutting down the planning phase. The end date was when the first truck was assembled that would be sold to the public, rather than the assembly line reaching full speed mass production, cutting time off the other end of the process.
Senior management was told the process was shortened by a year, but never told that was mainly by changing the definition of the start and end dates. When I told my management thew draft final report for the CEO was deceptive, I was told to shut up.
The “climate change” hysteria is like the 1920s stock hysteria that ended in the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.
Except stock valuations got very g high and collapsed. Again in 2000.
While the climate emergency is completely imaginary
I should add that Toyota had many demonstration projects to show a 3.5 year prosess could be done.
Nut Zero only has a few failed demonstration projects. Just trying to demonstrate 100% unreliables could power a small area. They all failed but were publicized by leftists as successes.
In one project, Samso Island Denmark, burning garbage was declared to be green. They even had to import garbage by ship.
None of the demonstration projects accounted for the carbon footprint of imported products, such as food, cars, appliances, etc. They just looked at the generation of electricity which is only a small part of Nut Zero/
In their push to switch to ruinables, they’ve use erroneous wind conditions. From that, they now discover, that their storage requirements are underestimated.
So, to compensate for the serious lack of electrical supply from ruinables, they need to install massive and expensive battery systems.
Whatever happened to KISS?
It’s been replaced by CYA.
Seriously, it’s not about delivering an accurate report it’s all about making it look good but with enough ‘get-out clauses’ in it that you can walk away from it without serious penalty.
Can’t argue with that, Richard.👍
The battery systems won’t help at all. They’re far to puny. You have to start by installing a whole lot more capacity if you refuse to do the sensible thing – which is to invest in dispatchable capacity in the first place. Then you need lots of low cost storage on top. Say 13,000 Dinorwigs at £2bn a pop. Pity we don’t have the mountains for that.
Basically, it’s infeasible.
That’s something a lot of people, don’t understand about hydro. They seem to think pumped hydro, is free, like a typical hydro dam.
I repeatedly point out, we’d need three things.
A very large lake (i.e. Loch Ness/Lomond), a plentiful supply of rain (those two we have 😊), and thirdly the lake has to be at an appreciable height somewhere up in the mountains. Which we most definitely don’t have.
I happen to have been looking at these for the last 3 or 4 weeks.
URL : https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/future-energy-scenarios/documents
The “FES 2023 Data workbook” link is to a “massive” 24.6 MB Excel file with 176 tabs.
Copying the numbers from the following tabs … plus a few other “bits and bobs” … gave me a much more manageable ~120 KB spreadsheet file.
1) The entire contents of the “Key Stats” tab (18 of 176) in the “FES in 5” section, mostly for the “Total storage capacity (in GWh, excluding vehicle-to-grid)” numbers in 2030 and 2035.
2) In the “Energy System” section :
– the “ES05-08: Electricity output by technology” tab (81 of 176), for the “Interconnectors” and “Total (domestic generation)” lines for each scenario.
– the “ES.09: Installed capacity in GW” tab
– the “ES.11: Offshore wind generation capacity” tab
– the “ES.12: Onshore wind capacity” tab
– the “ES.13: Solar capacity in GW” tab
– the “ES.15: Unabated gas capacity in GW” tab
– the “ES.25: Interconnector capacity” tab (98 of 176)
– the “ES.26: Electricity storage installed capacity, excluding V2G and hydrogen (GW)” tab
Concentrating on the “Leading the Way” option, I selected the following 2 combinations :
– the “2030 mix” : 79 GW Wind + 41.4 GW Solar + 22.9 GW “Unabated Gas” (~63% of their “36.3 GW capacity” in 2022)
– the “2036 mix” : 130.7 GW Wind + 62 GW Solar [ + ZERO “Unabated Gas” ]
The attached graph is of the “Leading the Way” capacities from their “Start Year” of 2022 up to 2040 (the entire dataset goes up to 2050).
I switched from using (nominally 5-minute resolution) Gridwatch data, which required a lot of “curating” to use, to a combination of ESO (for Embedded Wind and Solar, plus the interconnector (ICT) data) and BM Reports (for “fossil fuels” and “everything else” …) around 3 years ago.
ESO URL : https://www.nationalgrideso.com/data-portal/historic-demand-data
BMR URL : https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=generation/fueltype/current
The ESO data comes in annual files, the BMR data downloads are limited to “chunks” of 89 or 90 days.
3 years ago I downloaded the BMR data from 1/1/2018, and regularly updated it (now up to 31/12/2023).
This data can be contrasted with the FES 2023’s “Leading the Way” generation data later.
NB : ESO are assuming there will be annual averages of “Excess” electricity generation by the GB electricity grid, switching the ICTs from their historic “mostly importing” state to a “mostly exporting” one instead.
For each 30-minute “Settlement Period”, the ESO + BMR data can be grouped as :
Total Demand = (Wind + Solar) + (CCGT +OCGT + Coal) + (Nuclear + Hydro + Biomass + ICT sum + …)
“Extra renewables” are not supposed to replace the last, “Others”, group, but only the “Fossil Fuels (FF)” one.
I have thought of two ways to calculate wat would happen if you replace all (or some) of the FFs with “Extra Wind + Solar + Storage“.
Option 1 : “How big is your battery ?” says you increase your grid to X GW of Wind + Y GW of Solar, then calculate how much battery would have been required in the past to cope with that very specific sequence of “weather conditions over the island of Great Britain”.
NB : 6 years of data at 30-minute resolution is (just over) 100,000 rows of spreadsheet, but unfortunately my “Add Chart …” option is limited to 32768 (= 2^15) datapoints per “line” to plot.
I therefore did a “daily sample” of the sequence in my “Battery” spreadsheet to generate the following graph.
It is important to regularly “test your assumptions”.
The assumption is that that any “grid-scale battery” would be more heavily solicited under “reduced wind = increased CCGT to meet ‘Demand’ …”.
Zooming in to the period with the most ‘”spikes” in the above graph would seem to confirm that assumption is correct.
NB : “Target” = Wind + Solar + CCGT + OCGT + Coal” on a “GWh per day” basis.
Note also that the most “interesting” (to me) spikes to look at are the biggest one in December 2021 and the “double dip” in November-December 2022.
The second option for calculations is to ask “How much do I need to multiply the combined ‘Wind + Solar’ in order to avoid any ‘battery storage’ whatsoever ?”.
That can be done on a line-by-line basis, and it’s easy enough to setup a spreadsheet to extract a “daily maximum” series of (less than 32768) values.
My results for the complete 2018-2023 period are attached below.
Note the recurring “spikes up to the 40-45 range” even as the installed “Wind + Solar” fleets / parks connected to the GB electricity grid increase over time.
Zooming in on the (deepest) December 2021 “down spike” mean 30-minute resolution data is less than 32768 datapoints long.
My “test” of the FES 2023 “Leading The Way” scenario isn’t very promising …
Never mind on a “yearly” basis, “back-to-back dunkelflautes” happened over a three-week period in November-December 2022 !
Very nice, it is refreshing that people (powerful people) are asking questions. Asking questions is how you begin to right a wrong.
For me there is only one question that needs to be asked. Can you generate power when it is needed? Yes or no. If yes start building today, if no, we are not interested.
I didn’t see anyone accounting for a rise in the number of plug-in cars, either.
That’s all covered by V2G EVs whereby hordes of philanthropic climate alarmist owners will buy much bigger EV batteries than they require for their personal transport needs in order to socially support the grid.
We need sustainability money-
Nickel miners explore for taxpayer dime to ease industry pain (msn.com)
because-
Australian producers had higher costs from Australia’s labour and environmental standards but their nickel received no price premium for being more sustainable and ethical.
Yes well with ramping up lithium mining for the perceived battery demand for unreliable energy naturally you can end up with a short term glut and falling prices. Particularly if EV demand isn’t going to plan despite mandates and taxpayer slushfunding.
As for the nickel price problem the pesky Indonesians with lots of it easily accessed in the ground decided global demanders could only have it if mined and refined by their cheap coal power thereby undercutting the not so sustainable climate alarmist suppliers. Cue more subsidy mining.
We have spent 2 months in Spain and Italy. Every hotel and B&B is heat pumps. Some also have hot water heating at night.
The heat pumps are useless on a cold (5 C) night. They blow cold air.