From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
When green fantasies hit the brick wall of cold reality!
By 2035, Germany wants to produce 100% of its power in a climate-neutral way. To back up wind turbines and solar panels, whose production is expected to dominate in the coming years, the government initially envisioned a fleet of hydrogen-fired power plants.
But these plans are now faltering amid a prolonged government budgetary crisis, said Sigfried Russwurm, the president of Germany’s powerful industry association BDI.
In early August 2023, the German government triumphantly announced that the European Commission had essentially greenlit its plan for subsidised backup power plants.
That meant 8.8 GW of dedicated hydrogen power plants, alongside 15 GW of natural gas-powered ones that ought to switch to hydrogen by 2035 at the latest, in total representing about one-third of the German peak power demand of 2023. Climate-friendly power at the press of a button.
Because these plants would likely only produce power in periods of sustained low wind and low sun – known as “kalte Dunkelflaute” – they are unlikely to make a profit without state support.
And critically, the annual €7 billion earmarked for this purpose “evaporated” following a ruling from Germany’s top court, which restricted the government’s use of credit lines approved during the COVID-19 crisis.
With no hydrogen plants available as backup, coal power will likely be needed to fill the gap, the BDI chief warned.
“As long as the prospect of new backup power plants based on hydrogen does not get off the ground […] the solution in Germany will be the continued operation of coal-fired power plants,” Russwurm told the press on Tuesday (16 January).
Given budgetary constraints, the two industry associations are urgning the government to cut corners and ditch plans for hydrogen-fired power plants.
Industry groups are now urging the government to take action. “The Federal Government must now get its act together: We need a power plant strategy with clear framework conditions,” said energy industry association BDEW on 11 January.
“At least 15 gigawatts (GW) of new secure generation capacity will be needed in Germany by 2030,” the association added.
Given budgetary constraints, the two industry associations are urging the government to cut corners and ditch plans for hydrogen-fired power plants.
“To significantly reduce complexity and costs,” BDEW stresses the need to “reevaluate” the role afforded to hydrogen peak and hybrid power plants, due to their expensive components and limited impacts on supply security.
Russwurm is of a similar mind. Outlining the BDI’s priorities for the year, he used metaphors to explain what a hydrogen-fired power plant would look like.
Existing power plants can’t run on “pure” hydrogen because the “burners would simply melt”, he explained. Addressing this would require retrofitting the plants with ceramics, which would make them look like the nose of a spaceship folded inwards – a process that can be done but is costly, the BDI chief said.
“If these turbines are only supposed to run when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, then they will be extremely expensive,” he added.
“I’m not even talking about the cost of hydrogen, which we don’t have, but only the investment costs of these new gas turbines and their new peripherals.”
Ultimately, this means Germany’s plan to entirely phase out coal power by 2030 looks unlikely to materialise. Instead, Germany will have to continue relying on gas-fired power plants to match growing demand for electricity.
As the guy from BDI notes, 7 billion euros a year is just the cost of subsidising these hydrogen back up power plants. On top of that comes the cost of actually producing the hydrogen and the question of where the electricity will come from to do it.
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I guess a lot more people are going to be burned by hydrogen this time than 87 years ago.
London already has the roadmap for that. So far passengers were able to get off the battery busses when they self-combusted with just inhaling some nasty gasses. The passengers on hydrogen powered busses could be just smears on pavements after a hydrogen tank explodes that creates an oxygen depleting fire ball.
Would that be an Invisible Oxygen Depleting Fireball?
That ugly head just around the corner heading toward NutZero is REALITY.
Humans harnessed steam 4 centuries ago to produce power. It took about a century after that for a single coal fired engine to replace 6 horses.
A little more than a century ago coal and steam became partners in producing electricity. That system has undergone massive development over time and continues to be refined by the Chinese.
Making hydrogen from water and electricity is proven technology. But combining intermittent wind and solar electricity generators to producing hydrogen to be stored then used in gas turbines to firm intermittent electricity will never replace more coal than the coal used to make the hardware to make that back-up electricity.
The only way this technology works is to burn coal in China to make all the hardware needed to produce hydrogen powered electricity in truly woke States. It must increase atmospheric CO2 globally. At some point, the Chinese no longer need to hold debt denominated in other currencies and they own all the farms and premium property in the woke States.
The rich Chinese tourists come to Western nations- and take photos of the starving, freezing peasants sitting on their stoops. And they’ll be saying, “how nice of these fools to give up everything so we can be rich”.
There is an abundant untapped resource for wind hardware. My estimate is about 13,000 of the 14,000 wind turbines in Europe needing to be repurposed/removed/recycled are readily available. Think of all the hardware! (double that many in <10 years). To be sure the decommissioning gets done properly:
WindEurope Explains that “an international standard for decommissioning wind turbines does not exist today (prior to 2020) and therefore launched a Task Force for Dismantling and Decommissioning to produce guidelines for sustainable decommissioning including the whole wind energy supply chain.
https://proceedings.windeurope.org/biplatform/rails/active_storage/disk/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2
/WindEurope-decommissioning-of-onshore-wind-turbines.pdf (link title abbreviated)
The detailed report was issued in 2020. Four years later that great opportunity for hardware is untapped, except in a handful of isolated situations. How can that be? Is it possible that both the Wind Europe and the USA western energy board reports on wind turbine decommissioning costs are flawed?
https://www.westernenergyboard.org/wp-content/uploads/WindDecommissioningIssueBrief_20200114.pdf
Based on wind decommissioning plans submitted to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, the estimated costs to decommission a wind turbine facility can range between $90,000 to over $300,000 per wind turbine, but the associated salvage of high-cost components can help recover between 70-80 percent of the decommissioning costs; with the salvage component, the estimated average net decommissioning cost is about $40,000 per turbine.
Assuming the net cost to decommission a 3.0-megawatt (MW) turbine will be $40,000 after the expected salvage of the high-value components, and after a life of 30 years where it produced at an average capacity factor of 30 percent, the per megawatt-hour (MWh) rate to ensure funds are available for decommissioning is approximately $0.17/MWh or $1,333 per year over the life of the turbine.
Comment 1: Not too difficult to understand that the WGC will simply default on the $40,000 bond and “gift” the “associated salvage of high-cost components” to the State.
Comment 2: How much longer can this wind farce survive?
“By 2035, Germany wants to produce 100% of its power in a climate-neutral way.”
Proxy temperature data over 100s of millions of years, and actual historical measured data of various types going back more than a century shows the climate doesn’t give a fig about fossil fuel plants’ CO2 emissions.
Congratulations Germany!!!!
You’ve already reached NetZero!
“in a climate-neutral way.”
Ahh. so they are going to DUMP all their solar and wind, since it absolutely climate/weather dependent.
All that money just WASTED by their own ignorance.
And by their raging hubris.
more like NutZero
It will take a lot of electricity to produce the hydrogen.
1) Where will this electricity come from?
2) What means will be used to generate this electricity to produce hydrogen?
3) Will the hydrogen be able to produce more electricity that was needed to liberate it from (CH4/H2O??) in the first place?
If the answer to #2 is Renewables, how much additional dedicated renewable generation is needed?
If the answer to #3 is no then its a waste of electricity to produce hydrogen.
All three questions could be answered by using nuclear power plants, which would be completely free of carbon dioxide. But Germany has already said no way, so they’re in a corner. Iceland could do it, because they have all the geothermal that they need. Germany doesn’t.
Iceland’s geothermal usage is widely misunderstood. The vast majority of it is low temperature surface hot springs used for building heat – not hot enough to drive a turbine. About 75% of Iceland’s electricity production is hydro. Most of the rest is deep-well geothermal with a smattering of diesel on isolated small islands.
It’s more than that, but it doesn’t matter as Iceland’s population is a small fraction of Germany’s.
___________________________________________________________
Just one of many elephants in the room that the climate mob is ignoring.
7 billion euros a year
Donner und blitzen!
and that is just for the coffee supplied for climate conferences.
and that is just for the
coffeeprostitutes supplied for climate conferences.FYP
Many years ago, during my studies for my BSc, I had an assignment to compare and rate Electricity generation around the World. Leaving aside Nuclear my strong belief was that Combined Heat & Power (CHP) (waste to heat), as was used in Manhattan, parts of Germany and the District Heating in Sweden was, for a number of reasons, the superior method of generating electricity. I still hold this viewpoint and cannot understand why it is not so much more popular than the inefficient and intermittent solar and turbine technology(?)
I too looked at CHP as part of my degree. I recall that they are only good where you have a high density of users for the heat… typically new-build housing estates, blocks of flats etc.
not so good in less densely populated areas, or as a retrofit project.
There’s one in Burlington, VT. The power source is a woody biomass plant.
https://www.burlingtonelectric.com/mcneil/
It greatly enhances good forestry in the surrounding region. There could be many more in New England with abundant forest land much in need for a market for extremely low grade wood. There are a few others- all ferociously hated by the green nut jobs- who are so crazy in their hatred of ALL forestry- that they often chain themselves to logging machinery.
Generating electricity using hydrogen produced from electricity generated by renewable systems, i.e.wind turbines, is technically feasible but impracticable because it is an ignorant, thermodynamically and economically stupid proposal.
This proposal is not a product of joined up systems thinking.
Construction of such a system would require far more energy than could ever be delivered to consumers.
So Germany wants to have 8.8 GW + 15 GW = 23.8 GW of hydrogen fueled power generation in 2035? Oh yeah?
How much renewable generation capacity would that require?
Here goes: taking into account h2 pealing power turbine capacity factors (say 30%) wind turbines capacity factors, 20% to 30% depending on location and annual wind patterns, (21.5% in Ireland in 2010 due to low wind), efficiency of the hydrogen production process, losses from hydrogen storage leaks (about 0.5% per day) and grid transmission losses, etc., etc., etc. not less than 150GW of installed nominal wind generation capacity would need to be installed.
At 2 million euro per MW, that would be about 300 billion euro.
Plus the costs of the hydrogen electrolysis plants and the very large volumes of H2 storage, many more billions.
For comparison, installed wind generation capacity in Germany today is 66 GW delivering 140 TWh per year, or about 25% of Germany’s 555 TWh annual demand.
Thus, to fully supply German power demand would require not less than 4 times current installed capacity, 4 x 66 = 264 GW. i.e, an additional 200 GW over current installation. Due to the imbalance of renewable supply and consumer demand, a considerable amount of energy storage would be required. Some of this additional wind power could be used to produce H2, but due to the thermodynamic inefficiencies involved, even more wind power would be needed.
BUT, they are talking 23,8 GW H2 fueled generating capacity. German demand averages 66 GW per hour. Significant additional storage would be required for a fully renewable system.
Total energy storage required for Germany would be at least:
Annual demand 555 TWh x 15% = 83 GWh
The question is: How long will it take German leadership to figure out this is an unworkable deal?
How long will it take German leadership…
At least a full generation. Current leadership never will.
Talk of hydrogen and airships that burned reminds me of an interesting piece of psychology. There was an airship about to berth, so the usual rope was dangling from its nose, to be gathered and tied to a tether. A couple of people were holding on to the rope when a gust of wind sent it higher. A dozen other people rushed to help hold the rope, but the airship kept getting higher. With about a dozen hangers-on, those at the top could hold on no longer and they had to let go, from high enough to face death and injury.
The psychological point is that those people who were most keen to save the airship were the first to hang on, the first to drop off and the first to be killed. Death was their reward for loyalty to the cause and saving lives if the airship should crash. Their reward was upside-down with respect to their loyalty.
Now to the German present, with loyalty to hydrogen as a fuel for the future. What are the rewards for this loyalty? Job losses? Life can move in strange directions.
Maybe it is like the Army in WWII Britain, when common advice to new recruits was “Never volunteer”. Starts to make sense. I like to say instead, never commit yourself to a cause, a cult, an ideology.
Geoff S
Wasn’t their an air crash that killed Britians top military brass at the start of WWII that is largely overlooked as the reason for Britain’s success in the war effort?
Interesting- that “common advice”. I’ve read countless books on WWII and never heard that. But, from what I read, I concluded that UK soldiers were very good soldiers! Maybe they didn’t volunteer but they had good officers.
Reminds me of the sailors’ rule in man overboard events –
Don’t jump into the water to try to save the person overboard.
That just gives the rest of the crew 2 people to fish out of the water instead of one.
Increases the degree of difficulty of the rescue by 100%.
So much for Trudeau’s plan to sell Germany hydrogen instead of LNG.
Who are you going to believe. A disputed theory or millions of years of climate data.
The paleo records consistently show that temperatures fall when CO2 levels are highest. Temperature increase when CO2 levels are lowest. Completely at odds with GHG theory.
Ammonia, not hydrogen seems to be the big climate hope for Net Zero. Use ammonia in place of methane as a source of hydrogen.
What could possibly go wrong. Having had a leaking ammonia cycle freezer, I would say plenty.
re: “Having had a leaking ammonia cycle freezer,”
Interesting to read the history on this that took place in the early 1900s on this kind of ‘tech’, and the search for a more human-compatible (read that as MUCH less lethal alternative) refrigerant eventually leading to the ‘Freon’ family of gases …
When your strategy depends on Unicorn farts and Fairy vomit for success then expect unfavourable consequences.
The sort of things, found at a kid’s party
Dream? More like nightmare – for ratepayers and taxpayers.
Story Tip
Energy Bills Set to Soar as Report Finds Almost All Major Studies on Net Zero Grossly Underestimate Cost
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/01/27/energy-bills-set-to-soar-as-report-finds-almost-all-major-studies-on-net-zero-grossly-underestimate-cost/
They have already soared here. Geoff S
Coming to rural Scotland as we speak. Plans for large battery site and H2 plant near Kintore…
“By 2035, Germany wants to produce 100% of its power in a climate-neutral way.”
And I’d like to take a vacation on the moon.
“a fleet of hydrogen-fired power plants”
WTF? A fleet of power plants????
“As the guy from BDI notes, 7 billion euros a year is just the cost of subsidising these hydrogen back up power plants. On top of that comes the cost of actually producing the hydrogen and the question of where the electricity will come from to do it.”
Sounds as likely as finding a perpetual motion machine.
If they only learned to use and understand their pocket calculator or their slide rule…
re: “Germany… building a fleet of hydrogen-fired power plants”
Oh – this sounds dreamy and fraught with issues!!
AS is often said in cases like this: “Good luck with that!“
Well they can forget LNG as Buyden has put a stop to new facilities in the US
Good thing those farsighted German Greens succeeded in shutting down the perfectly good nuclear power plants they were using.
In the headline and body text of the above article:
“. . . fleet of hydrogen-fired power plants . . .”
Now that’s very strange terminology! Would that be anything like:
— a fleet of dams?
— a fleet of nuclear power plants?
— a fleet of fossil-fuel power plants?
— a fleet of offshore wind turbines?
Perhaps the misstated implication is that the practicality of hydrogen-fired power plants will be fleeting? 🙂
The answer is to write legislation and regulations repealing the laws of physics and economics. Once they’re out of the way it will be clear sailing. Or at least that seems to be the foundation of most Net Zero plans. On the other hand maybe Net Zero is more about Net Zero humans left alive on planet Earth.
I think the answer is hiding in plain sight. NetZero = NetZ (pronounced the American way as Zee). Say it fast and there you have it.
[I pointed this out to bait some leftist relatives who looked confused and said they didn’t get it. “National Socialists,” I explained.
They both looked even more confused as they considered the phrase in their heads. Finally one said,”National socialist. I really like the phrase. Can I use it?”
I blinked. “Sure”, I said. “You do that.”]
Making hydrogen at substantial effort and expense only to turn around and burn this hydrogen at typical thermal effciencies in a stop and go thermal plant. It reminds me of the old Goon Show episode where farmers were growing juju plants for which the only commercial use was fiber to provide shade for young juju plants.
On second thought, maybe the juju plant scheme made more sense.