Reposted from Robert Bryce’s Substack
The hype, and the reality, about the energy transition in 10 charts
Over the past few days, I’ve searched the NewsBank archive for uses of “energy transition.” One of the earliest uses of that now-ubiquitous phrase occurred in the Christian Science Monitor in 1981. In a dispatch from Nairobi, a reporter named Richard Critchfield explained that some “4,000 delegates from 154 countries” were gathering in the Kenyan capital for a two-week United Nations conference on new and renewable sources of energy. “The purpose of the conference,” Critchfield explained, was to “promote better understanding of the global energy transition from oil to such new sources as geothermal, solar, wind, ocean, and hydropower or energy from biomass, fuelwood, charcoal, peat, draught animals, oil shale, and tar sands.”
The article doesn’t mention climate change. Instead, it focuses on Kenya’s reliance on imported energy, the country’s geothermal potential, and the “classic third-world poverty trap of soaring oil costs and stagnant export earnings.”
Today, 43 years later, we are inundated with news reports about climate change and claims that we are in the midst of an energy transition that will eliminate our need for hydrocarbons. Myriad examples can prove that point, but consider the Earth Day press release from the White House. The April 22 release included the word “climate” 52 times and references the energy transition three times. For instance, it said President Joe Biden has launched a new “Clean Energy Supply Chain Collaborative to work with international partners to diversity supply chains that are critical to a clean and secure energy transition.” It continued, saying the president is “mobilizing other governments to follow the U.S. lead and commit to achieve net zero government emissions by 2040.”
Before going further, let me be clear about my politics. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican. I am Disgusted. I have no truck with either party. As a journalist focused on energy and power systems, my affiliation is with the math and the physics. My job is to spotlight the trends and the numbers and to separate the hype from the reality. Unfortunately, much of the media coverage about the energy transition is just that: hype. As I will show in these charts, the hype has soared during the Biden administration.
Last month, the EPA announced rules to “reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants.” In the agency’s April 25 press release announcing the new regulations, the word “transition” appears three times. The EPA said it was providing “regulatory certainty as the power sector makes long-term investments in the transition to a clean energy economy.” It also quotes the BlueGreen Alliance’s Jason Walsh as saying the EPA mandate provides a “toolbox of critical investments targeted to the workers and communities experiencing the economic impacts of energy transition.”
In these 10 charts, I abide by W. Edwards Deming’s commandment: “In God we trust, all others must bring data.” The numbers I’m presenting aren’t my numbers, they are the numbers. Here’s what the media won’t tell you about the energy transition.
Chart 1
I’ve said it before, but I’ll repeat it: the concept of the energy transition is essentially a Western conceit. The U.S. and Western European countries are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on programs like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Energiewende to fund buildouts of solar, wind, batteries, and tutti-fruity-colored hydrogen, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world will do the same. There is no evidence that China and India are going through an energy transition. Instead, the numbers show those two countries are building staggering amounts of new coal-fired capacity. That capacity is far greater than the amount of nuclear capacity they are building. This chart, which I first published last December, uses updated figures from the International Energy Agency and Global Energy Monitor.
Chart 2
On April 30, Reuters reported, “India’s coal production and generation shattered records in March as miners and power producers made a Herculean effort to avoid a repetition of the fuel shortages and blackouts that hit the country two years ago. Domestic coal production soared to an unprecedented 117 million tonnes in March 2024, up from 108 million in March 2023 and 96 million in March 2022, according to data from the Ministry of Coal.”
The following two charts show that whatever emissions reductions are achieved in the U.S. and other big economies are being swamped by what’s happening in India and China.
Chart 3
This chart uses the same numbers as those in the previous chart, but putting them in a horizontal format makes them easier to comprehend. It also underscores the challenge of decarbonizing the Indian and Chinese economies.
Chart 4
I have published this graphic before. But I am using it again here because it spotlights the staggering growth of hydrocarbons compared to the growth of the two politically favored sources of power generation, wind and solar.
Chart 5
As mentioned above, the EPA’s new mandates could force the closure of all the remaining coal-fired power plants in the U.S. by the mid-2030s. The mandate, which faces a years-long legal battle before it could become law, claims the U.S. must act on climate change. However, the mandate will not affect China and India, which generate eight times more electricity from coal than the U.S.
Chart 6
More coal-fired capacity is being built in developing countries. And those new plants will result in more emissions. On March 1, the International Energy Agency reported that energy-related CO2 emissions “grew by 1.1% in 2023, increasing 410 million tonnes to reach a new record high of 37.4 billion tonnes. This compares with an increase of 490 Mt in 2022 (1.3%). Emissions from coal accounted for more than 65% of the increase in 2023.”
That last line is critical. According to Global Energy Monitor, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam are all building new coal plants. That new capacity, totaling nearly 188 gigawatts, is roughly equal to all existing U.S. coal-fired power plants (200 GW).
Furthermore, since 2019, according to Global Energy Monitor, China and India have added some 216 GW of coal capacity. One more number is relevant here: Those five countries have a combined population of 3.4 billion, or about 42% of all the people on the planet. Their electricity use is a fraction of the 12,000 kilowatt-hours per capita per year we use here in the U.S. For instance, in Bangladesh and Indonesia, electricity use is paltry: less than 500 and 1,200 kWh/capita/year, respectively.
Chart 7
I published this chart last month in “Natty Nation.” I’m using it again here because it illustrates the point at hand. Yes, China, India, and other countries are burning more coal. The U.S. is reducing its use of coal. And yet, despite massive federal subsidies and numerous mandates at the local and state levels, wind and solar energy aren’t keeping pace with the growth in natural gas.
Chart 8
The surging use of the term “energy transition” can easily be seen by searching the New York Times archives. Between 2019 and 2023, the use of that phrase jumped 10-fold.
Chart 9
The same 10-fold increase can be seen in NewsBank’s newspaper database, which has the full text of over 10,000 newspapers
Chart 10
Perhaps the most straightforward way to observe the surge in the marketing of the “energy transition” is to look at the number of times it has been used during the presidential terms of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Both, of course, are Democrats, and both, of course, have focused on climate. According the National Archives, Obama “believes that no challenge poses a greater threat to our children, our planet, and future generations than climate change — and that no other country on Earth is better equipped to lead the world towards a solution.” However, as seen in the graphic below, the Obama era had far fewer mentions of the energy transition than what has occurred under Biden. Indeed, that phrase has appeared more than 75,000 times during Biden’s presidency. Thus, the media has used the phrase “energy transition” 36 times more during Biden’s three-and-a-half years in the White House than during eight years of Obama’s presidency.
We can think this as the “Woozle Effect,” named after a Winnie The Pooh story by A.A. Milne. The Woozle Effect is also known as “evidence by citation,” which occurs when a source “is widely cited for a claim it does not adequately support, giving said claim undeserved credibility.”
Conclusion
The punchline here is obvious: We are not in the midst of a major energy transition. Instead, what we are seeing is the media echo chamber at work. Media outlets are giving undeserved credibility to the idea of the energy transition despite a metric ton of evidence that shows no such transition is happening, particularly in developing countries like Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Indeed, the surge in the use of the phrase by the Biden administration — and its many allies in big media outlets — shows that we’re being bombarded by a public relations campaign that’s designed to convince the public and policymakers that an energy transition is happening and that we should be spending staggering sums of money on it.
A decade ago, energy analyst and polymath Vaclav Smil wrote, “hope for a quick and sweeping transition to renewable energy is fueled mostly by wishful thinking and a misunderstanding of recent history.” He explained that “for any new energy source to capture a large share of the market require[s] two to three generations: 50 to 75 years.” He concluded, “Energy transitions on a national or global scale are inherently protracted affairs.” That statement was true in 2014. And will be true for decades to come. Just don’t expect to read about it in major media outlets.
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“Hydropower” is a new source? The first US hydropower plant was built in 1849.
There are very few places left where hydropower makes sense.
Except British Columbia which gets 82% of its electrical power from hydro hence the name of the utility BC Hydro.
Just like Oz presumably where the low hanging fruit has been long plucked. Except in our case with not enough precipitation Snowy Hydro is largely used as a big battery as will the more costly add on with Snowy2 that’s a repository for helicopter money at present.
Do you think Snowy Hydro 2.0 will ever be built?
Partial tunnel collapse at Snowy 2.0 construction site raises fresh safety concerns
Well….this is all well and good. But the trashing of rural Scotland in the pursuit of renewables continues apace
So true, a few years ago, we visited Scotland, I was appalled to see the countryside desecrated by masses of ugly turbines. So distant, from my earlier memories of the 60s.
One of the interesting things about Chart 2 is that, as you scroll down the page, you discover that 2022 Chinese emissions have grown to be almost equal with those of the US, India and Germany combined in 2000.
It almost perfectly aligns with the top of the window before scrolling off page.
The most apt term I can apply to the ‘energy crisis’ is lemmings. No one knows why, but they all follow to their demise.
Lemmings at the “precipice.”
“I have no truck with either party.”
Dig it! Here in Wokeachusetts, I thought I’d pursue the libertarian party. I emailed them several times with questions to determine their policies. I either got no reply or some stupid reply. As to their opinion of green energy- I got back “We support limited government”. Duh!
But, I do like John Stossel’s YouTube channel. Maybe in other states, the LP is smarter.
I was a registered Libertarian at one time. It now appears the movement is away from limited government and towards a large, all-encompassing social safety net. I can’t reconcile that with ‘limited government.’
The Libertarians used to have ideas.
stomp, stomp, stomp through all institutions.
Former Wisconsin Governor Lee Dreyfus summed up the basic libertarian position on the role of the federal government: “defend our shores and deliver our mail and stay the hell out of our lives.”
These days delivering the mail is probably unnecessary and under Biden defending our shores has been discontinued.
________________________________________________
We being systematically lied to.
If you don’t want to, just stop using this site 😛
Childish with from UNowho
And yet here you are
Says in response to a factual article in WUWT.
You haven’t presented on real FACTS in your whole time here.
Your comments are one big DELIBERATE LIE.
Yet you are here and with zero counterpoints to offer, and offering empty comments, must the lack of nutrition in your diet.
No, the result of a double labotomy and psycoactive drugs, just like nearly all of our politicians.
Much sneakier than being outright lied to is being presented with “selective” reportage, which is what is continuously practiced by BBC, ABC, CBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, MSNBC, GUARDIAN, etc etc
Much sneakier than being outright lied to
I have said for a long time that the media can be biased by what it chooses to report even if what it reports is unbiased (which is usually not the case)
Wind and solar plus the system that can make use of them is more coal intensive than burning the coal directly to produce electricity.
Solar panels and their support system would need to last 200 years to make enough energy to produce more energy than the coal used in their manufacture. Any life less than that and they are net coal consumers.
If solar panels were the answer, China would not be exporting them. They would keep them for their own use to make all that cheap power we so often hear about.
Big miners love the notion of The Transition™ because it supercharges the price of all mined materials.
Australia has reached a significant turning point where new rooftop capacity is eroding the output of grid scale wind and solar. The new term is “economic offloading”. that occurs when the wind and solar farms shut down because the wholesale price is more negative than the government mandated theft from consumers. No new subsidy farmers can justify capital costs without guaranteed income unrelated to the power they send out because the supply of intermittent electricity is already saturated.
Households with capital are putting ever more solar panels on their roofs and batteries in the car garage. Some are going off-grid. It means that the excessively high system costs are being borne by fewer consumers.
Average suburban household on mainland Australia can be independent of the grid for an outlay of around AUD20k. The payback is less than 10 years.
Anyone wanting low cost electricity in the climatically insane parts of the world should be looking at making their own electricity.
Subsidy farmers need to be seriously concerned about sovereign risk. Any sensible government would simply end all the consumer theft and leave them with their loss making projects. COP28 saw a major pivot to nuclear energy. That marks the beginning of the end for wind and solar subsidies.
Source?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I have a genuine interest in whether wind, and in particular solar, actually reduce global CO2 emissions, and if they do, then to what extent.
You can see the totals in the charts. No, there is no actual reduction in global CO2 emissions.
You can’t build wind and solar without fossil fuels. You can’t transport them to market, install them, build the power lines, etc., without fossil fuels.
That’s down to China et al. producing more energy, and not just to make solar panels.
The fact that CO2 output has gone up does not answer my question.
No. No extent. Fossil fuels are consumed in increasing amounts each year.
Non sequitur, the question remains unanswered.
Some years ago, after many claims were made that wind projects resulted in no net decrease in CO2 production, some study (without reporting much supporting data) claimed that wind generation paid back its CO2 creation debt in 5 years. However, like most claims about wind and solar, that was based on nameplate capacity. Since overall wind capacity factor was more like 20% (this was pre offshore wind, which might change the numbers somewhat), that meant the actual payback required more like 25 years: more than the lifetime of most turbines.
You have forgotten the maintenance free life. Maintenance costs lots more fossil fuel energy, particularly for large cranes and similar!
Yup. Wind and solar – a really inefficient way to generate electricity using coal, oil and gas.
In addition to the energy needed to make and install wind and solar, fossil fuel plants have to be kept in warm standby so that they can take over quickly for whenever the wind stops blowing, or a cloud passes over your solar arrays.
AKA “spinning reserve” IIRC.
Still doesn’t answer the question.
I think you answered your own question. All generation requires spinning reserves (SR), the amount being determined by the variability / reliability of the generation type. On the basis of peak load, SR is fairly low, say less than 15%, for conventional generation, but would be 100% for W&S, unless, of course, it is assumed that protracted outages are acceptable.
From memory, SR is typically 20% for wind, possibly less for solar, although that was a few years ago, so might have come down.
The amount of electricity that W/S will produce is moderately predictable, and rises and falls gradually over time, so you only need enough SR to cover the minute to minute fluctuations and not 100% of the output.
You will of course need 100% backup for times when the wind isn’t blowing, but those can be shut down when not needed and fired up when they are.
There is the additional problem that CCGT plants are most efficient when run constantly, so if you shut them down for say 8 hours while the sun is shining, the loss in efficiency when you restart them may well offset any CO2 saving from the solar power in the first place.
As an anecdotal example. The time needed to cold start an Iowa class battleship is on the order of 8 hours. It takes that long to heat the water to boiling temperature.
I do not have info on steam turbine electric generators, but it may be well in excess of the Iowa/Missouri/New Jersey/Wisconsin cold start times.
The point is cold starting a power plant is not as simple as throwing a light switch. And just getting the water temp up is only part of it. Safety checks have to be performed as well each time.
The time it takes depends on the type. And it really comes down to thermal stress on the components, tubes, walls, drums, turbine blades, etc. The last boiler project I did was for a backup to be online within 3 hours. We were pushing the limits with the one the accountants made me buy.
Quite correct Eric. A Combined cycle plant is particularly bad in this respect because it takes a lot of energy to get the steam cycle working fully.
It is not really up to us to answer your question, and the answer will always be fairly uncertain, but it is quite obvious that without the crazy payment systems and the subsidies, wind and solar are wildly uneconomic. A good coal plant running continuously produces at a low price, without subsidy etc. which proves that the gain from wind and solar is almost certainly negative in CO2 terms. If they were really “free” they could operate without any fudges, which they cannot! All of their inputs need loads of fossil fuel.
That’s because you reject every answer.
No, I understand every answer, and recognize that you don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am highly sceptical about AGW in general and renewable power in particular, but I prefer to operate from a position of knowledge rather than shouting abuse at anyone who disagrees with me.
I didn’t Eric, the answer is above, and quite simple, renewables do not save CO2, and are very expensive! I outline the evidence for this.
Perhaps you need to rephrase the question so it’s clear what’s being asked. Or you can keep insulting people. That always gets better answers.
Global CO2 emissions continue to rise. Global oil consumption continues to rise. Global coal burning continues to rise.
What is it about up that you don’t understand?
Total energy consumption continues to rise, and seems to be just getting really started at that. This says nothing about wind and solar contribution to the rise in CO2. Maybe the rise in CO2 would be 10X greater without wind and solar being deployed. Probably notn but there is zero information about that in what you refer to.
We’ve already maxed out the CO2 capture of solar. Time to call it quits. And the technology industry is about to blow holes in the capacity of the grid.
What I don’t understand is why you think that has anything to do with the carbon cost of producing wind/solar, and the payback period for any carbon “investment”.
I’m not pro-renewables BTW, I just want a sound basis to be against them.
The question has to involve life cycle costs.
In operation, usually very low to no CO2.
Manufacturing and construction they increase more global CO2 emissions than the save during their operational lifetime. Windmill blades are essentially plastics, fiberglass, or others.
Decommission and disposal also have high CO2 metrics.
Batteries: Extreme, mining and processing and HUMAN costs.
Necessary grid upgrades including the electronics needed to convert from d.c. to a.c. again high. Power lines and transformers are big in CO2 during manufacturing.
Then there are transportation costs associated with all of it. There is not nearly enough solar and wind capacity to keep battery powered construction transport going and using all electric in construction means you have greater than 60% down time during the day and 100% down time at night.
That’s the question I am asking, can anyone show me a reliable source for the life cycle CO2/energy costs for wind or solar?
The best I can find is Mariutti, but his workings are difficult to follow, and hard to apply outside of Italy.
There are sources but the 200 years is based on my own data.
I have my own off-grid power system. It is an experiment I started 12 years ago to determine the life of large scale lithium batteries. I bought the components directly from China and built the system myself. The rooftop was free. The labour involved is not counted. There is no cost of capital.
I spent $6,000 on Chinese built solar panels, battery cells, inverter and solar chargers. It has 3kW of panels and 5kWh of batter. The system daily load ranges from 2.5 to 3kWh. I estimate it has produced 12MWh so far. The panels are fixed and not quite optimised for winter collection, which sets the system design. It has operated at over 99% availability. I am at 37S and May is the most likely month for the battery to go flat. The longest period without the battery going flat is 3 years but the battery is losing capacity and I usually have one or times a year now when the battery runs flat.
So without labor, land acquisition, transmission and cost of capital, the current cost of power is down to $500/MWh. At the time, coal plants in Australia were making money at $50/MWh. Average cost was $30/MWh. The system is still working so it will go on until I upgrade. I will always be able to make power from solar cheaper than what any grid operator can because they are burdened with acquiring land and transmitting the power long distances.
At the time, thermal coal was around $80/t. Thermal coal gives around 28GJ/t. So the $6,000 could have purchased 2100GJ (or 580MWh) of thermal energy. That would give 580years at my annual consumption of 1MWh. But that is heating and I want electricity so at 30% conversion, I would get 174 years from the coal. So 200 years of operation of my system would recover the cost of the coal energy assuming China was supplying coal at unsubsidised rates for manufacturing.
Based on my actual field data, I made a submission to the Finkel enquiry to size a system for the NEM. The solar collection was based on data from the Broken Hill solar output:
http://www.environment.gov.au/submissions/nem-review/willoughby.pdf :
I determined that the lowest cost combination of collection and battery to meet the NEM demand was 250GW of collection and 750GWh of storage. Those numbers look more realistic every day. The installed cost of grid solar was running at around $2000/kW and $1000/MWh for battery – not much has changed there. So the cost worked out at $1.25tr. That would buy 150Gt of coal at then prices, which was way above the cost of production in Australia. That is enough coal to power the NEM for 1000 years but there is need to upgrade power plants every 80 years or so that would consume some coal in maintaining the present system.
The global experiment is demonstrating what I demonstrated more than a decade ago. Australia and UK cannot manufacture anything of note now. Germany has shut down its last solar panel manufacturer because their cost of energy is too high. China burns 56% of the World’s coal to produces more than half the World’s steel,;above 90% of all silicon wafer; 66% of global ship building and gradually taking over motor vehicle production.
China is keeping the illusion of a transition alive in the developed nations by burning an ever increasing amount of coal. Heavy industry runs on coal.
Thanks for the reply.
Your experience certainly tallies with my understanding of the economics, particularly storage, which is the real killer in any “renewables” based system, and your latitude is considerably more favourable to solar than mine.
If you live somewhere that is intent on weather dependent generation then you should be doing the sums for your own power system. If you have lots of land and not lots of snow then solar panels might be feasible.
At 37S the best angle for winter is 60 degrees. A panel at that angle will produce near rated output during the middle of the day. If you are at 50N then you would need them tilted at 73 degrees. Obviously they require a lot of land area because they cast long shadows.
Trump put the USA 4 years behind the rest of the developed world in heading toward the cliff so places like UK, Germany and Australia will fall off the economic cliff before USA. And there will be the USA nutter States that will also provide the evidence of failing economics. The nutter States have falling populations so their economies are either in recession or heading for it.
Not to mention in the USA that states cannot print money. Nutters in charge as in California take a 90 billion dollar surplus and turn it into a 90 billion dollar deficit in just 4 years.
Source?
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/
It didn’t. Like SMRs a lot of talk and no action
China’s solar capacity is increasing. So what? It’s a smoke screen. China’s use of coal is also rising. They aren’t phasing out fossil fuels for renewables.
Of course, it has to be. Don’t let reality disturbe your worldview.
China added 47.5 GW of coal power in 2023 : total amount of coal power is almost 1080 GW.
India added 5.4 GW : total now 193 GW.
Indonesia added 5.9 GW : total now almost 45 GW
Since 2000 China and India have added 1273 GW of coal power.
And don’t forget that China’s coal production reached a record high in 2023 of 4.66 billion tonnes.
Your response indicates a lack of reading comprehension. I don’t deny reality, I acknowledged it. You failed to explain why China’s increasing solar capacity is more important than its increasing use of coal.
China is adding more non-renewable energy sources and at a faster rate than it is adding renewables.
Because they are the leading manufacturers & exporters of solar panels & part of their income depends on selling them to dupes in other countries. They cannot afford to appear to not use them.
Two, because their workers are, in effect, government owned slaves, they can get the panels so cheaply (not even import costs) that it would be foolish not to use them especially in their remote areas.
Also, they do not care about their ecology & contamination of their soil & air, That is why they have worn masks for decades.
Greebo agree, China installs solar panels for political posturing and marketing reasons, they know it’s essentially a worthless unreliable power source.
China’s population’s life expectancy has doubled since 1949.
there is no such thing as renewables, beyond a label.
Your reality is lurking under your cot, don’t look there!
Investment in nuclear is increasing. Steady upward trend for 4 years.
See VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NLR) Stock Price, News, Quote & History – Yahoo Finance
Full disclosure: I do own shares of NLR.
China’s sources for electricity looks like this.
It only takes a couple of decent nuclear reactors, and wind and solar will become and afterthought.. or rather a zero-thought.
A waste of time, resources and money that needs “renewing” regularly.
Won’t be long before the natural short-life attrition of earlier installed wind and solar becomes too much of a burden even for leftist governments using OPM.
How long until mandatory reporting of, and taxation thereof, of the amount of sun shine every “making their own” family owes to the state?
Trouble is at 15-20 years you’ll probably need new panels, so you have to lay the money out again (and that assumes a hailstorm (if you have those where you live) or windblown debris doesn’t destroy them sooner).
And since prices keep climbing, at some point the payback period becomes the life of the panels and the whole idea becomes untenable.
“hope for a quick and sweeping transition to renewable energy is fueled mostly by wishful thinking and a misunderstanding of recent history.”
It’s not fueled by either of those things. It’s fueled by the desire for control, and the reduction of human population.
Wind and solar are ‘fastest-growing electricity sources in history
https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-fastest-growing-electricity-sources-in-history/
What the data in the post shows is that there is no transition. Your link actually shows the same thing. This from your link:
There is no transition, and there is not going to be one, because it is not possible. The reason is intermittency.
This is why China and India are not attempting any sort of transition, but are growing their coal consumption, coal powered electricity generation and their emissions as fast as economic growth requires.
They do not believe either in the supposed climate crisis or the supposed energy transition.
Global emissions are not going to fall. No matter how many UN gatherings there are. Because the leading and fastest growing emitters have no intention of either stopping or reducing. Because they have no alternative if they want to provide increasing amounts of reliable power.
Intermittency is also the reason why even this quote from your link is misleading. the 2,304 TWh that wind produced is not comparable to that produced by other sources, because it is not dispatchable. That is, much of it was produced when it could not be used, when there was no demand for it. And frequently at peak demand, like in a North Western Europe winter evening, there is hardly any supply, so you have to have a gas system in parallel. So wind often produces when you don’t need it, and often fails when you do. That’s not doing 7.8% of supply.
To replace 1GW of dispatchable generation, from gas or coal for instance, you need 5-10 times as much wind faceplate. And even then you’d need prodigious amounts of batteries for the dead calms.
It is not possible. It is not happening and it will not happen. Any country seriously trying to get to Net Zero in power generation will either do a U-turn and install coal or gas or nuclear, or it will break its electricity supply and end up with nationwide cold start week long blackouts. This is what the facts show.
And so what? That’s like having the fastest-growing fungal infection in history, innit?
US added 6.5 GW wind energy capacity in 2023.
But total US wind energy production declined by 2.1%
Amazing transition to extreme inefficiency and unreliability.
None of the other sources of electricity were mandated and subsidized by multiple layers of government.
Why do you respond with non-responsive talking points. Folks here can actually do math. What a mealy mouthed contradictory article. Did you actually read it or just look at the pretty pictures?
Of course it – when you start from zero
I read the article. I also reviewed Ember. The take away from Ember is one of their primary associations is with WEF.
Enough said. We will be poor but we will be happy.
Since 2000, global electricity generation capacity added (remember to divide by about 4 for wind and solar usage)
solar… 1628
wind… 2273
hydro… 1581
nuclear… 145
oil… -535
gas… 3877
coal… 4658
Data derived from Electricity Mix – Our World in Data
You are believing LIES and DISINFORMATION from carbon briefs.. yet again.. poor gullible little child. !!
No counterpoint the posts article which is why you try this classic diversion article that blew up in your face as there is no viable energy transition going on in the article without the 24/7 back power the system would quickly collapse a reality many ruinables moron fans fails to understand.
Maybe you don’t understand the literature in post one, do we need to spoon feed you?
Small increases of small shares look big on a percentage basis, but the fact is that wind and solar don’t replace other energy sources, they just reduce the efficiency of use of other energy sources, decrease grid reliability, and increase costs.
Well how else is Oz going to get its coal fired EVs solar panels windmills and grid firming lithium batteries if we don’t get them from China with our coal? Do I have to get Nick and MyUsername to explain it slooooowly to you?
OK ok they’re busy transitioning so I’ll get one of their gurus to dispel the misinformation floating around the ether-
Teal MP Zoe Daniel awkwardly admits she voted for $2 billion fossil fuel subsidies after deeming claim ‘misinformation’ | Sky News Australia
STORY TIP
Wall Street Journal — Companies Are Balking at the High Costs of Running Electric Trucks
A Ryder analysis shows operating expenses of low-emissions rigs are far higher than those for diesel trucks
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-are-balking-at-the-high-costs-of-running-electric-trucks-fed0ce6e?st=p91nhgi60eufetg&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I follow Robert Bryce at his handle @pwrhungry on X. He is one of the sharpest and clearest commentators on the energy scene, especially concerning electricity.
Good article.
What The Media Won’t Tell You About The Energy Transition… or anything else
The honest truth. They’re in so deep now.
The Marxists have played the long game with energy very well. They have convinced the West/Capitalists to commit energy suicide while ignoring their own use of fossil fuels. And we/West are letting them get away with it partly because we have no media to back us up and most of our politicians are compromised into believing their propaganda.
“soaring oil costs and stagnant export earnings.”
What is it they’re exporting?
“In 2023, Kenya’s exports reached 1 trillion shillings (about $7.6 billion), which is an increase from $5.95 billion in 2022. The country’s exports to neighboring countries grew by 19.6% in the third quarter of 2023, reaching 269.4 billion shillings.
…
In 2023, Kenya’s oil exports are expected to be the second highest source of revenue, after tourism, with an estimated Ksh 150 billion annually
Good article, well worth bookmarking for ready access to the numbers.
I live in the UK. I feel the same about our political parties and individual MPs.
None deserve my vote.
One man, one vote. No one ever deserves your vote, they need to earn it.
Voting for someone you don’t want because you are afraid is insanity. It is philosophically and ethically better to withhold your vote entirely than to vote for someone you don’t want.
Over the Biden administration’s time in office, life expectancy in America has been dropping for all segments.
So whatever policy changes they have been doing, they are doing it wrong.
wrong from your viewpoint or theirs?
It depends upon the desired results, doesn’t it? But most would agree a drop in the expected life span is a bad thing. Maybe the Bidenomics gurus think a drop in life expectancy will help keep Social Security running longer.
My opinions are my viewpoint. Do you frequently argue against yours?
The lifespan is probably from COVID-19.
the lifespan drop…
Another interesting mismatch between media reporting, including many articles here at WUWT, and what is shown in the charts appears in charts 2 and 3 about the world’s 6 largest economies. Germany and the UK are frequently reported as imploding nations, going broke and becoming desperate, but here shown as among the 6 largest out of how many — more than 200?
Valclav Smil missed a couple of important things regarding the general statement about how long it takes “new energy sources” to “capture a large share of the market.”
First, wind and solar cannot displace existing energy sources, since they are not dispatchable and cannot be stored in a cost effective or practical manner. They can therefore do no more than partially overlap existing energy sources, and at massive cost.
Second, wind and solar depend on coal, oil and gas for their very existence. The “collectors” of low density wind and solar energy don’t last long and all of the energy inputs involved in their endless and frequent replacement, in addition to providing necessary 100% backup for them when they frequently fail to produce anything, necessarily comes from existing energy sources.
To sum it up: wind and solar will never “capture a large share of the market,” even if given ten times the amount of time in his historical reference.
I have this middle aged Indian woman who is making chuppatties out of cow dung to dry in the sun and burn for cooking. It’s called TRADITIONAL BIOMASS by the lying alarmists and it includes local forestry of course. In global energy terms it produces THREE TIMES the energy from all the solar panels and windmills in the world. So what is being done about this?
Good post. Facts are stubborn things.
I particularly like chart 10. Biden has a wozzle effect in many areas beyond ‘energy transition’. Inflation Reduction Act increased inflation. Shutting down Keystone XL just insured Canada’s oil would be shipped to Asia.
It is a good thing Biden has spent 38% of his days in office on vacation. Else things would be wozzled worse.
This is really important, the plain and simple truth. It needs wide distribution.
Stroy Tip.
Welcome Argentina to the world of oil and gas production. 🙂
Milei’s Argentina is fast becoming the Texas of Latin America | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com)
No one should be surprised by any of the above figures because they confirm what anyone who follows the details of global energy use and investment already knows. But when the mainstream media is pressured by governments and environmental organizations to downplay, or even suppress those numbers while adopting alarmist stances on anything related to climate or lose their funding and donations, it’s no wonder people get an unbalanced view of the whole issue. Fortunately, the majority of the population attaches a low degree of importance to climate rhetoric since they smell a rat in the first place and don’t intend to accept higher prices and make major lifestyle changes to combat a non-problem.
Feeling a bit flat with the Long March of the doomsters and usual suspects through our venerable institutions? There’s nothing like the outpourings of a bunch of sad sacks to lift the spirits and a quick pick me up-
‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair | Climate crisis | The Guardian
For Ruth from Mexico it was a jet in kneesup in Singapore when everything cliqued with the claque.
So much for all the media fact checking units (e.g. and famously the BBC) which has had net zero effect upon killing published lies dead, or on producing honesty, veracity of data, clarity of purpose, integrity, comprehension, in reporting let alone truth telling at the very basic child like right and wrong level.
Makes you wonder where all this will end and how abysmal the future will be for those who suffer no great catastrophic climate change ever but instead observe a much worse self destructive end for humanity as we know it.