by David Turver
Back in March, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee produced a report on long-duration energy storage (LDES). This report urged the Government to “get on with it”. Among its key recommendations were to ask the Government to “support no-regrets investments for hydrogen”.
However, some of the members of the committee have significant conflicts of interest and incestuous relationships that call into question the objectivity of the report and the integrity of Government.
What Did the Lords LDES Report Say?
The Executive Summary of the report talks about “cheap” renewables and insists the prize for investing in storage is that the electricity system will be cheaper. We do not need to rehearse all the arguments against this statement again. It is sufficient to note that all existing renewables, whether funded by Contracts for Difference (CfDs), Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) or Feed-In-Tariffs (FiTs) are currently more expensive than gas-fired electricity, as most recently discussed here.
A grid that is solely or mostly powered by renewables will therefore be more expensive than a gas-fired grid. However, as wind and solar power are intermittent in nature, they require some sort of backup or storage to ensure that the grid can always meet demand. Adding storage adds extra capital costs to the system but does not increase the amount of electricity generated. This extra expenditure must therefore increase the full system costs of electricity. So, the opening premise of their report is wrong, calling into question the rest of their analysis.
They then go on to quote extensively from the Royal Society report on long term storage (dismantled here) which farcically suggested the system cost of a renewables plus hydrogen storage grid would be ~£60/MWh. However, this cost is less than half what we pay for renewables alone today and much lower than the prices being offered in AR6. The required electrolysers, storage caverns and generators will not come cheap and will further increase the system cost of electricity. It is likely that the true costs of a renewables plus hydrogen grid will be three or four times that suggested.
How Did the Lords Get It So Wrong?
It is worrying that such an eminent committee should get things so wrong. To understand how and why they made such a glaring error, we need to look at the composition of the committee.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge chairs the Lords Science and Technology Committee. Her register of interests shows she is also the chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). By pure coincidence, Baroness Brown is also a non-executive director of Ceres Power Holdings, which describes itself as a leading developer of “electrolysis for the creation of green hydrogen and fuel cells for power generation”. Baroness Brown’s other interests include chairing the Carbon Trust, and she is also a non-executive director of wind farm operator and developer Ørsted.
Seen in this context, it becomes easier to see why the LDES report is so enthusiastic about renewables and securing spending on hydrogen storage.
However, the web of relationships runs even wider. Professor Keith Bell acted as Specialist Advisor to the committee in the production of the LDES report. Professor Bell is also a member of the CCC having taken up the position of power sector specialist in 2019 and recently had his contract extended to April 2025.
Incestuous Links to Government
Baroness Brown also has strong links to the new Head of Mission Control at DESNZ, Chris Stark. After leaving his position as Chief Executive of the CCC, Stark was appointed as Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust, which is chaired by Baroness Brown. Mr. Stark is also listed as Baroness Brown’s staffer on the House of Lords website.
One wonders if it is appropriate for one of the most senior people responsible for decarbonising the grid by 2030 should be a staffer for a Baroness and have such a close relationship with someone with such obvious vested interests in wind power and hydrogen.
We can see that the tentacles of the green blob have extended deep into the heart of the establishment and Government. One might term this situation a two-tier system of ethics. The extensive web of commercial interests and personal relationships makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the recommendations of the Lords Science and Technology Committee report on long term energy storage are tainted. It is also difficult to take seriously any recommendations made by the Climate Change Committee and the new Head of Mission Control. It’s so incestuous, seriously someone should check their hands and feet for extra digits.
David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared.
Some will have noticed that I often refer to the “British system of democracy” as the Parliamentary dictatorship. And that is exactly what it is. Its member parties are the gatekeepers of who can be a candidate.
It’s mission remains much the same as it was in 1660 when it restored the crown to a puppet monarch and kept itself over and above the people. Like the tides, occasionally Parliament is forced to cede rights – obvious example, the suffragettes – and occasionally it grabs others; terrorists etc end up winning by having our rights and freedoms curtailed.
The digital sphere is where new golden opportunities (censorship, cancellation, control of speech and thought online etc) lie. With the exception of Elon Musk at least.
So, can anyone guess what two-tier Keir’s first act was after winning the election? Well… he created at least half a dozen new lords. Unelected – and they get the best part of four hundred quid per day of attending the house. But worse than that, he’s given them ministerial positions….
“”Richard Hermer KC, a human-rights lawyer and expert in international law, has been granted a life peerage so that he can serve as attorney general. His previous credentials include pushing for the International Court of Justice to consider Israel an ‘apartheid state’ and arguing against stripping Shamima Begum of her citizenship.
Another new peer and minister is James Timpson, CEO of key-cutting and shoe-repair chain Timpson. He will be a prisons minister, also via a seat in the Lords.
Jacqui Smith has also been brought back to reprise the role of higher-education minister, which she held 25 years ago under Tony Blair. She resigned as home secretary in 2009 after a series of expenses scandals.
[Smith let all the vulnerable little girls of the Northern towns down badly, better and far easier to sacrifice them than to do what was right]
One appointment that especially sticks in the craw is Patrick Vallance. As chief scientific adviser until 2023, Vallance was one of the chief architects of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Now, he has been appointed science minister. “”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/09/return-of-the-technocrats/
Technocratic managerialism is back. Feudalism with a tinge of faux science (eg Miliband). Which brings us to the incestuous breen blob. Both Parliament and the woke Civil Service have an agenda – see BBC, Guardian etc etc etc – and sod the little people.
They didn’t get it wrong; they got caught out. Deben has been at it for years.
How did The Lords get it so wrong? Groupthink, pure and simple!
What I think of them isn’t printable here…
I wonder if there are any scientists and engineers on this august committee? If there were, surely they would be aware of the following:
To produce 1 tonne of hydrogen through the electrolysis of water requires 49MWh of electricity and, according to GE, the burning of 1 tonne of hydrogen will generate 12.86MWh. Therefore . . . ENERGY INVESTED is 3.8x GREATER than ENERGY RETURNED, which is . . . not much good to anybody.
And for this to have any credibility in our strange virtue-signalling world, the electrical supply for the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen would obviously have to come from “green” wind and solar generating facilities.
But over the last 12 months in the UK, wind and solar combined generation provided 10.37GW, this from a wind and solar combined installed capacity of 45GW . . . which was 23% of installed capacity – the “load factor.”
So, if you want to deliver 1GW of electricity from wind and solar generating facilities, with a load factor of 23%, those facilities will have to have an installed capacity of 4.35GW – an “overbuild factor” of 4.35.
In summary:
To make hydrogen by electrolysis requires 3.8x the energy that will be gained from using that hydrogen, and to generate the electricity needed for that electrolysis, the installed capacity of wind and solar generating facilities will have to be 4.35x greater than the electricity actually needed.
The impression I therefore get is: generating electricity through wind and solar, and using that electricity to make hydrogen . . . is an exercise in downright irrational profligacy, pure and simple.
Astonishingly, for once, yes, there are at least two. Only Professor Keith Bell seems to be a practicing engineer though, and he specializes in integrating renewables into the grid (or at least thinking about how to integrate renewables). In his case one can’t help worrying that Upton Sinclair’s observation is relevant: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Doesn’t that just make you bloody weep!!
The idea is to use a hydrogen fuel cell to convert the H2 and O2 from electrolysis back into H2O. This gives back exactly as much energy (in theory) as used to separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen in first place. But, of course, they actually use an over-voltage to do the electrolysis efficiently and you have the cost of all the equipment for both electrolysis and fuel cells plus storage facilities for H2 and O2. To do this efficiently, they both may need to be cooled to very low temps to liquify them. So, still very expensive and the gases are explosive. In unicorn land, people without any technical expertise (and even some that should know better) think that instead of only doing this at the “power plants”, the liquid hydrogen can be pumped through pipes to places with fuel cells (or into H2 powered vehicles) at a distance. Again, this is very expensive. Can’t use pipes meant for natural gas or propane as H2 is much smaller and much more reactive and makes many metals brittle. Plus, it’s more dangerous than CH4. So, the whole thing is a pipe dream on top of the other pipe dream of being able to have more than ~20% solar/wind in a grid.
I wish there was an open thread every day where we could make comments. At the Musk-Trump conversation on X today, Elon Musk said that if CO2 got to 1000 ppm people will start to find it uncomfortable to breathe and start getting headaches?? I thought on submarines they allow up to 5000 ppm with no ill affects? What’s the real truth? BTW that was heard by almost one billion people world wide!
Musk is a brilliant businessman, but not an expert in most things, especially science.
He’s confusing that much CO2 with a shortage of O2. It may be that in some buildings or subs, if the CO2 gets high, the O2 might get low- but that’s not true of the atmosphere.
One thing you can say for Musk, he doesn’t do the woke mind virus.
Why doesn’t Heartland or even WUWT reach out and inform him?
Right- I think one day I heard him mention “the climate crisis”- but didn’t catch what he meant.
Maybe neither do Mark Zuckenberg and Jeff Bezos. What of it?
Probably almost no one on the top layers of oligarchy has it, and certainly no one on the very top. As long as a participant fully cooperates for other reasons, if he does not sniff the strange powders he is selling, it’s irrelevant at very least and likely even preferable for doing his job properly.
It’s bullshit of course. But what information about the climate is not?
In fact 5000ppm is a recommended regulatory limit. In practice no ill effects are felt until twice that level.
Whether there exists enough fossil fuel in the earth to get to that level is moot. Even if plant growth didn’t accelerate to infeasible levels to use it, if there were…
CO2 levels of 5-10000 ppm were the norm in the Ordovician and Cambrian periods, when most of our ‘fossil’ fuels were created.
Of course why the Ordovician ice caps existed has been a problem for ‘climate scientists’, who have come up with the ‘faint young sun’ hypothesis to explain why the earth didnt catch fire etc etc.
.
I wonder if anyone has measured the CO2 concentration in their house with the windows and doors closed such as during the cold of winter.
Humans exhale CO2 at concentrations much higher than the atmosphere. Some estimates put it at 20,000 ppm per lungful of air exhaled. Sooner or later that would build up a concentration.
And while sleeping? Unless you have a fan blowing, CO2 being heavier than O2 or H2O will accumulate, but to what degree?
was that the “snowball Earth” period, in the Ordovician?
“The MNDOLI has set workplace safety standards of 10,000 ppm for an 8-hour period and 30,000 ppm for a 15 minute period.”
https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/air/toxins/co2.html
On the ISS it a 24hr average of 5250ppm
Affordable and reliable energy storage? How about coal and natural gas?
How ’bout nuclear?
but… but… they are the work of Satan! 🙂
Both coal and natural gas and even oil are solar batteries.
House of Lords! 🙂
Even that term makes most Americans reach for their guns. 🙂
I can see why but I think it’s due to a misunderstanding in the USA regarding what they’re there for.
It’s the title “Lords”. We don’t like monarchies and royalty here in the States.
Quite a few us in Blighty aren’t keen on them – although, we have managed to lose one to the royal principality of Montecito.
It’s a start.
Yet we elect them over and over again.
H. Clinton professed that she was “born to be President.” A monarch in the making that failed the final step.
Then there is the Kennedy family and the Bush family.
I am sure there have been others, too, that are akin to royal lineages.
«Fake democracy for the peasants—real monarchy for the rulers»?
To the extent that the Constitution forbids titles of royalty. Although, “doctor” has come to be used with the same deference accorded barons and dukes in Europe.
In short, the notion that only an oligarchical process can be legitimate (for theological reasons).
While the plural term “Lords” obviously refers to an oligarchical process, it’s also vaguely associated with the trappings of monarchy.
Two-tier has already started packing ‘em in.
As strativarius sets it out in comment one the UK’s democracy is anything but a democracy and the main parties – Lab, Lib and Con – do not have democratic systems for selecting their candidates. The processes lean heavily towards the party’s agenda as a selection mechanism guaranteeing the agenda will not change unless the party faithful want it to change. The on the street punter stands no chance of changing the direction of these parties but instead have to look elsewhere. We have safe seats instead of a true democracy where every seat is marginal. We have constituencies with uneven numbers and strange boundaries and no explanation why other than via reforms which are never put to a referendum of the voting public at large..
In many ways the system points to the fact that political animals are blatant hypocrites, little dictators without a democratic bone in their bodies. That is why the referendum on the EU came up with such an unexpected (to political animals) outcome. There would be many more of those unexpected outcomes if our House of Commons was truly representative of the electorate. Perhaps PM Starmer would like to explain why the HoC isn’t ever truly representative of the constituent vote and what he intends to do about it. But Starmer isn’t a true democrat and never has been …
And, certainly, the Dem party here didn’t have a democratic system for selecting Harris. It was handed to her- big mistake on their part- because no way she’s going to beat Trump. IMHO, the Dem party has some more common sense people, middle of the road types, who could beat Trump. But it’s politically correct to give it a 3fer!
no way she’s going to beat Trump
I hope you’re right but I’m not counting on it. We don’t know what D’s might pull last-minute, and the media is totally on her side.
I too feel the same. They got away with the last election and dubious activities. This time, they will feel that they can go further.
Like all his predecessors, two-tier will serve to protect the status quo. Here’s a list of his u-turns thus far. Some might even call it… austerity
https://order-order.com/2024/08/12/all-of-labours-u-turns-so-far/
The Lib Dem’s got 12% of votes and 11% of seats
Reform got 14% of the vote and just 1% of seats
Democracy it ain’t.
Just to emphasise your point.for our friends abroad
The Lib Dems got 12% of the vote and 71 seats
Reform got 14% of the vote and 4 seats
My guess is the Lib Dums will go silent for a while on their usual clamour for proportional representation. Maybe I should ask my new MP, who is of that party, if she’ll be calling for another referendum on voting reform, this time with PR as the option rather than the complicated transferable vote system that was on offer last time – not that Starmer will have any interest now in such a referendum.
Someone on youtube put together an amusing compilation of paired Starmer clips of the “I’ve made it clear that Labour will do X” followed by “I’ve made it clear that Labour won’t do X” variety. Few politicians don’t flip their views if they think it’s what the audience want to hear, but Starmer is a master at doing it.
From the article: “A grid that is solely or mostly powered by renewables will therefore be more expensive than a gas-fired grid.”
That is because when “renewables” are added to the grid, there has to be sufficient backup to supply electicity when the windmills and solar don’t produce. When the wind doesn’t blow, and the sun doesn’t shine, there has to be something available to make up for this loss of electricity.
The reason prices for electricity are going up is because using “renewables” like windmills and solar means we have to have double the capacity required in order to keep the lights on. So if windmills and solar were to supply 100 percent of our electrical needs, at some point they would produce little of nothing, and at that point we have to have a secondary electrical generation system that produces continuously and that means coal and natural gas powered power plants.
We should scrap the “renewables” and just keep the coal and natural gas powered plants. Prices come down and we won’t need to fear blackouts.
The current insanity is caused by CO2 phobia.
Definition: “A phobia is an uncontrollable, irrational, and lasting fear of a certain object, situation, or activity. This fear can be so overwhelming that a person may go to great lengths to avoid the source of this fear.”
end
Nick Stokes says 5x capacity is needed…he also claims wind power is “free”.
Technically, when the system is finally up (repeat finally) and running, since wind and solar require no fuel, it is free. That BLANTANTLY IGNORES the total system lifetime costs, of course.
Anyone who owns a home (no longer paying a mortgage) knows that their housing is not free. There are always maintenance costs related to aging, upgrades, taxes, insurance, and unplanned damage from storms that are not fully covered by insurance.
“he also claims wind power is “free”.”
Coal and oil are free too.. all you have to do is drill for them, dig them up etc.
I read somewhere in one of my library of “climate” books, that a gas powered power station, could last about 80 years with a mid-life refurbishment. In that time scale, they will have replaced renewables four times over. Is that cost ever factored in?
Tom Abbott:
It can easily be proven that warming due to the accumulation of CO2 in our atmosphere is a HOAX!
Because of Acid Rain and health concerns, “Clean Air’ legislation was passed in the 1970’s in the US and Europe,to reduce the amount of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere.
This pollution peaked at 139.4 million tons in 1980, and by 2022, due to “Clean Air” and “Net-Zero” efforts, it had fallen to 73.5 million tons, a decrease of 66 million tons!.
As its level gradually decreased over the intervening years, our atmosphere became less polluted, and the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface increased, causing warming to naturally occur.
However, this INEVITABLE warming has wrongly been attributed to rising levels of CO2 in our atmosphere, and because of the wrong attribution, there is NO basis for CO2 to have ANY measurable climatic effect.
Q.E.D. .
SO2, yes, is a significant factor, but one cannot ignore the sun, orbital mechanics, etc., etc., etc. There are so many factors involved that there can not be a single “control knob.”
Sparta Nova 4:
I am not ignoring the Sun. SO2 aerosols control the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface. Apart from seasonal changes,orbital mechanics are too slow to affect our rapidly changing climate, and sun spots have been shown to have no climatic effect. Changes in TSI levels are very small and also have never been shown to cause any warming or coolingt.
In spite of your comments, for all practicable purposes, SO2 aerosols ARE the control knob of our climate
“electicity”. I think you’ve coined a new term that has nothing to do with electricity, but everything to do with the political situation. Well done!
It was all inadvertent (fumble fingers), but thank you, Jeff! 🙂
Yes, but even that is only the first layer of this horrible cake.
Add the maintenance (oversized windmills need to be spun forcibly when they don’t spin under wind, otherwise the axles bent under asymmetric load, and it’s FUBAR), and there are conditions like temperature of the lubricants that must be maintained, which also eats outside power…
All in all, while such solutions often are good enough for small loads tolerant to uneven generation and interruptions, this does not necessarily scale well for large infrastructure grids that need to be stable.
Naturally, other cases may be much more attractive when scaled up rather than down, like methane hydrate. Or at some large, but not too large scale, like hydro.
nice image at the top- I gotta steal it and pass to all my friends and enemies here in Wokeachusetts. 🙂
Thank you Joseph, great idea. Anthony, is the image free for use, re your note in the side bar?
If I were to pass it along – I’d say where it came from, of course- not claim it as my own creation.
We could end all this nonsense with one requirement. How much energy can your project produce 24/7? The amount will be measured as a percentage of name plate. The prospective producers with the higher percentages are given preference. Storage is not considered production so it can’t be included.
We could end it all by stopping the paying of government subsidies to windmill and solar companies and by requiring them to provide their own backups.
That would be the end of windmills and solar because they cannot compete without government subsidies. They should be required to stand or fall on their own, just like every other business has to do. Then we would be rid of these obstacles to human progress.
Have anyone tried to write the history of The Great Watermelon March, or at least make a timeline, track connections of the important participants, etc?
I mean, the basic nature of that great U-turn from “asphalt everything, eat pills!!1” nonsense to “OMG penguins forget how to swim because cow farts!!1” nonsense seems obvious: mostly it was a part of well-known larger process, overthrow of the “Stalinist” wing of the American left by its “Maoist” wing which happened around 1968. Sure. Considering that California itself was Greened and immediately Watermeloned between 1960 and 1970 (since the push to change it from “Prussia of America, The most reactionary of the states … To the MOST PROGRESSIVE, in fact The leader” came back in 1920s, and obviously succeeded, it’s a good indicator), the time roughly matches.
But what and when the details were (and where is the devil hiding in them, as usual)?
A disgraceful case of “turn around while I stuff you back pockets”.
Is «no-regrets investments» Newspeak for guaranteed bailouts scheme?