Come here for the latest news on how the so-called “energy transition” is grinding to a halt. No amount of government handouts can make this ridiculously uneconomic fantasy work. My last post on the subject, on July 20, reported on the collapse of a large “green hydrogen” project in Australia, with the stated loss of an investment of about $2 billion (Australian) (equivalent to about $1.3 billion U.S.).
It seems that that one was just the tip of the iceberg. Today’s [August 19th~editor] Wall Street Journal has a substantial roundup of the financial status of a half-dozen or so so-called “clean fuel” projects. The headlines from the print and online versions tell you what you need to know. In the print edition (page B3) it’s “Clean-Fuel Startups Begin to Fizzle Out.” Online, it’s “Clean Fuel Startups Were Supposed to Be the Next Big Thing. Now They Are Collapsing.” As the headlines indicate, pretty much all of these “clean fuels” ventures are failing. Who could have guessed?
The Journal’s label of “clean fuels” is used to cover two different categories, one being biofuels, and the other being so-called “green hydrogen” (the stuff produced by electrolysis of water using electricity produced by wind or sun). The biofuels category appears to include such genius ideas as making fuel for airplanes or ships out of used cooking grease. Whatever you might think of that idea, these are still carbon-based fuels, and it’s not clear to me at all why they are supposedly “cleaner” than other carbon-based fuels like petroleum or natural gas.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, offers the promise of providing energy for planes, trains, ships and automobiles free of the dreaded “carbon emissions.” Just hook up some solar panels or wind turbines to big electrolyzers and watch the stuff bubble out of the water virtually for free! The badly misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” made billions upon billions of dollars of subsidies available for these kinds of projects. Surely the successes should be rolling forth one after the other by this time.
It turns out that no matter how many subsidies the government doles out, nobody can make this “green” hydrogen stuff as cheaply as natural gas can be produced by drilling into rock.
One of the big green hydrogen startups is called Plug Power. The Journal quotes its CEO, Andy Marsh:
“The excitement of the early days has not lived up to the hype,” said Andy Marsh, chief executive of Plug Power, a startup that recently opened one of the country’s first plants making green hydrogen, a potential replacement for fossil fuels in industries such as steel making and chemical production. Shares of Plug Power have tumbled more than 90% since the passage of the U.S. climate law two years ago.
Well, at least they’re not bankrupt — yet. You do have to wonder how Mr. Marsh could qualify to be a CEO of such a company and raise hundreds of millions of investor dollars without ever crunching the numbers to realize that green hydrogen could never be economical. Could it be that his business plan all along was to pay himself a big salary out of the investors’ funds and then walk away when the inevitable bankruptcy came?
Here are a couple of paragraphs from the Journal summarizing the overall state of the industry:
Many clean-fuel projects have become money pits, in part because of the great amounts of power they need. High interest rates, supply-chain disruptions and expensive power-grid upgrades have driven up electricity prices. . . . “The only way to fix it is by lowering the cost of green electricity,” said Andrew Forrest, one of the most vocal advocates of hydrogen.
Wait a minute. Andrew Forrest — where have we heard that name? Oh, he is the Australian tycoon who goes by the name “Twiggy.” He’s the head of the company Fortescue, and was the subject of my July 20 post as a result of the collapse of his big Australian green hydrogen project. The Journal goes on to some detail about “Twiggy’s” ongoing green hydrogen plans:
Forrest, the billionaire founder of Australian iron-ore giant Fortescue, said his company’s 2030 hydrogen production target now looks unrealistic. Fortescue is planning to produce its own clean power to make hydrogen in Australia and is considering doing the same in Arizona.
But somehow the Journal fails to mention the failure of Forrest’s big Australian project. Could it be that they interviewed him a month ago, before that happened?
So the odds are that nobody will ever be able to make these “clean fuels” economically. The consequence:
Without clean fuels, emissions at many companies are expected to keep climbing, threatening U.S. and global climate targets. Industries including aviation and shipping are counting on the new fuels because wind and solar power and batteries can’t meet their huge energy needs.
When are we allowed to declare that this whole charade is over?
UPDATE, August 20: Commenter Pablo Honey suggests that it might be interesting to look at the financials for one of these “clean fuels” companies. Here is the 2Q 24 earnings release for Plug Power, just out on August 8. Some key figures: revenue — $143.4 million; “earnings” — net loss of $262.3 million.
Margins: “The Georgia plant’s increased production capacity and strategic price increasesacross the hydrogen product portfolio have significantly improved hydrogen margins.” So they are increasing prices from levels that were already a multiple of the price of natural gas for equivalent energy content. Good for them if they can get someone to pay, but that inherently means that their market is limited to buyers who either need hydrogen for its non-energy properties (i.e., fertilizer) or ones who are willing to forego profit out of religious devotion to “decarbonization.”
Government handouts: “Plug Power became one of the first companies to leverage the PTC [Production Tax Credit] for its liquid hydrogen plant in Georgia, optimizing financial performance and enhancing shareholder value. . . . Plug Power is progressing with the DOE loan, which aims to support the expansion of its green hydrogen initiatives and infrastructure for up to six sites.”
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“Green fuels” are subsidy mining operations, first and last. The worst downside is that they divert investment into such operations, when investment in fracking or nuclear would have much greater returns.
The worst downside is that it flushes hard-earned tax money down the toilet!
I posted the answer to a question I posed for Chat GPT in the last of these series.
I asked ChatGPT to devise a wind power system to produce steady power of 10MW using wind turbines ( with foundation) and a battery to carry through up to 14 days wind drought. And then determine how much coal would be required to make the wind turbines, foundations and batteries. This was its reply:
I ran out of free time before getting an answer on how long 279kt of coal would last if burnt to produce 10MW of electricity. The answer is well above 100 years and closer to 200 years depending on the efficiency of conversion.
If you ask ChatGPT how long does it take for a wind turbine to recover the energy that went into its manufacture it will respond with 6 to 9 mths. If you then ask it to include the foundations, it will double the amount of coal.
Then you reframe the question to supply a steady load with battery back up for a defined period of wind drought, then it increases the numbier of turbines beyond the average to allow for charging and determines the size of the battery. Then you ask how much coal and you get a realistic answer.
The academics pushing the fantasy do not allow for the foundations or any means of firming. They are as naive as ChatGPT unless you frame the question in a realistic way.
How many of the “renewables” fanatics are comfortable with the notion that weather dependent generators are net coal consumers rather than coal savers.
“They [green advocates] are as naive as ChatGPT unless you frame the question in a realistic way.” Not naive; they are knowingly lying to us.
The concrete foundations pads for wind turbines are NEVER going to be exposed, broken up, dug up, loaded, taken away and transported to landfills.
They will become the profligate “pyramids” for future generations.
I think the foundations will be exhibited as a testament to human folly
They may remove them to a depth of 4 feet below ground surface, which is Wyoming’s statutory decommissioning order, or more likely they will ask for a variance to remove only to 3 feet, which seems granted automatically. Often the foundation has to be abandoned and a new one constructed when they “repower” wind turbines. My bet is that since each plant is an LLC that has no assets beyond the equipment itself, that these never get decommissioned in any reasonable sense despite their “bonding”.
Biden Administration has opened up a lot of the public lands in the West for wind/solar. Worst environmental stewards of all time in my humble opinion.
Then in tens of millions of years- some will be deeply buried under sediments- then eventually raised up in a mountain range- or exposed like flat lying rocks in arid areas- geologists (assuming civilization rises again after some catastrophe and dark age) will find them in the sediments as anomalies. The geologists will have trouble understanding what they are. Of course they’ll also see cross sections of urban infrastructure- like roads- sometimes turned at odd angles or upside down. My imagination runs wild. 🙂
If you ask ChatGPT how long does it take for a wind turbine to recover the energy that went into its manufacture it will respond with 6 to 9 mths. If you then ask it to include the foundations, it will double the amount of coal.
why do people lie about computers.
i mean its supr easy to fact chck bogus claims about AI
The time it takes for a wind turbine to recoup the cost of energy it takes to build it, often referred to as the environmental payback period, typically ranges from 6 months to a year.
This relatively short period is due to the increasing efficiency of wind turbine manufacturing and the substantial amount of clean energy these turbines generate over their lifespan. While the initial energy investment in building a wind turbine is significant, the ongoing energy production quickly offsets this initial cost.
It’s worth noting that this timeframe primarily focuses on the energy payback. The financial payback period, considering the total cost of the turbine and its installation, can take longer depending on various factors such as turbine size, location, and energy prices.
When including the energy required for the construction of foundations, the environmental payback period for a wind turbine typically extends to around 9-12 months.
The foundations for wind turbines, especially for larger onshore and offshore turbines, can be substantial and require a significant amount of concrete and steel. The production of these materials has a higher embodied energy than the turbine components themselves, contributing to the extended payback period.
However, even with the added energy costs of foundations, the payback period remains relatively short compared to the lifespan of a wind turbine, which is typically 20-25 years. This underscores the significant environmental benefits of wind energy in terms of clean energy generation over its lifetime.
A very rough estimate of electric energy from coal is 1lb/kw-hr (range is 0.5 to 1.5 lb/kr-hr depending on the rank of coal and thermal efficiency of the plant). 10MW would then require 10,000 lbs/hr or 5 tons per hour. 1kt of coal would then be good for 200 hours, so a year would require a bit over 40kt which puts 279kt good for maybe 7 years at 100% capacity factor. With a 33% capacity factor for a wind turbine, that 279kt of coal would be equivalent of roughly 20 years of energy production from a wind turbine.
To put it in perspective, a 2GW coal plant can burn a trainload of coal per day, with 10kt per train.
So about 9¢ per kWh? Seems a bit high, using $180/ton. Thanks Obama, thanks Biden.
Why, it’s almost as if they wanted to inflate the cost of electricity for everyone.
I ran out of free time before getting an answer on how long 279kt of coal would last if burnt to produce 10MW of electricity.
[snip]
the free versions give you answers that are worth your subscription price
it’s not a lie if you believe it.
‘It’s not a lie, if you tell it to a vegan’
(Not really pertinent, but … there it is anyway)
Carpetbaggers haven’t gone extinct.
Now they just identify as “green energy entrepreneurs”.
“it’s not clear to me at all why [biofuels] are supposedly “cleaner” than other carbon-based fuels like petroleum or natural gas“. The reason is quite straightforward: The carbon in them has recently come from the atmosphere, not from deep underground, so it is simply re-cycling – just like the carbon from cows, for example.
It’s also clear to me why this logic is used to support biofuels and not the livestock industry: biofuels do not make life better for people, but cows do. Greens oppose anything that works. Watch their position change instantly if it is found that biofuels are actually cheaper and more effective, or if eating beef is fatal. NB. Be careful there, I mean actually found, not false green propaganda aimed at propping up their position. The green world is a simple one, but it seems complicated at times.
Just tell the greens that the biofuels create more CO2 from the proper fuels used in equipment to clear rainforests and evict orangutans, in tractors to work and harvest the palm oil plantations, in the factories to refine and blend the oils, and finally in the ships to deliver it, than are displaced by switching from fossil fuels to palm oil.
So let me get this straight. We need cheap, sustainable, clean green energy. Hydrogen is it. But producing green hydrogen is too expensive, we need to lower the costs somehow. We need cheap, sustainable, clean green energy. Hydrogen is it. But…
One big circle jerk. Politicians are convinced by alarmists we need renewable energy even though they know nothing about it. Private investors know it’s a losing proposition so demand subsidies to provide it. Those investors come up with a business plan that since the politicians know nothing about the subject is accepted but does not ensure delivery, only payment to the investors. Plan fails, investors get their money, people lose. Wash, rinse, repeat.
the blind leading the blind
The title is a lie
The energy transition is happening
Global spending is accelerating
There is more wind and solar powered electricity
That’s a transition
The money invested is mainly private and the results are small relative to the investments.
The stage is set for investors to lose a lot of money in the long run … for a transition that was not necessary.
“That’s a transition”
Not if it doesn’t actually lead to a definitive transition- and it won’t. So, it’s an “attempted transition” soon to be called “a failed transition”.
Unless the growth in dispatched renewable electricity is greater than the growth of total demand for dispatched electricity, there is no “transition” going on.
?
Even government funding, which in the US is enormous, is private funding, aka personal income taxes.
Using Rick Will’s opinions as a starting point, I present a visually-illustrated guess as to what might happen in China between 2035 and 2085 if a political decision were to be made by the CCP in 2030 to completely eliminate coal by 2085 and to significantly reduce China’s oil and gas consumption by that year.
In this scenario, China’s energy consumption in 2085 is cut to roughly half of what it was in 2022, thwarting China’s long-term aspirations for dominating the world’s economy.
Most of the nuclear and hydro electricity produced in China after 2085 supports what remains of the Chinese economy by that time, while wind and solar generation capacity is devoted simply to replacing itself, making no direct contribution to China’s other post-2085 industrial and consumer energy needs.
“thwarting China’s long-term aspirations for dominating the world’s economy.”
Maybe, but not necessarily if it’s economy evolves to mostly high tech and services.
It might be interesting to see a different scenario where their coal use is cut in half by 2085- so it’s economy could continue to have industries and the high tech and services as America does now (despite losing many industries).
your model of chinese energy mix, fails to take into account the demographic catastrophe they face
. The biofuels category appears to include such genius ideas as making fuel for airplanes or ships out of used cooking grease. Whatever you might think of that idea, these are still carbon-based fuels, and it’s not clear to me at all why they are supposedly “cleaner” than other carbon-based fuels like petroleum or natural gas.
Used cooking grease, often referred to as “yellow grease,” can be recycled and converted into biodiesel, a renewable fuel source that can be used in diesel engines.
The process involves filtering and cleaning the grease, then chemically treating it (transesterification) to create biodiesel.
Renewable: Biodiesel is produced from a renewable resource, reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
1. Biofuel Basics – Department of Energy
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/favicon-tbn?q=tbn:ANd9GcQk2YGDXeCc1ozdu4Biknk–wxmkA0ngaZ3eFEzrMDHIktO4Aqsk21hVUPgNUvNUlssDmiCyW6BQ1aAyAEMgUUPRPrny2OE-bE
http://www.energy.gov
Reduced Emissions: Biodiesel typically produces lower emissions of pollutants like particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and sulfur compared to petroleum diesel.
Disadvantages:
Calling Albo…calling Albo…?
Australian flow battery pioneer put into administration after failing to find backers | RenewEconomy
So much for green hydrogen Tritium chargers cars of any kind and Gawdelpus trying to out compete China with solar panels batteries and windmills. Still there is an immediate opening to become a Transition support superpower of the future-
Battery fires ‘top issue’ for Fire and Rescue NSW as state reports more than six fires per week (msn.com)
Strange how the sun is free but there’s no return in it-
Origin cancels two solar projects due to rising costs and “unfavourable conditions” | RenewEconomy
as if we didn’t know-
Households lose up to an hour of solar power as network tests rooftop PV switch-off | RenewEconomy
On the plus side, there’s Plug Power CEO, Andrew J. Marsh’s annual compensation of about $7 million.
https://www1.salary.com/Andrew-J-Marsh-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-PLUG-POWER-INC.html