“Net Zero” — That’s the two-word slogan that has been adopted as the official goal of every virtuous state or country for decarbonizing its energy system. The “net” part is backhanded recognition that some parts of the energy system (like maybe air travel or steelmaking) may never be fully de-carbonized. Thus some kind of offsets or indulgences may need to be accepted to claim achievement of the goal.
But the “net” thing is not for the easy parts of decarbonization. And by the easy parts, I mean the generation of electricity, and the powering of anything that can be run on electricity or batteries. In electrifiable parts of the energy system, there is to be no tolerance for “net”; only “zero emissions” will do. The official line is that zero emissions electricity is easy and cheap because it can be provided by the wind and sun.
The official line is wrong. As the build-out of these wind and solar generation systems continues to progress, it has become increasingly obvious that there will never be a zero-emissions electricity system powered mainly by wind and sun.
The reason should be obvious to everyone although, for some reason I cannot understand, it is not. The reason is that the intermittency of wind and solar generators means that they require full back-up from some other source. But the back-up source will by hypothesis be woefully underused and idle most of the time so long as most of the electricity comes from wind and sun. No back-up source can possibly be economical under these conditions, and therefore nobody will develop and deploy such a source.
This issue has already arisen in many places, as increasing generation from wind and sun has put natural gas power plants into back-up mode, running half or less of the time.
Now consider how things are supposed to proceed as we move to zero-emissions electricity. First, we build more and more wind and solar facilities. Second, we disallow natural gas or any other hydrocarbon fuel as the back-up. Now the back-up must itself be zero-emissions, and also dispatchable. In New York, our regulators have devised the acronym DEFR (“Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource”). Several possibilities have been suggested as the DEFR, the main ones being nuclear, hydrogen, and batteries. All possibilities for the DEFR that have been suggested share the characteristic that they don’t exist today at anything close to the scale that will be needed to fully back up an electricity system powered mainly by wind and sun. In other words, somebody will have to make a huge investment in one or more of these things on a grand scale if we are to have an electricity system powered mainly by wind and sun.
Given New York’s political environment, the regulators who have raised the need for the DEFR have generally buried their discussion of the subject deep in lengthy documents. Roger Caiazza, the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York, has done yeoman’s work in digging up and highlighting these items. Roger has created a “Dispatchable Emissions Free Resource Page” where he has accumulated the key information.
For example, we have the Scoping Plan of the Climate Action Council, which Roger describes as “the ‘official’ Hochul Administration strategy description of the Climate Act transition.” The document is some 800+ pages of text plus appendices. Somehow, Roger made it to page 49 of Appendix G, where he found this quote:
During a week with persistently low solar and wind generation, additional firm zero-carbon resources, beyond the contributions of existing nuclear, imports, and hydro, are needed to avoid a significant shortfall; Figure 34 demonstrates the system needs during this type of week. During the first day of this week, most of the short-duration battery storage is quickly depleted, and there are still several days in which wind and solar are not sufficient to meet demand. A zero-carbon firm resource becomes essential to maintaining system reliability during such instances. In the modeled pathways, the need for a firm zero-carbon resource is met with hydrogen-based resources; ultimately, this system need could be met by a number of different emerging technologies.
Here is the Figure 34 that they mention:
It may be a little hard to read, but the dark gray is what they label the “Zero-Carbon Firm Capacity Need.” The width of that dark gray section gets up to well over 20 GW during the illustrated low wind/sun week. For reference, New York State’s current average electricity usage is well less than 20 GW. Meanwhile, even during this low wind/sun week there are times when this DEFR is not called on at all, and other times when it is called on for only a few GW.
So without saying so in as many words, they are telling us that as part of a predominantly wind/sun system we will need to build DEFRs of capacity equal to or greater than our entire current average electricity usage. But if the electricity system is powered mainly by wind and sun, then by definition the DEFRs are only going to operate a minority of the time. We will have now built an entire fleet of new nuclear power plants capable of fulfilling our entire peak electricity demand. Or maybe it’s an entire fleet of new hydrogen power plants of same capacity, or an entire fleet of grid-scale batteries of same capacity, only to keep them idle most of the time.
These are extremely capital-intensive facilities, which can only hope to be economical if they are operated to as much of their capacity as possible. Instead the proposal is that will be intentionally kept idle most of the time.
Who is going to make the investment in these DEFRs that will be kept mostly idle. Certainly, no private investors will do it without enormous government subsidies.
And if we were to build an entire system of these DEFRs capable of supplying all of our electricity needs to back up worst-case wind/sun lulls, wouldn’t it make far more sense just to leave out the wind and solar generation and go with the DEFRs all the time? Of course it would.
At some point this is going to become too obvious to ignore.
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The only way to power the grid, “Mainly Wind and Solar”, would be prohibitively costly. Due mainly to the inherent part time unreliability quality of both sources demands a reliable source of back-up that would be capable of providing 100% of needed generation for days to weeks AND part time % coverage for the 100% of the time.
The issue of capacity factor (CF) means that both sources would require massive overbuild to be able to provide supply anywhere near 100% of the time
Solar CF varies from around 10% in winter and at higher latitudes to 26-30% in prime locations in Summer. This would mean that solar would require 350% over capacity in summer and as much as 1000% overcapacity in winter.
Wind has a capacity factor of around 40% in the best sited areas as it generally functions around 40% of the year. Wind would require a 250% over build and storage to hold the overcapacity generation until its needed.
If you need 500TW of generation daily and planned on 200MW Solar and 300MW Wind to give you that 500MW, you would need 700MW Solar in Summer and 2000MW Solar capacity in Winter to produce that 200MW due to CF.
Likewise the 300MW Wind Generation would need 750MW installed overcapacity and sufficient MWh of storage capacity to retain the unused generation until it is needed.
So that 500MW of Renewable generation would require 2750MW of actual generation capacity and sufficient Storage capacity to buffer the overcapacity generation from destabilizing the grid
The Germans have demonstrated that with the Energiewende, no matter how much wind and solar they build, it still will not work. So like the Hochul administration, they rely on magic (DEFRs).
And a shrinking economy.
Imported power = exported emissions
Whether something “works” depends heavily on the definition of success, doesn’t it?
The definition we tend to demand is five nines (99.999%) availability and that is clearly unachievable while getting a majority of power from intermittent sources. Unfortunately that doesn’t kill the idea.
The way I see it, if you have a 10% base load of nuclear and hydro, the real danger for most of us is demand shaping. (load shedding). They can keep the grid up and supply the elites and critical infrastructure with the baseload supply.
You, on the other hand, run your refrigerator, water pump, heat only when the electricity is on. If you can afford it, you invest in batteries that can keep the fridge from getting too warm, or the pipes from freezing. The days of switching the power on without wondering if it will work will be a thing of the past.
In short, we revert to a very poor standard of living.
The Royal Society estimated for the UK that you would need about 100 GWh storage to be able to get to net-zero for an annual demand of 300 GWh. The storage was proposed to be hydrogen in exavated and sealed caverns, which is pure fantasy, but the size of the storage estimate gives an idea of how impossible the project is.
Minor correction.
300 GWh is about 10 hours of demand, the correct figure is 300 TWh, with a requirement for 100 TWh of storage, which is about 40 times annual global battery production, and would cost likely 10 times UK annual GDP.
Also, I think it was the Royal Institution, and not the Royal Society that did the estimate.
Sorry yes of course, I don’t know how I came to put GWh! Must have been dreaming.
It was indeed the Royal Society.
One of the main storage systems considered was hydrogen from wind turbines. They assumed 100 twh of storage. That is 100 twh thermal, not electric. 100 twh thermal is only about 40 twh of electrical production from conventional thermal power stations.
They seemed to forget that the hydrogen cycle is only about 20% efficient. These losses need extra generation capacity to charge up the system, when they did not seem to account for.
The other big raspberry in this report, is the assumed 570 twh per year demand for the UK in 2050. This is ridiculous, as the likely demand will be more like 1,250 twh per year. This means all their cost estimates are wrong.
I would also have liked an explanation as to how a nitrogen blanket will sit on the liquid hydrogen (a super-critical fluid at high pressure – some 2,500 psi), to act as a blanket. And there is no estimate for the total leakage from the 800 salt caverns, per year, that the hydrogen will be stored in.
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/large-scale-electricity-storage/large-scale-electricity-storage-report.pdf
Ralph
Thanks, I had not caught the thermal vs electrical. Have to go back and re-read, more carefully.
Yes they underestimated the TWhs demand because they used the UK’s electricity consumption in 2018 and repeated that consumption 32 times to 2050 without accounting for the massive increase in electricity usage required to electrify everything over that period
The mistake they made was to assume that demand would be set by the 2018 weather pattern. They did include extra demand for EVs and heat pumps. Their analysis for generation was actually based on histrocial weather patterns for generation going back to 1981. AFAIK Jaime Jessop was the first to point out that this relates to a more favourable part of the AMO cycle for wind speeds – credit to her for doing so. 2021 was a particularly bad year for renewables generation, and the evidence is mounting that the next years will be poor.
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/the-wind-drought-years-which-the
I think they did account for it: they talk of 741TWh of generated power to supply demand of 570TWh. The difference is the wastage from the storage round trip, and curtailed power that was too great and yet too infrequent to be worth storing. They do assume highly favourable hydrogen round trip efficiency, not to mention absurdly low costs for the whole shebang.
Out by a factor of 1,000. Their estimate was 100TWh.
Yes, apologies. Half asleep.
That Gray section is obviously when Democrats will demand Climate Realists to run on Treadmills, Bicycles and Large Hamster Wheels to create the missing capacity as penance for their lack of belief in the orthodoxy.
Its called Democrats Energy For Republicans DEFR
The Romans used giant hamster wheels to lift huge stones for their huge buildings. Time to bring them back! /s
We could all use more exercise.
Large Hamster Wheels is obviously a viable solution. Don’t calculate where the calories come from, that’s boring.
An electrical system designed by climate scientists. What could possibly go wrong.
Everything! Most all scientists are ignorant of the nitty-gritty of technology.
I think physical scientists are pretty savvy re. technology. It would be more accurate to say that most scientists, politicians, ‘crony’ capitalists and media personalities, whose financial well-being depends on perpetuating climate alarmism and/or the roll-out of renewable energy, choose to ignore or subvert the ‘nitty-gritty’ of energy technology.
With hindsight, I should have said “Most academic scientists …”. I’m a organic chemist, and did research at SFU in Burnaby, BC for over 30 years.
My experience is that biologists, for example, are least knowledgeable of technology.
You right about “…whose financial well-being depends on perpetuating climate alarmism …”. Nowadays, there is too just much hype and lies about global warming and climate change.
I’m 80 years old and experienced no climate change in Burnaby. The season come and go like they always have.
BTW: What physical scientist did you have in mind?
If it were climate scientists, we might be in with a chance, it’s the fact that it’s climate activists who are designing the system that should truly worry us.
These are the people who are ignorant of (or just ignore) simple things, such as significant digit rules for handling data.
An electrical system designed by climate
scientistsactivists. What could possibly go wrong.If a low carbon electricity grid is actually desired, the obvious solution is simply to build half a dozen nuclear power stations and forget about all of the useless wind and solar facilities. Given the lifetime of nuclear power stations, this would probably be the cheapest option long term as well.
Indeed, Bill. And one more thing, nuclear plants are run at full capacity 24/7. They can do some load following, but they cannot be dispatched quickly enough to compensate for a fall off in wind or the sun going behind some clouds. They are not a DEFR, they are a base load power source!
I don’t raise these points as an advocate but as one warning that our proofs of impracticality are not ironclad.
Similar to my other comment here warning that we can’t ignore load shaping as a tactic, we also can’t ignore the potential for supply following. Certain activities can be prioritized when supply is in excess, driven by a price signal using “smart” meters and appliances. In that way it may prove more feasible to run baseload plants at a higher level.
As an example, imagine an intermittently powered refrigerator that freezes blocks of ice when power is at a negative price and just allows the ice to melt when power is expensive. Obviously there’s also charging batteries, electrolysing water to make hydrogen, and running pumped storage as examples of supply following.
It’s not enough to show that it’s cost-prohibitive to try to operate a fully-dispatchable electric power system using intermittent supplies. We have to imagine the ways we could adapt to an unreliable supply and then make the case for how that harms our standard of living.
But above all, replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power should only be a fallback position for if we fail to persuade the majority that there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
“But the back-up source will by hypothesis be woefully underused and idle most of the time so long as most of the electricity comes from wind and sun.”
I disagree. As solar capacity factors of around 22% seem to be at the upper end of what those systems can produce, any backup for solar will be used most of the time. Likewise with wind, though only a little less than the solar backup will be used.
The system will more correctly be named a main generator system, with small amounts of wind and solar slotted in whenever it suits them.
It doesn’t work like that, because solar and wind capacity isn’t limited to max demand. They can, will and have installed wind and solar over-capacity so that solar and wind can supply way more than 22% of demand for a significant proportion of the time. So now, not only do they minimise the time for which backup is needed, they also have ever-increasing difficulty getting rid of the excess wind and solar electricity at other times. It’s a mega stuff-up and the people pay for it.
Just gotta build vast numbers of giant battery systems- everywhere- regardless of cost! /s
For the UK the Royal Society said, based on 37 years of weather data,
“For this reason some tens of TWhs of very long duration storage will be needed. For comparison the TWHs needed are 1000 times more than is currently provided by pumped hydro, and far more than can be provided cost effectively by batteries”
Your /sarc recognizes that it is economically unviable, but if the loons get their way, it won’t be because they maintain the system we have today where we can use practically any amount of power whenever it suits our whim. It will be us living much more like our great grandparents, consuming far less because it will be too expensive to do otherwise.
I recently traveled to the UK on business and paid almost half the cost in taxes. This will apply throughout all aspects of life. Most likely you won’t be prevented from using energy except that you simply can’t afford to use more. If it still cost $500 to fly there I probably would have had my wife fly with me and spend the weekend sightseeing. But it would have cost almost $1500 for her ticket. And every other expense has gone through the roof, because energy is a basic input to everything. Nobody has to ban travel if we have no choice but to forego the cost.
“It will be us living much more like our great grandparents, consuming far less because it will be too expensive to do otherwise.”
My Italian grandparents from Abruzzo, came to America as young adults around 1912. They said that in Italy they worked 7 days/week on a farm and had nothing to show for it. Lived in a small, cold, dark, damp farm house. Such a wonderful, low energy life style!
This is my recent video on the same subject
https://youtu.be/A6D6bDDxQOc
A nice summary of the point. Its why Nick Stokes here stopped arguing that net zero in generation from wind and solar + storage is both possible and cheaper than conventional or nuclear.
Instead he has moved on to the claim about fuel savings. The proposal seems to be that you have a dispatchable system which meets demand. You then build very large amounts of wind and solar in addition, and use them to turn off the dispatchable as and when you can. The argument is that the fuel savings will more than pay for the costs of installing and running the wind and solar.
No-one, to my knowledge, has ever produced a proper business case for some particular country with all the costs included which shows that. Not even a one page summary spreadsheet. The usual tactic is to rely on ‘levelized costs’ per kWh, where half the costs are left out, and intermittency is assumed not to exist. Done like that, in any other context it would be called fraudulent accounting.
Francis says “At some point this is going to become too obvious to ignore.”
Probably, but the disturbing thing is that the authorities are evidently intending to persist to the point where its obvious to them, and that will only be after the vain attempt has produced a social and economic disaster. For the mindset just look at the case of Ed Miliband, Energy Minister in the new UK Labour government. Nothing short of a week long nationwide winter blackout is going to change his policies.
What we are seeing, culturally, is a new kind of totalitarianism, where the mass of the population and even most decision makers know that a story is nonsense, but they pay lip service to it and vote for it regardless, because of fear. You see it in almost every mainstream critical story, they always include somewhere in the piece a remark about the importance and legitimacy of emission reduction targets, which the authors obviously don’t believe but feel they have to include.
You see the same phenomenon in regard to gender and trans ideology, people who know perfectly well that its nonsense all the same go along – the Scots proposing to send male rapists to women’s prisons, the British NHS referring to breast feeding as ‘chest feeding’, and the mother as the ‘birthing parent’, the Tavistock clinic handing out puberty blockers like candy, the new British Prime Minister, Starmer, claiming that some women have penises, and anyone dissenting being classed as ‘transphobic’. They don’t believe a word of it, but they go along.
The caution for the activists is that after the crash, they can turn into enemies in the same way that the ‘- phobes’ were. The bigger the crash, the more likely that is. In the end, all revolutions turn on their own.
“No-one, to my knowledge, has ever produced a proper business case for some particular country with all the costs included which shows that.”
Excellent point. Most of my engineering career in industry involved capital project management. A complete discounted cash flow analysis ALWAYS had to be performed on multiple options to confirm the best investment or to decide to do nothing. The “climate” and energy policies of our present day completely ignore the real consequences you are pointing out.
I’ve a hunch that the previous pretend-Tory UK administration actually removed any requirement for the government to prepare any proper cost analysis for certain ‘green’ energy projects.
If the Climate Change Committee said it would work then that was all the proof needed.
Fuel is the ONLY savings with Wind and solar…whenever nature or time-of-day decide to offer it to you.
4hrs a day max for Solar and 40% of the year max for Wind
Miliband is so blinkered that I don’t think even a week long blackout would change his approach.
Of course it would not. One can always find an oil or gas interest that sabotaged the works. When Texas froze in the dark, it was all the fault of the natural gas supply not covering >100% of average demand. Just ask Big Oily Boob or Lusername.
Nick Stokes stock-in-trade is sophistry, fueled by FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
“What we are seeing, culturally, is a new kind of totalitarianism, where the mass of the population and even most decision makers know that a story is nonsense, but they pay lip service to it and vote for it regardless, because of fear.”
Sounds like same old game
I
I’ve never known in person or seen evidence of a liberal/progressive on Quora or here on WUWT who is capable of understanding the need for continued investment in conventional sources. They simply insist we already have all the conventional we need and it will be so seldom used it will last for decades. Most of them are willing to accept a mix of single shaft fast ramping gas turbines and CCGT limited to 20% of peak demand. They claim RE is so cheap that wind can be overbuild 3-fold to correct for the 35% CF and solar 5-fold to correct the 20% CF.
That’s what they want to believe, so that’s what they insist is reality. When I suggest that it might be costly to dismantle and replace all that wind and solar every 30 years for 300 years or longer they blow it off with it will continue to get cheaper. Most people are liberal progressive and the percentage increases every year. It’s going to be ugly.
What these people forget is that demand is also increasing every year so we need more FF cover for when the weather won’t co-operate…
I wonder whether markets will drive continued investment in conventional sources even as policy drifts farther from reality making the future less ugly. Maybe markets and stuff that continues to get cheaper might survive for practical reasons too.
Not according to their Figure 34. ‘Zero Carbon Firm Capacity Need Over a Challenging Winter Week in 2050’ where it looks like what they describe as a ‘firm resource’ would be required to a greater or lesser extent most of the time.
Their glib reliance on an overbuild of wind, solar and batteries neglects their relatively short life resulting in recurrent and the substantial CO2 emissions not to mention cost and preposertousness:
“The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced” (The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking Mark P Mills Manhattan Institute).
Santayana: ‘Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.’
And to get to net zero you need not just a couple of days worth of demand in storage, but about 120 days. And the storage has to be in a form which will allow it to be held for decades. Source, Royal Society report. About the only people who have examined actual wind behavior over three decades for a specific region, and found out just how intermittent it really is.
To expand on the above point, the reason is that wind/solar are seasonal, with more of the former in winter, and more of the latter in summer.
The problem is this time of year, September/October, when there’s a tendency for us to have little of both, so you need to supply perhaps 80% – 90% of demand from backup, which over a period of 2 – 3 months, is obviously going to be significant.
Current UK renewable production is 6 GW out of a 45 GW fleet, which I think shows the problem.
And you also have whole seasons, one every couple of decades, where the season as a whole is very low wind power. I think there was a recent summer with wind drought.
In the summer and early autumn of 2021 Europe experienced a long period of dry conditions and low wind speeds which seriously affected wind generation.
In the UK April – September 2021 was the least windy period for most of the UK in the last 60 years. SSE reported a 32% drop in power from it’s renewable assets.
The IPCC itself says average wind speeds over Europe will decline by up to 10% as a result of climate change
And how much over-capacity is needed to fill 120 days—i.e. how many days are required to reach 120 days?
I’d like an actual answer to that question. It could be anywhere from a few minutes to a few years.
That’s not really a problem, if you think about a system producing an average output of, say, 10 GW, then half the time it’s going to be producing more than that, and half the time less than that, so the storage is there to balance the two, you don’t need extra production to fill up the storage.
The real problem is that storage on a TWh scale is both technically and economically impossible.
It’s not true: more than half the time it will produce less than the average. A limited proportion of the time it will produce close to maximum. Moreover, you can get unexpectedly long runs of below average output that deplete your storage. The same thing can be seen with hydro, where a relative drought can severely deplete the resource.
“At some point this is going to become too obvious to ignore.“. Nicolas Maduro has shown us something about that point in time – it’s after the current government is replaced. And please note that that is not the same as when the people vote for the current government to be replaced; not (a) when the current government has control over the voting and vote-counting processes, and/or (b) if the replacement government decides to continue the scam.
Nobody is going to build nuclear in the west. And certainly not a whole fleet. Hydrogen is a scam to keep the oil and gas industry in business.
But I just leave these here, speaking for themselves:
The Cleantech Revolution
It’s exponential, disruptive, and now
https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/06/RMI-Cleantech-Revolution-pdf.pdf
The Rise of Batteries in Six Charts and Not Too Many Numbers
https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-too-many-numbers/
RMI are a bunch of propaganda non-science idiots.. writing junk science to suck in morons like you.
And you are so incredibly dumb and gullible you fall for it every time.
I’m sure you love their pretty little pictures., though.
——
for example, p18 of the second link titled.
Electricity is the new King of Energy
reality is that in 2023 only 13.3% of global electricity came from UNRELIABLE wind and solar,
84% came from RELIABLE supplies like hydro, nuclear, gas, oil and coal.
You really have to stop linking to such travesty of fakery.
It makes you look like a completely gullible and moronic dimwit. !
If you want to mock something, at least try to understand it first.
MUN,
Clicking/tapping on your first link above automatically downloads a file from the rmi.org website to my PC. Not something I expected or want. You may want the rmi.org file on your PC or device, but it does not mean that I want it on mine.
You at least could do the rest of us the courtesy of letting us know this in your comment before we decide whether to click on it.
Net Zero and green energy are mocked here at WUWT because of lot of us actually do understand the science, economics and engineering of trying to transition away from fossil fuels and nuclear and to wind and solar.
I’ve told you this once before and I’ll say it again: The wind and solar energy narrative is the theology of a cult, and your refusal to acknowledge the serious problems with wind and solar demonstrate that you are naive enough to get sucked into it. One of the biggest issues with being in a cult is not knowing you are in one.
I’m sorry, for me it opens in the browser. I’ll write a warning for pdf files in the future.
For me, it opens in my browser and downloads the file. Did you check your download folder? Otherwise, maybe you are using a browser or have add-on software installed that prevents automatic downloads.
Nothing in the folder, and my browser is configured to always ask before downloading anything. Still he doesn’t ask me on that page, or any other pdf files for that matter. As said, I try to write a warning when linking pdf files.
Perhaps you don’t see a new download because you already have it in your system from previous visits?
It should be obvious by now that MUN is merely an anonymous troll. It decides to hide its identity because that would give away the organization it works for. It’s at least as bad as the absurd fake ID called Phil Stokes.
It’s the internet, of course I hide my identity. And I may ask the organizations I work for to pay me for this. Though I doubt they care 🙁
Any sane organisation would sack you immediately for being a mindless idiot.
From your comments..
1.. I doubt you are mentally old enough to work.
2.. Companies don’t tend to keep track of what janitors say on the web.
LOL.
If you want to post something, at least understand it first.
It is obvious that you have been taken in by a load of blatant propaganda misinformation.. as always.
You are just way too dumb to realise it.
Then you have “China has become the first major electrostate “
Here is China’s electricity production.
Totally dominated by COAL and HYDRO.
This doesn’t disprove the point they are making.
It shows that are totally twisting reality..
And you fall for it every time.
Of course China is electrifying quickly.. only a few decades ago much of the country didn’t have any.
WAKE UP, idiot !!
The further you actually look, the more you realise that basically EVERYTHING in those propaganda pap reports is provably a FLAT OUT LIE or blatant MISINFORMATION.
Just what we would expect from you.
Disinformation = misinformation intended to deceive.
They’re in it for “humanity”, right?
(Check out their DONATE options, starting at $5,000 a month)
You may want to look at the donate options again.
Go to the bottom of their board of trustees page
The climate trough is deep and putrid. !!
I followed the links before criticizing.
The battery article fixates on S-curves. It uses the sentence:
“Battery sales are growing exponentially up classic S-curves”.
Before Googling the answer, how many know what an S-curve is? I’d thought maybe supply, like in Supply and Demand, but no. It’s a technology adoption curve. The naming has to do with the shape of the curve which looks not like an ‘S’ shape to me.
Reminds me of the “elevator pitch” concept. If someone can’t summarize an idea they have in a format people with different ideas can embrace, then they might not have a strong idea.
“Thus some kind of offsets or indulgences may need to be accepted to claim achievement of the goal.”
One being pushed now in Wokechusetts and some other states is to lock up all the forests- terminate the wood industries. It’s called “proforestation”- fantasized by a Dr. Bill Moomaw, a chemist who thinks he understands the climate and forests when he understands neither. He was, a few decades ago, a reviewer/editor (?) with the IPCC, in a year when it got a Noble Prize- the entire IPCC, I think. So he, like Mickey Mann, brags about being a Noble Prize winner.
I’ve been fighting against this idiocy for several years.
Ain’t nothin’ noble about Tricky Micky Mann.
“A Disgrace to the Profession” — I get downvoted by the ruler monkeys when I quote this title.
I have it in my kindle library.
“Who is going to make the investment in these DEFRs that will be kept mostly idle. Certainly, no private investors will do it without enormous government subsidies.”
The answer is, of course, “The Government” with our tax dollars. That, as in any Soviet style economy, will allow for poor management, horrible inefficiency and the ability to change the rules to cover up the failures. Undoubtedly we will have government owned and operated gas and perhaps even coal power plants to support the inadequate renewables. Over time it will become clear that as wind/solar equipment ages and fails it will be easier and more economical to just run the government owned fossil fueled back-up more and more. That will also bring in revenue which the politicians can characterize as a win for tax payers (just allocate 5% of the profits to schools or something). Maybe someday sanity will finally prevail and power generation will be privatized and we’ll have come full circle.
Private (non-governmental entities) that consume large amounts of electricity (e.g. server farms) are investing in or contracting for the output of nuclear power plants. They are not waiting on government-mandated, unreliable and grossly expensive electric utility to supply their needs reliably and economically. Smart people learn how step around ideologically-driven and unimaginative politicians and bureaucrats (Deep State).
Never is a strong word, and rarely true
Iceland’s electricity is entirely carbon-free — roughly 70 percent hydropower and 30 percent geothermal — and so is its heating, 90 percent of which is geothermal.
In any other nation a combination of nuclear, hydro and batteries would be no CO2 emissions but very expensive electricity.
100% wind and solar with no nuclear and no hydro is just a green dream. There have already been about three local demonstration projects that failed. Not even close. And they all ignored the CO2 footprint of manufactured goods and food that was imported.
I have read wild guesses of battery backup capacity ranging from 10 hours to 2000 hours. That range is even worse than h the range of guesses for the long term effect of CO2 x 2
How much used hydro power exists near US cities?
Norway’s electricity is basically entirely hydro. There are several countries with either a high hydro output (particularly in South America, but also most of Canada) , or using nuclear and hydro as the basic foundation of their power systems – for exampe, France, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland.
Electricity is about 20% of total global primary energy consumption. The other 80% is mainly hydrocarbon fuels.
Net Zero dreams do not apply only to the 20%. And only 1 billion people in Nut Zero nations … while almost 7 billion people live in nations that do not care about CO2.
“Net Zero” electricity is only about 20% of primary global energy, and a goal for less than 15% of the global population.
“Primary energy is energy that is found in nature in its original form, before it has been converted by humans. It can be non-renewable or renewable, and can include energy from raw fuels, waste, and other sources.”
Are energy industrialists catching lightning bolts and shoving them into wires?
Hey . . . what about the latest plan from the EPA, backed by the Biden/Harris administration, that the US will build a second Sun and put it into orbit spaced 180 degrees away from the current Sun so that solar panels on Earth would then have continuous sunlight, 24/7?
I might not have got all the details quite correct, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I learned from an AI source on the Web.
😉
There would still be 2 points per revolution where panel surfaces would be parallel to both suns at the same time. Need another.
Really??? You imagine that situation is not nearly infinitely better than the current average of 12 hours where it doesn’t matter how the panels are oriented with respect to the one sun?
Beta Blocker’s Predictions for the Future of Electricity in the US-Canadian Northeast:
I have reached these speculative conclusions about what is now happening with the future of electricity generation in the US-Canadian Northeast:
(1) New-build nuclear power will not go forward on the North American continent unless state and federal governments directly fund initial construction of enough SMRs to establish a cost-efficient nuclear construction industrial base.
(2) The Provence of Ontario in Canada is positioning itself to become the favored source of SMR nuclear systems and technology in North America, covering both SMR component manufacturing and nuclear construction project expertise.
(3) Ontario’s government, working through its government-owned corporation Ontario Power Generation (OPG), will establish the GE Hitachi BWRX-300 as the defacto common standard SMR design for purposes of reducing the capital costs and the construction times for new-build nuclear power plants in North America.
(4) Ontario’s legacy nuclear manufacturing facilities will be expanded to handle the BWRX-300 design. These facilities will also be made available to other SMR developers for those who choose to make use of Ontario’s SMR manufacturing expertise.
(5) An opportunity is now developing for New York to become a partner with Ontario in establishing the region as an industrial hub for serving a growing SMR market. SMR component manufacturing facilities might be established in western New York state as one outcome of this future partnership.
(6) In early 2025, New York State will formally add nuclear to the list of zero emission technologies it will be pursuing. A subsequent decision to directly fund nuclear construction will come later in the decade and will depend upon how successfully OPG is in controlling the cost and schedule of the Darlington expansion project.
Lines of Evidence for Making these Predictions:
— New York’s attempt at a Net Zero transition is not progressing at anything like the pace called for in the 2019 Climate Act. The issue has become a serious concern for those NYS officials responsible for financial oversight of NYS government projects and NYS government-mandated spending.
— Governor Hochul is a native of western New York state, a region which has a long history with nuclear power. Adding nuclear benefits the citizens of western New York state, a region which is not profiting nearly as well from the Net Zero transition as are other areas of the state.
— Ontario gets half of its electricity from nuclear. The provence has a well-developed and well-managed nuclear support infrastructure. Western New York state also has a long history with nuclear.
— Ontario already has a strong economic relationship with western New York state. An alliance between Ontario and New York for promoting SMR technology in North America is a natural outcome of their mutual economic, social, and political interests.
— Micron’s new computer chip fabrication plant, to be located in western New York state, will require huge amounts of electricity delivered reliably 24/7/365 from the regional power grid.
— Micron will not build its own power generation plants. Micron’s decision to locate their new facility in New York was made based upon the current and future availability of reliable hydro and nuclear power in the region, all of it supplied through the grid.
— Micron’s representative at Governor Hochul’s September 5th energy summit held in Syracuse stated explicitly that Micron’s internal studies show that wind & solar backed by batteries cannot deliver the volumes of electricity Micron needs either reliably or at an affordable price.
— Micron needs highly reliable electricity 24/7/365 at a cost Micron can afford. Micron assesses nuclear, hydro, and possibly geothermal as reliable sources of zero-carbon but affordable grid-supplied electricity.
— Anti-nuclear activists and renewable energy advocates in New York are now raising vocal concerns about the Hochul Administration’s apparent embrace of nuclear. These activists have probably come to the same conclusions I have about the future role of nuclear power in their state’s energy policies.
Roger Caiazza and Francis Menton want New York’s politicians to come clean with the public concerning the realities of Net Zero in New York state. However, those politicians will not abandon their Net Zero transition goals.
What those New York politicians will do instead, as an enhancement to their current Net Zero program, will be to add nuclear into the energy mix as a means of gaining voter support from those political constituencies which are not currently benefiting from the state’s Net Zero transition policy and its associated government spending.
Worldometer website numbers
USA GDP: $25,462,700,000,000
Canada GDP: $2,139,840,000,000
Canada can be the favored source of something USA can also source for as long as USA’s electorate finds it convenient.
That is a rational and pragmatic way forward. I hope you are right and believe that there are some signs that may be the way they are headed. BUT never underestimate the power of the innumerate, emotional fringe who will object loudly.
Roger, my opinion here is that a decision to add nuclear to the state’s list of the favored technologies needed to support the Net Zero transition is as much a decision tailored to the realities of New York state’s regional politics as it is a decision tailored to the reality that the goal of fully decarbonizing the state’s power grid with wind & solar is completely pie in the sky.
The voters of western New York state will not be happy with Governor Hochul if Micron reneges on its commitment to build a major chip plant in the region citing the lack of a reliable future supply of electricity for its chip manufacturing processes.
In addition to what Micron said in the last afternoon session of the September 5th energy summit about its need for a reliable supply of electricity 24/7/365, we should note that Judy Tighe of the New York League of Conservation Voters was present at the morning sessions to advocate for more progress on the renewable energy front.
That Judy Tighe attended the summit at all as a guest speaker tells me that the most influential environmental NGO’s are already on notice that nuclear is on the table as an option for New York state.
Can nuclear make a difference in the state’s basic ability to achieve its Net Zero objectives for the electric power sector?
My opinion is that it can’t. For the simple reason that shutting down even one more legacy gas-fired power plant in New York state is fraught with major adverse consequences for the reliability of the state’s and the region’s supply of electricity.
Roger, you don’t have too worry at all about this net zero project because there is no chance it will ever make it to square one: the acquisition of the large amounts of land for these massive solar and winds farms. Have any of the possible sites been identified? If some of these are private lands, the owners probably lease the land at exorbitant rates. Flat farmland is out because it is more important for growing food.
You should also check if the costs of access roads to the sites and of site preparation has been estimated. What is the time frame for the construction of these?
Will the power companies allow the farms to be connected to their HV grids or only to lower voltage grids for local use near solar or wind farm?
Last question: Is it possible operate these systems in a NY which has long cold and snowy winters?
Scroll down and read my to reply Roger. You need not worry because net zero will never happen unless the state goes 100% nuclear. And that would take a very long time.
I can’t wait for long cold winter. Hopefully, Mother Nature will slap sense into those net zero zealots up there in Albany.
Ummmm . . . perhaps it would be a good idea to first have 2–5 years of full-scale, in-the-field demonstrated performance and reliability of a couple of SMRs before investing $trillions for that “cost-efficient nuclear construction industrial base”.
You know, my tax dollars at risk, and all that.
Your tax dollars have been directly funding initial construction of thousands of windmills and hundreds of solar farms. Which would be the superior “investment”, nuclear or windmills/solar?
The answer depends on the number of decades we need to wait for SMRs to actually demonstrate they are a practical source of electricity for the grid. So far, all we have are a bunch of nice color PowerPoint charts/electronic images and marketing promises.
BTW, the tax dollars required for subsidizing construction of SMRs (should that ever come to pass) will make the subsidies going out for solar and wind look like chicken feed.
And none of the taxpayer subsidies now, or in the future, should ever be thought of as “investments”. They are, instead, money going down the drain.
How do you make jet fuel, diesel fuel and marine fuel oil without making gasoline? No one has addressed this that I can tell. My Chem E friends say you can’t blend away that much gasoline so it’s going to be burned somewhere. Solve that riddle.
You should try “petroleum refining” at Wikipedia.
That’s Refining 101. I was on the leadership team of a 330,000 bbl p/day refinery for 7 of the 25 years I worked for one of the fully=integrated oil companies. The 101 stuff I understand. I need to get to Refining 406 course. How do you NOT make gasoline (45%) of the barrel and still make jet, diesel, marine fuel oil. This train wreck is coming fast. California is well on their way. BTW. California’s challenge is greater because they are an island as far as refined products are concerned. PADD V. Pacific on one side and continental divide on the other.
I find it mystifying and irritating the way the big advocates of Net Zero carefully maneuver around the the lack existence of large-capacity storage batteries that could power an entire neighborhood, let alone a large city. This is like claiming a high speed transportation system can be built without investing in the necessary infrastructure. Dream on, dream on.
“And if we were to build an entire system of these DEFRs capable of supplying all of our electricity needs to back up worst-case wind/sun lulls, wouldn’t it make far more sense just to leave out the wind and solar generation and go with the DEFRs all the time?”
You said a mouthful!
If you get the right sort of severe weather conditions, especially big thunderstorms destruction of solar and wind can occur over a wide area. The total smashing of Puerto Rico’s power system by Hurricane Maria is a good example.
AC power was never meant to be generated by large numbers of generators, especially when not producing at a constant rate as frequency, voltage and phase syncronization becomes difficult and neither wind nor solar can deliver under load. The issue of reactive power is another big factor which cannot be delivered from far away to where the loads occur and without this feature voltage control becomes impossible and transformers would not function.
The technical reasons against wind and solar are very valid
Story tip
Of course we all know that renewables are free. At least on Sundays
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/23/free-energy-sundays-miliband-green-revolution-edf/
But the reality is that subsidies are largest on Sundays. Data from the Low Carbon Contracts Company.
I have NEVER read an honest estimate of the cost of renewable energy. That’s because there is no such thing as a “cost for renewable energy.” The only thing that exists are hybrid systems that combine renewables with traditional power, and the True Believers always leave out the cost of the traditional power sources.
But it’s nothing to do with science. The WEF knows full well it won’t work. That is the plan, to destroy Western society. What other possible explanation can there be?
They want us to think that they are stupid and inept. The truth is they are evil globalists, hell bent on reducing the population for their own ends. The truth is in plain sight, so it’s harder to see.
UK demand as I type is 34GW, wind on this windy day is producing 10GW, solar 1GW.
23GW short. The most so called renewables produce at max output is around 15GW
Winter average demand is 40 to 45GW. There is a long way to go.