Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
A British village will not be forced to give up its gas boilers and switch to hydrogen without the support of local residents, the Government has conceded, after a backlash against the plans.
A British village will not be forced to give up its gas boilers and switch to hydrogen without the support of local residents, the Government has conceded, after a backlash against the plans.
The Government says it wants to test the viability of the fuel for home heating before making a decision on further rollout. But residents and experts have raised concerns over safety, costs, air pollution and the green credentials of the gas.
Whitby, home to around 2,000 people, is one of two neighbourhoods being considered for the trial, alongside Redcar in Teesside.
Ofgem is due to make a decision by the end of this year over which village will be switched to hydrogen based on bids by the two relevant gas networks, Cadent in Cheshire and Northern Gas Networks in Teesside. The trials are being funded through levies on consumer bills, including £9m for the initial bidding stage.
Although residents will have a choice between a hydrogen boiler and heat pump, they would not be able to opt out of the trial once a decision has been made.
But at a meeting organised by Cheshire West and Chester Council on Tuesday night, the Government said in a prepared statement that it would “not go ahead with a trial in an area where there is not strong local support”.
The concession raises doubts about the viability of the trial, given significant opposition to the plans.
“Strong community engagement support is vital for the success of a project like this,” the Government statement said. “That is why evidence of substantial local support validated by an external independent source such as the local council is one of our key assessment criteria in selecting a location.”
The meeting, which went ahead following pressure from residents, saw representatives from Cadent challenged over the plans.
“The only reason why we are here tonight is because some residents have pushed against the one-sided Cadent information machine and demanded a full range of evidence and opinion to help us make our decision,” resident Karen Cross told the meeting. “Cadent would never have willingly done this.”
Angela Needle, the strategy director at Cadent, said there were “absolutely no plans for Cadent to force our way into anybody’s homes.”
“The reason why that law is being changed is that today we can enter homes from a safety perspective,” she said. “And we wanted to make sure that in any hydrogen trial the same thing would apply.”
While IMO may be responding to climate alarmist prognostications on future climate catastrophes, there is no available data showing weather is posing a greater threat to shipping now than in years past. It makes sense for IMO to encourage efficiency in energy use and travel routes, but such goals make sense regardless of climate change.
A recent Forbes article, written by weather “risk communicator” and meteorologist Renny Vendewege, claims that extreme weather and climate change are forcing the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to develop new shipping industry standards. This is false. While IMO may be responding to climate alarmist prognostications on future climate catastrophes, there is no available data showing weather is posing a greater threat to shipping now than in years past. It makes sense for IMO to encourage efficiency in energy use and travel routes, but such goals make sense regardless of climate change.
Extreme weather resulting from warming ocean temperatures are becoming a top challenge for shipping industry executives. While the extreme weather can influence port activity and result in lost or damaged cargo, the environmental impact of shipping on the ocean temperatures cannot be ignored. With more than 55,000 merchant ships that trade internationally, maritime shipping accounting for about 3 percent of all global CO2 emissions. For most companies, supply chains typically have the biggest environmental impact of any part of a business, and beginning this year, there are two new regulations designed to make the shipping industry more environmentally friendly.
Tellingly, Vendewege neglects to give any specifics or data backing up the idea that there is any “extreme weather resulting from warming ocean temperatures,” he merely asserts that it is the case, and moves on to discussing the new rules and their energy efficiency benefits.
A number of conditions can pose a threat to shipping, like hurricanes and rising seas impacting seaports.
Looking at the data for hurricanes, as Climate Realism has dozens of times, here, here, and here, just taking a small sample, one finds no increasing trend of hurricane frequency or severity worldwide.
The most recent hurricane season in 2022 ended at a 42 year low, which, while not necessarily indicative of a trend in itself, certainly does not further the “worsening hurricanes” narrative implied by the story. So if hurricanes aren’t getting stronger or becoming more frequent, then changes in hurricanes can’t be used to justify new shipping rules.
Sea levels, another factor that may affect shipping ports over time, have not seen significant acceleration since records began. Sea levels are rising on average, but have been since the mid-1800s at least. On average, this rate is around 1.2 inches per decade, which is hardly anything like a rapid inundation that can’t be prepared for or mitigated. So dangers to ports from rising sea can’t be used to justify new shipping rules.
Venderwege discusses the new route optimization standards, describing how they might help ships avoid bad weather, but this is not at all new to seafarers. The shipping industry already use weather data to plan ahead, Forbes itself reported that private weather forecasting was a growing, already $7 billion industry in 2017, giving tailored forecasts to various industries. Any improvements are more than welcome, but are not proof that climate change is impacting shipping.
It is absolutely a good idea to improve the fuel efficiency of seagoing vessels, and keep up their maintenance to best ensure vessels’ seaworthiness. It also makes good business sense to plan routes to avoid bad weather to the extent it can be anticipated, and to find the most efficient, direct, and speedy routes to ports of call, but Forbes’ headline and climate-focused theme of the piece makes these ideas out to be some kind of response to current worsening conditions at sea—which are nowhere to be found. Forbes looks pretty foolish when they try to tie everything to climate, instead of focusing on the real, tangible benefits of IMO’s new rules.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.
While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”
Why should a thermal plant spend money in a government-rigged market that threatens a reasonable profit? Why should the plant even remain in the market under these conditions?
“Why should a thermal plant spend money in a government-rigged market that threatens a reasonable profit? Why should the plant even remain in the market under these conditions?”
“For IVREs it’s a no-risk deal, with markets guaranteed and taxpayers country-wide adding profits. But what about the need for reliable power?”
This two-part post (Part II here) is a follow-up to Robert Bradley’s recent IER article, “Wind, Solar, and the Great Texas Blackout: Guilty as Charged.” His article discussed how regulatory shifts and subsidies favoring Intermittently Variable Renewable Energy(IVRE) producers resulted in prematurely lost capacity, a lack of new capacity, and upgrade issues with remaining (surviving) traditional capacity. These three factors–“the why behind the why”–explain the perfect storm that began with (or was revealed by) Storm Uri.
Part I below describes how the market was originally meant to work–but has not worked given the governmentally redesigned power market, beginning with generation. The change was caused by:
Investment monies lured away from developing baseload capacity by government subsidies and special tax incentives, and
Operating opportunities lured away by “first-use” mandates. First-use mandates are especially pernicious as grid operators must purchase from IVREs whenever they are producing, leaving the reliable generators idle.
The Distortion
Imagine a billion dollars on the table for building a nuclear, coal-fired, or natural gas-fired generation facility. Your financials require a return on investment (ROI) to obtain the required capital from investors and/or shareholders.
You built the facility in good faith, based on robust grid modeling that suggested a significant opportunity to profitably sell your energy over the operating life of the plant. You did due diligence on this opportunity versus the cost, and the ROI was good enough to get signoff on a Final Investment Decision (FID), so the plant received financing and was built. Great.
Assume under the business case that X units of electricity were to be sold into the grid. Based on satisfactory plant performance, the project is statistically certain to sell, say, at least 50 percent of X (obviously making up numbers here but you get the point) and to break even. At a high level, the variables to manage are: 1) Fuel price, 2) Labor costs, 3) Maintenance costs.
This is a normal market–the way it used to be. The utility had an “obligation to serve” and had the ratebase incentive to key capacity above peak-demand scenarios.
Enter government intervention….
IVRE “first-use” mandates. Not only do these mandates require grid operators to buy power from IVREs “first” if they are generating, but these mandates also often require grid operators to pay a premium for IVRE power over any other source.
Your business case has now been kneecapped with a double-whammy: not only are you losing business because IVREs must sell “first,” but there is absolutely nothing you can do to make your power more commercially attractive, since IVREs not only have very low short-run marginal costs—in that the next electron that they can generate is extremely cheap, since wind and solar (and falling water for hydro) are “free.”
In this scenario, due to other political externalities, the price of your fuel (if you are using natural gas or coal) is rising.
Doesn’t look too good for you now, does it? Suddenly the volume of power that you are competing for (that is, market demand) has shrunk because IVREs can “cut in line” in front of you at any time.
Not to mention that with few exceptions, your ability to shut down when demand has dropped—and thus limit your operations and maintenance costs (O&M)—is very limited, especially if you are expected to have power ready to sell if demand suddenly ramps up.
Thus comes the double-edged sword of IVREs: their ability to produce can drop just as quickly as it rises. When that happens, grid operators expect baseload to be ready to sell, often with only a short notice. This means that baseload operators cannot shut down when they aren’t selling; rather, they have to keep their plants warm and turbines spinning in case they are called upon to sell when IVREs cannot.
This condition that baseload operators are forced to wait in is called “spinning reserve” – meaning the plant is operating but not generating any saleable electricity. But it is piling up fuel, labor and maintenance costs (see the list above).
Therefore, if fuel costs are rising, and I am running my generation facility on a skeleton crew, what’s left for me to cut?
Maintenance
Rather than spend money on scheduled maintenance, the generator will try to shore up the red ink by deferring maintenance. The more I am forced to do this (with the alternative being bankruptcy or exiting the market), the more I am playing a game of “Russian Roulette” with my ability to operate.
Planned maintenance is scheduled on the basis of statistical modeling, so I can operate my plant safely and produce saleable energy. I can stretch these statistics by implementing condition monitoring (“con-mon” for short), but eventually I have to maintain the plant if I do not want to risk a failure.
But if I cannot afford to perform the maintenance, I’ll defer items that I think I can get away with, like equipment used to operate the plant in extremely low temperatures, since weather rarely gets “that cold” here in Texas. And I’ve heard what is said about climate change moderating winter lows….
Statistically my risk is pretty low, right?
Until the proverbial holes in the layers of “swiss cheese” line up (some may recall the safety model using this graphic) and suddenly it’s very cold, and IVREs are not generating enough to make up the gap.
And, having deferred maintenance, my plant tries to generate saleable power, but it breaks.
Whose fault?
Yes, in this example, my baseload plant broke. This is the first “why” that the IVRE advocates point out–but they dare not go further. The layers below the initial “why” all involve government having fundamentally “altered the deal” for baseload generators after the fact: IVREs attract investment dollars and are allowed to cut the line for market demand whenever they are generating.
For IVREs, it’s a no-risk deal, with markets guaranteed and taxpayers country-wide adding profits. But what about the need for reliable power?
Conclusion
Why should a thermal plant spend money in a government-rigged market that threatens a reasonable profit? Why should the plant even remain in the market under these conditions?
This is where we find ourselves today: the market is broken, and the risk is that the “insurance” for IVREs, covering the reliability gap (not enough sun or wind for prolonged periods, thus negating any advantage that battery storage might offer them) will fail. After all, the baseload plants are either crippled by deferred maintenance, or else sold on the cheap to buyers that have even less incentive to maintain them. And much needed new capacity is not built at all (phantom plants).
——————–
Note
The nature of IVREs will continue to push baseload generators out of business – and IVREs will continue to blame baseload for these problems even as its mandates kill the security that baseload provides. Authors Tom Stacy and George Taylor have written a detailed submission to FERC (the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) on this topic: https://elibrary.ferc.gov/eLibrary/docinfo?accession_num=20230113-5070
An ancient vegetative and fauna ecosystem discovery in northernmost Greenland reveals how substantially warmer polar climates were when CO2 levels were said to be much lower than today.
An ancient vegetative and fauna ecosystem discovery in northernmost Greenland reveals how substantially warmer polar climates were when CO2 levels were said to be much lower than today.
Reconstruction of the Kap København Formation ecosystem 2 million years ago. Image credit: Beth Zaiken. Source:Sci.News
The northern coasts of Greenland are today a barren polar desert. Existing moisture is frozen into permanent ice sheets at these latitudes, precluding plant growth.
But two million years ago, when CO2 levels were claimed to only hover around 300 ppm, an 11-19°C warmer-than-today north Greenland (82°N) had no ice sheet coverage and instead was teeming with vegetation (shrubs, herbs), as well as birch, poplar, and thuja forests (Kjaer et al., 2022).
Megafaunal browsers such as mastadons (elephants) had access to abundant food sources (berries, twigs, leaves, etc.). Caribou and reindeer grazers, hare, and rodents thrived in the green landscape. Geese soared in the High Arctic skies.
Sea coasts near northern Greenland had green algae, coral reefs, and dugong – marine animals cousin to the manatee. Horseshoe crabs that today cannot spawn in waters any colder than 45°N (southern France) were able to occupy the much warmer-than-today Arctic waters at 82°N.
The annual sea surface temperatures (SSTs) at these Arctic latitudes have been estimated to be 8°C during this time, which is slightly warmer than the annual SSTs in New York’s Hudson Bay today (Galbraith and Larouche, 2011).
Interestingly, human beings were also living in China two million years ago (Zhu et al., 2018). For now, climate alarmists and activists have yet to blame these ancient humans for the much warmer temperatures facilitating these rich High Arctic ecosystems.
The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for February 2023 was +0.08 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean. This is up from the January 2023 anomaly of -0.04 deg. C.
The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for February 2023 was +0.08 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean. This is up from the January 2023 anomaly of -0.04 deg. C.
The linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.13 C/decade (+0.11 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).
Various regional LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 14 months are:
YEAR
MO
GLOBE
NHEM.
SHEM.
TROPIC
USA48
ARCTIC
AUST
2022
Jan
+0.03
+0.06
-0.00
-0.23
-0.13
+0.68
+0.10
2022
Feb
-0.00
+0.01
-0.01
-0.24
-0.04
-0.30
-0.50
2022
Mar
+0.15
+0.27
+0.03
-0.07
+0.22
+0.74
+0.02
2022
Apr
+0.26
+0.35
+0.18
-0.04
-0.26
+0.45
+0.61
2022
May
+0.17
+0.25
+0.10
+0.01
+0.59
+0.23
+0.20
2022
Jun
+0.06
+0.08
+0.05
-0.36
+0.46
+0.33
+0.11
2022
Jul
+0.36
+0.37
+0.35
+0.13
+0.84
+0.55
+0.65
2022
Aug
+0.28
+0.31
+0.24
-0.03
+0.60
+0.50
-0.00
2022
Sep
+0.24
+0.43
+0.06
+0.03
+0.88
+0.69
-0.28
2022
Oct
+0.32
+0.43
+0.21
+0.04
+0.16
+0.93
+0.04
2022
Nov
+0.17
+0.21
+0.13
-0.16
-0.51
+0.51
-0.56
2022
Dec
+0.05
+0.13
-0.03
-0.35
-0.21
+0.80
-0.38
2023
Jan
-0.04
+0.05
-0.14
-0.38
+0.12
-0.12
-0.50
2023
Feb
+0.08
+0.17
0.00
-0.11
+0.68
-0.24
-0.12
The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for February, 2023 should be available within the next several days here.
The global and regional monthly anomalies for the various atmospheric layers we monitor should be available in the next few days at the following locations:
Ed Dowd is the former BlackRock executive, who has been drawing attention to the excess death data. As a Wall Street trader he likes to find and arbitrage the realities that aren’t well known so he can bet against the realities that aren’t real.
Ed Dowd is the former BlackRock executive, who has been drawing attention to the excess death data. As a Wall Street trader he likes to find and arbitrage the realities that aren’t well known so he can bet against the realities that aren’t real. And so he found himself last year looking at death trends that were off the charts. At this point the trader turned into a human trying to warn hundreds of CEO’s of insurance companies (among others) but they did not want to know…
Of the 3.2 million newly disabled in the USA, it’s remarkable (though sad) that 1.7 million came from the employed sector. Normally working people are the healthiest group — but since February 2021 their disability rate is up 31%. That compares to a rise of just 9% across the “general population”. And in a complete turnaround — those who quit or got fired — normally the sickest ones — their disability rate rose only 4%.
So something changed. What could it be, we wonder, that took place in 2021 and caused more of those who stayed in their jobs to become disabled. Why was quitting work or being fired a seeming benefit to your health… unless it was medical experiments mandated by bosses?
His interview with Tucker Carlson is well worth watching. It’s food for the soul to see good men solving problems. And that’s even though they’re discussing death, corruption and fraud. There’s something hopeful about this that suggests that honest smart players are finding their feet.
Tucker and Dowd also discuss the effect this era has had on them, how he deals with fear, why this is the third time in his life he has gone against the flow, and he called it right the last two times. (The BlackRock fund he managed made billions.)
As he says: We’ve never seen these kinds of excess deaths and yet we’re not even talking about it.
During Covid we had ticker tallies of daily deaths, but not any more. It’s very telling that they stopped counting.
The official statistics on disability:
Disability in the general population has been gradually rising (2009 – 2023)
Don’t need a PhD or Wall Street background to see something changed here or to see from eyeballing these 2 charts that the employed disabilities are rising faster than the general population due to vaccine mandates.
This is a sick joke at this point. Institutions will be razed.
h/t William Astley, Another Ian, Tim. Scott of the Pacific, and Stephen Neil.
Not a new story, but problems are getting worse thanks to net zero obsessions. Why authorise new capacity in areas where transmission lines are known to be inadequate?
Not a new story, but problems are getting worse thanks to net zero obsessions. Why authorise new capacity in areas where transmission lines are known to be inadequate? – – – UK consumers are paying hundreds of millions of pounds to turn wind turbines off because the grid cannot deal with how much electricity they make on the windiest days, says Sky News.
The energy regulator Ofgem has told Sky News it is because the grid is “not yet fit for purpose” as the country transitions to a clean power system by 2035.
The National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), which is responsible for keeping the lights on, has forecast that these “constraint costs”, as they are known, may rise to as much as £2.5bn per year by the middle of this decade before the necessary upgrades are made.
The problem has arisen as more and more wind capacity is built in Scotland and in the North Sea but much of the demand for electricity continues to come from more densely populated areas in the south of the country.
In order to match supply and demand, the National Grid has to move electricity from where it is being made to where it is needed.
But at the moment there aren’t enough cables between Scotland and England to do that.
There is one major undersea cable off the west coast of the UK, and two main junctions between the Scottish and English transmission networks on land.
This bottleneck means that when it is very windy there is actually too much electricity for these cables to handle without risking damage.
And because we can’t store excess renewable energy at the necessary scale yet, the National Grid Electricity System Operator has no option but to ask wind generators to turn off their turbines.
According to analysis by energy technology company Axle Energy, using publicly available data from the electricity system’s balancing market platform Elexon, in 2022 the National Grid spent £215m paying wind generators to turn off, reducing the total amount generated by 6%, and a further £717m turning on gas turbines located closer to the source of demand, in order to fill the gap.
These costs are eventually passed to UK consumers as part of the network costs section on energy bills.
Constraint costs are not just restricted to clean, cheap [sic] wind power.
In order to balance the system, the National Grid pays fossil fuel generators to ramp production up and down when necessary too.
But there is a particular focus on the impact of increasing levels of variable renewable generation and how that can be best managed.
‘A huge risk – and a waste’
Director of policy for the renewable industry group RenewableUK, Ana Musat, told Sky News her members have been calling for upgrades to the grid for years.
She is now concerned the lack of transmission capacity may jeopardise the government’s promise to decarbonise power generation by 2035 and get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. . . . The energy department and Ofgem recognise the problem.
They recently set out joint plans to “overhaul” underwater and onshore transmission networks to connect up to 50GW of offshore wind to the grid by 2030, including two new undersea cables between Scotland and England that have already been approved.
But in a statement to Sky News an Ofgem spokesperson admitted the grid was not yet “fit for purpose”.
by Chris Morris & Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)
What they are doing and what issues are occurring
Australia is transitioning from a coal fired generation system to one based on solar and wind. There is an accelerated program to do this driven by both major political parties. There has been a lot written about the developments, mainly as advocacy, and many relevant facts are not mentioned. The proponents see the transition as world-leading while the skeptics believe the country will become the crash test dummy proving it won’t work. Already there have been major issues. Those in themselves and the remedial actions needed are harbingers that increasing penetration is likely to lead to a very expensive and unreliable electrical energy system.
The country isn’t the image the travel posters promote. More than 80% of Australians live within thirty miles of the coast and an even bigger percentage in urban areas. The big cities are hundreds of miles apart around the continental edge. These factors have had a major influence on their grid. Until quite recently, the system was primarily supported by large multi-unit coal fired power stations, located next to the coalfields. The transmission lines ran from them to the cities they served. There was very little interconnection. This was influenced by the very parochial political system.
Australia is a federal system, with six States and several Territories. The States jealously guarded their rights and had regular disputes with both their neighbours and the Federal Government. Interstate rivalry can go beyond a joke. Each State originally ran their own electricity system. Gradually this expanded and interconnectors between States were put in. As well as the AC lines, there are three DC interconnectors including a near 200 mile undersea cable joining Tasmania to the mainland. The interconnectors are ties between the State grids allowing interstate flow, but they often act as chokepoints.
In the 90s, the National Electricity Market (NEM) started. The name is a misnomer. Western Australia, about a third of the country, isn’t a part of it as it is too far away to link. Neither are the numerous isolated towns not connected to anywhere. Part 1 deals with grid as it is now in the Eastern and South-eastern States.
The management and operation of the electrical system is complex and mainly market driven. At the top is the Energy Regulator, a federal agency enforces the rules, monitors the markets, sets the revenue for the monopolies and is the arbitrator for disputes. Together with them is AEMC (Australian Energy Market Commission) who make and amend the rules but they can’t propose them. The federal AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) is the System Operator, running their electricity (and gas) markets. The market is run on a merit order dispatch, subject to load requirements and constraints. Negative pricing is allowed to ensure must run generation. For every trading period, originally half an hour but now five minutes, the generators submit a power and price. This can be graduated. This is arranged in increasing price forming a total MW versus price stack. The price paid to all dispatched resources is where the load line crosses this merit order stack. Some plant may be constrained on or off, regardless of their place in the merit order. There are also a number of secondary markets for services like reserves and frequency control.
Most of the generators are owned by companies which seek to run at a profit. They can connect to the grid if they comply with the rules. There can be problems connecting if there are no local lines or the ones there are overloaded. They generate when dispatched. For those like wind and solar who are semi-scheduled (a euphemism for unreliable) there are special rules around their bids.
Each State has a transmission grid company that owns and operates their high voltage network. There are distribution companies for the low voltage networks that have territories for which they are responsible. For example, NSW (New South Wales) has three of these. Both Transmission and Distribution are natural monopolies so are run as regulated ones.
There are a myriad of electricity retailers. Some are generator based retailers (gentailers), providing a customer load for their generation. Most retailers have longer term contracts with generation companies for their load requirements. There are niche suppliers who run on spot market prices but have backup hedges for their load requirements. Some market gas or internet as a package. The NEM supplies around 9 million customers – they are the group that ultimately pay the cost of both operation and capital development.
To this market has to be added the uncontrolled domestic generation by solar panels. These make up a significant and increasing part of the generation base. In one state one day, they provided over 90% of the instantaneous generation. The installations are supported by subsidies and generous feed-in tariffs. Most households do not have batteries.
AEMO does the forecasting. They look at factors like government policy, load predictions, generation development plans, system security requirements and the like. They use these to put out a variety of regular reports; some general, some specific, detailing what changes need to be made. The transmission companies are responsible for execution and to get funding approval from the regulator. As well as these, if a major incident occurs, they will put out a report detailing what happened, why and what changes need to be made. These often feed back into the other reports.
That is how it all fits together. Needless to say, the bureaucracy cost is high and there is a lot of employment for administrators and lawyers. The maps here show the location in each State of the transmission system and generators, both existing and proposed ones. The NEM supplies around 9 million customers – they are the group that ultimately pay the cost of both operation and capital development.
Cost to consumers
The renewables are subsidised to varying extents. Because it can be present at different levels and through different forms right down to the domestic level, it seems no one is exactly sure how much renewables are subsidized. However, the power price has risen over the 40 years at twice the rate of inflation with prices really taking off in 2007, coincident with increased renewable energy target. The authors are unaware of any detailed breakdown of exactly what has caused this rise other than the corelation with RET (Renewable Energy Target). The power price is still going up. We note the Ukraine war was blamed for part of the rises, even though Australia imports no electricity or thermal power station fuel. In contrast with reality, the AEMC just two years ago, and others more recently, predicted power would be getting cheaper by now. Even if it is not in the power bill, the price of these subsidies comes from somewhere and eventually are paid for by the taxpayer.
Where the Renewables are currently at
Wind and solar, the unreliables, are now a significant part of the current NEM generation but the backbone is still coal – over 60% of the energy. Wind is less than 15% and grid solar 5%. The snapshot below when the sun wasn’t shinning shows the contribution coal still makes. There is also the significant presence of domestic PV. Because it is mainly behind the meter, there is no accurate data on its precise magnitude. But scaling up the contribution of grid solar and allowing for less efficient installations, it would be in the order of another 10%. However, even at those levels, the intermittency and unpredictability has had major detrimental impacts on power stability. Note the instantaneous power contribution can be a lot higher that the numbers quoted above. This article mainly looks at just the broader problems of its unpredictability. Later postings may cover a more detailed analysis of some specific problems that have occurred so far.
Management of the grid on a day-to-day basis depends on reliable generation and dispatchability. The renewables offer neither. For wind, there is often the mantra that the wind is blowing somewhere. The actual data does not back that up. A skeptic has for a number of years compiled the daily wind generation on the NEM. The results are revealing. The graph shown below is for just one month, June 2022. There is a synchronicity in the output of all the windfarms. To cope with the drop in those declines from wind, that is a lot of power that needs to be quickly ramped up. If the wind isn’t blowing and it is night-time, where will the energy to make up the dip come from? The mainstay 400MW+ coal units that form the background of the energy supply can take three days to get to full load if cold.
Solar can be just as bad. On 1st and 4th July, 2022, the power from solar those days in Queensland was only a small fraction of what it had been the previous week or so. On the 4th, there was a cloud bank over all of eastern half of state all day and little wind production as well. The interconnectors from NSW were at rating with imports and the market price was at the maximum $15,000/MWh.
Proponents of the renewables boast about how places like South Australia (SA) achieved near 100% renewable energy generation, often around the middle of the day, implying they could do it all the time. What they don’t say, because it spoils the narrative, is a lot more instructive. Look at the generation profile below of one such day. They had to keep the gas turbines on to provide inertia. These had to generate most of the load before dawn and at dusk because the wind wasn’t there. Battery provided very little. The balancing interconnectors to Victoria that allowed near 20% export or coal fired power to come in were important if not essential. Without the gas power and the Heywood line, SA would have been in real trouble.
Even on a “normal” day, the merit order in SA is akin to a switch. When the sun is out and the wind is blowing, the merit order is in negative pricing. When it’s not, prices go up, often around $400/MWh. That raises costs for the distribution companies which pass it on their customers.
Heywood’s interconnector play a lot bigger everyday role in buffering SA’s erratic generation than renewables proponents will admit. In the right conditions, up to 40% of the State’s load come in through its lines. That stabilises its voltage as the frequency is locked onto that of the NEM. There is a smaller interconnector from north-western Victoria, but this is DC so it has a lot less of a role. Heywood’s benefit was demonstrated during an islanding outage in November. During the outage it cost the grid operators in just two days $22M just to provide Frequency Control services. These are what used to be called governor control on grids with a lot of inertia and big steam turbines. On modern grids, many thermal plants, especially gas turbines can run in this mode. Things often happen a lot faster with less conventional generation, so the corrections of frequency control have to be sped up. Grid operators promote batteries are capable of this function, but that is making a virtue out of a necessity. All those islanding costs will need to be paid by either the power consumer or the taxpayer. That is why SA has the most expensive power of any of the mainland States in the NEM.
The examples above show the unpredictability NEM grid operators have had to regularly cope with. It is relatively easy to match load and generation when conditions are just right. However, that it generally takes a very fine balance backed up by a lot of very expensive plant infrastructure. Much of it is not needed for day-to-day operations. However, when things go wrong, they can turn catastrophic in a very short time. The grid power supply to major infrastructure within a city may be 99.99% reliable, but can it cope with the power unpredictably being out for an hour a year which that number is? Reliable electricity isn’t just a nice to have for modern life, it is essential.
Forty years ago, Australia had an electricity system delivering cheap, reliable power. That is no longer the case. Development and change have been driven by politics and dogma, not engineering and economics. Things that work are being replaced by that which looks good to virtue signallers, especially to those that don’t understand the issue. Prices have risen a lot faster than inflation. Even then, the number on the power bill is probably not the full cost as there are hidden ones. The authors are unaware of any recent study of the price that takes into account or even identifies all the subsidies. However, for the money expended, they should have had a capable, robust, gold-plated system. It isn’t. The system staggers from crisis to crisis, the solution usually being more rules, market interventions and invariably, a subsidy. The price of electricity fluctuates between glut and scarcity, even on a daily basis. Large industrial users like smelters are downsizing, offshoring, or getting another subsidy. Australia used to be referred to as the lucky country. That may no longer be the case.
Next up: “Australia Part 2; A Grid revolution around the Corner? Or Just the Madness of a Crowds?” Will look at efforts within Australia to reduce the need for synchronous generators and allow for high penetration of renewables. Additional posts may follow covering other issues within Australia.
Bio: Chris Morris is a long-time but irregular commenter on Climate Etc. He is a semi-retired power station engineer in New Zealand.
However, if the so-called wind and solar ‘transition’ continues unchecked, a generation from now, talk about having electricity as and when we need it – and being able to comfortably pay for whatever we use – will be met with plenty of blank looks.
These days it takes some time and effort to explain to millennials what it was to have power on tap, whatever the weather, at prices everyone could afford.
However, if the so-called wind and solar ‘transition’ continues unchecked, a generation from now, talk about having electricity as and when we need it – and being able to comfortably pay for whatever we use – will be met with plenty of blank looks.
James McSweeney uses the device of a British winter’s night, a dozen years from now, to paint a picture of the dismal future that awaits us. But much of what James has to say about the parlous state of Britain’s power supply, relates to the here and now.
2035: the end of civilisation The Critic James McSweeney 10 February 2023
On a cold, windless December night, a rare bout of religious fervour has broken out in the control room. Not usually given to spirituality, the station controller finds himself whispering a prayer for a change in weather as the clock ticks down to New Year’s Day, 2035. Shaken from a vague recollection of Luke 4:12 by the sound of fireworks, the seasoned engineer takes a deep breath and orders his subordinates to disconnect the gas turbine — a ritual being repeated at power stations across the country. There is a moment’s peace, and then the lights go out. Miles away, the staff of the Electricity National Control Centre watch helplessly as the sudden drop in power collapses the entire national grid.
Despair gives way to morbid laughter a few hours later, when the prayed-for wind arrives in force — frying dump load systems and cables. Across the country, heat wishes its final farewell to homes as electric pumps cease to function. Chargeless electric cars pointlessly litter the streets. Well accustomed to rolling blackouts, the public have stocked-up on diesel generators, but the closure of pumps following the 2030 ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars has already caused shortages and rationing. Those who can afford the power for a television tune in the following evening for Prime Minister’s candlelit address, as he congratulates the nation on its progress towards Net Zero and heralds the “Green Industrial Revolution”.
Readers will be relieved to know that the described events are unlikely to transpire. They do, however, illustrate what would happen if politicians do as they say they will: ban petrol and diesel-powered cars and gas boilers, and switch the electric grid to net-zero generation by 2035.
Having looked into this extensively, I can confirm that there is no plan
Is this melodramatic? I invite prospective doomsday preppers (and sceptics) to examine the existing roadmap to 2035 and judge for themselves. Expect to discover potholes, gullies and gaping ravines which point to startling negligence on the part of the cartographers. Tinfoil hats on — let’s take a look.
According to National Grid, the amount of electricity Britain can hope to generate at any one time (its “de-rated generation capacity”) is around 62GW. Discount the intermittent (i.e., often unavailable) sources like wind and solar, and the figure falls to 57.5GW. This is slightly lower than peak demand, an uncomfortable reality which explains why National Grid is paying households to use less electricity. By 2035, planned nuclear closures, with the phase out of gas, oil and coal (plus the opening of Hinckley C) would reduce the figure to 15.4GW. That leaves us with a supply shortfall of 43.6GW — the equivalent of 17 Hinckley C-style nuclear power stations. At current build rates, it would take over a century to replace that lost generation.
This leads us to a key question: will peak demand be the same in 2035?
The short answer is “no”. The government is currently subsidising the roll-out of electric heat pumps and plans to ban the sale of natural gas boilers by 2035. Researchers at UCL recently modelled the impact of a 90 per cent uptake of heat pumps, based on the (cold) winter of 2010, and found that demand would sky-rocket to 130GW — 70GW higher than with gas boilers. Thankfully, the Government is only targeting a 25-40 per cent rollout by 2035, but this still implies a 19.5-31GW surge in demand.
Next, we must look at the effect of electric vehicles (EVs). Here projections become more difficult. The Government plans to ban the sale of conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030 and allow the sale of “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs) — which charge directly from the grid — until 2035. By 2040, it wants 100 per cent of cars to be net-zero emitters.
What does this mean for car ownership? In December, EVs made up 33 per cent of new car registrations. Even if that market share stops growing, churn rates mean we’d expect 14 per cent of cars to be EVs by 2029. If the ratio of EV to PHEV sales remains the same after the 2030 ban, we’d expect nearly 50 per cent of vehicles to be EVs by 2035. This is all highly speculative — it may be that the lithium shortage and rising electricity costs lead British motorists to mimic their Cuban counterparts: constantly doing up old bangers. On the other hand, the shutting of pumps, a shortage of mechanics and government incentives may push ownership in the other direction. Let’s take the 50 per cent figure — which doesn’t account for the high probability of a growing EV sales share until 2030 — as a conservative estimate.
Even this modest figure bodes ill. Research by a team at Berkley looking into the impacts of 50 per cent EV take-up on the US west coast grid found that, if most people opt for “smart-charging” during low-demand hours, peak demand would increase by 25 per cent (or 27GW). Adjust down for UK car ownership and mileage, and this translates to around 6GW. The National Grid ESO is more optimistic about EV uptake than I am; it predicts demand will increase by 7.5-10GW with smart charging (and 10-20GW without) by 2035.
Taken together, then, EVs and heat pumps would increase peak demand to at least 84GW by 2035 (and that’s without accounting for population growth or rising use of air conditioning). This leaves us with a 68.6GW shortfall — the equivalent of 27 Hinckley Cs. Put simply: we cannot build this in 12 years.
There must be a plan, right? You would think turning off 73 per cent of the grid whilst forcing everyone to buy electric boilers and cars isn’t the sort of decision a politician makes on a whim, or for the sake of a press release.
Having looked into this extensively, I can confirm that there is no plan.
The Government’s 2035 policy paper makes no attempt to guess peak demand and makes no mention of intermittency. At best, there is a vague reference to long-term storage technologies “in the early stages of development that may prove to be game-changing”. What are these technologies? How will we roll out thousands of gigawatt hours’ worth of them within 12 years? Like a spurned suitor, the reader is kept guessing.
No one had even a vague picture of the scale of the problem
Last year’s British Energy Security Strategy claims, “we can only secure a big enough baseload of reliable power for our island by drawing on nuclear,” yet concedes we will only be able to build “up to 24GW by 2050”. No attempt to explore the implications of these two statements is offered.
The House of Commons’ Climate Audit Committee’s report on energy security is even more negligent, arguing that the UK’s energy security needs can be met by wind and containing not one section addressing intermittency. Indeed, the three uses of the term in the report suggest the authors don’t understand what it means.
Some policy papers talk up the ability of gas generators to stay running by employing carbon capture storage (CCS) to extract the CO2 they produce. This technology is not in large-scale use anywhere on earth, with good reason. In 2021, the UK’s gas-based power stations released 59.6 million metric tonnes of CO2 — equivalent to 156 per cent the volume of oil we extracted from the North Sea. The CCS solution would require us to create the infrastructure to collect that gas, compress it, transport it to the equivalent of an offshore oil rig, and pump it underground. As you consider the practicalities and costs of creating this “reverse-North Sea Oil” infrastructure, bear in mind that we would have to double our installed gas generation to account for both growing demand and the fact that CCS power stations burn 10-15 per cent more gas to produce the same output. I can find no evidence that the Government is about to embark the nation on this bold adventure any time soon.
This all raises the question: how has no one noticed the impending cliff edge?
In fact, people have. In 2017, Professor Dieter Helm was invited to conduct an independent Cost of Energy Review for the Government. His report pointed out the failure to back up renewables and estimated that the grid would have already suffered catastrophic failure by the mid-2010s if the Recession hadn’t suppressed long-term economic growth. For his troubles, he was attacked by the Government-sponsored Committee on Climate Change (CCC) and ignored by politicians. A valiant attempt by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers to raise the alarm met a similar fate.
Two weeks ago, when I had the opportunity to question the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Environment on the shortfall, I was met by a failure to understand the difference between annual and peak demand. No one had even a vague picture of the scale of the problem or what needed to be built. Chris Skidmore MP — author of the recent Net Zero Review — appeared confused by the line of questioning and repeated his demand for faster cuts to fossil fuels.
The sad fact is that most MPs are not trained engineers — in fact, half of them can’t wrap their heads around basic probability. To expect them to keep track of the 22 organisations responsible for energy policy is expecting too much. The more complex the bureaucracy, the more politicians rely on the assurances of appointed experts.
Civil servants react to inconvenient hurdles by fudging figures
Herein lies the problem — as I have previously covered, civil servants are under a statutory obligation to plan as if they can meet Carbon Budgets. They react to inconvenient hurdles by fudging figures. The CCC, on which the Government relies for projections, is a climate activist-staffed organisation that has been caught lying.
For their part, businesses are following government incentives. Parliament is swarming with lobbyists eager to offer MPs pitches on their latest green project and lap up subsidies. Held hostage to politics by North Sea permitting and windfall taxes, big oil producers are eager to proclaim their willingness to take part in improbableschemes in order to build political capital and cash in on public money. Some even sponsor parliamentary groups to get a foot in the door.
Together, these factors create an ecosystem in which people with no understanding of energy policy are encouraged to overhaul the foundations of our society on the advice of liars.
How do we break the death spiral?
This winter, I was hopeful that National Grid’s blackout warning would shake politicians awake. I was wrong. It now seems only the real deal will do, and recent events suggest this reckoning may not be far away. In December, a surging demand from heat pumps almost knocked out the entire eastern portion of the US national grid. Disaster was only avoided by quick-thinking local controllers ordering rolling blackouts in the Carolinas.
The UK is in rougher shape. Last summer, London narrowly avoided a blackout thanks to an emergency diversion of power from Belgium nuclear plants. These plants have since shut down. “Low frequency events” — indicating an inadequate electricity supply — used to happen once a month; they now happen virtually every day.
Grid failure, combined with the rocketing energy prices, must eventually force a political reckoning. When that happens, we will need to have a sober conversation about how it came to be that our political class chose to gamble the future of our country on the weather. If not, we may find ourselves in the same shoes as our imagined engineer: huddling in a coat in his dark home and clutching at a vaguely remembered Bible verse from his childhood: “thou shalt not tempt the Lord.” The Critic
The four leading alternatives, from biomass to hydrogen, are expensive and/or would require huge imports or swathes of farmland, we’re told. Another fail for climate obsessives it seems. Is Plan B – choking off demand – on the fanatics’ drawing board yet?
The four leading alternatives, from biomass to hydrogen, are expensive and/or would require huge imports or swathes of farmland, we’re told. Another fail for climate obsessives it seems. Is Plan B – choking off demand – on the fanatics’ drawing board yet? – – – The quest for guilt-free flying may have been knocked off course by a broad study that has concluded there is “no clear or single net zero alternative to jet fuel”, reports Sky News.
The four most viable alternatives “offer some carbon savings but are not ideal”, according to the review by the Royal Society academy of scientists.
Replacing jet fuel with biomass, for example, would require half the UK’s farmland just to sustain current passenger levels.
But the government is planning for levels to soar by 70% by 2050, representing an additional 200 million passengers.
Switching to sustainable fuel is key to its “jet zero” strategy to turn aviation green, which it touts as a plan to offer “guilt-free flying”.
Flying is responsible for 8% of UK emissions and around 2.4% globally, and also releases other forms of pollution.
The lack of alternatives makes the carbon intensive industry one of the hardest to decarbonise as the world works towards net zero emissions by 2050.
“The requirements for an alternative to jet fuel, to kerosene, is energy density, has to be sufficient to sustain short and long haul flights, it must be produced globally at scale, it must be cost-competitive and it must be implementable by 2050,” said Professor Graham Hutchings, chair of the report’s working group.
Other options, such as hydrogen, ammonia and synthetic fuels require a massive increase in renewable energy production, or are expensive or require substantial modifications to existing aircraft.
Producing enough green hydrogen – which is created by splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen with renewably generated electricity – would require more than doubling or tripling the UK’s renewable capacity.
A fuel from biomass can be used in the same aircraft engine but there are concerns about its sustainability.
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