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 recent article posted by The Epoch Times, “Phillips 66 to Close Los Angeles Oil Refinery,” explains how Phillips 66 is shutting down one of its refineries in response to uncertainty and “market dynamics;” uncertain dynamics created by the state’s climate and energy policies. This is true. California’s government is actively hostile towards anything related to oil and gas, so refineries shutting down should not come as a surprise.
A recent article posted by The Epoch Times, “Phillips 66 to Close Los Angeles Oil Refinery,” explains how Phillips 66 is shutting down one of its refineries in response to uncertainty and “market dynamics;” uncertain dynamics created by the state’s climate and energy policies. This is true. California’s government is actively hostile towards anything related to oil and gas, so refineries shutting down should not come as a surprise.
Epoch reports that Phillips 66 “said on Oct. 16 that it plans to shut down its refinery in the Los Angeles area of California in the fourth quarter of 2025.” CEO Mark Lashier released a statement explaining that uncertainty and “market dynamics” affected their confidence in the long term “sustainability” of the plant and were responsible for Phillips 66 choosing the site for closure. Another spokesperson told Epoch that “low profitability” compared to other company assets was a factor, but claimed that Assembly Bill X2 – a bill that applies heavier regulatory burdens on oil refiners—was not strictly responsible. The spokesperson told Epoch that Phillips 66 isn’t quitting California entirely, but will find “new ways to serve California markets” which will increasingly include importing gasoline.
Because of the shutdown, California will lose production of 85,000 barrels of gasoline and 65,000 barrels of diesel and jet fuel every day.
Other oil companies responded more honestly and forceful to California’s new efforts to dictate refinery prices, with one Chevron executive stating flat out that “California’s policy choices have led to a gasoline shortage by driving suppliers away,” in a letter sent to the California legislature back in January.
Although Phillips 66 tried to play nice with California’s government, by saying that the particular bill wasn’t responsible, others Epoch interviewed were more directly tied the closure and California’s high gasoline prices to the state’s anti-fossil fuel policies. California Fuel and Convenience Alliance’s governmental affairs and regulatory director Alessandra Magnasco told Epoch that “[t] here is no mystery to our high gas prices—exploding overhead costs to run our stations, costly environmental regulations, and now, with even less supply in the market, every Californian will end up paying higher prices in this government-created energy crisis.” She went on to say that “refinery closures are a direct result of policies that make it increasingly difficult to maintain and expand critical infrastructure.”
This is absolutely correct, and good on Epoch for reporting it.
California’s fuel prices are consistently higher than the national average, currently sitting at $4.65 per gallon versus the national average of $3.19, according to AAA’s gas price tracking website. Californians already pay about $1.42 per gallon in state and federal taxes, and each new fuel standards rule and bit of anti-oil legislation pushes the costs for fuel in the state higher.
Importing fuel from out of state is going to make it more expensive, and it is unlikely that Phillips is the only oil refiner that will soon be feeling the crush.
Higher fuel prices in California will make everything more expensive for Californians, not just filling their tanks, because as Climate Realism previously reported in “Thanks, Center Square, For Reporting on the Effects of High Fossil Fuel Prices on Food Prices,” high fuel prices impact the cost of food in particular. Diesel fuel powers trucks and tractors and other equipment necessary for planting and harvest, as well as eventual transportation and processing.
The worst part is, California is not bringing just themselves down with their insanity – they are dragging other states down with them. California refineries export fuel to neighboring states like Nevada and Arizona, and their governors openly opposed the bill because of the impact it will have on their own fuel prices.
Imagining that laying yet another stack of regulations on top of the already overburdened California oil and gas industry would not result in refinery and other fuel business closures is ignorant. The Epoch Times does a good job of pointing out the implications of California’s energy policies, displaying the real casualties of Newsom’s and the Democratic leadership in the state’s efforts to restrict fossil fuel use, lost jobs in the state and residents paying higher prices.
Emma Pinchbeck is now head of the Climate Change Committee.
Six years ago, when she was Executive Director of Renewable UK, she proclaimed that CfDs would “secure low-cost energy for consumers”:
RenewableUK’s Executive Director Emma Pinchbeck has made a case for wind, wave and tidal energy to the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS) Select Committee, which is now considering the findings of Professor Dieter Helm’s Cost of Energy Review.
“An energy system led by renewables is the lowest cost option for the UK. I’d bet my house on renewables. A smart energy system can deliver consumers savings of £8bn a year between now and 2030,” Pinchbeck told the Committee, further saying that Contract for Difference (CfD) auctions are the best way to secure low-cost energy for consumers, highlighting that cost reductions in offshore wind are “unprecedented in any other sector.”
The usual font of misinformation, the Guardian, has an article claiming the following:
In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon.
The usual font of misinformation, the Guardian, has an article claiming the following:
In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon.
Hmmm, sez I as my bad number detector starts ringing … sounds fishy. Something on the order of 55% of emitted CO2 is sequestered and 45% remains airborne. Of this, some 75% is sequestered on land. So if land sequestration has “collapsed”, we should see an immediate jump in airborne CO2 of about 75% * 55% ≈ 41%. But I don’t recall seeing that in the data … hmmm.
And indeed, this jump in atmospheric CO2 is what the “preliminary findings” paper linked above uses as the basis of their claims about the carbon sinks, viz (emphasis mine):
In 2023, the CO2 growth rate was 3.37 ± 0.11 ppm at Mauna Loa, 86% above the previous year, and hitting a record high since observations began in 1958, while global fossil fuel CO2 emissions only increased by 0.6 ± 0.5%. This implies an unprecedented weakening of land and ocean sinks, and raises the question of where and why this reduction happened.
…
The CO2 growth rate in the decade 2013-2022 has averaged at 2.42 ± 0.08 ppm yr -1 . In 2023, it increased to a record high value of 3.37 ± 0.11 ppm yr -1 at the Mauna Loa station (MLO).
Whoa, biggest jump in the record, which “implies an unprecedented weakening of land and ocean sinks“! EVERYONE PANIC!!
So as is my habit, I went to the Mauna Loa site and got the CO2 data. It’s monthly, so I converted it to annual data. Here is the result, showing the growth rate for a given year as the average value for the previous year subtracted from the average value for the given year.
Figure 1. Annual change in atmospheric CO2
Hmmm, sez I once again… the change from 2022 to 2023 looks perfectly average, and at 2.5 ppmv, it’s certainly not the 3.37 ppmv they claim. Why would that be? They can’t be calculating the difference in annual averages.
A closer look at what the NOAA folks are doing when they calculate what they call the “annual mean rate of growth” explains the mystery.
The annual mean rate of growth of CO2 in a given year is the difference in concentration between the end of December and the start of January of that year. If used as an average for the globe, it would represent the sum of all CO2 added to, and removed from, the atmosphere during the year by human activities and by natural processes.
There is a small amount of month-to-month variability in the CO2 concentration that may be caused by anomalies of the winds or weather systems arriving at Mauna Loa. This variability would not be representative of the underlying trend for the northern hemisphere which Mauna Loa is intended to represent.
Therefore, we finalize our estimate for the annual mean growth rate of the previous year in March, by using the average of the most recent November-February months, corrected for the average seasonal cycle, as the trend value for January 1. Our estimate for the annual mean growth rate (based on the Mauna Loa data) is obtained by subtracting the same four-month average centered on the previous January 1.
Now, that all sounds perfectly legit, but doesn’t explain the large 2023 value. So I looked at the monthly data. Figure 2 below shows the more recent of the four-month November-February periods that they are averaging.
Figure 2. Year over year difference, monthly CO2 data. Blue bars highlight the periods from November to February used in their calculations
Following their instructions, I can replicate their calculations exactly. And in Figure 2, we can see why they’ve gotten such a high number—by chance, the data centered on Jan 1, 2024 occurred during a peak time of annual CO2 rise, and the data centered on Jan 1, 2023 occurred during a low time.
What difference does that make? Well, they’ve taken a four-month average starting in November, and compared that to the same period of the previous year … but they could just as easily have started their four-month average in January or June and done the same calculation of annual change.
But here’s the thing. If they’d chanced to start their four-month average in January rather than November, instead of the difference from 2022 to 2023 being the largest jump in the record, it would only be the 24th largest out of the 64 years. If they’d started in February, 11th largest. And if they’d started in June, it would be the 7th largest jump in the record.
And of course, this means that their claim that the carbon sink “is failing” is a totally falsified artifact of their calculation method. It depends entirely on the random choice of the month they’ve used to start their four-month average, and if they’d started in January, they’d have been forced to conclude that there’s nothing unusual going on with the carbon sink in the slightest.
Having been caught by confirmation bias more than once, I can only have compassion for the authors. They were looking for a climate disaster, they thought they’d found one, and unfortunately, because that confirmed their preconceptions, they didn’t look any deeper.
However … they’re still totally wrong. The data doesn’t show any change in the carbon sinks. It’s just an artifact of the odd way that they are calculating the “annual” change.
My very best to everyone, I’m going outside to see the moon.
w.
As Usual: When you comment, I ask that you quote the exact words you’re discussing … it avoids endless misunderstandings.
The recent devastating floods in western North Carolina were not unprecedented, but were certainly rare. A recent masters thesis examining flood deposits in the banks of the French Broad River over the last 250-300 years found that a flood in 1769 produced water levels approximately as high as those reported in the recent flood from Hurricane Helene. So, yes, the flood was historic.
The recent devastating floods in western North Carolina were not unprecedented, but were certainly rare. A recent masters thesis examining flood deposits in the banks of the French Broad River over the last 250-300 years found that a flood in 1769 produced water levels approximately as high as those reported in the recent flood from Hurricane Helene. So, yes, the flood was historic.
Like all severe weather events, a superposition of several contributing factors are necessary to make an event “severe”, such as those that led to the NC floods. In that case, a strong hurricane combined with steering currents that would carry the hurricane on a track that would produce a maximum amount of orographic uplift on the east side of the Smoky Mountains was necessary in order to produce the widespread 12-20 inch rainfall amounts, and the steering currents had to be so strong that the hurricane would penetrate far inland with little weakening.
Again, all severe weather events represent the somewhat random combining of amplifying components: In the case of Hurricane Helene, they produced the unlucky massive flooding result that the region had not seen in hundreds of years.
The Random Component of Precipitation Variability
The rare superposition of several rare contributing factors, or the more common superposition of more common factors, can be examined through statistics when one examines many events. For example, it has long been known that precipitation statistics gathered over many years exhibit a log-normal frequency distribution. Simply put, the lowest precipitation amounts are the most frequent, and the highest amounts are the least frequent. This is the statistical result of the superposition of contributing factors, such as (in the case of excessive rainfall) abundant humidity, an unstable air mass, low-level convergence of air, a stationary or slow-moving storm (In western NC, the mountains providing uplift are stationary), etc.
Extreme precipitation events are (of course) the most rare, and as such, they can exhibit somewhat weird behavior. This is why hydrologists disagree over the usefulness of the term “100-year flood”, since most weather records don’t even extend beyond 100 years. One would probably need 1,000 years of rainfall records to get a good estimate of what constitutes a 100-year event.
Simulating Extreme Rainfall Events through Statistics
It is easy in Excel to make a simulated time series of rainfall totals having a log-normal distribution. For example, the following plot of hypothetical daily totals for the period 1900 through 2024 shows an seemingly increasing incidence of days with the heaviest rainfall (red circles). Could this be climate change?
But remember, these are randomly generated numbers. Just like you can flip a coin and sometimes get 4 heads (or 4 tails) in a row doesn’t mean there is some underlying cause for getting the same result several times in a row. If we extend the above plot from 125 years to 500 years, we see (following plot) that there is no long-term increasing trend in heavy rainfall amounts:
Black Swan Events
Or, how about this one, which I will call “The Great Flood of August 28, 2022”?:
Note that this event (generated with just log-normally distributed random numbers) far exceeds any other daily event in that 500-year plot.
The point here is that too often we tend to attribute severe weather events to some underlying cause that is emerging over time, such as global warming. And, I believe, some of the changes we have seen in nature are due to the (weak and largely benign) warming trend most regions of the world have experienced in the last 100 years.
But these events can occur without any underlying long-term change in the climate system. To attribute every change we see to global warming is just silly, especially when it comes to precipitation related events, such as flood… or even drought.
A “Random Drought”
Now changing our daily random log-normal precipitation generator to a monthly time scale, we can look at how precipitation amounts change from decade to decade. Why monthly? Well, weather variations (and even climate cycles) tend to have preferred time scales. Several days for synoptic weather patterns, quasi-monthly for some kinds of persistent weather patterns, and even yearly or decadal for some natural internal climate cycles.
When I generate random log-normal time series at monthly time scales, and compute decadal averages over the last 120 years, seldom is the long-term trend close to zero. Here’s one what shows low precipitation for the most recent three decades, just purely through chance:
That looks like something we could attribute to drought in California, right? Yet, it’s just the result of random numbers.
Or, we can choose one of the random simulations that has an increasing trend:
I’m sure someone could tie that to global warming.
A Final Word About 100-Year Flood Events
There seems to be some misunderstanding about 100-year events. These almost always apply to a specific location. So, you could have 100-year events every year in the U.S., and as long they are in different locations, there is nothing unusual about it. A 100-year flood in western North Carolina this year could be followed by a 100-year flood in eastern North Carolina next year. That doesn’t mean 100-year floods are getting more frequent.
I’m not claiming that all severe weather is due to randomness. Only that there is a huge random component to it, and that’s what makes attribution of any kind of severe weather event to climate change essentially impossible.
A recent release from CarbonBrief, “How a UK government-backed Company has Fueled Gas Power in Africa,” reported that “a little-known company that is majority-owned by a UK government development body and backed by UK aid money has been pouring investment into gas power across Africa.”
“Social justice” demands energy freedom and energy exceptionalism for the poorest of the poor. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday.
A recent release from CarbonBrief, “How a UK government-backed Company has Fueled Gas Power in Africa,” reported that “a little-known company that is majority-owned by a UK government development body and backed by UK aid money has been pouring investment into gas power across Africa.”
British International Investment (BII)’s Globeleq has 1,120 MW of gas-fired generation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Tanzania to serve the electricity impoverished. UK climate activists are up in arms (“don’t gas Africa”), urging divestment from fossil fuels. “Let them have wind and solar” is the mantra, as if these dilute, intermittent substitutes were not expensive and unreliable.
Globeleq is adding new gas capacity to keep its portfolio at 85 percent natural gas.
BII says that in countries such as Mozambique, where only around 40% of people have access to electricity, gas power is “essential”. It argues that such nations often lack “baseload” power provided by gas, which can allow the integration of more renewables.
CarbonBrief continues:
This position has been supported by many African governments, with many advocating for the development of their own gas reserves. Many have noted that Africa currently produces a tiny share of the planet’s emissions and is home to nearly 600 million people without electricity access. Scaling up fossil fuels could be a route to development and wealth, they say.
—————
Yes, the UK government should divest itself of Globeleq and otherwise stay out of African energy politics. But what about the moral case for the best energies to address poverty, a theme that has inspired Paul Driessen (author, Eco-Imperialism) to note:
The ideological environmental movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates these people’s most basic human rights, denying them economic opportunities, the chance for better lives, the right to rid their countries of diseases that were vanquished long ago in Europe and the United States.
African producers have not and will not agree to phasing out fossil fuels. Unlike the rest of the developed world, the continent has not yet had the chance to transform its economies through oil and gas. In order to develop, grow and address concerns such as energy poverty and industrialization, oil and gas will need to remain central for years to come.
Also consider the idea of Laszlo Varro, vice-president of global business environment at Shell, who told his 20,000+ social media followers:
A very interesting debate: British green activists protest against gas fired power generation investment in Mozambique and Ivory Coast. They come from a society which has a per capita energy consumption around 10 times most African countries. Their privileged prosperity is based on a national wealth accumulated from past fossil fuel use and colonial exploitation. Now they are upset that former colonial nations are using their own gas resources to power development.
Varro suggests this exercise for the energy privileged:
Mozambique and Ivory Coast should create a special, green activist internship visa. This will enable British activists to come for a year and get a work permit. However, this would be valid only for the non-electrified regions of the country, not to the usual development aid practice of Western experts living in an air conditioned compound powered by a diesel generator in the backyard. The special, fossil free work permit will enable the activists to fetch water from the well in a bucket, without electric pumps and steel pipes. They will be able to tend the land and grow food without diesel tractors and gas based fertilizer, cook on an open fire, store the food without refrigerators and bring the produce to a market in a pushcart. They should definitely get a solar mobile charger so that they can share how happy their life is without natural gas in social media.
Laszlo Varro added:
Needless to say the UK government should have an open minded dialogue with those activists who completed a one year internship and still believe that African countries should not develop natural gas. In addition, if any democratically elected African government expresses concerns about the harmful effects of developing their domestic gas resources and using them to expand electricity supply then UK foreign policy should pay a respectful attention.
Indeed. “Social justice” demands energy freedom and energy exceptionalism for the poorest of the poor. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday.
Robert Jenrick has promised to tear up the Climate Change Act if he becomes Tory leader and eventually Prime Minister. The Telegraphhas more.
He has said he will scrap major pieces of Blair and Brown era legislation including the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act under a “Great Reform Act” if he makes it to No. 10.
His plans include scrapping carbon budgets and unburdening businesses of equality laws which have been criticised for driving positive discrimination and political correctness in the workplace.
He described carbon budgets as “Soviet-style five-year plans” and claimed they impede the building of critical national infrastructure projects.
He would also take aim at the public sector equality duty in the Equality Act and section 6 of the Human Rights Act, which gives the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) force in British law.
“The next Conservative government must do better to deliver a genuinely conservative country. We must repeal and amend the Climate Change Act, Equality Act and Human Rights Act and restore decision-making to ministers accountable to parliament,” Mr Jenrick told the Telegraph.
He accused the Prime Minister of “planning a second disastrous Blairite revolution” and suggested he could repeal laws brought forward by the current Labour Government, including a mooted Race Equality Act that was included in Labour’s manifesto.
He has also pledged to scrap new quangos promised in Sir Keir Starmer’s manifesto, including Great British Energy, the Nationwide Climate Export Hubs and an Office for Value for Money.
Mr. Jenrick argued the Public Sector Equality Duty has “led to recruitment based on identity, not merit” and that “the chief beneficiary has been EDI consultants and those that peddle divisive and false narratives about Britain’s past”.
On carbon budgets, the Tory leadership candidate said: “It is ludicrous to set out soviet-style five-year plans at a sectoral level which specify where you plan to reduce carbon emissions. The state does not have sufficient understanding of the economy to do that well. It’s impeding us from building the critical national infrastructure we need.”
Mr. Jenrick’s plan is inspired by the Great Reform Act of 1832 which expanded democracy and swept away corruption in the British political system.
Stop Press: In another crowd-pleasing intervention, Jenrick has called for whole-life sentences for people convicted of grooming underage girls for sex. The Telegraphhas more.
Yet another region of the world has not been cooperating with the “global” warming narrative.
A new study‘s reconstructed temperatures show no net warming in Central China over the last 250 years.
Yet another region of the world has not been cooperating with the “global” warming narrative.
A new study‘s reconstructed temperatures show no net warming in Central China over the last 250 years.
The authors point out the observed temperatures from 1953-2020 closely align (r = 0.732) with the reconstructed 1953-2020 temperatures. This suggests the reconstructed temperature values extending to the 1770s may also align with the actual temperature trends.
“This indicates that our reconstructed sequence is very robust at high frequencies…”
Of course, studies like this cue the expected “It’s-not-global!” protestations.
But if we consider the Mauna Loa site in the Central Pacific, a location assumed to represent the “global” atmospheric CO2 values, we observe a lack of a warming trend in recent decades here too.
In the transition to so-called clean and green electricity, critical minerals and metals bring new challenges to electricity security.
Solar plants, wind farms, and EVs generally require more minerals to build than their fossil fuel-based counterparts. A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant. Since 2010, the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50% as the share of wind and solar renewables in new investments has risen.
Our electricity is increasingly dependent on rare earth minerals and metals mined for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries under atrocious slave labor and environmental conditions in other countries that the DOE and bureaucrats ignore.
China controls a stranglehold of 80% of the global supply monopoly on rare earth minerals and metals, with the Congo in Africa a 90% source of vital cobalt.
On a total component basis for an EV battery, graphite is about 25% to 28% of the whole EV battery. Turkey has the largest reserves of graphite, followed by Brazil and China. Together, these three countries accounted for 66% of the estimated world graphite reserves.
It should concern everyone that all those “blood minerals” come from mining at locations in the world that are never seen by environmentalists, policymakers, or EV buyers.
For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, just one Tesla EV battery requires the processing of more than 500,000 pounds of materials somewhere on the planet.
A battery for a heavy-duty electric truck can weigh up to 16,000 pounds, which is 16 times more than the Tesla battery!!!! A single truck battery requires 8,000,000 pounds of earth to be dug up. That’s astounding – digging up 8 million pounds of earth for each truck battery!
Policymakers setting “green” policies are oblivious to the reality that Electricity came AFTER the discovery of oil 200 years ago.
ALL electrical generation from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar are ALL built with the products, components, and equipment that are made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
All EVs, solar panels, and wind turbines are also built with products, components, and equipment made from crude oil derivatives.
Further, all cars, trucks, excavating equipment, cranes, merchant ships, planes, and trains are also made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
Our advanced society uses oil derivatives manufactured from black, cruddy crude oil to make fuels for larger jets, ships, and space launches and to make the 6,000 products made from oil that did not exist 200 years ago. If we weren’t such an advanced society, there would be no need for so-called “big oil.”
Demand for products made from oil is stressing the supply chain, thus continuously spiking the cost of products and fuels from fossil fuels to meet society’s materialistic demands.
Most importantly, there is a lost reality that the primary usage of crude oil is NOT for the generation of electricity but to manufacture derivatives and fuels, which are the ingredients of everything needed by economies and lifestyles to exist and prosper, i.e., all products that did not exist before the 1800s.
None of the six methods for generating electricity can manufacture anything to support a materialistic society! Electricity can charge an iPhone but cannot make the iPhone. Electricity can make the defibrillator work in the hospital, but it cannot make the defibrillator.
Products that need electricity, such as iPhones, defibrillators, computers, data centers, and X-ray machines, are also dependent on the petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil to make all the parts and components of every method to generate electricity.
“Big oil” only exists because of the wealthier countries being addicted to the products and fuels that are manufactured from fossil fuels that make OUR life more comfortable?” OUR needs for smaller and faster electronics and for bigger and faster planes, ships, and launches into outer space are the only reasons that crude oil is needed.
Thus, before we chastise “big oil”, we must ask ourselves, “How dare ME to continuously demand the products and fuels made from oil that make MY life more comfortable?”
Rick Amato’s Politics & Profits 8-minute conversation with Ronald Stein is an 8-minute video conversation on Your America TV that sheds light on the fact that those pursuing net-zero emissions may be oblivious to the reality that wind turbines and solar panels do different things than crude oil. “Mandatory Emissions (just in wealthy countries) To Achieve Net-Zero Is A Fool’s Game.”
Adding huge wind turbine blades and solar panels to generate electricity occasionally is the “green” scam of the century, as “renewables” are increasing fossil fuel demands, but those so-called renewables CANNOT make any products that are the basis of our materialistic world.
A recent McKinsey Global Institute report The hard stuff: Navigating the physical realities of the energy transition (McKinsey Report) describes the challenges of the energy transition transformation for those who want a decarbonized society. This post describes my review of the description of the power sector with respect to my primary concerns for the New York Climate Leadership & Community Leadership Act transition of the electric grid to zero-emissions by 2040.
A recent McKinsey Global Institute report The hard stuff: Navigating the physical realities of the energy transition (McKinsey Report) describes the challenges of the energy transition transformation for those who want a decarbonized society. This post describes my review of the description of the power sector with respect to my primary concerns for the New York Climate Leadership & Community Leadership Act transition of the electric grid to zero-emissions by 2040. Those concerns are the need for a dispatchable emissions-free resource (DEFR) and the enormous risk associated with determining how much DEFR must be deployed to prevent blackouts in electric grids that depend on variable renewable energy resources, .i.e., wind and solar.
The McKinsey Report describes the realities of the global clean energy transition that proponents claim is necessary to address the existential threat of climate change. I think the authors did a good job explaining many of the complicated issues associated with the energy transition. The scope of the report is enormous because they are trying to cover the entire global energy system:
The energy system consists of the production, conversion, delivery, and consumption of energy resources across sectors as both fuels and feedstocks (that is, inputs for the production of different materials). The system is a massive, interlocking physical entity that has been optimized over centuries. It has served billions of people—if not yet all of humanity—well. But in an era in which countries and companies around the world are aspiring to address climate change, the high emissions resulting from the current energy system are now firmly in focus. The world has duly embarked on a huge transformation, centered on switching from the high-emissions assets and processes on which the system is largely based to new low-emissions solutions.
The summary describes the key points in the report:
The energy transition is in its early stages, with about 10 percent of required deployment of low-emissions technologies by 2050 achieved in most areas. Optimized over centuries, today’s energy system has many advantages, but the production and consumption of energy account for more than 85 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Creating a low-emissions system, even while expanding energy access globally, would require deploying millions of new assets. Progress has occurred in some areas, but thus far has largely been in less difficult use cases.
Twenty-five interlinked physical challenges would need to be tackled to advance the transition. They involve developing and deploying new low-emissions technologies, and entirely new supply chains and infrastructure to support them.
About half of energy-related CO2 emissions reduction depends on addressing the most demanding physical challenges. Examples are managing power systems with a large share of variable renewables, addressing range and payload challenges in electric trucks, finding alternative heat sources and feedstocks for producing industrial materials, and deploying hydrogen and carbon capture in these and other use cases.
The most demanding challenges share three features. First, some use cases lack established low-emissions technologies that can deliver the same performance as high-emissions ones. Second, the most demanding challenges depend on addressing other difficult ones, calling for a systemic approach. Finally, the sheer scale of the deployment required is tough given constraints and the lack of a track record.
Understanding these physical challenges can enable CEOs and policy makers to navigate a successful transition. They can determine where to play offense to capture viable opportunities today, where to anticipate and address bottlenecks, and how best to tackle the most demanding challenges through a blend of innovation and system reconfiguration.
I am only going to consider the power sector and not the other six end-use sectors discussed. Twenty-five physical challenges are described for these sectors. Each of the challenges is described relative to the difficulty of the challenge. This review focuses on the power sector energy transition physical challenges that are shown in the following figure.
The description of the power sector physical challenges explains:
Addressing physical challenges in power is fundamental to the entire transition because abating emissions in the huge energy-consuming sectors—mobility, industry, and buildings—requires sweeping electrification under typical decarbonization scenarios. Two difficult challenges arise: managing the variability of renewables such as solar and wind, as they grow their share of total generation; and doing so specifically for emerging power systems that need to grow, often more rapidly and by more than advanced power systems. These two are classified as Level 3 because addressing variability challenges would require the use of novel technologies that have not yet been deployed commercially and face other substantial barriers. Four other challenges, classified as Level 2, relate to constraints on scaling more established technologies, inputs, and infrastructure, where accelerated progress would be needed for the transition.
Quality Review Concerns
The two review concerns for a power sector depend upon weather-dependent resources that I think must be addressed in any assessment of the quality of the report are the need for a new resource to address long-term wind and solar deficits and the challenge of specifying how much of those resources is needed.
In my opinion, all credible analyses of future electric energy systems depending upon wind and solar must acknowledge the need for a new resource to backup up weather dependent resources that New York has named DEFR. Francis Menton explains that this creates a likely impossible challenge:
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.
There is another aspect of DEFRs that needs to be considered. Menton also did a post on September 28, 2023 that covered a Report then just out from Britain’s Royal Society dealing with issues of long-term energy storage to back up wind and solar generators that concisely describes my other quality concern. He explains that the Royal Society had collected weather data for Britain for some 37 years and documented that “there are worst-case wind and sun “droughts,” comparable to rain droughts, that may occur only once every 20 years or more.”
The Royal Society: Large-scale electricity storage, Issued: September 2023 DES6851_1, ISBN: 978-1-78252-666-7
To be a credible analysis of future power sector projected needs, ten both of these concerns need to be considered. If they are not included, then the complexity will be underestimated and the magnitude of resources required overlooked.
McKinsey Report Analysis of Concerns
For the power sector the McKinsey report addressed six challenges. I will describe the relevant challenges and mention the challenges that affect the global system but not the New York power sector.
With the energy transition, Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) sources, such as solar and wind, would be required to grow and reach a relatively high share of total generation. As this happens, the output of power systems would become progressively more variable, exceeding demand on some days but falling substantially short on others. Consider Germany. VRE could potentially account for 90 percent of all power generation by 2050, in the McKinsey 2023 Achieved Commitments scenario. Nonetheless, there could still be about 75 days a year when VRE generation would be insufficient to meet a large share of demand (meaning that at least one-quarter of demand would have to be met by other sources) (Exhibit 6). VRE-heavy power systems would therefore require much more supply-side flexibility. This could come from storage (both power and heat), backup generation capacity (including thermal generation like gas power and beyond), and interconnections. Such flexibility solutions may need to scale by as much as two to seven times faster than overall power demand globally in the next three decades. However, these forms of flexibility in turn face significant barriers relating, for example, to critical inputs (for some forms of energy storage) and other factors such as market design mechanisms (for backup generation). Most critically, some of the technologies that would be crucial for providing flexibility to the power system over the course of seasons, including novel long-duration energy storage (LDES) and hydrogen-based generation, would need to scale hundreds of times by 2050 from a negligible base today.
The Challenge 1 description emphasizes the need for supply-side flexibility. Exhibit 6 notes that at least one quarter of the days will require backup resources to resolve VRE intermittency explaining that “novel long-duration energy storage (LDES) and hydrogen-based generation” is needed “over the course of seasons”. The example resources can be used for DEFR but it does not address my second concern, the worst-case wind and sun drought. This study appears to only consider average conditions, which is a common flaw in academic assessments. For electric system resource planners, the emphasis on reliability for all periods mandates that the analysis addresses extreme conditions. As a result, the magnitude of DEFR support necessary to keep the lights on at all times is underestimated in this analysis.
The second challenge, “scaling emerging power systems”, is also rated as Level 3. The description notes that “Many countries, especially those that are lower-income, need faster and more significant growth in their power systems to increase access to electricity.” This is not an issue for New York.
The description of Challenge 3: Flexing power demand (Level 2) notes that “Alongside supply-side flexibility, there may be more opportunity for demand-side flexibility in power as the world electrifies” and does not address either concern. The McKinsey Report claims that this kind of flexibility could provide as much as 25 percent of the total amount needed to accommodate VRE in 2050, in the IEA’s Net Zero scenario. However, it exposes a weakness in studies that use averages. Industry planners do not rely on demand-side flexibility because in the worst-case scenarios the capability of those resources is much lower and can be essentially worthless. This means that studies that only look at averages miss the point that to keep the lights on demand-side resources may not displace as many supply-side resources during the worst-case scenario as they project. In my opinion, the value of any resource that does not provide firm energy during the worst-case scenario should be downrated.
Challenge 4, “securing land for renewables” is rated as Level 2. This is a problem for any jurisdiction that tries to rely on VRE because wind and solar resources are diffuse. This challenge does not address either of my concerns.
Challenge 5: Connecting through grid expansion (Level 2):
With the growth of the power system and the addition of more geographically dispersed energy sources such as VRE, grids would need to become larger and more distributed, interconnected, and resilient. They may need to more than double in size by 2050, growing 40 to 50 percent faster than they are currently. However, lead times for the permitting and construction of transmission lines are long, especially in mature markets such as the EU and the United States, where they have tended to be between five and 15 years. Among other initiatives, accelerating permitting with new streamlined processes could facilitate the expansion of grids.
This challenge does not address either of my concerns.
Challenge 6: Navigating nuclear and other clean firm energy (Level 2):
Increased deployment of clean firm power, such as nuclear, geothermal, and low-emissions thermal plants (for example, hydrogen, biogas, and natural gas with CCUS), could reduce the challenges of variability, land use, and grid expansion. Nuclear is an example of a clean firm technology that is mature and gaining momentum. At COP28, for example, a group of economies announced commitments to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. Nonetheless, increasing the deployment of nuclear requires managing complex engineering, supply chain, skills, and siting issues as well as safety considerations. In combination, these issues could result in long lead times, frequent delays, and cost overruns. Addressing these would require, for instance, standardizing the design of nuclear plants and building multiple plants using the same designs to leverage shared learning, training workforces in the skills they need, and developing necessary supply chains.
These issues affect the deployment of DEFR but do not address my concerns directly.
Discussion
Although there is useful information in this report, it fails to address my concerns about the need for a new resource to address the specific problem of worst-case wind and solar “droughts” and the related problem of defining just how much of the new resources will be needed to prevent blackouts for the worst of the worst-case periods.
I think the main problem can be traced to the use of averages rather than worst-case conditions for evaluation of resource requirements. I searched the document for the terms “worst” and “extreme”. The term “worst” did not appear. The term “extreme” did show up relative to battery electric vehicle use and heat pumps. The McKinsey Report noted that special considerations were needed for the worst-case extremes for those applications. Unfortunately, the authors did not extend that consideration to the power sector.
There is one other consideration unmentioned in the power sector challenges. Wind and solar resources do not provide the ancillary services necessary to support the transmission system. The McKinsey Report did note that transmission requirements would be a challenge but overlooked this aspect.
Conclusion
The report concludes that:
The path of the energy transition will not be straightforward, and stark trade-offs and consequences lie ahead. Taking time for the transition to play out, as in many physical transformations of the past, could allow for the physical realities of the transformation to be confronted more gradually with time to innovate and scale new low-emissions technologies, address bottlenecks, and reconfigure the system. While this may make navigating the physical challenges easier, such a path would almost certainly involve compromising on the climate goals that countries and companies across the world have agreed to, with consequences for rising physical risks. However, driving the transition forward without confronting physical realities would most likely compromise the performance of the energy system—and as a result challenge energy access, growth, prosperity, and support for the transition itself.
Alternatively, stakeholders could confront difficult physical challenges head-on—in fact, they could use an understanding of physical realities to guide the way forward to an affordable, reliable, competitive path to net zero. While many open questions remain on what precise path would enable the physical challenges to be addressed, this analysis sheds light on some crucial ingredients that would have to be present in a successful energy transition.
The power sector analysis appears to use averages to project future needs. As a result, it fails to address my concerns about the need for DEFR and the related risk that improper assessment of the amount of DEFR needed threatens the reliability of the electric system. The ultimate concern is that the conditions associated with extreme wind and solar droughts are also associated with extreme hot and cold weather when the electrified society will be most vulnerable if there is a blackout. The report sheds some light on crucial ingredients but overlooks a potential fatal flaw.
Clearly there is no question in the minds of the authors that the transformation to net-zero is necessary. The conclusion talks about trade-offs and consequences but does not acknowledge that there may not be an “affordable, reliable, competitive path to net zero” using VRE. Given the vulnerability risk, I remain convinced that the VRE transition will do more harm than good in New York and elsewhere. I think the nuclear option is the only path forward for those who want to decarbonize.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
At the weekend I attended the Battle of Ideas Festival in London. It is a fascinating event, with interesting debates taking place across a wide variety of topics like free speech, culture wars, the economy, education and women’s freedom.
At the weekend I attended the Battle of Ideas Festival in London. It is a fascinating event, with interesting debates taking place across a wide variety of topics like free speech, culture wars, the economy, education and women’s freedom.
I was there primarily for the energy discussions. Unfortunately, I missed the book launch on nuclear power on the Saturday, but I did attend the two energy debates that took place in the scientific dilemmas section on Sunday.
First up was a lunchtime debate entitled “Is nuclear the future of energy… again?” Unfortunately, the speaker who was supposed to speak for this position had some sort of transportation nightmare and could not attend. I did not catch the name of the man who replaced her, but he did put up a valiant effort considering he was drafted in at the last minute. Speaking against the idea of a nuclear renaissance was Robert Reid, policy development officer for the Alba Party who was in mourning for the late Alec Salmond. We can therefore forgive him somewhat for advancing the hoary old chestnut that offshore wind is cheap: he claimed £41/MWh without citing any sources. Of course, the existing CfD funded offshore wind farms have cost us over £150/MWh so far this financial year and the new projects awarded in AR6 will cost us over £82/MWh in today’s money, more than twice Robert’s claim. Emma Bateman, who is an environmental campaigner and founding member of Together Against Sizewell C, unsurprisingly spoke against the idea of nuclear power and made some spurious claims about safety that if nuclear power were a person would have resulted in the libel lawyers being called on Monday morning. The gist of her substantive argument was that nuclear is too expensive and takes too long so we should therefore spend more on wind and solar.
In the ensuing debate, I managed to correct Robert Reid’s ‘facts’ and make the point that if your primary concern is the environment, then you should be an advocate of nuclear power because it has the smallest overall environmental footprint of all energy sources because it doesn’t take up much land and has very low mineral intensity. I also made the point about the chocolate teapot fallacy. Arguing for wind and solar in place of nuclear power is akin to arguing in favour of chocolate teapots because you cannot wait for a ceramic one. No matter how many chocolate teapots you buy, you can never make tea; just like no matter how many wind turbines and solar panels you install you can never run a modern economy on intermittent electricity.
The physics of nuclear power are far superior to any other energy source because of its extremely high energy return on energy invested, meaning we get far more energy out than we expend building the power plants, and the output is reliable. There are even designs on the drawing board and beginning to be built that will allow nuclear power plants to follow fluctuations in demand. The barriers to nuclear power are all political: the West over-regulates nuclear power and it is unsurprising that it takes so long because of all the paperwork that must be produced before a new reactor can be built. We can fix man-made political and regulatory problems, but mere mortals cannot change the faulty physics of intermittent renewables, just like you can never make tea in a chocolate teapot.
We would be far better off committing to a significant nuclear power programme so we can deliver reliable electricity. If we fix the regulations, invest in rebuilding the skills base and supply chains and choose the right reactor design, we can even have cheap, reliable energy with only a small impact on the environment. This is what the French did in the 1970s and 1980s and now they produce around 70% of their electricity from nuclear.
The next debate was on the “Great British Energy Crisis”. It was encouraging to see that three of the five panellists are subscribers to this Substack (you know who you are and thank you). Two of the speakers, James Woudhuysen and Lord David Frost both made eloquent attacks on Net Zero and its consequences. Professor Michaela Kendall who is the U.K. Hydrogen Champion for Mission Innovation suggested we needed more facts to inform the debate on energy, but managed to skirt around the fact that the Government agreed contracts for green hydrogen at £241/MWh, which is about seven times the current cost of U.K. natural gas, which in turn costs more than five times U.S. gas.
Dr. Shahrar Ali is a former spokesperson for the Green Party who has recently won a discrimination court case against the Greens because they sacked him for his gender critical beliefs. It is a shame Dr. Ali cannot apply his critical thinking skills to Net Zero. The gist of his argument was the world is warming, it is going to be a catastrophe, it is all our fault, so build more windmills.
I managed to take him to task in the ensuing debate by pointing out that even if you believe CO2 causes warming, then it is a big leap to conclude that building windmills will change the weather. This is the so-called mitigation strategy that can only work if 1) CO2 is the only climate control knob (we know this to be untrue from paleo-climate records) and 2) everyone else follows the strategy (you only need to look at charts of global greenhouse gas emissions to see this is also untrue). A far better strategy is one of adaptation which has the advantages of being cheaper and will work regardless of the actions of others and regardless of the causes of global warming. The mitigation strategy we are pursuing is one of unilateral economic impoverishment and the Net Zero “cure” is far worse than the alleged climate change “disease”.
It is encouraging that my intervention drew an enthusiastic round of applause which is testament to the growing scepticism about Net Zero among the general public. It appears to me that cracks are appearing in the cosy green consensus in Westminster and if we get our arguments right, we can win this debate.
All in all, the Battle of Ideas is a thoroughly enjoyable event and I highly recommend everyone to attend next year, whatever your beliefs. It is only through free and open debate that we can get to the truth.
You must be logged in to post a comment.