Day: November 18, 2024

Rota Load Disconnections- aka Power Cuts–Coming To Your Street

If needed, customers would lose power for around three hours per day during the emergency, on an area-by-area basis. This would ensure power supplies are shared fairly with customers, and everyone has power for most of the day.

Customers would know when they would be without power by entering their postcode at powercut105.com to find their rota. The rota would only be published once emergency power cuts have been approved to take place.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

They’re preparing for the inevitable blackouts:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on global energy markets mean the UK and Europe face a challenging winter. The energy industry is prepared and has well-established procedures in place if there is a national energy shortage.

One part of these procedures is planned emergency power cuts, called ‘rota disconnections’. These are very rare and temporary.

How would rota disconnections work?

If needed, customers would lose power for around three hours per day during the emergency, on an area-by-area basis. This would ensure power supplies are shared fairly with customers, and everyone has power for most of the day.

Customers would know when they would be without power by entering their postcode at powercut105.com to find their rota. The rota would only be published once emergency power cuts have been approved to take place.

When would they be used?

Rota disconnections would only be used after all other options, such as turning down industrial demand and voltage reduction, have failed to restore stability to the power system.

If required, the electricity system operator National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) would legally instruct distribution network operators to disconnect power supplies. They would follow established procedures set out by the government in the Electricity Supply Emergency Code.

The Code ensures power is shared fairly across all customers during a national energy emergency.

National Grid ESO take several steps to protect customers before any emergency planned power cut instruction is given. These include:

  • encouraging additional generation through the supply market.
  • asking heavy industrial users to limit their demand during peak periods.
  • reducing domestic power demand. This could include paying customers to change how and when they use appliances like washing machines and dishwashers or reducing voltage across the country by a small percentage, which would be undetectable.

While the winter is expected to be challenging, there is no guarantee emergency measures will be necessary. National Grid ESO’s central view remains that there will be adequate electricity supplies through the winter to ensure Great Britain remains within the reliability standards set by Ofgem.

Is anyone protected from emergency power cuts?

Some sites are protected from emergency planned power cuts. These include critical national infrastructure, like air traffic control centres and some major hospital facilities with accident and emergency departments.

Exemptions aren’t automatic and organisations have to apply for protected status. Residential customers, including those on the Priority Services Register and businesses without backup generation that are not listed as ‘protected’ by the government, would be part of an planned power cut rota.

Organisations would need to apply for protected status, following the Electricity Supply Emergency Code procedures.

If you depend on medical equipment that requires power, and don’t already have a power cut plan, you should speak to your healthcare provider now. Power cuts can happen all-year-round so it’s important you are prepared, make a plan and know what to do.

https://www.nationalgrid.co.uk/rota-load-disconnections

They say that these power cuts are “very rare and temporary”, and up to now they are. But the timing of this announcement, which according to Wayback was last winter, is a strong signal that they will be very common in future. After all, the Ukraine war might have tightened gas supplies, but under Net Zero plans, we won’t have any gas at all!

The cuts can be up to 3 hours at a time, they say. And the system has been set up to share the pain across the network.

I also like the reference to “emergency planned power cuts” – if they are an emergency, they can hardly be planned!

We can know that this is far from a once in a blue moon event, when the National Grid even have a website where you can check which particular rota you house is on!

https://www.powercut105.com/en/

And all of this is being smuggled in under the radar, so the public do not notice until it is too late.

Are You Even Aware That There Is Another Big UN Climate Conference Going On?

The overwhelming focus of the environmental movement over the past three decades and more has been the push to eliminate the use of hydrocarbon fuels and transform the world’s energy system into something based on supposedly cleaner wind and sun. This effort has always been doomed to failure, because energy produced by wind and sun does not work satisfactorily and is wildly too expensive.

From The Manhattan Contrarian

Francis Menton

The overwhelming focus of the environmental movement over the past three decades and more has been the push to eliminate the use of hydrocarbon fuels and transform the world’s energy system into something based on supposedly cleaner wind and sun. This effort has always been doomed to failure, because energy produced by wind and sun does not work satisfactorily and is wildly too expensive. So it has long been obvious to the well-informed that this whole effort will inevitably go away at some point. But after the desperate cries of crisis and alarm from thousands of activists for decades on end, and after the trillions of dollars government funds invested, how could that possibly occur?

My prediction has long been that at some point the whole thing would just quietly fade away, as if it had never happened. It would become like dozens of other (admittedly less pervasive) environmental scares of my lifetime, from acid rain to gypsy moths to alar to bee colony collapse and many more. One day there would just be no more news stories about these things, and they would pass from public attention. Despite the much larger effort behind the climate scare, there is no reason that the same thing could not happen. Nobody who had promoted the scare would ever admit they were wrong. Those people would just move on to the next cause without mentioning that this one had been forgotten.

Frankly, with regard to the global warming scare, I thought that this would have occurred well before now. However, somehow trillions of dollars of government funding can have a magical effect of motivating those feasting on the bounty to keep the scare going.

But very recently, something significant seems to be changing. It’s not only that Donald Trump just decisively won the presidency on a promise of “drill, baby, drill”; or that Kamala Harris, to try to win the swing states, decided to back off her prior promises to ban fracking and internal combustion cars. As an example that something bigger may be going on, how about this: Do you even know that one of the big annual UN climate conferences just got under way in Baku, Azerbaijan?

These annual UN conferences have been big news for almost as long as I can remember. They started back in 1992 following the UN’s so-called Framework Convention on Climate Change; and they have occurred almost every year since, going by the name of “Conferences of Parties,” or “COP.” COP 21, held in Paris in 2015, was the meeting when the Paris Climate Agreement was signed, supposedly committing all the nations of the world to emissions reductions and energy transformations. Lots of big names showed up, including then U.S. President Barack Obama. The world press reacted with glee. There were hundreds upon hundreds of stories. Six years later, after a year off for the pandemic, it was COP 26, held in Glasgow, Scotland. The UK chaired the conference, and wowed the world with enhanced pledges of emissions reductions. No fewer than 120 heads of state attended, just a few highlights being UN secretary-general António Guterres, United States president Joe Biden, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, French president Emmanuel Macron, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Indonesian president Joko Widodo, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, and Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven. Again, the zone got flooded with press coverage.

By contrast, this year’s conference is passing largely under the radar. This year’s event goes by the name COP 29, now being held for the second year running in a petro-state (last year it was in Qatar). It would be an understatement to say that this conference has been totally overshadowed by the U.S. election. At the New York Times, one of their climate activist reporters, David Wallace-Wells bemoans the new situation in an article yesterday with the headline “Climate Change Is Losing Its Grip on Our Politics.” Excerpt:

[Donald Trump’s] election is . . . a confirmation of an international turn in the politics of warming as much as it is a sharp or distinctly American break. Yes, a global renewables boom is well underway, with worldwide investment in clean energy reaching $2 trillion this year and total solar capacity doubling since 2022. But the climate logic of that transition increasingly goes unspoken in all but the most committed corners, replaced by chin-scratching about energy politics. Governments have retreated from even their legally binding promises to decarbonize, trusting markets to deliver comparatively meager emissions reductions instead, and activists have been unable to generate meaningful public outrage at the walkback.

It’s almost as if nobody cares any more. This is most notable in Wallace-Wells’s list of who failed to show up — in summary, everybody important:

When the COP29 climate conference comes to an end next week, it will have concluded without an appearance by President Biden. . . . The president-elect isn’t attending, either. Neither is Vice President Kamala Harris. . . . Hardly any of the world’s most powerful leaders will be making an appearance in Baku, Azerbaijan . . . . President Xi Jinping of China won’t be there, and neither will Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. President Emmanuel Macron of France, . . . is skipping the conference, too. Also missing will be Lula da Silva, who is the leader not just of Brazil but also of the Group of 20. As recently as the Glasgow summit in 2021, the annual climate confab was a who’s who of global power politics. These days, it’s more about who’s missing.

A separate New York Times article here notes that over 50,000 people will be attending this year’s conference, including participants, observers and media. That is a lot, but well down from around 70,000 last year. And what will they all be doing? It seems that the main point of the meeting is the attempt to reach a new “climate finance agreement “ — otherwise known as the effort by the governing cliques in developing countries to shake down the rich countries for sums in excess of $100 billion per year, using the cover of “climate” to fill their Swiss bank accounts. From Reuters, yesterday:

The main task for nearly 200 countries at the U.N.’s COP29 climate summit is to broker a deal that ensures up to trillions of dollars in financing for climate projects worldwide. . . . Wealthy countries pledged in 2009 to contribute $100 billion a year to help developing nations cope with the costs of a transition to clean energy and adapting to the conditions of a warming world. . . . Those payments began in 2020 but were only fully met in 2022. The $100 billion pledge expires this year. Countries are negotiating a higher target for payments starting next year. . . .

Yes, outgoing President Biden fell for this scam and sent off billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds. Put this at the top of President Trump’s agenda: zero this one out. Once it becomes clear that the U.S. isn’t going along any more, maybe we can even save the annual expense of sending thousands of people off to these remote corners of the world.

Trump’s New Energy Secretary

Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary called net zero a “sinister goal” and was once censored by LinkedIn for posting a video of his views on climate policy.

Chris Wright, an oil executive and staunch defender of fossil fuels, is also known for drinking fracking fluid that includes bleach on camera to prove it is safe.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Drill, bay, drill!!

Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary called net zero a “sinister goal” and was once censored by LinkedIn for posting a video of his views on climate policy.

Chris Wright, an oil executive and staunch defender of fossil fuels, is also known for drinking fracking fluid that includes bleach on camera to prove it is safe.

Mr Wright, the founder and chief executive of Denver-based Liberty Energy, is expected to spearhead Mr Trump’s “drill baby drill” plans to increase oil and gas production and seek new ways to boost energy.

A climate sceptic who has filed lawsuits opposing climate disclosure rules, Mr Wright has called climate activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.

In 2019, he made headlines when he drank a fracking fluid cocktail containing a collection of chemicals, which he knocked back with colleagues after toasting the “long lives and healthier lives of billions of people all around the world from oil and gas”.

Last year, he was briefly censored by LinkedIn for posting a video in which he said: “There is no climate crisis and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”

‘Destructive deceptions’

During the 12-minute video, he said that the terms climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy and dirty energy are all “destructive deceptions” that cause children anxiety.

Mr Wright went on to say that “we have seen no increase in the frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods” as a result of climate change – a claim that is widely disputed.

The social media platform took the video down, claiming it violated its policy on spam and scams, before restoring it the next day, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Mr Wright, who does not have any political experience, has written extensively on the need for more fossil fuel production to lift people out of poverty.

He has stood out among oil and gas executives for his confrontational, freewheeling style.

In a keynote address to oil and gas industry figures earlier this year, Mr Wright has said “there’s no such thing as renewable energy”, adding that the target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 is “sinister”.

“Net zero 2050: zero chance of this happening, but it’s actually a sinister goal because we spend an insane amount of money pretending we’re going to actually achieve this,” he said.

He added that the net result has been to “make energy more expensive, less reliable, and impoverish people”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/11/17/chris-wright-net-zero-sinister-trump-energy-secretary

Club of Rome: COP29 “No longer fit for purpose”

Club of Rome have finally noticed the world’s premier climate conferences are being run by petroleum states.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Club of Rome have finally noticed the world’s premier climate conferences are being run by petroleum states.

Open Letter on COP reform to All States that are Parties to the Convention

Mr. Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Secretariat and UN Secretary-General António Guterres

November 15, 2024

Excellencies,

We, the undersigned, write today to reiterate and update the call for COP reform, which was first conveyed in our open letter to the UNFCCC Secretariat, dated February 23, 2023.

We recognise the important diplomatic milestones of the past 28 years of climate negotiations. A remarkable consensus has been achieved with over 195 countries having agreed to strive to hold global warming to 1.5°C. We also recognise the key role of the UNFCCC Secretariat in helping to bring all 195 countries along the steps necessary to establish the global policy framework, which is underpinned by the Paris Agreement and its subsequent COP decisions. 

Beyond the Paris goals, countries have now agreed to phase out fossil fuels, end inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies, stop deforestation by 2030, operationalise carbon trading globally, and most have joined the Global Methane Pledge. Governments have pledged $100 billion annually to the Green Climate Fund, and the Loss and Damage Fund is officially established. 

Despite some of its flaws, and limited resources, the global policy framework is scientifically rigorous and economically sound and complete. But the framework alone is not enough to solve the problems.

Global emissions continue to increase, carbon sinks are being degraded and we can no longer exclude the possibility of surpassing 2.9°C of warming by 2100. Our first encounter with 1.5°C was accompanied by unprecedented human impacts coupled with enormous climate costs running into the hundreds of billions in 2023. Science tells us that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 7.5% annually to have any chance of staying within the 1.5°C threshold, a prerequisite for the stability of our planet and a livable future for much of humanity. In 2024, the task is unequivocal: global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 4 billion tonnes.

28 COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this. However, its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity. This is what compels our call for a fundamental overhaul of the COP. We need a shift from negotiation to implementation, enabling the COP to deliver on agreed commitments and ensure the urgent energy transition and phase-out of fossil energy.

We outline below our suggested measures for reform:

1. Improve the selection process for COP presidencies
We need strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy. Host countries must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris Agreement.

2. Streamline for speed and scale
With the global policy map fully developed, COP must shift away from negotiations to the delivery of concrete action. COP meetings must be transformed into smaller, more frequent, solution-driven meetings where countries report on progress, are held accountable in line with the latest science, and discuss important solutions for finance, technology and equity. This work must be supplemented by the benchmarking of national progress using the UN Gap Reports. This approach will accelerate action and allow for timely adjustments based on emerging scientific findings and changing global circumstances. 

3. Improve implementation and accountability
The COP process must be strengthened with mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their climate targets and commitments. Whilst the Paris framework was intended to operate in “delivery mode”, it is not working because governments are not held to account to ensure that national action plans align with the latest scientific evidence.  The Global Stocktake process is an important start but it must be strengthened with enhanced reporting and benchmarking, rigorous peer-review processes, independent scientific oversight and transparent tracking of pledges and action.

4. Ensure robust tracking of climate financing
A growing proportion of climate financing pledges are now being disbursed as interest-bearing loans, thereby exacerbating the debt burden for climate vulnerable nations. We need standardised definitions and criteria for what qualifies as climate finance, along with common reporting frameworks and tracking mechanisms to verify climate financing flows. All of these measures are critical for rebuilding trust and accountability and for mobilising the necessary resources.

5. Amplify the voice of authoritative science
Whilst the climate COP does rely on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other related bodies, such as the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), it does not have its own permanent scientific advisory body that is formally part of the COP structure. We share growing concerns that climate COPs do not sufficiently integrate or action up the latest scientific evidence. The CBD COP has its own permanent scientific advisory body, which has provided a technical and scientific underpinning for the CBD. And the same could be replicated within the climate COP.

6. Recognise the interdependencies between poverty, inequality and planetary instability
New research from the Earth Commission and from Earth4All affirms the important linkages between ecological and social change processes. If the climate COP is to be more impactful, it must acknowledge that the current rate of nature loss (e.g. freshwater scarcity, land and soil degradation, pollination decline, ocean pollution) is affecting the stability of the planet. Moreover, planetary stability, now at grave risk, is impossible without decisive action on equality, justice and poverty alleviation. This is why we call for a Climate-Poverty Policy Envoy to ensure that these critical links are anchored in the negotiations and implementation actions, especially through dedicated spaces for vulnerable communities to advocate for these linkages.

7. Enhance equitable representation
Despite the climate COP’s new disclosure rules, a record number of 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access at COP28, nearly four times more than COP27. The fact that there were far more fossil fuel lobbyists than official representatives from scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations reflects a systemic imbalance in COP representation. Improving the management of corporate interests within COPs proceedings will require stronger transparency and disclosure rules and clear guidelines that require companies to demonstrate alignment between their climate commitments, business model and lobbying activities. 

In closing, let us reiterate the important role the UNFCCC has played and will continue to play in ensuring ambition on climate change. There is no doubt that climate change is a global challenge and must be solved through multilateral negotiations alongside ambition at the National level through Nationally Determined Contributions. The Paris agreement and subsequent COP decisions have laid a robust foundation for the global policy framework on climate action. Now, we must work together with urgency and purpose, transforming the climate COP so that it can take strategic, action-oriented and accountable decisions to deliver the scale of ambition commensurate with the defining challenge of our time.

SIGNATORIES
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Executive Chair, Earth4All and Global Ambassador for the Club of Rome
Prof. Dr. Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Action Research
Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations
Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland
Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Connie Hedegaard, Chair of the Board for the KR Foundation and former EU  Former EU Commissioner for Climate Action
Dr. Carlos Nobre, Member of the Joint Steering Committee of the World Climate Research Programme & the Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health
Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director-General, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Dr. Bertrand Piccard, President, Solar Impulse Foundation
Esmeralda of Belgium, President of the Leopold III Fund for Nature Exploration and Conservation
Maria João Rodrigues, President, Foundation for European Progressive Studies
Youba Sokona, Chair, African Institute for Sustainable Energy and System Analysis and former Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water
Sharan Burrow, former General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation
Phyllis Cuttino, President and CEO, The Climate Reality Project
Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, Co-founder and President,  Igarapé Institute
Eva Zabey, Executive-Director, Business for Nature
Sheela Patel,  Director,  Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres  and Global Ambassador for the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience
Dr. Gunhild A. Stordalen, Co-founder and Executive Chair, EAT
Marie-Claire Graf, Co-Founder, Youth Negotiators Academy & YOUNGO Focal Point COP26
Paul Shrivastava, Co-President, The Club of Rome Source: https://www.clubofrome.org/cop-reform-2024/

Club of Rome are famous for their 1972 publication The Limits to Growth, an absurdly simplistic attempt to suggest we will all run out of stuff before the end of this century.

One of my favourite responses to the Limits to Growth was published by The New York Times shortly after the publication of Limits.

… “The Limits to Growth,” in our view, is an empty and misleading work. Its imposing apparatus of computer technology and systems jargon conceals a kind of intellectual Rube Goldberg device—one which takes arbitrary assumptions, shakes them up and comes out with arbitrary conclusions that have the ring of science. “Limits” pretends to a degree of certainty so exaggerated as to obscure the few modest (and unoriginal) insights that it genuinely con tains. Less than pseudoscience and little more than polemical fiction, “The Limits to Growth” is best summarized not as a rediscovery of the laws of nature but as a rediscovery of the oldest maxim of computer science: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

…

As a first approximation of the future, the authors assume that the world is utterly incapable of adjusting to problems of scarcity. Technology stagnates and pollution is ignored, even as it chokes millions to death. A shortage of raw materials prevents industry and agriculture from keeping up with population growth. World reserves of vital materials (silver, tungsten, mercury, etc.) are exhausted within 40 years. Around 2020 the pinch becomes tight enough to cause a fall in per capita income. A few decades later, malnutrition and lagging health services abruptly reverse the climbing population trend. By the year 2100 the resource base has shrunk so badly that the world economy is unable to sustain even 19th‐century living standards.

…

It is no coincidence that all the simulations based on the Meadows world model invariably end in collapse. As in any simulation, the results depend on the information initially fed to the computer. And the “Limits” team fixes the wheel; no matter how ‘many times you play there is only one possible outcome. Critical to their model is the notion that growth produces stresses (pollution, resource demands, food requiremeats) which multiply geometrically. Like compound interest on a savings account, these stresses accumulate at a pace that constantly accelerates: Every child born is not only another mouth to feed but another potential parent. Every new factory not only drains away exhaustible resources but increases our capacity to build more factories. Geometric (or as mathematicians prefer to call it, exponential) growth must eventually produce spectacular results. If the Indians who sold Manhattan 300 years ago for $24 could have left their money untouched in a bank paying 7 per cent (a number chosen no more arbitrarily than many in “Limits”) they would have more than $25‐billion today.

…Read more: 

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/02/archives/the-limits-to-growth-a-report-for-the-club-of-romes-project-on-the.html

You would think after an intellectual blunder like “The Limits to Growth” that they would have changed their name or something, but every so often The Club of Rome still pops their head above the parapet to deliver a doom laden pronouncement, or scold the world for not being run the way they would like it to be run.

Why Ed Miliband’s net zero dream is doomed to failure

Climate summits – with delegates flying in on private jets to discuss reductions in carbon emissions – tend to be hotbeds of irony. But the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – also known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP – has elevated such lack of self-awareness to an art form.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t George Herraghty

Climate summits – with delegates flying in on private jets to discuss reductions in carbon emissions – tend to be hotbeds of irony. But the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – also known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP – has elevated such lack of self-awareness to an art form.

Last year’s event was held in the United Arab Emirates, which holds the world’s seventh-largest reserve of natural gas. Next year’s event will be in Brazil, which recently joined Opec, the cartel of oil exporters.

Ilham Aliyev, the president of this year’s host nation Azerbaijan, opened proceedings in Baku by declaring that fossil fuels are “a gift from God”. The country’s deputy energy minister, who was also the conference’s chief executive, was secretly filmed promoting oil and gas deals on the sidelines.

The British contingent to COP, which included Sir Keir Starmer and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, inadvertently embraced the spirit of the event. The Prime Minister declared that the “single most important” way to hit emissions targets will be to generate more renewable energy.

But back at home, the UK was generating much less renewable energy than normal because the sun wasn’t shining and the wind wasn’t blowing. Northern Europe was labouring though another period now known in energy circles by the German word Dunkelflaute, which roughly translates as “dark doldrums”.

Meanwhile, the Energy Secretary was repeating now-debunked claims about how his plan to deliver clean power by 2030 (five years earlier than the Tories’ plans) will result in cost savings for the average household, while supporters of the UK’s net zero ambitions and sceptics alike have been picking holes in the Government’s proposals.

During a speech in Baku, Starmer said he wanted to restore the UK’s role as “a climate leader on the world stage”. But delegates from the US, China, India, Japan, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the European Union were conspicuous by their absence.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/16/ed-miliband-doomed-net-zero-dream-labour

This section of the article is particularly relevant:

Unreliable weather and neighbours

Last week’s Dunkelflaute was not even the worst this year. Between February 26 and March 8 the capacity factor – the measure of how often turbines generate their maximum power – of the UK’s wind fleet failed to rise above 20 per cent. In fact, as the wind refused to blow, the fleet’s average over the 11 days was just 11 per cent – less than a quarter of what it achieved in the month before and after. It was the longest Dunkelflaute that Britain has experienced in the last decade.

Some six times in the past 30 years, such cold spells with little wind have affected large parts of Europe for a week or more, including areas in which most onshore and offshore wind projects are located, according to analysis by the International Energy Agency.

But there are worries that climate change means wind droughts are becoming frequent. Scientists working for the United Nations’s intergovernmental panel on climate change have forecast that average wind speeds in the UK are expected to drop by up to three per cent by 2050 and by 10 per cent by the end of the century.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, recently approved controversial plans for the building of new undersea interconnector cables that will link the UK to Dutch and Belgian windfarms and combine with existing interconnectors that will give the grid access to Norwegian hydro-electric stations and French nuclear power.

However, critics have pointed out that it is hard to square such reliance with claims of greater “energy security”. They worry what Norwegian and French politicians might do if the interconnectors expose their populations to energy price spikes caused by Dunkelflautes as Europe becomes evermore reliant on wind power.

The think-tank Agora Energiewende believes that, were countries to hit their net zero targets, the proportion of Europe’s electricity coming from renewable sources will rise from 44 per cent now to 96 per cent by 2050. Europe is also set to become more reliant on electricity as households are encouraged to switch from petrol to electric cars and from gas-fired boilers to electric heat pumps. At the moment, electricity meets just over 20 per cent of the continent’s energy demand but this could rise to 70 per cent by 2050.

“You hear people saying: ‘It’s always windy somewhere.’ But European wind speeds are highly correlated,” says Montford. “You frequently get weather systems that are large enough to cover everywhere from here to south of the Sahara.” Scientists and energy experts agree that managing periods of Dunkelflaute and wind drought will therefore require a stepchange in electricity storage.

Costly and untested electricity storage plans

The Royal Society conducted a study modelling solar and wind generation, which used 37 years of weather data, and found that wind droughts lasting days or even weeks would require the UK to develop long-duration electricity storage adding up to “some tens of [terawatt hours]”.

Its numbers, which are based on some fairly optimistic forecasts about what will happen to both costs and efficiencies over the next 25 years, suggest the UK will have to spend the equivalent of the original cost of HS2 on electricity storage each and every year in perpetuity.

The analysis concluded that the amount of storage required is around 1,000 times more than is currently provided by pumped hydro – where water is pumped up to a reservoir and then discharged when needed to drive a turbine – and “far more than could be provided cost-effectively by batteries”, according to the Royal Society.

This is why, according to one climate scientist, “hydrogen is the only game in town” for storing surplus electricity. Electricity from renewable sources can be used to extract hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is then stored and used to fuel a power station when the wind drops.

However, it’s currently pretty inefficient, with something like two-thirds of the electricity wasted during the process. Energy experts also expect much of the low-carbon hydrogen produced in the coming years to be snapped up by energy-intensive industries – such as fertiliser manufacture or steelmaking – which have precious few other options when it comes to cutting their emissions.

A lot now rests on making lithium batteries or hydrogen energy storage a lot more efficient very quickly. “We’re betting the economy on the hope that someone will come up with a viable storage solution,” says Montford. “It’s like jumping out of a plane and hoping someone will invent a parachute on the way down.”

The whole article, which goes on to look at the lack of trained labour and the logistical problems of Miliband’s targets, is well worth a read. (Just switch off you Java-Script to get past the paywall!)

Furious Farmers “Besiege” Wales Labour Conference in Protest Over Reeves’s Tax Raid

Hundreds of angry farmers have besieged the Welsh Labour Party conference in Llandudno with tractors and farm trucks in protest at the Government’s inheritance tax changes.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Richard Eldred


Hundreds of angry farmers have besieged the Welsh Labour Party conference in Llandudno with tractors and farm trucks in protest at the Government’s inheritance tax changes. GB News has the story.

The demonstration saw agricultural vehicles line up outside Venue Cymru, where Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer made a speech.

Protest organisers Digon yw Digon – which translates as ‘Enough is Enough’ – called for people to “stand shoulder to shoulder with farmers and rural communities”.

Demonstrators brought tractors, slurry tankers, lorries and 4x4s with trailers to make their voices heard.

Placards declared there was “blood on Labour hands” and “Labour war on countryside” as farmers expressed their fury over the new tax measures.

Protesters chanted “save our farms” while tractor horns blared on the promenade, attempting to ensure politicians inside the building heard their message. …

The Prime Minister avoided confrontation with the protesters by leaving the venue through a back gate with a police escort, drawing boos from demonstrators.

High-profile farmer Gareth Wyn Jones condemned the PM’s actions on GB News, saying: “He didn’t come and face the audience, he didn’t come and talk to us, he went out the back.

“He went back to his London hideout while hundreds of farmers turned out to air their frustrations and grievances.

“We need to feed this nation in a sustainable and affordable way, and this Government does not care one iota.” …

Inside the conference, Sir Keir Starmer stood firm on the Budget decisions despite the protests outside.

“Make no mistake, I will defend our decisions in the Budget all day long,” he told delegates, avoiding explicit mention of the inheritance tax changes.

Worth reading in full.

COP29: Confronting narratives and absurdities at climate summit (Part II)

Examples of the perpetual masquerade of the climate industry were on display at the United Nations COP29 “Green Zone,” where private companies underwriting the cost of the summit, along with participating governments, virtue-signaled their embrace of the cause of changing the climate.

From CFACT

By Peter Murphy

Baku, Azerbaijan

Examples of the perpetual masquerade of the climate industry were on display at the United Nations COP29 “Green Zone,” where private companies underwriting the cost of the summit, along with participating governments, virtue-signaled their embrace of the cause of changing the climate.

The Socar Oil Company, owned by the government of Azerbaijan, had a large vendor display. The company is the nation’s major developer of oil and gas, with revenue that funds 60 percent of government budget and provides more than 90 percent of the nation’s electricity. Earlier this year, just in time for hosting COP29, Socar created a subsidiary, Socar Green, to develop wind turbines and solar panels with the goal of making the company carbon “net zero” by 2050.

I asked Fidan Zeynalova, a senior commercial analyst for Socar, how it was possible for renewable energy to replace or offset carbon from oil and gas production. She acknowledged it would take years and that oil and gas extraction will continue, basically until it runs out, but that it was wise to prepare for that future possibility. Without her saying so, it was clear the goal of “net zero” carbon emissions were more public relations imagery and unserious.

Around the corner from Socar was the consulting giant, McKinsey Sustainability, ever seeking more climate change clientele. The entrance to its make-shift room displayed a large aerial photo of acres of green countryside and trees, overtaken by rows of solar panels. Obviously, this lucrative firm promoted this as a good thing, despite the manifest despoiling of bucolic land mass. When I raised this concern, the two employees at the entrance wanted no part of such discussion.

Then there was the FINS organization, Fighting for International Nautical Species, which is based in the United Kingdom and is dedicated to preserving sea creatures and opposing whale hunting. Whales have “ecological importance” and are “the giants that sustain our planet” its wallpaper displayed. Of course, CFACT agrees with these facts and sentiments, and I complimented the mission to Elissa Phillips, a FINS official. In fact, in downtown Baku, I visited the traveling statue of a dead whale to highlight their endangerment.

I then asked Ms. Phillips if FINS was concerned about the deleterious effect of offshore wind turbines on whales, including dozens of beached whales on the northeastern U.S. coast in recent years. She claimed unawareness of this well-documented tragedy and said whales die for lots of reasons. I mentioned CFACT’s fight to protect whales against wind turbines, including our lawsuit against Dominion Energy for its inadequate environmental impact study required by federal law.

If a changing countenance reveals anything, Ms. Phillips found herself in a quandary of not wanting to oppose one of the central climate change tenets of wind power, even at the high plausibility they were killing whales that her organization purports to champion. Alas, if the choice is between dead whales and offshore wind turbines, climate change dogma stipulates that whales lose.

Lastly, on a more pleasant note, I encountered many of the UN summit volunteer staff assisting with the blizzard of mundane tasks to operate this massive event. All those with whom I spoke were native to Azerbaijan and spoke at least two languages, English being one of them. At one point during the conference, I needed workspace, and they graciously accommodated me. They also were fascinated by the U.S. election and the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, including trying on “MAGA” hats and taking selfies.

Now, that was irony at a UN climate summit.

“Hygiene Poverty”: The Brutal Reality of Life in Net Zero Britain

Imagine being so poor you have to send your kids to school wearing dirty clothes. Because this is happening right now in Britain.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Imagine being so poor you have to send your kids to school wearing dirty clothes. Because this is happening right now in Britain.

Teachers forced to wash school students’ uniform and install washing machines in schools due to ‘hygiene poverty’

16 November 2024, 11:59 | Updated: 16 November 2024, 14:05

By Shannon Cook

Teachers in some parts of the UK have been left to personally wash students’ school uniforms and install washing machines to combat students’ poor hygiene. 

The findings were laid out in a survey by smol – a cleaning brand – and the Hygiene Bank charity.

The teachers believe that students’ poor hygiene can lead to increased bullying or isolation from peers. 

40% of teachers who responded to the survey confirmed that they had washed a school student’s uniform themselves, meanwhile nearly 90% of teachers said they had assisted students with hygiene products.

…

Lisa Cropper, a family support practitioner at St Cuthbert’s Academy in Blackpool, told Sky News that parents had confided in her that they felt they had to make a “choice” between washing and the electricity.

…Read more: 

https://news.sky.com/story/teachers-washing-students-school-uniforms-amid-hygiene-poverty-worries-13254639

Much of Britain tends to have cold, dripping wet winters, so It can be difficult to dry clothes without a fireplace or an electric clothes dryer (or an oil heater). Poor people are unlikely to have more than one or two school uniforms, so the inability to dry clothes likely means kids have to wear the same uniform for the entire week, perhaps longer in inclement weather.

Using an electric heater to dry clothes, even if they can afford the electricity, can result in a dripping wet home, especially in older buildings. It is a truly horrible sight watching a slug or snail appear behind your baby basket, crawling up a glistening wet wall near where your baby is sleeping.

People can live with wearing smelly, unwashed clothes and bad hygiene – our ancestors lived this way for centuries. But you cannot live without adequate warmth.

Thanks to Net Zero’s skyrocketing energy prices, Britain appears to be well on the way to establishing Victorian England levels of poverty in some communities. The poorest people in Britain have been forced to make a choice, between the humiliation of sending their kids to school in unwashed clothes, or risking their health in even worse ways by providing inadequate food and warmth.

In some ways it is worse today than it was in the late 1800s during Queen Victoria’s reign. At least the Victorian poor were allowed to burn scrap wood for warmth. Most homes in Victorian times had some kind of fireplace or hearth where people could burn wood or whatever else they could get their hands on to stay warm.

In today’s Britain, even if you have a fireplace, only expensive low sulphur smokeless fuel is permitted since a 2020 crackdown on burning firewood in urban areas. In any case, people who can barely afford electricity are unlikely to be living in a home with a safe fireplace. Lightning a fire in a hovel with a cracked and crumbling fireplace and chimney is unlikely to end well for anyone concerned.

Blackpool, which was quoted in the article above, has a thriving prostitution industry. While Blackpool tries to portray itself as a family friendly holiday destination, and a lot of families do visit and enjoy the seaside amenities of Blackpool, if you leave your hotel at night, you may find the streets filled with a very different crowd. It is not difficult to understand why people in impossible circumstances sell themselves to try to give their kids at least some of the necessities of life, or stop borderline criminal debt collectors from battering their door, trying to collect on the desperate high interest payday loans which have consumed their income. But with family home heating bills exceeding £3000 / year (US $3700 / year) for a one bedroom flat in some of the poorest quality properties, and all the competition from other desperate Britons, along with economic refugees from Germany’s train wreck economy and other financially stricken parts of Europe, that occasional Saturday night some mums and dads spend turning tricks to boost the family income likely just covers the heating bills and other basic necessities.

The saddest part of this for me is it is all so unnecessary. Blackpool is in Lancashire, which has one of Britain’s largest reserves of frackable gas. Test wells have been drilled which prove the viability of the reserve. But nobody is allowed to extract the gas, because Britain is committed to Nut Zero.

Cheap Renewables? British OFGEN Issues 48 Hour Price Hike Warning

Trumping the electric vehicle mandate

One of Donald Trump’s main campaign themes was ending the federal electric vehicle mandate, which he calls a China-first policy that taxes the electric grid, subsidizes forced labor, and destroys American jobs. This means rescinding Biden Administration subsidies and mandates – but what else will he be able to do?

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

One of Donald Trump’s main campaign themes was ending the federal electric vehicle mandate, which he calls a China-first policy that taxes the electric grid, subsidizes forced labor, and destroys American jobs. This means rescinding Biden Administration subsidies and mandates – but what else will he be able to do?

The worldwide revolt against the one-engine-fits-all strategy long favored by the European Union began in Italy, just two months after the EU struck a provisional deal on a new vehicle emissions law that would have banned the sale of internal combustion engines by 2035.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government raised objections to the scheme, as the march toward an EV-only vehicle fleet had already hit the Italian auto industry with job cuts. Transport Minister Matteo Salvini argued that ICE vehicles were already running on carbon-neutral synthetic fuels.

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner then demanded an exception in the EU mandate for hydrogen-derived, carbon-neutral synthetic e-fuels, on which Porsche had already invested $75 million. Germany Transport Minister Volker Wissing, insisting that anyone serious about climate-neutral mobility must rely on all available options, did not understand why anyone would want to “ban some technologies.”

Auto industry veteran Andrew Graves suggested that e-fuels could be the answer for keeping older model ICE vehicles on the road. He also cited the significant risk that there could not be enough EV charging stations or battery manufacturing plants to satisfy demand by 2035.

European automakers found themselves in a losing battle against cheap (subsidized by President Xi’s government) Chinese imports and a declining interest by consumers in battery-electric vehicles. Unherd reported in July that Porsche was scaling back its sales targets for EVs due to a 25% drop-off in sales, admitting that “the transition to electric vehicles will take longer than we assumed.”

In the U.S., a Gallup survey found that the number of Americans not considering an EV had risen while the number considering such a purchase had fallen. President Trump has vowed to make it difficult for the Chinese to sell their EVs in the United States, and European governments also imposed tariffs to try to protect their automakers from total collapse.

General Motors delayed the development of new EV models and postponed the opening of an electric truck factory, while Ford shut down production of its Lightning EV trucks after admitting to losing over $47,000 for each EV it sold.

While many automakers are still building EV passenger vehicles, there is a growing consensus that battery-electric is not the way to go for 18-wheelers and other heavy trucks or even for the pickup trucks that millions rely on to haul smaller loads.

Peter Rawlinson, whose Lucid Motors manufactures luxury EVs, told Axios that internal combustion engines – not battery-electric vehicles – are the only realistic option for pickup trucks. The EV pickup “is the wrong product, and so we’re seeing that companies are not making a viable product by trying to make an electric pickup truck.”

Even before Trump’s November victory, automakers were cutting back on EV production promises made to placate the Biden Administration (and presumably, states like California that have passed stringent EV mandates).

Toyota in early October announced it would delay production of its first U.S.-made electric vehicles at its plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, until 2026, even as it remained committed to an EV SUV plant in Princeton, Indiana, and a lithium-ion battery plant in North Carolina.

Hyundai as of October had started production of its Ioniq 5 electric crossover at a huge plant in Bryan County, Georgia, that will build six EVs for Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis, aided by a battery factory joint venture with LG Energy Solutions. The company anticipated building 300,000 EVs a year, with a maximum capacity of 500,000 a year depending on demand. The facility will also be able to build hybrids, which are much higher on the Trump Administration’s pecking order.

But what happens to the EV market if the subsidies and the mandates are gone? The Biden Administration apparently squandered billions in a purported campaign to build out an EV charging network, and the super-fast charger is largely a mirage as of today. Auto insurance rates for EVs have soared in the wake of spontaneous fires, and growing power outages even in EV-mandate states are another brake on consumer confidence.

During his campaign, President-Elect Trump railed against hydrogen vehicles, which he said were prone to tragic explosions, but automakers from Europe to Asia are already putting hydrogen-powered engines and other new technologies on the market or in heavy development.

While Jaguar Land Rover in the United Kingdom has demanded “more effort” to make buying and owning an electric car more appealing, the industry worldwide is seeing production and sales of EVs in decline – a decline likely to be exacerbated by a subsidy-killing Trump Administration.

The British government, though, remain as committed (if not more so) than the Biden Administration to forcing EVs upon an unwilling public. While short-lived Prime Minister Rishi Sunak extended the deadline from 2030 to 2035 for a total phaseout of ICE engines, the nation is still far from (at just 3.5%) of the 22% minimum EV sales by 2025 and 80% by 2030.

The deeper issue in trying to replace a 125-year-old technology onto a public that today operates 1 billion ICE vehicles is that EVs run on an entirely different platform that is not amenable to other technologies – one very different even from the hybrid engine that works quite well in ICE vehicles. So does hydrogen, and so do e-fuels. Yet some governments still believe that resistance is futile – that their mandates will prevail even against a tidal wave of dissent.

A recent article in Wired speculates that a President Trump will back away in part from his pledge to “end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” if only to avoid alienating strong supporter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Will he go along with the Heritage Foundation’s call for ending EV tax credits and other subsidies and backing away from ever-more-stringent fuel economy standards to level the playing field for ICE vehicles?

Trump has said clearly that he believes there is a place for EVs in the U.S. auto mix while sharply criticizing the ICE-friendly hydrogen-powered vehicle market (even though Tesla now plans to introduce its first hydrogen vehicle in 2026).

What is certain is that Democrats, wedded to an EV-only future, will try to obstruct any effort by the Trump Administration to roll back the Biden mandates, and that some Republicans may join them. Moreover, some of the EV facilities are in states whose votes Trump needed to win in 2024 – and it is difficult for politicians to vote to end the flow of federal cash into their states.

Four principles will likely guide the Trump Administration’s actions on the auto industry in the next several months: (a) tariffs to protect domestic auto industry jobs, (b) fighting against mandates that tilt the playing field toward an EV technology that is both widely unpopular especially for load-carrying vehicles, (c) lowering the overall cost of owning reliable transportation for American consumers, and (d) consumer choice, not government mandates, must drive the auto and truck marketplace.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

‘I Press My Own Buttons’: Al Gore Goes On Unhinged Rant During UN Climate Summit

Former Vice President Al Gore raged against “polluters” during an address at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, demanding that people listen to scientists about climate change.

Former Vice President Al Gore during the Global Action Climate Summit Friday, Sept. 14, 2018, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

From Watts Up With That?

The Daily Caller

Harold Hutchison
Reporter

Former Vice President Al Gore raged against “polluters” during an address at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, demanding that people listen to scientists about climate change.

The COP29 summit, which started Monday, previously featured speakers who proposed taxes on the meat and dairy industry and “climate finance” initiatives for less-developed countries. While addressing the conference, Gore claimed that predictions by climate scientists had been proven to be “dead right.”

“The fact that the scientists who predicted all of this decades ago have been proven dead right should cause the rest of us to pay more attention to what they’re telling us now!” Gore vehemently told the crowd, eliciting cheering and applause from attendees. “Do we listen to the polluters, who don’t want to do anything meaningful that might reduce fossil fuels, or do we listen to the scientists who have been telling us what we need to do?” (RELATED: Speaker At UN Summit Claims ‘Naming Extreme Heat Events’ Will Help Fight Climate Change)

WATCH:

“This was a very extreme drought in China in the middle of this year, and what’s happening in the Amazon, the Rio Solimões, the Rio Negro, it’s the worst drought on record in the Amazon — 90% of the river flow in Colombia is gone, Ecuador’s losing its hydro because of this,” Gore continued. “In Namibia, and also Zimbabwe, they are now killing livestock — killing wild animals in order to help feed hungry people. How long are we going to let this get worse until we decide to take action?! I’m sorry, I press my own buttons these days.”

Gore claimed that during the hour he was speaking, 30 million tons of ice was melting in Greenland, warning that the melting ice could have catastrophic consequences for the oceans.

“That is fresh water coming off Greenland into the North Atlantic, where a key part of the ocean current circulation system is involved. It could be disrupted,” he said. “Some scientists disagree, but more and more, they’re raising the alarm.” (Click Here To Watch The Daily Caller Documentary “Anarchy U”)

“And if you look at the bottom statement, these peer-reviewed — these scientists say in this peer-reviewed study, ‘We estimate a collapse around mid-century.’ What?! What?!” Gore continued. “Some of the load-bearing elements of our entire Earth ecological system are at risk. And what are we doing? Just talking away, talking away, not making much progress. Again, I’m getting stirred up here so I’ll try to calm down.”

Multiple officials from the Biden administration — which notably backed away from a major emissions initiative at the event — including Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, White House climate advisor John Podesta and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, are attending the event in Azerbaijan. Podesta told attendees at the conference during a Monday speech that despite the election of former President Donald Trump, the United States would still be involved in addressing climate change, Bloomberg reported.

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