Day: March 22, 2025

Crisis time: Heathrow airport swapped diesel gens for Net Zero wood-fired backup generator

Turns out, one of the world’s largest airports apparently didn’t have reliable backup generators. This may be just sheer incompetence, but some insiders are saying it’s specifically because it went Net Zero compliant in 2012 and switched diesel generators for biomass ones.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Turns out, one of the world’s largest airports apparently didn’t have reliable backup generators. This may be just sheer incompetence, but some insiders are saying it’s specifically because it went Net Zero compliant in 2012 and switched diesel generators for biomass ones.

Apparently some terrorism investigators are looking closely at the cause of the fire, but the crazy thing is, that Heathrow was completely reliant on one substation nearby which went up in a fireball yesterday, and never had even the slightest hope of keeping the airport running. The blackout left something like 290,000 people stranded, with 1,3oo flights canceled or rearranged. A bit like a war broke out or a volcano exploded, except they didn’t.

Fury as Heathrow’s lack of back-up power causes ‘a contained version of 9/11’: Small fire at power station leaves more than 200,000 travellers, and others forced to turn around in mid-air

By Martin Robinson, Daily Mail

One industry source has claimed that Net Zero is to blame because Heathrow is moving from diesel back-up generators to biomass.

Reform MP Richard Tice said: ‘It appears that Heathrow had changed its backup systems in order to be, wait for it…Net Zero compliant’.

‘They had got rid of their diesel generators and had moved towards a biomass generator that was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside it. Their net zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking’.

“Basically, their net zero-compliant back-up system had completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking. It beggars belief.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Tice said: “Why is Heathrow being so silent about this? Are they embarrassed because they have something to hide?

But they did win a Sustainability Leaders Award in 2013 for burning down 13,000 tons of forest.

They were proud of their effort to change the global weather by (0.0 degrees)

According to the DailyMail the North Hyde substation fire involved a very old transformer catching alight and “involved 25000 litres of cooling oil igniting”. Apparently, it burnt the generator at North Hyde and also the backup. Previously it had been running at 106% of capacity, suggesting they were pushing old equipment past its maintenance schedule.

Wait, what? This failure was “expected”?

It’s hard to believe but in their defense the Heathrow management effectively said they weren’t even trying to back up the whole airport, just some runway lights. Nothing to see here… it is just critical national infrastructure that could fail at any moment or be taken out in a blink at times of warfare:

[The Telegraph]  — …  Heathrow said in a statement the airport’s back-up energy systems worked ‘as expected’ when the substation fire started.

It said: ‘We have multiple sources of energy into Heathrow.

‘But when a source is interrupted, we have back-up diesel generators and uninterruptable power supplies in place, and they all operated as expected. ‘Our back-up systems are safety systems which allow us to land aircraft and evacuate passengers safely, but they are not designed to allow us to run a full operation.

James Melville posted:  ” …as an emergency back up this biomass relic is a farce. …

“Diesel kicks in within seconds, keeping runways lit and skies safe. Biomass dawdles — hours to reach full power, better for steady warmth than sudden blackouts. … Net Zero’s noble pursuit has left Heathrow vulnerable, a global hub undone not by storms or foes, but by the folly of prizing untested green tech over proven resilience.”

No matter how we look at this, in every direction, we see incompetence.

h/t David Maddison, Anton, Tonyb.

Why Heathrow Ditched Its Diesel Generators

In 2017, Heathrow announced they were going to be sourcing all renewable power. Current+ reported at the time:

Heathrow airport is to be powered completely by renewable-sourced electricity from next month as the airport aims to become recognised as zero carbon infrastructure.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Some further news on the Heathrow power cuts.

In 2017, Heathrow announced they were going to be sourcing all renewable power. Current+ reported at the time:

Heathrow airport is to be powered completely by renewable-sourced electricity from next month as the airport aims to become recognised as zero carbon infrastructure.

As the airport prepares for a highly contentious expansion, yesterday it unveiled ‘Heathrow 2.0’; a landmark new sustainability strategy which contains wide range of targets based upon the airport attaining the status by 2050.

A 2020 milestone target of a 34% reduction in carbon emissions compared to a 1990 baseline has also been established, with additional targets to be set throughout 2017.

The document discusses various ways in which the status will be achieved, with energy efficiency deployment and renewable energy playing a pivotal role.

Most notably the airport has stated that 100% of the electricity it purchases will be sourced from renewable generators as of April 2017, although the document does not reveal any further details such as whether or not it is changing supplier or tariff, or purchasing renewable energy certificates.

It also states that the airport will look to “maximise” on-site or local renewable energy generation but does not set any specific targets.

Heathrow already has a wide array of on-site renewable generators including a 71kWp rooftop solar array on its Terminal 2 building, and a 9MW thermal/1.8MW electric combined heat and power facility also located at T2.

https://www.current-news.co.uk/heathrow-targets-carbon-neutral-status-in-landmark-sustainability-strategy

Those solar panels were not much help then!

The move to 100% renewable, which in any event was fictitious in actuality, would naturally preclude the diesel backup generators it had been using, as confirmed by their Net Zero plan, published three years ago:

https://www.heathrow.com/company/about-heathrow/heathrow-2-0-sustainability-strategy/our-carbon-strategy

Left torching Teslas

The Left is torching electric vehicles.
Can the news get any more bizarre?

From CFACT

By Craig Rucker

The Left is torching electric vehicles.

Can the news get any more bizarre?

That’s right, the same folks who scolded that the world will “burn” unless the government forces every one of us to buy an EV or stop driving, are now torching the world’s best EVs with Molotov cocktails.

“Wow, you guys like petty acts of domestic terrorism, huh?” asked bemused Daily Show host Jordan Klepper when his audience hooted, cheered and applauded a news clip reporting “multiple cases of possible arson targeting Teslas and cyber trucks.”

Could it be that the anti-America, anti-capitalist Left’s obsession with electric vehicles was never about saving the planet at all?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, America’s top entrepreneur, brought us reusable rockets, internet for all, amazing A.I., robots that actually work, and much more.

Elon just rescued Butch and Suni, two astronauts who were stranded on the I.S.S. for over nine months.

EVs were nowhere until Elon showed the world, they could be amazingly innovative and incredibly cool. Tesla EVs may very soon be fully self-driving.

Making EVs cool was a tall achievement considering that EVs suffer from short range, long charging times, heavy weight, prohibitive expense, batteries that burn uncontrollably and require scarce rare earths that are too often mined under appalling circumstances.

Despite those challenges, Elon’s Tesla is now mass producing electric vehicles that are solid choices for some.  They are not the best choice for all.  Elon’s cool with that.

You’d think the Left would be erecting monuments to the man who made their EV dreams come true.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Protesters used a Tesla EV to carve “DON’T BUY A TESLA” onto a beach in Wales.  They included an image of a man extending his arm out straight.  This, despite the bizarre notion that Elon telling an audience that his heart goes out to them was somehow an authoritarian salute, has been massively debunked.

Tesla was removed from the Vancouver International Auto Show the day before it opened, reports The CBC.  Organizers cited “safety” concerns.  Tesla vehicles have also been removed from Vancouver’s EV subsidy program.  “Safety” is frequently the rationale employed to justify institutions retaliating against free speech and has been used to silence speakers on college campuses.

Minnesota Governor and former V.P. candidate Tim Walz has been celebrating the recent drop in Tesla’s stock price.  As if rooting against an important company that created 80,000 American jobs was not bad enough, Walz and the Left’s cheering against Telsa requires shamelessly cherry picking their stock data.  Tesla stock may be down from the high it achieved in January resulting from the “Trump bump,” but remains up nearly 34% over the last year and 18,000% since it went public!

The Left cannot forgive Elon for bringing free speech to X/Twitter, endorsing President Trump, and now for applying his unmatched talent to rooting out waste and making government more efficient.

As Congressman Wesley Hunt put it, “Musk, Musk, Musk, Musk, Musk, Musk Musk.  What’s funny about it to me is, you’re mad at the guy that found the fraud, but not mad at the people who wasted YOUR money.”

Why Did Heathrow’s Backup Fail?

Chaos at Heathrow Airport can be blamed on the drive for net zero by successive governments, according to Reform UK MP Richard Tice.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Why did Heathrow’s power back up not work?

From GB News:

Chaos at Heathrow Airport can be blamed on the drive for net zero by successive governments, according to Reform UK MP Richard Tice.

Speaking on GB News, Tice said Heathrow has changed its backup electrical systems to reach green targets and the decision has now come back to bite them.

The airport will be closed all day Friday after a fire at an electrical substation near by that supplies it with power.

Tice said on the People’s Channel: “Critical infrastructure like that obviously needs a backup and I can exclusively reveal to you this morning that Heathrow changed its backup systems to be net zero compliant.

“It got rid of their diesel generators and moved to a biomass generator which was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside the grid.

“Their net zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking. It beggar’s belief.”

https://www.gbnews.com/news/heathrow-airport-reform-richard-tice-shutdown-fire-net-zero

There are certainly questions to be answered.

Sources suggest that whatever the backup was, it was unable to be fired up straightaway, which surely is the whole point of having it.

There are questions to be answered.

No, NewsBreak, the Supposed “Cold Blob” in the Atlantic Isn’t a Harbinger of the Atlantic Ocean Current Collapsing

An article published at NewsBreak (NB) titled, Scientists issue urgent warning about mysterious ‘cold blob’ in the ocean: ‘Most likely underestimated’ claims that a “mysterious cold blob” in the Atlantic Ocean signals an impending collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which could have “catastrophic” consequences. This claim is, at best, misleading. In reality, the AMOC is not weakening at an unprecedented rate, nor is it on the brink of collapse—long-term data and historical trends do not support such dire predictions.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

An article published at NewsBreak (NB) titled, Scientists issue urgent warning about mysterious ‘cold blob’ in the ocean: ‘Most likely underestimated’ claims that a “mysterious cold blob” in the Atlantic Ocean signals an impending collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which could have “catastrophic” consequences. This claim is, at best, misleading. In reality, the AMOC is not weakening at an unprecedented rate, nor is it on the brink of collapse—long-term data and historical trends do not support such dire predictions.

As seen above in a satellite data derived image from NASA in 2018, the “cold blob” has been around awhile.

The NB article states, “The decline of the AMOC system is most likely underestimated by current climate models, and its collapse could bring devastating climate changes.” However, this assertion relies heavily on speculative and notably flawed climate models rather than observational data.

The NB articles is based on and cites a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which claims that the AMOC is weakening due to climate change. However, like many similar studies, it relies on climate models with unverified assumptions about how the AMOC works and what drives changes in it, and climate model projections based on those assumptions. The study did not look at direct, long-term empirical observations.

For years, climate alarmists have warned about an imminent collapse of AMOC, yet real-world data tells a different story. As Climate at a Glance: Ocean Currents highlights, direct observational data shows no long-term weakening trend in AMOC. The supposed decline is based on incomplete datasets and short-term variability rather than robust, century-scale records. The RAPID array monitoring system in the Atlantic, shows no consistent trend of dramatic weakening.  In addition, although the so-called cold blob south of Greenland has been cited before as an indicator of AMOC weakening, temperature variations in this region have multiple causes, not just AMOC changes. Natural ocean variability, changes in atmospheric circulation, and volcanic activity all contribute to regional temperature anomalies.

With approximately 40 years of satellite records, science is unable to determine at the present time whether the “cold blob” is a regular natural occurrence every few decades and whether the blob is driven by ocean currents or is a periodic or recent phenomenon occurring only off of Greenland, resulting from inflows from melting ice.

Furthermore, historical research shows that similar cold anomalies have appeared in the Atlantic before, long before industrial CO₂ emissions became a factor. If a cooling region in the North Atlantic were a reliable indicator of AMOC weakening, then AMOC would have supposedly been on the verge of collapse multiple times over the past several centuries—yet it never did.

Perhaps the most glaring problem with the AMOC collapse narrative is that it keeps changing. Over the past two decades, the same climate activists who now claim AMOC is weakening due to global warming have previously argued the opposite—that warming would strengthen AMOC. As pointed out in Climate Realism: Climate Activists Flip-Flop on Ocean Currents Yet Again, scientists and the mainstream media have repeatedly shifted their position, sometimes arguing that AMOC is accelerating, sometimes claiming it’s slowing and on the verge of collapse, and at other times saying the speed of the current has not changed much at all.

For example, in 2005, NASA reported that AMOC was slowing down, but by 2010, researchers were claiming AMOC was actually speeding up due to Arctic ice melt. Then, in 2015, the narrative flipped back to AMOC slowing, only to shift again in 2018 when another paper suggested that AMOC had been recovering, and the previous conclusions might have been overstated.

When it comes to the AMOC, as with the constantly shifting narrative on monsoons, every time a new study is published, the narrative changes, but regardless of the change, the cause is always attributed to human activity and the results are always going to be catastrophic if governments don’t act. But what are we acting to prevent when the anticipated disaster constantly shifts? Is the AMOC speeding up, slowing down, or remaining about the same? Pick your study.

If AMOC were truly experiencing an unprecedented, human-caused collapse, the narrative shouldn’t be shifting with every new study, but rather the studies should produce consistent results.

The primary problem with the PNAS study and the NB article is the reliance on climate model projections, even though the models past projections have been consistently flawed and the modelers themselves admit, they don’t accurately portray the key metric they were designed to project, that is, global temperatures.  As we’ve reported at Climate Realism repeatedly, here, here, and here for example, climate models have consistently overestimated warming rates and failed to account for natural climate variability.

The media’s track record on climate predictions is littered with failed doomsday scenarios. Just a few decades ago, headlines were filled with warnings of an impending ice age. Now, every observable natural fluctuation in weather or climate is blamed on human activity and portrayed as an existential crisis. The NB article fits this pattern, presenting a speculative study as if it were undeniable proof of an impending disaster.

Rather than presenting a balanced view of the scientific debate, the media continually pushes alarming narratives intended not to inform but rather to generate fear. Yet the stories almost always lack empirical backing or even fly in the face of what data actually show. The reality is there is no evidence that AMOC is on the verge of collapsing. Indeed, based on the current state of knowledge about the AMOC, science can’t even say whether it is changing at all, much less whether it is speeding up or slowing down. Readers deserve better than another round of speculative climate doom predictions based on the unverified alarming study de jour.

Ed Miliband offers to pay £525,000 for GB Energy Chief

Hot on the heels of news that Ed Miliband is offering an annual equivalent salary to recruit a new head for the Low Carbon Contracts Company quango comes news of the salary on offer to head up GB Energy.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Thank you for your interest in the role of Chief Executive Officer at Great British
Energy (GBE). This is a truly extraordinary opportunity to lead a pioneering new
publicly owned company that will sit at the very heart of the UK’s clean energy
transformation.

Candidate Brief Published_Department for Energy Security – Net Zero_Great British Energy CEOHerunterladen

Hot on the heels of news that Ed Miliband is offering an annual equivalent salary to recruit a new head for the Low Carbon Contracts Company quango comes news of the salary on offer to head up GB Energy.

A base salary of £350,000 will be paid, plus bonuses of up to £175,000, for what is yet another quango.

And he only has to work in the office for three days a week!

GB Energy, you must remember, will not actually generate electricity or be a retailer. Instead, it is a vehicle set up to dole out taxpayer money to subsidise new green investments, that would not otherwise be viable.

Favourite for the job is said to be Dan McGrail, the temporary chief, on secondment from the lobby group Renewable UK.

One of his predecessors there, Emma Pinchbeck, is already coining it in as head of the Climate Change Committee.

So much for Rachel Reeves’ black hole!

Trump’s Energy Secretary Offers Africa Freedom from Biden’s Climate Imperialism

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has signaled a change that could mean the difference between life and death for millions in Africa. Speaking at the “Powering Africa Summit” in Washington, D.C., Wright told leaders of a continent of 1.5 billion people that the Trump administration “has no desire to tell you what to do with your energy system.” This is a departure from the Biden regime, which was aligned with much of the Western climate juggernaut imposing Green New Dealism on developing countries that couldn’t afford it and stood to suffer by it.

From Watts Up With That?

By Vijay Jayaraj

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has signaled a change that could mean the difference between life and death for millions in Africa. Speaking at the “Powering Africa Summit” in Washington, D.C., Wright told leaders of a continent of 1.5 billion people that the Trump administration “has no desire to tell you what to do with your energy system.” This is a departure from the Biden regime, which was aligned with much of the Western climate juggernaut imposing Green New Dealism on developing countries that couldn’t afford it and stood to suffer by it.

“It’s a paternalistic post-colonial attitude that I just can’t stand,” Wright said of the climate evangelism that sought to force others to abandon fossil fuels and adopt largely useless technologies like solar and wind energy.

Africa has languished under paradoxical political and economic pressures: Nations that had built their prosperity on coal, oil and natural gas have spent decades discouraging Africans from tapping their own wealth of fossil fuels. The continent was shackled by a sanctimonious agenda of Western elites who used their financial and geopolitical leverage to press Africans into a campaign against a fabricated climate crisis.

But where is the evidence for this “existential threat”? Global life expectancy has doubled since 1900, hunger rates have plummeted, and climate-related deaths have dropped 98% over the past century. Predictions of global overheating are fearmongering resting on pseudoscience, and purported solutions to prevent catastrophe have no hope of working in any case.

So, these climate policies forced upon Africa aren’t environmentalism; it’s eco-imperialism that perpetuates the poverty and deprivation that only sensible energy policy can reverse. Poor education, ill-health and shortened lives would remain the lot of Africans being promised an ecological nirvana.

“If you trace the evolution of energy on the world or on a country, it is the evolution of human possibility, human opportunity, and the quality of life,” said Wright. Exactly.

Repeating his message at the Houston CERAWeek energy conference, Wright noted that millions of people use solid fuels such as wood, straw and animal dung for cooking and heating.

“The indoor air pollution from this activity alone is estimated to kill over two million people annually,” he said. Where he asked, is the global conference to address this crisis?

Deafening is the silence from the climate establishment, which seeks to block development of natural gas deposits that would eliminate these deaths.

Roughly a billion people worldwide enjoy the comforts of modern life, consuming annually the energy equivalent of 13 barrels of oil per person, Wright said. In Africa, that figure plummets to less than one barrel per capita.

“We wear fancy clothes, mostly made out of hydrocarbons. We travel in motorized transport. The extra lucky of us fly across the world to attend conferences,” he said. Meanwhile, African women walk miles to carry fresh water, wash clothes by hand and forgo education because a lack of electric lighting precludes doing homework at night.

“Beyond the obvious scale and cost problems,” Wright said, “there is simply no physical way that wind, solar, and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas.” The same goes for replacing coal and oil.

Africa sits atop a treasure of energy riches. Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and Libya are oil giants; Mozambique and Tanzania boast world-class gas fields; South Africa and Zimbabwe hold coal reserves that could power entire regions. Yet, much of this wealth is locked up by the arrogance of foreign pressure and the timidity of domestic hesitation.

Wright’s endorsement of fossil fuels is a game-changer. He has thrown open a door that was once bolted shut. His rejection of past impositions and embrace of African energy autonomy is an overdue recognition of realism and opportunity.

Abundant energy is the lifeblood of progress. Without it, Africa remains trapped in a pre-industrial limbo, its people condemned to toil in darkness while the West preaches about an imaginary crisis.

The continent’s leaders must seize this moment with unapologetic resolve. Wright’s words are a challenge for Africans to act decisively.

The African Energy Week conference at Cape Town in September, as Wright noted, will be a critical platform to connect with global investors and accelerate development. From oil rigs in the Gulf of Guinea to coal reserves in the Kalahari basin, the time to build is now. Godspeed, Africa.

This commentary was first published at Daily Caller on March 18, 2025.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.

BBC’s Make Believe Extreme Weather

You will recall I complained about this BBC article, which failed to offer any evidence to back up its claim about climate change making extreme weather worse.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Climate change has brought record-breaking heat this year, and with it extreme weather, from hurricanes to month-long droughts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg8dg3ke40o

You will recall I complained about this BBC article, which failed to offer any evidence to back up its claim about climate change making extreme weather worse.

They have now responded. Most of their reply is based on weather attribution models. And at the end, they admit the truth behind their article:

“The BBC’s article based on the report by the WWA and Climate Central is in line with these guidelines”

In short, they have not done any research themselves before publishing the nonsense. Instead, they have simply repeated claims by Climate Central, who are by their own admission a lobby group whose focus is on “communicating climate science”, along with claims made by weather attribution computer models.

I will now be moving the complaint up to the ECU.

Climate Change Racial Divide in the Australian Desert?

In Coober Pedy, white people live in comfortable dugouts, while Aboriginals swelter on the surface. But is this really a climate change racial divide?

Essay by Eric Worrall

From Watts Up With That?

In Coober Pedy, white people live in comfortable dugouts, while Aboriginals swelter on the surface. But is this really a climate change racial divide?

In the Australian outback, climate change widens the racial divide

Story by Michael E. Miller

COOBER PEDY, Australia — From her front door, Sonya Crombie can see the sandstone hills where White men carved up the land in search of opal and then stayed, turning their mines into elaborate underground homes insulated from the desert heat.

But when Crombie’s air conditioner broke in November just as the scorching summer was about to set in, the ailing 60-year-old Aboriginal woman had no tunnel in which to take refuge. As the temperature in her state-run house topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Crombie struggled to breathe. Emergency workers flew her 500 miles to a hospital.

“I nearly died,” she said. “This heat can kill you.”

…

Belowground, the town’s mostly White residents live in “dugouts” — bought, sold and expanded in certain neighborhoods — where the temperature stays in the low to mid-70s and electricity bills are modest.

…

Aboveground, Aboriginal people, who make up 17 percent of the town, swelter without air conditioning or rack up enormous electricity bills. Crombie owes the district council almost $11,000, largely from using her now-broken air conditioner. Records show that 76 account holders, many Aboriginal and indigent, owe a total of $350,000.

…Read more: 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/in-the-australian-outback-climate-change-widens-the-racial-divide/ar-AA1BdLc9

This has got to be one of the most fake climate stories I’ve ever covered.

I’ve never been to Coober Pedy, but I’ve been to Broken Hill in the summer, which has a similar climate. That place is hot. The satnav holder on my windshield melted in the desert sun.

But in winter temperatures in Coober Pedy are mild, with top temperatures in the high 60s or low 70s.

Why don’t the aboriginals have their fair share of dugouts?

Most of those dugouts started as mine shafts, miners searching for opal. The white people didn’t steal mineshafts from the aboriginals, they dug the mineshafts themselves or used their own money to buy underground homes from those who built them.

I’m not expecting a 60-year-old with ailing health to dig through multiple tons of solid rock, but their younger and more athletic relatives could easily dig a few dugouts for their parents and grandparents or dig homes for themselves and let the grandparents stay in the hotter months. Coober Pedy Summer daytime temperatures are insufferable, but as soon as you get a few feet underground temperatures drop dramatically, maintaining a comfortable 23-25C (73F – 77F) all year round.

The fact young people aren’t helping their distressed elders says more about social breakdown in the aboriginal community than climate change.

Let’s hope younger aboriginals take the initiative and start taking care of their old folk. You never know, while digging new homes they might even find a bit of opal.

Click here for an interesting article on the history of Coober Pedy.

Low Energy-IQ Politicians, Be Gone!

We know what the future of American energy will look like. Solar panels, drawing limitless energy from the sun. Wind turbines harnessing the bounty of nature to power our homes and businesses.  A nation effortlessly meeting all of its energy needs with minimal impact on the environment. We have the motivation, we have the technology. There’s only one problem: the physics.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Power Density Physics Trump Energy Politics

A plethora of insane energy policy proposals are touted by clueless politicians, including the recent Democrat candidate for US President.  So all talking heads need reminding of some basics of immutable energy physics.  This post is in service of restoring understanding of fundamentals that cannot be waved away.

The Key to Energy IQ

This brief video provides a key concept in order to think rationally about calls to change society’s energy platform.  Below is a transcript from the closed captions along with some of the video images and others added.

We know what the future of American energy will look like. Solar panels, drawing limitless energy from the sun. Wind turbines harnessing the bounty of nature to power our homes and businesses.  A nation effortlessly meeting all of its energy needs with minimal impact on the environment. We have the motivation, we have the technology. There’s only one problem: the physics.

The history of America is, in many ways, the history of energy. The steam power that revolutionized travel and the shipping of goods. The coal that fueled the railroads and the industrial revolution. The petroleum that helped birth the age of the automobile. And now, if we only have the will, a new era of renewable energy.

Except … it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s not really a matter of will, at least not primarily. There are powerful scientific and economic constraints on where we get our power from. An energy source has to be reliable; you have to know that the lights will go on when you flip the switch. An energy source needs to be affordable–because when energy is expensive…everything else gets more expensive too. And, if you want something to be society’s dominant energy source, it needs to be scalable, able to provide enough power for a whole nation. Those are all incredibly important considerations, which is one of the reasons it’s so weird that one of the most important concepts we have for judging them … is a thing that most people have never heard of. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the exciting world of…power density.

Look, no one said scientists were gonna be great at branding. Put simply, power density is just how much stuff it takes to get your energy; how much land or other physical resources. And we measure it by how many watts you can get per square meter, or liter, or kilogram – which, if you’re like us…probably means nothing to you. So let’s put this in tangible terms. Just about the worst energy source America has by the standards of power density are biofuels, things like corn-based ethanol. Biofuels only provide less than 3% of America’s energy needs–and yet, because of the amount of corn that has to be grown to produce it … they require more land than every other energy source in the country combined. Lots of resources going in, not much energy coming out–which means they’re never going to be able to be a serious fuel source.

Now, that’s an extreme example, but once you start to see the world in these terms, you start to realize why our choice of energy sources isn’t arbitrary. Coal, for example, is still America’s second largest source of electricity, despite the fact that it’s the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive way to produce it. Why do we still use so much of it? Well, because it’s significantly more affordable…in part because it’s way less resource-intensive.

An energy source like offshore wind, for example, is so dependent on materials like copper and zinc that it would require six times as many mineral resources to produce the same amount of power as coal. And by the way, getting all those minerals out of the ground…itself requires lots and lots of energy. Now, the good news is that America has actually been cutting way down on its use of coal in recent years, thanks largely to technological breakthroughs that brought us cheap natural gas as a replacement. And because natural gas emits way less carbon than coal, that reduced our carbon emissions from electricity generation by more than 30%.

In fact, the government reports that switching over to natural gas did more than twice as much to cut carbon emissions as renewables did in recent years. Why did natural gas progress so much faster than renewables? It wasn’t an accident. Energy is a little like money: You have to spend it to make it. To get usable natural gas, for example, you’ve first got to drill a well, process and transport the gas, build a power plant, and generate the electricity. But the question is how much energy are you getting back for your investment? With natural gas, you get about 30 times as much power out of the system as you put into creating it.  By contrast, with something like solar power, you only get about 3 1/2 times as much power back.

Replacing the now closed Indian Point nuclear power plant would require covering all of Albany County NY with wind mills.

Hard to fuel an entire country that way. And everywhere you look, you see similarly eye-popping numbers. To replace the energy produced by just one oil well in the Permian Basin of Texas–and there are thousands of those–you’d need to build 10 windmills, each about 330 feet high. To meet just 10% of the country’s electricity needs, you’d have to build a wind farm the size of the state of New Hampshire. To get the same amount of power produced by one typical nuclear reactor, you’d need over three million solar panels, none of which means, by the way, that we shouldn’t be using renewables as a part of our energy future. But it does mean that the dream of using only renewables is going to remain a dream, at least given the constraints of current technology. We simply don’t know how to do it while still providing the amount of energy that everyday life requires. No energy source is ever going to painlessly solve all our problems. It’s always a compromise – which is why it’s so important for us to focus on the best outcomes that are achievable, because otherwise, New Hampshire’s gonna look like this.

Addendum from Michael J. Kelly

Energy return on investment (EROI)The debate over decarbonization has focused on technical feasibility and economics. There is one emerging measure that comes closely back to the engineering and the thermodynamics of energy production. The energy return on (energy) investment is a measure of the useful energy produced by a particular power plant divided by the energy needed to build, operate, maintain, and decommission the plant. This is a concept that owes its origin to animal ecology: a cheetah must get more energy from consuming his prey than expended on catching it, otherwise it will die. If the animal is to breed and nurture the next generation then the ratio of energy obtained from energy expended has to be higher, depending on the details of energy expenditure on these other activities. Weißbach et al. have analysed the EROI for a number of forms of energy production and their principal conclusion is that nuclear, hydro-, and gas- and coal-fired power stations have an EROI that is much greater than wind, solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power in a desert or cultivated biomass: see Fig. 2.

In human terms, with an EROI of 1, we can mine fuel and look at it—we have no energy left over. To get a society that can feed itself and provide a basic educational system we need an EROI of our base-load fuel to be in excess of 5, and for a society with international travel and high culture we need EROI greater than 10. The new renewable energies do not reach this last level when the extra energy costs of overcoming intermittency are added in. In energy terms the current generation of renewable energy technologies alone will not enable a civilized modern society to continue!

On Energy Transitions

Postscript