UK renewables produced enough electricity to ‘power every UK home’ through the winter, analysts say
This is just looking at aggregates, ignoring WHEN the energy was produced -- much of it outside peak demand times. but it obviously would have done some good for part of the day
British-based renewables generated more electricity than gas this winter and produced enough to power every UK home through the winter, analysis has shown.
Between 1 October and 28 February, power generated by wind, hydro and solar reached 47TWh (terawatt hours), according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
Generating the same amount of electricity using gas power stations would have required around 95TWh of gas – equal to 110 tankers of liquified natural gas (LNG) or the amount more than 10 million UK homes would burn over the winter.
Renewably-produced electricity this winter has displaced more than a third of the UK’s entire annual gas demand for power generation, the analysts said.
Without it, the UK would have had to burn more gas which would have potentially increased net gas imports by more than 22 per cent, including gas imported via pipeline.
Jess Ralston, head of energy at ECIU, said: “We’re seeing the old electricity system give way to the new, with renewables becoming the backbone and displacing more and more gas.
“Battery storage is ramping up faster than expected, boosting the UK’s energy security and leaving us less exposed to international gas markets.
“Lifting the ban on the onshore wind will help. But with the US and the EU going gangbusters for renewables, eyes are on the Government, the Chancellor and the Budget to decide on how the UK stays an attractive market for the investments that will ultimately bring down bills.”
On Monday, Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps met his US counterpart Jennifer Granholm in London and said he wants to commit the UK to greater energy independence through nuclear and renewables.
Mr Shapps and Ms Granholm want to wean Western countries off Russian oil and gas to undermine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
They said the huge rise in gas prices after the Russian invasion has shown the need to speed up the move away from fossil fuels.
Emma Pinchbeck, Energy UK’s chief executive, said “we must do everything possible” to encourage and speed up investment in low-carbon power.
She added: “This analysis confirms the ever-growing contribution that homegrown renewable generation is making to power our homes and our businesses.
“We’ve seen the effect that record wholesale gas prices have had on customers’ bills over the last 18 months and it’s underlined the urgency of expanding our supply of cheap, domestic, clean power in order to remove our dependency on expensive fossil fuels – which will strengthen the country’s energy security, cut bills and emissions and boost economic growth.”
In 2022, UK renewables provided 38 per cent of the country’s electricity generation, nearly as much as gas at 40 per cent, and became a net electricity exporter for the first time since 2010.
Most clean energy in the UK comes from wind power which is most productive during the winter when winds are stronger.
Other sources of generation, including nuclear and biomass, generated 28TWh over the winter period, the ECIU analysts said.
Using gas power plants instead would have required 56TWh more gas, equivalent to almost five million homes’ annual gas demand or more than 60 LNG tankers.
Battery storage is also set to grow 14-fold with the storage pipeline having increased by five times in the last year.
Europe’s largest grid-scale battery storage facility came online in 2022 and the UK’s pumped hydro storage capacity is set to rise by 130 per cent to 6.5GW.
The UK is still heavily dependent on gas. It supplies 40 per cent of our power and 85 per cent of our heating and UK households have been badly hit by rising gas prices because they are the least energy efficient in western Europe, according to the International Monetary Fund.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-renewable-energy-electricity-winter-b2292542.html
*****************************************************My ‘low confidence’ in media’s climate change propagandists
The press’ reaction to The Wall Street Journal’s blockbuster weekend report that the US Department of Energy has concluded the COVID pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, is another highly revealing instance of deep media bias.
Mainstream media outlets were quick to highlight that the department itself rated its conclusion “low confidence,” which was clearly meant to cast doubt on the credibility and significance of the report.
Question: How often do the major media ever mention the “low confidence” ratings attached to many findings in climate science? Almost never.
Yet anyone who takes the time to read through the climate-science reports the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues every few years will find that many of the most crucial factors behind the catastrophic climate-change claims and forecasts are rated “low confidence” by the scientists who produce them.
In the most recent IPCC science report, for example, issued in 2021, the term “low confidence” appears 48 times in the key 131-page chapter on climate sensitivity; “uncertain” or “uncertainty” appears 248 times.
While the media breathlessly report that every tropical storm, tornado, hurricane and forest fire are caused by climate change, the UN scientists are much more restrained, saying they have “low confidence” the computer models or climate-history studies justify such statements. Ditto for predictions of large sea-level rise, Antarctic sea-ice melting, ocean-surface temperatures, regional climate impacts and North Atlantic storm tracks.
The IPCC’s estimates for the largest single cause of future temperature change — the various forms of water vapor in the atmosphere (in other words, clouds) — remain highly uncertain.
But anyone who brings up these “low confidence” findings or mentions “uncertainty” in any aspect of climate science is branded a “climate denier,” a term deliberately promoted to equate any climate-science skepticism with Holocaust denial — just as anyone who suggested the lab-leak theory for COVID the last three years was branded a racist, a bigot and a tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorist, including by Scientific American’s editor and The New York Times’ science reporter.
The “settled science” of climate is enforced by the most appalling groupthink. Most major media willingly go along with the demonization of dissenting analysis of climate questions just as they did with COVID.
The Los Angeles Times announced several years back it would no longer publish any letters to the editor that dissent from the party line on climate change. Major media outlets like The Washington Post that have otherwise been laying off journalists have been adding numerous reporters dedicated to covering climate change, and nearly all of them come with environmental-advocacy backgrounds.
The Society of Environmental Journalists is better known as the Society of Environmental Stenographers, so faithfully do most environmental “reporters” uncritically pass along the claims of green-activist groups.
Not content to let the SEJ do the heavy lifting for the climate campaigners, a new pressure organization, Covering Climate Now, boasts of signing up 500 media outlets and reporters who are on board to “inform the public and hold power to account.”
Covering Climate Now is a joint project of several leftist publications including The Nation and The Guardian, and the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review has taken sides as well, declaring that climate change should “touch every beat in the newsroom.”
CCN is just one of countless climate initiatives funded by a consortium of foundations that bankroll the massive climate campaign, including the Packard Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund and even Bill Moyers. The climate lobby is likely a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide at this point, and while CCN is a relatively recent and small node, it has enjoyed considerable success feeding storylines to the media. One of its gimmicks is to give out annual journalism awards in more than 20 categories, with the winners featured in ABC News TV — good for a budding career as a climate propagandist.
In addition to parroting climate activists’ talking points, the media also ignore or distort coverage of green energy, the holy grail of the climate movement. While there have been hundreds of local protests against proposed wind and solar-power installations around the United States, the media seldom cover these unless Greta Thunberg shows up.
Last week Reuters reported that Thunberg protested a wind-power installation in Norway because it is located near reindeer pastures an obscure indigenous tribe favors. A serious news media would be embarrassed at this kind of celebrity-driven coverage.
But we no longer have a serious and unbiased media. The press is one institution the American public now rates with “low confidence.”
The latest Gallup survey on American attitudes toward the press finds the proportion of people who have no trust in the media “at all” has risen from about 5% in 1972 to 38% today, with another 28% expressing “little trust.” The segment with a “great deal or fair amount” of trust in the media has fallen from 68% in 1972 to just 34% today.
That’s a climate change you can believe in. No wonder the forecast for the future of media is so grim.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/01/my-low-confidence-in-medias-climate-change-propagandists/
************************************************'Ecogrief' Seminar Is the Latest Leftist Attack on American Energy
Harriet Hageman
The insanity of woke-ism is permeating our society, ruining our culture, and preventing law-abiding citizens from working for a living and taking care of their families. This scourge has already infiltrated academia, the media, and our corporate boardrooms, and it is now taking over functions of our own government, with the bill being handed to the taxpayers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has now begun offering “Ecogrief” training to its employees. Yes, you read that correctly: Ecogrief. Although it sounds like a parody of leftism, sadly, it is not.
Ecogrief is nothing more than a made-up condition that provides a pat on the head for delicate federal employees who are allegedly struggling with a sense of trauma as they believe they are witnessing a cataclysmic collapse of the Earth’s environment.
It might be comical if it were a private company wasting its own money, but it’s not. It is our federal government, and that makes it your money that is being misappropriated and used to further a political agenda. The explicit purpose of this agenda is to increase the cost of putting food on your table, a roof over your head, and gas in your car.
It is your money that is being used for environmental activism instead of to pay down some of our nearly $32 trillion in national debt.
It’s your money being used to convince people that the United States is evil, despite the fact that we have lifted more people out of poverty, provided a better standard of living, and provided more opportunities for more people than any other country in the history of mankind. And at the same time, we’ve managed our natural resources in a way that supports our economy, protects our environment, and safeguards our country’s sovereignty.
This latest phony malady is just another part of a larger-scale assault on both common sense and American energy. And it disturbed me enough that I took to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to draw attention to it.
The Biden administration has gone to war on our energy industries by blocking the extraction, development, transport, and use of our abundant and clean fossil fuels. In other words, they’re opposed to any energy resource that actually works, such as coal, oil and gas, and uranium.
They seek to make us energy paupers, thereby forcing the United States to beg other countries for the resources we need to power this country and our economy. And this is a war is being fought on multiple fronts.
Permitting is now longer, more complicated, more expensive, and designed to limit new sources of energy production throughout every step of the process.
Oil and gas leases have declined by 97% compared to this point in Donald Trump’s presidency.
And despite President Biden’s irresponsibly tapping into our Strategic Petroleum Reserves, gas prices remain stubbornly high, and natural gas – a major source of home heating for half of America – is expected to increase by 25%.
Coal, which provides a quarter of America’s energy, is critical to manufacturing, and is vital to not only my state of Wyoming, but to anyone who wants to ensure access to clean and affordable energy. Nonetheless, coal is under constant attack by the ever-increasing and more restrictive rules issued by unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
And who suffers? The citizens of this country, with the poorest among us suffering the most.
I believe that there is truly a special place in hell for people who adopt policies that are designed to create energy poverty – a situation where families must choose among buying food, heating their homes, or putting gas in their cars. This will be one of Biden’s lasting legacies: Shared misery for everyone except the elite.
We cannot afford the woke energy agenda, and we certainly shouldn’t provide cry rooms for the victims of the fictitious affliction of ecogrief.
But, while it may seem that there is a non-stop cycle of bad policies coming out of D.C., we must never give up. With the Republicans back in control of the House, we must pass legislation to claw back power from the administrative state – and I am filing multiple bills to do just that. We can unleash our affordable and plentiful American Energy and we can call out the nonsense.
And I have a message to our friends at the Fish & Wildlife Service: You may want to get in a good cry and take that Ecogrief seminar now – before we legislate it out of existence.
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Polar wildlife was thriving in 2022
A prominent Canadian zoologist says that Arctic and Antarctic wildlife continued to thrive in 2022 despite predictions of impending catastrophe.
In the Polar Wildlife Report 2022, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) on International Polar Bear Day, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that ice-dependent species in the Arctic and Antarctic show no sign of impending population crashes due to lack of sea ice.
Crockford’s report reveals that there were no reports in 2022 that would suggest that polar wildlife is suffering as a result of reduced sea-ice extent: no starving polar bears or walrus, no beach-cast dead seals, no marked declines in great whale numbers, no drowned penguin chicks.
While a few Antarctic penguin species and the Antarctic minke whale appear to have suffered a recent decline in abundance, these were unrelated to sea-ice cover in the Southern Ocean. Similarly, in the Arctic, a recent 27% decline in polar bear numbers in Western Hudson Bay was found to be unrelated to sea-ice conditions over the last five years.
Indeed, contrary to all expectations, critical Antarctic winter sea ice has been increasing since 1979. While sea-ice experts have long voiced concerns that computer models of future Antarctic sea ice coverage are seriously flawed, biologists concerned about the future of ice-dependent emperor penguins and Antarctic krill have continued to use them to justify alarmist predictions.
Crockford concludes: “In both the Arctic and Antarctic, less summer sea ice has meant increased primary productivity, which in turn has meant more food for all animals. This explains in part why polar wildlife continues to thrive, even in areas with much reduced summer sea-ice coverage.”
Key Findings
* There were no reports in 2022 that would suggest polar wildlife is suffering as a result of reduced sea-ice extent; in both the Arctic and Antarctic, less summer sea ice and increased primary productivity over the last two decades has meant more food for all animals, which explains in part why polar wildlife has been thriving.
* Arctic sea ice in summer has declined since 1979, but has had an overall flat trend since 2007; coverage was again well below average in the Barents and Chukchi Seas in 2022, where continued high primary productivity has provided abundant food resources for wildlife; winter ice coverage in 2022 was slightly lower than 2020 but overall has shown a relatively flat trend since 2011.
* Ice-dependent polar bears worldwide probably now number about 32,000, with a wide range of potential error; a survey of Western Hudson Bay polar bears in 2021 generated a population decline of 27% since 2016, but this did not correlate with lack of sea ice. A genetically-distinct subpopulation of polar bears was discovered thriving in SE Greenland, and western Barents Sea bears (Norway) are still doing well despite the most profound summer sea-ice loss of all Arctic regions.
* Atlantic walrus numbers are still low, but recovering in the Barents Sea and eastern North America. A new population estimate of Pacific walrus in 2019 reveals more than 200,000 exist in the Chukchi/Bering Sea area. More killer whales were reported visiting the Eastern Canadian Arctic, and in Alaska and the Western Canadian Arctic, bowhead whales are thriving.
* Antarctic sea ice extent has barely changed since 1979: vital winter ice has slightly increased overall while summer ice has slightly declined (with its lowest extent in December 2022), all while overall primary productivity has increased. A new sea ice predictive model acknowledges previous flaws and does not predict a future decline until 2050 at the earliest.
* Krill are crucial prey for many species of wildlife (especially huge numbers of great whales and penguins) that live or feed in the Southern Ocean. Future intensification of commercial fishing of krill (largely to feed farmed fish) is likely the largest conservation threat to local wildlife, given recent geopolitical tensions over effective fisheries management.
* Numbers of fin, blue, humpback, and southern right whales feeding in Antarctic waters in summer have increased in recent years, and while minke whale numbers appear to have declined, an estimated 500,000 individuals still frequent the region.
* Killer whales (orcas) are the top predator in the Southern Ocean and most populations appear to be thriving. The IUCN lists all ice-dependent seals in Antarctica as ‘least concern’.
* Several albatross and large petrel species are considered ‘vulnerable’ by the IUCN due to deadly interactions with long-line trawlers fishing for Antarctic toothfish (Patagonian sea bass), while over-fishing of this cod-like species and the herring-like Antarctic silverfish is also a concern.
* Emperor penguins, the largest and most ice-dependent penguin species, were classified as ‘Threatened’ on the US Endangered Species List in 2022 but remain ‘Near Threatened’ according to the IUCN Red List because of the large size of their breeding population and the acknowledged uncertainty of future sea-ice predictions.
Contact Dr Susan Crockford e: sjcrockford@gmail.com
https://mailchi.mp/2f3898a89fed/press-releasepolar-wildlife-was-thriving-in-194215?e=cc88839e92
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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