No Ambrose, curtailed power is not free
Curtailed power is power that is produced but not needed
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in the Telegraph, has been looking at what the future grid might do to stay afloat when the wind isn’t blowing. This is certainly an important question, and one that you might have hoped would no longer be the subject of speculation now that we are twenty years into the renewables ‘revolution’. Unfortunately, the Green lobby has conned the country into ploughing on before finding the answers, but I suppose we should be relieved that the issues are finally getting an airing.
AEP’s first suggestion is to use Allam-cycle gas turbines, and this is only a partially daft idea. Allam cycle looks a promising technology, and is said to be able to deliver power for about the same cost as unabated CCGTs, although presumably the storage bit is extra. You can believe the hype or not, as you prefer. Either way, it looks likely it is going to be lower cost than renewables, and without causing the same problems for the system as a whole. That being the case, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t just dump all the windfarms and use Allam cycle on its own.
AEP’s other suggestion is, of course, hydrogen, and here he betrays the lack of economic understanding that is so prevalent in the media. Here’s what he says:
"The second default option is to use free electricity from excess renewable power that would otherwise have to be curtailed – at night, at weekends, etc – to produce green hydrogen via electrolysis."
If I had a penny for every time some wild-eyed hack in Fleet Street punted the idea of “free” curtailed electricity I would long since have retired to the sun. Let me explain why this is so wrong.
Imagine a windfarm (let’s call her “Anna”), which each year produces 2 million megawatt hours of electricity per year at a cost of £100 each. That’s a total cost of £200 million, representing part of Anna’s build cost and all of her operating costs for the year. Note the word “cost”: it’s what has been paid out to produce the energy, as distinct from the “price”, which is what someone is willing to hand over to get their hands on it.
Then imagine that the following year another windfarm (“Betty”) comes on stream in the vicinity, and that at times throughout the year, there is not enough transmission capacity to get both windfarms’ output to market. Let’s say 10% of Anna’s output has to be curtailed. Her unit cost therefore goes up (to £200m/180m = £111/MWh).
In year 3, someone sees an opportunity and builds a hydrogen plant (“Horace”) next door to Anna. They will take the curtailed power off her hands for nothing (in reality, for a low price, but let’s not quibble). Anna’s output is therefore back up to 2 million MWh, and her unit costs back down to £100. But the 200,000 MWh of electricity that pass from Anna to Horace have still cost £100 each to make! The price may be low, but the cost is still high! Selling this power for nothing to Horace therefore creates a big loss in Anna’s books, which cancels out the “profit” that Horace has effectively made by getting hold of electricity worth £100 for free.
Another way to think about the transaction is to consider the picture if Anna’s owners had built their own hydrogen plant and administered it as part of the same operating company as the windfarm. Feeding power from the windfarm to the hydrogen plant would then just be a change of location. No profit, illusory or otherwise, would be seen. In AEP’s model of the world, creating the hydrogen plant as a separate entity magically creates “free” electricity. It’s daft!
So in system terms, the “free electricity” is an illusion. It’s only free to the hydrogen plant because a loss has been sustained elsewhere.
Fortunately for Anna, things are pretty comfortable whatever happens. Firstly, if she is curtailed, she gets a constraint payment from the grid for her trouble, and can then get that topped up to her CfD strike price. Both these sums are ultimate funded by consumers. And if she can unconstrain herself, by building a direct wire between her and Horace (in other words, if she doesn’t have to deliver power via the transmission grid), she can get the constraint payment, the strike price top up and whatever Horace is willing to pay her for the power. Quids in!
This is the antithesis of “free”.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/no-ambrose-curtailed-power-is-not-free/
**********************************************Germany cools on gas boiler ban as Net Zero begins to fall apart
German politicians are increasingly having second thoughts about government policies to phase out gas boilers starting next year as the pro-business FDP united with opposition groups—the CDU and the AfD—to lobby against the new measures.
German lawmakers rushed to pass anti-boiler legislation in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in March 2022, mandating that all new heaters comply with a regulation to be 65% renewable as of 2024.
Effectively banning most current models of gas boilers, this dovetails with an overarching 2029 EU gas boiler ban. Authorities want to wean German consumers off gas-guzzling boilers in favour of electric-powered heat pumps as the country’s supply of gas from Russia looks increasingly in doubt due to sanctions.
According to government statistics, however, uptake in electric pumps has so far been poor with only 236,000 installed last year compared to 600,000 gas boilers. The Guardian reported on a concerted lobbying campaign by the European gas industry and other special interest groups to stall or water down the gas boiler ban, while Germany is accused of allowing green dogma to drive their economy off a cliff.
The German Ministry of Economics expressed their opinion, earlier this week, that the ban may be a step too far, given that the initiative was mainly the handiwork of Green Party Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is currently in the hot seat for his links to a worsening nepotism scandal involving members of his family and Germany’s powerful green think tanks.
Berlin’s ruling traffic light coalition has been at odds over the pace of the green transition despite attempts to secure amendments to the legislation that would give some wriggle room to synthetic fuel powered boilers. Some media outlets, based on numbers from the German Statistics Office, announced last month that the German economy had entered a recession (read here why it may not actually be in recession). Many industry insiders are now saying that Green Party involvement in government was a major reason for the German economy losing its shine.
The boiler dispute parallels similar efforts by Germany to partially resist a ban on the sale of new fossil-fuel-powered combustion engines. Earlier this year, Berlin successfully pushed for the inclusion of synthetic fuel amendments to soften the blow on its auto industry. The past few months have seen a weakening of the EU green consensus, as German FDP politicians have joined with the national governments of Italy and Eastern European states in calling for a slowdown if not a complete cessation of the green transition.
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Canada's green extremism is leading to disaster for its economy and political elites
A new paper from Net Zero Watch warns Canadian politicians that the economic and social pain they are causing through sweeping decarbonisation policies will soon become critical, and that the public will soon turn on them.
Author Robert Lyman says:
"Ottawa is obsessed with transitioning us away from energy sources that we hold in abundance, to new sources of supply that are more expensive, less reliable, and less secure. This can only end badly."
Lyman points out that most of Canada's political classes and bureaucracies are signed up to a radical green agenda, and it is therefore necessary for the public to seize control of policies that are threatening their very living standards.
He sets out a plan for the country to develop a new policy framework that better balances environmental, economic and social considerations as essential for national unity.
Lyman says:
"We can focus on real environmental harms, we can focus on technologies that work, and we can focus on the things that matter to people alive today rather than hypothesising about what might happens far in the future. But we must move on from the impractical and dangerous decarbonisation path that is leading us towards disaster."
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Climate Action Shouldn’t Mean Sacrificing Life, No Matter Whose It Is
The Irish government is considering a “dairy cow massacre” to reduce emissions and meet climate targets. If that sounds insane, it’s because it is. Even conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair and entrepreneur Elon Musk agreed on Twitter, which sparked much discussion – and outrage – across Europe and the United States.
This isn’t the first time climate alarmists have lost the plot and resorted to extreme “solutions.” In recent years, environmentalists have urged people to not have children, give up their pets, stay away from houseplants, and now, slaughter farm animals.
Being anti-life – whether it be animal or human – is no way to fight climate change. As an environmentalist, I want to preserve the health of our planet so that life can be abundant, not nonexistent.
For too long, we’ve operated under the assumption humans and our society are a disease on the earth that needs to be cured. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, human society has contributed to environmental challenges, like climate change, but we’ve also made incredible advances and discoveries. Whether it be in art, science, or agriculture, it’s clear humans are not the disease; we’re the cure.
There are many diverse solutions to the climate challenges we face, but I can assure you ending the lives of 200,000 dairy cows prematurely is not one of them. Sacrificing life – any life – for emissions reductions is a poor precedent to set, and it frankly won’t be effective. In the United States, for instance, dairy cows account for 1.3% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Surely, we could be spending our efforts elsewhere instead of terrorizing the agricultural sector.
Moreover, there are often more elegant and innovative ways to mitigate the effects of climate change than the extreme measures proposed. For instance, regenerative agriculture techniques such as the usage of cover crops for grazing to improve soil quality are already in use all around the world. Allowing cattle to roam and graze naturally, rather than overgrazing pastures, has proven an effective way for both the animals and the ecosystem to thrive. Those in agriculture have also discovered simply switching out dairy cows’ feed can greatly reduce methane emissions associated with their herds.
These solutions are not only more humane than the options Ireland is considering, but they’re also more forward-looking. Reducing the size of dairy cow herds in one fell swoop would be a short-term emissions reduction, sure, but in the long term, there would be no progress in making the industry more sustainable overall. We know logically we cannot, as a society, survive without a robust agricultural sector, so we should strive to incrementally reduce its environmental impact, not exterminate it.
Protecting our planet should also mean protecting the life on it. We shouldn’t sacrifice life for the planet, or the planet for life. Instead, we should take an approach – such as regenerative agriculture for this instance – that allows constructive collaboration between nature and society. The alternative is pursuing medicine worse than the disease.
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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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