The crippling problem of renewable green energy cannot be solved
In a Net Zero world, what will we do when the wind isn’t blowing? Environmentalists like to point out that we will have solar power as well, but of course the sun doesn’t shine at night, so windless nights are a big problem.
Next, it is suggested that we can store electricity. But in winter we frequently get long wind lulls, and with the sun low in the sky, there will be little or no solar power either. These so-called “dunkelflautes” mean little or no electricity supply from the renewables fleet.
A dunkelflaute can last for weeks. That means you need huge, unfeasible quantities of electricity storage. The Royal Society recently concluded we’d need enough to cover more than two months’ demand, and, whatever storage technology is adopted, this isn’t going to be affordable or probably even possible. The Royal Society’s numbers suggest we’d need to deliver a project equivalent in size to HS2 every year, forever. Worse, that number is likely to be hugely understated, because the report’s authors used extraordinarily optimistic projections of what might happen to costs and efficiencies in the next 25 years. Using assumptions grounded in the technologies and costs prevalent today, we’d conclude that we’d need six months’ storage, and would have to settle ongoing annual bills equivalent to five HS2 projects per year.
It’s a huge problem, which makes the idea of Net Zero a hard sell. One of the wheezes dreamt up by the greens to make the costs look a bit smaller is to assume that we will get a significant proportion of our electricity down the “interconnectors” – the big cables that connect the UK grid to our European neighbours, or which would stitch together the various grids of North America. There are already several international interconnections in operation – from the UK to Norway, France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands – as well as others bringing power from region to region. More are on the way.
However, as with so much of the energy “transition”, there is a lot of wishful thinking going on.
Firstly, it is glibly assumed that the electricity delivered down interconnectors is zero-emission. Remarkably, this is the case, no matter how many coal-fired power stations are in operation on the continental grid at the time. In other words, replacing an idle wind farm in the UK with a coal-fired power station in Belgium would be assumed to represent an emissions-reducing move.
Secondly, it is assumed (in equally glib fashion) that the continental grid will always have power to spare for the UK, and that there will always be power to spare somewhere in the USA. This is simply not the case. Firstly, if it is midnight in the UK, it is dark across the whole of Europe. If it is two AM in New York it is midnight in Los Angeles, so nobody is going to be generating any solar power.
Secondly, although we are frequently told that “the wind is always blowing somewhere”, weather systems are extremely large things and they frequently affect whole continents. As a result, wind speeds are highly correlated across any continent; if there’s no wind in the UK, the chances are high that it’s not windy anywhere nearby either.
Even if the continent is windy when it’s calm in the UK, or if it’s windy in Texas when it’s calm in California, the ability to send power where it’s needed depends on there being surplus generating capacity in the precise place where the wind is blowing.
If, say, it’s windy in Scandinavia but the rest of Europe is experiencing a lull, you need enough spare windfarms in the Baltic and Nordic seas to meet demand from almost half a billion people. That’s a huge amount of windfarms. Then again, the windy spot might be in the Atlantic, off the coast of Iberia. So you’d need to build the same enormous number windfarms again, this time off the coast of Portugal. The again, and again – basically every local neighbourhood would have to have enough capacity to supply the entire continent. Hopefully this shows that the idea is rather ridiculous.
The same arguments apply to the idea of getting power from further afield. There is a currently a proposal to build an interconnector to Morocco, where the stiff breezes found in the seas off the Atlantic seaboard and deserts full of solar panels will, it is claimed, deliver an electricity bonanza. Unfortunately, as I write, wind speeds are rather low across most of Europe, while off the Western seaboard of Morocco they are ... even lower. It’s gusty off Portugal though.
A lack of generating capacity in the right place is only one of the problems with interconnectors. They also turn out to be rather unreliable. For example, the Western Link, one of the interconnectors from England to the South of Scotland has failed regularly in its short lifetime, going down for months at a time, causing nightmares for grid managers tasked with making up the difference. Similarly, the IFA1 interconnector to France was hit by a fire in 2021, losing half of its capacity for a period of more than a year. Of course, any part of the electricity grid can suffer an outage, but the loss of an interconnector can take out a significant proportion of supply for long periods.
Worse still, interconnectors represent a risk to security of supply in other ways. Those long cables, hidden deep beneath the waves, are an inviting target for hostile powers. Just last week, a small flotilla from the navies of several European nations was scrambled to an area adjacent to the East Anglia One windfarm, after a Russian vessel was seen to be hanging around the area. We can’t know if it was sizing up the windfarm’s grid connection or the adjacent gas pipeline, but the point is the same; it is very hard to protect subsea infrastructure from sabotage (and impossible when it is a thousand-mile cable from here to Morocco).
The problem of what to do when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining is all but insurmountable. In technological terms, the only feasible solution is a vast fleet of windfarms and a gigantic store of green hydrogen, along the lines envisaged by the Royal Society. However, barring a series of dramatic technological breakthroughs, the costs would make the recent energy price crisis look like nothing.
It’s high time to put a stop to the wishful thinking on Net Zero.
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German Finance Minister Casts Doubt on 2030 Coal Exit
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner on Wednesday called into question the government's aim to end coal use in Europe's largest economy by 2030.
"Until it is clear that energy is available and affordable, we should end dreams of phasing out electricity from coal in 2030," Lindner said in an interview with the German daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.
"Now is not the time to shut down power plants," he added.
Germany ought to "enable the expansion of renewable energies more quickly" and expand domestic gas production, said Lindner, who also leads the pro-business FDP party.
Lindner's comments threaten to deepen division within the ruling coalition between Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats, the Greens and the FDP, where ministers have clashed over how to respond to higher energy prices while reducing fossil fuel usage.
The coal exit date is a plank in Germany's project to produce 80 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030 and the coalition aims "ideally" to close all coal-fired plants within the same timeframe.
The agreement brings forward the exit date agreed by the government of former Chancellor Angela Merkel's to quit coal by 2038.
Germany's plans to decarbonize energy production were thrown into disarray by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent cut to sorely needed gas supplies from Russia.
The turn of events, punctuated by the sabotage of a key pipeline, sent energy prices soaring and left Germany looking for new sources of energy.
The government brought mothballed coal plants back online to take the pressure off of gas-based electricity production, with the reactivated fleet available through March 2024.
At the same time, Berlin has pledged to cut red tape for installing wind turbines to meet the ambitious target, but observers say the pace is still too slow.
Germany also shut off its last remaining nuclear power plants in April this year, a long-planned step, which some critics said could make it harder to hit climate targets.
https://www.voanews.com/a/german-finance-minister-casts-doubt-on-2030-coal-exit/7337035.html
***************************************************Europe’s new road rules are making driving a nightmare for tourists
“Where’s your Crit’Air sticker?” I’m just about to enter the parking area outside my Airbnb in Rouen, in France’s Normandy, and the parking officer has me stumped. I haven’t got a clue what he’s talking about. “What’s a Crit’Air sticker?” I ask. It’s a permit to drive in a low-emission zone he tells me, haven’t I seen the signs?
That rings a bell. I’ve seen a road sign with a red circle and something about emissions, and a warning popped up on the GPS. The fine for entering a low-emission zone (LEZ) without a permit is €68 ($112) he says, and I can be fined multiple times. Mine is a hire car that I picked up in Amsterdam I tell him, and I can see he’s wavering. In the end he lets me off with a caution. Who knew?
France’s low-emission mobility zones
France’s zones à faibles émissions mobilite (ZFE-m), its clean air scheme for vehicles, has been in existence since January 2017, when the government introduced windscreen stickers as a legal requirement in some of its cities. The stickers identify a vehicle’s emissions levels and, in some cases, restrict access in the quest for less polluted cities. Rouen is one of a number of French cities that require motorists to have a Crit’Air sticker, but from 2025 all cities with a population over 150,000 will be required to introduce a LEZ. France is gradually ratcheting up the requirement, making it tougher for the older, more polluting Crit’Air 4 and 5 vehicles to enter the LEZs.
All of Paris is now a LEZ. Only vehicles with a Crit’Air 3, 2 or 1 sticker are allowed to enter. From June 1, 2025, the restrictions tighten and only Crit’Air 2 vehicles will be allowed in. Starting from 2030, all of Paris will be a zero-emission zone, no petrol or diesel vehicles allowed. Only electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be permitted to enter the city on weekdays.
The Citroen C4 I’m driving falls into Crit’Air 1, the least-polluting category apart from electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. All petrol-powered vehicles made after 2011 are Crit’Air 1. If this was a diesel-powered vehicle it would need a Crit’Air 2 sticker. Most hire cars registered in France come with a Crit’Air sticker, and that’s where my problem arises. Since mine is registered in the Netherlands, hired from Amsterdam and driven across Belgium and into France, it doesn’t have a Crit’Air sticker.
Getting a Crit’Air sticker is straightforward. You go to the relevant French Government website (entreprendre.service-public.fr) pay €3.72 ($6) which covers the application cost plus postage and within 10 days your sticker will arrive through the post. But here’s the rub, the sticker can only be sent to the vehicle’s registered postal address. It is impossible for anyone driving a hire car to obtain a Crit’Air sticker.
If the ZFE-m scheme means lower emissions and a cleaner, healthier planet I’m all for it, but how are you supposed to be across all this? Of course, ignorance of the law is no defence. It’s not just France. Many other parts of Europe also require emissions stickers, and this could create problems for anyone driving a hire car across borders.
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Australia: Labor’s renewable ‘investments’ are just blowing in the wind
The floundering offshore wind turbine industry received some welcome news from Australia last week with a strong hint from Jim Chalmers of more sugar on the table for renewable energy.
The promise of what the Treasurer euphemistically called “more decisive action across all levels of government” is a sign of increasing desperation as the government’s emissions-reduction timetable falls hopelessly behind.
The giant boring machine crawling beneath the Snowy Mountains is an apt metaphor for the government’s progress towards its 2030 target. Both projects were based on heroic assumptions, neither were adequately surveyed, and both have turned into giant sinkholes for capital that could be better spent elsewhere.
Joe Biden’s dream of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind turbines by 2030 is in tatters after a string of cancelled projects. Last week, Danish wind energy company Orsted dropped two projects that would have installed more than 200 giant turbines off the New Jersey coast. Orsted’s stock has fallen 60 per cent this year and The New York Times estimates it will have to write off billions of dollars in investments in the two projects. Orsted is not the only company encountering headwinds.
Britain’s target of 50GW of offshore wind by 2030 can only be met with substantial subsidies and revenue guarantees. The Swedish company Vattenfall abandoned a giant offshore wind project off the Norfolk coast earlier this year, blaming a 40 per cent rise in costs. The latest auction for offshore wind licences failed to attract a single bid.
Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, BP’s head of low-carbon energy, told a Financial Times conference on Wednesday that the US offshore wind industry was “fundamentally broken” and required a “fundamental reset” to help the nascent market grow. Mounting problems included approval delays, long timelines and escalating interest rates that have caused financing costs to soar.“There’s really not a Plan B right now,” environmentalist Jeff Tittel told the New York Times. “It’s a political disaster.”
Enter Energy Minister Chris Bowen who told the Asia Pacific Offshore Wind and Green Hydrogen Summit in August that Australia had big ambitions for offshore wind. “We aren’t just building an industry from scratch,” he said. “We are building an industry in which we want to be a world leader.”
Bowen has announced five offshore wind zones in the past year, with a sixth between Bunbury and Perth expected to be formally announced this month.
The numbers, sprinkled like fairy dust in the minister’s press releases, are too silly to believe. The Hunter, Illawarra and Southern Ocean zones alone will provide enough electricity to power 16 million homes, according to the minister. In a country of 9.7 million households, that would be impressive if it were true, rather than a scribble on the back of an envelope.
We are told that the energy capacity of the five offshore wind zones in the eastern states will be 43GW. That means constructing 5400 turbines with a boilerplate capacity of 8MW, or one a day for the next 15 years. On a conservative installation cost assumption of $US1.3m a megawatt, that would require a capital investment of $86bn.
“We need you,” Bowen told the industry gathering. “We need your capital. We need your investment. We need your experience.
“The Australian government is deadly serious about our journey to become a renewable energy superpower.”
Reducing emissions is not as easy as Labor seemed to assume when it announced its 82 per cent renewable-energy target two years ago. The construction of onshore wind, grid-scale solar and transmission lines has fallen way behind the government’s timetable. Offshore wind, with its long lead time and significant capital costs, is an even larger challenge.
Yet building the extra generation capacity to meet the government’s 2030 target is only the beginning. The additional power that would be needed to manufacture green hydrogen on an industrial scale has barely been discussed. Yet the amount is considerable.
Plans for the proposed renewable energy hub in Gladstone, Queensland, for example, include a facility to export 4MT of green hydrogen a year. That would require 110GW of renewable energy capacity, according to a presentation by Gladstone Ports Corporation chief executive Craig Haymes at a recent engineering conference. It means an extra 10,000 wind turbines or 2500sq km of solar panels, an area the size of Fraser and Mornington Island combined.
Some attendees thought Haymes may have been trying to can the project by putting the figures on the table. Yet in a statement, the Corporation said Haymes had merely wanted to illustrate “the potential for renewable energy for Queensland and the opportunities this presents”.
Green hydrogen is at a nascent stage. It is an inefficient and hazardous way of storing electricity, and there is no serious industrial demand. It comes with huge capital constraints.
Yet governments in the US, Europe and Australia are investing billions of dollars of seed capital into hydrogen produced by renewable energy without a care in the world as to where the energy will come from.
In a speech to The Australian’s Economic and Social Outlook Conference last week, Chalmers flagged a “uniquely Australian” revamp of energy policy to prize an extra $225bn in capital from the hot little hands of private investors. He promised measures in the 2024-25 budget “to get private capital flowing towards our priorities effectively and efficiently”.
The hubris in this statement bodes poorly for our future prosperity. Diverting the flow of such huge sums of private capital to government pet projects, however noble the intentions, is the road to economic ruin. The investors withdrawing from renewable energy projects are responding to price signals. Private investors have a keen nose for snake oil. They are trading off costs and benefits and assessing the technical feasibility of projects with rigour this government has failed to match.
“Australia is, to be honest, a bit like the kid who forgot to study for an exam early in the process and is pulling all-night study sessions,” Bowen told the August conference. “But now we are working 24/7 to catch up.”
The tragedy is that Australia was gifted the chance to learn from the mistakes of others. Bowen’s obstinacy comes at a price.
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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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