Why Climate Activists’ Push for Renewable Energy May Backfire
Renewables such as wind and solar are intermittent and largely unpredictable energy sources, with rapid swings in output from one minute to the next. This creates major challenges for operators of the nation’s electricity grid, because supply must equal demand, and the supply “curve” in a given area never tracks the output from intermittent renewable sources.
As a result, the more that intermittent solar and wind capacity is deployed to an electricity grid, the more of what’s called “dispatchable” capacity needs to be deployed to stabilize the grid to meet demand.
What this means, ironically, is that the rush to deploy solar and wind is locking us out of the one energy source that could actually achieve a zero-emissions grid, namely nuclear, and locking us into fossil fuel sources of electricity generation such as natural gas.
“Dispatchable” capacity refers to power plants that can quickly ramp up and ramp down as needed. This means simple-cycle combustion-turbine power plants such as “intermediate” and “peaker” natural gas-powered generators, and (in the developing world) power plants fired by heavy fuel oil.
“Dispatchable” power does not include power from steam electrical generators, because the boilers used to make the steam that propels their turbines take too long to heat up and cool down. Steam electrical generators, such as large low-carbon combined-cycle natural gas plants and zero-carbon nuclear plants, are instead used as “baseload” generators; “baseload” refers to that portion of demand that always needs to be satisfied around the clock.
At a joint hearing of federal regulators recently, Matt Lauby, the chief engineer of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (a not-for-profit regulatory authority that oversees power generation and distribution in the U.S. and Canada), argued that nuclear energy can help stabilize the electricity grid as increasing wind and solar capacity is deployed. But this is highly misleading. Some of the most advanced nuclear reactors include new electricity storage technologies that could in theory help them be more responsive to variable demand, but as a general rule, nuclear cannot be counted upon as dispatchable power.
Hence, the inordinate reliance on solar and wind is arguably moving us away from a zero-emissions grid. As the developed world proceeds in its increasingly heedless transition to clean energy, so much intermittent solar and wind capacity is being deployed to the grid in places like California that it is displacing reliable baseload generation.
People are only just waking up to the deep irony. Displacing baseload generation with intermittent solar and wind requires grid operators to replace baseload generation with dispatchable sources of power to stabilize the grid. In practice, this means replacing low-carbon combined-cycle natural gas plants and zero-carbon nuclear plants with more pollution-intensive, carbon-intensive and inefficient intermediate and “peaker” natural gas plants.
Utility-scale batteries are advancing in storage capacity and efficiency, potentially mitigating the intermittency of renewables and reducing the reliance on natural gas for peaking power. But these can only marginally flatten the supply curve, and only for a few hours. They can’t store solar and wind energy from Monday so that you can use it on Wednesday.
“Storage right now is about four hours per lithium battery,” said Lauby. “But I’m not worried about 24 hours. I’m worried about five days of extreme weather.”
Environmentalists are often their own worst enemies. They insist that clean energy is necessary to save the planet but are responsible for virtually all of the major obstacles to a clean energy transition. They welcome the Biden Environmental Protection Agency’s mandates on electric vehicles and power plants, though those rules will punish the most efficient power plants and cause utilities to switch to less-efficient and more carbon-intensive sources of electricity generation. They celebrate the Biden’s administration’s decision to stop granting new liquefied natural gas export licenses, though this will make developing countries poorer and more reliant on coal and will turn Europeans increasingly against the very idea of a clean energy transition.
If environmentalists were serious about eliminating carbon emissions from the electricity grid, they would be pushing for a massive expansion in nuclear power, so that demand is satisfied as much as possible from nuclear baseload generation. Instead, in their rush to deploy solar and wind, they are diminishing the rationale for baseload generation, thereby making grid management all about stabilizing the intermittency of solar and wind, rather than assuring reliance on the most dependable, efficient, and least carbon-intensive sources.
Renewable and conventional energy production in Germany over two weeks in 2022. In hours with low wind and photovoltaics (solar sources) production, hard coal and gas fill the gap. Nuclear and biomass show almost no flexibility. This graph shows how intermittent solar and wind energy displace baseload generation and force the electric grid to deploy more inefficient dispatchable power sources.
Writing in Energy Central in 2013, research scientist Schalk Cloete noted the catastrophic impact that Germany’s renewables-heavy Energiewende (“energy transition”) would have on utilities:
This incompatibility between baseload capacity such as nuclear and intermittent renewables such as wind and solar is part of the reason why Germany is retiring her nuclear fleet and building more flexible coal plants. Naturally, this is a tremendously expensive endeavour, and struggling German utility companies are now claiming €15 billion [$16.2 billion U.S.] in damages. Without this compensation, German utilities will not be able to meet the great challenges posed by rapidly fluctuating loads such as the example shown above and the Energiewende will fail.
Simply put, climate activists aren’t just putting all their eggs in one basket. It’s the wrong basket, even for the goal of net-zero carbon emissions electricity. They will be dismayed at how much fossil fuel power they find stuck inside of it.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/02/is-renewable-energy-actually-making-us-rely-more-fossil-fuels
*********************************************In praise of carbon dioxide
Humans don’t create carbon dioxide; they simply recycle some of it.
Once that is understood, the role of carbon dioxide in regard to climate change can be put into perspective. Since the formation of the Earth, many carbon compounds, from the pure form, diamonds, to the trace atmospheric gas that is essential to all life, have been expelled from the interior of planet Earth to the surface. Scientific literature is replete with graphs depicting the progressive depletion of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years. Much of this has been captured in readily available and abundant fossil fuels.
All life is dependent on carbon dioxide, an invisible, odourless, non-polluting, heavier-than-air plant-nutrient. The CO2 Coalition, established in 2015 as a non-partisan education foundation to educate thought leaders, policymakers, and the public, reports that:
‘Contrary to the oft-repeated mantra that today’s CO2 concentration is unprecedentedly high, our current levels of carbon dioxide are at near-historic lows. The average CO2 concentration in the preceding 600 million years was more than 2,600 ppm, nearly seven times our current amount and 2.5 times the worst case predicted by the IPCC for 2100.’
We are thus experiencing a CO2 drought, more pervasive and threatening to life on Earth than water droughts. Water droughts occur in short-term cycles as in the Biblical seven years of feast and seven years of famine (a cycle that the use of hydrocarbon fuels has overcome), but a carbon dioxide drought is a long-term looming issue (that can also be met with the wise use of the vast depositories of coal, oil and gas that should be utilised, not locked away under superstitious, unscientific rules and regulations).
The quantities of fossil-fuel energy-banks (coal seams of solidified sunlight) are breathtakingly vast. For example, the big coal mines in the Bowen Basin are of Permian age, which goes back 240 to 290 million years (my), but the Walloon coal deposit seams in the Surat Basin in eastern Australia are over 12 metres thick and are of Jurassic age (135–200 my ago). Coals of this age exist also in other parts of Queensland and are common worldwide. We also have Cretaceous coals in Queensland and elsewhere (65-135 my ago) – still within the dinosaur period. Massive amounts of ‘brown coals’ (lignite) exist in Victoria (Yallourn and Loy Yang power stations), and in South Australia, and in other parts of Australia, deposited about 10-65 my ago. In Australia, we have an abundance of coal – thousands of years of supply at our present mining rate.
Australian drillers have recently discovered two 90-metre-thick coal seams in Mongolia. It takes approximately 10 metres of foliage to make a metre of peat, and 10 metres of peat to make a metre of coal. It is difficult to comprehend the eons of solar power collected through the miracle of plant photosynthesis that lie beneath the surface, but which are being locked away through political chicanery. Before humans use a fraction of these resources, newer and cleaner forms of energy based on the power of the atom will surely have been developed, but such advances will not come by candlelight.
Coal is the primary heavy-duty electrical energy source that propelled mankind from subsistence living and still underpins the world economy today. Its efficiency, though, is being undermined by regulatory imposition of the duplicitously named ‘renewables’ in pursuit of impossible Net Zero targets, but coal remains the fuel of today, and is the fuel that will allow a smooth transition to the fuel of the future, safely harnessed power of the atom. Hopefully, it might also generate wealth and release energy to facilitate the disposal of dead wind turbines and solar panels, the detritus of a temporary mass delusion that weak, intermittent wind and solar energy can be efficiently harvested in amounts sufficient to reliably replace the energy-on-demand that feeds every light switch and power point.
By extracting some CO2 from fossilised remains of past atmospheric CO2 and recycling it into the atmosphere from whence it came, mankind benefits from the energy released, and replenishes vitality in the air to help re-green the planet. Despite the demonstrable role played by carbon dioxide in greening and sustaining plant life, there are controversies and debates about how much CO2 in the atmosphere is anthropogenic and how much is naturally occurring. For example, Terry Gerlach confidently states that, ‘Research findings indicate unequivocally that the answer to this frequently asked question is human activities.’ In a paper, entitled Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide, he argues, ‘Anthropogenic CO2 emissions … clearly dwarf all estimates of the annual present-day global volcanic CO2 emission rate.’ But if CO2 levels have been much higher in the past without causing the planet to overheat, this is surely prima facie evidence that the source of the carbon dioxide is of academic interest only… The more we can return to the atmosphere, the healthier, the greener, the planet.
The entire UN/IPCC campaign against carbon dioxide is built on demonstratively faulty computer modelling and committee decisions driven by self-interest of largely scientifically illiterate delegates at annual Conferences of Parties. But a massive volcanic eruption in Tonga two years ago has turned climate prediction models on their collective ears. In the largest such event since the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, the effects of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption in January 2022 are still being felt in weather patterns across the world, and the disconnect between carbon dioxide levels, whether from natural causes or human recycling, and surface temperatures, unequivocally proves that atmospheric carbon dioxide is not the cause of climate change, but a residual of millennia of volcanic emissions.
The El Niño effects have been observed for centuries, as explained by National Geographic:
El Niño was recognised by fishers off the coast of Peru as the appearance of unusually warm water. We have no real record of what indigenous Peruvians called the phenomenon, but Spanish immigrants called it El Niño, meaning ‘the little boy’ in Spanish. When capitalised, El Niño means the Christ Child, and was used because the phenomenon often arrived around Christmas. El Niño soon came to describe irregular and intense climate changes rather than just the warming of coastal surface waters.
La Niña is described by the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology:
La Niña occurs when equatorial trade winds become stronger, changing ocean surface currents and drawing cooler deep water up from below. This results in a cooling of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. The enhanced trade winds also help to pile up warm surface waters in the western Pacific and to the north of Australia.
However, ocean surface currents, piling up warm surface waters, and ‘upwelling’ of cooler deep water were unsatisfactory explanations for the functioning mechanism of these phenomena and could not explain the heat blobs that caused mass deaths of marine life. This can only be explained by sub-sea volcanic releases of heat and matter from the hot mantle.
Over 20 years ago, a Queensland mining engineer, Robert Arthur Beatty, correlated increased seismic activity in South America with increased rainfall on the East Coast of Australia, with a time lag. This was described in his seminal booklet Planets, Satellites and Landforms. The Humboldt Current – also known as the Peru Current – sweeps up the coast of Chile, then hangs a left below the Equator and sweeps across a highly volcanically active submarine trench past the Galapagos Islands to reach the east coast of Australia a year or two later – no mere coincidence that there is resultant increased rainfall and cyclonic events. When there is more sub-sea volcanic activity, the ocean will experience more heat. In turn, more heat triggers more heat dissipation via cyclones and rain depressions. Oceanic heat blobs do not come from a trace gas in the atmosphere or intermittent sunshine warming a few centimetres of the surface of the waters as the Earth rotates – cloud cover permitting.
Painstaking, pioneering work by Professor Wyss Yim of the University of Hong Kong in collecting and correlating volcanic activity, particularly the more numerous but lesser-known and little-understood sub-sea events, provides the essential link with volcanic eruptions that are affected by cyclical gravitational and electro-magnetic stresses on the surface crust, the solidified skin that envelopes the molten mantle. As the giant gyroscope of planet Earth spins around the Sun, precessional forces compete as the core beats to a different drum and the magnetic poles migrate around the inertial true North and South Poles. The Earth’s crust is thinner beneath the oceans and there are hundreds of thousands of sub-sea vents that allow hot magma to influence the ocean currents that drive surface weather and rainfall patterns. Healthy scientific debate is ongoing regarding the influence of volcanic activity versus solar influences on the climate, but this paper is focussed on the fact that a trace gas in the atmosphere controls neither, and that it may be recycled with great benefit to life on Earth, without causing the much feared and over-hyped ‘global warming’.
There are indeed many fissures in the sea. Blaming carbon dioxide and attempting to regulate this harmless gas and predicting surface temperatures using computer models based on pretentious carbon dioxide emissions targets is the ultimate scientific charade. Excellent research work has also been done on the benign and beneficial effects of atmospheric CO2 by eminent scientists, Emeritus Professor William Happer of Princeton University and Dr Patrick Moore, Past President of Greenpeace Canada, who bring a clear spotlight on the futility of attempting to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
Hence, the answer to the question, whether volcanic activity or anthropogenic carbon dioxide is more responsible for an increase in temperatures on Earth is that it simply does not matter. The ideological one-sided pursuit of blaming an essential gas is destroying and trashing the principal source of the hydrocarbon energy on which the survival of mankind depends. Net Zero is a time bomb that must be defused before the blind pursuit of this impossible dream causes more economic devastation.
In an attempt to better understand the formation of the Earth, China has commenced a deep borehole drilling program. Had we spent the funding wasted in the mass-hysteria-led ‘renewables’ programs on hardening our defences against natural catastrophe and better researching the anatomy of our home in the wilderness of space, we would not today be facing the shut-down of industry in Western nations and skyrocketing costs-of-living crises.
Once the role of carbon dioxide in regard to climate change is put into perspective, and this gas given a fair trial, it will be found innocent of all charges of ‘pollution’ and driving ‘global warming’ and we can take a deep breath that we have escaped yet another bout of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/02/in-praise-of-carbon-dioxide/
*********************************************EU Farmers Protest Green Policies’ Threat to Greenest Lands
Europe’s picturesque landscapes, adorned with sprawling croplands and pastures, have long been part of the continent's agrarian identity. However, a wave of farmer protests has intruded on this peaceful scene and extended into cities.
From the rolling hills of France to the windswept plains of Poland, farmers have driven their tractors onto the streets, united in a fight against a threat to their livelihoods. Last week, thousands of French farmers blocked roads in the outskirts of Paris, in an act that has been dubbed the “siege of Paris.” The city of Toulouse, home to 800,000 people, was cut off from the rest of France due to protests.
Likewise, in cities across Belgium, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Germany, farmers have blocked roads and conducted targeted protests at public buildings. Tractor convoys, road blockades, and impassioned speeches reflect the agricultural community’s deep frustration with attempts to reduce farmlands and ban fertilizer use.
This week, the protest spread to Spain and Greece. Spanish farmers blocked freeways and access to ports. Greek farmers dumped apples and chestnuts in the city of Thessaloniki as a sign of protest. Farmers in the majority of EU states have now joined the protest.
The primary policy target of farmers is a so-called Farm to Fork program that seeks to halve pesticide use, reduce fertilizer use, cut by at least 10% agricultural areas and mandate a conversion of 25% of the European Union’s agricultural land to “organic-only” farming. The initiative also includes the removal of subsidies for agricultural diesel used in tractors and machinery.
Farmers argue that all these policies jeopardize their livelihood, make the EU agricultural sector less competitive to non-EU markets, and undermine the rich agricultural heritage that has defined European societies for centuries.
Behind all this is the EU’s climate change agenda’s obsession with reducing harmless industrial and agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases, which include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. Farm to Fork is a subset of the bigger European Green Deal and Net Zero programs.
France’s largest farm union, FNSEA, says it wants a change in the “very philosophy of the Green Deal, which assumes degrowth.” “French farmers are united in their opposition to absurd, extreme and unworkable environmental policies,” said the president of Coordination Rurale, a French farming group. “Those in power do not spare a thought for the impact of these policies on the livelihoods of farmers, the food security of the nation and the cost-of-living crisis facing ordinary people.”
The farmer unions have a point and a serious one. Reducing the use of fertilizers would require employing more land for agriculture, but the EU’s green policies intend to decrease the amount of farmland. This amounts to forced agricultural suicide, which poses a threat to hunger, death, and societal collapse.
Shaken by these protests and to appease the farmers, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced minor concessions to their Farm to Fork program earlier this week. Though media outlets celebrated it as a success for the farmers, the concessions are too insignificant and are temporary measures to end the continent-wide protests.
In her speech on Tuesday, the EU president von der Leyen shockingly blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Climate Change for the farmers' protests, when the primary reason for the farmer protests was the EU Commission’s policies, under her very oversight. It is important to remember that the EU president is not directly elected by the people of the EU, yet has been bestowed with authority to impose life-crippling and farm-destroying policies on millions of Europeans.
Thomas O'Reilly of the Brussels-based The European Conservative, says, “No matter the rhetoric coming from the Commission (EU), the Green Deal is at the heart of EU climate policies, and nothing they will let go of without a fight. Neither, it seems, will Europe’s farmers, who are fighting for their lives.”
In other words, the fight goes beyond the immediate use of land and fertilizers and to the well-being of generations to come. Farm to Fork won’t be resolved until there is an end to the Green Deal and Net Zero programs.
The European agricultural crisis is a warning to citizens of other governments planning to adopt similar policies for agricultural production to avert a non-existent climate crisis. So-called green policies would kill the greenest parts of our world as they destroy ordinary people’s dream of a decent life with access to basic necessities for living.
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Australia: NSW to Introduce Legislation to Ban OFFSHORE Oil and Gas Exploration
One wonders why offshore drilling is singled out and why both parties support that. I guess the oceans have an image as pristine. They are more accurately seen as a biological soup. They teem with both life and pollution
On Feb. 6, the state Labor government announced that it would introduce a new piece of legislation to amend the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.
Under the changes, all sea bed petroleum and mineral exploration and recovery activities in the state’s coastal waters will be banned.
In addition, the bill will make it impossible for energy companies to carry out other developments related to offshore oil and gas exploration (such as pipelines) within the state.
The NSW government cited the risks of “major environmental disasters” such as oil spills, as well as greenhouse gas emissions associated with petroleum extraction as the main reasons for introducing the legislation.
“The NSW government’s bill is designed to prevent the severe environmental impacts that can result from offshore exploration and recovery of petroleum and minerals,” it said.
Nevertheless, the exploration ban will not apply to activities that the state government deems beneficial to the environment, including the recovery of sand for beach nourishment or beach scraping to help protect against erosion.
Similarly, dredging activities for purposes such as removing sediments or pollutants, and laying pipelines or submarine cables will also not be subject to the ban.
NSW Climate Change and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe believed the new legislation was the right move by the government.
“We know an overwhelming majority of people in NSW do not support offshore mining. The passage of this bill will give certainty that our government is prioritising environmental protection and our own local interests,” she said.
“This bill is a sensible amendment to our legislation to protect NSW against the risks of offshore mining.”
Echoing the sentiment, NSW Central Coast Minister David Harris said local communities would be better off under the new bill.
“This is about providing communities with certainty that is in the best interest of NSW as well as protecting the NSW coastal waters and marine environments,” he said.
State Opposition to Support the Bill
It is expected that the bill will receive support from the state opposition, which introduced a similar bill in June 2023.
While Shadow Environment Minister Kellie Sloane welcomed the announcement, she questioned why the state Labor government did not take action earlier.
“Pleased to see that Labor has finally seen the light when it comes to protecting NSW coastal waters—and has agreed to legislate Liberals and Nationals policy to stop offshore drilling of oil and gas,” she said on social media.
“I’m not sure why they didn’t just do this 7 months ago when the Coalition introduced.”
Despite the looming prospect of a total ban, some energy producers have expressed the intention to continue their exploration activities.
On Feb. 6, Advent Energy Executive Director David Breeze stated that his company would maintain its commitment to exploring and securing gas resources in the Commonwealth waters under the Petroleum Exploration Permit 11 (PEP-11).
“Numerous reports show that NSW faces a gas supply shortfall within the next four years,” he said, as reported by ABC News.
“PEP-11 has the possibility of supplying NSW with the bulk of its gas needs for 20 years.”
Meanwhile, Samantha McCulloch, the CEO of the Australian Energy Producers, a peak industry body, criticised the new legislation, saying it ignored the critical role of gas under the net zero transition and the importance of new gas supply in ensuring energy security and reducing pressures on prices.
“Report after report from independent agencies such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Energy Market Operator have warned of approaching supply shortfalls and identified the need for new east coast gas supply–especially in NSW and Victoria,” she told The Epoch Times.
“Blanket bans unnecessarily limit sources of gas when existing regulations provide an appropriate framework to determine conditions for exploration and development.”
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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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