Harris’s New Strategy: Equate Fighting Climate Change With ‘Freedom’

Very reminiscent of Hegel, the founder of Leftism. He had some funny ideas about freedom too

http://jonjayray.com/hegel.html

The Harris campaign isn’t offering details on climate policy but is framing the fight to protect the environment as one of patriotism.

Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned climate change just once in her speech before the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, wrapping it into her larger campaign theme of freedom.

After attacking her Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, on abortion, Ms. Harris declared that along with reproductive choice “many other fundamental freedoms are at stake” in the November election. Those include “the freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis,” she said.

It was a novel way of framing climate change for a campaign that has sought to reclaim patriotism after decades of Republicans seeming to own the messaging around freedom. And it was a message echoed by others throughout the night, including Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida, the youngest member of Congress, who declared in a speech earlier in the evening that “fighting the climate crisis is patriotic.”

Ms. Harris has not offered any new policies for addressing climate change.

She also has talked about climate on the campaign trail far less frequently than President Joe Biden did when he ran for president. In his 2020 acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Biden called climate change an “existential threat” and said, “It’s not only a crisis, it’s an enormous opportunity. An opportunity for America to lead the world in clean energy and create millions of new good-paying jobs in the process.”

In a significant departure from the 2020 presidential campaign, climate groups this year haven’t pressed the Democratic nominee to be more outspoken on the issue. That may be in part because Ms. Harris appears to already have the support of voters who put climate at the top of their election priorities. A new poll of swing state voters from the Environmental Voter Project shows that younger voters, who were appearing to turn away from President Joe Biden, are more energized around Ms. Harris’s campaign.

“We know that the Harris-Walz administration will work tirelessly to ensure that all people in this country are free to breath clean air, drink clean water and live in a healthy climate,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters.

Cassidy DiPaola, a spokeswoman for Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit group, said in a statement, “We’ve moved beyond simply counting mentions of climate change.” Instead, “we’re seeing climate woven throughout the convention.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/climate/kamala-harris-climate-strategy.html

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Floating Offshore Wind - A Financial Catastrophe

When it comes to looming financial and environmental catastrophes, nothing can compare to floating offshore wind. It is energy policy at its worst.

In an analysis earlier this year (WC #36), using cost estimates published by a European energy consulting firm, I estimated the total project cost for floating offshore wind off the California coast at, best case, $13.6 million per megawatt of baseload-equivalent capacity. “Capacity” is an often misunderstood word. The “nameplate capacity” of a wind turbine might be 10 megawatts, but that amount of electricity is only going to be generated when the wind is blowing and the system isn’t down for maintenance. With intermittent sources of electricity generating technologies such as wind turbines, the “yield” is what matters, and that is unlikely to ever exceed 40 percent, even offshore.

Taking into account intermittency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates a construction cost of $10 million per megawatt. But that estimate is for the less expensive “fixed bottom offshore wind with monopile foundations,” and not for floating platforms. As economist Jonathan Lesser, author of “The False Promises of Offshore Wind,” shared with me via email last week, “the technology for the cabling needed to secure the turbines to the floor and the cables to carry the electricity are in their infancy. I conclude that the EIA estimate for floating turbines is, in my view, pure fantasy.” Which is to say, more than $10 million per megawatt.

Another expert I was fortunate enough to reach is Gordon Hughes, a professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh. For the last several years he has been analyzing the performance of offshore wind in the North Sea and throughout the world. Here’s what he wrote to me in a recent email:

“I don’t believe the figures given by EIA – they have no basis in actual costs and performance, they are little more than optimistic guesses generated by lobbyists. No-one knows how to build floating wind turbines with a tip height of 220 or 250 meters. The rotational forces in high winds are huge and the only way to stabilize them are to build huge concrete/steel platforms. I have no idea where they would be built on the West Coast and I doubt that towing them across the Pacific from East Asia is viable. Could they transit the Panama Canal? The point is all talk of floating wind farms off California or Oregon seems to me to be ungrounded speculation. You could build ones with a tip height of 150 meters but that would significantly reduce both the nominal capacity and capacity factor for such turbines.”

At that height, still nearly 500 feet, nameplate capacity is only 2.5 megawatts per turbine. We would have to float 10,000 of these monstrosities in order to achieve the currently planned 25 gigawatt capacity off our coast.

As acknowledged in a Cal Matters report from July 2024, “The offshore wind industry must be created almost from scratch: a new manufacturing base for the still-evolving technology; a robust and reliable supply chain; transportation networks on land and sea; specially configured ports to make, assemble and maintain the gargantuan seagoing platforms; finding and training a highly specialized workforce; building a large transmission network where none exists and beefing up those that operate now.”

Compare that to the EIA’s estimates to construct other types of electricity generating plants. A natural gas fueled electricity generating plant with 95 percent carbon capture will only cost $2.4 million per megawatt. Advanced nuclear: $7.8 million per megawatt. Small modular nuclear: $8.9 million per megawatt. Geothermal: $3.9 million per megawatt.

Imagine the scene if this abominable scheme ever comes to full fruition. To produce 25 gigawatts of capacity would require at least 2,500 wind turbines floating approximately 20 miles offshore. To have a capacity per turbine of 10 megawatts, each of them would be approximately 1,000 feet high, and each of them would have at least three tethering cables hooked to the sea floor over 4,000 feet underwater. Each of them would also need an underwater high voltage cable that would somehow connect to the onshore grid.

Offshore wind is a terrible idea. There are plenty of alternatives, including the only slightly less unpalatable option of onshore wind. But the California Energy Commission pushes forward. The rhetorical bludgeon used to silence critics and empower the special interests poised to make a killing is predictable enough. From Cal Matters, here’s a quote from one of the CEC’s five commissioners. “‘I feel the urgency to move forward swiftly,’ said energy commissioner Patty Monahan. ‘The climate crisis is upon us. Offshore wind is a real opportunity for us to move forward with clean energy.'”

Clean energy does not have to require hundreds of billions in taxpayer subsidies and utility rate increases. Clean energy should not rely on technology that isn’t ready and components that can’t be sourced. And clean energy shouldn’t destroy the environment. Invoking the “urgency” of climate change without addressing the issues of cost, technology, materials, and environmental impact is a vapid and irresponsible but all too common tactic.

Let’s assume that we industrialize some of the most pristine stretches of the California coast and foul our offshore waters with between 2,500 and 10,000 floating wind turbines. We will have 25 gigawatts of new capacity, yielding 10 gigawatts of steady power once sufficient land-based storage assets are available. That equates to 87,600 gigawatt-hours. Even at $10 million per megawatt, which is a best case estimate, the total project cost will be $100 billion. To generate the same amount of power capacity by constructing new, advanced combined cycle natural gas generating plants with sequestration of CO2 emissions would cost $25 billion. That’s four times less expensive.

https://mailchi.mp/calpolicycenter/whats-current-issue-7859004

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High Costs Delay Denmark’s North Sea Energy Island for Second Time

Denmark has been forced to delay the construction of its planned North Sea Energy Island by at least three more years due to rising costs and high interest rates.

The artificial island was designed as a hub for collecting and distributing electricity generated by offshore wind turbines.

A government minister announced the delay on Wednesday, explaining the project is intended to supply approximately three million European households with renewable energy.

Danish Energy Minister Lars Aagaard told Reuters that the projected cost of investment for the energy island exceeded DKr200bn ($29.81bn), and also required nearly DKr50bn in state funding.

He declined to comment to the US news outlet on the cost increase from the project’s initial cost projections.

In June 2023, the country announced the first delay on the energy island, explaining that the cost of the project was too expensive.

According to Aagaard, rising interest rates and the cost of raw materials led to the project no longer being economically viable.

The project was initially set to be constructed without the use of subsidies, with Denmark and Belgium funding the project due to the positive impact on both countries’ energy landscape.

However, efforts to secure additional funding have been unsuccessful and Belgian authorities have refused to provide any more money.

If the project is redesigned to include a power link to Germany, this could secure additional funding from that country but would delay completion until 2036.

According to Power Technology’s parent company, GlobalData, installed wind power capacity was 827.3GW in 2021 and is expected to achieve a CAGR of more than 9% up to 2030.

https://www.world-energy.org/article/44250.html

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Wholesale prices surge as wind and solar output falls to zero in South Australia

Wholesale electricity prices surged on Monday morning in the southern states after wind and solar output in South Australia – the grid with the highest average share of the technologies – fell to zero soon after 7am.

According to various data sources, including GPE NEMLog2, the output of wind and solar fell to zero at 7.05am, just before rooftop and large scale solar kicked in to the grid. Wind output remained very low throughout the morning.

It is not the first time wind and solar have hit zero – they did so in June last year for a brief moment, according to GPE NEMLog, but the fossil fuel generators and the growing portfolio took full advantage and pushed the wholesale price towards the newly elevated market cap of $17,500 a megawatt hour in the absence of any competition.

Most of the fossil fuel capacity switched on this morning has been in the system for years, built to back the former coal generators and to provide the balance of power needs.

There are now also four operating big batteries – Torrens Island, Hornsdale, Lake Bonney and Dalrymple North with a combined capacity of around 500 megawatts and an average of one a half hour storage. More big batteries, with longer duration, are now being built.

On Monday morning, even though ample capacity remained in the system – demand was hovering around 2 GW in the early morning compared to the grid’s demand peaks of more than 3 GW – the generators and battery owners were able to bid the wholesale price towards the peak without competition.

The generators have been achieving similar results in other state grids over the past weeks and months, including in South Australia where the state is once again at risk of breaking the cumulative price threshold of $1.57 million, which will result in an automatic price cap being imposed.

The market cap is there to achieve at least some semblance of normality. The cost of generation – even at peaking plants – is likely to be in the order of $300 to $600 a megawatt hour, depending on fossil fuel prices – but the new regulations allow them to bid the price up to more than $17,000/MWh.

This is ostensibly to provide incentives for new peaking plants or storage to be built in the absence of a capacity market. That is designed as reward for the rare events when the supply and demand balance is very tight, but the lack of competition means that these price caps can be manipulated on a regular basis.

Even if just one megawatt is priced at that level, it flows through to all generation. The Australian Energy Regulator has written in great detail how plant availability and ramp rates are often manipulated to push prices into a higher price band.

South Australia is particularly vulnerable because it has little competition. Two of the big batteries are owned or operated by AGL, the dominant player in the market, while the Lake Bonney battery is owned by Iberdrola, which also owns one of the peaking plants. The other is Hornsdale, which is owned by Neoen.

By the middle of the day, prices had subsided towards the marginal cost of gas generation, as rooftop and utility solar provided the bulk of supply. But the fossil fuel generators retained pricing power.

Other states had a similar story to tell. In Victoria, the output of wind and solar fell to just 2.8 MW on Sunday evening, but at 8am the prices were pushed to the market cap of $17,500/MWh, even though demand was a gigawatt short of the peaks over the previous week and the market did not come close to soaking up available supply.

In NSW the story was repeated, with generators pushing the price to $17,000 MWh, even though demand was significantly less than Sunday’s peak when the prices were just $300/MWh.

Again, it was the lack of competition in the market – nothing to do with cost of generation or even long term pricing incentives. The federal government might want to look at the bidding practices of its wholly owned Snowy Hydro, which controls much of the peaking capacity that is deployed at such times.

The one exception was Queensland, where prices remained relatively low at less than $300/MWh, and the onset of solar soon pushed prices into negative territory.

Why were the prices moderate in Queensland?

Firstly because there was enough wind in the market to add some competition – Queensland wind is not correlated to the rest of the grid – and perhaps also because that state government owns the bulk of generation, and may have found other ways of rewarding its easily excitable screen jockeys.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/wholesale-prices-surge-as-wind-and-solar-output-falls-to-zero-in-south-australia/#google_vignette

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