Net Zero Debate is Running Out of Ideas

At the weekend I attended the Battle of Ideas Festival in London.

It is a fascinating event, with interesting debates taking place across a wide variety of topics like free speech, culture wars, the economy, education and women’s freedom.

I was there primarily for the energy discussions. Unfortunately, I missed the book launch on nuclear power on the Saturday, but I did attend the two energy debates that took place in the scientific dilemmas section on Sunday.

First up was a lunchtime debate entitled “Is nuclear the future of energy… again?” Unfortunately, the speaker who was supposed to speak for this position had some sort of transportation nightmare and could not attend.

I did not catch the name of the man who replaced her, but he did put up a valiant effort considering he was drafted in at the last minute. Speaking against the idea of a nuclear renaissance was Robert Reid, policy development officer for the Alba Party who was in mourning for the late Alec Salmond.

We can therefore forgive him somewhat for advancing the hoary old chestnut that offshore wind is cheap: he claimed £41/MWh without citing any sources. Of course, the existing CfD funded offshore wind farms have cost us over £150/MWh so far this financial year and the new projects awarded in AR6 will cost us over £82/MWh in today’s money, more than twice Robert’s claim.

Emma Bateman, who is an environmental campaigner and founding member of Together Against Sizewell C, unsurprisingly spoke against the idea of nuclear power and made some spurious claims about safety that if nuclear power were a person would have resulted in the libel lawyers being called on Monday morning.

The gist of her substantive argument was that nuclear is too expensive and takes too long so we should therefore spend more on wind and solar.

In the ensuing debate, I managed to correct Robert Reid’s ‘facts’ and make the point that if your primary concern is the environment, then you should be an advocate of nuclear power because it has the smallest overall environmental footprint of all energy sources because it doesn’t take up much land and has very low mineral intensity.

I also made the point about the chocolate teapot fallacy. Arguing for wind and solar in place of nuclear power is akin to arguing in favour of chocolate teapots because you cannot wait for a ceramic one.

No matter how many chocolate teapots you buy, you can never make tea; just like no matter how many wind turbines and solar panels you install you can never run a modern economy on intermittent electricity.

The physics of nuclear power are far superior to any other energy source because of its extremely high energy return on energy invested, meaning we get far more energy out than we expend building the power plants, and the output is reliable.

There are even designs on the drawing board and beginning to be built that will allow nuclear power plants to follow fluctuations in demand.

The barriers to nuclear power are all political: the West over-regulates nuclear power and it is unsurprising that it takes so long because of all the paperwork that must be produced before a new reactor can be built.

We can fix man-made political and regulatory problems, but mere mortals cannot change the faulty physics of intermittent renewables, just like you can never make tea in a chocolate teapot.

We would be far better off committing to a significant nuclear power programme so we can deliver reliable electricity. If we fix the regulations, invest in rebuilding the skills base and supply chains and choose the right reactor design, we can even have cheap, reliable energy with only a small impact on the environment.

This is what the French did in the 1970s and 1980s and now they produce around 70% of their electricity from nuclear.

The next debate was on the “Great British Energy Crisis”. It was encouraging to see that three of the five panellists are subscribers to this Substack (you know who you are and thank you).

Two of the speakers, James Woudhuysen and Lord David Frost both made eloquent attacks on Net Zero and its consequences. Professor Michaela Kendall who is the U.K.

Hydrogen Champion for Mission Innovation suggested we needed more facts to inform the debate on energy, but managed to skirt around the fact that the Government agreed contracts for green hydrogen at £241/MWh, which is about seven times the current cost of U.K. natural gas, which in turn costs more than five times U.S. gas.

Dr. Shahrar Ali is a former spokesperson for the Green Party who has recently won a discrimination court case against the Greens because they sacked him for his gender critical beliefs.

It is a shame Dr. Ali cannot apply his critical thinking skills to Net Zero. The gist of his argument was the world is warming, it is going to be a catastrophe, it is all our fault, so build more windmills.

I managed to take him to task in the ensuing debate by pointing out that even if you believe CO2 causes warming, then it is a big leap to conclude that building windmills will change the weather.

This is the so-called mitigation strategy that can only work if 1) CO2 is the only climate control knob (we know this to be untrue from paleo-climate records) and 2) everyone else follows the strategy (you only need to look at charts of global greenhouse gas emissions to see this is also untrue).

A far better strategy is one of adaptation which has the advantages of being cheaper and will work regardless of the actions of others and regardless of the causes of global warming.

The mitigation strategy we are pursuing is one of unilateral economic impoverishment and the Net Zero “cure” is far worse than the alleged climate change “disease”.

It is encouraging that my intervention drew an enthusiastic round of applause which is testament to the growing scepticism about Net Zero among the general public.

It appears to me that cracks are appearing in the cosy green consensus in Westminster and if we get our arguments right, we can win this debate.

All in all, the Battle of Ideas is a thoroughly enjoyable event and I highly recommend everyone to attend next year, whatever your beliefs. It is only through free and open debate that we can get to the truth.

https://principia-scientific.com/net-zero-debate-is-running-out-of-ideas/

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Overnight Success: Biden’s Climate Splurge Gives Billions to Nonprofit Newbies

Although there isn’t much public information available about the Justice Climate Fund, it appears to have been an overnight success.

After gaining nonprofit status in August 2023, the organization was awarded $940 million by the Biden administration just eight months later in connection with the White House’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which aims to provide financial assistance to reduce carbon emissions and reduce pollution.

The Justice Climate Fund is not the only nonprofit newcomer suddenly made rich by the GGRF. Within a month of gaining nonprofit status from the IRS, Power Forward Communities, which reported 2023 revenues of $100, was awarded $2 billion.

The awards were made by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is new to the world of major grantmaking. The agency acknowledges it has never handed out such gigantic sums of money, and its inspector general told Congress last month it marked a “fantastically complex” and “unusual” setup that his small staff would be hard-pressed to follow.

Critics note that many of the awardees are run by politically connected figures. The single biggest winner in the awards, which were announced in April, was the Climate United Fund, which is slated to receive $6.97 billion. The fund’s directors include prominent Democrats, such as Phil Angelides, a former California State Treasurer. After this article was published Climate United told RCI that Anthony Foxx, who served as Transportation Secretary in the Obama administration, was “listed as a board member for our [grant] application but did not commit to serving post award.” A press release on the group’s website names Foxx as a member of its “Inaugural Board of Directors.”

The unprecedented nature of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created as part of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, is raising concerns about the Biden administration’s efforts to spend tens of billions of dollars in its final months, a gusher of taxpayer money that will flow into a poorly understood, untested, and difficult to audit format. The tremendous sums involved, the novelty of the program, and the EPA’s lack of experience in the field, as well as the unproven track record of some of the newly hatched recipients, have drawn the attention of lawmakers and others uncertain about how the taxpayers’ billions will ultimately be spent and who will keep track of it all.

“These groups are political front groups that are simply created to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to Democrat campaigns under the guise of doing something good,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff in the Trump administration.

Daren Bakst, director of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a sharp critic of the Biden administration’s climate change spending splurge, said, “It’s worse than a slush fund – it’s a slush fund to create non-profit slush funds.”

The EPA describes the Greenhouse Fund as “an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate the adoption of greenhouse gas reducing technologies.” By investing in making residential homes and neighborhoods more “eco-friendly,” the money will pay dividends in both lower utility bills and higher employment, the agency says.

Neither the Justice Climate Fund nor Power Forward Communities responded to questions about their plans to spend the close to $3 billion in public funds they had received.

The $27 billion assigned to the Greenhouse Fund represents a fraction of the money the Biden-Harris administration has embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act for its green energy revolution. Biden acknowledged the bill’s true purpose this summer when he called the IRA a “climate” bill, thereby aligning the administration’s position with what leftist environmental groups such as the World Resource Institute hailed from the beginning as “the largest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history.” The IRA involved “hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy, electric vehicles, environmental justice and more.” Billions more would be spent on the global warming front under the Biden-Harris Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed in 2021.

The EPA has made it clear it views the bonanza as seed money. The agency expects that each dollar the nonprofit recipients spend in seeking to reduce America’s carbon footprint will attract seven times its value in private investment. This anticipated capitalist activity has led many media accounts to label the nonprofits “green banks,” and it has created an entirely new wrinkle in the EPA, according to its inspector general. The Fund’s requirements also carry mandates that at least 40% of the billions be spent in “low income or disadvantaged communities” or “tribal” lands, and in some cases, winners have pledged to spend up to 70% of the money in those same areas.

“I can’t say enough about how complex this system will be,” EPA Inspector General Sean O’Donnell testified to a House subcommittee in September. “It’s like they created an investment bank. It’s fantastically complex. I think it’s unusual.”

“I think it’s more than unusual,” responded Ohio Republican Rep. David Joyce.

EPA Special Advisor Zealan Hoover pushed back at the claim that unusual secrecy surrounded the process and criticism that there are flimsy guardrails to ensure the $27 billion is well spent.

Greenhouse Fund money has been divided into three programs. The biggest is in the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), which will divide $14 billion among three groups, followed by Solar For All, which has $7 billion, and then $6 billion divided among five groups under the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA).

While the degree of competition involved was not immediately made public, the EPA did provide the numbers to RealClearInvestigations. Three National Clean Investment Fund winners were chosen from a dozen applicants, while Clean Communities Investment Accelerator winners came from a pool of 26 proposals. “Solar For All,” which has the smallest awards, had 60 winners and 150 applicants, according to the EPA. Some of the NCIF and CCIA winners are associated with one another and publicly speak of their collaboration.

“In some cases, the umbrella organizations are new, but it’s set up to help long established groups such as the United Way or Habitat for Humanity,” Hoover said. “These are partnerships and coalitions in which we are very confident, and they submitted remarkably comprehensive applications.”

Hoover also told RCI the EPA will retain spending and auditing oversight, though that responsibility was not spelled out in any of the press releases that have accompanied the Greenhouse Reduction Fund. None of the groups receiving the billions responded to questions or agreed to comment on their plans for spending and how the money will be tracked and audited.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/10/22/overnight_success_bidens_climate_splurge_gives_billions_to_nonprofit_newbies_1066437.html

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$24 billion is missing from spending on FAKE climate change! Was it stolen?

Climate science is a ruse. But the money spent on fake research and gifts to nations is real.

Between 24 and 41 billion dollars of that money is missing from the World Bank. No one knows where it went.

Oxfam, October 17: “Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance—nearly 40 percent of all climate funds disbursed by the Bank over the past seven years—is unaccounted for due to poor record-keeping practices, reveals a new Oxfam report published today ahead of the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in Washington D.C. [October 21—26, 2024]”

“An Oxfam audit of the World Bank’s 2017-2023 climate finance portfolio found that between $24 billion and $41 billion in climate finance went unaccounted for between the time projects were approved and when they closed.”

“There is no clear public record showing where this money went or how it was used, which makes any assessment of its impacts impossible. It also remains unclear whether these funds were even spent on climate-related initiatives intended to help low- and middle-income countries protect people from the impacts of the climate crisis and invest in clean energy.” (link in footnote)

A source at the World Bank told the NY Post that the actual amount of missing money “could be twice or ten times more…all the figures are routinely made up. Nobody has a clue about who spends what.” (link in footnote)

The World Bank gets its money from national governments’ donations, from its own issuance of bonds, and from repayment of loans it makes.

As mainstream reports on this scandal appear, they’ll be couched in terms of horribly deficient accounting practices, “mistakes,” lack of executive oversight at the Bank, etc.

I raise the distinct possibility that the money was stolen

https://jonrappoport.substack.com/p/real-24-billion-missing-from-spending-fake-climate-change

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Indonesia Dumps Climate Politics in Favor of Energy Security

The archipelago nation of Indonesia represents just 1% of Earth’s land area, but it has set the stage for global geopolitics surrounding fossil fuels and climate policies.

As a part of climate negotiations between G-7 nations, Indonesia was expected to be the first among developing countries to announce early closures of coal plants.

In the spotlight is the 660-megawatt Cirebon-1 plant in West Java province, which had been scheduled to shut down by 2035. However, it is understood that Jakarta will not follow that timeline but rather continue to operate the plant to its originally projected end of life in 2042. A stumbling block to the early closure is a price tag of more than $1 billion to replace the coal plant with so-called renewable energy.

In reaffirming its commitment to the unrestricted use of coal, Indonesia makes a bold and sensible decision to put energy security and economic priorities ahead of international climate politics. The move sets up Indonesia as a model for other developing countries to defy the western agenda to reduce emissions in favor of their own self-interest.

Coal in Indonesia

For developing nations like Indonesia, the path to prosperity is paved with affordable energy. Coal, abundant and cheap, has long been the fuel of choice for powering economic growth. The country sits atop vast coal reserves, estimated at 37 billion metric tons, which are primarily located in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

Jakarta has approved a coal production quota of 922 million metric tons for 2024, a significant increase from previous years. This move has sparked international criticism, but it’s a calculated step to ensure energy affordability.

Coal remains the backbone of Indonesia’s energy sector, accounting for over 60% of its electricity generation. Also, Indonesia relies on coal-fueled smelters for most of its nickel production.

Producing about half of the world’s nickel, Indonesia is the top producer of the metal, which is needed to make batteries that run electric vehicles and energy storage devices.

Economic Case for Fossil Fuels

In the late 1990s, nearly 50% of Indonesia’s population lived in poverty. Today, that number is closer to 10%, thanks to unabated use of coal during the past two decades. At 70%, Indonesia manages to maintain one of the highest employment rates among the G20 countries.

“Despite challenges in 2023, Indonesia has demonstrated resilience to global shocks and an ever more diversified economic base is expected to mitigate adverse impacts,” says a spokesman for financial services company PwC.

Much of this success is due to a stable and reliable energy supply of coal, oil, and natural gas for electricity and industries. Coal and petroleum, along with nickel and ferroalloys, are among Indonesia’s top exports.

Poverty, though declining, remains a pressing issue, with over 26 million Indonesians classified as poor. Rapid industrialization and economic growth are essential for improving living standards and creating opportunities for millions.

Western Hypocrisy

Many western leaders lecturing Indonesia on the evils of coal had their own economies built with that very fuel and continue to rely on oil and gas.

The United States, for instance, underwent an energy revolution through fracking, which unlocked vast reserves of natural gas and oil. In 2023, U.S. was the number one oil producer in the world.

Similarly, Norway, often lauded for its commitment to “sustainability,” continues to issue oil drilling permits in the North Sea. If Norway, a country with a superior economy and high standard of living, can still prioritize its economic self-interest by extracting its oil, why should Indonesia be criticized for utilizing its coal reserves?

The $1.4 trillion Indonesian economy is in no mood to compromise its future or the continuing upward trend in economic growth. Count on Jakarta to exploit its natural resources well into the future.

https://climaterealism.com/2024/10/indonesia-dumps-climate-politics-in-favor-of-energy-security/

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http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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Shocking Rise in Whale, Dolphin and Porpoise Strandings as Wind Farms Proliferate Around British Coast

Over the last decade as offshore wind farms proliferated around the U.K., there has been a disturbing rise in coastline strandings of whales, dolphins and porpoises. Since the turn of the century, strandings have more than doubled and are now running at over 1,000 animals a year.

The slaughter has been largely ignored by the mainstream media that runs with the agreed narrative that offshore wind is environmentally friendly and is the key to achieving Net Zero by 2050. In fact, wind turbines, whether on or off the shore, are a clear danger to many endangered species and concerns are mounting about their widespread and harmful effects on the natural world. Years ago, the great cause in environmentalism was to save the whales, but these concerns seem to have abated of late, while the slaughter of millions of onshore bats, along with the destruction of many types of large raptors, is simply ignored.

Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch has updated his graph on the stranding of U.K. cetaceans and compared it to the rise of offshore wind capacity.

Both totals have soared in recent years. Is there a causal link? Perhaps not one that would inconvenience Net Zero fanatics, but Montford says the suggestion of a causal relationship “remains very strong”.

The Daily Sceptic has reported in the past about the mounting casualties of whales stranded off the north eastern coast of the United States in the wake of massive offshore windfarm construction. There have been around 300 fatalities in the last five years, and many suggest the extensive sonar soundings, pile driving and heavy concentrated vessel traffic is causing havoc with aquatic feeding, breeding and migration up and down the coast.

The latest U.K. stranding figures have been reported to Ascobans, a UN environmental conservation body for cetaceans in the NE Atlantic. Commenting on the “shocking” figures, the environmental writer and campaigner Jason Endfield called them “a wake-up call to those planning to further industrialise our seas in the name of renewable energy, and especially offshore wind farms”. In his view, it made no sense to increase ocean noise to levels that are “literally unbearable for marine mammals”.

The great cover-up of this environmental disaster continues with massive industrial parks being erected around the coasts of many countries. In the U.K., the incoming Labour government is committed to a massive expansion with the Mad Miliband spraying around billions of pounds in additional subsidies to boost an industry that would not exist in a free market.

To the fore in blowing smoke over the issue is Greenpeace USA’s senior oceans campaigner Arlo Hemphill who claims there is “no evidence whatsoever” connecting wind turbines to whale deaths. “It’s just a cynical disinformation campaign,” says another Greenpeace spokesman. The mainstream media often goes along with this narrative as shown by recent tweets from Agence France-Presse reporter Manon Jacob. He dismissed the focus on wind farms as a red herring “when offshore wind remains thus far marginal in the U.S. and scientific evidence of large marine mammal deaths is lacking”. This is the same Jacob who wrote a recent ‘fact check’ of the Daily Sceptic that was so bad and misleading it should feature in future journalism schools as an example of how not to criticise well-sourced material.

The investigative science journalist Jo Nova has a different take on the matter: “Researchers have known since at least 2013 that pile drivers were permanently deafening porpoises, leaving them presumably to die miserable deaths wandering blindly through dark or murky seas. Where were all the professors of marine science, paid by the public to know these things, and where was the BBC?” Spread the word, she continued. Fifty years ago, environmentalists would have raised hell about a thousand dead whales and dolphins. Now they are part of the cover-up. “They don’t want to draw attention to the blubber on the beach in case people start asking hard questions,” she observed.

There are however some signs that the ‘nothing to see here, guv’ line is starting to crack. A recent essay in Watts Up With That? suggested that an impact statement from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) had finally acknowledged the harm caused by offshore wind farms. Examining leases off the New Jersey and New York coast covering over 488,000 acres, the BOEM hints that these developments are not entirely benign “despite being repeatedly framed as environmentally friendly solutions to the climate crisis”. Marine mammals, sea turtles, birds and fish could suffer due to noise, habitat displacement and changes in migration patterns, it is said. Even bats, says WUWT?, which are not typically associated with offshore environments, could be affected.

The essay noted that this latest BOEM work may signal a more cautious approach, “perhaps influenced by increasing legal challenges, public backlash, and even emerging scientific research indicating that wind turbines are not as harmless as once believed”.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/28/shocking-rise-in-whale-dolphin-and-porpoise-strandings-as-wind-farms-proliferate-around-british-coast/

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Study Exposes Hidden Health Risks from Wind Turbines

New research by Dr. Bellut-Staeck in the journal Medical Research and Its Applications suggests chronic infrasound exposure can lead to serious blood vessel problems.

This underpins earlier literature that has reached similar conclusions.

But the government refuses to accept the results.

Wind turbines are known to disrupt wildlife and severely damage the surrounding biotope, And, despite being inaudible, it is known that low-frequency vibrations from wind turbines can be harmful to human health.

Humans can only perceive sound waves over a range of approximately between 20 and 20,000 Hertz. Soundwaves below 20 Hz cannot be heard by humans and are called infrasound.

Natural infrasound emitted by nature is harmless but it is increasingly being understood that infra-sound generated by wind turbines pulsates and makes people who are subjected to them over extended periods sick.

Strong evidence of a hazard to health

The rotating blades of wind turbines cause air pressure changes, which in turn can cause pressure on the ears and chest and lead to health issues and even serious problems like arrhythmia and vision impairment, according to a German Medical Journal.

The study’s abstract states:

“Noise-exposed citizens, who live near infrastructures such as biogas installations, heat pumps, block-type thermal power stations, and bigger industrial wind turbines (IWT’s), show worldwide mainly a symptomatology associated with microcirculatory disorder.”

In other words: Infrasound from wind turbines, or other industrial machinery, even though we can’t hear it, can disrupt the natural balance of chemicals in our blood vessels, which can lead to inflammation and problems like atherosclerosis.

So what is the German government going to do about this well-established health hazard? Don’t expect much.

Germany’s green Utopian vision is broadly based on wind power and so far the country has installed more than 30,000 turbines, many being sited near populated areas.

The government isn’t about to admit it has completely goofed.

It’s a situation very similar to the COVID mRNA vaccine, which has long been exposed as a health hazard. Yet, the government insists they’re safe!

German government ignores obvious hazard

Tichy’s Einblick writes:

“For its part, the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) continues to maintain that there is no scientific evidence of a possible harmful effect of infrasound from wind turbines.

This argument from the chronically green-tinged authority is astonishing – because in the case of glyphosate and many other phenomena, the UBA did not need any ‘scientific proof’ of harmfulness. Suspicion was always enough to call for a ban.”

https://principia-scientific.com/study-exposes-hidden-health-risks-from-wind-turbines/

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No, CBS, Climate Change Will Not Put Chicago at Heightened Risk for Hurricanes

A recent article posted by CBS News, Chicago asks the question on nobody’s mind: “Will climate change put the Chicago area at heightened risk for hurricanes?” This question and the thinking behind it are ridiculous. Although it is true that the remnants of tropical storms and hurricanes can reach Chicago, and have in the past, there is little reason to think that climate change will make it more likely to occur in the future or more severe if or when it does.

CBS claims that the recent hurricane Helene “brought tropical flooding to inland regions not typically at risk,” warning that it’s now clear that “climate disasters can happen anywhere.” Besides the obvious issue of CBS conflating climate (long term average) with weather (a short term event), it is also untrue that it’s unusual for hurricanes to bring heavy rain inland. In fact, hurricane related flooding has occurred in the Appalachians long before industrialization could be blamed. The flood of 1916 in Asheville, North Carolina was much worse than this recent one.

If that wasn’t silly enough, CBS turns to the unscientific realm of rapid attribution studies to claim that human contributions to climate change “fueled Milton’s rapid intensification, according to Climate Central,” and asks the question “[a]s the impacts of climate change get worse faster, what, if anything, could reach Illinois now or in the future from hurricanes?”

This question carries a tiny thread of truth, that is, that the remnants of tropical storms and hurricanes can and do affect regions far away from the coasts, with CBS giving the examples of Hurricane Ike and Tropical Storm Lowell, the latter of which which caused flooding in Chicago that was severe enough to warrant an emergency declaration in 2008. However, this is not new, and the evidence CBS uses to try to frighten readers into believing that hurricanes will soon pose a greater threat up north is mere propaganda and not real data.

CBS cites Climate Central, a climate activism and advocacy group which is often caught spreading fake news and misleading information about climate science in order to push alarmist narratives. For instance, they touted the University of Maine’s faulty climate reanalyzer in 2023 as though it represented measured data when it does not. CBS also references rapid attribution analyses from groups like World Weather Attribution. Climate Realism has covered their false “science” assertions many times, where they use counterfactual computer models to claim that any given storm is the result of human-caused climate change. There will never be a weather event that World Weather Attribution can’t tie to climate change, because they begin with the assumption that climate change juices every weather event.

The reason mainstream media organizations like CBS rely on attribution study groups instead of real data, is because the available data do not show that hurricanes are getting more intense, wetter, or more frequent. Although Climate Realism has covered hurricanes many times this season (here, here, and here, just in the last 2 weeks), it is worth going over the facts again.

Major hurricanes, according to global hurricane frequency data, are not getting more common, nor are less powerful hurricanes.

In regards to strength, there is no demonstrable increasing trend in global accumulated cyclone energy. If that’s not enough, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, in Chapter 12, Table 12.12, identifies no connection between tropical cyclones and climate change. Not in the present, or the future, even under extreme emissions scenarios

Facts are inconvenient for climate hucksters like CBS, which end up looking like fools trying to ignore reality in order to frighten readers in places like Chicago. Yes, the remnants of a hurricane or tropical storm can make it up to Chicago, but no, there is no indication that such occurrences are common or are set to become a frequent problem in the future. CBS has to know this, otherwise they would not rely so heavily on the nebulous claims of attribution artists.

https://climaterealism.com/2024/10/no-cbs-climate-change-will-not-put-chicago-at-heightened-risk-for-hurricanes/

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Even with a price tag, Australia's renewables future is already broken

The Silverton Wind Farm and Broken Hill Solar plant were supposed to produce enough electricity to power 117,000 homes. They’re supported by AGL’s 50MWh battery facility at Pinnacles Place, one of the largest in Australia. Yet Broken Hill, population 19,000, has been in a semi-permanent state of blackout since a storm brought down the transmission line connecting the town to the east coast grid.

Broken Hill’s plight exposes the gap between the promise of renewable energy and what it actually delivers. AGL claimed its battery would ensure a reliable electricity supply to the town if the transmission lines went down. The combination of wind, solar and storage would allow Broken Hill to operate on a renewable microgrid until its connection to the outside world was restored.

Yet the battery wasn’t switched on until Friday. Diesel generators are being used to recharge it because the wind and solar generators are disconnected from the rest of the grid. Rooftop solar is affecting the grid’s stability. Essential Energy, which supplies power to Broken Hill, has asked customers to turn off their solar supply main switch to prevent the 40-year-old backup gas turbine generator from tripping.

Yet Broken Hill’s experience shows how crucial baseload generation is to the grid’s stability. Without it, balancing supply and demand becomes impossible.

Some $650m worth of renewable energy investment within a 25km radius of Broken Hill has proved to be dysfunctional. The technical challenges of operating a grid on renewable energy alone appear insurmountable using the current technology.

Broken Hill’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale for the incoming Liberal National Party government in Queensland as it assesses the energy policy mess left by Labor. Among the expensive proposals on the books is CopperString, a 100km high-voltage transmission line from Townsville to Mount Isa, crossing the remote and rugged terrain of North Queensland.

Mount Isa operates on a micro-grid served by two gas-fired power stations with diesel generators used as a backup. Replacing locally generated power by linking Mount Isa to the National Energy Market is costly and introduces the risk of transmission failure.

The latest estimate for CopperString, which would be funded entirely by the government, is $5bn, but the cost of building transmission lines is escalating dramatically.

David Crisafulli has every reason to put the project on hold while other options are considered. One solution could be micro modular reactors – self-contained, mass-produced nuclear power plants that are relatively easy to transport and install close to where the electricity is needed. This is the preferred option in Canada, where MMRs are seen as a breakthrough for remote indigenous communities and mining operations.

Bowen’s claims about the cost of renewable energy were called into question last week when senior executives from the Australian Electricity Market Operator gave evidence under oath to a Senate select committee.

AEMO’s assertion that its blueprint for the transition to renewables was “the lowest-cost pathway” is misleading. AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman told the committee its modelling only considered the wholesale cost of electricity. AEMO did not model network costs, transmission and distribution costs or retailer margins. “A home electricity bill will need to consider all of those factors,” he said.

Senator Matt Canavan asked: “You’re saying you cannot guarantee that the current government policy settings you model will deliver lower power prices?”

Westerman replied: “I can’t guarantee that. No.” He said AEMO “explicitly doesn’t consider other parts of the consumer energy bill”.

Westerman was asked if AEMO had costed other policy options before concluding that the cheapest path was renewable energy backed by storage and gas.

No, said Westerman. “It is the role of policymakers to identify alternatives and make those public policy decisions.

“If policymakers wanted to ask AEMO for advice, we would be pleased to provide it. But it’s not really our role to judge on whether it’s a good policy or not.”

Canavan asked: “So there’s no analysis of whether that’s a good idea or not?”

“No. Sorry. We don’t analyse that,” replied Merryn York, AEMO’s executive general manager for system design.

In summary, AEMO’s “least-cost pathway” turns out to be the wholesale cost of a transition to renewable energy on the accelerated timetable stipulated by the government. The destination of this plan is not cheaper electricity or cleaner energy.

Instead, AEMO’s lowest-cost pathway aims to meet Labor’s political target of 82 per cent carbon-free electricity by 2030 and 100 per cent renewable power by 2050, using mostly wind, solar and some gas. AEMO’s model excludes any consideration of nuclear energy.

It’s alarming that AEMO has not even attempted to model the retail cost of electricity. AEMO’s Integrated Systems Plan is the blueprint for the government’s energy transition. It sets the deadline for phasing out coal generation by 2038, a fourfold increase in rooftop solar, a sixfold increase in grid-scale wind and solar, and a 13-fold increase in battery storage.

Yet AEMO doesn’t consider it part of its brief to estimate how much this will cost. Nor does AEMO attempt to vouch for the technical feasibility of its plan. Engineering, like economic modelling, is not part of its job.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/even-with-a-price-tag-our-renewables-future-is-already-broken/news-story/889525e04688e0bd112988428a37cad7

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Molten Salt Reactor at ACU Receives Historic NRC Construction Permit

Molten salt is very hard to control. Expect disasters

ABILENE, Texas – September 16th: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a construction permit (CP) for the deployment of the Natura Resources’ MSR-1 system at Abilene Christian University (ACU).This marks the first construction permit for a liquid-fueled advanced reactor and only the second for any advanced reactor issued by the NRC.

“Natura recognized early on that the NRC is the gold standard of licensing of nuclear reactors.We made a conscious decision to work with the NRC to license our technology for deployment here in the States rather than taking our technology outside their jurisdiction or attempting to avoid the licensing process entirely.The NRC’s issuance of the Construction Permit for the Natura MSR-1 deployment at ACU shows that our technology can be licensed and de-risks the licensure of Natura’s 100MWe systems,” said Douglass Robison, Founder and President.

Natura Resources has taken an iterative, milestone-based approach to advanced reactor development and deployment, focused on efficiency and performance.This started in 2020 when Natura brought together ACU’s NEXT Lab with Texas A&M University, the University of Texas, and the Georgia Institute of Technology to form the Natura Resources Research Alliance.In only four years, Natura and its partners have developed a system that the NRC has successfully licensed.The successful deployment of the Natura MSR-1 system at ACU as the molten salt research reactor (MSRR) is going to provide valuable operational data to support Natura’s 100MWe systems and will also serve as a world-class research tool to train advanced reactor operators and educate students.

“We appreciate the thorough reviews by the NRC staff.The environmental review was completed in March and found that the MSRR would have no significant impact on the environment.The safety review that was just completed found that the Natura MSR-1 design and analysis meets the federal regulations and is safe to construct.This construction permit is the first step in the NRC’s two-step licensing process.It allows Natura and ACU to build and operate the MSRR without uranium.The next step is the operating license, which will authorize Natura and ACU to fuel the reactor and demonstrate the elegance of molten salt technology,” said Ben Beasley, Director of Licensing.

While this is a significant milestone, there is still work to be done.The advanced reactor deployment site that will house the reactor, the Science and Engineering Research Center at ACU, was completed in August 2023, and the issuance of the construction permit allows the team to begin fabrication of the reactor.Zachry Nuclear Engineering will complete the Detailed Engineering and Design of the Natura MSR-1 in the first part of 2025, which will be followed quickly by the submission of the Operating License application to the NRC.The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) provides fuel for the current operating fleet of university research reactors, and its commitment in 2019 to provide fuel and salt for the MSRR was the impetus for Natura Resources to develop and deploy the Natura MSR-1 with ACU.The fuel and salt needs for the MSRR are unique, and Natura Resources and ACU are committed to working with the DOE to finalize details related to the provision of fuel and salt.

“We are proud to have been working with Natura over the past year on the detailed design engineering for their first molten salt reactor system, a truly groundbreaking project in clean energy. This partnership highlights the innovative leadership both of our Texas-based companies bring to the industry as we work together to drive progress and shape the future of energy.Our shared commitment to advancing technology and economic growth makes this collaboration especially meaningful,” said John B. Zachry, President and CEO of Zachry Group.

“ACU is thrilled to have Natura as a partner as we work together to answer the world’s increased demand for reliable energy, medical isotopes, and clean water through the deployment of liquid-fueled molten salt reactors. With the NRC’s issuance of the construction permit, we are one step closer to making that a reality. The performance-driven approach of Natura Resources to advanced reactor deployment has quickly moved them from a relative unknown to a leader in the upstart advanced reactor industry,” said Dr. Phil Schubert, ACU President.

“If we're going to meet the growing energy needs, not only in the State of Texas but in our country and the world at large, we must begin deploying advanced nuclear reactors,” said Douglass Robison.

https://www.naturaresources.com/natura-resources-molten-salt-reactor-at-acu-receives-historic-nrc-construction-permit

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Climate Alarmists Now Attack Growing Your Own Food

Allotment produce, much prized by proud food-growing citizens the world over, has six times the ‘carbon’ footprint of conventional agriculture, according to a recent paper published by Nature

“Steps must be taken to ensure that urban agriculture supports, and does not undermine, urban decarbonisation efforts,” demand the authors.

What have these people been smoking? Surely not some of the puff circulating at the recent Psychedelic Climate Week in New York.

Highlights included a discussion on funding ketamine-assisted therapy and a panel on ‘Balancing Investing and Impact with Climate and Psychedelic Capital’.

The lead authors of the Nature paper are academics working out of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. They suggest using urban farms as sites for “education, leisure and community building”.

Perhaps the locals could sit cross-legged and listen to early Pink Floyd music. Maybe clap the setting sun to some Atom Heart Mother.

Excuse your correspondent if he cannot take this paper seriously. It is a classic example of ‘greens’ picking on a human activity – almost any will do – and complaining that it causes the devil-gas carbon dioxide to be released.

At the recent New York climate happening, according to the Guardian, revellers were told that using hallucinogens can spark “consciousness shifts” to inspire ‘climate-friendly behaviour’.

What climate friendly behaviour, one might ask, given that almost anything humans do to improve their lot of Earth is demonised by an increasingly weird millenarian ‘green’ cult.

The authors of the Nature paper seem to have a particular down on home composting. Poorly-managed composting is said to exacerbate the release of ‘greenhouse gases’. “The carbon footprint of compost grows tenfold when methane-generated anaerobic conditions persist in compost piles,” it says.

This is particularly common during small-scale composting, apparently. With a seeming complete ignorance of how small allotments farming functions, the authors suggest that “cities can offset this risk by centralising compost operations for professional management”.

Wherever these cultists look, there are gases being released that are contributing to their invented existential climate crisis. The high application rates of compost in urban agriculture can also lead to nitrous oxide, we’re told.

Needless to say, “strategic management of application scheduling and fertiliser combinations may be required to minimise emissions”.

For allotment holders, few pleasures in life compare with a break from arduous work and a hot cup of tea in the shed. Surrounded by the tools of the trade, it is the labourer’s equivalent of passing around a few liveners at National Climate Week, with the added attraction that it doesn’t turn you into a self-important dope.

But such pleasure will come to an end if the climate cops have their way. Infrastructure, we’re told, is the largest driver of ‘carbon’ emissions at what are termed “low-tech” urban agricultural sites.

As well as sheds, this includes beds (for vegetables, not a crash pad for ketamine heads) and compost facilities. A raised bed built and used for five years will have approximately four times the environmental impact as one used for 20.

Other infrastructure supplies are said to include fertiliser, gasoline and weed block textile.

Plants need water, but only the ‘right’ sort of water can help ‘save the planet’.

In their site samples, the researchers found that most allotment-holders use potable municipal water sources or groundwater wells. Big no, no, of course, since such irrigation emits ‘GHG’s from pumping, water treatment and distribution.

“Cities should support low-carbon (and drought-conscious) irrigation for urban agriculture via subsidies for rainwater catchment infrastructure, or through established guidelines for greywater use,” it is suggested.

Presumably, the subsidies will come from the magic bread tree and the infrastructure will be of the special type that does not produce ‘GHG’s.

This crackpot climate paper is just the latest sign that the ‘green’ movement is riven with disagreements as its climate crisis grift starts to fall apart in the face of reality.

There are no realistic back-ups for intermittent wind and solar, while ‘carbon capture’ is a colossal and potentially dangerous waste of money.

Without hydrocarbon use, humankind is doomed. Billions will die and society will be returned to the dark ages.

Hydrocarbons are ubiquitous in modern society, and so almost everything that humans do to survive and thrive can be demonised.

Eventually, you end up with Sir David Attenborough making the appalling observation that it was “barmy” for the United Nations to send bags of flour to famine-stricken Ethiopia.

Or to read earlier this year the tweet from the UN contributing author and UCL professor Bill McGuire that the only “realistic way” to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown is to cull the human population with a high fatality pandemic.

Many ‘green’ extremists seem to take the view that anything humans do, including growing their own veg, is causing existential harm to the planet.

https://principia-scientific.com/climate-alarmists-now-attack-growing-you-own-food/

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Overnight Success: Biden’s Climate Splurge Gives Billions to Nonprofit Newbies

Although there isn’t much public information available about the Justice Climate Fund, it appears to have been an overnight success.

After gaining nonprofit status in August 2023, the organization was awarded $940 million by the Biden administration just eight months later in connection with the White House’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which aims to provide financial assistance to reduce carbon emissions and reduce pollution.

The Justice Climate Fund is not the only nonprofit newcomer suddenly made rich by the GGRF. Within a month of gaining nonprofit status from the IRS, Power Forward Communities, which reported 2023 revenues of $100, was awarded $2 billion.

The awards were made by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is new to the world of major grantmaking. The agency acknowledges it has never handed out such gigantic sums of money, and its inspector general told Congress last month it marked a “fantastically complex” and “unusual” setup that his small staff would be hard-pressed to follow.

Critics note that many of the awardees are run by politically connected figures. The single biggest winner in the awards, which were announced in April, was the Climate United Fund, which is slated to receive $6.97 billion. The fund’s directors include prominent Democrats, such as Phil Angelides, a former California State Treasurer. After this article was published Climate United told RCI that Anthony Foxx, who served as Transportation Secretary in the Obama administration, was “listed as a board member for our [grant] application but did not commit to serving post award.” A press release on the group’s website names Foxx as a member of its “Inaugural Board of Directors.”

The unprecedented nature of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created as part of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, is raising concerns about the Biden administration’s efforts to spend tens of billions of dollars in its final months, a gusher of taxpayer money that will flow into a poorly understood, untested, and difficult to audit format. The tremendous sums involved, the novelty of the program, and the EPA’s lack of experience in the field, as well as the unproven track record of some of the newly hatched recipients, have drawn the attention of lawmakers and others uncertain about how the taxpayers’ billions will ultimately be spent and who will keep track of it all.

“These groups are political front groups that are simply created to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to Democrat campaigns under the guise of doing something good,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff in the Trump administration.

Daren Bakst, director of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a sharp critic of the Biden administration’s climate change spending splurge, said, “It’s worse than a slush fund – it’s a slush fund to create non-profit slush funds.”

The EPA describes the Greenhouse Fund as “an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate the adoption of greenhouse gas reducing technologies.” By investing in making residential homes and neighborhoods more “eco-friendly,” the money will pay dividends in both lower utility bills and higher employment, the agency says.

Neither the Justice Climate Fund nor Power Forward Communities responded to questions about their plans to spend the close to $3 billion in public funds they had received.

The $27 billion assigned to the Greenhouse Fund represents a fraction of the money the Biden-Harris administration has embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act for its green energy revolution. Biden acknowledged the bill’s true purpose this summer when he called the IRA a “climate” bill, thereby aligning the administration’s position with what leftist environmental groups such as the World Resource Institute hailed from the beginning as “the largest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history.” The IRA involved “hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy, electric vehicles, environmental justice and more.” Billions more would be spent on the global warming front under the Biden-Harris Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed in 2021.

The EPA has made it clear it views the bonanza as seed money. The agency expects that each dollar the nonprofit recipients spend in seeking to reduce America’s carbon footprint will attract seven times its value in private investment. This anticipated capitalist activity has led many media accounts to label the nonprofits “green banks,” and it has created an entirely new wrinkle in the EPA, according to its inspector general. The Fund’s requirements also carry mandates that at least 40% of the billions be spent in “low income or disadvantaged communities” or “tribal” lands, and in some cases, winners have pledged to spend up to 70% of the money in those same areas.

“I can’t say enough about how complex this system will be,” EPA Inspector General Sean O’Donnell testified to a House subcommittee in September. “It’s like they created an investment bank. It’s fantastically complex. I think it’s unusual.”

“I think it’s more than unusual,” responded Ohio Republican Rep. David Joyce.

EPA Special Advisor Zealan Hoover pushed back at the claim that unusual secrecy surrounded the process and criticism that there are flimsy guardrails to ensure the $27 billion is well spent.

Greenhouse Fund money has been divided into three programs. The biggest is in the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), which will divide $14 billion among three groups, followed by Solar For All, which has $7 billion, and then $6 billion divided among five groups under the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA).

While the degree of competition involved was not immediately made public, the EPA did provide the numbers to RealClearInvestigations. Three National Clean Investment Fund winners were chosen from a dozen applicants, while Clean Communities Investment Accelerator winners came from a pool of 26 proposals. “Solar For All,” which has the smallest awards, had 60 winners and 150 applicants, according to the EPA. Some of the NCIF and CCIA winners are associated with one another and publicly speak of their collaboration.

“In some cases, the umbrella organizations are new, but it’s set up to help long established groups such as the United Way or Habitat for Humanity,” Hoover said. “These are partnerships and coalitions in which we are very confident, and they submitted remarkably comprehensive applications.”

Hoover also told RCI the EPA will retain spending and auditing oversight, though that responsibility was not spelled out in any of the press releases that have accompanied the Greenhouse Reduction Fund. None of the groups receiving the billions responded to questions or agreed to comment on their plans for spending and how the money will be tracked and audited.

State-directed spending on new technology raises major questions about the role of government in promoting industrial development and in “picking winners.” In other words, are neighborhoods clamoring for what the nonprofits will sell, and how will the award winners attract $189 billion in private investment?

“Is there really any organic demand for all this?” said Travis Fisher, director of Energy and Environmental Policy Studies at the conservative Cato Institute.

But Hoover said the answer lies in the gargantuan scale, and that the lump sum awards will actually be spent in myriad smaller projects throughout the country.

“The theory is that by unlocking the market we’ll create the market,” he said. “The top line numbers are large, but this will jumpstart lending.” That activity will also be spurred because the award winners will offer a smorgasbord of energy-efficient projects rather than one standardized one, Hoover said.

The EPA and the award winners speak in glowing terms of what they will accomplish.

“To date, the eight selected applicants have supported thousands of individuals, businesses, and community organizations to access capital for climate and clean energy projects,” the EPA said when announcing the awards. “With their awards, selectees will unleash tens of thousands of more projects like these across the country for decades to come.”

The press release went on to describe individuals who needed water heaters replaced, communities that are investing in solar panels, and even the “sustainable rehabilitation of the historic National Guard Armory building located in one of Owosso, Michigan.”

This sort of activity also contributed to the “green banks” label, and it aligns with IG O’Donnell’s testimony that the EPA had essentially created a “fantastically complex” investment bank.

Critics say such problems are compounded by the political connections of many of the awardees, whose boards and directors are peppered with people with careers in various credit unions and what are known as “Community Development Financial Institutions,” or banks that are focused on distressed communities.

The board of the Coalition for Green Capital, which got the second biggest NCIF award of $5 billion, includes Hugh Frater, who headed Fannie Mae at the end of the Obama administration. Another board member,Cecilia Martinez, was the top “environmental justice official” in Biden’s White House before moving to the advocacy and nonprofit sector. Stephen Brown, the Coalition’s chief network officer, began his Washington career in the Clinton White House, while Jessie Buendia, chief impact officer, was previously part of the California state government. Another highlighted officer with the Coalition is Daniela Nyiri, who worked on campaigns for Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens before moving to the Progressive Turnout Project.

The last NCIF installment of $2 billion was awarded to a group called Power Forward Communities, which was formed in 2023. It is led by Timothy J. Mayopoulos, who headed Obama’s Fannie Mae from 2012 to 2018. One of its directors is Shaun Donovan, who served in the Obama administration for all of its eight years, including a stint as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Power Forward Communities was granted its tax-exempt status by the IRS last March, one month before it landed the $2 billion award.

Some of the CCIA awards went to more established players, such as Inclusiv Inc., an outfit that has been around since 1977 and will get $1.87 billion, and the Opportunity Finance Network, which in 2022 had revenues of $76 million, according to tax records. Others are new arrivals on the scene, like the Justice Climate Fund, which formed in August 2023. The Justice Climate Fund’s CEO, Amir Kirkwood, had previously been with the Opportunity Finance Network, which received a $2.29 billion award.

Almost without fail, each award winner appears to have received a massive revenue boost from this surge of tax money under the Biden-Harris administration.

“The EPA does not have the wherewithal to handle $2-billlion grants – they were terrible at handling much smaller ones when I was there – much less an organization that previously disclosed a minuscule budget,” Gunasekara told RCI in an email. “There is very little oversight once the money goes out the door and even less accountability on whether the funds achieve the stated purpose in grant applications.”

House Republicans sounded a similar note at the September hearing, dubbed “Holding the Biden-Harris EPA Accountable for Radical Rush-to-Green Spending.” Democrats insisted that GOP concerns were hypothetical, given most of the actual spending has not yet occurred and is earmarked for a good cause. Republicans called attention to the unprecedented nature of the EPA’s arrangement.

“The Biden-Harris administration’s radical rush-to-green energy policies have fueled out-of-control inflation, which has driven up prices by more than 20 percent and destroyed the economic stability American families deserve,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“While American families are increasingly worried about unaffordable costs, the Biden-Harris administration is working relentlessly to expand its radical energy agenda,” added the Washington state Republican.

O’Donnell acknowledged that his staff, which has not grown apace with the EPA’s massive surge under Biden, would not be able to keep tabs on the $27 billion Greenhouse Fund.

Republican representatives said the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund follows enormous sums of money the Biden-Harris administration had already sunk into the EPA in the form of some $100 billion via the Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Acts, effectively doubling the agency’s budget for five consecutive years.

“Spending at this pace and scale for any agency should raise concerns, but especially for an agency like the EPA with a known track record of waste, fraud, and abuse,” Rodgers said. “Under the Obama administration the EPA was given roughly $7.2 billion – nearly doubling its annual budget at the time. Even at that level, the EPA was not able to responsibly manage the spending.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/10/22/overnight_success_bidens_climate_splurge_gives_billions_to_nonprofit_newbies_1066437.html

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Offshore wind’s bogus benefits bragged on

Resources for the Future (RFF) has produced a combined cost benefit analysis for 32 U.S. offshore wind projects now in development. They proudly point to the benefits outweighing the costs by a whopping 14 times. But these supposed benefits are not just exaggerated; they are fabricated. They simply do not exist.

Their lengthy title is “Offshore Wind Power Examined: Effects, Benefits, and Costs of Offshore Wind Farms along the US Atlantic and Gulf Coasts”.

The analysis is fairly simple which makes it easy to see the fallacies. There are just four basic benefit claims. And of course it is all based on highly questionable modeling.

Before looking at each of these benefit claims it is worth noting a pervasive misconception. They assume that when a MWh of wind displaces a MWh of coal or gas fired power the emissions of the latter are reduced by the amount it takes to produce a MWh. As I have written at length this is not true.

Baseload fossil fueled power plants run on very high pressure steam produced by gigantic boilers. These plants have to be ready to produce power while wind and solar run intermittently. They are typically running while their output is temporarily displaced by offshore wind. The reduction in emissions is relatively quite small compared to the power displacement.

Each of the RFF benefit quantities is based on this mistaken displacement assumption. Thus each would be much smaller than they estimate if it were real. But as we shall now see they are not real.

The first and by far the biggest purported benefit is in changing climate change. This benefit is greater than the other three combined.

The claimed climate benefit is in reducing global climate change deaths for just under the next 300 years. I am not making this up. Here is their preposterous explanation:

“The GIVE Model, one of the three models on which the EPA (2023c) social cost of CO2 is based, projects that each million short tons of CO2 emitted in 2020 will cause 43 premature deaths globally between then and 2300 (after which the GIVE model does not project effects). Using this deaths-per-million-tons value, we estimate that the CO2 emissions reductions caused by the modeled offshore wind farms, in each year of their operation, will prevent 1,600 premature deaths. This mortality reduction is a major part of the overall estimated dollar value of the GHG emissions reductions caused by the offshore wind farms.”

Our emissions are not causing any climate change deaths, much less from now until 2300 so this benefit does not exist.

The next biggest benefit is in reducing the purported deaths caused by power plant pollution. Here is their summary:

“Our model estimates that the offshore wind farms will prevent approximately 436 premature deaths per year in the United States by reducing ground-level PM2.5. We estimate an additional 84 avoided premature deaths per year from reductions in ground-level ozone pollution; however, this is more uncertain than our PM2.5 related mortality estimate because ozone formation is more sensitive to background assumptions, and we base the estimate on a national average estimated ozone mortality rate of power plant emissions (EPA 2023a) rather than on modeling that accounts for the locations of the emissions changes.”

Power plant emissions are not causing these EPA dreamed up deaths so this benefit does not exist. In particular a great book on the PM2.5 hoax is Steve Milloy’s “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA”.

The third supposed benefit is “electric bill savings”. Again I am not making this up. That the cost of backup makes renewables expensive is well established and offshore wind is very expensive renewables so bills will go way up not down.

To get these supposed savings they basically rebuild the land based power generation system and given the offshore generation they build with cheaper stuff. Here is their opaque summary:

“In our results, building 35 GW of offshore wind farms reduces the average capacity factor of non-variable generation capacity and causes a change in the mix of such capacity. The change is a shift of several GW of capacity from types with higher fixed costs and lower operating costs to types with lower fixed costs and higher operating costs, which reduces costs and increases profits in light of the lower capacity factor.”

That lowering the capacity factor reduced people’s electric bill sounds like a model driven fantasy for sure. Moreover it sounds like the so-called savings are from what bills would otherwise be in some future scenario, not from what they are today. In that case the claim is a trick.

The last benefit is even more far fetched. It is “Natural gas user savings outside the electricity sector”. The simple idea is that so much gas is displaced by wind that the price of gas to everyone goes down. Not much mind you but a little bit.

They say “The offshore wind farms reduce the US and Canadian projected average natural gas price by 2.5 percent, from $4.12 to $4.02 per MMBtu, because of decreased demand for natural gas in the power sector.”

If only economics were that simple but it is not. Gas is a huge market besides electric power. Also most of the area in question is now served by fracked gas that runs around $2.00. So this tiny 2.5% change is not credible.

That is it for the bogus benefits. They are claimed to be 14 times the cost but they do not exist. The costs however are very real. At least RFF did not include jobs as benefits, as they are costs. They just used fairy tales.

Perhaps this report is written for politicians and other people who will cite it but never read it. Or maybe for people who believe the fairy tale of America’s tons of emissions killing people around the world for the next 300 years. I like to think my readers are smarter than that.

Offshore wind has no benefits; it is a destructive and wildly expensive policy mistake.

https://www.cfact.org/2024/10/07/offshore-winds-bogus-benefits-bragged-on/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Green Blob-Funded Report Calls for Massive Frequent Flyer Levies That Would Devastate International Air Travel

A radical new plan to reduce international air travel from Europe to minimal levels over the next few years has been proposed by a group of Net Zero fanatics led by the New Economics Foundation (NEF). Massive charges under a ‘frequent flyer levy’ are proposed, the effect of which could quickly destroy large sections of the international air transportation industry. Some of the money raised – or not as the case may be – will be sent abroad as ‘climate aid’ to less developed countries forced to stay poor by mandated restrictions on their use of hydrocarbons. Needless to say, the work is the product of what Ben Pile recently termed “bog-standard Green Blob fronts”. Writing and promoting the NEF publication involved a number of operations heavily funded by the usual suspects including the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and ClimateWorks.

The fantasy plan calls for large European surcharges to be added to ticket prices for multiple annual trips. Financial details are not provided in the press release but the report suggests €50 for a medium distance trip and additional levies of €100 for long and “comfort” classes. This would appear to suggest an extra €250 charge for long-distance business and first class travel. George Monbiot of the Guardian boasts of the report having been shared exclusively with his newspaper and writes that the €100 levy on both distance and class will rise with each trip. It is hoped the surcharges will raise €64 billion, a sum said to be equivalent to 30% of the entire EU annual budget. This would be spent, at least until the golden goose is killed stone dead, on accelerating Europe to a “fairer, greener economy”. More virtuous bungs can be sent to countries to stop them using hydrocarbons and recompense them for the non-existent climate crisis.

Although the report talks of reducing travel by around 25%, the blow will be much worse in financial terms. Many airlines rely on premium travel to keep economy tickets low and severe reductions would affect the economics of aviation, both in the air and on the ground. Reducing passenger traffic by a suggested 25% and very likely much more, would require massive restructuring across the board including air traffic control, baggage handling, security and border activities and airport management. Yet more lost jobs to be added to the increasing pile of Net Zero casualties.

Not that this is the end of the attack. Air travel has enabled countless millions to travel for pleasure, holidays, education, business and to connect with family over the last few decades. In pursuit of ther mad Net Zero policies, the eco-zealots tell us, further restrictions “would therefore be necessary”. These would include caps on the number of flights, airport slots, night flights, private jets and “limits on the more damaging comfort classes of travel”.

Want to know what is being planned by the Net Zero fanatics – look at what their Blob-funded puppets are writing. In this case, forget about flying within just a few short years.

The New Economics Foundation has been around for a few years pumping out Left wing propaganda. It is no surprise that the hard Left’s favourite money tree the Rowntree Trust has funnelled in cash, although much larger amounts have been supplied by the Laudes Foundation and the ECF. As Ben Pile noted recently in the Daily Sceptic, most of the organisations active in the climate domain in the U.K. are funded by the ECF directly, or by one of the half dozen or so of the ECF’s grantor philanthropic foundations. As Pile also observes, the “hapless consumer” is ensnared by the phantom institutions that represent the green-ideology-addled British Establishment.

The NEF report is co-written by the Stay Grounded Network which, perhaps to nobody’s surprise, is funded by the ECF. The aviation campaigner at this outfit, Magdalena Heuwieser, says that the single trip flyer is paying the same tax as a traveller making 10 trips. Except that the more frequent flyer is actually paying 10 times more tax. Designed to fit a political narrative, Left wing sums often diverge from reality. In his article, Monbiot notes that air travel, heavily taxed as most passengers are aware, is “heavily subsidised” since the fuel is exempt from duties. In Monbiot’s world, a lack of a specific tax is often seen as a ‘subsidy’, while an actual £12 billion annual subsidy loaded onto U.K. electricity consumers to pay for unreliable renewable power is passed off as an ‘investment’. One reason fuel duty is not levied on aviation is that mobile jet aircraft will ‘tanker up’ at cheaper locations.

Monbiot reports on the view of Marlene Engelhorn who states that the “mile-high club of private planet combustion, where wealthy people like me can ferment in our comfort zones, needs to close it doors”. Easy to say of course when you are a wealthy heiress who has inherited a fortune from the BASF chemical operation. Other people who work for a living and need holidays and some modest comfort as they travel to drum up business might take a different view.

According to Monbiot, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) reviewed an early draft of the NEF report. Another Green Blob-funded operation of course, mostly it seems through ClimateWorks. This large operation channels considerable flows of money from other billionaire foundations such as Hewlett and Packard. These two latter operations are also direct funders of ICCT. Flying less is obviously the most effective solution to cutting emissions, states Sola Zhang, described by Monbiot as an aviation “expert”. Another operation quoted by Monbiot, More in Common, found that rich people would be most affected by a frequent flyer levy because they fly more. Again such value, such insight – funders ECF, the George Soros Open Society Foundation and Hewlett must be very pleased.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/21/green-blob-funded-report-calls-for-massive-frequent-flyer-levies-that-would-devastate-international-air-travel/

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Grid scale battery fires loom large

America faces a growing threat from grid scale lithium battery fires. Construction of huge battery arrays with no concern for potentially catastrophic fires is out of control. There are no established standards to follow and local permitting authorities seem oblivious to this very real danger.

The batteries are teamed with a big solar facility because until recently that was the only way to get the battery subsidies. Each lithium battery unit is the size of a tractor trailer or big shipping container and there are well over a hundred of them, with a rated storage capacity of 230 MW. This is a medium sized storage facility.

That these units can spontaneously burst into flames is well established. The question is how to design and prepare for this destructive event?

To scale the problem consider the following event. A battery powered tractor trailer rig recently crashed and it’s battery burned on an interstate in California. Lithium battery fires cannot be put out so this one burned for around eleven hours. In order to keep the fire from spreading to create a wildfire the fire crew continuously sprayed it using a reported 50,000 gallons of water in the process. The interstate was closed due to the toxic fumes from the fire.

One of these grid scale battery units is easily 10 to 20 times the size of that truck battery. If the water usage required to keep a grid battery fire from spreading scales with size that is 500,000 to a million gallons of water. The actual amount is an engineering calculation that needs to be established and incorporated into battery facility design standards.

Note that we are not talking about the fire spreading to create a wildfire although that is certainly a concern. The vital need is to keep it from igniting the nearby batteries. If this happened the whole facility could go up with a hundred or more giant batteries burning. That would be truly catastrophic.

So now look at the Desert Sunlight photo and note there is no water tank. There should be something like a million gallon water tank with a high volume system to deliver that water to every unit in the facility. Clearly there is not.

There is also the engineering question of how far apart these units should be to enable that water to work keeping the fire from spreading. I doubt the Desert Sunlight spacing is even close to big enough. It looks like just room to walk between them.

Now let’s turn to permitting these facilities where I have another example that speaks volumes. This is a facility that just got permitted by Washington State. It is a combined wind, solar and battery project with a proposed storage capacity of 300 MW, which is considerably bigger than Desert Sunlight. It might have 200 huge lithium battery units. That number is not disclosed.

The project is named the Horse Heaven Wind Farm despite its massive solar and battery components. The name, usually shortened to Horse Heaven, is truly ironic because it will be no place for horses. Horse Hell might be better.

The permitting authority is the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council or EFSEC for short. The permit is called a Site Certification Agreement or CSA and Horse Heaven just got one, with a big push from the Governor.

The astounding point is that there was no discussion, or even recognition, of the fire threat posed by this enormous lithium battery facility. The CSA has numerous requirements for lots of issues, big and small, right down to the facility having water to keep the road dust down. There is nothing on having a million or so gallons to prevent a catastrophic conflagration, nor on the environmental impact of such.

This is wildfire country so there should be liability insurance for harm to others from a fire. Other potential sources of harm are huge amounts of contaminated water runoff as well as toxic air emissions, especially if the whole facility burns.

This neglect no doubt flows from the Horse Heaven Application. The App is over 500 pages long and I can find just one sentence about battery fires. Buried in a long paragraph on PDF page 366 we read “Lithium-ion battery storage may pose a risk of fire and explosion due to the tendency for lithium-ion batteries to overheat.”

This single sentence does not even refer to the project. For that matter there are only a few paragraphs about the battery facility in the entire App, mostly just describing it in general terms. There is nothing about the number of giant battery containers or that it is a huge project in its own right, posing an equally huge fire threat. In fact the App says they might double deck these container sized battery units which is absurd given the risk of setting off a chain reaction in the whole complex.

One can easily think from the Application that the batteries are of no significance and that appears to be exactly what has happened at the EFSEC.

This systematic neglect looks to be what is happening around the country. We desperately need a national code or standard covering this issue. The National Fire Protection Association says it is working on one, but it is up to the permitting authorities to make something happen.

The growing threat of grid scale battery fires is a very serious issue calling for equally serious action.

https://www.cfact.org/2024/10/01/grid-scale-battery-fires-loom-large/

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IEA: The World Is Not on Track to Triple Renewable Capacity by 2030

Despite the surge in renewable energy additions, the world is not yet on track to reach the goal of tripling renewables capacity by 2030, according to the Renewables 2024 report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Wednesday.

Global renewable capacity is expected to grow by 2.7 times by 2030, surpassing countries’ current ambitions by nearly 25%. But it still falls short of tripling, said the agency advocating for a swift move away from fossil fuels.

While climate and energy security policies have boosted the attractiveness of renewables by making them cost-competitive with fossil-fired generation, “this is not quite sufficient to reach the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity worldwide established by nearly 200 countries at the COP28 climate summit,” the IEA said.

The agency’s main case, assuming existing policies and market conditions, forecasts 5,500 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable capacity becoming operational by 2030. This implies that global renewable capacity additions will continue to grow every year, reaching nearly 940 GW annually by 2030 – 70% more than the record level achieved in 2023, the IEA said.

Solar PV and wind together are expected to account for 95% of all renewable capacity growth through the end of this decade due their growing economic attractiveness in almost all countries.

As a result of these trends, nearly 70 countries that collectively account for 80% of global renewable power capacity are expected to reach or surpass their current renewable ambitions for 2030. But this would still fall short of the COP28 pledge for tripling renewables capacity.

Growth is there, but governments need to boost their efforts to integrate variable renewable sources into power systems, the IEA said, noting that the rates of curtailment of renewable electricity generation have been increasing substantially recently, and already reaching around 10% in several countries.

In a separate report last month, the IEA said that the global goal to triple renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade is still within reach, but massive investments in power grids and energy storage would be needed.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/IEA-The-World-Is-Not-on-Track-to-Triple-Renewable-Capacity-by-2030.html

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Australia is already a successful nuclear nation

ANSTO – the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation – recently celebrated 70 years since Australia’s nuclear age began in Sydney.

On April 15, 1953, Australia entered the nuclear science arena as the Atomic Energy Act came into effect. The Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) followed and in 1987 the AAEC evolved into ANSTO as it’s known today.

ANSTO is the home of Australia’s most significant landmark and national infrastructure for research. Thousands of scientists from industry and academia benefit from gaining access to state-of-the-art instruments every year.

Thousands of visitors, including many schoolchildren, have safely toured the site at Lucas Heights, which is located 40km southwest of the Sydney CBD. They had the opportunity to learn a great deal about nuclear science as a result of that experience.

I recently became one of those visitors when I was invited to a 3-hour escorted tour of their facilities. As former Executive Director of the National Safety Council of Australia (NSW/ACT) I was particularly interested in their WHS procedures as well as the management of waste, as the latter could impact on the wider community if poorly managed.

What impressed me most was seeing just how advanced we are as a nuclear nation. Despite being relatively small in scale compared to a full civil nuclear energy plant, it has much the same range of issues and complexities to deal with. And it certainly appears to successfully do so at both their Sydney and Melbourne campuses.

During his visit to Australia in July 2022, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi expressed deep confidence in Australia, acknowledging the solid foundations established through ANSTO since its formation.

The obvious question is, why is the Albanese Labor-Greens government, together with the Teals, opposed to extending our obvious expertise into producing nuclear energy on a commercial scale, as proposed by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s LNP?

As you’d expect, there are a number of reasons for both their reluctance to accept nuclear despite it being cheap, reliable and emissions-free and their manic obsession with unreliable, hugely expensive, and environmentally/socially disastrous wind, solar, and battery renewables.

Political factors play a major part. The Greens and Teals are directly opposed to nuclear, but for different reasons.

The Greens have shown beyond doubt that they want to disrupt society across as many issues as possible. They are doing this on a regular basis – even appearing to stand with crowds that hold sympathies toward recognised terrorist groups.

People who think the Greens are still a well-meaning environmental group like they were under Bob Brown are fooling themselves – they are not!

In the case of the Teals, they started life as political entities via funding from Climate 200, whose primary financial supporters are deeply entrenched in the lucrative and heavily taxpayer-subsidised renewables industry.

The Teals are ignorant pawns in the high-stakes game of climate change and the hysterical pursuit of ‘saving the planet’.

There is a lot of money involved in this issue and ordinary Australians are being played by the so-called elites, including left-wing mainstream media such as the ABC.

A good example is the almost total lack of media reporting on the very recent and hugely important US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Lift-off Report that includes significant findings:

The system cost of electricity with nuclear and renewables combination is 30 per cent lower than just renewables.
⁠The jobs from nuclear are 50 per cent higher paying than solar or wind.

⁠⁠Nuclear provides the lowest emissions, is the most reliable form of energy production, has the lowest land use requirement, and lowest material usage.

The report also outlines a pathway for the USA to reach their ambition to triple their nuclear energy capacity by 2050, in direct contradiction of our government’s refusal to even legalise nuclear energy.

It also directly contradicts the policy position of the Albanese government.

The report debunks repeated claims that nuclear is ‘too expensive’ and will ‘increase power bills’ and outlines various other benefits of nuclear energy.

The DoE report could not disagree more with Australian anti-nuclear campaigners and the Albanese Labor-Greens government, Teals, and other sources of ignorance.

Their report also completely debunks the much-criticised report produced by CSIRO GenCost that our Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, refers to constantly as his renewables crusade ‘Bible’.

This is despite the fact that the CSIRO GenCost report totally failed to accurately estimate the likely total cost of renewables compared to nuclear.

It also used in its modelling a 30-year life for a nuclear plant instead of the far more accurate 80 years. This created a false financial outcome by not comparing the total cost of nuclear with renewables over an 80-year period.

It also totally neglected the fact that waste management costs for renewables will be many times greater than for nuclear. There will be the need to replace wind turbines and solar panels three or four times during an 80-year period.

And who is going to be responsible for dismantling and disposing of the millions of components – some of which have toxic ingredients?

Many people, including some of our top scientists and engineers, believe that the CSIRO GenCost report was simply designed to support the Albanese government’s narrative as depicted in their childish three-eyed fish media splash some months ago.

‘Blackouts’ Bowen promoted that infantile campaign in his usual gloating, arrogant manner and then compounded his evident stupidity by stating that he had not even read the US report – dismissing it completely!

And this typifies the problem we face with the Albanese government. They have Ministers like Bowen, Wong, Burke, Plibersek, Clare and, of course, Albanese whose sole objective is to win the coming election and thereby remain in power; they simply don’t want to suffer the ignominy of becoming a one-term government.

Hopefully, in the very best interests of our country, they will fail to achieve that objective because we need a government that protects our borders, controls immigration, decreases our cost-of-living, and helps young people to buy their own homes.

It’s becoming clearer on a daily basis that none of that will happen under the current Labor-Greens government.

One major impediment to reducing living expenses is the rising cost of energy.

Renewables alone will continue to increase the cost of electricity and that will in turn increase the prices paid at our shops and for commercial or residential electricity usage.

Nuclear energy will add to the range of resources available to us – as it has done in many other countries.

Nuclear power plants operate in 32 countries and generate about a tenth of the world’s electricity. Most are in Europe, North America, and East Asia.

The United States is the largest producer of nuclear power, while France has the largest share of electricity generated by nuclear power, at about 70 per cent.

The only way we are going to catch up with the rest of the world in relation to nuclear energy production is to replace our current government with Peter Dutton’s Liberal-National Coalition.

That might be hard to accept for some people – but it’s an undeniable fact.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/australia-is-already-a-successful-nuclear-nation/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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