Lack of energy storage makes renewables-only grids a pipedream
A new paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation warns that renewable energy policies being pursued around the world are unrealistic.
That’s because renewables-only grids require large amounts of electricity storage to make them viable. However, the world currently lacks any power storage technology that is both affordable and scalable.
As the paper’s author, Francis Menton explains:
“The amount of storage required is very large – perhaps as much as two months’ of average demand. The cost then becomes absurd: you could spend all of your GDP on batteries every year, and it would still not be enough. Hydrogen is better, but is still astonishingly expensive, because it’s so inefficient”.
In one of Mr Menton’s estimates, the cost of providing lithium ion batteries for a grid could be more than ten times GDP. Moreover, because the batteries wear out, the expenditure would need to be repeated every few years.
Despite this, policymakers are ploughing ahead with deployment of wind and solar, hoping that scientists will come up with something to save the day.
GWPF Director, Dr Benny Peiser said:
“The skyrocketing prices in UK electricity markets in recent days are a warning. Without economic forms of electricity storage, a drive for renewables is going to end very badly for consumers.”
Francis Menton: The Energy Storage Conundrum (pdf)
Contact
Dr Benny Peiser
Director, Global Warming Policy Foundation
e: benny.peiser@thegwpf.org
m: 07553 361717
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The U.S. EV charging network is a mess
Gas stations spar with utility companies, rural areas predict years of losses on chargers, spotty equipment threatens reliability:
The U.S. has just 11,600 points where any EV can charge quickly, according to the research group Atlas Public Policy.
The U.S. has just 11,600 points where any EV can charge quickly, according to the research group Atlas Public Policy
One of the biggest roadblocks to the mass adoption of electric vehicles is the troubled business model for the commercial chargers that power them.
The government is pouring billions of dollars into developing a national highway charging network. But businesses aren’t sure how they will make money, and the nascent industry looks messy.
Utility companies and gas stations are at war with each other over who will own and operate EV chargers. Rural states say some charging stations could operate at a loss for a decade or more. New companies that provide charging gear and services are contending with the equipment’s spotty reliability.
The network’s build-out has a chicken-or-egg quality: EV advocates say many drivers will only be comfortable purchasing vehicles if rapid charging is as easy as using a pump at a gas station. Yet businesses interested in offering charging say they can’t make money until more EVs are on the road.
Around 1% of U.S. drivers own EVs, but wait lists are growing and auto makers including General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. are expecting EV sales to keep rising. To overcome “range anxiety”—the fear that EV drivers will run out of power while traveling long distances—industry experts say the U.S. needs plentiful fast chargers. Fast charging can take 20 minutes to an hour depending on the vehicle.
There are more than 145,000 places to refuel a gas-powered vehicle. So far, the U.S. has 11,600 points where any EV can charge quickly, according to the research group Atlas Public Policy.
EV market leader Tesla Inc. built a private U.S. network of nearly 16,000 fast chargers for its own drivers starting in 2012, and its popular Superchargers have become a marketing tool for selling cars. Most other auto makers are relying on the government and private companies. In some cases, they are investing alongside charging companies.
The Biden administration and Congress want to speed the transition to electricity-as-fuel. This year’s climate and tax law, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, offers expanded federal tax credits to persuade more businesses to add chargers. Budget estimators expect around $1.7 billion in tax credits for chargers or other alternative-fuel equipment to be claimed over a 10-year period. States also are set to distribute $7.5 billion over several years from last year’s infrastructure law to increase the availability of chargers.
Tension has erupted between businesses such as gas stations, convenience stores and truck stops and utility companies over who gets to sell electricity to drivers and who foots the bill for the costly infrastructure to do so.
Many monopoly utilities want to own and operate chargers, extending electricity sales into a new market. They have a competitive edge because, with the approval of state utility regulators, they can pass on the cost of infrastructure and power to all rate payers, as they do for wires or new power generation.
In Minneapolis, Channing Smith, who owns a gas station and convenience mart called The Corner Store, said a utility proposal threatens to squeeze out charging competition. Xcel Energy has asked regulators to let it build, own and operate 730 fast-charging sites by 2026—about 45% of Minnesota’s’ projected fast-charging market. The $193 million cost would be paid for by its rate payers.
“For them to take taxpayer money to create a network removes the private sector completely,” Mr. Smith said. He said he would like to install fast chargers, but not if he has to compete directly against the company selling him electricity.
Xcel says a dearth of public chargers is hindering EV adoption in Minnesota, which has just 55 or so non-Tesla locations for fast charging, according to government data. “We have not seen the market fill in key gaps regarding necessary public charging,” Xcel told regulators in August.
Lacey Nygard, an Xcel spokeswoman, said the company would support retailers or communities whether they wanted to own or simply host chargers on their property.
Tim Echols, an EV advocate and a Republican who serves on Georgia’s utility commission, said utilities will have to own and operate some equipment. “If it’s going to be in an area that’s never going to make money, then who else is going to put it there?” Mr. Echols asked.
In the past year, utilities have been approved or have pending requests to spend more than $1.4 billion on charging, according to Atlas Public Policy.
Another point of contention comes in how utilities charge businesses for electricity. The highest 15-minute period of power consumption each month makes up a large chunk of commercial billing. Because an EV charging session requires a surge of power, gas station owners say their monthly bills are spiking unpredictably, by hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Shameek Konar, chief executive of Pilot Co., which has more than 800 truck stops and travel centers across North America, said he understands the need for such fees, which pay for upgrades to electric infrastructure. But Pilot expects chargers to draw twice as much power as the rest of a truck stop. He said he thinks high fees should be phased in, and that state or federal officials should help set common rates with the patchwork of America’s nearly 3,000 utilities.
Pilot and GM plan to add fast-chargers at 500 of the travel center company’s Pilot and Flying J locations starting next year.
“We’re going to have to work with 300 utilities to come up with rate structures,” Mr. Konar estimated.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ev-charging-stations-electric-vehicles-11669737656
**************************************************There Are 8 Billion People. We Should Celebrate Superabundance, Not Lament ‘Overpopulation’
Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people: as of today, there are eight billion of us. Contrary to what the environmental movement tells us, that eight billionth person is a blessing, not a curse.
We should be celebrating. Person number eight billion brought another mouth to feed, it’s true, but she also arrived with nimble hands and, most importantly, one of those wonderful little idea factories that we call a brain.
In the very short run, our eight billionth neighbor puts at least some pressure on our stock of proved resources. By buying her diapers, her parents are calling resources like adhesives and polymers out of other uses. Prices rise just a little. In the long run, however, necessity is the mother of invention. People find new, innovative ways to economize on the resources we know about, and they find new, innovative ways to find new resources.
This is what the economist Julian Simon thought, and more importantly, it’s what he demonstrated in a body of research that, in my opinion, should have won him a Nobel Prize. The human mind, Simon argued, is The Ultimate Resource, and when people are free to invent, innovate, and try new things, they create new possibilities.
As my friend and coauthor Deirdre McCloskey as put it, every new product—and every new resource—begins as an idea. More people means more brains. More brains means more ideas. As McCloskey and I argue in our book Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World (which I discuss here and here, and which is available in paperback this month), economic liberty and social dignity for innovators and entrepreneurs put those minds to work and led to the cornucopia we enjoy today.
Simon demonstrated this by looking at the data. He showed that in the long run, resource prices tended to fall. This is consistent with his thesis that more brains are a blessing, and it flatly contradicts the popular-but-wrong idea that there are too many people and that we have exceeded the world’s carrying capacity. Others have followed in Simon’s footsteps and expanded on his argument. Just one contribution to this tradition is Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet by Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley. I reviewed it for the American Institute for Economic Research, and it’s a book everyone should have on their bookshelf—or as I do, in their Kindle library.
Today marks a momentous occasion that should be cause for dancing, not mourning. We should welcome our new neighbors, not reject them or worry that they’ll somehow leave us worse off. If we embrace creativity and innovation, like Julian Simon suggests, every new person is a small step toward a better and brighter future for all of us.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14343&omhide=true&trk=rm
*******************************************Worldwide Record Cold Challenges Climate Rhetoric and Risks Lives by Complacency
By Vijay Jayaraj
I live in Bengaluru in southern India. This month, the city recorded the coldest temperature in 10 years for the month of November. So has been the case in my country’s capital New Delhi where extreme winters have become a norm in recent years.
A small percentage of India’s 1.3 billion population has access to electrical heaters. However, a majority must burn a variety of fuels for fire to stay warm, making many people susceptible to surprise cold events. Why are cold events considered a surprise and not a normal part of weather? Is it because the public mind has been made complacent about cold by the fearmongering of global warmists?
The reality is cold events have become common not just in India but across the globe. Since 2017, there have been regular incidences of below-average temperatures in both winter and summer. What can be inferred from these cold spells and what do they suggest about the apocalyptic rhetoric of the climate cult?
The November 18 snow event at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport is the earliest snowfall in recorded history since 1898. Just an isolated event due to a regional storm? Well, think again.
The past few months witnessed unusual cold spells in the U.S. and Canada. Buffalo registered one of its highest snowfalls for November while Vancouver saw unusual early winter snowfall.
On November 20 and 21, hundreds of daily all-time low temperature records were registered across the U.S. as Arctic air swept through the North American continent. There have been extreme cold events in other parts of the world too.
In August, China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang experienced surprise summer snowfall. South America, Europe, Asia and Australia registered record low temperatures in recent months.
In Greenland – often a subject in the climate-change debate – the surface mass balance (SMB) of ice sheet this year is at one of its highest levels since 1981 and is set to increase further in the winter season. Greenland has been registering a consistent growth in ice sheet SMB since 2016.
As Electoverse writer Cap Allon notes, “(S)ince 2016, Northern Hemisphere (NH) snow mass seasons have been holding well above the 1982-2012 average, and the 2022-2022 season is proving no different — as of the latest datapoint (Nov 19), the ‘Total snow mass for the NH’ chart, which comes courtesy of the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), continues to ride above both the multidecadal average and the standard deviation.”
The “Dangerous Warming” Rhetoric
So, do these record snowfall events and record low temperature events mean that there is no increase in global average temperatures? Certainly not! There has been a warming trend since the Little Ice Age began to lose its grip in the 17th century, but never has there been a dangerous general warming – and there is none now.
The claim that global warming has made our summers hotter and winters milder is certainly wrong. As evidenced in the last five years, both extreme cold and extreme warmth have been common.
Until the climate debate took over our media, these thermal ups and downs were known as weather variations. However, in the age of climate apocalypse, every extreme weather event is a catastrophe. Even unusual snowfall and cold are considered sour fruits of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.
This pseudoscience and outright distortions of media and political elites are harmful. The most vulnerable in our world are more exposed to the risks of cold because of an exaggerated concern about warming.
More than 500 million Indians still use open fire to warm themselves while cold kills more people than heat. In some parts of India, winter temperatures can reach as low as -20 Celsius/-4 Fahrenheit. Even in a developed nation such as Germany, climate complacency has led to unpreparedness for winter energy needs and the government officials are now asking citizens to heat just one room in their homes!
It is the cold that kills. If anything, the warming of the past three centuries has been extremely beneficial to mankind, helping us achieve unprecedented progress in human health, living standards, food production and technological achievement as we utilize earth’s resources ever more efficiently
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
1 comment:
The problem with electric vehicles is that they all have DIFFERENT battery systems, charging needs and the like. So you have to spend a LOT of time waiting for a vehicle to charge if you're driving further than the range of the vehicle.
The system that is needed is a COMMON swap-able battery pack where you can take your vehicle to the charging station and quickly swap the low battery pack for a charged battery pack and be on your way as fast or even faster than a gasoline vehicle. That would of course rely on charging stations to own the batteries and have sufficient packs that they can meet rushes of depleted vehicles. Then included in the charging price would be a surcharge for the drain and eventual replacement of the individual packs end the "surprise" high charge to replace the batteries being seen today.
Larger vehicles would require multiple packs be swapped just as larger vehicles take longer and cost more to fill with fuel.
This is a pie-in-the-sky thought exercise right now because it would require the car makers to work together to create a standard and they are unlikely to do that.
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