The United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change in 1988 and in 1995 the first climate change Conference of Parties (COP1) was held in Berlin. There has been a COP meeting every year since then, apart from 2020 when covid intervened. Last year COP28 was held in the United Arab Emirates and was attended by 84,000 delegates who flew in from all around the world to lecture the rest of us about the importance of reducing our carbon footprint.
In the nearly 30 years since COP conferences began, the U.K. has halved its CO2 emissions so that we now account for a mere 1% of the global total. But in this same time interval the developing world has massively increased its CO2 emissions. For example, China’s CO2 emissions have quadrupled and now account for 29% of the global total. India’s have tripled and now account for 7% of the global total. Both countries are still increasing their CO2 emissions.
The problem is that ‘green’ technologies are not very good. Electric cars and renewable energy are more expensive and inferior in performance to their fossil fuel equivalents. So as the developing world industrialises it is using fossil fuel technology to keep its costs down. Is it right for the privileged people of the First World to tell the poorest people in the Third World that they now have to stop operating gas and coal-fired power stations and stop driving petrol cars because of worries that in 50 years time the planet will be warmer? Climate modelling is so complex and uncertain that we don’t know how much warmer and we don’t know the consequences of that warming. Quite understandably the priority for the leaders of the developing world is to improve the lives of people now rather than worry about what may or may not happen in 50 years time.
Despite the fact that we only produce 1% of global CO2 emissions, our Government has decided we must press on with being world leaders in Net Zero. Because our ‘carbon footprint’ is already so small, reducing it further will have no measurable impact on global temperatures, but it will further impoverish British people. For example, we are repeatedly told by the green lobby (which these days occupies influential positions in politics, the media, universities and business) that renewables are now the cheapest form of energy generation and we should build ever more wind farms and solar farms. Since the U.K. is already a world leader in offshore wind it follows that we should have some of the lowest electricity prices in the world. In fact the opposite is true, the U.K. has some of the highest electricity prices in the world. Typically people in this country pay more than twice as much for electricity as they do in the USA, where shale gas has transformed the energy market, and more than five times as much as in China, where they are still building coal-fired power stations. The reason the U.K.’s electricity prices are so high is because there is a massive hidden cost in renewables which its supporters gloss over or never mention, namely the need to have back-up energy generation for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
The sales growth of electric vehicles in this country has stalled as people realise just what poor value they are. They are expensive to buy and inconvenient to drive because of the long charge times and the scarcity of public charging points. There is also the issue of how green electric vehicles actually are after taking into account the environmental impact of mining the rare earth metals and manufacturing the batteries. Yet our Government is blithely carrying on with its plan to ban petrol cars.
If the world is going to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the best way forward is to encourage research and development so that we improve green technologies. Imagine for a moment a time in the future when ‘green’ technologies might be cheaper and better than their fossil fuel equivalents. If this were to happen then people would want to buy green technology and the world’s CO2 emissions would fall quickly and naturally. In the meantime we have the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem parties all wanting to inflict more of this junk green technology on us. Only Reform offers any sanctuary for the Net Zero sceptic.
Reports in newspapers this week revealed that Britain’s domestic production of energy has reached a new record low. The news comes from trade group, Offshore Energies U.K. (OEUK), whose analysis, far from unexpected, details the pressures on investment in conventional energy production, such as the windfall tax on oil and gas companies. Since the turn of the century, U.K. production of energy has fallen by two thirds, whereas consumption has fallen by a third. The difference has been met by an increased dependence on imports. Yet neither the report itself, which is at best agnostic about renewables, nor the stories that cover it, seem to have taken seriously the harm that Net Zero and adjacent agendas have done to our industries, businesses and economy – and are set to do worse.
The U.K. ceased being a net energy exporter in 2004, amid a flurry of green policymaking, culminating in the Climate Change Act 2008, and its increased ‘Net Zero’ target adopted in 2019. Over the duration, coal-fired power stations were demolished, but not replaced with equivalent (i.e. reliable) generating capacity, shale gas exploration was abolished before it had even started. Energy investors in the U.K. and across the continent, lured to attractive guaranteed profits by subsidy regimes, and dissuaded from conventional energy by rising costs of capital, lost interest in oil and gas. Despite promises of ‘green jobs’, a ‘green industrial revolution’ and ‘green economic growth’ and lower prices being the constant chorus of energy ministers of all governments and their so-called ‘opposition’ counterparts, domestic energy prices tripled. So if these new data on Britain’s energy production do not prove the expensive and dangerous folly of more than two decades of U.K. climate policy, what could?
It is as if the entire political establishment had at once decided to forget that there exists a relationship between scarcity and price. Yet, the effect of abolishing coal is just that: it creates scarcity. So too, do policies that either restrict the exploration of oil and gas, or increase the cost of capital, create scarcity. Politicians, lobbied by green billionaires’ ersatz ‘civil society’ organisations who pump false claims into the public sphere, then claim that the problem all along was ‘dependence’ on oil and gas. Green energy will lower prices and diminish the power of dictators, who turn energy into a ‘weapon’ that terrorises Europe, they claim. So successful are they in their policymaking that, since 2019, the Government has capped energy prices – a policy they stole from Ed Miliband in 2017, before taking us into Net Zero. If ‘green’ means anything at all, it means acute cognitive dissonance.
At stake, argues the OEUK report, is immense value that could be unleashed from the North Sea. But investment is being held back by policies, “having big impacts on the profitability of U.K. offshore energy”’ worth one trillion pounds of exports and £450 billion domestically “within the next 15 years”. However, though the bulk of that potential lies in oil and gas, the report includes in its analysis, wind power, CCS and hydrogen. Even oil and gas executives, it seems, have swallowed the green Kool-Aid. And that is a missed opportunity to reflect on the failures of the green agenda, as well as a disappointing failure of an industry to properly stick up for itself, and to defend industry in principle.
And it needs defending. The fig leaf that has concealed Britain’s shameful industrial decline, and blinding politicians to reality in recent years has been the notion that green policies have successfully caused GDP growth to ‘decouple’ from fossil fuel use. However, this conceit requires us to believe, in turn, that the 79% increase in GDP that coincided with the halving of emissions over the same period was not driven by funny money, tricksy policies and analytical sleights of hand, and that the deindustrialisation underpinning it has left us better off. Does anybody, other than green energy hustlers, actually feel better off? Who? How?! What better position can we claim to be in, now that we know that we produce less and import more at a higher price? How much of that ‘growth’ is just higher prices?
The embrace of green economics, at the expense of established economic orthodoxy, leads to regressive disdain for industry. It seems not to have bothered many that we are less capable of producing things and sustaining ourselves – an issue which would have once sent a modern government into a tailspin. It is as if using less energy was a ‘good thing’ in itself, not a reflection of rising prices and stagnant (or worse) productivity. As if to make my point for me, following OEUK’s report, the half-truthfully named Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the obedient press put a different spin on the matter. “The U.K. recorded the highest ever share of electricity generation by renewables last year”, declared the Standard.
As greens rejoice our production of less for more, U.K. energy market regulator, Ofgem, announced its “discussion on the future of the price cap”, which is “so customers remain protected as the energy market evolves to a smarter, more flexible system”. Why would customers need ‘protection’ from a ‘smarter, more flexible system’? It is, of course, doublespeak. The ‘dynamic price cap’ is time-of-day pricing, more honestly known as rationing. And ‘flexibility’ means using prices to force customers to organise their lives around the ‘smarter’ system, rather than the energy market meeting people’s needs. And it is made necessary by the scarcity created by green energy policy and green ideology.
It would be all for the better if regulators, industry associations and, of course, politicians simply admitted that they have made a catastrophic mess of the very industries that were pioneered in this country. Putting green political ambitions before any other practical consideration has made us poorer, and is going to create a problem far worse than climate change.
Subscribe to Ben Pile’s The Net Zero Scandal Substack here.
On Saturday March 2nd Northern California was hit by a major blizzard in its Sierra Nevada Mountain Range with 12 feet of snow and winds of 190 miles per hour. But during the following week America was hit with a blizzard of a different kind: a flurry of pro-renewable energy news reports which totally distorted the facts. The distortion of the truth has been going on for at least 15 years. In 2009 Scientific American published an article (citing a Stanford study) which predicted that renewables could become 100% of the world’s energy needs by 2030.
In March of 2021 Carbon Tracker posted a report errantly asserting that renewable energy was capable of meeting energy demand 100 times over. Two years later the World Economic Forum jumped on the bandwagon with a study that mistakenly claimed that we have “reached peak fossil fuels” and that we are now entering a “new era for power”. Yet the WEF’s own charts show that worldwide electricity production (WEF apparently forgot about the energy needs of the global transportation sector) in 2022 was less than 13%. The WEF also aberrantly suggested that global CO2 emissions might start to decline in the near future.
Making matters even worse, U.S. President Joe Biden touted renewable energy in his March 7th 2024 State of the Union speech, and two days later the Washington Postprinted a story about the efforts by Dartmouth University to try and find some way to bring solar power to northern Greenland where the sun does not shine for six months every year: solar power for six months and fossil fuel power when darkness shrouds the landscape.
Because of this never ending deluge of renewables propaganda, most American progressives dutifully believe that humanity can obtain all of its energy needs from renewables almost for free. But energy has never been unchained from cost. And although the cost of renewables have been declining, existing fossil fuel (including coal and nuclear) sources remain the cheapest sources of energy. That is true both for electrical generation and transportation – not least because the Sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, making these intermittent sources of energy unreliable, as Germany discovered last winter.
Political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. has stated: “It is quite intuitive for people to understand that there is a lot of power in solar energy. We feel the wind. The idea that you can get something for nothing, people find enormously appealing.” But the Sun does not shine at night and the wind blows strongest at night in the winter when the electricity that it produces is not needed. Simply put, renewables are intermittent and they are far less concentrated than fossil fuels are.
In America, different states are following varied energy paths, providing us with an invaluable 50-part experiment. California is the most committed jurisdiction to the adoption of renewable energy and its citizens are being hit hard in their wallets. Take the U.S. West Coast as a comparison. Consumers in Washington state on average pay 11 cents per kilowatt-hour for the electricity they use. In Oregon, the average household pays 13 cents per kilowatt-hour used. Now look at California where people must endure an average cost of electricity of 30 cents per kilowatt-hour and they suffer from rolling blackouts and brownouts. The cost of their electricity has risen three times faster than the rest of the nation. Even California Governor, Gavin Newsom, has admitted that “we failed to predict and plan”. California’s recent spate of wildfires has been attributed by some to the state’s overloaded power grid.
The ‘lifting cost‘ of a land-based barrel of oil in the U.S. is under $40 for existing wells and about $60 for new wells. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review asserted that wind energy is now competitive with the cheapest fossil fuels even without Government subsidies – but this analysis did not consider the cost for each electric utility to keep a ‘spinning reserve‘ that burns natural gas as back-up in order to maintain grid integrity.
An article in One Finite Planetput its finger on the nub of the problem. “Solar and wind have proven to be successful partial cost-effective substitutes for fossil fuels, but fossil fuels are stored energy, and solar and wind are not.”
The Biden Administration and the far Left of the Democratic Party are congenitally opposed to nuclear power, but on February 22nd the Washington Post noted that Canada, France and Sweden have taken a different path from the U.S. and Germany. The very best comparison of these two options is to examine France versus Germany. According to Next Big Future, “France’s nuclear energy spending was 60% of what Germany spent on renewables. France gets about 400 terawatt-hours per year from nuclear, but Germany gets 226 terawatt-hours each year [from renewables]. And 45 Terawatt-hours of Germany’s renewable power comes from burning biomass which generates air pollution.”
Renewable energy advocates in the U.S. like to say America should be a lot more like Germany when it comes to generating more electricity from wind and solar. Their argument is that wind and solar are already less expensive than fossil fuels.
But if renewables are cheaper, why does Germany now have the second highest electricity price, at 52 cents per kilowatt hour? Only a penny less than Denmark. And amazingly, Germany has decommissioned all of its nuclear power stations due to political pressure from that nation’s Greens.
And, again according to Next Big Future: “Germany’s solar farms will have to be rebuilt every 15-25 years. The wind farms will need to be rebuilt every 20-25 years. Nuclear plants can last 40-80-plus years. This means that it guarantees that the solar and wind farms will have to be rebuilt in 15-25 years.”
And if Germany’s wind and solar farms are more reliable, why did Germany have to resume burning lignite (brown coal) last winter when the wind stopped blowing, the sun stopped shining and the Germans could no longer import enough natural gas from Russia after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine? Brown coal is 20% water and it generates more CO2 than burning wood.
France completed construction on 76% of its current 58 reactors at an inflation-adjusted cost of $330 billion (€290 billion). The complete buildout of the 58 reactors is less than €400 billion. Germany has spent about €500 billion over the last 20 years to get to 35% renewables. Seven percent of this is burning biomass. France gets almost double the TWh from nuclear than Germany gets from renewables (solar, wind, biomass, hydro). France has gotten about 400 TWh per year from nuclear while all of Germany’s renewables (solar, wind and biomass) amounts to about 220 TWh.
According to Energy Central, “France’s cost was $1 billion to build each terawatt hour per year of clean energy.”
Germany’s cost is $2.5 billion to build each terawatt hour per year of relatively clean energy. The 180 TWh per year of solar and wind is clean but the biomass is not. It generates air pollution. France’s electricity is 41% cheaper for its citizens’ than Germany. Germans now pay 30 euro cents per kwh. while the French pay 18 euro cents per kwh. This was an extra €24 billion per year. Twenty-two years of extra cost is another $500 billion. This is triple the cost of France and does not include the rebuilding expense of solar and wind over the 50-plus years during the expected life of the nuclear reactors.
From 2006 to 2017, Germany increased the cost of electricity for households by 50%. French electricity prices are just 59% of German electricity prices. France produces one tenth the carbon pollution from electricity compared to Germany.
Emmanuel Macron has announced a “renaissance” of the French nuclear industry with a vast programme to build as many as 14 new reactors, arguing that it would help end the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and make France carbon neutral by 2050.
“What our country needs… is the rebirth of France’s nuclear industry,” Macron said in a recent speech.
Atomic energy provides about 70% of French electricity; low-cost nuclear power has been a mainstay of the French economy since the 1970s.
Clearly, France has made far better choices! Its nuclear based approach was far cheaper to install, will last longer and provides electricity at one half the cost. And the Germans veered far off the best course of energy action.
This is a beginning post toward infographics exposing the damaging effects of Climate Policies upon the lives of ordinary people. And all of the pain is for naught in fighting against global warming/climate change, as shown clearly in the image above. This post presents graphics to illustrate the first of four themes:
Zero Carbon Means Killing Real Jobs with Promises of Green Jobs
Reducing Carbon Emissions Means High Cost Energy Imports and Social Degradation
100% Renewable Energy Means Sourcing Rare Metals Off-Planet
“While many experts dispute the feasibility of Jacobson’s plan for a renewables-only energy grid, the severe job losses are far more difficult to dispute, given that they come directly from Jacobson’s research. Those job losses would undoubtedly be devastating for millions of American families.”
And about Those Promised Green Jobs to replace the lost ones:
In February 2009, the last time Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden flew to Colorado to sign their $787 billion stimulus package into law.
The plan was to invest $150 billion over 10 years that would advance a “clean energy” economy built around biofuels, hybrid cars, low-emission coal plants, and renewable sources such as solar and wind. Obama and Biden promised to create five million green jobs that would specifically benefit low-income earners, claiming that the stimulus package included “help for those hit hardest by our economic crisis.”
A decade later, we now know that the 2009 green jobs program was a complete failure. The Department of Labor (DoL) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued several reports on the green jobs program. Each report was an indictment on the program, as job placement met only 10 percent of the targeted level, and many of those who were hired remained employed for less than six months.
Even the new, redefined green jobs did not reach the five million promised in February 2009. According to a study by the Brookings Institution, the Obama–Biden administration identified nearly 2.7 million green jobs, but most were bus drivers, sewage workers, and other types of work that do not match the “green jobs of the future” that the administration promised. Most of them were preexisting jobs, which were simply re-characterized by the government, apparently in an effort to boost the numbers. Source: If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try ‘Green Jobs’ Again
“Renewable good, non-renewable bad” is far too simplistic and unfortunately influential
Previous posts have argued that renewable does not necessarily mean green, sustainable or environmentally sound. Non-renewable generation may meet green goals, be highly sustainable and environmentally sound. The dichotomy adds more confusion than value. Additionally, the grid impacts of resources lumped together as renewable are so diverse that it makes no sense to speak of them as a group in that context. This posting will, through a couple examples, challenge and highlight the dangerous idea that all “renewables” are basically “good” and all “nonrenewable” are basically bad.
Do We Want More Renewables and Less Nonrenewable?
Technology and our ability to tap various resources change over time. With key technological developments, very poor options can become very good options. With extensive adoptions, good options can become very bad. Attempting to implement any option before its time is usually counterproductive. Options that are beneficial on a small scale may have serious negative consequences when scaled up. Renewable-good, non-renewable-bad is far too simplistic.
Biomass projects may unduly benefit from being classified as a renewable generation resource. Various biomass projects are frequently criticized across the political spectrum for a variety of environmental ills. Nevertheless, biomass projects meet regulatory requirements for renewable energy and are selected over alternatives that may be better by most all other relevant criteria.
Nuclear power is another example of another resource that does not work well with the renewable/nonrenewable dichotomy. Nuclear minimizes many of the problems associated with fossil fuel generation. Certainly, objections can be raised against nuclear power, but sustainability is not a major concern at this time. Current efforts to increase nuclear power face additional challenges because nuclear resources are not considered renewable. Nuclear power should be competing with various “renewable” sources based on their specific merits for specific applications and criticized based on whatever concerns can be raised. But they should not be handicapped because of the rubric of renewables.
Our energy future likely will be impacted by many new alternatives that work even less well with the renewable/non-renewable framework. Simplistic thinking can help to sideline emerging beneficial technology and advance more suspect technology. We should have many goals for are future energy sources, but properly fitting into the renewable category should not take precedence.
Could a Non-Renewable Non- Sustainable Fossil Fuel Based Resource be a Great Option?
While not wanting to promote any technology before it’s time, I will argue that we may want to keep the door open for beneficial generation options that could emerge in the future that might not be renewable. For example, huge amounts of tires end up in landfills where their decomposition can result in leeching, leading to various consequential environmental problems. Eventually we may be able to transform waste tires into energy, with net benefits across a range of environmental measures. Consider that with improved technology, large amounts of waste tires could be seen as potential fossil fuel-based resources instead of toxic dumps.
Currently, considerable efforts center around recycling waste tires and their components. There are various technologies. Circulating fluidized bed technology makes use of a hot bed of ash at 850 to 900 C. This flameless combustion can produce tremendous energy while allowing pollutants to be captured in the ash bed. Pyrolysis, heat in the absence of oxygen, may prove to be a superior technology for extracting energy from tires while minimizing their waste impact. Imagine transforming and eventually eliminating toxic waste dumps while capturing valuable synchronous, dependable electrical energy. If such plants were successful, might we clear out all dumps and exceed capabilities of future waste tires? Yes, we could. But wouldn’t it be a great thing to drive such waste to extinction in a process that was known to be unsustainable?
Such approaches are outside of the renewable/nonrenewable dichotomy. But in many cases, that may be where we want to go. Renewable thinking argues our resources must last forever. That is a true statement for many things we depend on. But transitory resources have provided great benefits in the past. As noted above, who cares if we don’t have enough waste tire dumps to last forever. This is a fossil fuel-based resource that cries out to be depleted in the interest of environmental concerns.
Don’t get Suckered into Huge Waste Because the Energy Part is Renewable
Renewable energy has a scary power to push the adoption of many marginal technologies. To illustrate this, I will summarize the solar roadways story. Many were overly enthusiastic about the potential for solar roadways when this concept exploded in 2014. Solar Roadways is a specific company, but other named companies have promoted and have run various projects seeking to produce electricity using panels on roadways. The basic approaches involve high-tech interlocking solar panels with many other additional functionalities. There were big pushes to capitalize on “abundant”, “free”, “green” power through solar roadways. The potential benefits touted also included reduced highway maintenance, jobs, warning of obstructions through weight sensors, the ability to charge vehicles using the roads, roads which would melt the snow and enhanced road signaling through embedded LED technology.
Many people were naïve and seduced by the potential benefits. Money came from many sources to the Solar Roadways Incorporated Company. The Department of Transportation provided funding for various feasibility projects. A crowdfunding drive at Indiegogo, bolstered by Georgie Takei and this video, raised $2.2 Million for Solar Roadways. Like many videos, this one looks a bit dated after nearly a decade, but it was powerful then and captured the hearts and minds of many.
Responsible people would occasionally ask me my take on solar roadways. I would probe and respond carefully. “Do you have extra money you need to spend on something? Are you wanting to do something for positive PR? Do you want to be altruistic and support preliminary research?” These weren’t their prime drivers and when they let me know that, I’d tell them that I didn’t believe getting an early start on a technology with so much development ahead could possibly help their consumers or their bottom line.
What should rational individuals have been thinking about the potential for solar roadways back then?
“This is going to take a long while at best. Nothing has been demonstrated on even a small scale. It costs an awful lot to just cover roads with asphalt. How much will it cost to cover them with glass devices that are more complicated and have greater functionality than iPhones? Do you think we can leave them exposed to the elements with trucks and cars and who knows what driving over them? What could possibly go wrong? What about road traction? This can’t easily be hooked up and made to work with controls and connected to the grid or other power supply stations. How long might individual panels last? Maintenance of such a system on the roadway seems challenging to say the least. Aren’t solar panels angled for good reasons? Shouldn’t we see a whole bunch of successful implementations of solar roofs before you might reasonably expect solar roads to be doable? Aren’t there all sorts of potential problems not yet thought of that are likely to emerge? I’m going to have to hear a lot more before I become enchanted by this one.”
But such questions did not get much visibility. People were largely enchanted or distracted by the prospect of free renewable energy.
How have these programs performed? A $3.9 million prototype in Idaho found 83% of the panels broke the first week. Had it worked, it may have been able to power a drinking fountain and lighting for a restroom. France spent over $5 million to install 2,800 photovoltaic panels covering .62 miles of road. Despite the special silicone resin intended to protect the road from 19-wheeler traffic, the panels couldn’t hold. Initially the project generated half of the expected energy, but within a few years it was closer to 10% of original projections. The impacts of thunderstorms, leaf mold and tractors were not adequately anticipated. The resin coating that helped protect the panels, generated so much noise that the speed limit had to be lowered to 79 km/h (43 mph). China opened a .62-mile solar road in 2017. However, it closed within a week due to damage from traffic and panel theft.
Today there is one functioning solar roadway today in the US, located in Peachtree City, Georgia. Data for this small 50 square meter project is hard to come by, but the anticipated annual electric output of the project could be purchased for less than $200 using the average Georgia residential rate. Maybe this small application is the right size scale for such a project a decade after the initial great promise and hope and who knows how long before the technology may prove fruitful.
These are terrible results. Maybe worse than might have been expected by even some of the most extreme of skeptics. As questionable as the big concept was, there was a plethora of smaller sub problems that needed a lot of development. Despite some of the honest appraisals available, it was hard to dampen the enthusiasm for these projects. Accompanied by much acclaim, solar roadway projects got funding and proceeded with fairly large-scale testing, despite the supporting materials being only in the most primitive stages of development.
Conclusions
The terms renewable and nonrenewable command a lot of undeserved power and influence with the public and policy makers. Rather than educating and informing, they often serve to confuse and misdirect energy policy. More sophisticated understandings around what is clean, green, sustainable, environmentally sound and workable are needed. The renewable/nonrenewable dichotomy is hurting our ability to move forward with potentially valuable workable technologies and giving too big a boost to poorly thought-out boondoggles.
Correction/Clarification: In Part II of this series, and perhaps going further back, I refer to “run of the river” hydro as being rare and mostly insignificant. This series was picked up in another forum and a commenter there noted that the US has many large hydro facilities classified as run of river. I should have referred to run of river facilities without pondage. The Corps of Engineers refers to hydro dams with extensive storage facilities (seasonal and multi-year) as stored hydro. Those with more limited storage ability (days, weeks and possibly months) are credited with “pondage” capabilities as opposed to storage. Basically, pondage allows operators to hold back flows until they are needed and useful. It is a limited form of storage. Large facilities with considerable pondage (as opposed to long term storage) are classified as run of the river (or in some documents as “basically run of the river”) by Federal authorities. While pondage is not long-term storage, it provides capacity value and allows Planners to count on these facilities to meet peak demand. Pondage allows operators to dispatch these facilities to follow load and support the system when needed. Hydro facilities with pondage are not correctly called intermittent and would be similar to a wind or solar facility with extensive battery backup. My use of the term “run of river” came from modelling experience where it referred to resources that showed up intermittently and were uncontrollable. I should have been more precise here because of the differing definitions. Hydro without pondage or storage is usually small and not significant.
There are growing fears that one of India’s iconic large birds, the great Indian bustard, is about to go extinct due to the growth of electric transmission lines in its home area of the Thar desert. Prioritising wind and solar power has led to a growth of transmission lines with the effect that the numbers of birds could have dropped to 150.
This is just the latest evidence that industrialising large areas of wildlife habitat is causing worrying losses to the population of large raptors and birds, bats and whales. Last October, the Daily Scepticreported that wind farms in Tasmania have reduced the population of the endangered local wedge-tailed eagle to around 1,000 individuals. Large numbers of whales have beached along the U.S. east coast in recent years as offshore wind farm industrialisation has disrupted the migration, mating and feeding habits of some of the most endangered whale species in the world.
In 2021, a paper produced by the Wildlife Institute of India warned that the great Indian bustard was at “imminent risk of extinction due to power line mortality”. Mortality was said to be “positively related” to the number of wires. Many other large birds were said to be at risk, and the researchers found that around 50 birds die annually per kilometre of power lines in the Thar desert due to collision and electrocution.
According to the Wildlife Institute of India, over 100,000 birds of diverse species are killed each year as a result of electrocution from transmission lines connecting wind and solar to the grid. In 2022, two Spanish ecologists confirmed that electrocution on power pylons was a major cause of bird mortality worldwide, including for some severely endangered species. They noted that power lines were “not bio-diversity-friendly”. Prerna Singh Bindra, a wildlife conservationist and former member of the National Board for Wildlife, comments:
In recent years, the death blow to the great Indian bustard has come from unexpected quarters – the expanse of wind farms and power transmission lines that criss-cross its last remaining habitats… The question that needs to be asked is, how green is renewable energy when it leads to the extinction of a critically endangered species?
Of course that last question is the one question that will not be asked. Indeed on past evidence it will be studiously avoided and helpful messengers in the mainstream media will be easily persuaded that deaths are due to other factors such as ‘climate change’.
Bird and bat protection societies around the world are invariably in favour of green ‘sustainable’ wind and solar power, and they turn an almost blind eye to the mass slaughter by making mealy-mouthed safety suggestions. But of course the fact is that large raptors such as eagles and bustards rely on wind currents, as do gigantic wind turbines, and the two meet far too often. Worldwide, bustards are at particular risk from power cables due to the birds’ heavy weight, large wing span and limited manoeuvring ability.
The New York Timesrecently reported that electrocution isn’t the main thing killing birds along power lines. It was relaying the findings of a paper that said bullet fragments had been found in a number of dead birds lying under lines in four western states. Four hundred whales have been washed up on the eastern U.S. coastline since 2016, including nearly two dozen in the three months to February 2023.There is “no evidence” to support claims that industrial noise has impeded the whales ability to navigate and communicate, notes the New Scientist. The bulk of the strandings may have been caused by “changing ocean currents related to climate change”. Deafening rock-concert-grade sonar noise bouncing around hundreds of miles of ocean, constant pile-driving, massive ocean building works and heavy shipping movements have, of course, nothing to do with it – move along please, nothing to see here.
Nothing it seems must get in the way of the green industrial revolution. In California, the Democrat state Government recently relaxed controls on wildlife protections to allow permits to kill previously fully protected species for renewable energy and infrastructure projects.
Nothing is sacred and protected from the slaughter – even America’s national bird, the bald eagle. A typical green reaction came from the Audubon California Policy Director Mark Lynas who said we need renewable energy resources, and he did not want to see the eagle deaths “being used to push against clean energy”.
In addition to the large bird kill, wind turbines are estimated to chomp millions of bats around the world every year. Any concern for the depredation of wildlife, whether on or offshore has tended to focus on these huge blots on the land- and seascapes. But according to the International Energy Authority, achieving Net Zero means building 80 million kilometres of new and refurbished power lines within 17 years, equivalent to wrapping the Earth 2,000 times with new electricity grid capacity.
All these high voltage cables will be needed to benefit from the intermittent power produced by vast numbers of new wind turbines. To achieve Net Zero, the countryside will need to be blanketed with turbines and ubiquitous cables strung to bring the power to distant urban areas. Of course, as it becomes clearer by the day, Net Zero will not be achieved since the breezes and sunbeams are unreliable, so full stand-by gas turbines will have to be maintained.
It is possible that some other cheap and reliable back-up fuel will be discovered or invented in the next few years – and pigs might fly, although that would not be advisable across much of the future countryside.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
1959-71: Royal Navy engineer officer, Submarine Branch. Two appointments as chief engineer of submarines. Rank on retirement: lieutenant commander.
12 years as senior manager for Malaysian conglomerate Sime Darby, including:
2 years as general manager, Sime Darby Crane Hire, Hong Kong. Turned around a bankrupt company.
General Manager, Philippine Crane Rental Corporation, Manila. In 12 months built a lean, profitable company from a green field start.
8 years with heavy equipment hire company in Indonesia. Inter alia set up the company’s first two autonomous branches in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) and Sumatra and made them the company’s major profit centres, hiring earth moving machinery and cranes primarily to the oil and construction industries.
8 years with SGS, Swiss international inspection company. Imports control customs inspection contract for Indonesian government. Head of oil and gas industry department. Closely involved with oil industry operations
00:00 Introduction 00:21 Impact of Power Plants and Renewable Energy 02:35 Effects of Wind Turbines on Wildlife 04:20 The Paradox of Wind Turbines 06:27 Global Food Production and Climate Change 08:31 The Hypocrisy of Climate Change Advocates 13:20 Climate Change and Its Impact on Farming 20:57 The Role of Media in Climate Change Perception 27:19 Climate Change and Its Impact on Natural Disasters 30:44 The Politics and Economics of Climate Change 36:53 Questioning the Climate Change Numbers 37:32 Predicting the Future of Climate Change 38:33 The Reality of Renewable Energy in Australia 39:56 The Cost of Renewable Energy Projects 41:40 The Impact of Renewable Energy on the Environment 42:44 The Inefficiency of Wind and Solar Power 45:10 The Hoax of Man-Made Global Warming 45:44 The Consequences of Decommissioning Britain’s Gas Grid 51:42 The Increasing Demand for Electricity 01:01:51 The Future of Renewable Energy and Net Zero
India has committed itself to greater coal-fired generation use ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai and is set to voice developing nations’ demands for a greater share of the carbon emissions budget at the Nov. 30-Dec. 12 summit.
India is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide after China and the US, with a booming economy driving electricity demand up 9.6% in fiscal year 2023.
“There will be pressure again on those countries who use coal,” RK Singh, minister of power and new and renewable energy, said Nov. 6. “Our point of view is that we are not going to compromise with the availability of power for growth.”
Public sector power companies are constructing about 27 GW of thermal plants — almost all coal — but this is insufficient, according to Singh. The country needs “at least 80 GW” of new capacity to meet future demand, he said.
India generated 149.66 TWh of electricity in September, of which 108.70 TWh, or 73%, was coal-fired, data from Central Electricity Authority showed. The coal-fired figure was up 17% year on year.
S&P Global Commodity Insights forecasts the share of coal-fired generation in India’s power mix will rise to 77% by 2025 before falling to 71% in 2030 and 52% by 2050.
“India cannot survive without coal as it has no other options,” said Rashika Gupta, research and analysis director at S&P Global. “Nuclear and hydro take a decade to build, gas is not available, and LNG is very expensive. India’s forte has always been coal — it knows how to operate it, and there is indigenous capacity to build it.”
Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, assessed the price of India West 5,500 NAR physical thermal coal at $111.30/mt Nov. 28. Coal stockpiles at Indian power plants stood at 25.70 million mt Nov. 26, enough for nine days of coal burn.
Gas growth
Though a relatively small segment of overall generation, India’s use of natural gas is also growing strongly.
In third quarter 2023, India’s gas demand across all sectors increased 19% year over year to 6,524 MMcf/d, reflecting strong demand from the fertilizer, power and refining sectors. In August, India registered its higher-ever gas consumption of 6,800 MMcf/d.
“The gas demand is driven by new gas reforms, increased domestic gas production, prolonged heat waves and relatively low spot LNG prices,” S&P Global said in its November India gas market briefing.
A significant trend in India has been the increase in gas allocation for prioritized sectors such as city gas distribution, fertilizers and power, the report said.
Renewables growth
India is also one of the fastest growing renewable power markets, with capacity additions of around 15 GW to 20 GW annually.
Renewable capacity additions are expected to accelerate further, overtaking coal capacity additions in the next decade, Gupta said.
“2035 is the year where I see some transition happening,” Gupta said. “But there would still be some coal additions that would happen year on year.”
For India’s growing carbon credits industry, meanwhile, COP28’s global stocktake is likely to translate into fresh impetus for India’s carbon project developers.
Balancing inequalities
COP28 negotiations are expected to reflect geopolitical divisions between developed and developing nations, S&P Global said in a November 2023 report.
“Developing countries, led by China and India, have brought increasing attention to the idea of the ‘responsibility’ developed parties have towards other parties as the largest emitters on a cumulative basis — a topic that traditionally serves as a deal-breaker when raised to developed parties with concerns over opening themselves up to liability,” the report said.
India had backed language on a “phasedown” of fossil fuels in the official cover text of the COP27 meeting in Egypt last year, having been instrumental in removing “phaseout” language at the previous COP in Glasgow in 2021.
Now India is said to be pushing for developed nations to commit to being “carbon negative” by 2050, moving beyond their current net-zero pledges.
In a reference scenario, S&P Global forecasts India’s carbon emissions rising from 2.48 billion mt/year in 2023 to 2.9 billion mt/year in 2030, and further to 3.37 billion mt/year in 2045.
India has pledged to cut its emissions intensity by 45% by 2030 from 2005 levels, reaching net-zero emissions by 2070 under its Nationally Determined Contributions.
Net Zero electricity taxes and levies are set to cost British consumers almost £100 billion over the next six years, according to the latest official figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The ‘environmental levies’ total includes a variety of green rackets from paying suppliers to produce uneconomic energy to persuading consumers to install inferior technologies. As the insane dash towards Net Zero continues in elite political circles, the costs have started to spiral out of control.
Almost all green technologies seem to require huge amounts of public subsidy with no end in sight to constant demands for cash. Recently, offshore wind generators refused to take further Government licences in the North Sea unless the U.K. Government complied with their demands for higher guaranteed prices. In real terms the Government is now prepared to pay over £100 per megawatt hour, a price more than the current estimated cost of gas-powered electricity.
The investigative climate journalist Paul Homewood has been digging into the figures for years, and notes the offshore wind business is already being subsided to the annual tune of £4.8 billion. This despite the fact that we have been promised ‘rapidly falling’ wind power costs that would bring our bills tumbling down. “Now we know that was always a lie,” observes Homewood. Looking at the financial accounts, Homewood concludes that there is “no prospect” that costs will decline in future. On the contrary, he continues, they are likely to continue increasing as supply chain and manufacturing problems mount.
“We are therefore now locked into permanently high electricity prices, with contract prices guaranteed for 15 years,” he notes.
Homewood has produced the table below from the latest figures from the OBR. In total it shows how all the ‘environmental levies’ surrounding the production of electricity are set to provide hard-pressed U.K. consumers with an entirely unnecessary collective bill for £95 billion over the next six years. As Homewood notes, the figures below show the cost added to energy bills by the various assortment of renewable subsidies, capacity market payments and the climate change levy.
Homewood has added in three relevant costs to the OBR table. The feed-in tariffs scheme was recently excluded, but in Homewood’s view it is wrongly left out since it increases energy bills. The Climate Change Levy on productive business is noted elsewhere in the OBR report, but Homewood has “taken the liberty” of adding it to his table. It need hardly be added that this does not involve all the cost of runaway Net Zero fiscal madness. Homewood notes, for instance, that there is no mention of the costs of electricity grid upgrades, system balancing cost and constraint payments – all the direct result of increased renewable generation. And, of course, one can take it out even wider to include the cost of keeping vast amounts of gas capacity idle, waiting to fire up when the wind stops blowing, often for days at a time.
But it might be asked, what is £100 billion when an almost complete dismantling of modern economic society is being planned? A mere down payment on wealth destruction on an unimaginable scale. At a time when the political will to control immigration has withered, massive deindustrialisation is being planned in Europe, with unimaginable effects on the less affluent members of society. On the basis of an unproven hypothesis that human-produced carbon dioxide controls a climate headed for disaster – now deemed ‘settled’ and beyond debate – small, well-funded elite groups in society are planning to remove 85% of the world energy supply within less than 30 years. How far they will get in this madcap, nightmarish scheme before being repelled by gathering rational and democratic forces, only time will tell.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
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Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
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