We’re coming up on three and a half years into the Biden presidency — a presidency which from the outset promised an “all of government” regulatory onslaught to force a transition away from fossil fuels and to “green” energy. And the regulatory onslaught has indeed come forth. But how about the actual transition in energy use? Not so much.
Let’s have a round-up of some recent data points.
On the regulatory onslaught front, on March 7, 2024 Thomas Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research put out a list of “200 Ways the Biden Administration and Democrats Have Made it Harder to Produce Oil & Gas.” The list is chronological, beginning with Executive Orders that Biden issued on his first day in office (January 20, 2021) and continuing right up to the date of the post. Yes there is some duplication and overlap in the list (e.g., separately listing multiple steps toward approval of a single regulation); but even with that, the sheer number of efforts to restrict, hamper, harass and extort fossil fuel producers is breathtaking. You will probably remember most of this stuff, but it’s remarkable to see it all put together in one place. By all means look through the full list, but meanwhile here is a small sample of the more significant items:
Item 1, January 20, 2021: “[C]anceling the Keystone XL pipeline.”
Item 2, also January 20, 2021: “[I]ssuing a moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”
Item 5, January 27, 2021: “{I}ssu[ing] an executive order announcing a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on public lands.”
Item 10, also January 27, 2021: By the same Executive Order, “promoting ‘ending international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy while simultaneously advancing sustainable development and a green recovery.’”
Item 14, February 19, 2021: “[R]ejoin[ing] the Paris Climate Agreement.”
Item 24, April 22, 2024: “[I]ssu[ing] the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan to funnel international financing toward green industries and away from oil and gas.”
Item 33, September 3, 2021: “[I]ssu[ing] a proposed rule that would update the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for Model Years 2024–2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks to increase fuel economy regulations on passenger cars and light vehicles.”
Item 48, November 12, 2021: “[Issuing] New Source Review . . . regulations target[ing] new, modified, and reconstructed oil and natural gas sources, and would require states to reduce methane emissions from hundreds of thousands of existing sources nationwide for the first time.”
Item 66, February 18, 2022: “[Updating policy] for assessing proposed natural gas pipelines, adding new considerations for landowners, environmental justice communities, and other factors. In a separate but related decision, the commission also laid out a framework for evaluating projects’ greenhouse gas emissions.”
Item 75, March 21, 2022: “The SEC [issues a] proposed rule [that] would require public companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions.”
Item 95, April 21, 2022: Climate Czar John Kerry announces, “We have to put the industry on notice: You’ve got six years, eight years, no more than 10 years or so, within which you’ve got to come up with a means by which you’re going to capture, and if you’re not capturing, then we have to deploy alternative sources of energy.”
Item 105, June 8, 2022: “President Biden’s Interior Department announced it will reduce the fees on renewable projects on federal lands after announcing recently that royalty rates and rents would increase as much as 50% for oil and gas projects on federal lands.”
Item 139, January 17, 2023: “Biden appointee [Richard Trumka] proposes ban on gas stoves.”
Item 152, April 12, 2023: “[Issuing] new rules to force electric Vehicles on Americans. The New York Times notes that EPA is releasing rules that are intended to ensure that electric cars represent between 54 and 60 percent of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030 and 64 to 67 percent by 2032—in 9 years.”
Item 153, April 12, 2023: “[Issuing] new GHG emissions regulations for heavy duty vehicles.”
Item 156, May 15, 2023: “EPA proposes new regulations requiring power plants to reduce GHG emissions and require carbon capture and sequestration or hydrogen co-firing even though these are uneconomic technologies.”
Item 167, August 1, 2023: “EPA proposes updated greenhouse gas reporting requirements for the oil and natural gas industry.”
Item 171, August 7, 2023: “Biden proposed 236-pages of revisions to NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) guidance to make it harder to permit any natural gas, oil, or coal project.”
Item 180, October 27, 2023: “A proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule on hydrofluoric-acid-based alkylation could spur a round of refinery closures as the cost of replacing hydrofluoric acid based alkylation with alternatives is extremely high.”
Item 193, January 26, 2024: “Biden halts permitting for new LNG export facilities.”
That’s only 20 of the 200. There are plenty of other significant ones that I skipped over.
At the same time, the Biden Administration has dramatically ramped up subsidies and other favors and incentives for so-called “green” energy. The badly misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” of August 2022 alone contained over $400 billion of subsidies and handouts to the green energy industry.
So with the double whammy of endless restrictions and harassment of fossil fuel producers, and subsidies for the wind and sun, undoubtedly oil and gas production must be shrinking rapidly? Not at all. In fact, domestic production of both has just recently hit all-time records. Here is a chart of U.S. crude oil production from the EIA, with data through January 2024:
Production reached an all-time record of 13.29 million bbl/day in December 2023, before having a small down-tick in January. The current production level is well over double where it was when Barack Obama took office in 2009. You really have to hand it to these oil and gas producers for somehow getting around whatever the government throws at them.
And here’s another chart from the same source showing natural gas production through December 2023:
From EIA: “U.S. natural gas production grew by 4% in 2023, or 5.0 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), to average 125.0 Bcf/d, according to our Natural Gas Monthly.” There had also been increases in 2023 and 2022.
Well, but surely the transition to electric vehicles is taking off? Maybe — but the latest data would seem to indicate that the electric vehicle market is suddenly in big trouble. For an overview, Robert Bryce has a long post at his Substack today, titled “Tesla In Turmoil: The EV Meltdown In 10 Charts.” You may know that Tesla has just announced that it is laying off 10% of its workforce. Bryce concludes: “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it one more time: Electric vehicles are The Next Big Thing, and they always will be.”
Here’s a chart not from Bryce, but from Statista, on Tesla sales by quarter:
Does it seem that Tesla is going gangbusters? It does until you look closely. Tesla sold 485,000 cars in 4Q 2023, and only 387,000 in 1Q 2024. That’s rather a sudden and dramatic decline. Elsewhere in the EV biz, the story is the same. From Cox Automotive, April 11:
Sales [of EVs in the U.S.] in Q1 rose 2.6% year over year, but fell 15.2% compared to Q4 2023.
Do these declines represent a one-quarter blip, or an accelerating trend. I’m betting with Bryce that this is the trend. My prognosis is that the EV market is close to saturated. I have no interest in buying one of them, let alone paying a premium to do it. Do you? But meanwhile the large automakers (except Toyota) have all made big, big bets that the government can make its mandates stick. If consumers don’t go along, this could be the end of Ford and GM, let alone Audi, Mercedes and BMW. Tough luck, guys.
Our current rulers think that they have infinite ability to tell the people how to live, and infinite money to force the people to change their ways. They are wrong, and reality will catch up to them, if only gradually.
Sun’s up, wind’s blowing and wind and solar power is flowing. Wind drops, Sun sets and you’re on your own. The so-called wind and solar ‘industries’ couldn’t care less whether you’re left freezing in the dark. Your power supply is somebody else’s problem.
In this three-part essay, Edward A Reid Jr targets the unhealthy relationship between (witless) governments and (ruthless) crony capitalists as they have come to dominate the energy domain over the last 20 years.
Government Responsibility The Right Insight Edward A Reid Jr 6 February 2024
Government, at all levels, apparently believes that its responsibility in the proposed energy transition is to establish the goals, set the timeline, pick the winning technologies and incentivize their market adoption. This perception led to Net Zero by 2050, all-electric everything, wind and solar generation, electric vehicles and a variety of incentives, subsidies and mandates. Would that life were so simple.
First, the goal of Net Zero by 2050 would require a complete revision of the energy system over a period of 27 years, a very short period of time for such a major change. Fortunately, both the goal itself and the accelerated timeline are unnecessary, but unfortunately, they are being pursued anyway, driven by politics rather than science.
Second, the technologies picked as the winners (wind, solar and EVs) are not winning technologies for a variety of reasons: wind and solar are intermittent generators which have low capacity factors compared with coal, natural gas and nuclear generation. They therefore require either continued support from conventional generation or support from electricity storage which is not available for the storage and discharge durations required to assure a reliable grid. Government assumes that the required storage technology would evolve, though it would be needed in the very short term. Also, wind, solar and storage, including EV batteries, all depend on the availability of several rare earth minerals which are not currently produced in the US, are not globally available in the quantities which would be required and are currently controlled globally by unfriendly nations.
The transition to all-electric everything in the residential and commercial markets would be relatively straightforward from a technology standpoint, since all of the technology already exists. However, the conversions are expected to encounter significant installation issues which would add to the expense. The transition to all-electric everything in the industrial market would be far more difficult, since there are no commercial electric technology approaches available for many industrial processes. Government assumes that the required industrial technologies would evolve.
The transition to all-electric everything would require an approximate tripling of the capacity of the electric grid from generation capacity through transmission and distribution. Government has erected numerous barriers which would significantly hinder this massive, rapid expansion particularly in transmission. Transmission project approvals currently require 10+ years, longer if delayed by lawsuits. Government could streamline this process, but so far has not seen fit to do so.
Tripling of real generation capacity would require an approximate 9-12 times increase in wind and solar rating plate capacity because of their low capacity factors. Wind and solar capacity additions would also require long approval times, especially if challenged in court. This issue is compounded by the requirement for storage technology which is not currently commercialized.
Government has promoted the notion that wind and solar generated electricity is cheaper than electricity from conventional generation. However, to assure a reliable grid, wind and solar generation must be dispatchable, which means that they must be coupled with storage adequate to assure their availability to meet peak demand. The combined requirement for multiples of rating plate capacity plus storage to achieve dispatchability assures that wind and solar generated electricity would be more expensive than conventionally generated electricity, driving up electric rates.
Finally, government must address a satisfactory approach to providing emergency generation in the event of grid outages for hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities, prisons and other facilities which cannot be without power. These generators are typically fueled with natural gas, propane or diesel fuel, none of which are compatible with a Net Zero energy economy.
Currently, government is forcing pursuit of a goal without a plan based on unsuitable or non-existent technologies. Government is responsible for this situation, but would be unlikely to accept responsibility for its adverse impacts.
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. -Ronald Reagan The Right Insight
Renewables Responsibility The Right Insight Edward A Reid Jr 13 February 2024
The renewable energy industry apparently believes that its responsibility in the proposed energy transition is take maximum advantage of federal and state subsidies, incentives, preferences and mandates by installing as much generating capacity as the industry participants can finance and get connected to the grid. The industry also believes that the grid should accept all of its output whenever it is available. The opportunity the industry perceives is the result of Net Zero by 2050, all-electric everything, and the selection of wind and solar as the winning technologies. Would that life were so simple.
The renewable energy industry believes that it should be free to install its generation facilities at whatever locations and that the operators of the existing electric utility grid should be responsible for extending the grid to their facilities.
The renewable industry is aware that the output of its facilities varies minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, season-to-season, and year-to-year. The industry believes that it is the responsibility of the grid operator to smooth renewable generation output, to fill in the gaps when the generators are not operating, and to manage the generation of the difference between the available renewable energy and the contemporaneous demand on the grid.
The renewable energy industry is aware that the electricity it generates displaces energy which would otherwise have been generated by the conventional generators which serve the grid. The industry also recognizes that this displacement reduces the cumulative output and the revenues of the conventional generators, including utility owned generation. The renewable energy industry believes that this is not their problem; and, realizes that it actually benefits their industry by increasing the prices the conventional generators must charge to remain profitable, and thus the prices paid for their renewable energy as well.
The renewable energy industry is aware that, as conventional generators leave the grid as renewable generation increases, conventional generators age out or are required to cease operation by government edict or because their operation has become uneconomic, the gaps in renewable generation would have to be filled by withdrawals from electricity storage systems. The industry also realizes that the transition from conventional generation backup to storage backup would create demand for additional renewable generating capacity. The industry accepts no responsibility for the need for electricity storage to provide a stable and reliable grid.
The renewable energy industry understands that the expansion of intermittent generation of the electric utility grid adversely affects grid stability and reliability and complicates the effective management of the grid. However, the industry accepts no responsibility for these issues and places that responsibility solely on the grid operators.
The renewable energy industry also holds the grid operators responsible for the fact the industry cannot get new renewable generating capacity connected to the grid as rapidly as it would like. Difficulties with receiving regulatory approvals for transmission grid expansion is viewed as not being the renewable energy industry’s responsibility.
FERC, NERC and several ISOs and RTOs have recognized the potential reliability issues facing the grid and have become more vocal regarding the need for caution as the energy transition proceeds. The Right Insight
Grid Responsibility The Right Insight Edward A Reid Jr 20 February 2024
Previous commentaries (Renewables Responsibility and Government Responsibility) dealt with the government and renewables industry perceptions of their responsibilities regarding the proposed energy transformation.
Government, at all levels, apparently believes that its responsibility in the proposed energy transition is to establish the goals, set the timeline, pick the winning technologies and incentivize their market adoption. This perception led to Net Zero by 2050, all-electric everything, wind and solar generation, electric vehicles and a variety of incentives, subsidies and mandates.
The renewable energy industry apparently believes that its responsibility in the proposed energy transition is take maximum advantage of federal and state subsidies, incentives, preferences and mandates by installing as much generating capacity as the industry participants can finance and get connected to the grid. The industry also believes that the grid should accept all of its output whenever it is available. The opportunity the industry perceives is the result of Net Zero by 2050, all-electric everything, and the selection of wind and solar as the winning technologies.
The overall responsibility of the utilities, which own and operate the grid and much of the generating capacity which feeds the grid, and the ISOs and RTOs through which they coordinate their generation and transmission operations, is to assure reliable and economical electricity service. Their operational and financial performance are overseen by state utility commissions and consumers’ counsels.
The utilities are required to connect non-utility generators to the grid. Conventional non-utility generators have historically been subject to economic dispatch. However, the proposed energy transition has changed this process by requiring that the output of connected renewable generators, which cannot be dispatched at will, be taken whenever it is available and supplemented by electricity dispatched from both utility and non-utility generators to meet the contemporaneous demand on the grid. In situations in which the renewable generator output exceeds demand, the grid operators would be expected to store the excess electricity for later use.
As the fraction of subsidized renewable generation connected to the grid increases, the output of the conventional generation to the grid decreases, reducing the revenues to those generators and increasing the rates they must charge to remain profitable. However, the intermittency of the renewable generation requires that the conventional capacity remain operating, even at zero net output, to supply the grid demand when the renewable generation declines significantly or is unavailable. However, conventional generation is being retired far more rapidly than renewable generation is being added to the grid, reducing the capacity reserve margin available to meet peak demand and threatening grid stability and reliability.
The grid operators, which typically connected a relatively small number of relatively high-capacity dispatchable generators, are now required to connect a relatively large number of relatively low-capacity non-dispatchable generators, spread over a far larger geographic area. As the energy transition proceeds, the number of relatively low-capacity non-dispatchable generators would increase dramatically, rendering the continued operation of conventional generation uneconomical. Fossil fueled conventional generation would also be driven from the grid by government edict.
When the rating plate capacity of the connected renewable generation exceeds the capacity of the conventional generation, the grid operators would be required to add dispatchable electricity storage to the grid to satisfy grid demand when renewable generation is unavailable or inadequate. This storage capacity would be recharged using surplus renewable electricity when available, supplemented by conventional generation while available. However, as the conventional generation is retired, additional grid storage capacity would be required, and additional renewable generation capacity would be required to assure that grid storage capacity is charged and available as required.
The grid scale storage required by the energy transition is currently either extremely expensive (short duration) or unavailable (medium to long duration). This would make the grid operators’ responsibility to ensure reliable and economical electricity service very difficult to fulfill.
Finally, there has not been a successful demonstration of a stable and reliable renewable plus storage grid, so there remain questions about whether the grid operators’ responsibilities could be fulfilled. The Right Insight
You came here for truths and straight talk, so, here’s a doozy.”
Standing on stage at the National Press Club — being beamed live into offices and lounge rooms across the country — one of Australia’s top energy bosses was preparing to say what few in the industry will acknowledge publicly.
Jeff Dimery — CEO of Alinta Energy — looked up from his notes on the lectern and delivered the promised doozy to the audience.
“Australians will have to pay more for energy in future,” he says.
“We need to be honest about that.“
…
Yes, renewables are the “lowest cost, new form of generation”.
But building the wind and solar farms at the scale required to replace coal, together with the batteries needed to store the power, and the new network of transmission lines to distribute that power to consumers will involve tens of billions of dollars’ worth of investment.
This is a big change from previous claims that renewables would bring down near term prices.
Electricity prices predicted to fall as renewable supply increases, gas price falls
Posted Mon 21 Dec 2020 at 5:32am
Key points:
Electricity prices are expected to fall by 9 per cent over the next three years
More renewable energy production is behind the fall
Power prices in Canberra are predicted to buck the trend
Household electricity bills are expected to fall by 9 per cent over the next three years as more renewable generation joins the grid.
A new report by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) predicts all states in the National Electricity Market — NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania — will have lower energy prices in 2023.
The residential electricity price trends report 2020, published by the advisory body today, projects the ACT will have a slight rise in electricity prices over the next three years.
…
The report says the main reason for the drop is lower gas prices and the introduction of new sources of energy generation like solar and wind.
It also says network costs and environmental costs are falling, too, although they contribute less to the overall reduction.
It is not just the ABC. The AEMO, the industry body tasked with regulating the East Coast Australian energy grid, has also frequently added to the confusion about the true cost of renewables;
Renewables push NEM electricity prices down to historical levels
23/10/2023
AEMO’s latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report shows that wholesale electricity prices averaged $63 per megawatt hour (MWh) in the September quarter, down 41% from the June quarter ($108/MWh) and 71% ($216/MWh) from Q3 2022.
By region, South Australia recorded the highest average quarterly price at $92/MWh, followed by New South Wales ($81/MWh), Queensland ($65/MWh), Victoria ($49/MWh) and Tasmania ($29/MWh).
Total electricity supply by fuel type saw renewables (wind, grid-scale and rooftop solar, hydro and other sources) contribute 38.9% of total supply, up 4.6%, while black coal’s share fell 3.4%, primarily due to the Liddell Power station closure, and gas fell 2.3%. Brown coal’s market share increased 1%, mainly due to fewer unplanned outages.
AEMO Executive General Manager Reform Delivery, Violette Mouchaileh, said that the growing influence of renewables in the NEM was apparent in the warmer September quarter as prices returned to historical levels.
“Record renewable generation output helped push down average wholesale electricity prices by more than two-thirds, double the occurrence of zero or negative wholesale prices (19%) and reduce total emissions by 11% compared to the previous September quarter,” Ms Mouchaileh said.
“Renewables also supplied a record 70% of total energy used over a half-hour period, with rooftop solar contributing 39%, again highlighting the likely benefit from coordinating rooftop solar and home batteries.
There is no excuse for this confusing messaging about prices. Renewables were always going to be expensive. It was up to the industry oversight body to keep people informed. Does leaving out the bit about how much renewables cost seem like a reasonable effort to keep people informed?
According to the AEMO “Who we are” page, “… AEMO provides the detailed, independent planning, forecasting and modelling information and advice that drives effective and strategic decision-making, regulatory changes and investment. …”. Do articles like the fluff piece above, which somehow fails to mention that any renewable driven cost reduction is temporary, that someone has to pay for all the green infrastructure, does any of this seem like the AEMO is adequately discharging its duty to provide independent advice?
$383 billion is just under $15,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia, or $39,000 for every working person in Australia, just to pay for initial construction. All those extra transmission lines and renewable systems will have to be maintained, at a cost of billions of dollars every year in addition to the cost of maintaining existing infrastructure.
Australia’s peak demand was 31GW in 2023-24, serviced by a capacity of 55GW. According to Wikipedia, the capital cost of building new coal capacity is US $4,074 / Kw to around $1,201 / Kw for gas.
Isn’t climate change supposed to create superstorms and violent weather? If say a big hail storm comes along and wrecks a vast acreage of solar panels, as happened last year in Nebraska, well that will have to be paid for as well.
What are the alternatives to renewables?
Underinvestment in Australia’s energy infrastructure has left most of it in a decrepit state. Lets assume for a moment we have to replace it all.
55GW x 1000000 (convert to Kw) x $4074 = US $224 billion to completely replace all of Australia’s coal capacity with coal. Multiply by 1.54 to get Australian dollars, and you have $345 billion – well short of the $383 billion Energy CEO Jeff Dimery estimated for renewables. If the coal plants use brown coal, which has zero value except as fuel to be shovelled into an adjacent generator, that is a saving of $38 billion in capital costs, + the system does not incur higher transmission line maintenance charges, and a massive cost every time. We save at least $38 billion, and since coal is dispatchable, we wouldn’t have to panic every time the wind dies.
And of course there is the very real risk the $383 billion costing is a massive underestimate. A lot of rather arbitrary assumptions go into calculating such numbers, such as the battery capacity required to accomodate renewable intermittency. Extreme excursions from normal weather conditions such as season long wind droughts over large geographical regions occur often enough to be a problem.
Even when the power doesn’t completely fail, economically damaging spikes in electricity prices can devastate the finances of energy intensive businesses. No energy intensive business can afford $5000 / MWh on a regular basis.
Green energy is a bottomless money pit, always was, always will be. It is time for politicians to be honest with voters, and put a stop this colossal waste of taxpayer resources, before they burn even more money for no benefit.
** FILE ** Cars try to navigate their way through New York City during a blackout that hit U.S. and Canadian cities in this Aug. 14, 2003, file photo. A year after the nation’s worst ever blackout, utilities have made improvements and New York has spent millions of dollars on new high-tech gadgets to avert the chaos that followed. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
Color scale with arrow from red to green. The measuring device icon. Risk level indicator. Colorful infographic gauge element. 3D rendering
This article draws upon narratives and information in the author’s book Cyberwarfare: Targeting America, Our Infrastructure, and Our Future, Stairway Press, 2020.
Consider some inescapable self-inflicted scenarios from hell that government “experts” never warned you about regarding utopian visions of carbon-free vehicles powered by friendly breezes and sunbeams.
So, imagine it’s one of those warm, beautiful days when the first news breaks about a big hurricane or tropical storm heading your way.
You immediately begin thinking about stocking up on food supplies that don’t require refrigeration and charging up your electric plug-in to get out of town in a hurry if necessary … just like, it seems, everyone else is doing.
Or maybe, with no warning, “poof,” all power goes off because the grid is down for suspicious reasons no one fully understands or can inform you about.
As it turns out, a foreign adversary cyberattack precludes either of those previous options, plus an added problem.
Along with knocking out all power transformers, the malign hackers also took remote control of both autonomous and operator-controlled electric vehicles, jamming exit highways with colossal human and metal crash wreckage.
In both cases, it’s already too late.
In the first scenario, there isn’t enough available electrical power to serve the broad hurricane zone. It has been in dangerously short supply since millions of EV cars and trucks have been added to an ancient grid that has depended upon natural gas turbines to balance fluctuating wind and solar loads.
It seems that shutting down those fossil companies through “net-zero” carbon policies didn’t prevent extreme weather after all.
Instead, extreme ideological EPA policies such as imposing costly, useless carbon capture requirements on those natural gas producers prevented energy companies from economically competing with heavily government-subsidized “green” fantasies.
A March 2024 ruling adding heavy-duty trucks to its original all-electric light vehicle mandate dealt another crushing drain on already slim power margins: each one of them consuming seven times as much electricity on a single charge as a typical daily home.
Sadly, your plug-in has no plug with any juice due to emergency rationing necessary to support medical care facilities and other critical services. And forget about any hopes of using municipal or commercial recharging stations, which have the same problem.
The situation soon becomes more expansive and dangerous as high winds have downed long transmission lines connecting remote wind and solar sites to the grid, sparking massive fires and extending regional power outages.
Deluges of rain have flooded metropolitan centers and small lowland communities, making them inaccessible for emergency rescue by now-useless electric ambulances, fire trucks, and police vehicles with depleted batteries.
Downed trees collapse local power lines, further blocking access and operations of similarly stranded maintenance crews.
Even then, circumstances could have been much worse with cyber scenario two.
Neighbors and friends with battery backup radios finally inform you that one of three power grids serving the entire nation has been disabled by hackers of unknown geographic origin, with transmission connections to the other two intentionally switched off to prevent universal overload collapse.
Darkness soon descends everywhere around you except where backup energy generators temporarily powered by batteries and purloined natural gas provide isolated pockets of light that are soon extinguished as well.
Hospitals are rapidly losing limited generator-supplied electricity to operate life-critical equipment. Meanwhile, primary power can’t be restored any time soon due to melted power transmission lines and damaged turbines at the few remaining conventional fossil and nuclear power plants.
Supplies of clean water are being depleted as well.
Whereas metropolitan areas with high water towers atop high-rise buildings will have enough gravity flow to supply most basic living needs for, at best, a few days, when that runs out, taps will go dry, toilets won’t flush, and emergency supplies of bottled water will become exhausted.
Mountains of uncollected waste, including human biological material, soon create a previously unimaginable unsanitary health crisis.
If you are fortunate enough to live within walking distance of a nondepleted grocery, plan to use cash because the credit card system won’t be operative. Ditto, any ATM machine.
In any case, those stores can’t be restocked because of stranded EV long-haul and local delivery trucks.
Meanwhile, police and fire responses who are busily engaged in rescuing people trapped in elevators and other emergency services have also become overwhelmed by widespread store looting by desperately hungry individuals and families.
As tens or hundreds of millions of others over many states share such chaotic dilemmas, there is no way of predicting when power will be restored. And whereas present weather and temperature conditions may be moderate, many of these regions – including yours – anticipate a coming winter home heating crisis that will put countless lives at risk.
There are few opportunities for people to leave for warmer climes. Personal EVs are useless, as are commercial EV buses and moving vans.
Contemplating either of such avoidably catastrophic scenarios might provide cause to seriously doubt those government experts who continue to warn us of climate change and extreme weather being our greatest threat, with the solution being to load our ancient, cyberattack-prone power grids with weather-dependent energy systems overloaded with voracious EV electricity consumption.
No, climate change isn’t nearly as great as the threat presented by their own policies, with the best solution of all…powerful winds of regime change sanity blowing through November voting booths before it is too late.
Materials, costs and survivability for wind turbines on massive floating platforms defy reality
Paul Driessen
The US Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management recently designated two Wind Energy Areas in deepwater areas off the Oregon coast. BOEM is also reviewing offshore wind energy development options for the Gulf of Maine, Central Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and maybe Great Lakes.
They’re part of Team Biden’s plan to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030 and 15,000 MW of floating offshore wind energy capacity by 2035. Capacity is what the turbines could generate, when the wind is blowing at optimal speeds, perhaps 30-40% of the year.
30,000 MW is what 2,500 12-MW turbines could generate. It’s enough to meet New York State’s current peak electricity needs on a hot summer day. Add the electricity required to replace gasoline cars and natural gas furnaces and stoves, meet surging AI, data center and streaming video demands, and charge grid-scale backup batteries – and New York alone would likely need 10,000 12-MW offshore turbines.
Meeting the soaring electricity needs of all US states would require hundreds of thousands more.
BOEM nevertheless insists that “Offshore wind is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a new clean energy industry, tackle the climate crisis, and create good-paying jobs, while ensuring economic opportunities for all communities.”
Note to be outdone in baseless puffery, the Department of Energy extols the Administration’s goal of “decarbonizing” the entire US electric grid by 2035 and says “offshore wind is especially well-suited” for generating “clean energy.” Two-thirds of all US offshore wind potential, it says, exists over ocean areas so deep that turbines must be mounted on floating platforms anchored to the seafloor by mooring lines tied to suction piles sunk into bottom sediments.
DOE even claims it will somehow reduce the cost of floating deepwater wind energy to $45 per megawatt-hour by 2035. (That’s 45¢ per kilowatt-hour, triple what most Americans now pay.) To buttress its claims, DOE presents maps, artist’s renderings and images of floating turbine arrays.
It’s almost as though these government officials actually believe they can solve the alleged climate crisis by simply issuing proclamations, regulations, drawings, press releases and subsidies – and Voila!
Mines open, raw materials materialize, and millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of vehicle and grid-scale batteries, millions of miles of transmission lines, millions of transformers and other technologies get manufactured and installed – affordably and with no fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic air and water pollutants, child and slave labor, or other evils (all at minimal cost), while endangered species and other environmental conflicts disappear (or are relegated to irrelevance) …
and cornucopias of clean, renewable, reliable, affordable electricity are rapidly generated worldwide.
It’s impolite to question fervently held beliefs in fossil-fuel-free utopias. However, a little reality is urgently needed before activists and bureaucrats take us any further down this primrose path.
12-MW offshore turbines are 850 feet tall, carry three 350-foot-long blades, and weigh thousands of tons. To date, few have been installed anywhere, none have been subjected to major hurricanes, and none have been mounted on deepwater floating platforms. Indeed, no such platform-mounted turbines exist outside the realm of concepts and ten-foot models in wind tunnels and test tanks.
The Kincardine floating turbines in the North Sea southeast of Aberdeen, Scotland are much smaller, and the strongest wind gusts recorded there were in the 83–123 mph range. Sustained wind speeds for category 3-5 hurricanes range from 111 to 157 mph and greater. Some of the worst US landfalling hurricanes reached 126 mph (Katrina, 2003) to 167 mph (Andrew, 1997). The strongest winds ever off the Oregon coast exceeded 100 mph (1962 and 1995).
Subsurface and semisubmersible structures for the smaller 2.0–9.5-MW deepwater turbines weigh 2,000 to 8,000 tons. New semisubmersible platforms for deepwater oil production can be over 30,000 tons and cost a billion dollars or more. Yet even they are probably not large enough for the monstrous 15-MW beasts that the Biden Administration, CNN and others are extolling.
Says CNN: “The first, full-sized floating offshore wind turbine in the United States will tower 850 feet above the waves in the Gulf of Maine…. The gigantic machine, with 774-foot diameter blades and tethered to the seabed with thick metal cables, is planned to be put into the water” by 2030.
It’s almost impossible to conceive of the amounts of steel and other raw materials that would be needed for each of these gigantic turbines and support systems; the amounts of ore that would have to be extracted to obtain those materials; the fossil fuels required to mine and process the ores, manufacture the turbines, blades and support systems, and transport and install them; the cost to build each of them.
Based on average deposits being mined today, the 110,000 tons of copper required for 30,000 MW of offshore turbine alone would require removing some 65,000,000 tons of ore and overlying rock. That doesn’t include copper for marine cables, transmission lines, transformers and other equipment – or the other metals and minerals.
It is inconceivable that these deepwater wind turbine systems could ever recoup all the energy and costs – or offset all the greenhouse gas emissions – involved in building them, no matter how many years they generate electricity. Indeed, those years may be very short, due to violent storms and constant salt spray.
It’s equally inconceivable that they could survive major storms. As a deepwater oil production expert explained, the major unexamined issue is the enormous dynamic loads the mooring systems impart on support structures and turbines.
Floating offshore structures are designed to move on their mooring systems, to adjust for wind and waves. But if 115–160 mph winds hit the structures and equipment on their decks, they can be pushed to the limits of survivability. That’s what happened to the Mars TLP rig during Hurricane Katrina.
Some of its mooring lines (tethers) failed, the entire rig was pushed over onto its side, and the 200-foot-tall derrick snapped off and sank. Subsequent analysis found it was not the high winds that caused the failure, but the total structure’s return motion – its restorative forces or “whiplash” – as the wind speeds suddenly dropped from 126 mph, with gusts of 200 mph, to 15 mph.
Now picture 850-foot-tall turbines, with huge blades designed to catch the breezes, atop enormous semisubmersible platforms, being caught in a hurricane or other fierce storm; being pushed over further and further; until wind speeds suddenly plummet, and the turbines whiplash violently – and snap off.
That Shell Oil, among the world’s most experienced offshore oil developers, has dropped out of deepwater wind projects should say a lot about the viability of the far-fetched deepwater schemes Team Biden is promoting, to forcibly transform America’s energy and economic system.
That some companies are still in the game underscores how their risks are being forcibly subsidized and underwritten by taxpayers and consumers, who are being dragooned into these schemes by politicians and bureaucrats who likewise have no real skin in the game. Their leasing bids are plummeting, their electricity price demands soaring.
It’s time to say, “Enough! We’re going to keep our nuclear and fossil fuel energy, until you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your alternatives provide equally abundant, reliable, affordable energy.”
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor to the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.
The elephant in the room that policymakers refuse to talk about is that renewables only generate electricity but cannot manufacture any products for today’s materialistic society.
Ronald Steinis an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
Regardless of the intermittent weather, the electrical grid is expected to deliver continuous and uninterrupted electricity no matter what the weather to support computers for hospitals, airports, offices, manufacturing, military sites, and telemetry, that all need a continuous uninterruptable supply of electricity.
Yet, policymakers continue to subsidize wind turbines and solar panels (with taxpayers’ money) for the generation of electricity that do not work most of the time.
I find it amusing that twenty-three states have adopted goals to move to 100 percent clean ELECTRICTY by 2050.
Of the six electrical generation methods, wind and solar cannot compete with hydro, nuclear, coal, or natural gas:
Wind and solar generate occasional electricity.
Hydro, nuclear, coal, and natural gas generate continuous uninterruptible electricity.
The elephant in the room that no policymaker wants to discuss is that:
Neither wind turbines nor solar panels can replace the supply chain of products from crude oil that are the foundation of our materialistic society demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.
Occasional electricity generated from wind and solar CANNOT support computers for hospitals, airports, offices, manufacturing, military sites, and telemetry, that all need a continuous uninterruptable supply of electricity.
Interestingly, all the components of wind turbines and solar panels are also based on the products made from fossil fuels. Thus, in a fossil-free society, we’re decaying back in the 1800’s as there will also be NO electricity. Life was short and hard for the common man just a few hundred years ago!
Sarcastically, or more realistically, these are a few boomerang impacts of a society free of crude oil:
Without oil, a significant loss of billions of lives of the 8 billion on this planet from starvation, diseases, and weather-related fatalities because of shortages of food, medications, and products, and a reduction in transportation infrastructures, that are all based on the components made from fossil fuels!
Without oil, we would drastically reduce the homeless population as all the tents and sleeping bags utilized by the homeless are all made from fossil fuels! The homeless will need to live like the cavemen in a non-materialistic society like that in the pre-1800’s.
Without oil, we would drastically reduce the unfunded pension liabilities associated with those that retire early from business or start collecting Social Security in their mid-60’s, and collect pensions well into their 80’s, as few people would live beyond their 40’s!
As a refresher for those pursuing net-zero emissions, wind and solar do different things than crude oil:
Wind turbines and solar panels do not work most of the time, as they only generate occasional electricity AND manufacture NOTHING for society as renewables cannot make tires, insulation, or fuels for commercial and military aircraft, merchant ships, and the space program.
Wind and solar cannot make any of the more than 6,000 products now in our materialistic world.
Crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity but when manufactured into petrochemicals, is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800’s.
We’ve become a very materialistic society over the last 200 years, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products and different fuels for jets, ships, trucks, cars, military, and the space program that did not exist before the 1800’s.
If the world governments want to rid the earth of crude oil usage, what’s the back-up source that can manufacture refrigerators, tires, asphalt, X-Ray machines, iPhones, air conditioners, and the other 6,000 products that wind and solar CANNOT manufacture?
Crude oil use is essential to human flourishing for the foreseeable future. The pursuit of “net zero by 2050, without first identifying the crude oil replacement to support the supply chain of products now demanded by those in developed countries, would be one of the most destructive developments in human history.
Without crude oil, there would be nothing that needs electricity!! Everything that needs electricity to function is made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, from computers, iPhones, telemetry, and HVAC units!!
Until a crude oil replacement is identified to manufacture products for society, the world cannot do without crude oil that is the basis of our materialistic “products” society.
We should be careful with what we wish for. From the proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” tells us that:
You can’t rid the world of crude oil and continue to enjoy the products and transportation fuels that are currently made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil.
The few wealthy countries of the United States of America, Germany, the UK, and Australia represent about 6 percent of the world’s population (515 million vs 8 billion) are mandating social changes to achieve net zero emissions.
Germany, the first country to go “green” with an electricity generation transition to renewables, now has electricity rates that are among the highest in the world, and threatens to be an unaffordable, unrealizable disaster, according to the government’s own independent auditors.
Looking beyond the few wealthy countries setting environmental policies for the other 94 percent of the world’s population, billions still struggle to meet basic needs. The poorer on this planet may never be able to enjoy the materialistic living styles of those in wealthier countries.
The few in the developed countries have come a long way in the last few hundred years from the zero emissions society that existed before the 1800’s when:
There were no products for heating, cooling, or irrigation to prevent weather related fatalities and injuries before the 1800’s.
Life longevity was about 40 years of age before the 1800’s.
When people were born, they seldom traveled more than 100 miles from their birthplace before the 1800’s.
There was no medical industry before the 1800’s.
There were no electronics, computers, or iPhones before the 1800’s.
There were no transportation infrastructures before the 1800’s.
There were no tires or asphalt to support transportation infrastructures.
There were no airplanes and thus no airports before the 1800’s.
There were no cruise ships nor merchant ships, other than sailing vessels before the 1800’s.
There were no military ships or planes before the 1800’s.
There were no coal fired power plants before the 1800’s.
There were no natural gas-powered plants before the 1800’s.
There were no hydro or nuclear power plants before the 1800’s.
At the recent climate summit gathering in Dubai that attracted more than 70,000 from around the world that enjoy their materialistic lifestyles, as well as more than 600 emission-spewing private jets, the president of the United Nations Climate Change ConferenceCOP28, Sultan Al Jaber stated that a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”, i.e. back to the pre-1800’s !
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, policy advisor on energy literacy for The Heartland Institute, and The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and National TV Commentator- Energy & Infrastructure with Rick Amato.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy literacy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.
Ron advocates that energy literacy starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine, as wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture anything for the 8 billion on this planet.
The effort to increase the percentage of electricity generated by intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar inevitably brings about large increases in the actual price of electricity that must be paid by consumers. The price increases grow and accelerate as the percentage of electricity generated from the intermittent renewables increases toward 100 percent. These statements may seem counterintuitive, given that the cost of fuel for wind and solar generation is zero. However, simple modeling shows the reason for the seemingly counterintuitive outcome: the need for large and increasing amounts of costly backup and storage – things that are not needed at all in conventional fossil-fuel-based systems. And it is not only from modeling that we know that such cost increases would be inevitable. We also have actual and growing experience from those few jurisdictions that have attempted to generate more and more of their electricity from these renewables. This empirical experience proves the truth of the rising consumer price proposition.
In those jurisdictions that have succeeded in getting generation from renewables up to as high as about 30% of their total electricity supply, the result has been an approximate tripling in the price of electricity for their consumers. The few (basically experimental) jurisdictions that have gotten generation from renewables even higher than that have had even greater cost increases for relatively minor increases in generation from renewables. As the percentage of electricity coming from renewables increases, the consumer price increases accelerate.
No jurisdiction – even an experimental one – has yet succeeded in getting the percentage of its electricity generated from the intermittent renewables up much past 50% on an annualized basis. To accomplish the feat of getting beyond 50% and closer to 100%, the grid operator must cease relying on fossil fuel backup power for times of dark and calm and move instead to some form of storage, most likely very large batteries. The cost of such batteries sufficient to power a jurisdiction of millions of people is enormous and quickly comes to be the dominant cost of the system. Relatively simple calculations of the cost of batteries sufficient to get through a year for a modern industrialized area show that this cost would imply an increase in the price of electricity by a factor of some 15 or 20, or perhaps even more.
The burden of such increasing prices for electricity would fall most heavily on poor and low-income people.
The reason that increasing renewable generation leads to accelerating consumer prices is that an electrical grid must operate with one hundred percent reliability on a 24/7/365 basis. A reliable grid requires a very close match between power supplied and power demanded on a minute-by-minute, and even a fraction of a second, basis. But wind and solar sources experience large, unpredictable, and often sudden swings in the power that they supply. Therefore, in a grid using large amounts of power from wind and solar sources, additional costly elements must be added to the system to even out the supply and always match it to the demand. These additional elements are what bring about the increased costs and, thus increased consumer prices:
· In the early stages of moving toward increasing generation from intermittent renewables – say, to get 10% of the generation from the renewables — a grid operator can start by simply adding some new wind turbines or solar panels to the system, and by then accepting that power onto the grid when it is available. However, there will be substantial times when no such power is available (e.g., calm nights). Therefore, all or nearly all pre-existing fossil fuel capacity must be maintained, even though some of it may be idle much of the time. Although the fuel cost of the renewables is zero, the operator must pay the capital cost of two overlapping and duplicative systems to the extent of the renewable capacity.
· To get the percentage of generation from renewables beyond about 10% and into the range of 20-30%, the operator can then attempt a massive expansion of the renewable sources, such that the renewable capacity becomes equal to, or even a multiple of peak usage. (Jurisdictions, including Germany and Denmark, have followed this strategy.) With such massive renewable capacity, the system may even work without backup at some times of relatively low wind or thick clouds. However, no amount of excess capacity can make a wind/solar-only system generate any electricity on a completely calm night, nor any meaningful amount on a heavily overcast and calm winter day. If the backup comes from fossil fuel facilities, very nearly the full fleet must still be maintained. As wind/solar capacity goes to 100% and even 200% of peak usage, the capital cost of the system goes to double or even triple the capital cost of a fossil-fuel-only system. But, since much of the time will be dark and/or calm, still the percentage of electricity coming from the renewables will only be around 30%, and the decrease in carbon emissions from the backup fossil fuel plants will be even less, since they must often be kept on “spinning reserve” to be ready to step in when the wind and sun die.
· If the intent is to get the percentage of generation from wind and solar up above 30% and then to 50% and beyond, then by hypothesis, the fossil fuel backup must be gradually phased out to be replaced incrementally with some sort of storage as the percent of generation from renewables gets higher and higher. Batteries are the only feasible storage option in most locations. The amount of battery capacity needed accelerates as the percentage of generation from renewables approaches 100%. Due to seasonality of the availability of the wind and sun, most locations require a month or more of battery capacity to get a fully-wind/solar system through a year. The cost of the batteries is enormous and quickly comes to dominate the cost of the system. In jurisdictions where a calculation has been made, the cost of the batteries exceeds the full annual GDP of the jurisdiction and implies an increase in the price of electricity by a factor of 15, 20, or more.
In a post at the website Energy Matters on November 22, 2018, Roger Andrews set forth a detailed analysis of what it would take to get to an electricity grid powered 100% by wind and solar sources backed up by batteries. Mr. Andrews’s post is available at this link: http://euanmearns.com/the-cost-of-wind-solar-power-batteries-included/ Andrews’s study covers two cases, Germany and California. His analysis is detailed but not complicated and can be replicated or challenged by anyone competent at basic arithmetic.
Andrews collects data for day-by-day power generation for a full year from existing wind and solar sources for both Germany and California. That data immediately reveals a fundamental issue, which is that the wind and sun are not only intermittent within a given day or week, but they also vary greatly from season to season. Thus, for example, in California, both the wind and the sun produce substantially more power in the summer and fall than in the winter and spring. That means that to have a fully wind/solar system in California backed up with batteries, you need the batteries to store power from April to October, to be discharged from November to March. The total amount of storage needed comes to some 25,000 GWh for a year, equal to more than a full month’s current rate of usage. The batteries for such an effort – even assuming some substantial declines from current prices – will cost something in the range of $5 trillion, which is more than the full annual GDP of California. And these batteries will need to be replaced regularly.
Andrews concludes:
The combined wind + solar LCOE [Levelized Cost of Energy] without storage was $50/MWh. . .
I then estimated wind + solar LCOEs with battery storage capital costs included. This was a straightforward exercise because reducing baseload + load-following generation in direct proportion to the increase in wind + solar generation results in LCOEs that are the same regardless of the percentage of wind + solar in the generation mix. The NREL calculator showed:
· LCOE Case A [Germany]: $699/MWh
· LCOE Case B [California]: $1,096/MWh
These ruinously expensive LCOEs are entirely a result of the added costs of storage batteries, which in the 100% wind + solar scenarios approach $5 trillion in both Case A [Germany] and Case B [California], compared to wind + solar capital costs of ~$300 billion in Case A and ~$160 billion in Case B.
Assuming that these additional costs are passed on to consumers in electricity prices, this would represent price increases of a factor of about 14 for Germany and 22 for California. (The difference derives from lesser seasonality in Germany than in California.)
Although no jurisdiction has yet tried to test Andrews’s calculations by pushing generation from renewables much beyond 50% and toward 100%, many have gone down the road of pushing generation from renewables to the range of 30%, and some experimental jurisdictions have gotten to 50% and a little beyond. Substantial data exist to demonstrate the results on the cost of the resulting electrical system and thereby, what the effect would be on price to consumers assuming that the full cost is borne by the consumer. (The experimental jurisdictions have thus far not imposed the bulk of the costs on the consumer, but that approach would likely not work for an entire country.)
The following chart, initially prepared by Willis Eschenbach of the website WattsUpWithThat, shows the near linear relationship between installed renewables capacity per capita (in watts/capita) on the x-axis and cost of electricity to the consumer (in cents per kilowatt hour) on the y-axis, where each point is a country. The chart is available at the following link:
Germany is the leader in Europe in its power generation per capita from renewables through its so-called Energiewende, having gotten the percentage of its electricity from wind and solar all the way up to about 30%, and at times somewhat beyond. However, the consequence of that effort has been an approximate tripling of the cost of electricity to consumers to about 30 cents per kWh. (The average consumer price of electricity to the consumer in the U.S. is approximately 10 cents per kWh.) Analyses of the soaring price of electricity in Germany place the blame squarely on excess costs that have been necessarily incurred to try to get to a stable, functioning, 24/7 system with so much input from intermittent renewables.
First, massive “excess” wind and solar capacity has been installed to try to deal with days of light wind and heavy clouds. And for the completely calm nights and overcast winter days when the wind and solar sources produce nothing or next-to-nothing, nearly the entire fleet of fossil fuel plants has been maintained and ready to go, even though those sources end up being idle much of the time. (Actually, since Germany during this time has been shutting down all of its nuclear power plants, it has been building additional coal plants to back up its renewables.) And then, some means have had to be found to deal with the surges of available electricity when the wind and sun suddenly blow and shine together at full strength at the same time.
Every 10 new units worth of wind power installation has to be backed up with some eight units worth of fossil fuel generation. This is because fossil fuel plants have to power up suddenly to meet the deficiencies of intermittent renewables. In short, renewables do not provide an escape route from fossil fuel use without which they are unsustainable. . . . To avoid blackouts, the government has to subsidize uneconomic gas and coal power plants. . . . Germany’s renewable energy levy, which subsidizes green energy production, rose from 14 billion euros to 20 billion euros in just one year as a result of the fierce expansion of wind and solar power projects. Since the introduction of the levy in 2000, the electricity bill of the typical German consumer has doubled.
To further illustrate the relationship between the percentage of electricity from renewables and the cost of electricity to the consumer, consider the case of California. California is a “leader” in the United States in generating power from wind and solar sources. According to the California Energy Commission, in 2016, California got 8.11% of its electricity supply from solar and 9.06% from wind, for a total of 17.17% from those two intermittent sources. See http://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html. For the U.S. as a whole the percentage of generation from wind and solar was 6.5%. See https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, California’s average electricity price that year was 14.91 cents per kWh, versus a U.S. average of 10.10 cents per kWh; that is, almost 50% higher.
There are only a handful of small jurisdictions that have tried to get the percentage of their electricity generation from renewables up much beyond the 30% achieved by Germany. But those jurisdictions have not achieved levels much beyond that of Germany, and even those levels have been achieved only at high and accelerating costs. One such jurisdiction is Gapa Island, a small island of only 178 people (97 households) in South Korea. A report on the Gapa Island Project appeared on the Hankyoreh news site in July 2016 (http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/752623.html).
With average electricity usage of 142 kw, and maximum usage of 230 kw, the islanders installed wind and solar capacity of 674 kw – about three timesmaximum usage, to deal with light wind and low sun. They also bought battery capacity for about eight hours of average usage. The cost of the wind and solar capacity plus batteries was approximately $12.5 million, or about $125,000 per household. And with all that investment the islanders were still only able to get about 42% of their electricity from the sun and wind when averaged over a full month. Even with the storage, they still needed the full fossil fuel backup capacity.
Applying a reasonable cost of capital to a system like that of Gapa Island, and considering additional elements of a system, like additional storage, that would be necessary to push the percent of total generation from renewables to higher levels, one can calculate that a system like the Gapa demonstration project for the full United states would lead to electricity prices of at least five timestheir current level, and more likely, far higher. And even then, the U.S. would be hard-pressed to achieve 50% of electricity from the intermittent renewables.
A somewhat larger demonstration project on the Spanish island of El Hierro (population about 10,000) has had similar results. The idea on El Hierro was to combine a massive wind farm with a large elevated reservoir to store water, which would then be released at times of low wind to balance the grid. El Hierro has the good fortune of a mountainous geography, so that a large reservoir could be placed at a relatively high elevation, in close proximity to the consumers of the electricity. The investment in the wind/water system was approximately 64.7 million euros, or about $80 million – which was on top of what was already a fully-functioning fossil fuel-based system, all of which still needed to be kept. Operations of the El Hierro project began in 2015 with high expectations for 100% renewable generation, but it has not come close.
During 2017 the percent of generated electricity that came from renewables ranged from 62.4% in September down to only 24.7% in November, with the overall average for the year at about 40%. Based on the data from actual operations, Mr. Andrews calculates that, to achieve the goal of 100% generation from the wind/water project, El Hierro would need to increase its wind turbine capacity by some 50%, and the capacity of its reservoir by a factor of 40. Clearly, there is no place on the island to put such a massive reservoir; and if there were, the cost would be not in the millions, but in the billions. And that would be for a mere 10,000 people.
During 2018, the El Hierro system supplied 56.6% of the island’s electricity (which represented only 13.0% of its total energy usage). However, the production from the system varied widely over the course of the year, producing as much as 74.2% of the island’s electricity in 3Q 2018, but only 27.7% in 4Q. The 27.7% electricity generation in 4Q represented only 6.4% of the island’s total energy usage.
The geography of the United States does not permit a water storage system like that of El Hierro for most parts of the country. As discussed above, the alternative of storage by large batteries, such as the type used for Tesla automobiles, carries truly astounding potential costs, potentially multiplying the cost of electricity by well more than a factor of 10, and even by a factor of 20 and more.
Such an economic jolt would hit everyone in the country hard, with the possible exception of some of the very wealthiest people. Even middle and upper middle-income people would be forced to make major reductions in their energy consumption. But poor and low-income people would be hit by far the hardest. If electricity prices went to ten or twenty times current levels, most low-income people would be almost completely priced out of things they now take for granted, like light, refrigeration and computers. They would be forced into energy poverty. This is the route down which the Clean Power Plan, but for the Supreme Court’s stay, would surely have taken us – on the now thoroughly discredited assumption that CO2is a pollutant (SeeSection II above).
A new study by IHS Markit, titled Ensuring Resilient and Efficient Electricity Generation: The Value of the Current Diverse U.S. Power Supply Portfolioconsidered the economic effects of state and federal energy policies that are driving electric utilities away from coal, nuclear and hydroelectric and towards renewables and natural gas.Such policies are forecast by IHS Markit to lead to a tripling of the current 7% reliance on wind, solar and other intermittent resources, with natural gas-fired resources supplying the majority of generation.
The Study’s Findings are that current policy driven market distortions will lead to:
U.S. power grid becoming less cost-effective, less reliable and less resilient due to lack of harmonization between federal and state policies and wholesale electricity market operations, …
Id. at p. 4 (Emphasis added).
The study forecast that these policies will cause significant increases in the retail price of electricity. The following economic impacts of these price increases were forecast:
The 27% retail power price increaseassociated with the less efficient diversity case causes a decline of real US GDP of 0.8%, equal to $158 billion (2016 chain-weighted dollars).
Labor market impacts of the less efficient diversity case involve a reduction of 1 million jobs.
A less efficient diversity case reduces real disposable income per household by about $845 (2016 dollars) annually, equal to 0.76% of the 2016 average household disposable income.”
Id. at p. 5. (Emphasis added).
It should be noted that the projected 27% increase in average retail power prices is predicated on the wind and solar renewables share rising by three-fold from 7% to “only” about 21%. The case studies discussed above make very clear the enormous increases in power prices that would result as policy makers attempt to move the renewables share higher than that.
Moreover, the study found that current state and federal policy-driven market distortion will imply:
Increased variability of monthly consumer electricity bills by around 22 percent; and an additional $75 billion per hour cost associated with more frequent power supply outages.
Id. (Emphasis added).
The study’s lead author commented that“[d]iversity of supply is an essential bedrock for security and reliability for an electric power system that is as big and diverse—and as crucially important—as that of the United States.”
Moreover, policies that promote increased use of wind and solar would likely result in little to no reduction in the level of electric sector CO2 emissions:
Ironically, addressing climate change concerns with federal and state policies to subsidize and mandate wind and solar electric generation produced the unintended consequence of distorting wholesale electricity market clearing prices and driving the uneconomic closure of nuclear power plants—a zero-emitting source. The result has been some power system CO2 emissions remaining constant or increasing, …
Language matters. Orwell knew it, so does your local Ministry of Truth. Wind and solar propagandists know it too. They use ‘energy’, when consumers only care about ‘power’. They talk about wind and solar output in terms of meaningless averages, when consumers only care about having power as and when they need it, around-the-clock, whatever the weather, not when the sun is up or the wind is blowing.
They use ‘renewable’ as a mantra, conflating wind and solar power generators (which are hardly renewable) with stored or run of the river hydro and geothermal. Biomass generation (clearfelling forests and burning the timber harvested for power) somehow sneaks into the ‘renewable’ camp, too.
Rational thinkers are quick to concede that even hydro has its limits; droughts leading to empty dams (see above) or low river flows mean no power generated until the dam fills again, or the river starts flowing.
Then there’s the difference between electrical power and energy employed for other purposes. Electrical power generation is a fraction of the total energy being consumed in Western nations, on any given day.
The difference matters, particularly if the protagonists are making wild claims about powering the entire world with wind and solar. As a number of the more unhinged of their acolytes most certainly do.
Australian entrepreneur, Dick Smith found himself embroiled in a battle with the Ministry of Truth recently. The brawl began and ended with semantics, as Nick Cater explains below.
Tassie’s rich power exports damned by hydro hypocrites The Australian Nick Cater 25 March 2024
Dick Smith brushed shoulders with the truth police last week after claiming that Chris Bowen is attempting the impossible.
Smith claimed in an interview on 2GB that no country has managed to power an electricity grid solely with renewable energy. That is misinformation, according to the ABC’s Fact Checkers, who summoned Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University to testify on their behalf.
Professor Jacobson identified four national grids that ran on renewable energy: the Albanian Power Corporation, the Nepal Electricity Authority, the Bhutan Power Corporation and the National Electricity Administration of Paraguay. This is hardly good news for those who fear that chasing net zero will shrink our economy, since Paraguay, Albania, Nepal and Bhutan sit in the bottom half of world GDP rankings, while Australia is near the top. In 2022, the gross domestic product of the four economies combined was $US2550. Australia’s, for the record, was $US65,100.
The renewable energy exemplars do somewhat better when it comes to rain. Bhutan receives 1679mm in the average year, Nepal 1600, Albania 1485 and Paraguay 1270. The average annual rainfall across Australia is 433mm, according to the Bureau of Meteorology website. All four countries are powered entirely by hydro-electricity. This renders the ABC’s comparison spurious, except in Tasmania, Australia’s dampest, hilliest and poorest state, where the average rainfall on the west coast is almost double that of Paraguay.
Last year, Hydro Tasmania generated enough electricity to meet four-fifths of the state’s demand. The marginal cost of production is low, which would make electricity in the island state cheaper if not for the interstate agreement that obliges Tasmanians to share it with the energy mendicants in Victoria.
That could change if the next Tasmanian government sticks by its election promises. All this remains to be seen, however, as Labor leader Rebecca White conceded defeat on Sunday afternoon, and now caretaker premier Jeremy Rockliff seeks to strike a deal with the crossbench to form government. Whatever the case, both major parties pledged to curb sales of hydro-electricity to the mainland to bring down household power bills.
A hydro-reservation policy would undermine Bowen’s plans to turn Tasmania into the nation’s battery. It would also weaken the highly speculative business case for a second undersea cable to the mainland. The bi-directional Marinus Link has joined Snowy Hydro’s giant pumped hydro scheme and the VNI-West transmission line on the infamous list of energy mega-projects with inflated costs and embarrassingly protracted timelines.
The goal of making Tasmania energy self-sufficient grows more attractive as the cost of Marinus escalates. If a new Bass Strait link must be built, it could be built to handle one-way traffic in anticipation of the day when Tasmania will be able to export surplus clean energy to Victoria.
Yet economist Saul Eslake condemned the Tasmania-first energy policy last week as reckless. It would lead Tasmania down the Venezuelan path towards socialist disaster, Eslake told the Australian Financial Review. “They have crude oil coming out their ears, and, because of that, they think they can sell petrol to Venezuelans at 3.5¢ per litre,” he said.
Eslake argues that the loss of hydro-electricity export revenue will harm Tasmania’s economy and accelerate the exodus of Tasmanians to the mainland.
Yet Eslake’s argument is perverse. Reducing Tasmanian retail power prices relative to other states would help an incoming government attract new investment, particularly in the power-hungry digital economy. The energy demand for data processing and storage is driving the industry away from Silicon Valley towards countries such as Paraguay, where retail electricity is currently 8c a kWh, less than a third of the price in California and a quarter of the price in Australia.
There’s no use crying over spilt milk. Nevertheless, the doomed Gordon Dam above Franklin Dam would have put Tasmania on the Paraguayan path, minus the rampant corruption, human rights abuses and succession of military coups that have kept the landlocked South American nation from reaching its full potential.
In the early 1980s, when the Greens were chaining themselves to bulldozers in the Tasmanian forests, Paraguay was constructing the Itaipu Dam, named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the seven modern wonders of the world.
It produces more than 40TWh of clean electricity annually, enough to meet the country’s demand four times over. Brazil, a joint partner in the project, takes the rest.
The Franklin Dam would have increased Tasmania’s hydro capacity to 4GW, comfortably more than the state’s current demand. Liberal premier Robin Grey won the 1982 Tasmanian election promising to build the dam, reduce electricity prices and attract jobs.
The Tasmanian government was overruled by the federal Labor government the following year in a decision later endorsed by the High Court. The rest is history: an effective moratorium on dam building has been in place for the past 40 years. Hydro-electricity’s role as the energy villain in the morality play of progressive politics is now played by coal. Hydro, along with solar, wind and biomass (or wood burning to the uninitiated) sits in the sacred ranks of renewable energy, an expression seldom heard outside of deep-green circles in the early 1980s.
The green movement, too, has shifted ground from its tree-hugging days. Its priority is no longer protecting the natural environment but saving the planet, which is an entirely different thing.
For example, new-wave eco-thought allows ministerial approval of Andrew Forrest’s Upper Burdekin wind turbine development in northern Queensland, despite an environmental report warning the development will have “unavoidable significant residual impact” on four endangered species: the Sharman’s rock-wallaby, the greater glider, the red goshawk and the koala. Even so, the chances of revisiting the Franklin project or any other hydro dam in Australia would probably be a step too far, even for a movement undisturbed by its own hypocrisy.
Which leaves a question hanging for the ABC’s Fact Checkers. Has anyone managed an emissions-free electricity grid in a developed economy without abundant hydro? Why, yes, claims the ABC’s expert witness. California, population 37 million, has been running entirely on WWS “for 10 out of the last 11 days for between 0.25 and 6 hours per day”, Professor Jacobson says.
By that logic, the ABC Fact Unit should be considered 100 per cent accurate, fair and balanced since, occasionally, it defies our expectations by getting something right. Last week it tested Bowen’s claim “that average build time of a nuclear power plant in the United States has been 19 years”.
Not true, the ABC’s experts ruled. The average construction time for all reactors built since 1950 was 8.1 years. For those built since 1970, it was 8.8 years.
We await the minister’s correction with bated breath. The Australian
On the subject of build times for nuclear power plants, Nick could have made express reference to the construction of Calder Hall. Construction started in 1953 and was completed in 1956. It was the world’s first full-scale commercial nuclear power station to enter operation. The video below tells the story:
Regardless of intermittent weather, the electrical grid is expected to deliver continuous and uninterrupted electricity, no matter what the weather, to support computers for hospitals, airports, offices, manufacturing, military sites, and telemetry, which all need a continuous, uninterrupted supply of electricity.
Yet, policymakers continue to subsidize wind turbines and solar panels (with taxpayers’ money) for generating electricity that DOES NOT work most of the time.
I find it amusing that twenty-three states have adopted goals to move to 100 percent clean electricity by 2050.
Of the six electrical generation methods, wind and solar cannot compete with hydro, nuclear, coal, or natural gas:
Wind and solar generate occasional electricity.
Hydro, nuclear, coal, and natural gas generate continuous, uninterruptible electricity.
The elephant in the room that no policymaker wants to discuss is that:
Neither wind turbines nor solar panels can replace the supply chain of products from crude oil, which is the foundation of our materialistic society demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.
Occasional electricity generated from wind and solar CANNOT support computers for hospitals, airports, offices, manufacturing, military sites, and telemetry, which all need a continuous, uninterruptable supply of electricity.
Interestingly, all the components of wind turbines and solar panels are also based on products made from fossil fuels. Thus, in a fossil-free society, we’re decaying back to the 1800s, as there will also be NO electricity. Life was short and hard for the common man just a couple hundred years ago!
Sarcastically, or more realistically, these are a few boomerang impacts of a society free of crude oil:
Without oil, there would be a significant loss of billions of lives of the 8 billion on this planet from starvation, diseases, and weather-related fatalities because of shortages of food, medications, and products and a reduction in transportation infrastructures, all of which are based on components made from fossil fuels!
Without oil, we would drastically reduce the homeless population as all the tents and sleeping bags utilized by the homeless are all made from fossil fuels! The homeless will need to live like cavemen in a non-materialistic society like that in the pre-1800s.
Without oil, we would drastically reduce the unfunded pension liabilities associated with those who retire early from business or start collecting Social Security in their mid-60s and collect pensions well into their 80s, as few people would live beyond their 40s!
Without oil, a smaller number of colleges would be needed because there would be no need for doctors for hospitals or engineers for infrastructure development, which are all based on the components made from fossil fuels!
As a refresher for those pursuing net-zero emissions, wind and solar do different things than crude oil:
> Wind turbines and solar panels do not work most of the time, as they only generate occasional electricity AND manufacture NOTHING for society, as renewables cannot make tires, insulation, or fuels for commercial and military aircraft, merchant ships, and the space program.
> Wind and solar cannot make any of the more than 6,000 products now in our materialistic world.
> Crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity, but when manufactured into petrochemicals, it is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800s.
> Over the last 200 years, we’ve become a very materialistic society, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products and different fuels for jets, ships, trucks, cars, the military, and the space program that did not exist before the 1800s.
> If the world governments want to rid the earth of crude oil usage, what’s the backup source that can manufacture refrigerators, tires, asphalt, X-ray machines, iPhones, air conditioners, and the other 6,000 products that wind and solar CANNOT manufacture?
> Crude oil use is essential to human flourishing for the foreseeable future. The pursuit of “net zero by 2050, without first identifying the crude oil replacement to support the supply chain of products now demanded by those in developed countries, would be one of the most destructive developments in human history.
> Without crude oil, there would be nothing that needs electricity!! Everything that needs electricity to function is made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, from computers, iPhones, telemetry, and HVAC units!!
> Until a crude oil replacement is identified to manufacture products for society, the world cannot do without crude oil, which is the basis of our materialistic “products” society.
We should be careful with what we wish for. The proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” tells us that:
> You can’t rid the world of crude oil and continue to enjoy the products and transportation fuels that are currently made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil.
The few wealthy countries ⏤ the United States of America, Germany, the UK, and Australia — represent about 6 percent of the world’s population (515 million vs. 8 billion) and are mandating social changes to achieve net zero emissions.
Germany, the first country to go “green” with an electricity generation transition to renewables, now has electricity rates that are among the highest in the world and threatens to be an unaffordable, unrealizable disaster, according to the government’s own independent auditors.
Looking beyond the few wealthy countries setting environmental policies for the other 94 percent of the world’s population, billions still struggle to meet basic needs. The poor on this planet may never be able to enjoy the materialistic living styles of those in wealthier countries.
The few in the developed countries have come a long way in the last few hundred years from the zero-emissions society that existed before the 1800s when:
There were no products for heating, cooling, or irrigation to prevent weather-related fatalities and injuries before the 1800s.
Life longevity was about 40 years of age before the 1800s.
When people were born, they seldom traveled more than 100 miles from their birthplace before the 1800s.
There was no medical industry before the 1800s.
There were no electronics, computers, or iPhones before the 1800s.
There were no transportation infrastructures before the 1800s.
There were no tires or asphalt to support transportation infrastructures.
There were no airplanes and thus no airports before the 1800s.
There were no cruise ships or merchant ships other than sailing vessels before the 1800s.
There were no military ships or planes before the 1800s.
There were no coal-fired power plants before the 1800s.
There were no natural gas-powered plants before the 1800s.
There were no hydro or nuclear power plants before the 1800s.
At the recent climate summit gathering in Dubai, which attracted more than 70,000 people from around the world who enjoy materialistic lifestyles and more than 600 emission-spewing private jets, the president of the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP28, Sultan Al Jaber, stated that a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves,” i.e., back to the pre-1800s!
The editorial pages of the Houston Chronicle, as well as news reports, did what they could to hype the “energy transition” before, during, and after CERAWeek. Chronicle business editorialist, the conflicted Chris Tomlinson, was particularly egregious in this regard. But just a bit of balance was achieved in the letters section, where an op-ed by Randall Morton, “Houston is making a losing bet on fossil fuels (Opinion),” (March 18), previously examined at MasterResource, received three rebuttals.
The letters follow:
Jim Lloyd, Lakewood, Colo.: Randall Morton painted a very grim picture for the future economics of Houston because of a lower demand for fossil fuels. Morton failed to account for several issues related to the principles of supply and demand. He simply needs to drive in the congested traffic of every large city. Millions of fossil-fueled cars are stuck bumper to bumper. These cars have a practical lifetime well past 2030.
The politically driven transition to electric vehicles will not be popular with drivers, many of whom will be willing to extend the life of their fossil-fueled cars to avoid buying an EV. Drivers like to occasionally drive long distances and do not like the anxiety of worrying about the life of an EV battery. The demand for fossil fuels will extend well into the future and the supply provided by the Houston economy will have to meet that demand.
There is hardly any demand for EVs: just look at the auto dealers’ inventory and the losses felt by EV manufacturers. In places such as California, supply is artificially high because of environmental mandates for EV sales. The other issue is the high demand for the materials needed to make the batteries, and the very limited supply of raw materials. Following supply and demand principles, the cost of batteries will skyrocket as material supplies don’t meet demand.
All of these factors will make the future of fossil fuel economies, such as Houston’s, flourish.
Joel Mohrman, Houston: Randall Morton’s op-ed urging Houston to abandon the fossil fuel industry and become a “New Energy Capital” misleads the reader. Morton claims the end of the age of fossil fuels is near, but is very vague on what will replace them.
He warns that Houston will end up like Detroit, seemingly unaware that Detroit did not fail because cars were no longer being bought. Detroit failed for many reasons, including because its government was awful.
The expense and lack of electric vehicle capability captures the problem of the green economy overall. Green power sources are more expensive and generally work less well than the systems they replace. Morton’s claim that renewables are cheaper is another sleight of hand. The cited figures do not include the costs of overbuilding and having backup systems (usually gas turbines) to solve the intermittency problem of renewables. You can’t run a modern economy only when the sun is out or when the wind blows.
We would not need subsidies and billion-dollar government giveaways if green energy and EVs were cheaper and better. Simply because something is new does not mean it’s better.
And in fact, these products aren’t new. Windmills have powered production since the 7th century and electric cars have been tried and rejected since the beginning of the [20th] century. Given poor green economics, it’s hard to understand green boosterism.
Perhaps Upton Sinclair had the answer. He said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary is dependent on his not understanding it.” Morton and other green apologists are not shooting straight with us.
Barbara Goodson, Kingwood: Regarding “Oil and gas,” (March 19): Thumbs up to Raymond Martin for pointing out the obvious in his rebuttal letter to Randall Morton’s op-ed. Kudos to the Chronicle for printing the facts. He points out that unless our society would like to return to the 1800s lifestyle, there is no current substitute on the market that can replace the continued need for petroleum products derived from oil and gas.
My husband still enjoys watching “Gunsmoke,” but we don’t want to live like that.
Final Comment
I used to be an op-ed contributor at the Houston Chronicle[1] until the paper went from Left to Progressive Left. I no longer even try to submit articles but have gotten some letters published (and other letters not published.) I do my part, however, by exposing the conflict-of-interest of editorialist Chris Tomlinson, a fossil-fuel hater, meat-hater, and Republican hater. Every little bit counts ….
———————–
[1] Some past editorials were:
“ExxonMobil on Right Path” (June 14, 2009)
“Climate-Change Alarmism Runs into a Reality Check” (January 9, 2009)
“False Alarms and Climate Change” (March 30, 2008)
“Al Gore’s Telling Whoppers Again” (June 4, 2006)
“Shoppers: There is a Bright Side to Rising Gas Prices” (April 18, 2002)
“President is Correct to Ignore Climate Alarmists” (May 14, 2001)
“Fear Not: The Energy Malthusians Are Wrong” ( April 21, 2000)
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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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