UK Infrastructure Bank and British Gas-owner Centrica are the primary funders for Highview Power’s proposed liquid air energy storage plant next to the former Carrington Power Station off Manchester Road.
This would be the first commercial-scale liquid air energy storage plant in the UK, according to Highview. Constructing the facility will support more than 700 jobs both directly and in the supply chain, the company added.
The cryogenic energy storage plans have already received approval from Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
“My vision is for Greater Manchester to be a leader in the green transition – and Highview Power’s decision to build one of the world’s largest long-duration energy storage facilities at Carrington is a huge boost for the region,” Burnham said.
“This new plant will deliver renewable energy to homes and businesses across our region and bring world-leading technology, jobs, skills, and investment to Greater Manchester.”
With the £300m secured, work is set to start “imminently” on the plant, according to a press release. When operational in early 2026, the facility should be able to store 300MWh of energy and distribute 50MWs per hour every for six hours.
Highview’s cryogenic energy storage facility would compress excess energy from solar and wind farms into air. This would then be liquified and frozen so that it can be stored for several weeks. When the energy is needed again, the liquid air is warmed up so it becomes a gas once more and, in the process, drives a generator-connected turbine – thus making the energy usable by the grid.
The plant would have an operational lifespan of at least 30 years, according to a planning statement from RSK in 2022 – which is when Trafford Council gave the project the go-ahead. You can view that planning application by searching reference number 108006/FUL/22 on the local authority’s planning portal.
Highview has spent the past 17 years creating the technology that makes the cryogenic energy storage plant possible. The company said that its energy storage programme is now capable of being deployed across the country at scale.
It is already planning four facilities that will be even larger than the one at Carrington. These would be capable of storing 2.5Gwh of energy. Building them would require an investment of £3bn.
If it was not for intermittent wind and solar power, we would not need to be wasting all of this money.
And for what? Six hours worth of power. That is hardly likely to keep the grid going for days on end when the wind stops blowing.
And it will, of course, be funded via our energy bills, one way or another. Why else would Centrica want to splash out hundreds of millions?
Even the 2.5 GWh mooted at a cost of £3bn would only keep the grid going for a couple of minutes. £3 billion pounds just for that?
And remember that storage creates no energy. You have to generate electricity for it to store in the first place, then spend a lot of money to store it, and worst of all you don’t even get all of your energy back out of it.
If someone could tell me of a more illogical proposition, I’d like to know!
We have 84 industrial wind plants across 5 states of Australia, and the green band below was their total contribution to our national electricity needs on Thursday — put your reading glasses on.
Things were even worse in Western Australia, where at the one point that afternoon when I happened to look the state’s total wind generation was minus 11MW. Some wind turbines were drawing a megawatt here and there, perhaps to keep the turbines rolling so they don’t get flat spots on bearings.
It was an attack of another climate-denying high pressure cell on Thursday. There was no place in Australia good for wind generation except (maybe) for our research stations in Antarctica.
Again, this is now a feature of our weather dependent electricity grid, unless the government can stop these high pressure cells or conquer New Zealand and build a bridge.
But sadly, there is no “building” our way out of this. One thousand more wind-plants won’t keep many lights on, and $100 billion dollars of interconnectors will not connect us to wind power if there is a high pressure cell 5,000 kilometers wide, which there is every two or three weeks.
Wind power went from producing 7.2GW in the early hours of Wednesday to 0.09GW by lunchtime Thursday. It was sheer luck it bottomed out at lunchtime on a sunny day when solar panels were at their peak. Seven gigawatts of power disappeared in just 36 hours. If we lost 7 gigawatts of coal plants in a week, we’d never hear the end of it.
It’s the minimums that matter
Paul McArdle at WattClarity has all the grid data, and provides a spectacular graph of the system-wide peaks and troughs of our wind generators over the last 13 years which he has updated recently to highlight how bad the months of April and May were for wind production in Australia. Click to enlarge this graph to really appreciate the devastating message. While the total wind farm “capacity” has grown massively (the grey columns on the graph), the minimum lowest guaranteed production has not shifted much at all. This is the generation we can rely on, the minimum monthly points are marked in dark green at the bottom.
Ten years ago the lowest monthly minimum was practically zero (reaching just 3.7MW one day in July 2014). But since then we’ve built 8,000 MW of extra wind power, at an effective cost of $16 billion, and only bought ourselves effectively two diesel generators worth of reliable electricity?
Wind energy is an environmental destruction machine, warns veteran center-left columnist.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist block satellite countries in 1989, the West stood in awe, amazed by the environmental and economic wasteland left behind by the inefficient collective socialist system.
But since then, green radicals have taken over and it’s safe to say that the next generation, in about 2060, will also stand in amazement before a similar mass wreckage left behind by the “Green New Deal”.
The future generation will be asking: “What the hell were they thinking?”
“The ruthless way in which wind power is being pushed through in Germany is reminiscent of the brutal way in which the “concrete faction” wrecked many German cities in the post-war period. A wind madness inventory..,” comments Etscheit, calling Germany’s drive into wind energy “a run amok at the expense of people and nature.
Germany plans to add another 10,000 wind turbines in addition to its current 30,000, which means 2% of Germany’s land area will be completely destroyed and industrialized, according to Etscheit.
What follows are Etscheit’s 5 environmental reasons why Germany’s wind energy insanity is a major threat:
Landscape will be blighted by the addition of 10,000 wind turbines, with a height of up to 250 meters. The natural biotope surrounding these turbines will be irreversibly ruined.
Endangered bird, like the red kite, will lose their habitats. It’s estimated that an absolute collision rate of around 21 per year and wind turbine. “With 40,000 or more wind turbines planned in Germany, the million mark would soon be exceeded.”
Bats and insects severely decimated. “Wind turbines also pose a significant threat to the 25 or so species of bat found in Germany…”. …”Wind turbines also have a significant impact on flying insects, as a study published in 2017 by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Oberpfaffenhofen shows … an estimated five to six billion insects per day at all German wind turbines during the warm season (200 days from April to October).”
Hazard also for marine fauna. Wind turbines have a negative impact from pressure and sound waves on some animal species with an extremely sensitive sense of hearing. The industrialization of the oceans could displace native marine mammals. “If more and more offshore wind farms are built, this will have an enormous impact on the harbor porpoise populations in the North and Baltic Seas,” reads a statement from the Society for the Rescue of Dolphins.
Infrasound harming people. People near wind turbines often complain of “severe health complaints such as insomnia, dizziness, headaches, depression, tinnitus, hearing and vision problems and cardiac arrhythmia”, and experts warn this will increase dramatically, and turbine setback regulations in Germany are being watered down.
Etscheit argues for a moratorium on the construction of new turbines, but doesn’t see this happening in Germany, where officials are pressing on with the madness, “no matter the costs.”
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Georg Etscheit is an author and journalist based in Munich. He worked for the dpa agency for almost ten years, but since 2000 has preferred to write “freelance” on environmental issues as well as on business, gourmet food, opera and classical music for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others. He also writes for www.aufgegessen.info, the gastrosophical blog for free enjoyment that he co-founded, and a culinary column on Achgut.com.
Robert Bryce explains the basics at his substack blog Build It, And The Wind Won’t Come. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Weather-dependent generation sources are…weather dependent: Last year, despite adding 6.2 GW of new capacity, U.S. wind production dropped by 2.1%.
Three years ago, in the wake of Winter Storm Uri, the alt-energy lobby and their many allies in the media made sure not to blame wind energy for the Texas blackouts. The American Clean Power Association (2021 revenue: $32.1 million) declared frozen wind turbines “did not cause the Texas power outages” because they were “not the primary cause of the blackouts. Most of the power that went offline was powered by gas or coal.”
Damaged wind turbines at the Punta Lima wind project, Naguabo, Puerto Rico, 2018. Photo: Wikipedia.
NPR parroted that line, claiming, “Blaming wind and solar is a political move.” The Texas Tribune said it was wrong to blame alt-energy after Winter Storm Uri because “wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of what the state had planned for during the winter.” The outlet also quoted one academic who said that natural gas was “failing in the most spectacular fashion right now.” Texas Tribune went on to explain, “Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.”
In other words, there was no reason to expect the 33 GW of wind capacity that Texas had to deliver because, you know, no one expected wind energy to produce much power. Expectations? Mr. October? Playoff Jamal? Who needs them?
But what happens when you build massive amounts of wind energy capacity and it doesn’t deliver — not for a day or a week, but for six months, or even an entire year?
That question is germane because, on Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration published a report showing that U.S. wind energy production declined by 2.1% last year. Even more shocking: that decline occurred even though the wind sector added 6.2 GW of new capacity!
Um, yes. It would. And the EIA made that point in its usual dry language. “Generation from wind turbines decreased for the first time since the mid-1990s in 2023 despite the addition of 6.2 GW of new wind capacity last year,” the agency reported. The EIA also explained that the capacity factor for America’s wind energy fleet, also known as the average utilization rate, “fell to an eight-year low of 33.5%.” That compares to 35.9% capacity factor in 2022 which was the all-time high. The report continued, “Lower wind speeds than normal affected wind generation in 2023, especially during the first half of the year when wind generation dropped by 14% compared with the same period in 2022.”
Read that again. For half of last year, wind generation was down by a whopping 14% due to lower wind speeds. Imagine if that wind drought continued for an entire year. That’s certainly possible. Recall that last summer, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that U.S. generation capacity “is increasingly characterized as one that is sensitive to extreme, widespread, and long duration temperatures as well as wind and solar droughts.”
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, corporate investment in wind energy between 2004 and 2022 totaled some $278 billion. In addition, according to data from the Treasury Department, the U.S. government spent more than $30 billion on the production tax credit over that same period. Thus, over the last two decades, the U.S. has spent more than $300 billion building 150 GW of wind capacity that has gobbled up massive amounts of land, garnered enormous (and bitter) opposition from rural Americans, and hasn’t gotten more efficient over time.
Wednesday’s EIA report is a stark reminder that all of that generation capacity is subject to the vagaries of the wind. Imagine if the U.S. had spent that same $300 billion on a weather-resilient form of generation, like, say, nuclear power. That’s relevant because Unit 4 at Plant Vogtle in Georgia came online on Monday. With that same $300 billion, the U.S. could have built 20, 30, or maybe even 40 GW of new nuclear reactors with a 92% capacity factor that wouldn’t rely on the whims of the wind. In addition, those dozens of reactors would have required a tiny fraction of the land now covered by thousands of viewshed-destroying, bat-and-bird-killing wind turbines.
If climate change means we will face more extreme weather in the years ahead — hotter, colder, and/or more severe temperatures for extended periods — it’s Total Bonkers CrazytownTM to make our electric grid dependent on the weather. But by lavishing staggering amounts of money on wind and solar energy, and in many cases, mandating wind and solar, that’s precisely what we are doing.
Weather-dependent generation sources are…weather dependent: Last year, despite adding 6.2 GW of new capacity, U.S. wind production dropped by 2.1%.
Damaged wind turbines at the Punta Lima wind project, Naguabo, Puerto Rico, 2018. Photo: Wikipedia.
Three years ago, in the wake of Winter Storm Uri, the alt-energy lobby and their many allies in the media made sure not to blame wind energy for the Texas blackouts. The American Clean Power Association (2021 revenue: $32.1 million) declared frozen wind turbines “did not cause the Texas power outages” because they were “not the primary cause of the blackouts. Most of the power that went offline was powered by gas or coal.”
NPR parroted that line, claiming, “Blaming wind and solar is a political move.” The Texas Tribune said it was wrong to blame alt-energy after Winter Storm Uri because “wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of what the state had planned for during the winter.” The outlet also quoted one academic who said that natural gas was “failing in the most spectacular fashion right now.” Texas Tribune went on to explain, “Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.”
Um, yes. It would. And the EIA made that point in its usual dry language. “Generation from wind turbines decreased for the first time since the mid-1990s in 2023 despite the addition of 6.2 GW of new wind capacity last year,” the agency reported. The EIA also explained that the capacity factor for America’s wind energy fleet, also known as the average utilization rate, “fell to an eight-year low of 33.5%.” That compares to 35.9% capacity factor in 2022 which was the all-time high. The report continued, “Lower wind speeds than normal affected wind generation in 2023, especially during the first half of the year when wind generation dropped by 14% compared with the same period in 2022.”
Read that again. For half of last year, wind generation was down by a whopping 14% due to lower wind speeds. Imagine if that wind drought continued for an entire year. That’s certainly possible. Recall that last summer, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that U.S. generation capacity “is increasingly characterized as one that is sensitive to extreme, widespread, and long duration temperatures as well as wind and solar droughts.”
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, corporate investment in wind energy between 2004 and 2022 totaled some $278 billion. In addition, according to data from the Treasury Department, the U.S. government spent more than $30 billion on the production tax credit over that same period. Thus, over the last two decades, the U.S. has spent more than $300 billion building 150 GW of wind capacity that has gobbled up massive amounts of land, garnered enormous (and bitter) opposition from rural Americans, and hasn’t gotten more efficient over time.
Wednesday’s EIA report is a stark reminder that all of that generation capacity is subject to the vagaries of the wind. Imagine if the U.S. had spent that same $300 billion on a weather-resilient form of generation, like, say, nuclear power. That’s relevant because Unit 4 at Plant Vogtle in Georgia came online on Monday. With that same $300 billion, the U.S. could have built 20, 30, or maybe even 40 GW of new nuclear reactors with a 92% capacity factor that wouldn’t rely on the whims of the wind. In addition, those dozens of reactors would have required a tiny fraction of the land now covered by thousands of viewshed-destroying, bat-and-bird-killing wind turbines.
If climate change means we will face more extreme weather in the years ahead — hotter, colder, and/or more severe temperatures for extended periods — it’s Total Bonkers CrazytownTM to make our electric grid dependent on the weather. But by lavishing staggering amounts of money on wind and solar energy, and in many cases, mandatingwind and solar, that’s precisely what we are doing.
I have already asked if the sun is setting on wind energy and now it seems we have to ask the same question about the European solar industry. A recent Politico article headline suggests (in a rather strange choice of words) that a “drowning” solar industry needs to be rescued (the body of the article says that it is “dying” rather than “drowning”). Whichever word is more apt, it seems clear that the European solar industry is in deep trouble.
So much so that we are told that the EU is urging its members to sign a joint declaration pledging to revive it. The article is quite an eye-opener, given that the mainstream media is so keen to have us believe that renewable energy is cheap and the way forward. The main points can be summarised shortly as follows:
EU solar firms are worried about an imminent collapse of their industry. In part this is said to be due to “heavily subsidised” Chinese competition. Of course, while such subsidies might be playing a role (as might the Chinese use of Uighur slave labour), no doubt the fact that Chinese energy is cheap (because they use a lot of coal) and energy within Europe is expensive (because they use a lot of renewable energy) is also highly relevant. The other issue, we are told, is a supply glut within the EU. I take that to mean that the supply of solar is significantly more than the demand for it. After years of propaganda, in other words, solar panels aren’t all that popular.
Reference is made to Meyer Burger’s recent announcement that it intends to cease module production in Germany. The text, according to pv magazine is as follows:
With a deteriorating market environment in Europe, continuing with full-scale European solar manufacturing is not sustainable for the time being. Part of the plan would unfortunately be the closure of one of Europe’s largest operational solar module production sites in Freiberg, Germany, as early as beginning of April 2024, affecting approximately 500 people.
The letter sent by the EU Commission to the energy ministers of member states talks of “the current worsening of the situation” and seeks “the signature of a declaration committing to take concrete actions to support the EU solar production.”
The Politico article suggests that the situation is so bad that this won’t placate solar manufacturers within the EU:
For months, the industry has been urging the Commission to spearhead an emergency buyout of inventories and further relax EU subsidy rules.
The EU seems to be talking about measures which are fairly obviously aimed at China, such as setting up state-led project auctions to promote the production of solar panels with “high environmental, innovation and labour standards.”
The conclusion, however, is that the situation is so dire that:
To keep the sector alive, argued Dries Acke, policy director at the SolarPower Europe lobby, the Commission “needs to become more concrete very soon” with plans to unlock EU cash.
Money. It’s always about money. Weren’t we assured that net zero would make us all better off?
A federal judge sided with a Native American tribe in a dispute with a major wind developer on Wednesday, handing a massive defeat to the wind industry to end 2023.
U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ordered Enel, a major green energy company based in Rome with an American presence, to tear down an enormous wind farm that the firm had constructed in Osage County, Oklahoma, over the consistent protest of the Osage tribe who live in the area, according to the Tulsa World. The ruling is a huge victory for the Osage tribe, who opposed the project because of its location relative to burial sites and the ecological damage inflicted upon eagles by the massive turbines, and a stark defeat for Enel, which is now staring down hundreds of millions of dollars in decommissioning charges.
The wind farm had been the subject of a lengthy legal battle between the Osage Nation and the developer, spanning back to 2011, when the tribe filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the development illegally deprived the tribe of access to the mineral deposits beneath the site of the project, according to the Tulsa World. The project featured 84 turbines, as well as required equipment like transmission lines and weather towers, spread over 8,400 acres of land that Choe-Groves asserted was leased illegally and to the detriment of the tribe’s sovereignty. (RELATED: ‘Green Colonialism’: Biden Admin Clashes With Native American Activists Over Lithium Mine)
Biden’s Climate Bill Boosted An Offshore Wind Giant, But His Economy Brought It To The Brink https://t.co/AF7SPT2FNu
There will be a trial for damages following Choe-Groves’ ruling, according to the Tulsa World.
Notably, Enel states on its website that it exhibits “an unmatched commitment to sustainability and a just and inclusive energy transition for all.” Paolo Romanacci, who is the head of Enel Green Power North America, also serves as the director for the American Clean Power Association, a green energy trade group that has spent millions of dollars lobbying the federal government to advance the interests of the green energy industry, according to data from Open Secrets.
The ordered deconstruction of 84 wind turbines is “unprecedented,” according to Robert Bryce, an energy sector expert who also keeps track of local rejections of major renewable energy projects across the country. Bryce estimates that the company stood to reap tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies for the project, a dynamic which he considers at least partially responsible for the firm’s insistence to continue building and operating the project despite the persistent objections of the tribe.
“I hope no other tribe has to do what we had to do,” Osage Minerals Council Chairman Everett Waller told the Tulsa World, referencing the tribe’s long legal battle against the project. “This is a win not only for the Osage Minerals Council; this is a win for Indian Country. There are a lot of smaller tribes that couldn’t have battled this long, but that’s why we’re Osages. We’re here, and this is our homeland, and we are going to protect it at all costs.”
Enel did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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by Samuel Furfari – originally published in Factuel in French. Republished here in English translation with permission of the author.
According to Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union address to the European Parliament on 13 September, the EU is doing well thanks to the Green Deal. But millions of people can no longer afford to pay for their energy. But before we get back to energy, a few words about Europe’s migration crisis. While the small Italian island of Lampedusa had to take in 7,000 migrants in 48 hours – and not climate refugees, as a colleague pointed out to me – Poland complained that the Commission President did not want to see the reality of the problem. Responding to the speech, Polish European Affairs Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk said: “I am convinced that there is a certain reluctance on the part of European leaders and European institutions to notice the problems that plague the EU today.”
We know that relations between the Polish government and the European Commission are not harmonious, as ideological differences clash. In the area of migration, it is clear that Poland does not intend to follow Brussels’s instructions to take on migrants. But tensions have also been evident for some time in the field of energy.
The Polish workshop destroyed by alchemy
Poland can be considered the EU’s main workshop for the production of automotive components, which are then assembled by the major manufacturers in their assembly plants. A large number of SMEs in the mechanical sector have specialized in the production of components for our cars. The electric car poses a serious threat to Poland’s manufacturing industry. An electric motor is infinitely simpler than a combustion engine and requires less labor to produce; in addition, electric vehicles do not need a gearbox or clutch, and even braking is simpler because the engine brake is powerful. It is understandable that Poles are strongly opposed to the obligation to stop selling combustion engine vehicles by 2035, as this will throw thousands of workers who had secure and well-paid jobs in the automotive sector out on the street.
For a while, Germany joined Italy and Poland in opposing this strange decision. Then the first vice-president of the European Commission, the Dutchman Frans Timmermans, pulled out his green environmental magician’s hat and came up with a solution to convince Germany: don’t worry, we will allow internal combustion vehicles to run on electric fuels. E-fuels that do not exist and will never be economical because they have to be made from hydrogen produced from wind and solar photovoltaic energy and CO₂. At the moment, wind energy produces only 2.2% of the primary energy consumed in the EU, but it is promised that there will be so much that it will be enough to produce 100% green electricity and, in addition, synthetic fuels … by 2035 Chemistry forbids such utopias, but we in Brussels-Strasbourg don’t care. Neither does Berlin, and it’s even stranger in the country where the chemical industry was born. In short, the green alchemist who wants to turn life’s escape into energy – CO₂ – has managed to convince Berlin. Left to their own devices, Italy and Poland have therefore been unable to resist the mistake that will destroy the automotive sector, the sector that the United States and China envy us.
Poland rebels
After the failure of Soviet socialism, an ideology imposed by force on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, they embraced the market economy without reservation. Poland is a good example. Since joining the EU, Eurostat data show that Poland’s growth rate has hovered around 5%, almost double that of the EU-27.
In the car industry, of course, there was no hope of selling the Polski, the Fiat-licensed car produced in Poland. Poland has therefore wisely chosen to become a subcontractor for large companies in the west of the EU. It has managed to organize itself so that its specialized workers produce the parts that German, Italian and French companies assemble in their own country or elsewhere. According to PZPM(the Polish Association of the Automotive Industry), 153,900 people worked in the sector in 2019. However, EU pressure on the automotive sector has reduced this number to 141,400 workers. Similarly, in 2019, Poland produced 434,700 engines, but by 2022 it will only produce 255,100. These cuts of 41% in engine production and 8% in employment are worrying, and it is understandable that the Polish government is very wary and is trying to reverse this trend.
However, Poland has not given up and we have just learned that on 17 July it lodged an appeal with the Court of Justice of the EU (Case C-444/23). The Republic of Poland seeks the full annulment of Regulation (EU) No 2023/851 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 April 1985 as regards the strengthening of the CO₂ emission performance standards for new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, in line with the Union’s climate change objectives. In the alternative, it seeks the partial annulment of that regulation in so far as it relates to the provisions of emission targets for new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles applicable from 1 January 2035, in the event that the Court considers that the pleas put forward do not justify the annulment of the regulation in its entirety.
According to Poland, the EU legislator – the European Parliament and the Council of the EU – infringed Article 192 (2c) of the Lisbon Treaty, which requires unanimity in the Council, because the contested decision ‘ significantly affects a Member State’s choice between different energies sources and the general structure of its energy supply ‘.
Poland intends to defend the well-being of its people
Poland believes that this regulation will have a significant impact on the automotive industry as well as on companies in related sectors, and that the European legislator has therefore failed to fulfill its obligation to promote the well-being of the people of the Union, its obligation to promote social justice, to work for sustainable economic development and to promote economic cohesion, social and territorial solidarity and solidarity between Member States. Warsaw also believes that the legislator has failed to take into account the requirements of promoting a high level of employment and combating social exclusion (Article 9 of the Treaty) and the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of wealth. The argument makes sense, because sustainable development is not just about promoting ecology, but also about ensuring the well-being of society and economic growth. In fact, ‘sustainable’ is the qualifier for ‘development’, although environmentalists have managed to erase the word ‘development’ by replacing the term ‘sustainable development’ with the noun ‘sustainability’. The Polish government disagrees.
Green policy is disproportionate
It considers that the principle of proportionality has not been taken into account because the resulting disadvantages, in particular the costs, are manifestly disproportionate to the objectives pursued. According to Poland, the costs of adapting the EU economy and society to the stricter standards for the reduction of CO₂ emissions laid down in the contested regulation are significantly higher than the resulting benefits. For Poland, the contested regulation imposes a disproportionate burden on European citizens, in particular the most disadvantaged, and on the European car industry, due to the transition to zero-emission mobility. The contested regulation is likely to have serious negative effects on the European car industry, social exclusion, exclusion of the poorest from means of transport,
Carbon market manipulation
Poland also accuses the Council and the European Parliament for failing to provide a sufficient impact assessment of this Regulation (an obligation for all legislative texts presented by the European Commission). It considers that the assessment of the impact of the obligations and objectives set out in the Regulation of individual Member States is fundamentally flawed. Furthermore, Warsaw believes that insufficient account has been taken of the available scientific and technical data, the potential benefits and costs of an activity or its cessation, as well as the economic and social development of the Union as a whole and the balanced development of its regions. In short, this regulation was adopted on an ideological basis which Poland rejects.
At the same time, the Polish government is challenging the number of CO₂ allowances to be placed in the carbon market stability reserve until 2030 in order to artificially increase the price per ton of CO₂. Again, according to the Polish government, the case is based on a violation of Article 192.2c. It argues that this carbon market-manipulating reserve could eliminate jobs in the mining sector, leading to ‘greater social inequality between Member States and increased social exclusion’. Poland’s car sector is crucial, but its coal and therefore mining sector is even more, as the country generates around 70% of its electricity from coal, which is mainly mined in Silesia.
It is unlikely that such an institutional imbroglio over non-compliance with the legal basis of this regulation will be resolved before the European elections on 9 June 2024. But whether Poland loses the case or not, there is no doubt that the Poles will take it into account when they vote.
The Brussels-Strasbourg specialized press deciphered the speech of the President of the European Commission before the European Parliament as her candidacy for re-election. However, the appointment of the President of the European Commission is decided by the Member States. The Italian government, abandoned in the face of migrants, and the Polish government, which will not accept the destruction of its car industry, will know who not to vote for.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the wind industry has fallen on hard times:
The wind business, viewed by governments as key to meeting climate targets and boosting electricity supplies, is facing a dangerous market squall.
After months of warnings about rising prices and logistical hiccups, developers and would-be buyers of wind power are scrapping contracts, putting off projects and postponing investment decisions. The setbacks are piling up for both onshore and offshore projects, but the latter’s problems are more acute.
Why might prices be rising, and supply chain issues emerging? The Journal mentions Bidenflation and rising interest rates, but the more intractable problem is supply and demand. Because of their minuscule productivity, wind turbines use extraordinary amounts of steel, concrete, copper, cobalt, zinc, and numerous rare earths. As governments around the world have mandated “green” energy, demand for these materials has skyrocketed. Prices are only going higher, as massive new mines for minerals like copper and cobalt will have to be developed.
More:
Europe’s strong winds and shallow waters have made offshore wind one of its fastest-growing renewable technologies. But a 40% cost increase recently halted a giant project in the U.K., a global leader in offshore wind, while developers delayed two investment decisions in the Baltic Sea.
Another three projects in the North Sea totaling about $19 billion in planned spending are potentially delayed or revising terms too, said Peter Lloyd-Williams, a senior analyst at Westwood Global Energy Group.
There have been similar cancellations and delays of offshore projects in the U.S., too. Quality problems are also adding insult to injury. Wind turbines are at best disposable power plants, lasting only 20 years or so.
They are also costly to maintain:
Manufacturers have been struggling with profitability as they deliver ever-larger and more advanced machines, which are more efficient at making electricity. Now some say they are running into problems with wear and tear.
“We have problems both offshore and onshore,” said Tim Proll-Gerwe, spokesman with Siemens Energy. The company, which had previously said quality issues related to its subsidiary’s flagship onshore turbines could cost up to $1.1 billion to fix, on Monday raised that estimate to about $1.75 billion. ***
Blade supplier TPI Composites, which has agreements with several wind manufacturers, issued a profit warning last month that it was seeing higher inspection and repair costs.
The struggling wind industry faces other problems that likely cannot be overcome at any cost. Robert Bryce describes the popular revolt against “green” energy that is taking place world-wide:
[A]ll over the world, rural people are reacting with fury at the encroachment of large wind and solar projects on their homes and neighborhoods. ***
In June, thousands of Druze residents in the Golan Heights rioted to stop the installation of a large wind project on their traditional lands. Last month, Australia’s largest farmers union said it wanted a moratorium on new solar projects. In May, a wind project in Colombia being pushed by the Italian company, Enel, was canceled after it met fierce opposition from the indigenous Wayuu communities.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., over the last 10 days, local governments in Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa have rejected or restricted wind and solar projects. Those moves bring the total number of rejections or restrictions in the Renewable Rejection Database to 574.
Robert does a tremendous service by maintaining a database of instances where local objections and protests have successfully blocked wind and solar projects. The reality is that, no matter how loudly the federal government clamors for “renewables” to be built, successfully constructing them has proved to be difficult.
And this problem ultimately can’t be solved. Bryce deserves credit for arguing forcefully that, notwithstanding all of the other intractable problems with low-intensity, unreliable wind and solar energy, what will finally kill those technologies is their land use requirements. In a paper that he wrote for American Experiment, Robert pointed out:
[M]erely meeting America’s current electricity needs with wind energy would require a territory more than two times the size of California.
And, of course, if liberals get their way and electrify everything from automobiles to stoves, the land requirements would be vastly greater.
None of this is going to happen. The laws of physics do not permit a developed country to power itself with “green” energy. Our attempt to do so is doomed. In his Substack piece, Bryce quotes a British physics professor:
In 2016, shortly before his death at age 46 from cancer, David J.C. MacKay, a physics professor at the University of Cambridge, said wind turbines are “a waste of money.” Eight years earlier, MacKay had published Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, a remarkable book that hammered home the land-use impacts of renewables. MacKay, who recognized nuclear must be part of any effort to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, calculated that wind energy needs about 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site. In the same 2016 interview, MacKay called the idea of relying solely on renewables an “appalling delusion.” He continued, “There’s so much delusion and I think it’s so dangerous for humanity that people allow themselves to have these delusions that they’re willing to not think carefully about the numbers and the realities, and the laws of physics and the realities of engineering… humanity really does need to pay attention to arithmetic, and the laws of physics.”
Arithmetic? Laws of physics? They are lost on politicians, to our incalculable cost.
Booming demand for balsa wood, used to make turbine blades for wind energy, is ravaging Amazon forests and indigenous communities — in the name of “green power.”
Story at a glance:
The rapid expansion of wind energy has led to increasing demand for windmills and balsa wood to build them.
The tropical tree is facing exploitation and being cleared from Amazon forests, causing potentially more environmental problems than the windmills it creates can solve.
Wind turbine blades can be up to 328 feet (100 meters) long; each blade requires 150 cubic meters of balsa wood, which is several tons.
China is a major consumer of balsa wood, purchasing 85% of Ecuador’s exports in 2020.
The Open Democracy video, “A Green Paradox,” documents how the rush for balsa wood to create “green” wind energy has destroyed local indigenous communities and decimated ecosystems.
A global rush towards wind turbines has decimated Ecuador’s balsa trees – destroying local Indigenous communities and fragile ecosystems.
Balsa, a tree that’s native to South America, is a coveted resource. Growing up to 98 feet (30 meters) and ready for harvesting in just three to four years from planting, balsa holds the promise for high profits for those who grow them.
Adding to its value, balsa wood is flexible and light yet very strong, making it an ideal material for manufacturing bridges, skis, boats and wind turbine propellers.
In an ironic tragedy, however, the rapid expansion of wind energy has led to increasing demand for windmills and balsa wood to build them.
Now, the tropical tree is facing exploitation and being cleared from Amazon forests, causing potentially more environmental problems than the windmills it creates can solve.
Logging Amazon rainforests to create massive wind turbine propellers is the opposite of sustainable. Meanwhile, birds and bats — many species of which are already endangered — are suffering. It’s estimated that 600,000 to 949,000 bats, and up to 679,000 birds, are killed annually by wind turbines in the U.S.
But the number of wind turbines has increased significantly since these estimates were calculated, which means many more are probably affected. Areas, where wind farms are built, are also in peril, as the giant structures have a significant socio-economic impact.
As it stands, wind energy is falling into the trap of many “green” initiatives before it, claiming to offer a solution to save the planet while instead helping to destroy it.
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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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