Unaccountable, riddled with conflicts of interest, incompetent, opaque, defensive and hypocritical; it is time for the Climate Change Committee to be disbanded.
Good. And I hope my letter to Parliament assisted in their decline, because they were idiots.
This was the report to government that confused gw with gwh, so the entire report was meaningless. The reason for this error, was they just copied and pasted from a Green website, which also confused gw with gwh. So they were not only idiots, they were just kids copying and pasting from the net. (A bit like that Blairite "20 minutes for weapons of mass destruction" lie.)
The report said:
Quote:
The power output capacity of grid storage is currently around 2 GW.
This will need to rise to 7 GW by 2025 and 8-9 GW by 2028.
This comment is asinine in the extreme. A gw is not a unit of energy storage, so you cannot use gw units to assess energy storage requirements. It is like saying: “the distance from London to Coventry is 150 miles per hour”.
The report goes on to say:
Quote:
Grid storage capacity in Great Britain will more than double by next winter, as
2.3 gw of new-build battery storage contracts for delivery in 2023/24 (come on-line).
Again, this is a completely asinine statement. How long will this energy last for? For instance, the new 200 mwh Tesla battery at Cottingham is rated at 100 mw, so it can only power a small portion of the UK grid for 20 seconds.
In truth, the UK needs 20,000 gwh of energy storage by 2050. Reading between the lines of this mis-reporting by the CCC, this means we need 4,000x as much energy storage as they are hailing in their report as being 'good progress'. (At a guess, all their new battery storage only held 4.6 gwh of energy.)
If the CCC's 'good progress' took two years to implement, then we should get all the energy storage we need in 8,000 year's time.
Yeah, guys, that is real progress (in governmental terms.)
You are like the little boy who pointed out to his mother than all the other soldiers in the military parade were out of step - except his father!!!
If you look at just about any publication, article or grid operator statement about energy storage, you will find it primarily talks about MW or GW as the nameplate output power, and often doesn't even mention duration (hours) or MW or GWh.
You need two parameters to specify energy storage, and one or these needs to be output power.
The reason why grids care more about output power than duration is that the grid operators always have to balance supply and demand. If a power plant fails or a transmission line goes down, then the grid has to either find more supply within seconds, cut demand on demand response contracts, or cause blackouts somewhere.
If battery storage is a minimum 1 hour duration, and the August 2019 power cut lasted 31 minutes, then, as long as the storage was somewhat full, the capacity hardly matters. Further, you can bring a cold natural gas CCGT or OCGT plant to full output and maximum efficiency in well less than an hour.
Had 4.4 GW of grid batteries been installed in 2019, there would have been no power cut at all - and it would not have mattered whether the duration was 1 hour, 2 hours or 8 hours. Only around 1.7 GW of generation was lost due to the original lightening strike (though badly set ROCOF - rate of change of frequency - parameters). So half of the current 4.4 GW of batteries would have done the trick - as long as they were not charging at the time.
RE said "the UK needs 20,000 gwh of energy storage by 2050."
The UK needs around 300 GWh of short duration energy storage by 2035, to cover the gaps in wind and solar of up to 24 hours. But how much long duration storage it needs rather depends on how the longer gaps are handled.
For instance, if UK implements, say 10 GW of BECCS (bio energy + CCS) that gives negative emissions, then it can afford to have maybe 40 GW of CCGT run on natural gas and still hit a net zero target. That is provided the backup for long duration gaps does not have to run for more than 10% of demand.
If UK relies on hydrogen fuelled CCGT for backup, then it will likely need 2-3 months of green hydrogen storage, which would be around 50-75 TWh of stored output (50,000-75,000 GWh).
So it all rather depends. The CCC proposal seems to be for more BECCS and less green hydrogen storage by 2035.
RE said "At a guess, all their new battery storage only held 4.6 gwh of energy."
If everything under construction completes (and you would expect it to), then UK is already on target to have nearly 9 GW of grid battery storage (plus another 2.5 GW ?? of pumped hydro). If the duration of these batteries averages 1.5 hours, then UK could have up to 3x as much as 4.6 GWh of grid battery storage within a couple of years.
What they are not saying openly, either in the CCC report or in the media, is that none of this new battery ‘backup’ is actually stored energy backup. It is merely load balancing energy, just as you say.
The CCC report says.
Quote:
We consider grid storage to be on track due to a considerable pipeline of grid-scale battery storage in development, assuming these are able to gain network connections.
Endquote.
This section of the report is claiming to be about ‘grid storage’, when none of this is actually grid storage - it is all load balancing, which is needed because of the variability of wind.
(Note: the grid needs to maintain 50 hz, otherwise the entire grid collapses. Load balancing supplies an instantaneous boost to the grid when the wind changes, maintaining the all-important 50 hz. Unlike the South Australian grid, which went out of frequency limits and crashed.)
So there has been NO GRID STORAGE BUILT.
So the CCC report, is a load of tosh.
Dangerous tosh, because it misleads Parliament.
We need 20,000 gwh of storage capable of 45 gw.
To cover a 10-day wind outage.
At present we have about 10 gwh of storage, capable of 2 gw.
Future sites (Coire Glas etc) will produce another 40 gwh, at 3 gw.
Great, so we only have another 19,950 gwh to go - capable of 45 gw.
Typically, the cost case for new grid battery storage is split between "load balancing"/grid stability etc. and "grid storage" (in your terms)/energy time shifting.
The batteries will bid for contracts in balancing or capacity markets, and then have to satisfy the contract.
In the case of the South Australia Hornsdale Power Reserve/Neoen Tesla big battery, the current size is 150 MW and 193 MWh after upgrade. The original battery was upgraded from 100 MW and 129 MWh. The initial split was 70 MW for 10 minutes for "load balancing" and 30 MW for 3 hours for "grid storage" . I think there is a contract for 1000 MWs (megawatt seconds) of grid inertia too, which is presumably within the 70 MW/10 minutes side of the split.
The grid only needs a certain amount of grid stability function, usually short duration, and only the first chunk of battery installations will be able to tap into this. Most of the grid batteries eventually installed will either need long duration capacity contracts or will have to make a profit from energy arbitrage (buying electricity cheap then time shifting it to selling it when prices are higher).
So it is debatable how much of the 9 GW of UK grid batteries which will complete installation within the next 2 years, will be for grid support, and how much for time shifting. You could probably get the information from the list of NG ESO contracts. But certainly UK does already have some "grid storage" installed.
Customers of the Agile Octopus tariff have the ability to do energy arbitrage if they have home batteries or an EV with V2G. Octopus publishes the cost of power in the evening for the day ahead, allowing customers to plan energy use (with the aid of apps) and take advantage of any low or negative pricing to store power and high power prices to sell it back to the grid. So you don't need to be a utility to do some of this stuff. See https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/.
The ancillary services market for frequency support in the UK for batteries is already saturated. Income is running at 10-20% of what it was initially. Many battery projects got proposed in the heat of the extreme price volatility during the energy crisis. Longer duration batteries now offer a poor return. Most of those are unlikely to get financed unless subsidies are offered in one form or another. There is likely to be some scrutiny before doling out the subsidies.
My response was aimed at Ralph Ellis who seems to prefer to use the terms "load balancing" and "grid storage". That is why the term was in inverted commas. In Ralph's terms, the AEMO document just confirms what I said.
IDAU said "The ancillary services market for frequency support in the UK for batteries is already saturated"
This isn't true.
There is an administrative problem in that the NG ESO looks for bids which cover the whole of a requirement, rather than partial bids. Where a set of battery bids could cover a requirement, the NG ESO will not / cannot add them together, so take, say a large 500 MW generator as the winner, despite the fact the cost is higher than adding together say 10 separate bids for 50 MW from a set of grid batteries. This probably has something to do with software constraints. Whatever the reason, my understanding is that the difficult is being addressed. Only when this happens will we be able to determine whether the UK market for grid services is already saturated or not. And at the moment the evidence is that it would not be (with software changes).
The whole point of Net Zero 2035, is that all gas fired plants will be closed down. Closed by 2035, not simply by 2050.
Thus there will be NO gas electricity to call on line, by 2035, when the wind stops blowing. (Forget solar, as it does not work in winter anyway.) We will be totally dependent upon other sources of stored backup. But we are unlikely to have more than 100 gwh of backup working by 2035.
In 2035 we will ‘only’ need 10,000 gwh of backup (because much of industry and heating will still be gas powered). But that still leaves us with another 9,900 gwh to build - otherwise the lights will go out, and our water, food, sewerage, transport, banking, hospitals, and emergency services will all grind to a halt.
We will enter a new Dark Age, if there is no power for 7 days.
RE said "The whole point of Net Zero 2035, is that all gas fired plants will be closed down. Closed by 2035, not simply by 2050."
All gas plants will NOT be closed down as part of either the UK grid 2035 net zero or the full economy 2050 net zero. If the UK adopts green hydrogen as the long duration backup storage medium, then the existing natural gas plants would be converted to hydrogen firing. In fact, some of the more modern plants are already capable of using either hydrogen or methane (natural gas) as a fuel. See https://www.gevernova.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fueled-gas-turbines. 3 out of 4 ranges of gas turbines marketed by GE can already handle fuel mixes from 0:100% 100%:0 of hydrogen: natural gas.
What is true is that there will be no unabated (i.e. without CCS) gas plants in operation in the UK by 2050. That is nothing like the same as "no gas plants".
RE said "we are unlikely to have more than 100 GWh of backup working by 2035."
That is not what the grid battery pipeline stats are pointing to. There is currently a pipeline of 95 GW of UK grid batteries, with significant pipeline growth of 67% per year at the moment. If they are all installed and end up averaging 2 hours duration, that would be 190 GWh of grid battery backup by 2035. That could well happen. That would be nearly two thirds of the total of ~300 GWh of short duration storage which the UK grid needs by 2035.
RE said "that still leaves us with another 9,900 GWh to build"
Firstly, UK will need rather more than 10 TWh per year of long duration backup for a 2035 net zero. Likely 2 to 3 months of long duration fuel storage will be needed, which would be 50-75 TWh.
Secondly, grid batteries are far too expensive to be used for long duration backup. Other possible sources are pumped hydro or hydro behind dams (imported from Norway), unabated CCGT offset by BECCS negative emissions, or green hydrogen storage.
RE said "We will enter a new Dark Age, if there is no power for 7 days."
>>If the UK adopts green hydrogen as the long duration backup storage
>>medium, then the existing natural gas plants would be converted to hydrogen.
That is not what the Royal Society said.
Firstly, current gas power stations are in the wrong place, so would need extensive and expensive piping of volatile hydrogen. It would be easier to build 60 new plants in Yorkshire.
Secondly, the RS said:
Quote: Although hydrogen burning turbines will be available, they will not be discussed - as fuel-cells and 4-stroke engines are cheaper. (See p41).
Thirdly: this presupposes that sufficient deep-seam hydrogen caverns, electrolysers, and demin water plants had already been constructed, plus all the pipes to existing gas plants. I can assure you that none of this will be operational by 2035. In fact, it is not known if any of this will work at scale. We are betting the nation on suppositions, instead of certainties. (Plus, hydrogen is only 25% efficient, so where does all that energy come from?)
.
>> If they are all installed and end up averaging 2 hours duration,
>>that would be 190 GWh of grid battery backup by 2035.
I don’t believe a word of that.
The UK and South Australian batteries all last for about 2 minutes maximum, so how on Earth are the new-build batteries going to last for 2 hours? This is the trouble with the dumb-arrses at the CCC not giving correct data (gw instead of gwh). They never did say what the true capacity of these new batteries will be.
But judging by the battery at Cottisham(?), they will only be lasting for minutes, not hours. Think about it - to raise the Cottisham battery to 2 hours duration, it would have to be multiplied by 120x in size. Are you really suggesting that is happening??
Where is your data and references for this??
.
>> Secondly, grid batteries are far too expensive to be
>>used for long duration backup.
Which is why all of my calculations in these threads have been in multiples of ‘Dinorwigs’.
The trouble is, that the dumb-arrses at the CCC never mentioned pumped hydro or hydrogen, let alone the problems with those systems.
Who is going to solve the lack of upland regions for pumped hydro, by 2035? Where do we put 2,000 Dinorwigs?
What is the cost and time, to build 800 caverns some 2,500 ft down, plus all the demin water and electrolyser plants, for hydrogen storage.? How long will that take, and at what cost.?
.
Face facts, you are an apologist for the impossible. But once we are half way down that impossible road, we WILL get 7-day power outages. That is a certainty. Don’t you remember the Great NE Outage? With a weak generation system and high demand, long outages are highly likely.
The current gas plants are clearly in sensible places, as they work well within the context of the current grid - apart from the 500 gm/kWh of CO2 emissions.
Thus it would not be not be more efficient to build 60 new gas plants in Yorkshire. In general it is cheaper to build a pipeline to transport green hydrogen, than to build a transmission line to either send the power to produce the same hydrogen, or to send the power which can be generated from that hydrogen.
The RS said "Although hydrogen burning turbines will be available, they will not be discussed - as fuel-cells and 4-stroke engines are cheaper."
If the RS said it, then I am sure NEW hydrogen burning turbines would be more expensive than NEW fuel-cells or NEW 4-stroke engines. But the UK already has INSTALLED gas turbine CCGT and OCGT plant, and it is difficult to believe that these are not the cheapest way to provide backup power. As my link shows, the RS are a little bit behind the times on hydrogen burning gas turbines, as GE's current range include them, with 100 in use on hydrogen worldwide, according to GE.
If you are looking for relocating the generation, and can afford to store three volumes of gas instead of one, then you can get SOFCs to perform the reversible set of reactions CH4 + 3O2 <--> CO2 + 2 H20 to perform at high power to gas to power efficiency (I believe up to 70%). But it isn't fully developed yet.
RE said "this presupposes that sufficient deep-seam hydrogen caverns, electrolysers, and demin water plants had already been constructed, plus all the pipes to existing gas plants. "
If, unlike the RS suggestion, you use depleted oil and gas wells, I can assure you that there are many of these around which could be repurposed to store hydrogen. As part of the offer to the government to reinstate Rough, Centrica was claiming it can be repurposed to store hydrogen. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_(facility)#Closure_and_partial_reopening.
If Rough is suitable, then so are other depleted oil and gas wells.
I can assure you that none of this will be operational by 2035. "
RE said "In fact, it is not known if any of this will work at scale. "
Most things that work well at small scale will also work well at large scale, particularly in electricity grids, as it is a pretty thoroughly known science. Instead of naysaying a likely forerunner solution, the obvious thing is for the government to finance a pilot project at a reasonable scale, to see if any snags emerge which have not been identified. And sooner rather than later too.
RE said "hydrogen is only 25% efficient, so where does all that energy come from?"
Power to hydrogen to power is 40-45% efficient. The energy to do this will come from surplus (cheap) wind and solar. Around 15 GW of electrolysers would be enough to provide hydrogen to generate 10% of the current demand of 300 TWh/year.
RE said "The UK and South Australian batteries all last for about 2 minutes maximum, so how on Earth are the new-build batteries going to last for 2 hours? "
The grid batteries in the UK pipeline are a minimum of 1 hour, and more likely average 1.5 hours. So the 4.5 GW of grid batteries can likely store 4.5 to 6.7 GWh.
The South Australia Hornsdale Power Reserve grid battery is 150 MW and 193 MWh, so its duration is just over 75 minutes.
RE asked "What is the cost and time, to build 800 caverns some 2,500 ft down, plus all the demin water and electrolyser plants, for hydrogen storage.?"
I don't know how long it will take to convert depleted oil and gas wells to hydrogen storage caverns. But more than enough depleted oil or gas wells already exist, and the oil industry must know how to do it, because it has already done it for Rough.
Demineralised water for electrolysis is much cheaper to produce than the power required to electrolyse it to hydrogen. And you don't need that much of it. 50 TWh of hydrogen at 33.6 kWh/kg energy density is around 1.5 billion kg of hydrogen. You get that from 17x the volume of water (H2 is molecular weight 2, water is 34).
So the water to fill the hydrogen storage weighs 25 million tonnes and occupies 25 million cubic metres. That could come from a 500m x 500m area of water which is 100m deep. The UK water mains supply provides 840 billion litres of water per year, or 840 million cubic metres or 840 million tonnes. So 25 million tons would increase that by 3% which is close to peanuts.
In terms of cost, desalinating water costs $0.8 to 2.5/cubic metre. So 25 million cubic metres costs$20-62.5 million - peanuts in UK grid terms.
RE said "you are an apologist for the impossible. But once we are half way down that impossible road, we WILL get 7-day power outages. "
I present my own analyses, and you haven't pointed to anything significantly wrong with them - just a load of speculation. There is more than one practical way to get to a 2035 net zero grid, and the ultimately solution will depend more on economics than anything technical.
To decommission old grid resources before the new technology resources are up and running properly would be a stupid way to do it. You get the new grid resources up and running before you decommission the stuff you plan to get rid of. There is no desperate hurry and you can preserve energy security by taking time on the overlap. And in any case the transition is gradual and takes a few years. It is not like a transition from driving on the left to driving on the right. More like the transition to EVs which can drive quite happily on the same roads as fossil fuel cars.
RE said "with a weak generation system and high demand, long outages are highly likely."
A renewable, net zero 2050 grid would likely be much stronger than today's grid, as generation would be more distributed and the transmission network would be far more robust.
You are rather assuming that the present pipework, junctions and valves, can handle hydrogen. Hydrogen is a slippery bugger, and can escape from any containment vessel, thus specialist materials are often required.
In addition, we don’t have enough gas fired power stations to run the nation, during a wind outage.
Remember that we need triple or quadruple the number of power stations, to go all electric by 2050. That means six or eight times the number of gas powered stations, as we have now.
Plus all the hydrogen generation and storage infrastructure, which we have not even begun to design, let alone build.
1. My own security analysis, based on the calm during the UK's summer of 1976, suggested that the UK needs at least 100 days of electrical energy storage (and probably nearer 130 days) to replace wind generation when a typical engineering safety margin of 50% is included. [Alternatively, just install cheap dispatchable thermal generating plant which wins on EROEI (= energy return on energy invested) too! This article's David Turver has a couple of very informative other ones on EROEI.]
3. The number of 'windy days per annum' appears to vary on decadal and centennial scales; see H.H. Lamb, "Climate, History and the Modern World", 2nd ed., Routledge, 1995, near pages 53 and 71. So, when planning for energy security where wind turbine generators are concerned (an oxymoron?), it is prudent to review the full wind record Regards, John C.
At some point it will dawn on even the eco zealots that we are going to need 10-20GW of CCGTs available for zero solar and wind days so i just hope that DENZ realise that and ensure there are mechanisms, however expensive, to keep those stations available unlike the coal sets that were demolished before the boilers had gone cold.
Norway's existing hydro dams (with no pumped hydro storage at all) have 88 TWh of hydro water capacity. Interestingly, that is enough to power the whole of Europe for 10 days.
To use this to support northern European long duration backup would need conversion to pumped hydro plus a lot more interconnector capacity, and a lot more generation capacity installed, but no more dams. Apparently it is possible to pair reservoirs to maybe provide maybe 25% of the 88 TWh as pumped hydro storage.
But someone has to pay for this - probably Germany. Clearly other countries would also have to send much more power to Norway than they are doing at present, to recharge the pumped hydro.
Even now, Denmark sells excess wind energy to Norway, and then buys it back at three times the cost when there is no wind. Norway is laughing all the way to the bank, while Denmark has the highest electricity costs in Europe.
You seem to be a fantasist, who forgets that economics should be at the very heart of any national infrastructure decision.
Not so simple. If you want pumped hydro there must be a lower reservoir as well as an upper one. That is lacking in most of Norway’s hydro installations. If you want to install more turbines you need the space to accommodate them, and the ability to handle the consequent flow below them. Again, not widely available.
The economics take a step change once you start pumping. Not running hydro plant and keeping the water available for use, while supplying demand from imports is close to 100% efficient. The round trip must pay for round trip transmission losses as well as the round trip through the hydro facilities. Already, pumped storage has been struggling economically when located in Germany. Putting it at the end of distant interconnection isn't going to help the economics.
In many cases, Norway was merely shutting off their hydro, to conserve water, while burning cheap Danish wind energy. Then letting the turbines flow, when Denmark was desperately short of wind energy. And cashing in on their desperation.
I don’t think the UK could do anything like that. Prof McKay (government science advisor) said we should flood the Scottish glens making low-level pumped hydro. But I am not sure the Scots would be happy with that.
The estimate is that there is more than 20 GW of additional generation potential for pumped hydro pairings of upper and lower reservoirs in the existing Norwegian system with a capability of storing 5 TWh per cycle.
Excluding the 15% or so of on-site pumped hydro round trip losses, the interconnector transmission losses are no different when incoming interconnector power is diverted to a Norwegian load, enabling a non-pumped hydro system to be stopped compared to the incoming interconnector power being used to pump water uphill as part of the pumped hydro process. The difference is just the 15% or so pumped hydro round trip efficiency itself.
General rules of thumb from other simulations show UK will likely need 2 to 3 months of seasonal electricity storage - 60 to 90 days - which is roughly in accordance with your 100 day estimate. But that is provided you are trying to do all the long duration backup from green hydrogen. If you use natural gas CCGT and offset the emissions with BECCS, then you can reduce the requirement.
Alternatively have a flight of fairies breathing in CO2 and exhaling oxygen. There is no proper proof of BECCS at the scale required at any reasonable cost, and a clear requirement to increase forest clearance to attempt it. Certainly not the basis of a global solution to CO2 emission reduction fantasies.
Storage requirements can be reduced somewhat by indulging in substantial renewables capacity overbuild. All of these things cost large sums of money for very little benefit in terms of emissions reduction. The marginal effective LCOE for a marginal wind farm soon becomes a significant multiple of the simple estimate that assumes all output is consumed at equal value, because most of the output becomes worthless.
IDAU said "There is no proper proof of BECCS at the scale required at any reasonable cost, and a clear requirement to increase forest clearance to attempt it."!
If the Drax and other BECCS is using only waste wood, then there should be no change at all to the forestry clearance operations, other than that the waste wood is collected, dried, chipped and shipped.
IDAU said "Storage requirements can be reduced somewhat by indulging in substantial renewables capacity overbuild. All of these things cost large sums of money for very little benefit in terms of emissions reduction. "
It is getting the 80%/20% and 98%/2% splits right that make wind, solar, grid batteries and green hydrogen long duration backup a feasible and economic solution compared to zero carbon alternatives.
From simulations using actuals of a Texas all wind and solar grid, you could derive some rules of thumb such as 25% overgeneration, 7.5 hours of grid batteries and at least 3 weeks of green hydrogen storage, for very crude optimisation of a reliable grid, at least in terms of meeting 2010-2012 demand. The simulations used actuals for demand and wind output with solar output estimated from solar irradiance (Texas had less than 500 MW of solar at the time - now it has 23 GW).
It is true that eliminating the last 6% of CO2 emissions from the ERCOT grid is more expensive than reducing CO2 emissions in other stages (for instance the 12% eliminated by the 7.5 hours of grid battery storage). But the fuel cost of this long duration backup (electrolysers, storage, but not capital cost of hydrogen fired CCGT) is obviously spread out a lot when calculating the impact on average electricity prices. A lot of industrial processing won't need all or some of this long duration backup (electric arc furnaces etc.). Similarly, EV smart charging and heat pumps with 24 hours of thermal storage won't need a proportion of the 7.5 hours of grid batteries.
As far as the required overgeneration is concerned, there seems to be a very sharp cutoff - with a little too little the system does not work reliably, and with a little more than the minimum all the problems disappear. This isn't too surprising. As you add generation, you satisfy more demand direct from generation, but also some of this newly directly met demand loses the slight round trip inefficiency of going through grid batteries, and other parts lose the rather bigger round trip inefficiencies of power to hydrogen to power.
Clearly, you then need more overgeneration capability for redundancy etc. on top of the sharp cut off for overgeneration. It is unlikely the 24 hour ahead power auctions are going to pay for this - it needs to be handled by capacity markets or some similar mechanism.
And all that sort of complexity is why the government has initiated the REMA review of electricity market arrangements process - to change the way the regulation works to prepare the UK grid for further green transition, all the way to net zero in 2035.
Marginal pricing for cheap wind power may thus not be that useful going forward.
Please explain to us, how sequestered CO2 can be safely stored. If it is buried in old oil fields, what is to stop a well blow-out, and a cloud of CO2 drifting across the UK east coast, killing millions?
And regards Drax - as you know Drax ran out of waste wood in the first couple of years of operation, and is now burning good timber.
Drax is the most environmentally destructive force on the planet, promoting monoculture coniferous forests - barren deserts, that have absolutely no biosphere within them.
If you want to know why Britain is so poor nowadays, it is because people like Peter inherited positions of power - and could inflict their pernicious views and policies on a previously successful and vibrant economy. Peterites are Scargill’s dream - a new managerial class who are dedicated to destroying Western civilisation.
Had 4.4 GW of grid batteries been installed in 2019, there would have been no power cut at all
I wouldn't be too sure about that. The report into the incident noted that grid batteries significantly underperformed against what they were supposed to do. It's also clear that grid batteries failed to arrest the near blackout on 22nd December last year, which had to wait until Dinorwig wound up to full power before the freq
The new 200 MWh Tesla battery at Cottingham is rated at 100 MW, so it can only power about 0.6% of average grid demand for two hours if if happens to be fully charged when called on.
David, congratulations, a hatchet job worthy of a column in Private Eye. Ed Miliband as joint chief architect of the CCA certainly has a lot to answer for.
My view for many years is that everything ‘green energy’ is corrupt to the core, they simply cannot exist without subsidy, without lies, without obfuscation, without ‘think’ tanks churning out propaganda (witness the clowns at carbon brief) and anyone criticising, regardless of their background & expertise is seen as some kind of ‘nut job’
While we took lead out of petrol we’ve clearly bred a generation or more infested with idiots.
The ‘support’ renewables require is not seed capital for first of a kind cutting edge technology it’s ongoing, never ending, ever increasing subsidies because they are either inherently crap, someone needs to extract more wealth, or both.
It’s obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that we cannot ever ‘control the weather’. A country accounting for less than 1% of global emissions is really close to insignificant. It is simply not worth wrecking what is left of our fragile economy for ‘it’ For those that on cue churn out the usual line of what about the costs of ‘not doing anything’ the reality is they are insignificant. True it might possibly get a bit warmer over a few hundred years, sea level might rise a few mm, crops may grow better, more trees but they really need to get a grip.
Renewables are a never ending economic disaster, LCOE, a mind numbingly, naive, truly ridiculous metric peddled for years by Lazard is one significant cause of that, yet if it’s ‘cheaper’ and costs are truly falling then subsidies should fall or no longer exist. That their inherent intermittency and system costs are simply ignored is criminal. As for the cost of the generation equipment, the state of the finances of European wind turbine manufacturers and Chinese solar panel producers is very telling.
Simply burning fossil fuels for electricity generation is in my view bad, it’s wasteful, fossils are really far too useful for just burning, and despite their ubiquity, far too precious. For a functioning, growing economy energy costs, reliability and availability are everything and renewables & the mythical battery ‘storage’ simply cannot and never will deliver, that’s why rational joined up thinking pushes nuclear to the very top of the heap, that the CCC, government and the ‘green’ ‘think’ tanks don’t come to that exact same solution for decarbonisation tells you all you need to know.
Thank you, David, for a devastating analysis. I would add that the use of claims in Parliament about the Levelised Cost of Electricity is even worse than you suggest:
Thank you for this excellent exposé. I'm embarrassed to admit to being somewhat shocked and horrified: just when I felt I was settling into a cynical retirement, not for the first time it's clear I was nowhere near cynical enough.
Designing an energy system is a complex systems engineering challenge, requiring full transparency and challenge, and also, by the way, engineers. Trust a committee, get a camel, and an expensive one at that.
Designing an energy system with dispatchable generators geographically dispersed near load centres and interconnected was actually quite straightforward. We've over complicated it and created a complex system which will have hidden fault lines in it somewhere. However, my real test of complexity is when i first went to the CEGB National control centre in Bankside in mid 80's it was run by 4 control engineers now goto Wokingham and there is upwards of 20 people on the floor sitting in front of computer screens and it actually looks more like a city dealing room. Also the backroom staff have exploded as well to manage the multitude of services needed to maintain grid stability not the simple governors on the steam input valves on a 500MW generating set. As my old boss used to say KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid
Thank you for your informative comment, which is much appreciated. I guess the key word is dispatchable. As David has covered, the current pricing system alone is complex. I'll take this opportunity to add my view that the levellised cost of intermittent sources means nothing without including whatever is needed in conjunction (gas plants on idle part of the time, batteries, pumped storage...) to produce dispatchable power.
National control in the 1980’s was really just that, a very high level overview, in turn they instructed six regional ‘area’ control centres (Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, East Grinstead and another in the south east who’s name escapes me for now) as to the required generation levels for that area at specific times of the day.
Those area control centres dispatched regional generation and coordinated 275kV and 400kV switching in their region (and 132kV until that was divested to the area electricity boards) either by telecontrol from those area control centres or more usually by instructing (over the phone) a further level of manned remote locations around the ‘regions’ (usually at a big substation) who each in turn monitored and controlled a cluster of maybe half a dozen substations, often with relatively primitive functionality, so three tiers of control, manned round the clock. That’s the tiers for the grid system, not distribution level control.
That setup was initially reduced to two tiers in the 1990’s as the manned remote locations in the regions were gradually closed with the installation of modern control systems, with all the ‘area’ control centres then performing all switching and finally in the late 1990’s national control took over all their current responsibilities for control as the area control centres were closed.
The article betrays a huge lack of understanding as to what the CCC climate change committee is about.
DT said "This lack of accountability has allowed the CCC to fill itself with people who have deep financial and social interests in the whole climate change agenda, in effect its own echo chamber."
The CCC members are, of course, chosen by the government. To give high quality advice, the most important aspect of the CCC is that it should be staffed by undisputed experts in various relevant fields which should encompass most of the areas that the committee will be advising on.
You can't have acknowledged experts in an area without them having worked in that area for a number of years. And any expert worth his or her salt will ending up acting as a consultant to a number of companies or organisations. That is precisely what the CCC should be tapping into. If there were not a list of a few or more registered interests of the climate change committee then the government would clearly have chosen the wrong people to be members of that committee.
This setup is very similar to the way the Bank of England monetary policy committee is chosen - by the government. And after that the BoE MPC has complete independence to set interest rates. But the CCC doesn't have any direct authority. All it can do is make recommendations to the government and parliament, which they can accept, reject, or alter.
And parliament has so far accepted almost all of the recommendations for targets that the CCC has proposed.
DT said "The CCC has not behaved appropriately and there are insufficient checks and balances to keep it on the straight and narrow. "
You don't appoint a completely independent committee, then hamstring them with government micro management. We don't do if for the BoE MPC and should not do it for the UK CCC either.
DT said " Political parties should take this opportunity to promise in their manifestos to disband the Climate Change Committee and return control of energy and climate policy to MPs, who are accountable to their constituents."
If Sunak were so stupid as to put the abolition of the CCC and the abandonment of net zero in the conservative manifesto for the July 4th election, the outcome would be very clear from the opinion polling on climate. The conservatives would not only lose even more seats than than it is already going to, but it might possibly even result in the breakup of the conservative party.
And climate change is not a constituency by constituency effect - it is a global problem, and will affect the whole of the UK. So it is a "tragedy of the commons" issue - everyone can do better for themselves by exploiting more and more of a scarce resource, but eventually everyone ends up with nothing.
Further, very few MPs have enough time to devote to climate change. Most typically it is those who are climate deniers who are partly funded by fossil fuel interests such as JRM, who try to pressure other MPs to do the wrong thing.
There's a lot missing from the article - such as that the House of Lords register compliance investigation found that Lord Deben was abiding by the disclosure rules. And that the Drax employee on the committee did not participate in the decision making when the CCC was reporting on biomass generation.
This latter is, of course, an example of how the CCC works, but is not fairly represented in the article.
Further, the UK CCC does get independently audited on an annual basis, and this is not mentioned either, despite the complaints in the article about precisely this.
Most people,, including me, believe that the MPC have done a pretty good job of stabilising UK inflation around the 2% target.
She provided them with extensive evidence/opinions and contacts to support her view as technical director at Drax with a degree in forestry. How nice of her to leave the room when they voted on what to say. Or maybe she simply sat there and didn't vote. The wretched scheme is even named after her. ReBECCS Heat-on.
Independent audit is simply concerned with checking that there is no obvious evidence of misappropriation of public funds and that the accounts department has proper procedures in place etc.
There is no independent audit of the quality of the work they do and commission that is acknowledged and published officially. Parliament has shown itself incapable of doing that job in Select Committee or in debate on carbon budgets and targets.
There are plenty of people out there, who could give truly independent advice, without having a finger in the Greeney Pie. Myself, Oldbrew, and DT, for example, and there will be hundreds of others out there who could give much better advice.
I, for example, wrote a report on renewable energy 20 years ago - spelling out the very dangers that can now clearly see. The failings of renewables were easy to see, to anyone with half a brain and no incentive to jump on the lucrative Greeney bandwagon.
Conversely, anyone in government, industry, or academia knew they would have to ride the Greeney bandwagon, to maintain their income and career. They long ago saw those who were cancelled and dumped, for presenting ‘Inconvenient Truths’ to the climate industry and their pet politicians and media hacks. Academics like: Prof David Bellamy, Prof Peter Ridd, Prof Svensmark, Prof Judith Curry, Prof Tim Ball, and many others (and now critic Mark Steyn, who was fine a million dollars for making fun of the Mann-pig).
Climate is a religion, complete with an invisible global god, two high priests, several religious texts, many acolytes, a child saint, several hair-shirt penances, many financial indulgences, and whole host of useful idiots. Not sure which category you would ascribe to.
The CCC report is a sacred text that you feel compelled to defend, because it is a pillar of the new religion. And you will defend it to the end, even if it contains more holes than Swiss cheese. Stand back for a moment, and look at all the holes. And just think for a moment, of the calamity that will befall this nation and the Western world, if those many holes are not plugged by 2035.
(Note: China and lndia don’t care, because they have no intention of committing the self-immolation that you so obviously desire.)
Firstly you say tidal power is useless because it causes 4 periods a day when no power is available, to which you claim there is no solution.
But, of course, there is an easy solution. A tidal power station might generate, say 300 MW for 2 hours, followed by a gap of 4 hours, then cycling again. If you fit just a little over 400 MWh of battery storage with an efficiency of 92% to it then you can smooth that out to 94 MW of continuous power. No need for backup fossil fuel generation.
But you miss the real issue with tidal storage, which is that there are spring and neap tides, when the sun earth and moon are in a straight line or form a right angle. This affects generation (including smoothed generation). Output is predictable thousands of years in advance.
Secondly you said "That means we actually need some 120 gw of installed wind generation capacity to cover just 40% of total UK electrical demand."
See https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2023-05-01&&_k=pfnihc. Over the last 12 calendar months, with around 27 GW total of wind (summing both onshore and offshore), 29.98% (call it 30%) of UK electricity supply has come from wind power. To get to 40% by boosting offshore wind will probably require less than another 13 GW of offshore wind (which has a much higher capacity factor) for a combined total of 40 GW of wind power capacity. That is only one third of what you predicted.
So you were wrong on the first two of your 2009 predictions and I'm not going to read and critique the rest. But of course the wind prediction is very key - had you been in a position to advise, then UK would have missed out on its most valuable energy resource of all.
Your remarks about climate are well wide of the mark of both the physics and the current 1.2 to 1.6 degree rise over historical temperatures as CO2 has risen from 280 ppm to 420 ppm.
If it cost Steyn 1 million dollars he had it coming. I hope Mann got decent costs out of it.
You say "The CCC report is a sacred text that you feel compelled to defend, because it is a pillar of the new religion. And you will defend it to the end, even if it contains more holes than Swiss cheese. "
I have a recent PhD in physics, which gives me a qualification in objective analysis, as well as other skills. And I wouldn't feel compelled to defend the CCC if I felt they had something wrong. Though I will always take the trouble to understand what they are saying, because they commission research which is as objective as they can make it.
You say "China and lndia don’t care, because they have no intention of committing the self-immolation that you so obviously desire"
India is a lower emitter than the USA at this point.
China is obviously the world's biggest CO2 emitter. But it installed 292 GW of wind and solar in 2023, which is more than the rest of the world put together (global total was 510 GW, so the rest of the world installed around 220 GW of wind and solar). Assuming that is what you mean by "self immolation", then you clearly are wrong about China too. China is obviously very serious about installing wind and solar.
And again, China's vehicle sales were 25% BEVs in 2023, which Europe was around 16% and the USA was 7.7%. More self-immolation from China which "doesn't care" according to you.
If China is what happens when you "don't care" then bring it on - the west could do with a huge dose of "not caring" Chinese style to boost renewables and BEVs.
The truth is that wind, solar and BEVs are the technology of the future, and China and Europe know this. Some in the USA aren't as sure, though Biden clearly knows it too.
Further, if China can install another 30% of wind and solar each year by 2025 then Chinese coal use on the grid will start to fall. That is just straight calculation. You could work it out for yourself. China has committed to "peak CO2 emissions BEFORE 2030", and it looks possible it might achieve this next year.
300 mw of tidal is a spit in the ocean, to our 2050 needs. The UK will be needing some 150 gw of electricity, by 2050. Something like 1,200 twh per year. Tidal plus a battery are not going to help at all, and will cost a fortune (with renewables, it is always two systems, instead of one). And yes, I do discuss neap tides, because tidal produces bugger all then. Tidal is a non-starter, and the Greeneys would never allow their ‘habitats’ to be destroyed.
You miss the point. You were claiming tidal power is an intermittent source, but it is actually easy and cheap to convert it to a continuous source of power which doesn't need fossil fuel generation.
What's the economic issue with wind (or solar) plus a couple of hours of battery? Two vs one isn't a numerical analysis of the additional cost. Grid batteries are likely to come in at less than $100/kWh by 2035, based on expected sodium ion battery prices.
You DON'T discuss the issue of spring and neap tides until someone challenges you on your claimed unreliability for tidal power - it is not in the body of your article on WUWT.
1. To be precise, tidal is a CYCLIC variable resource rather than an intermittent resource. The word intermittent is probably inappropriate because it implies random, while tidal is anything but random - the cycle and the output can be predicted thousands of years in advance for any given day and time of day.
It cycles every 6 hours - there are two high tides and two low tides each day. You know that.
Because tidal is a cyclic resource, generating for 2 hours then not generating for another 4, you can predict precisely how much battery storage will turn it into a baseload resource. Specifically to turn tidal into a baseload resource you need storage configured roughly with a charging power of 2/3rds of the maximum output of the raw tidal generators. The output power has to be one third of the maximum output of the tidal generators. And the MWh needs to be the maximum output of the tidal generators x 4/3. But if I were you, I would configure the storage output power to be 2/3rds of the maximum output of the raw tidal generators.
There you are - a complete free design of tidal lagoon firming up storage for you.
b. "Why would we expect tidal to be any different"
Because we know everything about when and how much it will generate. It is set in the stars (well, in the sun and moon anyway).
This is not true of wind and solar, which is weather dependent and much more random. We know the maximum solar output by time of day thousands of years in advance (and we know it is zero at night). But, unlike tidal, we don't know how much of the maximum output we will get, more than a day or so in advance.
c. "Smoothing out tidal intermittency reduces the claimed peak output by half."
This is misleading in two ways
Firstly, the fact you have the storage to convert tidal into a baseload resource does not mean you have to use it all the time. If you want to supply raw peak tidal output to the grid - say if it occurs two hours before the end of the evening peak demand period, then you can do it. And you can save the discharge of the batteries to the previous two hours of the peak demand period too (to give 2/3rd of raw peak tidal output instead of the 1/3rd which would give you smooth baseline power.
Secondly, if you are generating 2 hours in 6, then perfect smoothing reduces the peak output from the plant by 2/3rds, not half.
d. "The Greeneys would never allow the destruction of tidal habitats."
We don't know about this yet. The Swansea tidal lagoon project has failed so far due to lack of government funding - not because of environmental objections.
As you know, temperature data homogenisation has always made historic temperatures colder, and recent temperatures warmer. A full half of the claimed warming has been caused by poor sensor positioning and data manipulation.
In addition, the proposed ‘climate emergency’ is a blatant lie. I would have thought that your phd would have allowed you to determine this yourself. But here are some helpful guides for you.
So where is the climate emergency in those graphs?
In addition, why do you fear plant-food? CO2 has increased agricultural production by 20%, so that a billion people depend on this extra CO2 for their livelihoods. Do you really want a billion people to starve, to somehow prevent a non-existent climate ‘emergency’ that is all in your mind?
RE said "As you know, temperature data homogenisation has always made historic temperatures colder, and recent temperatures warmer. "
This is completely wrong.
Historical land surface temperatures have generally been adjusted down slightly, but historical ocean surface temperatures have generally been adjusted up rather more. And there is a lot more ocean than land.
RE said "I would have thought that your PhD would have allowed you to determine this yourself. "
I took the unrelated opportunity to attend an atmospheric physics course during my PhD, so am familiar with all the physics of global warming. And I can tell you there isn't a significant flaw with mainstream climatology.
The ocean heat content figures are a clear repudiation of the climate denier claims that there is no fast warming going on. It is convincing because it documents the raw energy imbalance caused by the 50% increase in CO2. It also depends entirely on a set of experimental measurements, and not on climate modelling.
You get side tracked by tornadoes and polar bears etc., even getting the effect of temperature dataset adjustments the wrong way around, but completely ignore the base evidence above.
Nobody is denying that there has been a little warming - just that it has been grossly exaggerated by alarmists. Plus the reason for this warming is still unknown.
So there has been half a degree of warming in 45 years. And much of that has been influenced by oceanic cycles, rather than CO2 - cycles like the long-term AMO. And also by surface albedo changes, due to Chinese industrial soot, which is another factor.
Yet the tropical cyclone data, which you choose to ignore, suggests that oceanic warming is not significant. Numbers of hurricanes are reducing, which is the opposite of what was originally forecast. Yes, climate ‘scientists’ were wrong, yet again.
And you fail to demonstrate any detrimental effects of warming. Crop yields are increasing, as NASA admits. While the climate is more benign, with less tornadoes and less hurricanes.
What is not to like, about a little warming?
And as you know, any slight influence CO2 may be having on climate, gets weaker and weaker. The next half a degree of warming will take 80 years. (And many more years than that, if present warming is heavily influenced by albedo and oceanic cycles).
So why is all this money being spent, on a non-problem?
There is no need to reduce CO2.
Especially when China and India are INCREASING CO2.
National self-immolation is not a winning strategy.
And hugely detrimental for citizens.
Why is the CCC not pointing this out to government?
Is it because too many members have their finger in the pie?
Your first chart ignores the significant warming we have seen recently, probably because of averaging applied first - which de-emphasises both start and end periods. If you just plot the trend for the full UAH 6.0 data you get 0.7 degrees of warming as at https://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/trend/plot/rss/trend/plot/best/from:1960/trend (red line)
Or you get 1.0 degrees of warming for the RSS (green line) from 1978, or, from 1960 onwards, close to 1.2 degrees C of warming from the BEST surface land and sea dataset (blue line).
RE said "And as you know, any slight influence CO2 may be having on climate, gets weaker and weaker."
While this is true, you are missing the key point that equilibrium surface temperatures are a long way from having caught up with the forcing from current CO2 levels yet. By that I mean that surface temperatures have to rise enough to eliminate the forcing at the top of the atmosphere. Then any further changes in CO2 are on top of that, with roughly a log law.
So we have added 50% to 280 ppm of CO2 to get to 420 ppm. To go from 420 ppm to 560 ppm ( a doubling from long term levels) will change equilibrium surface temperatures by roughly 2/3rds of the change in going from 280 to 420 ppm. If temperatures have gone up by 1.2 to 1.6 degrees C already, going to 560 ppm will cause another 0.8 to 1.0 degrees to take us to 2.0 to 2.6 degrees. And that is before you take into account the lag from not reaching equilibrium surface temperatures yet for 420 ppm CO2.
RE said "So why is all this money being spent, on a non-problem?"
It isn't a non problem. The Chinese may have to move 100 million people away from the North China Plain because, in an extreme heat wave, agricultural workers there may not be able to survive outdoors in the shade by 2100 - with a wet bulb temperature of more than 37 degrees C people die in the shade. That is just one huge example.
Further it isn't clear that power from a 2035 UK net zero grid will cost any more for consumers than current electricity prices - you get some economies of scale out of the increase in demand. It would be really difficult to get more expensive than electricity prices during 2023, thanks to Putin's war. And while UK is dependent on fossil fuels (at European market prices even if produced in the UK), then there is always a possibility of something similar happening again.
As explained before, China is doing far more than UK is to reduce its CO2 emissions. It just starts off at a much worse place.
There is still a huge fossil fuel lobby effort to persuade voters that climate change is not real, and that we should take on board doom (too late), delay (wait until we are richer) and distraction (look at China - except they were clearly the heroes in 2023). None of the mainstream climate scientists or green energy advocates are fools. They understand the issues and the possible solutions to them.
Of course we can and possibly will fill the N.Sea up with windmills and improve the average amount of power delivered across a calendar year and get to 40% or more for sure but what about the other 60%? That has come from somewhere and a good chunk of it should have been nuclear but won't be so short of telling people they can only have power when the wind and sun is available gas has to remain on the system for some time to come. This must be obvious to people like yourself that there is no way we can achieve net zero electricity generation by 2035 let alone Labours insane 2030 goal? So what we need is a rational debate that acknowledges firstly the practicalities of moving away from gas by 2030/5 isn't possible secondly in whatever we do to decrease emissions it won't be cheaper thirdly that some peoples backyards will have to be impacted to build the necessary infrastructure whether they like it or not. If any one of the mainstream parties has this policy id be happy to lend them my vote.
The point about 40% of UK supply from wind was that Ralph Ellis had forecast in 2006 that it would take 120 GW of wind power capacity to get there, and it looks very much as if we will blow 40% wind power supply with only 40 GW of a combination of 1/3rd onshore wind and 2/3 offshore wind capacity. He was claiming he should be on the CCC because he could give good advice, but is out on this one by a factor of around 3.
N said "What about the other 60%" [of UK supply other than that coming from wind when it gets to 40%]
UK has a target of 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030 (which it might now fail to meet by a year or so). That means it has to install another 36 GW or so of offshore wind, plus some onshore wind which I will ignore right now.
New UK offshore wind is likely to come in at an average capacity factor of 55%. So 36 GW of extra capacity is worth 20 GW of extra average generation, on top of the 30% supply from wind over the last 12 calendar months. Demand over the last 12 months has averaged 30 GW, so average supply must be something like 35 GW to account for all losses. Wind power over the last 12 calendar months averages 9.5 GW. 9.5 GW + 20 GW = 29.5 GW which is notionally 84% of UK electricity supply. But a lot of this is going to be at the wrong time (when demand is already fully satisfied). It is perhaps reasonable to assume that wind power would supply 70% of UK demand if required supply remains 35 GW on average.
There is also a pipeline of 95 GW of grid batteries, which should help achieve this target.
Then the solar target is 60 GW by 2035 - an increase of 45 GW or so, likely with a capacity factor of 11%. So this might deliver an average of 5 GW, mainly in summer (when offshore wind generates only half what it does in winter. That would be 14% of supply. By 2035 we could have 70 + 14 = 84% of supply from wind and solar, plus the 18% of unused wind power for export or green hydrogen production or whatever - all available.
That is assuming we don't yet get a huge uptake of heat pumps (no sign of it so far) boosting demand. By 2030 EV charging could add no more than 5 GW to average load, even if EV sales are 90% plus by then. That might absorb some of the surplus offshore wind power.
We can't move away from gas completely by 2030, but it is quite likely supply from gas will be down to 10% by then (from 30% over the last 12 calendar months - https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2023-05-01&&_k=pfnihc). Some BECCS negative emissions offsets should be available by 2030 - whether it is enough to offset residual gas use I doubt, but it certainly should be by 2035 to give a net zero grid. Keeping the BECCS and using green hydrogen should enable the UK grid to be slightly negative emissions by 2035.
That's a reasonable scenario and for sure gas displacement will increase as wind and solar buildout increases. However, there remains a vast gap on how to deal with windless and sunless days and battery energy storage isn't the answer even with that highly speculative pipeline it will never be enough. Thus it would be act of sheer folly to not have sufficient CCGTs still available to cover for those occasions when wind and solar aren't available, however expensive that might be, its a necessary price that has to be borne to largely decarbonise electricity supply. I would say the far bigger issue is going to be road transport as its pretty clear EVs aren't going to achieve the levels of penetration necessary even if we sell out completely to the Chinese. Heat pumps are another white elephant and hydrogen is cloud cuckoo land. So we will be left with the need to retain gas as primary heat source and petrol/diesel as transport source of energy. So in all likelihood the ESO fantasy energy forecasts even at the "falling short" level are now well ahead of what reality will be. In some respects that's just as well given the woeful buildout of the necessary grid infrastructure but on the other it risks an oversized grid transmission and generation system. The electricity industry has form for this with a massive overbuild of coal fired stations in the 60's that only really got usefully used when the AGR programme went pear shaped.
In summary, unless we want to fundamentally upturn peoples lives, what im saying here is we need to accept that fossil and renewables are going to need coexist for sometime yet and setting unachievable deadlines will just cost us more so better to develop a policy that recognises that.
If residual gas plant supply is down to 10% by 2030, then the addition of 15 GW of electrolysers and a conversion of the CCGTs to hydrogen fuel would not be that costly and could move the grid to net zero. It might need a little more offshore wind overgeneration, but that is surely coming after 2030, and is likely to lead to significant offshore wind exports through interconnectors after 2030.
Although not everyone can see the trends yet, it looks as if the UK already has most of the major targets and plans in place to get to net zero by 2035 with no real sweat. Hitting it by 2030 might be dependent on significant BECCS offset for natural gas CCGT backup for a few years.
If typical BEV prices drop below fossil fuel vehicle prices by 2026, as expected, then there is no reason why any of the 80% of drivers with off street parking at home or at work (on which a charge point can be installed) would buy a new fossil fuel car after 2028 maybe.
Note that this BEV price drop was forecast for quite a while, but not believed by many. Now everyone believes that Chinese BEV exports will be that cheap and that the issue is the Chinese cleaning up with BEV exports to UK at these prices. For me, the thing that might restrict new BEV sales to 90% rather than 100% is the possible lack of government action to ensure those who have to charge on street have enough public chargers and are not paying through the nose for electricity from them.
So I think you are unduly pessimistic on the BEV transition. Look at how quickly the sales transition happened in Norway once the BEV price (after subsidy) dropped below the cost of fossil fuel cars. Norway is now at 80% BEV, 10% PHEV and 10% fossil fuel car sales.
N said "We need to accept that fossil and renewables are going to need coexist for sometime yet and setting unachievable deadlines will just cost us more so better to develop a policy that recognises that."
Surely the policy should just be to continue to displace fossil fuels with green technology as fast as possible. That will automatically cut fossil fuel production - there's no need to close existing oil or gas wells. But by the same token, there's no point in spending scarce UK investment money in developing more fossil fuel production if it is not needed. As one example, over 30 years, installing 7 GW of offshore wind from one annual auction will produce about the same quantity of electricity as would allowing UK mainland fracking and using the gas produced to generate electricity. And the offshore wind would be on reasonable price fixed price
contracts with annual CPI uplifts, whereas the fracked gas would be sold at European market rates which are at the mercy of price fluctuations caused by geopolitics.
New UK offshore wind is likely to come in at an average capacity factor of 55%
There is no evidence to support this claim. The newest wind farms are in any case first in line to curtail because they lose their subsidies in any hour with negative prices, and the result is much lower capacity factors. Wind farms are increasingly taking each other's wind, reducing their output. Hornsea 2 is performing worse than Hornsea 1 for example. Maintenance problems seem to be eating into performance too.
There may be 95GW of battery wishful thinking, but to call this a pipeline is nonsense. How could 95GW of battery ever earn an income, even at say 1 hour duration?
The FID for Dogger Bank C offshore wind was for a capacity factor of 55%. And you would expect a FID to be reasonably conservative in terms of expected revenue. Dogger Bank offshore wind will use 13 and 14 MW models GE Haliade X wind turbines.
Then there is the GWA Global Wind Atlas at https://globalwindatlas.info/en. Zoom in on UK, set a class I turbine capacity factor in the menu top left, and put your mouse cursor (best done on a PC not a mobile device) around Dogger Bank. That confirms an expected capacity factor of 55-60% on the scale on the bottom right on the map bit.
Then note that a number of areas north of Scotland have higher capacity factors. In particular, offshore west of the Shetlands starts around 62% and tends to get higher the further west you go. There may be areas where capacity factors reach 70%.
It would be surprising indeed if the average CF for the floating offshore turbines planned north of Scotland was not in excess of 55%.
Further, the GWA probably is geared for hub heights of 100m, while the Haliade X and similar turbines > 13 MW are going to be hub height 140m and growing with time for new variants - after all, it only needs a taller tower, not a redesign of rotor or nacelle.
I keep checking the Dogger Bank A output on Elexon, but this is sporadic and won't give a good indication of CF until Dogger Bank goes live (hopefully soon). I think the issue delaying this has been availability of jacking up vessels.
Wind farms can take each other's wind. The average power available offshore to a huge array of turbines (say 200km by 200km) is 0.3 W/m^2. But typically, if the extents of the wind farms occupy only 10% of the available area, you will get 3 W/m^2 within the wind farms and the vertical friction of the wind will replenish the air momentum from above, outside the wind farms. Two wind farms can only interfere with each other when the wind is in two specific directions, and if they are too close - you would have to look at the relevant wind roses.
Battery pipelines are always the "wishful thinking" version, and the UK pipeline is 95 GW. Since the UK peak hour demand is currently only 60 GW you would indeed not expect 95 GW to be financially viable. But up to 60 GW probably will be. The projects are likely to consolidate down to a lower power, but with higher duration. 4 hours is a good duration to cope with UK evening peak times, for instance.
That assumes it is expensive to provide more GW of power for the same GWh of energy stored. If it isn't, then we may get 95 GW.
The above argument ignores the possibility of profitable exports of battery power (charged with offshore wind) to Europe, of course. UK already has over 10 GW of interconnectors planned and that might double within a decade. We shall see.
I am sure you could wipe the floor with any of us on the quantum effects in femto- and atto- Farad capacitors, though a friend of mine helped write the software ARM use in chip design which has to look at such things so I know more about it than you might suppose. However, it is plain you are not an authority on energy systems and economics, although you have a repertoire of propaganda that seems to derive from references at Wikipedia.
IDAU said "I am sure you could wipe the floor with any of us on the quantum effects in femto- and atto- Farad capacitors [on chips]"
Actually, I doubt I could, for one good reason. The aim of the capacitors on chips is to work at low voltage around 1-2 volts maybe and to have the maximum possible capacitance per area - thus saving chip real estate for more useful purposes. For chip use, the "dead layers" at the electrodes of a capacitor increase the voltage and decrease the capacitance and are thus undesirable. The chip guys want to eliminate dead layers if possible, and this was what all but one of the research papers were focused on when I was doing literature reviews.
But that is the opposite of what my research was all about. My research was to exploit these dead layers, which actually increase the voltage across a capacitor for a given state of charge ~= polarisation, which thus increases the stored energy. With good design, these dead layers cannot readily break down, unlike the bulk dielectric, but can drop a decent fraction of a volt each. My aim was to investigate how to maximise the energy density in ceramic capacitors with very many very thin dielectric layers each separated by a disconnected conducting layer to give two interfacial voltage drops (plus the voltage drop across the dielectric which would be smaller in the optimal case). So the resulting device would be oriented towards high voltage energy storage and not towards low voltage chip operation.
Although the effect is real and could be used to implement ceramic capacitors with a higher energy density than existing ceramic capacitors, the only real advantages they have are in high frequency operations or in hot environments such as jet engines maybe. It also looks like they would cost too much to produce to be commercially viable. Supercapacitors beat them hands down for energy density in more normal environments, as do batteries, though both of these energy storage devices respond far slower than ceramic capacitors.
You assert that "climate change is not a constituency by constituency effect - it is a global problem". Do you even consider that it might not be? Or that our small nation can't really have any meaningful effect on global CO2? Or that warming is better than cooling?, or that the CO2 effect is already saturated? Or that even if CO2 had an effect, mitigation might be a better option that restricting CO2 output? Or that there are benefits to additional CO2 in greening the world? Yet our rulers have granted the CCC all these undemocratic powers to influence our lives and take risks with our electricity system and prices. Who do I vote for if I don't want any of this?
DW asks "You assert that "climate change is not a constituency by constituency effect - it is a global problem". Do you even consider that it might not be? "
There don't seem to be many countries or regions of the world where there are only advantages from global warming, if that is what you mean. But there might be some parliamentary constituencies in the UK in that position.
DW said "Or that our small nation can't really have any meaningful effect on global CO2? "
My standard counter arguments to this objection include splitting up China into 26 separate countries by province. Then each crudely has around the same emissions and same population as the UK. So if UK has no meaningful effect on global CO2, then neither does any individual one of these new Chinese province countries. So if it is OK for UK not to take any further action on climate change, then it would be OK for none of the new Chinese province countries to do nothing too.
Except the issue is that you haven't actually resolved global warming then - just ignored it by a trick. So the logical conclusion is that not only all the small Chinese province countries, but also the UK has to do something about CO2 emissions.
The next questions is - how much should all 27 of us do about it? Well you could ask for actions based on:-
- China's current emissions of 29x UK (29% vs 1%?)
- China's historical emissions of 3x UK (14% vs 4.6%)
- Chinas population of 20x UK (1.4bn vs 70m)
- Chinas dollar GDP of 6x UK ($18tr vs $3tr)
Now China installed 292 GW of wind and solar in 2023. Pro rata that by each of the above ratios and you would be asking UK to install roughly 10 GW, 100GW, 15GW or 50 GW of wind and solar. The snag is that whichever ratio you go with, UK didn't hit it in 2023.
In 2023 UK installed around 1.7 GW of solar and just over 2 GW of wind power - total 4 GW. But the minimum fair ratio for UK to install would required 10 GW, and the maximum ration would be 100 GW. So, on any measure I can think of, the UK didn't do as well as China in 2023.
DW said "Or that warming is better than cooling?, or that the CO2 effect is already saturated? "
Warming may be better than cooling, but it is not better than temperatures staying at what they were a few years ago.
The CO2 effect is not saturated. While the centre of the main CO2 infrared band is saturated, the two side wings of it are most definitely not. And these are not saturated by the combination of CO2 and H2O either.
DW said "Or that even if CO2 had an effect, mitigation might be a better option that restricting CO2 output? "
You can't mitigate enough. It is just far cheaper to restrict CO2 emissions.
DW said "Yet our rulers have granted the CCC all these undemocratic powers to influence our lives and take risks with our electricity system and prices. "
Firstly the government appoints all the CCC members. Secondly the CCC only has an advisory role in policy - parliament takes decisions on which of the CCC recommendations to accept or not. This all seems pretty democratic to me as the CCC has no direct power - only influence.
Compare that with the Bank of England MPC monetary policy committee are all appointed by the government, but who directly control interest rates without the decision needing to be ratified by parliament.
Vote Reform if you don't want any of this. But the snag is that there are too few of you not wanting it to get anyone elected - 80%+ of UK voters support net zero and action on climate change. If the Tory party made scrapping net zero targets part of its election manifesto, it would contribute to a much more savage decimation of its MPs than is currently predicted.
You could emigrate to Russia or one of the Middle Eastern countries who don't believe in climate action. But if I were you I would stay put in the UK - because life will surely be more tolerable here, despite the rest of us continuing to address global warming.
And, have you ever driven an EV? Almost everyone who owns one thinks it is the best car they have ever owned, including me with my lowly 2015 Nissan Leaf. I hate having do drive my wife's 2018 Toyota Yaris petrol car.
I was rather thinking that the case for it being a man made (CO2) global problem has not been adequately made. Relax that assumption and see where it takes you. The null hypothesis should be that man made CO2 emissions have no effect. Stick with that. For example, when the world locked down most economic activity 2 or 3 years ago it had zero effect on CO2 at Mauna Loa - a reality check! So why do you think CCC proposals will be any different?
Next step is the belief/assumption that reducing CO2 will reduce global temperature. Where is the reality check for that? And do we want it ?
Is there anything you can point to to expand your comment on saturation?
Ditto with your assertion that reducing CO2 is cheaper than mitigation. Spending trillions on something that we don’t know is going to have any effect (CO2 reduction) versus mitigating any problems as they arise seems bonkers to me. CO2 reduction has zero track record.
In our two-party system neither is querying Net Zero, which has effectively become dogma that is never questioned. I didnt vote for it. Reform is a red herring.
DW said "I was rather thinking that the case for it being a man made (CO2) global problem has not been adequately made."
It is not a matter for debate, it is a matter of physics. As Nate Silver put it, there is a clear and well researched physical mechanism as to why human induced CO2 emissions should cause warming. And it is clear that as Mauna Loa CO2 reading have increase, ocean heat content has gone up. 90% of the global warming net incoming energy ends up in the oceans, so you should expect a very clear signal of global warming there, and that is precisely what you see at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content. It will be clear because the signal is much larger than the surface temperature signal.
DW said "The null hypothesis should be that man made CO2 emissions have no effect. "
Look at the ocean heat content. Clearly there is steady warming going on and not a trace of any sort of cyclic temperature rise - somewhere between a straight line and a slowly expanding exponential rise in ocean heat content.
DW said "For example, when the world locked down most economic activity 2 or 3 years ago it had zero effect on CO2 at Mauna Loa - a reality check!"
This is very straightforward. In 2020, global CO2 emissions dropped 5.4% from 37 bn tonnes in 2019 to 35 bn tonnes in 2020, then made up most of that drop in 2021 and set a new record in 2022. But Mauna Loa does not measure CO2 emissions - it measures the CUMULATIVE CO2 in the atmosphere, which is the original 280 ppm plus roughly half of all the CO2 humans have caused to be added to the atmosphere. So when you look at the chart for Mauna Loa, what you should be looking for is a very slightly smaller increase in 2020 than for the previous year. But the change is too small to see on the chart - CO2 in the atmosphere should be going up by roughly half of the 35 to 37 billion tonnes. Whether is was the smaller or larger figure, it won't be discernible by eye.
Only if 2020 CO2 emissions were zero would you have seen the 2020 figure at the same level on the chart as the previous year. But to a good first approximation they were very similar to the previous year! See the zoomed in chart for a few years at https://insight.factset.com/mauna-loa-and-ppm-analyzing-the-latest-data.
The other snag is that CO2 takes about a year for CO2 to mix from northern to southern hemisphere and vice versa. But only weeks to months to mix within one of the hemispheres. Mauna Loa is at roughly 20 degrees N latitude, so won't pick up the slow down in 2020 southern emissions until 2021, not 2022. And, although Mauna Loa is fairly well isolated, there is still some small element of random type noise in the readings to make it difficult to pick up a drop of 2 bn tonnes per year in emissions.
Surely you don't dispute that human induced CO2 emissions increase the CO2 levels in the atmosphere? The process is that humans add more CO2 in a particular year, then after a few years approximately half of the addition gets absorbed by the sea surface and biosphere. So the atmosphere retains roughly half of the original emissions which then stays there for hundreds if not thousands of years and increases CO2 levels. Some of the half that gets absorbed by the sea surface makes the sea more acidic, of course.
There is also a huge, annual, cyclic dynamic interchange of CO2 between atmosphere, sea surface and biosphere. But on the same day of each year this returns to its starting level a year previously. So it doesn't affect the long term upward trend of CO2, but just imposes an annual cycle on it which you can see in the Mauna Loa figures.
So there is clearly something going on - CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise in line with half of cumulative, human induced emissions, and ocean heat content rises with this, without showing any cyclic behaviour.
You now have to select a hypothesis to research in detail to confirm or otherwise. In the last but one century, in an article published in 1896 in the Philosophical Magazine, Arrhenius predicted human burning of fossil fuels would increase temperatures. Then in 1964 Manabe and Strickler published their seminal paper "Thermal equilibrium of the atmosphere with a convective adjustment". It was the first paper to produce a theory as to what causes the measured vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere which it got roughly right except for the poles.
After that, the techniques in the paper were increasingly used for weather modelling and climate modelling. The science was expanded, and there was no dispute that this described the mechanism of the greenhouse effect.
Then the oil companies started to push climate denial for corporate rather than scientific reasons. Prior to that there were zero disagreements about about standard atmospheric science or climatology. When the disagreements came, they were motivated by corporate greed and later politics, not by science.
Because CO2 is clearly going up as humans add it to the atmosphere, the ocean heat content is rising steadily, and standard atmospheric physics processes work extremely well for weather forecasting etc. the onus is not on the climatologists to prove anything - because they already have. If someone disputes the link between human induced CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 levels, or between atmospheric CO2 levels and the level of forcing at the top of the atmosphere leading to rises in ocean heat content, then they have to come up with a credible alternative mechanism. So far no one has done this with the degree of rigour required. Those who dispute climate science have come up with plenty of suggestions - most of them with huge flaws. But no one has come up with a complete credible alternative that explains the atmosphere and warming, without invoking human induced CO2 emissions.
DW said "Next step is the belief/assumption that reducing CO2 will reduce global temperature."
It is a prediction based on standard atmospheric physics.
Except you have to be careful what it means. Reducing annual CO2 emission while there still are emissions some does not reduce temperatures - it just makes them increase more slowly. You would have to actually net remove CO2 from the atmosphere to eventually bring temperatures down, which is decades away. And there are also some years of lag between atmospheric CO2 increasing, and the new equilibrium temperature of the atmosphere with that level of CO2 being reached. So temperatures will still continue to go up for a while even at the point where we start net removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
DW asked "Is there anything you can point to to expand your comment on saturation?"
I was despairing on this one because I have just the paper on my PC, but it is normally paywalled. But I have just found a version on a Harvard web site.
The top chart of figure 5b) shows you what happens the radiative flux emitted at the top the atmosphere if you change CO2 levels. The baseline for comparison (labelled 1 x CO2) is for CO2 at 389 ppm, because that is what it was around 2013 when the paper was written.
Be careful of the other charts. The left hand and right hand charts on the top and bottom lines correspond to each other. But for lines 2, 3 and 4 of the charts the left hand charts and right hand charts are for different CO2 concentrations. I think I did complain to Joanna Haigh at one point, but it was really too late by then! Just make sure you read the concentration on each chart if trying to relate the left side charts to the right side charts.
If you have any questions I am happy to try to answer them. If I can't I should be able to contact someone who can. Joanna Haigh retired over 10 years ago.
DW said "Spending trillions on something that we don’t know is going to have any effect (CO2 reduction) versus mitigating any problems as they arise seems bonkers to me."
Most of us are pretty sure that CO2 emissions reduction do have an effect - because CO2 emissions do have an effect, but this only slows the rate at which problems develop (which is critical).
DW said "CO2 reduction has zero track record."
As I said above, it will be decades before we can start actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere, as opposed to just slowing down the rate we put it into the atmosphere.
DW said "In our two-party system neither is querying Net Zero, which has effectively become dogma that is never questioned. "
Just about every country in the world is signed up to the Paris climate agreement. That includes just about all nationalities, all political systems, all races, all languages. The reason is that everyone understands that climate science is settled science. Calling it "dogma" is irrelevant - you could equally well call the law of thermodynamics, general relativity and quantum mechanics "dogma". Typically the more a scientist knows about climate science, the less he or she disputes it, though there are a very small percentage of very public exceptions.
You live in a democracy, at least at the moment, so are going to continue to get overruled by the majority.
“Climate change” is a massive, decades-old globalist hoax and it’s a waste of time trying to reason with puppet Uniparty politicians. The electorate now has a once-in-many-decades chance to vote them all out of office.
That article is rubbish and, on a cursory inspection, contains the following serious flaws.
1) It is true that warming often precedes CO2 rises in the prehistorical record. But it is a logical fallacy to think that means that CO2 rises cannot cause warming.
2) The article claims all temperature adjustments are made in the direction that increases the perceived warming trend. This is a complete falsehood. While the trend for land surface temperatures is increase somewhat by adjustments compare to raw data, the trend for sea surface temperatures is lowered far more by adjustments - and there is more than twice as much sea (70% of the earth's surface) as there is land (30%). So the overall effect of adjustments is to very distinctly reduce the calculated warming, not to increase it.
3) The article claims there is no global warming because the climate models run too hot. While I would dispute that, the climate model results are irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of global warming. CO2 has risen 50% from 280 ppm to 420 ppm now, and the ocean heat content at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content has been steadily increasing (possibly with a recent acceleration). Those facts alone are enough to establish that there is a strong case that global warming is real - global warming does not depend on the accuracy or otherwise of climate models, but on the raw experimental evidence for CO2 and ocean heat content.
4) The article is laden with emotive and perjorative terms whose purpose is obviously to persuade people of something, rather than present objective evidence. The intent of the author is to ensure that readers don't think properly about the content - or they might do their own fact checking of a few things and start to think logically about it, which wouldn't suit the author at all.
I am sure I could treble the size of the list with a more careful reading - but it isn't worth it because the article clearly falls below the threshold for an informative, objective appraisal of climate change.
1. I don’t make any such “logical fallacy”. I said that many studies have shown that an increase of atmospheric CO2 from present levels will have minimal impact on global temperatures. I defy you to rebut any of these studies, e.g. that of Professor Will Hutton.
2. Typical that you would pick up on a single poorly chosen word (“always”). I defy you to rebut the examples I listed.
3. I didn’t say there was no global warming “because the climate models run too hot”. Your own sloppy wording doesn’t distinguish between natural warming and alleged man-made warming. Obvious there was some global warming in the 1980s and 90s, which I contend was natural, giving the impression that the flawed climate models were partly right. My main point relates to your point 1 and the CO2 saturation effect. And the climate models didn’t do a very good job of predicting the current spike (Hunga Tonga, Lol).
4. Meaningless word soup and claiming I haven’t presented any “objective evidence” when the explanations and facts I give make it clear to any critical thinker that the people are being lied to on a massive scale. OK I admit I am angry, which shows in some of my words. I’m angry because we, the people, are being oppressed through an undeclared war against truth and freedom by oppressors who lie, cheat, suppress the truth and curtail our freedoms. And that doesn’t just apply to the climate change hoax.
1. You say "The pretence that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 lead to dangerous global warming is debunked by studies and reconstructions of what happened in the recent and long-ago past, as described in this paper. These show that the increase in atmospheric CO2 follows the rise in global temperature rather than coming before it and causing it, i.e. the exact inverse of the establishment’s CO2 climate “control knob” pretence."
And you imply strongly to the reader that this means that rises in CO2 do not and cannot cause rises in temperature.
To re-iterate, it is certainly true that temperatures can rise for reasons other than CO2 (e.g. earth's orbital fluctuations), and that more CO2 is released into the atmosphere as a result. But that does not at all prove that rises in CO2 cannot cause rises in temperature.
I'm not going to read Hutton or anyone else. If your document is not correct then it is not correct.
2. Let us be charitable to you, and omit the word "always"
What you then would have said would have been "Another establishment climate change skulduggery is the never-justified retrospective adjustment of official temperature records, in a direction to make global warming look worse."
This is still a gross lie, because the balance of adjustments made actually REDUCE the calculated rate of warming. Depending on which data set you take, adjustments reduce the results of calculations of overall warming from the late 1800s to today by 0.1 to 0.2 degrees C. And you omit to mention this, so your article ends up being hugely misleading to anyone not skilled in critical analysis and prepared to do some fact checking
But forget the surface temperatures, which are always subject to complexities of ENSO etc. etc. Just look at the ocean heat warming which captures 90% of the incoming energy of global warming. It shows a steady increase from the late 1960s. Most recently it has been approximately linear.
And while we are on the subject of deliberate misrepresentation in your 22 May 2024 article, I would like to know why you have deliberately constrained the UAH 6.0 WoodForTrees chart to finish at the end of 2023, and not 2024? The UAH chart above the WoodForTrees subset shows a distinct peak in 2024, as does a WoodForTrees unrestricted chart as in the link https://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6.
This is surely an extreme case of cherry picking with an intent to mislead.
3. What you said was "Further evidence that CO2 global warming is a hoax is given by the abject failure of the establishment’s computer climate models to give credible global temperature predictions."
As far as I can see this is very similar to saying 'there is no global warming because the climate models run too hot'.
4. Here are some of the words you use in your article:-
"blatant falsehoods"
"outrageously false “climate change” propaganda and brainwashing."
"horribly deceived and abused for ulterior political motives "
"junk science, anti-humanity climate policies"
"the seldom-mentioned anti-capitalism, anti-democracy and even anti-humanity origins of the scientifically corrupt, Malthusian, horribly politicised, horribly entrenched and ruthlessly enforced climate change hoax."
"various bad actors have weaponised these concerns for dark ulterior motives. One such was the late billionaire socialist Maurice Strong who set up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988"
"The Machiavellian Strong set about creating a false problem based on false science"
If you are in an angry state, then likely you are not doing the necessary analysis to find out what is supported by reliable evidence and what is not.
---------
Some other points:-
"All we ever get from the UN is bluster, not proper science"
Every few years, the UN, through the UNFCCC, produces very comprehensive IPCC documentation, with a full review process and documented responses to every single comments received on drafts. Hardly "bluster". And if you could find anything substantive wrong with any of the IPCC material, you could have commented on it. Have you ever submitted a comment to the IPCC on any draft material? If not, then why not, since you clearly feel so strongly about the subject.
"Bill Gates, George Soros and the Rockefellers who are using the climate change hoax to manipulate public policy towards their own self-centred goals."
Bill (and Melinda) Gates are well known for donating literally billions for medical research and practical measures to help to eliminate diseases, such as malaria and polio. While I don't agree with Gates on many things, these actions are about as far from being self-centred as you can get. I doubt if you would find anyone to dispute that.
"It took years of dogged investigation by a small band of climate realists, hindered all the way by IPCC scientists who refused to make public their data, to prove that the hockey stick graph was bogus, crafted from flawed data and statistical chicanery."
The analysis of the original Mann research paper has been repeated many times by mainstream scientists. And every time, its findings have been confirmed.
DB said "when the explanations and facts I give make it clear to any critical thinker that the people are being lied to on a massive scale. "
I am a critical thinker and do a lot of analysis, and can see that there are a lot of problems with a number of your statements, as documented above.
" the warming effect of CO2 is already “saturated”
I would submit to you that your article brings together a number of statements from other articles written by people with whom you generally agree. And you have combined them into your article without ever doing any critical analysis on the statements you include, as best you can, so see if they are actually correct or not. And that is why it is easy to find so many flaws in the article.
Many years ago, until they banned me completely for going against the “official” establishment narrative, I used to enter the comment sections under climate change articles in The Guardian. I knew then I had no hope of enlightening them to the error of their thinking. My main motivation was to try to figure out what on earth made them tick.
These exchanges with you bring back memories of the impossibility of using rational arguments against Guardian readers. I had enough of it then and I’ve had enough of it now. I won’t be engaging with you any further.
As I recently said to someone like you on another thread, how can you sleep at night when your pseudo-science is leading us into wrecking the economy? Did you learn nothing from the establishment’s Covid hoax? Please don’t bother to respond to these rhetorical questions.
COVID wasn't a hoax. 7 million people have died of it so far. Most of these had 10 or more years of natural life left. And it would have been far more had there not been vaccines available within a year.
You again! You have fallen for the Covid hoax just as you have fallen for the climate change hoax. Either that or you are a paid-for establishment shill.
Since Covid, I have assumed that the establishment’s most pressing fear is a global financial system meltdown due to the unsustainable debts they have run up, which is why they want, one way or another, to get the global population shackled in digital straitjackets to prevent an uprising. Reiner Fuellmich identified this as the main reason they launched their Covid “plandemic”. Read his closing arguments in his 2002 Covid-19 Crimes Against Humanity model trial summarised by myself and hosted by Joel here: https://metatron.substack.com/p/reiner-fuellmichs-grand-jury-court.
I cannot speak for Mr Turver. However, I started a letter writing campaign over 10 years ago to inform (mostly British) politicians and other policy formers of the dangers of current renewables/climate & energy policy - I included references to Mr Turver's very important work when it became available. I have to say that the responses I received have, for the most part, not been encouraging; most policy formers seem to be wedded to the current renewables/Net Zero agenda. Regards, John C.
99% of politicians are wedded to Net Zero and of course its been cooked up so long that its in most people mind set that it has to be dealt with so most politicians would be on dangerous ground now to abandon it so on the lie goes. Reality is until people are impacted directly by the NZ policies I fear its going to be difficult to move the dial. The problem is significant impacts are probably several years away still but by the time they start occurring things will have gone too far.
I think it is more productive to ensure that sympathetic politicians are well briefed. The establishment will try to ignore them, but e.g. Andrew Bridgen the other day completely floored the energy minister with facts about what we are really paying for renewables. That is now on record.
Someone like Tice on the other had really hasn't grasped the detail, and needs educating, even if he is broadly sympathetic. Graham Stringer was excellent (proving this is not a party thing).
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my comment John. It is concerning that those responsible for the renewables/Net Zero agenda and their followers are so quick to ignore/dismiss other opinions/perspectives and indeed opposing facts these days. I'm 67 and a retired power systems engineer and relieved not to be involved with these folk. Regards, Phil.
The problem stretches much wider into the tentacles that the CCC extends elsewhere. They have surprisingly little relevant expertise of their own, so they have an array of sock puppet consultancies to whom they turn to prepare the blizzard of reports they issue with each carbon budget. The consultancy fees help fund a whole propaganda business that is bolstered by further consultancy work for BEIS/DESNZ, OFGEM etc.
The CCC has been intimately entwined with the group at National Grid who produce the Future Energy Scenarios under contract to BEIS/DESNZ and OFGEM, using them as the underpinning of their work. In effect this group is one if the CCC sock puppet consultancies, with the twist that they get to set the scenarios to the benefit of National Grid. The solutions they choose magically involve much more grid. A bigger conflict of interest is hard to imagine. The plans to have this group off from the grid owning company itself do not solve the problem. It will be the same people with the same narrow view.
I note our resident troll has contributed some 13,671 words (over 60%), and 36 out of 100 posts, only two of which were on topic - Top trolling! He persists in writing lengthy essays full of errors and his personal opinion. When he is shown to be wrong he claims he is right. He has a high opinion of himself because he has a physics PhD in a rather abstruse field that is of no relevance to the topics under discussion, and because he has done some basic course in atmospheric physics, but evidently the course reading material was somewhat restricted.
I am very much in favour of free speech. But his activities are designed to smother that. Almost no-one reads his diatribes except the person he takes aim at on each occasion, and it takes the patience of a saint to counter him if he writes an essay introducing new topics and poor analysis. Comments from others which may often reveal a different slant or insight on the article topics get buried - and thus free speech is drowned. I think he should be invited to write his critiques elsewhere, like his own website. You might even offer him a link to it for interested parties. I do wonder whether he is being paid to be disruptive: links he has to e.g. the Grantham Institute reveal potential sources of funding.
Meanwhile your next post probably needs a DNFTT warning.
No one pays me for anything, apart from my company (IBM) pension and state pension.
The question is whether you wish this site to be a pure echo chamber where everyone agrees with each other without questioning anything.
Almost everyone currently working in the UK electricity industry would share most of my views rather than yours - and I do get exposure to some of them from time to time in various ways such as open face to face seminars and events and various open online briefings. But they are all gainfully employed doing real things, rather than just outreach, so don't have time to respond with point for point rebuttals to a comment or article on a web site which takes a thoroughly contrarian view to the mainstream. Most of them would regard it as a waste of time, though I don't think it is.
My activities are not designed to smother free speech. Rather they are to engage in conversations with individuals who may thus come to understand that not everything is as they previously thought it was, by means of examples and links. And from time to time I learn something new too, or at least am forced to research some area in rather more detail than previously.
It is considerably less likely that someone will change their views on climate change, than on renewables and EVs. Though it has been known.
The issue of length is simple. There is no point in responding to a statement "there is no such a thing as global warming" with a similar length statement saying "oh yes there is". If there is any point at all to responding to that statement, the response has to outline the main, overwhelming evidence for global warming. And this will take somewhat more text than original, erroneous) statement.
Usual suspects funding academia... Hohn pops up everywhere.
.
Good. And I hope my letter to Parliament assisted in their decline, because they were idiots.
This was the report to government that confused gw with gwh, so the entire report was meaningless. The reason for this error, was they just copied and pasted from a Green website, which also confused gw with gwh. So they were not only idiots, they were just kids copying and pasting from the net. (A bit like that Blairite "20 minutes for weapons of mass destruction" lie.)
The report said:
Quote:
The power output capacity of grid storage is currently around 2 GW.
This will need to rise to 7 GW by 2025 and 8-9 GW by 2028.
This comment is asinine in the extreme. A gw is not a unit of energy storage, so you cannot use gw units to assess energy storage requirements. It is like saying: “the distance from London to Coventry is 150 miles per hour”.
The report goes on to say:
Quote:
Grid storage capacity in Great Britain will more than double by next winter, as
2.3 gw of new-build battery storage contracts for delivery in 2023/24 (come on-line).
Again, this is a completely asinine statement. How long will this energy last for? For instance, the new 200 mwh Tesla battery at Cottingham is rated at 100 mw, so it can only power a small portion of the UK grid for 20 seconds.
In truth, the UK needs 20,000 gwh of energy storage by 2050. Reading between the lines of this mis-reporting by the CCC, this means we need 4,000x as much energy storage as they are hailing in their report as being 'good progress'. (At a guess, all their new battery storage only held 4.6 gwh of energy.)
If the CCC's 'good progress' took two years to implement, then we should get all the energy storage we need in 8,000 year's time.
Yeah, guys, that is real progress (in governmental terms.)
Ralph
You are like the little boy who pointed out to his mother than all the other soldiers in the military parade were out of step - except his father!!!
If you look at just about any publication, article or grid operator statement about energy storage, you will find it primarily talks about MW or GW as the nameplate output power, and often doesn't even mention duration (hours) or MW or GWh.
You need two parameters to specify energy storage, and one or these needs to be output power.
The reason why grids care more about output power than duration is that the grid operators always have to balance supply and demand. If a power plant fails or a transmission line goes down, then the grid has to either find more supply within seconds, cut demand on demand response contracts, or cause blackouts somewhere.
Take the 9 August 2019 UK power cut - https://www.theblackoutreport.co.uk/2023/08/09/9-august-2019-blackout/. The supplies were restored everywhere within half an hour.
UK now has 4.4 GW of live grid batteries, with another 4.3 GW under construction. See https://www.current-news.co.uk/renewableuk-battery-projects-pipeline-increase-by-38-5gw-in-12-months/. We don't even know the duration for sure, but it is likely to be between 1 and 2 hours - maybe more because the capacity contracts now derate batteries with less than a few hours duration.
If battery storage is a minimum 1 hour duration, and the August 2019 power cut lasted 31 minutes, then, as long as the storage was somewhat full, the capacity hardly matters. Further, you can bring a cold natural gas CCGT or OCGT plant to full output and maximum efficiency in well less than an hour.
Had 4.4 GW of grid batteries been installed in 2019, there would have been no power cut at all - and it would not have mattered whether the duration was 1 hour, 2 hours or 8 hours. Only around 1.7 GW of generation was lost due to the original lightening strike (though badly set ROCOF - rate of change of frequency - parameters). So half of the current 4.4 GW of batteries would have done the trick - as long as they were not charging at the time.
RE said "the UK needs 20,000 gwh of energy storage by 2050."
The UK needs around 300 GWh of short duration energy storage by 2035, to cover the gaps in wind and solar of up to 24 hours. But how much long duration storage it needs rather depends on how the longer gaps are handled.
For instance, if UK implements, say 10 GW of BECCS (bio energy + CCS) that gives negative emissions, then it can afford to have maybe 40 GW of CCGT run on natural gas and still hit a net zero target. That is provided the backup for long duration gaps does not have to run for more than 10% of demand.
If UK relies on hydrogen fuelled CCGT for backup, then it will likely need 2-3 months of green hydrogen storage, which would be around 50-75 TWh of stored output (50,000-75,000 GWh).
So it all rather depends. The CCC proposal seems to be for more BECCS and less green hydrogen storage by 2035.
RE said "At a guess, all their new battery storage only held 4.6 gwh of energy."
If everything under construction completes (and you would expect it to), then UK is already on target to have nearly 9 GW of grid battery storage (plus another 2.5 GW ?? of pumped hydro). If the duration of these batteries averages 1.5 hours, then UK could have up to 3x as much as 4.6 GWh of grid battery storage within a couple of years.
Yes, and no.
What they are not saying openly, either in the CCC report or in the media, is that none of this new battery ‘backup’ is actually stored energy backup. It is merely load balancing energy, just as you say.
The CCC report says.
Quote:
We consider grid storage to be on track due to a considerable pipeline of grid-scale battery storage in development, assuming these are able to gain network connections.
Endquote.
This section of the report is claiming to be about ‘grid storage’, when none of this is actually grid storage - it is all load balancing, which is needed because of the variability of wind.
(Note: the grid needs to maintain 50 hz, otherwise the entire grid collapses. Load balancing supplies an instantaneous boost to the grid when the wind changes, maintaining the all-important 50 hz. Unlike the South Australian grid, which went out of frequency limits and crashed.)
So there has been NO GRID STORAGE BUILT.
So the CCC report, is a load of tosh.
Dangerous tosh, because it misleads Parliament.
We need 20,000 gwh of storage capable of 45 gw.
To cover a 10-day wind outage.
At present we have about 10 gwh of storage, capable of 2 gw.
Future sites (Coire Glas etc) will produce another 40 gwh, at 3 gw.
Great, so we only have another 19,950 gwh to go - capable of 45 gw.
Where will we build this?
How much will it cost?
How long will it take?
Can this be done by 2150, let alone 2050?
Ralph
Typically, the cost case for new grid battery storage is split between "load balancing"/grid stability etc. and "grid storage" (in your terms)/energy time shifting.
The batteries will bid for contracts in balancing or capacity markets, and then have to satisfy the contract.
In the case of the South Australia Hornsdale Power Reserve/Neoen Tesla big battery, the current size is 150 MW and 193 MWh after upgrade. The original battery was upgraded from 100 MW and 129 MWh. The initial split was 70 MW for 10 minutes for "load balancing" and 30 MW for 3 hours for "grid storage" . I think there is a contract for 1000 MWs (megawatt seconds) of grid inertia too, which is presumably within the 70 MW/10 minutes side of the split.
The grid only needs a certain amount of grid stability function, usually short duration, and only the first chunk of battery installations will be able to tap into this. Most of the grid batteries eventually installed will either need long duration capacity contracts or will have to make a profit from energy arbitrage (buying electricity cheap then time shifting it to selling it when prices are higher).
So it is debatable how much of the 9 GW of UK grid batteries which will complete installation within the next 2 years, will be for grid support, and how much for time shifting. You could probably get the information from the list of NG ESO contracts. But certainly UK does already have some "grid storage" installed.
Customers of the Agile Octopus tariff have the ability to do energy arbitrage if they have home batteries or an EV with V2G. Octopus publishes the cost of power in the evening for the day ahead, allowing customers to plan energy use (with the aid of apps) and take advantage of any low or negative pricing to store power and high power prices to sell it back to the grid. So you don't need to be a utility to do some of this stuff. See https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/.
The initial split was 70 MW for 10 minutes for "load balancing" and 30 MW for 3 hours for "grid storage"
Wrong.
https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/media_centre/2018/initial-operation-of-the-hornsdale-power-reserve.pdf
The ancillary services market for frequency support in the UK for batteries is already saturated. Income is running at 10-20% of what it was initially. Many battery projects got proposed in the heat of the extreme price volatility during the energy crisis. Longer duration batteries now offer a poor return. Most of those are unlikely to get financed unless subsidies are offered in one form or another. There is likely to be some scrutiny before doling out the subsidies.
My response was aimed at Ralph Ellis who seems to prefer to use the terms "load balancing" and "grid storage". That is why the term was in inverted commas. In Ralph's terms, the AEMO document just confirms what I said.
IDAU said "The ancillary services market for frequency support in the UK for batteries is already saturated"
This isn't true.
There is an administrative problem in that the NG ESO looks for bids which cover the whole of a requirement, rather than partial bids. Where a set of battery bids could cover a requirement, the NG ESO will not / cannot add them together, so take, say a large 500 MW generator as the winner, despite the fact the cost is higher than adding together say 10 separate bids for 50 MW from a set of grid batteries. This probably has something to do with software constraints. Whatever the reason, my understanding is that the difficult is being addressed. Only when this happens will we be able to determine whether the UK market for grid services is already saturated or not. And at the moment the evidence is that it would not be (with software changes).
.
P.S.
The whole point of Net Zero 2035, is that all gas fired plants will be closed down. Closed by 2035, not simply by 2050.
Thus there will be NO gas electricity to call on line, by 2035, when the wind stops blowing. (Forget solar, as it does not work in winter anyway.) We will be totally dependent upon other sources of stored backup. But we are unlikely to have more than 100 gwh of backup working by 2035.
In 2035 we will ‘only’ need 10,000 gwh of backup (because much of industry and heating will still be gas powered). But that still leaves us with another 9,900 gwh to build - otherwise the lights will go out, and our water, food, sewerage, transport, banking, hospitals, and emergency services will all grind to a halt.
We will enter a new Dark Age, if there is no power for 7 days.
Ralph
RE said "The whole point of Net Zero 2035, is that all gas fired plants will be closed down. Closed by 2035, not simply by 2050."
All gas plants will NOT be closed down as part of either the UK grid 2035 net zero or the full economy 2050 net zero. If the UK adopts green hydrogen as the long duration backup storage medium, then the existing natural gas plants would be converted to hydrogen firing. In fact, some of the more modern plants are already capable of using either hydrogen or methane (natural gas) as a fuel. See https://www.gevernova.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-fueled-gas-turbines. 3 out of 4 ranges of gas turbines marketed by GE can already handle fuel mixes from 0:100% 100%:0 of hydrogen: natural gas.
What is true is that there will be no unabated (i.e. without CCS) gas plants in operation in the UK by 2050. That is nothing like the same as "no gas plants".
RE said "we are unlikely to have more than 100 GWh of backup working by 2035."
That is not what the grid battery pipeline stats are pointing to. There is currently a pipeline of 95 GW of UK grid batteries, with significant pipeline growth of 67% per year at the moment. If they are all installed and end up averaging 2 hours duration, that would be 190 GWh of grid battery backup by 2035. That could well happen. That would be nearly two thirds of the total of ~300 GWh of short duration storage which the UK grid needs by 2035.
RE said "that still leaves us with another 9,900 GWh to build"
Firstly, UK will need rather more than 10 TWh per year of long duration backup for a 2035 net zero. Likely 2 to 3 months of long duration fuel storage will be needed, which would be 50-75 TWh.
Secondly, grid batteries are far too expensive to be used for long duration backup. Other possible sources are pumped hydro or hydro behind dams (imported from Norway), unabated CCGT offset by BECCS negative emissions, or green hydrogen storage.
RE said "We will enter a new Dark Age, if there is no power for 7 days."
There won't be no power for 7 days.
Peter said…
>>If the UK adopts green hydrogen as the long duration backup storage
>>medium, then the existing natural gas plants would be converted to hydrogen.
That is not what the Royal Society said.
Firstly, current gas power stations are in the wrong place, so would need extensive and expensive piping of volatile hydrogen. It would be easier to build 60 new plants in Yorkshire.
Secondly, the RS said:
Quote: Although hydrogen burning turbines will be available, they will not be discussed - as fuel-cells and 4-stroke engines are cheaper. (See p41).
Thirdly: this presupposes that sufficient deep-seam hydrogen caverns, electrolysers, and demin water plants had already been constructed, plus all the pipes to existing gas plants. I can assure you that none of this will be operational by 2035. In fact, it is not known if any of this will work at scale. We are betting the nation on suppositions, instead of certainties. (Plus, hydrogen is only 25% efficient, so where does all that energy come from?)
.
>> If they are all installed and end up averaging 2 hours duration,
>>that would be 190 GWh of grid battery backup by 2035.
I don’t believe a word of that.
The UK and South Australian batteries all last for about 2 minutes maximum, so how on Earth are the new-build batteries going to last for 2 hours? This is the trouble with the dumb-arrses at the CCC not giving correct data (gw instead of gwh). They never did say what the true capacity of these new batteries will be.
But judging by the battery at Cottisham(?), they will only be lasting for minutes, not hours. Think about it - to raise the Cottisham battery to 2 hours duration, it would have to be multiplied by 120x in size. Are you really suggesting that is happening??
Where is your data and references for this??
.
>> Secondly, grid batteries are far too expensive to be
>>used for long duration backup.
Which is why all of my calculations in these threads have been in multiples of ‘Dinorwigs’.
The trouble is, that the dumb-arrses at the CCC never mentioned pumped hydro or hydrogen, let alone the problems with those systems.
Who is going to solve the lack of upland regions for pumped hydro, by 2035? Where do we put 2,000 Dinorwigs?
What is the cost and time, to build 800 caverns some 2,500 ft down, plus all the demin water and electrolyser plants, for hydrogen storage.? How long will that take, and at what cost.?
.
Face facts, you are an apologist for the impossible. But once we are half way down that impossible road, we WILL get 7-day power outages. That is a certainty. Don’t you remember the Great NE Outage? With a weak generation system and high demand, long outages are highly likely.
Ralph
The current gas plants are clearly in sensible places, as they work well within the context of the current grid - apart from the 500 gm/kWh of CO2 emissions.
The UK gas grid is eventually likely to be converted to hydrogen. Tony Green is the NG expert on this and a talk from him is available at https://shows.acast.com/fuelling-the-transition/episodes/s2e3-building-the-uk-hydrogen-backbone-with-tony-green.
Thus it would not be not be more efficient to build 60 new gas plants in Yorkshire. In general it is cheaper to build a pipeline to transport green hydrogen, than to build a transmission line to either send the power to produce the same hydrogen, or to send the power which can be generated from that hydrogen.
The RS said "Although hydrogen burning turbines will be available, they will not be discussed - as fuel-cells and 4-stroke engines are cheaper."
If the RS said it, then I am sure NEW hydrogen burning turbines would be more expensive than NEW fuel-cells or NEW 4-stroke engines. But the UK already has INSTALLED gas turbine CCGT and OCGT plant, and it is difficult to believe that these are not the cheapest way to provide backup power. As my link shows, the RS are a little bit behind the times on hydrogen burning gas turbines, as GE's current range include them, with 100 in use on hydrogen worldwide, according to GE.
If you are looking for relocating the generation, and can afford to store three volumes of gas instead of one, then you can get SOFCs to perform the reversible set of reactions CH4 + 3O2 <--> CO2 + 2 H20 to perform at high power to gas to power efficiency (I believe up to 70%). But it isn't fully developed yet.
RE said "this presupposes that sufficient deep-seam hydrogen caverns, electrolysers, and demin water plants had already been constructed, plus all the pipes to existing gas plants. "
If, unlike the RS suggestion, you use depleted oil and gas wells, I can assure you that there are many of these around which could be repurposed to store hydrogen. As part of the offer to the government to reinstate Rough, Centrica was claiming it can be repurposed to store hydrogen. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_(facility)#Closure_and_partial_reopening.
If Rough is suitable, then so are other depleted oil and gas wells.
I can assure you that none of this will be operational by 2035. "
RE said "In fact, it is not known if any of this will work at scale. "
Most things that work well at small scale will also work well at large scale, particularly in electricity grids, as it is a pretty thoroughly known science. Instead of naysaying a likely forerunner solution, the obvious thing is for the government to finance a pilot project at a reasonable scale, to see if any snags emerge which have not been identified. And sooner rather than later too.
RE said "hydrogen is only 25% efficient, so where does all that energy come from?"
Power to hydrogen to power is 40-45% efficient. The energy to do this will come from surplus (cheap) wind and solar. Around 15 GW of electrolysers would be enough to provide hydrogen to generate 10% of the current demand of 300 TWh/year.
RE said "The UK and South Australian batteries all last for about 2 minutes maximum, so how on Earth are the new-build batteries going to last for 2 hours? "
The Pillswood, Cottingham UK battery is 96 MW and 192 MW, so 2 hours. See https://www.heitp.co.uk/portfolio/projects-overview/key-information-about-pillswood/UK.
The grid batteries in the UK pipeline are a minimum of 1 hour, and more likely average 1.5 hours. So the 4.5 GW of grid batteries can likely store 4.5 to 6.7 GWh.
The South Australia Hornsdale Power Reserve grid battery is 150 MW and 193 MWh, so its duration is just over 75 minutes.
RE asked "What is the cost and time, to build 800 caverns some 2,500 ft down, plus all the demin water and electrolyser plants, for hydrogen storage.?"
I don't know how long it will take to convert depleted oil and gas wells to hydrogen storage caverns. But more than enough depleted oil or gas wells already exist, and the oil industry must know how to do it, because it has already done it for Rough.
Demineralised water for electrolysis is much cheaper to produce than the power required to electrolyse it to hydrogen. And you don't need that much of it. 50 TWh of hydrogen at 33.6 kWh/kg energy density is around 1.5 billion kg of hydrogen. You get that from 17x the volume of water (H2 is molecular weight 2, water is 34).
So the water to fill the hydrogen storage weighs 25 million tonnes and occupies 25 million cubic metres. That could come from a 500m x 500m area of water which is 100m deep. The UK water mains supply provides 840 billion litres of water per year, or 840 million cubic metres or 840 million tonnes. So 25 million tons would increase that by 3% which is close to peanuts.
In terms of cost, desalinating water costs $0.8 to 2.5/cubic metre. So 25 million cubic metres costs$20-62.5 million - peanuts in UK grid terms.
RE said "you are an apologist for the impossible. But once we are half way down that impossible road, we WILL get 7-day power outages. "
I present my own analyses, and you haven't pointed to anything significantly wrong with them - just a load of speculation. There is more than one practical way to get to a 2035 net zero grid, and the ultimately solution will depend more on economics than anything technical.
To decommission old grid resources before the new technology resources are up and running properly would be a stupid way to do it. You get the new grid resources up and running before you decommission the stuff you plan to get rid of. There is no desperate hurry and you can preserve energy security by taking time on the overlap. And in any case the transition is gradual and takes a few years. It is not like a transition from driving on the left to driving on the right. More like the transition to EVs which can drive quite happily on the same roads as fossil fuel cars.
RE said "with a weak generation system and high demand, long outages are highly likely."
A renewable, net zero 2050 grid would likely be much stronger than today's grid, as generation would be more distributed and the transmission network would be far more robust.
Peter,
You are rather assuming that the present pipework, junctions and valves, can handle hydrogen. Hydrogen is a slippery bugger, and can escape from any containment vessel, thus specialist materials are often required.
In addition, we don’t have enough gas fired power stations to run the nation, during a wind outage.
Remember that we need triple or quadruple the number of power stations, to go all electric by 2050. That means six or eight times the number of gas powered stations, as we have now.
Plus all the hydrogen generation and storage infrastructure, which we have not even begun to design, let alone build.
Ralph
1. My own security analysis, based on the calm during the UK's summer of 1976, suggested that the UK needs at least 100 days of electrical energy storage (and probably nearer 130 days) to replace wind generation when a typical engineering safety margin of 50% is included. [Alternatively, just install cheap dispatchable thermal generating plant which wins on EROEI (= energy return on energy invested) too! This article's David Turver has a couple of very informative other ones on EROEI.]
3. The number of 'windy days per annum' appears to vary on decadal and centennial scales; see H.H. Lamb, "Climate, History and the Modern World", 2nd ed., Routledge, 1995, near pages 53 and 71. So, when planning for energy security where wind turbine generators are concerned (an oxymoron?), it is prudent to review the full wind record Regards, John C.
At some point it will dawn on even the eco zealots that we are going to need 10-20GW of CCGTs available for zero solar and wind days so i just hope that DENZ realise that and ensure there are mechanisms, however expensive, to keep those stations available unlike the coal sets that were demolished before the boilers had gone cold.
.
The true answer is that we need 30 gw of Thorium power, plus a little bit of renewables just to keep the brain-dead eco-idiots happy.
R
I doubt we will need 100 days.
Most outages that last for a month, are still operating at 30% of demand, so that is only 20 days of total energy requirements.
Besides, the need for just 10 days of energy, is still 2,000 Dinorwigs. Where on Earth could we build those, and at what cost?
If we needed 20,000 Dinorwigs (for 100 days), it would be cheaper to move the Uk population to Mars.
R
Norway's existing hydro dams (with no pumped hydro storage at all) have 88 TWh of hydro water capacity. Interestingly, that is enough to power the whole of Europe for 10 days.
To use this to support northern European long duration backup would need conversion to pumped hydro plus a lot more interconnector capacity, and a lot more generation capacity installed, but no more dams. Apparently it is possible to pair reservoirs to maybe provide maybe 25% of the 88 TWh as pumped hydro storage.
But someone has to pay for this - probably Germany. Clearly other countries would also have to send much more power to Norway than they are doing at present, to recharge the pumped hydro.
But only if Norway will give us the energy.
Even now, Denmark sells excess wind energy to Norway, and then buys it back at three times the cost when there is no wind. Norway is laughing all the way to the bank, while Denmark has the highest electricity costs in Europe.
You seem to be a fantasist, who forgets that economics should be at the very heart of any national infrastructure decision.
R
Not so simple. If you want pumped hydro there must be a lower reservoir as well as an upper one. That is lacking in most of Norway’s hydro installations. If you want to install more turbines you need the space to accommodate them, and the ability to handle the consequent flow below them. Again, not widely available.
The economics take a step change once you start pumping. Not running hydro plant and keeping the water available for use, while supplying demand from imports is close to 100% efficient. The round trip must pay for round trip transmission losses as well as the round trip through the hydro facilities. Already, pumped storage has been struggling economically when located in Germany. Putting it at the end of distant interconnection isn't going to help the economics.
True.
In many cases, Norway was merely shutting off their hydro, to conserve water, while burning cheap Danish wind energy. Then letting the turbines flow, when Denmark was desperately short of wind energy. And cashing in on their desperation.
I don’t think the UK could do anything like that. Prof McKay (government science advisor) said we should flood the Scottish glens making low-level pumped hydro. But I am not sure the Scots would be happy with that.
Why wind works for Denmark.
https://docs.wind-watch.org/sharman-winddenmark.pdf
R
See https://www.hydroreview.com/hydro-industry-news/pumped-storage-hydro/pumped-storage-hydropower-could-help-stabilize-norways-electricity-prices/
and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301214007_Design_of_Future_Pumped_Storage_Hydropower_in_Norway.
The estimate is that there is more than 20 GW of additional generation potential for pumped hydro pairings of upper and lower reservoirs in the existing Norwegian system with a capability of storing 5 TWh per cycle.
Excluding the 15% or so of on-site pumped hydro round trip losses, the interconnector transmission losses are no different when incoming interconnector power is diverted to a Norwegian load, enabling a non-pumped hydro system to be stopped compared to the incoming interconnector power being used to pump water uphill as part of the pumped hydro process. The difference is just the 15% or so pumped hydro round trip efficiency itself.
General rules of thumb from other simulations show UK will likely need 2 to 3 months of seasonal electricity storage - 60 to 90 days - which is roughly in accordance with your 100 day estimate. But that is provided you are trying to do all the long duration backup from green hydrogen. If you use natural gas CCGT and offset the emissions with BECCS, then you can reduce the requirement.
Alternatively have a flight of fairies breathing in CO2 and exhaling oxygen. There is no proper proof of BECCS at the scale required at any reasonable cost, and a clear requirement to increase forest clearance to attempt it. Certainly not the basis of a global solution to CO2 emission reduction fantasies.
Storage requirements can be reduced somewhat by indulging in substantial renewables capacity overbuild. All of these things cost large sums of money for very little benefit in terms of emissions reduction. The marginal effective LCOE for a marginal wind farm soon becomes a significant multiple of the simple estimate that assumes all output is consumed at equal value, because most of the output becomes worthless.
IDAU said "There is no proper proof of BECCS at the scale required at any reasonable cost, and a clear requirement to increase forest clearance to attempt it."!
If the Drax and other BECCS is using only waste wood, then there should be no change at all to the forestry clearance operations, other than that the waste wood is collected, dried, chipped and shipped.
IDAU said "Storage requirements can be reduced somewhat by indulging in substantial renewables capacity overbuild. All of these things cost large sums of money for very little benefit in terms of emissions reduction. "
It is getting the 80%/20% and 98%/2% splits right that make wind, solar, grid batteries and green hydrogen long duration backup a feasible and economic solution compared to zero carbon alternatives.
From simulations using actuals of a Texas all wind and solar grid, you could derive some rules of thumb such as 25% overgeneration, 7.5 hours of grid batteries and at least 3 weeks of green hydrogen storage, for very crude optimisation of a reliable grid, at least in terms of meeting 2010-2012 demand. The simulations used actuals for demand and wind output with solar output estimated from solar irradiance (Texas had less than 500 MW of solar at the time - now it has 23 GW).
It is true that eliminating the last 6% of CO2 emissions from the ERCOT grid is more expensive than reducing CO2 emissions in other stages (for instance the 12% eliminated by the 7.5 hours of grid battery storage). But the fuel cost of this long duration backup (electrolysers, storage, but not capital cost of hydrogen fired CCGT) is obviously spread out a lot when calculating the impact on average electricity prices. A lot of industrial processing won't need all or some of this long duration backup (electric arc furnaces etc.). Similarly, EV smart charging and heat pumps with 24 hours of thermal storage won't need a proportion of the 7.5 hours of grid batteries.
As far as the required overgeneration is concerned, there seems to be a very sharp cutoff - with a little too little the system does not work reliably, and with a little more than the minimum all the problems disappear. This isn't too surprising. As you add generation, you satisfy more demand direct from generation, but also some of this newly directly met demand loses the slight round trip inefficiency of going through grid batteries, and other parts lose the rather bigger round trip inefficiencies of power to hydrogen to power.
Clearly, you then need more overgeneration capability for redundancy etc. on top of the sharp cut off for overgeneration. It is unlikely the 24 hour ahead power auctions are going to pay for this - it needs to be handled by capacity markets or some similar mechanism.
And all that sort of complexity is why the government has initiated the REMA review of electricity market arrangements process - to change the way the regulation works to prepare the UK grid for further green transition, all the way to net zero in 2035.
Marginal pricing for cheap wind power may thus not be that useful going forward.
.
Another Peter fantasy.
Please explain to us, how sequestered CO2 can be safely stored. If it is buried in old oil fields, what is to stop a well blow-out, and a cloud of CO2 drifting across the UK east coast, killing millions?
Lake Nyos CO2 disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster
And regards Drax - as you know Drax ran out of waste wood in the first couple of years of operation, and is now burning good timber.
Drax is the most environmentally destructive force on the planet, promoting monoculture coniferous forests - barren deserts, that have absolutely no biosphere within them.
If you want to know why Britain is so poor nowadays, it is because people like Peter inherited positions of power - and could inflict their pernicious views and policies on a previously successful and vibrant economy. Peterites are Scargill’s dream - a new managerial class who are dedicated to destroying Western civilisation.
Ralph
Had 4.4 GW of grid batteries been installed in 2019, there would have been no power cut at all
I wouldn't be too sure about that. The report into the incident noted that grid batteries significantly underperformed against what they were supposed to do. It's also clear that grid batteries failed to arrest the near blackout on 22nd December last year, which had to wait until Dinorwig wound up to full power before the freq
...before the frequency decline was arrested.
NGESO and OFGEM are in a conspiracy of silence over that.
The new 200 MWh Tesla battery at Cottingham is rated at 100 MW, so it can only power about 0.6% of average grid demand for two hours if if happens to be fully charged when called on.
David, congratulations, a hatchet job worthy of a column in Private Eye. Ed Miliband as joint chief architect of the CCA certainly has a lot to answer for.
My view for many years is that everything ‘green energy’ is corrupt to the core, they simply cannot exist without subsidy, without lies, without obfuscation, without ‘think’ tanks churning out propaganda (witness the clowns at carbon brief) and anyone criticising, regardless of their background & expertise is seen as some kind of ‘nut job’
While we took lead out of petrol we’ve clearly bred a generation or more infested with idiots.
The ‘support’ renewables require is not seed capital for first of a kind cutting edge technology it’s ongoing, never ending, ever increasing subsidies because they are either inherently crap, someone needs to extract more wealth, or both.
It’s obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that we cannot ever ‘control the weather’. A country accounting for less than 1% of global emissions is really close to insignificant. It is simply not worth wrecking what is left of our fragile economy for ‘it’ For those that on cue churn out the usual line of what about the costs of ‘not doing anything’ the reality is they are insignificant. True it might possibly get a bit warmer over a few hundred years, sea level might rise a few mm, crops may grow better, more trees but they really need to get a grip.
Renewables are a never ending economic disaster, LCOE, a mind numbingly, naive, truly ridiculous metric peddled for years by Lazard is one significant cause of that, yet if it’s ‘cheaper’ and costs are truly falling then subsidies should fall or no longer exist. That their inherent intermittency and system costs are simply ignored is criminal. As for the cost of the generation equipment, the state of the finances of European wind turbine manufacturers and Chinese solar panel producers is very telling.
Simply burning fossil fuels for electricity generation is in my view bad, it’s wasteful, fossils are really far too useful for just burning, and despite their ubiquity, far too precious. For a functioning, growing economy energy costs, reliability and availability are everything and renewables & the mythical battery ‘storage’ simply cannot and never will deliver, that’s why rational joined up thinking pushes nuclear to the very top of the heap, that the CCC, government and the ‘green’ ‘think’ tanks don’t come to that exact same solution for decarbonisation tells you all you need to know.
Thank you, David, for a devastating analysis. I would add that the use of claims in Parliament about the Levelised Cost of Electricity is even worse than you suggest:
https://cliscep.com/2024/05/21/voila/
Yes, I came to a similar conclusion here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/offshore-wind-new-big-lie?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you - great analysis.
Thank you for this excellent exposé. I'm embarrassed to admit to being somewhat shocked and horrified: just when I felt I was settling into a cynical retirement, not for the first time it's clear I was nowhere near cynical enough.
Designing an energy system is a complex systems engineering challenge, requiring full transparency and challenge, and also, by the way, engineers. Trust a committee, get a camel, and an expensive one at that.
Yes. I had a fairly low opinion of the CCC before I started research. But now I think they are atrocious.
Designing an energy system with dispatchable generators geographically dispersed near load centres and interconnected was actually quite straightforward. We've over complicated it and created a complex system which will have hidden fault lines in it somewhere. However, my real test of complexity is when i first went to the CEGB National control centre in Bankside in mid 80's it was run by 4 control engineers now goto Wokingham and there is upwards of 20 people on the floor sitting in front of computer screens and it actually looks more like a city dealing room. Also the backroom staff have exploded as well to manage the multitude of services needed to maintain grid stability not the simple governors on the steam input valves on a 500MW generating set. As my old boss used to say KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid
Thank you for your informative comment, which is much appreciated. I guess the key word is dispatchable. As David has covered, the current pricing system alone is complex. I'll take this opportunity to add my view that the levellised cost of intermittent sources means nothing without including whatever is needed in conjunction (gas plants on idle part of the time, batteries, pumped storage...) to produce dispatchable power.
National control in the 1980’s was really just that, a very high level overview, in turn they instructed six regional ‘area’ control centres (Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, East Grinstead and another in the south east who’s name escapes me for now) as to the required generation levels for that area at specific times of the day.
Those area control centres dispatched regional generation and coordinated 275kV and 400kV switching in their region (and 132kV until that was divested to the area electricity boards) either by telecontrol from those area control centres or more usually by instructing (over the phone) a further level of manned remote locations around the ‘regions’ (usually at a big substation) who each in turn monitored and controlled a cluster of maybe half a dozen substations, often with relatively primitive functionality, so three tiers of control, manned round the clock. That’s the tiers for the grid system, not distribution level control.
That setup was initially reduced to two tiers in the 1990’s as the manned remote locations in the regions were gradually closed with the installation of modern control systems, with all the ‘area’ control centres then performing all switching and finally in the late 1990’s national control took over all their current responsibilities for control as the area control centres were closed.
St Albans was the sixth area control centre I couldn’t recall earlier
By the way the taxpayer bill for this lot was £7m last year with easy money for plenty of people with no accountability for their actions.
The article betrays a huge lack of understanding as to what the CCC climate change committee is about.
DT said "This lack of accountability has allowed the CCC to fill itself with people who have deep financial and social interests in the whole climate change agenda, in effect its own echo chamber."
The CCC members are, of course, chosen by the government. To give high quality advice, the most important aspect of the CCC is that it should be staffed by undisputed experts in various relevant fields which should encompass most of the areas that the committee will be advising on.
You can't have acknowledged experts in an area without them having worked in that area for a number of years. And any expert worth his or her salt will ending up acting as a consultant to a number of companies or organisations. That is precisely what the CCC should be tapping into. If there were not a list of a few or more registered interests of the climate change committee then the government would clearly have chosen the wrong people to be members of that committee.
This setup is very similar to the way the Bank of England monetary policy committee is chosen - by the government. And after that the BoE MPC has complete independence to set interest rates. But the CCC doesn't have any direct authority. All it can do is make recommendations to the government and parliament, which they can accept, reject, or alter.
And parliament has so far accepted almost all of the recommendations for targets that the CCC has proposed.
DT said "The CCC has not behaved appropriately and there are insufficient checks and balances to keep it on the straight and narrow. "
You don't appoint a completely independent committee, then hamstring them with government micro management. We don't do if for the BoE MPC and should not do it for the UK CCC either.
DT said " Political parties should take this opportunity to promise in their manifestos to disband the Climate Change Committee and return control of energy and climate policy to MPs, who are accountable to their constituents."
If Sunak were so stupid as to put the abolition of the CCC and the abandonment of net zero in the conservative manifesto for the July 4th election, the outcome would be very clear from the opinion polling on climate. The conservatives would not only lose even more seats than than it is already going to, but it might possibly even result in the breakup of the conservative party.
And climate change is not a constituency by constituency effect - it is a global problem, and will affect the whole of the UK. So it is a "tragedy of the commons" issue - everyone can do better for themselves by exploiting more and more of a scarce resource, but eventually everyone ends up with nothing.
Further, very few MPs have enough time to devote to climate change. Most typically it is those who are climate deniers who are partly funded by fossil fuel interests such as JRM, who try to pressure other MPs to do the wrong thing.
I think the article fairly represents how the CCC works. For you to use the bungling MPC as an exemplar is frankly laughable.
There's a lot missing from the article - such as that the House of Lords register compliance investigation found that Lord Deben was abiding by the disclosure rules. And that the Drax employee on the committee did not participate in the decision making when the CCC was reporting on biomass generation.
This latter is, of course, an example of how the CCC works, but is not fairly represented in the article.
Further, the UK CCC does get independently audited on an annual basis, and this is not mentioned either, despite the complaints in the article about precisely this.
Most people,, including me, believe that the MPC have done a pretty good job of stabilising UK inflation around the 2% target.
"Did not participate in the decision making"
She provided them with extensive evidence/opinions and contacts to support her view as technical director at Drax with a degree in forestry. How nice of her to leave the room when they voted on what to say. Or maybe she simply sat there and didn't vote. The wretched scheme is even named after her. ReBECCS Heat-on.
Independent audit is simply concerned with checking that there is no obvious evidence of misappropriation of public funds and that the accounts department has proper procedures in place etc.
There is no independent audit of the quality of the work they do and commission that is acknowledged and published officially. Parliament has shown itself incapable of doing that job in Select Committee or in debate on carbon budgets and targets.
Peter…
There are plenty of people out there, who could give truly independent advice, without having a finger in the Greeney Pie. Myself, Oldbrew, and DT, for example, and there will be hundreds of others out there who could give much better advice.
I, for example, wrote a report on renewable energy 20 years ago - spelling out the very dangers that can now clearly see. The failings of renewables were easy to see, to anyone with half a brain and no incentive to jump on the lucrative Greeney bandwagon.
Conversely, anyone in government, industry, or academia knew they would have to ride the Greeney bandwagon, to maintain their income and career. They long ago saw those who were cancelled and dumped, for presenting ‘Inconvenient Truths’ to the climate industry and their pet politicians and media hacks. Academics like: Prof David Bellamy, Prof Peter Ridd, Prof Svensmark, Prof Judith Curry, Prof Tim Ball, and many others (and now critic Mark Steyn, who was fine a million dollars for making fun of the Mann-pig).
Climate is a religion, complete with an invisible global god, two high priests, several religious texts, many acolytes, a child saint, several hair-shirt penances, many financial indulgences, and whole host of useful idiots. Not sure which category you would ascribe to.
The CCC report is a sacred text that you feel compelled to defend, because it is a pillar of the new religion. And you will defend it to the end, even if it contains more holes than Swiss cheese. Stand back for a moment, and look at all the holes. And just think for a moment, of the calamity that will befall this nation and the Western world, if those many holes are not plugged by 2035.
(Note: China and lndia don’t care, because they have no intention of committing the self-immolation that you so obviously desire.)
Ralph
RE said "I, for example, wrote a report on renewable energy 20 years ago - spelling out the very dangers that can now clearly see. "
Let me just take two points from that report as it appears on WUWT in https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/25/renewable-energy-our-downfall/.
Firstly you say tidal power is useless because it causes 4 periods a day when no power is available, to which you claim there is no solution.
But, of course, there is an easy solution. A tidal power station might generate, say 300 MW for 2 hours, followed by a gap of 4 hours, then cycling again. If you fit just a little over 400 MWh of battery storage with an efficiency of 92% to it then you can smooth that out to 94 MW of continuous power. No need for backup fossil fuel generation.
But you miss the real issue with tidal storage, which is that there are spring and neap tides, when the sun earth and moon are in a straight line or form a right angle. This affects generation (including smoothed generation). Output is predictable thousands of years in advance.
Secondly you said "That means we actually need some 120 gw of installed wind generation capacity to cover just 40% of total UK electrical demand."
See https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2023-05-01&&_k=pfnihc. Over the last 12 calendar months, with around 27 GW total of wind (summing both onshore and offshore), 29.98% (call it 30%) of UK electricity supply has come from wind power. To get to 40% by boosting offshore wind will probably require less than another 13 GW of offshore wind (which has a much higher capacity factor) for a combined total of 40 GW of wind power capacity. That is only one third of what you predicted.
So you were wrong on the first two of your 2009 predictions and I'm not going to read and critique the rest. But of course the wind prediction is very key - had you been in a position to advise, then UK would have missed out on its most valuable energy resource of all.
Your remarks about climate are well wide of the mark of both the physics and the current 1.2 to 1.6 degree rise over historical temperatures as CO2 has risen from 280 ppm to 420 ppm.
If it cost Steyn 1 million dollars he had it coming. I hope Mann got decent costs out of it.
You say "The CCC report is a sacred text that you feel compelled to defend, because it is a pillar of the new religion. And you will defend it to the end, even if it contains more holes than Swiss cheese. "
I have a recent PhD in physics, which gives me a qualification in objective analysis, as well as other skills. And I wouldn't feel compelled to defend the CCC if I felt they had something wrong. Though I will always take the trouble to understand what they are saying, because they commission research which is as objective as they can make it.
You say "China and lndia don’t care, because they have no intention of committing the self-immolation that you so obviously desire"
India is a lower emitter than the USA at this point.
China is obviously the world's biggest CO2 emitter. But it installed 292 GW of wind and solar in 2023, which is more than the rest of the world put together (global total was 510 GW, so the rest of the world installed around 220 GW of wind and solar). Assuming that is what you mean by "self immolation", then you clearly are wrong about China too. China is obviously very serious about installing wind and solar.
And again, China's vehicle sales were 25% BEVs in 2023, which Europe was around 16% and the USA was 7.7%. More self-immolation from China which "doesn't care" according to you.
If China is what happens when you "don't care" then bring it on - the west could do with a huge dose of "not caring" Chinese style to boost renewables and BEVs.
The truth is that wind, solar and BEVs are the technology of the future, and China and Europe know this. Some in the USA aren't as sure, though Biden clearly knows it too.
Further, if China can install another 30% of wind and solar each year by 2025 then Chinese coal use on the grid will start to fall. That is just straight calculation. You could work it out for yourself. China has committed to "peak CO2 emissions BEFORE 2030", and it looks possible it might achieve this next year.
Peter,
300 mw of tidal is a spit in the ocean, to our 2050 needs. The UK will be needing some 150 gw of electricity, by 2050. Something like 1,200 twh per year. Tidal plus a battery are not going to help at all, and will cost a fortune (with renewables, it is always two systems, instead of one). And yes, I do discuss neap tides, because tidal produces bugger all then. Tidal is a non-starter, and the Greeneys would never allow their ‘habitats’ to be destroyed.
Ralph
You miss the point. You were claiming tidal power is an intermittent source, but it is actually easy and cheap to convert it to a continuous source of power which doesn't need fossil fuel generation.
What's the economic issue with wind (or solar) plus a couple of hours of battery? Two vs one isn't a numerical analysis of the additional cost. Grid batteries are likely to come in at less than $100/kWh by 2035, based on expected sodium ion battery prices.
You DON'T discuss the issue of spring and neap tides until someone challenges you on your claimed unreliability for tidal power - it is not in the body of your article on WUWT.
.
a. Tidal IS an intermittent source, just as wind and solar are intermittent sources.
b. There are ways to reduce intermittency, but that has never been done with wind and solar, so why would we expect tidal to be different.
c. Smoothing out tidal intermittency reduces the claimed peak output by half.
d. The Greeneys would never allow the destruction of tidal habitats.
R
1. To be precise, tidal is a CYCLIC variable resource rather than an intermittent resource. The word intermittent is probably inappropriate because it implies random, while tidal is anything but random - the cycle and the output can be predicted thousands of years in advance for any given day and time of day.
It cycles every 6 hours - there are two high tides and two low tides each day. You know that.
Because tidal is a cyclic resource, generating for 2 hours then not generating for another 4, you can predict precisely how much battery storage will turn it into a baseload resource. Specifically to turn tidal into a baseload resource you need storage configured roughly with a charging power of 2/3rds of the maximum output of the raw tidal generators. The output power has to be one third of the maximum output of the tidal generators. And the MWh needs to be the maximum output of the tidal generators x 4/3. But if I were you, I would configure the storage output power to be 2/3rds of the maximum output of the raw tidal generators.
There you are - a complete free design of tidal lagoon firming up storage for you.
b. "Why would we expect tidal to be any different"
Because we know everything about when and how much it will generate. It is set in the stars (well, in the sun and moon anyway).
This is not true of wind and solar, which is weather dependent and much more random. We know the maximum solar output by time of day thousands of years in advance (and we know it is zero at night). But, unlike tidal, we don't know how much of the maximum output we will get, more than a day or so in advance.
c. "Smoothing out tidal intermittency reduces the claimed peak output by half."
This is misleading in two ways
Firstly, the fact you have the storage to convert tidal into a baseload resource does not mean you have to use it all the time. If you want to supply raw peak tidal output to the grid - say if it occurs two hours before the end of the evening peak demand period, then you can do it. And you can save the discharge of the batteries to the previous two hours of the peak demand period too (to give 2/3rd of raw peak tidal output instead of the 1/3rd which would give you smooth baseline power.
Secondly, if you are generating 2 hours in 6, then perfect smoothing reduces the peak output from the plant by 2/3rds, not half.
d. "The Greeneys would never allow the destruction of tidal habitats."
We don't know about this yet. The Swansea tidal lagoon project has failed so far due to lack of government funding - not because of environmental objections.
Peter,
Your claims of global warming are to be disputed.
As you know, temperature data homogenisation has always made historic temperatures colder, and recent temperatures warmer. A full half of the claimed warming has been caused by poor sensor positioning and data manipulation.
In addition, the proposed ‘climate emergency’ is a blatant lie. I would have thought that your phd would have allowed you to determine this yourself. But here are some helpful guides for you.
Climate misinformation 1.
https://x.com/ralfellis/status/1794031841864716580?s=61
Climate misinformation 2.
https://x.com/ralfellis/status/1794614750283800790?s=61
So where is the climate emergency in those graphs?
In addition, why do you fear plant-food? CO2 has increased agricultural production by 20%, so that a billion people depend on this extra CO2 for their livelihoods. Do you really want a billion people to starve, to somehow prevent a non-existent climate ‘emergency’ that is all in your mind?
Ralph
RE said "As you know, temperature data homogenisation has always made historic temperatures colder, and recent temperatures warmer. "
This is completely wrong.
Historical land surface temperatures have generally been adjusted down slightly, but historical ocean surface temperatures have generally been adjusted up rather more. And there is a lot more ocean than land.
See the first chart at https://granthaminstitute.com/2015/10/16/taking-the-planets-temperature-how-are-global-temperatures-calculated/ which demonstrates it clearly. Or go look up he adjustments to the GHCN land temperature readings and the HADSST3 readings.
RE said "I would have thought that your PhD would have allowed you to determine this yourself. "
I took the unrelated opportunity to attend an atmospheric physics course during my PhD, so am familiar with all the physics of global warming. And I can tell you there isn't a significant flaw with mainstream climatology.
90% of global warming net incoming heat ends up in the oceans, and it is very clear from the red and blue chart at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content that ocean heat content has risen steadily as CO2 has risen from 280 to 420 ppm.
The ocean heat content figures are a clear repudiation of the climate denier claims that there is no fast warming going on. It is convincing because it documents the raw energy imbalance caused by the 50% increase in CO2. It also depends entirely on a set of experimental measurements, and not on climate modelling.
You get side tracked by tornadoes and polar bears etc., even getting the effect of temperature dataset adjustments the wrong way around, but completely ignore the base evidence above.
Peter,
Nobody is denying that there has been a little warming - just that it has been grossly exaggerated by alarmists. Plus the reason for this warming is still unknown.
UAH ocean temps
https://i.ibb.co/1vChQqc/IMG-5060.jpg
So there has been half a degree of warming in 45 years. And much of that has been influenced by oceanic cycles, rather than CO2 - cycles like the long-term AMO. And also by surface albedo changes, due to Chinese industrial soot, which is another factor.
The AMO cycle has been in warm mode for 40 years.
https://i.ibb.co/kDMC3wM/IMG-5059.jpg
Yet the tropical cyclone data, which you choose to ignore, suggests that oceanic warming is not significant. Numbers of hurricanes are reducing, which is the opposite of what was originally forecast. Yes, climate ‘scientists’ were wrong, yet again.
And you fail to demonstrate any detrimental effects of warming. Crop yields are increasing, as NASA admits. While the climate is more benign, with less tornadoes and less hurricanes.
What is not to like, about a little warming?
And as you know, any slight influence CO2 may be having on climate, gets weaker and weaker. The next half a degree of warming will take 80 years. (And many more years than that, if present warming is heavily influenced by albedo and oceanic cycles).
So why is all this money being spent, on a non-problem?
There is no need to reduce CO2.
Especially when China and India are INCREASING CO2.
National self-immolation is not a winning strategy.
And hugely detrimental for citizens.
Why is the CCC not pointing this out to government?
Is it because too many members have their finger in the pie?
Is it because it pays too well?
Is it because they are idiots and fools?
Ralph
Your first chart ignores the significant warming we have seen recently, probably because of averaging applied first - which de-emphasises both start and end periods. If you just plot the trend for the full UAH 6.0 data you get 0.7 degrees of warming as at https://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/trend/plot/rss/trend/plot/best/from:1960/trend (red line)
Or you get 1.0 degrees of warming for the RSS (green line) from 1978, or, from 1960 onwards, close to 1.2 degrees C of warming from the BEST surface land and sea dataset (blue line).
Also bear in mind that RSS and UAH are not surface (or near surface) data sets - satellites can't measure surface temperatures directly. And there is a lot of subjectivity about stitching together the records from sensors on individual satellites to make a time series. See the charts 50% and 65% down https://granthaminstitute.com/2015/10/16/taking-the-planets-temperature-how-are-global-temperatures-calculated/.
RE said "Yet the tropical cyclone data, which you choose to ignore, suggests that oceanic warming is not significant. "
That is not what the ocean heat content data is saying. Again, see the red and blue chart at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content.
RE said "And as you know, any slight influence CO2 may be having on climate, gets weaker and weaker."
While this is true, you are missing the key point that equilibrium surface temperatures are a long way from having caught up with the forcing from current CO2 levels yet. By that I mean that surface temperatures have to rise enough to eliminate the forcing at the top of the atmosphere. Then any further changes in CO2 are on top of that, with roughly a log law.
So we have added 50% to 280 ppm of CO2 to get to 420 ppm. To go from 420 ppm to 560 ppm ( a doubling from long term levels) will change equilibrium surface temperatures by roughly 2/3rds of the change in going from 280 to 420 ppm. If temperatures have gone up by 1.2 to 1.6 degrees C already, going to 560 ppm will cause another 0.8 to 1.0 degrees to take us to 2.0 to 2.6 degrees. And that is before you take into account the lag from not reaching equilibrium surface temperatures yet for 420 ppm CO2.
RE said "So why is all this money being spent, on a non-problem?"
It isn't a non problem. The Chinese may have to move 100 million people away from the North China Plain because, in an extreme heat wave, agricultural workers there may not be able to survive outdoors in the shade by 2100 - with a wet bulb temperature of more than 37 degrees C people die in the shade. That is just one huge example.
Further it isn't clear that power from a 2035 UK net zero grid will cost any more for consumers than current electricity prices - you get some economies of scale out of the increase in demand. It would be really difficult to get more expensive than electricity prices during 2023, thanks to Putin's war. And while UK is dependent on fossil fuels (at European market prices even if produced in the UK), then there is always a possibility of something similar happening again.
As explained before, China is doing far more than UK is to reduce its CO2 emissions. It just starts off at a much worse place.
There is still a huge fossil fuel lobby effort to persuade voters that climate change is not real, and that we should take on board doom (too late), delay (wait until we are richer) and distraction (look at China - except they were clearly the heroes in 2023). None of the mainstream climate scientists or green energy advocates are fools. They understand the issues and the possible solutions to them.
Of course we can and possibly will fill the N.Sea up with windmills and improve the average amount of power delivered across a calendar year and get to 40% or more for sure but what about the other 60%? That has come from somewhere and a good chunk of it should have been nuclear but won't be so short of telling people they can only have power when the wind and sun is available gas has to remain on the system for some time to come. This must be obvious to people like yourself that there is no way we can achieve net zero electricity generation by 2035 let alone Labours insane 2030 goal? So what we need is a rational debate that acknowledges firstly the practicalities of moving away from gas by 2030/5 isn't possible secondly in whatever we do to decrease emissions it won't be cheaper thirdly that some peoples backyards will have to be impacted to build the necessary infrastructure whether they like it or not. If any one of the mainstream parties has this policy id be happy to lend them my vote.
The point about 40% of UK supply from wind was that Ralph Ellis had forecast in 2006 that it would take 120 GW of wind power capacity to get there, and it looks very much as if we will blow 40% wind power supply with only 40 GW of a combination of 1/3rd onshore wind and 2/3 offshore wind capacity. He was claiming he should be on the CCC because he could give good advice, but is out on this one by a factor of around 3.
N said "What about the other 60%" [of UK supply other than that coming from wind when it gets to 40%]
UK has a target of 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030 (which it might now fail to meet by a year or so). That means it has to install another 36 GW or so of offshore wind, plus some onshore wind which I will ignore right now.
New UK offshore wind is likely to come in at an average capacity factor of 55%. So 36 GW of extra capacity is worth 20 GW of extra average generation, on top of the 30% supply from wind over the last 12 calendar months. Demand over the last 12 months has averaged 30 GW, so average supply must be something like 35 GW to account for all losses. Wind power over the last 12 calendar months averages 9.5 GW. 9.5 GW + 20 GW = 29.5 GW which is notionally 84% of UK electricity supply. But a lot of this is going to be at the wrong time (when demand is already fully satisfied). It is perhaps reasonable to assume that wind power would supply 70% of UK demand if required supply remains 35 GW on average.
There is also a pipeline of 95 GW of grid batteries, which should help achieve this target.
Then the solar target is 60 GW by 2035 - an increase of 45 GW or so, likely with a capacity factor of 11%. So this might deliver an average of 5 GW, mainly in summer (when offshore wind generates only half what it does in winter. That would be 14% of supply. By 2035 we could have 70 + 14 = 84% of supply from wind and solar, plus the 18% of unused wind power for export or green hydrogen production or whatever - all available.
That is assuming we don't yet get a huge uptake of heat pumps (no sign of it so far) boosting demand. By 2030 EV charging could add no more than 5 GW to average load, even if EV sales are 90% plus by then. That might absorb some of the surplus offshore wind power.
We can't move away from gas completely by 2030, but it is quite likely supply from gas will be down to 10% by then (from 30% over the last 12 calendar months - https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2023-05-01&&_k=pfnihc). Some BECCS negative emissions offsets should be available by 2030 - whether it is enough to offset residual gas use I doubt, but it certainly should be by 2035 to give a net zero grid. Keeping the BECCS and using green hydrogen should enable the UK grid to be slightly negative emissions by 2035.
That's a reasonable scenario and for sure gas displacement will increase as wind and solar buildout increases. However, there remains a vast gap on how to deal with windless and sunless days and battery energy storage isn't the answer even with that highly speculative pipeline it will never be enough. Thus it would be act of sheer folly to not have sufficient CCGTs still available to cover for those occasions when wind and solar aren't available, however expensive that might be, its a necessary price that has to be borne to largely decarbonise electricity supply. I would say the far bigger issue is going to be road transport as its pretty clear EVs aren't going to achieve the levels of penetration necessary even if we sell out completely to the Chinese. Heat pumps are another white elephant and hydrogen is cloud cuckoo land. So we will be left with the need to retain gas as primary heat source and petrol/diesel as transport source of energy. So in all likelihood the ESO fantasy energy forecasts even at the "falling short" level are now well ahead of what reality will be. In some respects that's just as well given the woeful buildout of the necessary grid infrastructure but on the other it risks an oversized grid transmission and generation system. The electricity industry has form for this with a massive overbuild of coal fired stations in the 60's that only really got usefully used when the AGR programme went pear shaped.
In summary, unless we want to fundamentally upturn peoples lives, what im saying here is we need to accept that fossil and renewables are going to need coexist for sometime yet and setting unachievable deadlines will just cost us more so better to develop a policy that recognises that.
If residual gas plant supply is down to 10% by 2030, then the addition of 15 GW of electrolysers and a conversion of the CCGTs to hydrogen fuel would not be that costly and could move the grid to net zero. It might need a little more offshore wind overgeneration, but that is surely coming after 2030, and is likely to lead to significant offshore wind exports through interconnectors after 2030.
Although not everyone can see the trends yet, it looks as if the UK already has most of the major targets and plans in place to get to net zero by 2035 with no real sweat. Hitting it by 2030 might be dependent on significant BECCS offset for natural gas CCGT backup for a few years.
If typical BEV prices drop below fossil fuel vehicle prices by 2026, as expected, then there is no reason why any of the 80% of drivers with off street parking at home or at work (on which a charge point can be installed) would buy a new fossil fuel car after 2028 maybe.
Note that this BEV price drop was forecast for quite a while, but not believed by many. Now everyone believes that Chinese BEV exports will be that cheap and that the issue is the Chinese cleaning up with BEV exports to UK at these prices. For me, the thing that might restrict new BEV sales to 90% rather than 100% is the possible lack of government action to ensure those who have to charge on street have enough public chargers and are not paying through the nose for electricity from them.
So I think you are unduly pessimistic on the BEV transition. Look at how quickly the sales transition happened in Norway once the BEV price (after subsidy) dropped below the cost of fossil fuel cars. Norway is now at 80% BEV, 10% PHEV and 10% fossil fuel car sales.
Look at the orangey brown chart 60% of the way down https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-extends-lead-norway-evs-take-record-82-market-share-2024-01-02/. UK is at around 16% BEV sales now - where Norway was in 2016. But seven years later, Norway is at 82% BEV sales and 8% PHEV sales. This is where UK could be seven years from 2023, which would be 2030. If labour gets in, it could probably ensure this by halving VAT on BEVs.
N said "We need to accept that fossil and renewables are going to need coexist for sometime yet and setting unachievable deadlines will just cost us more so better to develop a policy that recognises that."
Surely the policy should just be to continue to displace fossil fuels with green technology as fast as possible. That will automatically cut fossil fuel production - there's no need to close existing oil or gas wells. But by the same token, there's no point in spending scarce UK investment money in developing more fossil fuel production if it is not needed. As one example, over 30 years, installing 7 GW of offshore wind from one annual auction will produce about the same quantity of electricity as would allowing UK mainland fracking and using the gas produced to generate electricity. And the offshore wind would be on reasonable price fixed price
contracts with annual CPI uplifts, whereas the fracked gas would be sold at European market rates which are at the mercy of price fluctuations caused by geopolitics.
New UK offshore wind is likely to come in at an average capacity factor of 55%
There is no evidence to support this claim. The newest wind farms are in any case first in line to curtail because they lose their subsidies in any hour with negative prices, and the result is much lower capacity factors. Wind farms are increasingly taking each other's wind, reducing their output. Hornsea 2 is performing worse than Hornsea 1 for example. Maintenance problems seem to be eating into performance too.
There may be 95GW of battery wishful thinking, but to call this a pipeline is nonsense. How could 95GW of battery ever earn an income, even at say 1 hour duration?
The FID for Dogger Bank C offshore wind was for a capacity factor of 55%. And you would expect a FID to be reasonably conservative in terms of expected revenue. Dogger Bank offshore wind will use 13 and 14 MW models GE Haliade X wind turbines.
Further, Dogger Bank average wind speeds are in excess of 10 m/s, and GE predicts a capacity factor of 60% or more in those conditions - see https://www.gevernova.com/wind-power/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine.
Then there is the GWA Global Wind Atlas at https://globalwindatlas.info/en. Zoom in on UK, set a class I turbine capacity factor in the menu top left, and put your mouse cursor (best done on a PC not a mobile device) around Dogger Bank. That confirms an expected capacity factor of 55-60% on the scale on the bottom right on the map bit.
Then note that a number of areas north of Scotland have higher capacity factors. In particular, offshore west of the Shetlands starts around 62% and tends to get higher the further west you go. There may be areas where capacity factors reach 70%.
It would be surprising indeed if the average CF for the floating offshore turbines planned north of Scotland was not in excess of 55%.
Further, the GWA probably is geared for hub heights of 100m, while the Haliade X and similar turbines > 13 MW are going to be hub height 140m and growing with time for new variants - after all, it only needs a taller tower, not a redesign of rotor or nacelle.
I keep checking the Dogger Bank A output on Elexon, but this is sporadic and won't give a good indication of CF until Dogger Bank goes live (hopefully soon). I think the issue delaying this has been availability of jacking up vessels.
Wind farms can take each other's wind. The average power available offshore to a huge array of turbines (say 200km by 200km) is 0.3 W/m^2. But typically, if the extents of the wind farms occupy only 10% of the available area, you will get 3 W/m^2 within the wind farms and the vertical friction of the wind will replenish the air momentum from above, outside the wind farms. Two wind farms can only interfere with each other when the wind is in two specific directions, and if they are too close - you would have to look at the relevant wind roses.
Battery pipelines are always the "wishful thinking" version, and the UK pipeline is 95 GW. Since the UK peak hour demand is currently only 60 GW you would indeed not expect 95 GW to be financially viable. But up to 60 GW probably will be. The projects are likely to consolidate down to a lower power, but with higher duration. 4 hours is a good duration to cope with UK evening peak times, for instance.
That assumes it is expensive to provide more GW of power for the same GWh of energy stored. If it isn't, then we may get 95 GW.
The above argument ignores the possibility of profitable exports of battery power (charged with offshore wind) to Europe, of course. UK already has over 10 GW of interconnectors planned and that might double within a decade. We shall see.
I am sure you could wipe the floor with any of us on the quantum effects in femto- and atto- Farad capacitors, though a friend of mine helped write the software ARM use in chip design which has to look at such things so I know more about it than you might suppose. However, it is plain you are not an authority on energy systems and economics, although you have a repertoire of propaganda that seems to derive from references at Wikipedia.
Also see my web site at https://greenenergytransition.info/
IDAU said "I am sure you could wipe the floor with any of us on the quantum effects in femto- and atto- Farad capacitors [on chips]"
Actually, I doubt I could, for one good reason. The aim of the capacitors on chips is to work at low voltage around 1-2 volts maybe and to have the maximum possible capacitance per area - thus saving chip real estate for more useful purposes. For chip use, the "dead layers" at the electrodes of a capacitor increase the voltage and decrease the capacitance and are thus undesirable. The chip guys want to eliminate dead layers if possible, and this was what all but one of the research papers were focused on when I was doing literature reviews.
But that is the opposite of what my research was all about. My research was to exploit these dead layers, which actually increase the voltage across a capacitor for a given state of charge ~= polarisation, which thus increases the stored energy. With good design, these dead layers cannot readily break down, unlike the bulk dielectric, but can drop a decent fraction of a volt each. My aim was to investigate how to maximise the energy density in ceramic capacitors with very many very thin dielectric layers each separated by a disconnected conducting layer to give two interfacial voltage drops (plus the voltage drop across the dielectric which would be smaller in the optimal case). So the resulting device would be oriented towards high voltage energy storage and not towards low voltage chip operation.
Although the effect is real and could be used to implement ceramic capacitors with a higher energy density than existing ceramic capacitors, the only real advantages they have are in high frequency operations or in hot environments such as jet engines maybe. It also looks like they would cost too much to produce to be commercially viable. Supercapacitors beat them hands down for energy density in more normal environments, as do batteries, though both of these energy storage devices respond far slower than ceramic capacitors.
You assert that "climate change is not a constituency by constituency effect - it is a global problem". Do you even consider that it might not be? Or that our small nation can't really have any meaningful effect on global CO2? Or that warming is better than cooling?, or that the CO2 effect is already saturated? Or that even if CO2 had an effect, mitigation might be a better option that restricting CO2 output? Or that there are benefits to additional CO2 in greening the world? Yet our rulers have granted the CCC all these undemocratic powers to influence our lives and take risks with our electricity system and prices. Who do I vote for if I don't want any of this?
DW asks "You assert that "climate change is not a constituency by constituency effect - it is a global problem". Do you even consider that it might not be? "
There don't seem to be many countries or regions of the world where there are only advantages from global warming, if that is what you mean. But there might be some parliamentary constituencies in the UK in that position.
DW said "Or that our small nation can't really have any meaningful effect on global CO2? "
My standard counter arguments to this objection include splitting up China into 26 separate countries by province. Then each crudely has around the same emissions and same population as the UK. So if UK has no meaningful effect on global CO2, then neither does any individual one of these new Chinese province countries. So if it is OK for UK not to take any further action on climate change, then it would be OK for none of the new Chinese province countries to do nothing too.
Except the issue is that you haven't actually resolved global warming then - just ignored it by a trick. So the logical conclusion is that not only all the small Chinese province countries, but also the UK has to do something about CO2 emissions.
The next questions is - how much should all 27 of us do about it? Well you could ask for actions based on:-
- China's current emissions of 29x UK (29% vs 1%?)
- China's historical emissions of 3x UK (14% vs 4.6%)
- Chinas population of 20x UK (1.4bn vs 70m)
- Chinas dollar GDP of 6x UK ($18tr vs $3tr)
Now China installed 292 GW of wind and solar in 2023. Pro rata that by each of the above ratios and you would be asking UK to install roughly 10 GW, 100GW, 15GW or 50 GW of wind and solar. The snag is that whichever ratio you go with, UK didn't hit it in 2023.
In 2023 UK installed around 1.7 GW of solar and just over 2 GW of wind power - total 4 GW. But the minimum fair ratio for UK to install would required 10 GW, and the maximum ration would be 100 GW. So, on any measure I can think of, the UK didn't do as well as China in 2023.
DW said "Or that warming is better than cooling?, or that the CO2 effect is already saturated? "
Warming may be better than cooling, but it is not better than temperatures staying at what they were a few years ago.
The CO2 effect is not saturated. While the centre of the main CO2 infrared band is saturated, the two side wings of it are most definitely not. And these are not saturated by the combination of CO2 and H2O either.
DW said "Or that even if CO2 had an effect, mitigation might be a better option that restricting CO2 output? "
You can't mitigate enough. It is just far cheaper to restrict CO2 emissions.
DW said "Yet our rulers have granted the CCC all these undemocratic powers to influence our lives and take risks with our electricity system and prices. "
Firstly the government appoints all the CCC members. Secondly the CCC only has an advisory role in policy - parliament takes decisions on which of the CCC recommendations to accept or not. This all seems pretty democratic to me as the CCC has no direct power - only influence.
Compare that with the Bank of England MPC monetary policy committee are all appointed by the government, but who directly control interest rates without the decision needing to be ratified by parliament.
Vote Reform if you don't want any of this. But the snag is that there are too few of you not wanting it to get anyone elected - 80%+ of UK voters support net zero and action on climate change. If the Tory party made scrapping net zero targets part of its election manifesto, it would contribute to a much more savage decimation of its MPs than is currently predicted.
You could emigrate to Russia or one of the Middle Eastern countries who don't believe in climate action. But if I were you I would stay put in the UK - because life will surely be more tolerable here, despite the rest of us continuing to address global warming.
And, have you ever driven an EV? Almost everyone who owns one thinks it is the best car they have ever owned, including me with my lowly 2015 Nissan Leaf. I hate having do drive my wife's 2018 Toyota Yaris petrol car.
I was rather thinking that the case for it being a man made (CO2) global problem has not been adequately made. Relax that assumption and see where it takes you. The null hypothesis should be that man made CO2 emissions have no effect. Stick with that. For example, when the world locked down most economic activity 2 or 3 years ago it had zero effect on CO2 at Mauna Loa - a reality check! So why do you think CCC proposals will be any different?
Next step is the belief/assumption that reducing CO2 will reduce global temperature. Where is the reality check for that? And do we want it ?
Is there anything you can point to to expand your comment on saturation?
Ditto with your assertion that reducing CO2 is cheaper than mitigation. Spending trillions on something that we don’t know is going to have any effect (CO2 reduction) versus mitigating any problems as they arise seems bonkers to me. CO2 reduction has zero track record.
In our two-party system neither is querying Net Zero, which has effectively become dogma that is never questioned. I didnt vote for it. Reform is a red herring.
DW said "I was rather thinking that the case for it being a man made (CO2) global problem has not been adequately made."
It is not a matter for debate, it is a matter of physics. As Nate Silver put it, there is a clear and well researched physical mechanism as to why human induced CO2 emissions should cause warming. And it is clear that as Mauna Loa CO2 reading have increase, ocean heat content has gone up. 90% of the global warming net incoming energy ends up in the oceans, so you should expect a very clear signal of global warming there, and that is precisely what you see at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content. It will be clear because the signal is much larger than the surface temperature signal.
DW said "The null hypothesis should be that man made CO2 emissions have no effect. "
Look at the ocean heat content. Clearly there is steady warming going on and not a trace of any sort of cyclic temperature rise - somewhere between a straight line and a slowly expanding exponential rise in ocean heat content.
DW said "For example, when the world locked down most economic activity 2 or 3 years ago it had zero effect on CO2 at Mauna Loa - a reality check!"
This is very straightforward. In 2020, global CO2 emissions dropped 5.4% from 37 bn tonnes in 2019 to 35 bn tonnes in 2020, then made up most of that drop in 2021 and set a new record in 2022. But Mauna Loa does not measure CO2 emissions - it measures the CUMULATIVE CO2 in the atmosphere, which is the original 280 ppm plus roughly half of all the CO2 humans have caused to be added to the atmosphere. So when you look at the chart for Mauna Loa, what you should be looking for is a very slightly smaller increase in 2020 than for the previous year. But the change is too small to see on the chart - CO2 in the atmosphere should be going up by roughly half of the 35 to 37 billion tonnes. Whether is was the smaller or larger figure, it won't be discernible by eye.
Only if 2020 CO2 emissions were zero would you have seen the 2020 figure at the same level on the chart as the previous year. But to a good first approximation they were very similar to the previous year! See the zoomed in chart for a few years at https://insight.factset.com/mauna-loa-and-ppm-analyzing-the-latest-data.
The other snag is that CO2 takes about a year for CO2 to mix from northern to southern hemisphere and vice versa. But only weeks to months to mix within one of the hemispheres. Mauna Loa is at roughly 20 degrees N latitude, so won't pick up the slow down in 2020 southern emissions until 2021, not 2022. And, although Mauna Loa is fairly well isolated, there is still some small element of random type noise in the readings to make it difficult to pick up a drop of 2 bn tonnes per year in emissions.
Surely you don't dispute that human induced CO2 emissions increase the CO2 levels in the atmosphere? The process is that humans add more CO2 in a particular year, then after a few years approximately half of the addition gets absorbed by the sea surface and biosphere. So the atmosphere retains roughly half of the original emissions which then stays there for hundreds if not thousands of years and increases CO2 levels. Some of the half that gets absorbed by the sea surface makes the sea more acidic, of course.
There is also a huge, annual, cyclic dynamic interchange of CO2 between atmosphere, sea surface and biosphere. But on the same day of each year this returns to its starting level a year previously. So it doesn't affect the long term upward trend of CO2, but just imposes an annual cycle on it which you can see in the Mauna Loa figures.
So there is clearly something going on - CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise in line with half of cumulative, human induced emissions, and ocean heat content rises with this, without showing any cyclic behaviour.
You now have to select a hypothesis to research in detail to confirm or otherwise. In the last but one century, in an article published in 1896 in the Philosophical Magazine, Arrhenius predicted human burning of fossil fuels would increase temperatures. Then in 1964 Manabe and Strickler published their seminal paper "Thermal equilibrium of the atmosphere with a convective adjustment". It was the first paper to produce a theory as to what causes the measured vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere which it got roughly right except for the poles.
After that, the techniques in the paper were increasingly used for weather modelling and climate modelling. The science was expanded, and there was no dispute that this described the mechanism of the greenhouse effect.
Then the oil companies started to push climate denial for corporate rather than scientific reasons. Prior to that there were zero disagreements about about standard atmospheric science or climatology. When the disagreements came, they were motivated by corporate greed and later politics, not by science.
Because CO2 is clearly going up as humans add it to the atmosphere, the ocean heat content is rising steadily, and standard atmospheric physics processes work extremely well for weather forecasting etc. the onus is not on the climatologists to prove anything - because they already have. If someone disputes the link between human induced CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 levels, or between atmospheric CO2 levels and the level of forcing at the top of the atmosphere leading to rises in ocean heat content, then they have to come up with a credible alternative mechanism. So far no one has done this with the degree of rigour required. Those who dispute climate science have come up with plenty of suggestions - most of them with huge flaws. But no one has come up with a complete credible alternative that explains the atmosphere and warming, without invoking human induced CO2 emissions.
DW said "Next step is the belief/assumption that reducing CO2 will reduce global temperature."
It is a prediction based on standard atmospheric physics.
Except you have to be careful what it means. Reducing annual CO2 emission while there still are emissions some does not reduce temperatures - it just makes them increase more slowly. You would have to actually net remove CO2 from the atmosphere to eventually bring temperatures down, which is decades away. And there are also some years of lag between atmospheric CO2 increasing, and the new equilibrium temperature of the atmosphere with that level of CO2 being reached. So temperatures will still continue to go up for a while even at the point where we start net removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
DW asked "Is there anything you can point to to expand your comment on saturation?"
I was despairing on this one because I have just the paper on my PC, but it is normally paywalled. But I have just found a version on a Harvard web site.
See page 103 (really page 4) of https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/global-change-debates/Sources/CO2-saturation/more/Zhong-Haigh-2013.pdf.
The top chart of figure 5b) shows you what happens the radiative flux emitted at the top the atmosphere if you change CO2 levels. The baseline for comparison (labelled 1 x CO2) is for CO2 at 389 ppm, because that is what it was around 2013 when the paper was written.
Be careful of the other charts. The left hand and right hand charts on the top and bottom lines correspond to each other. But for lines 2, 3 and 4 of the charts the left hand charts and right hand charts are for different CO2 concentrations. I think I did complain to Joanna Haigh at one point, but it was really too late by then! Just make sure you read the concentration on each chart if trying to relate the left side charts to the right side charts.
If you have any questions I am happy to try to answer them. If I can't I should be able to contact someone who can. Joanna Haigh retired over 10 years ago.
DW said "Spending trillions on something that we don’t know is going to have any effect (CO2 reduction) versus mitigating any problems as they arise seems bonkers to me."
Most of us are pretty sure that CO2 emissions reduction do have an effect - because CO2 emissions do have an effect, but this only slows the rate at which problems develop (which is critical).
DW said "CO2 reduction has zero track record."
As I said above, it will be decades before we can start actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere, as opposed to just slowing down the rate we put it into the atmosphere.
DW said "In our two-party system neither is querying Net Zero, which has effectively become dogma that is never questioned. "
Just about every country in the world is signed up to the Paris climate agreement. That includes just about all nationalities, all political systems, all races, all languages. The reason is that everyone understands that climate science is settled science. Calling it "dogma" is irrelevant - you could equally well call the law of thermodynamics, general relativity and quantum mechanics "dogma". Typically the more a scientist knows about climate science, the less he or she disputes it, though there are a very small percentage of very public exceptions.
You live in a democracy, at least at the moment, so are going to continue to get overruled by the majority.
“Climate change” is a massive, decades-old globalist hoax and it’s a waste of time trying to reason with puppet Uniparty politicians. The electorate now has a once-in-many-decades chance to vote them all out of office.
https://metatron.substack.com/p/debunking-the-climate-change-hoax
That article is rubbish and, on a cursory inspection, contains the following serious flaws.
1) It is true that warming often precedes CO2 rises in the prehistorical record. But it is a logical fallacy to think that means that CO2 rises cannot cause warming.
2) The article claims all temperature adjustments are made in the direction that increases the perceived warming trend. This is a complete falsehood. While the trend for land surface temperatures is increase somewhat by adjustments compare to raw data, the trend for sea surface temperatures is lowered far more by adjustments - and there is more than twice as much sea (70% of the earth's surface) as there is land (30%). So the overall effect of adjustments is to very distinctly reduce the calculated warming, not to increase it.
3) The article claims there is no global warming because the climate models run too hot. While I would dispute that, the climate model results are irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of global warming. CO2 has risen 50% from 280 ppm to 420 ppm now, and the ocean heat content at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content has been steadily increasing (possibly with a recent acceleration). Those facts alone are enough to establish that there is a strong case that global warming is real - global warming does not depend on the accuracy or otherwise of climate models, but on the raw experimental evidence for CO2 and ocean heat content.
4) The article is laden with emotive and perjorative terms whose purpose is obviously to persuade people of something, rather than present objective evidence. The intent of the author is to ensure that readers don't think properly about the content - or they might do their own fact checking of a few things and start to think logically about it, which wouldn't suit the author at all.
I am sure I could treble the size of the list with a more careful reading - but it isn't worth it because the article clearly falls below the threshold for an informative, objective appraisal of climate change.
1. I don’t make any such “logical fallacy”. I said that many studies have shown that an increase of atmospheric CO2 from present levels will have minimal impact on global temperatures. I defy you to rebut any of these studies, e.g. that of Professor Will Hutton.
2. Typical that you would pick up on a single poorly chosen word (“always”). I defy you to rebut the examples I listed.
3. I didn’t say there was no global warming “because the climate models run too hot”. Your own sloppy wording doesn’t distinguish between natural warming and alleged man-made warming. Obvious there was some global warming in the 1980s and 90s, which I contend was natural, giving the impression that the flawed climate models were partly right. My main point relates to your point 1 and the CO2 saturation effect. And the climate models didn’t do a very good job of predicting the current spike (Hunga Tonga, Lol).
4. Meaningless word soup and claiming I haven’t presented any “objective evidence” when the explanations and facts I give make it clear to any critical thinker that the people are being lied to on a massive scale. OK I admit I am angry, which shows in some of my words. I’m angry because we, the people, are being oppressed through an undeclared war against truth and freedom by oppressors who lie, cheat, suppress the truth and curtail our freedoms. And that doesn’t just apply to the climate change hoax.
1. You say "The pretence that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 lead to dangerous global warming is debunked by studies and reconstructions of what happened in the recent and long-ago past, as described in this paper. These show that the increase in atmospheric CO2 follows the rise in global temperature rather than coming before it and causing it, i.e. the exact inverse of the establishment’s CO2 climate “control knob” pretence."
And you imply strongly to the reader that this means that rises in CO2 do not and cannot cause rises in temperature.
To re-iterate, it is certainly true that temperatures can rise for reasons other than CO2 (e.g. earth's orbital fluctuations), and that more CO2 is released into the atmosphere as a result. But that does not at all prove that rises in CO2 cannot cause rises in temperature.
I'm not going to read Hutton or anyone else. If your document is not correct then it is not correct.
2. Let us be charitable to you, and omit the word "always"
What you then would have said would have been "Another establishment climate change skulduggery is the never-justified retrospective adjustment of official temperature records, in a direction to make global warming look worse."
This is still a gross lie, because the balance of adjustments made actually REDUCE the calculated rate of warming. Depending on which data set you take, adjustments reduce the results of calculations of overall warming from the late 1800s to today by 0.1 to 0.2 degrees C. And you omit to mention this, so your article ends up being hugely misleading to anyone not skilled in critical analysis and prepared to do some fact checking
But forget the surface temperatures, which are always subject to complexities of ENSO etc. etc. Just look at the ocean heat warming which captures 90% of the incoming energy of global warming. It shows a steady increase from the late 1960s. Most recently it has been approximately linear.
And while we are on the subject of deliberate misrepresentation in your 22 May 2024 article, I would like to know why you have deliberately constrained the UAH 6.0 WoodForTrees chart to finish at the end of 2023, and not 2024? The UAH chart above the WoodForTrees subset shows a distinct peak in 2024, as does a WoodForTrees unrestricted chart as in the link https://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6.
This is surely an extreme case of cherry picking with an intent to mislead.
3. What you said was "Further evidence that CO2 global warming is a hoax is given by the abject failure of the establishment’s computer climate models to give credible global temperature predictions."
As far as I can see this is very similar to saying 'there is no global warming because the climate models run too hot'.
4. Here are some of the words you use in your article:-
"blatant falsehoods"
"outrageously false “climate change” propaganda and brainwashing."
"horribly deceived and abused for ulterior political motives "
"junk science, anti-humanity climate policies"
"the seldom-mentioned anti-capitalism, anti-democracy and even anti-humanity origins of the scientifically corrupt, Malthusian, horribly politicised, horribly entrenched and ruthlessly enforced climate change hoax."
"various bad actors have weaponised these concerns for dark ulterior motives. One such was the late billionaire socialist Maurice Strong who set up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988"
"The Machiavellian Strong set about creating a false problem based on false science"
If you are in an angry state, then likely you are not doing the necessary analysis to find out what is supported by reliable evidence and what is not.
---------
Some other points:-
"All we ever get from the UN is bluster, not proper science"
Every few years, the UN, through the UNFCCC, produces very comprehensive IPCC documentation, with a full review process and documented responses to every single comments received on drafts. Hardly "bluster". And if you could find anything substantive wrong with any of the IPCC material, you could have commented on it. Have you ever submitted a comment to the IPCC on any draft material? If not, then why not, since you clearly feel so strongly about the subject.
"Bill Gates, George Soros and the Rockefellers who are using the climate change hoax to manipulate public policy towards their own self-centred goals."
Bill (and Melinda) Gates are well known for donating literally billions for medical research and practical measures to help to eliminate diseases, such as malaria and polio. While I don't agree with Gates on many things, these actions are about as far from being self-centred as you can get. I doubt if you would find anyone to dispute that.
"It took years of dogged investigation by a small band of climate realists, hindered all the way by IPCC scientists who refused to make public their data, to prove that the hockey stick graph was bogus, crafted from flawed data and statistical chicanery."
The analysis of the original Mann research paper has been repeated many times by mainstream scientists. And every time, its findings have been confirmed.
DB said "when the explanations and facts I give make it clear to any critical thinker that the people are being lied to on a massive scale. "
I am a critical thinker and do a lot of analysis, and can see that there are a lot of problems with a number of your statements, as documented above.
" the warming effect of CO2 is already “saturated”
No it isn't. Here's a spectral analysis which shows a doubling of CO2 from the then levels of 389 ppm would produce a bigger greenhouse effect - https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/global-change-debates/Sources/CO2-saturation/more/Zhong-Haigh-2013.pdf. See the top left chart of figure 5b) on page 103.
I would submit to you that your article brings together a number of statements from other articles written by people with whom you generally agree. And you have combined them into your article without ever doing any critical analysis on the statements you include, as best you can, so see if they are actually correct or not. And that is why it is easy to find so many flaws in the article.
Many years ago, until they banned me completely for going against the “official” establishment narrative, I used to enter the comment sections under climate change articles in The Guardian. I knew then I had no hope of enlightening them to the error of their thinking. My main motivation was to try to figure out what on earth made them tick.
These exchanges with you bring back memories of the impossibility of using rational arguments against Guardian readers. I had enough of it then and I’ve had enough of it now. I won’t be engaging with you any further.
As I recently said to someone like you on another thread, how can you sleep at night when your pseudo-science is leading us into wrecking the economy? Did you learn nothing from the establishment’s Covid hoax? Please don’t bother to respond to these rhetorical questions.
COVID wasn't a hoax. 7 million people have died of it so far. Most of these had 10 or more years of natural life left. And it would have been far more had there not been vaccines available within a year.
You again! You have fallen for the Covid hoax just as you have fallen for the climate change hoax. Either that or you are a paid-for establishment shill.
Since Covid, I have assumed that the establishment’s most pressing fear is a global financial system meltdown due to the unsustainable debts they have run up, which is why they want, one way or another, to get the global population shackled in digital straitjackets to prevent an uprising. Reiner Fuellmich identified this as the main reason they launched their Covid “plandemic”. Read his closing arguments in his 2002 Covid-19 Crimes Against Humanity model trial summarised by myself and hosted by Joel here: https://metatron.substack.com/p/reiner-fuellmichs-grand-jury-court.
Maybe this is rather naive of me to ask, but have you drawn the attention of Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband to your study?
I cannot speak for Mr Turver. However, I started a letter writing campaign over 10 years ago to inform (mostly British) politicians and other policy formers of the dangers of current renewables/climate & energy policy - I included references to Mr Turver's very important work when it became available. I have to say that the responses I received have, for the most part, not been encouraging; most policy formers seem to be wedded to the current renewables/Net Zero agenda. Regards, John C.
99% of politicians are wedded to Net Zero and of course its been cooked up so long that its in most people mind set that it has to be dealt with so most politicians would be on dangerous ground now to abandon it so on the lie goes. Reality is until people are impacted directly by the NZ policies I fear its going to be difficult to move the dial. The problem is significant impacts are probably several years away still but by the time they start occurring things will have gone too far.
So true , as appears to be happening in mainland Europe lately. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the forthcoming European elections.
I think it is more productive to ensure that sympathetic politicians are well briefed. The establishment will try to ignore them, but e.g. Andrew Bridgen the other day completely floored the energy minister with facts about what we are really paying for renewables. That is now on record.
Someone like Tice on the other had really hasn't grasped the detail, and needs educating, even if he is broadly sympathetic. Graham Stringer was excellent (proving this is not a party thing).
This is heartening.
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my comment John. It is concerning that those responsible for the renewables/Net Zero agenda and their followers are so quick to ignore/dismiss other opinions/perspectives and indeed opposing facts these days. I'm 67 and a retired power systems engineer and relieved not to be involved with these folk. Regards, Phil.
The problem stretches much wider into the tentacles that the CCC extends elsewhere. They have surprisingly little relevant expertise of their own, so they have an array of sock puppet consultancies to whom they turn to prepare the blizzard of reports they issue with each carbon budget. The consultancy fees help fund a whole propaganda business that is bolstered by further consultancy work for BEIS/DESNZ, OFGEM etc.
The CCC has been intimately entwined with the group at National Grid who produce the Future Energy Scenarios under contract to BEIS/DESNZ and OFGEM, using them as the underpinning of their work. In effect this group is one if the CCC sock puppet consultancies, with the twist that they get to set the scenarios to the benefit of National Grid. The solutions they choose magically involve much more grid. A bigger conflict of interest is hard to imagine. The plans to have this group off from the grid owning company itself do not solve the problem. It will be the same people with the same narrow view.
I note our resident troll has contributed some 13,671 words (over 60%), and 36 out of 100 posts, only two of which were on topic - Top trolling! He persists in writing lengthy essays full of errors and his personal opinion. When he is shown to be wrong he claims he is right. He has a high opinion of himself because he has a physics PhD in a rather abstruse field that is of no relevance to the topics under discussion, and because he has done some basic course in atmospheric physics, but evidently the course reading material was somewhat restricted.
I am very much in favour of free speech. But his activities are designed to smother that. Almost no-one reads his diatribes except the person he takes aim at on each occasion, and it takes the patience of a saint to counter him if he writes an essay introducing new topics and poor analysis. Comments from others which may often reveal a different slant or insight on the article topics get buried - and thus free speech is drowned. I think he should be invited to write his critiques elsewhere, like his own website. You might even offer him a link to it for interested parties. I do wonder whether he is being paid to be disruptive: links he has to e.g. the Grantham Institute reveal potential sources of funding.
Meanwhile your next post probably needs a DNFTT warning.
No one pays me for anything, apart from my company (IBM) pension and state pension.
The question is whether you wish this site to be a pure echo chamber where everyone agrees with each other without questioning anything.
Almost everyone currently working in the UK electricity industry would share most of my views rather than yours - and I do get exposure to some of them from time to time in various ways such as open face to face seminars and events and various open online briefings. But they are all gainfully employed doing real things, rather than just outreach, so don't have time to respond with point for point rebuttals to a comment or article on a web site which takes a thoroughly contrarian view to the mainstream. Most of them would regard it as a waste of time, though I don't think it is.
My activities are not designed to smother free speech. Rather they are to engage in conversations with individuals who may thus come to understand that not everything is as they previously thought it was, by means of examples and links. And from time to time I learn something new too, or at least am forced to research some area in rather more detail than previously.
It is considerably less likely that someone will change their views on climate change, than on renewables and EVs. Though it has been known.
The issue of length is simple. There is no point in responding to a statement "there is no such a thing as global warming" with a similar length statement saying "oh yes there is". If there is any point at all to responding to that statement, the response has to outline the main, overwhelming evidence for global warming. And this will take somewhat more text than original, erroneous) statement.