In my humble opinion, the HoCL now comes under the aegis of the new definition of an 'extremist' organisation. Their stated purpose (and their moral, if not legal duty) is to provide elected MPs with impartial information in order for those MPs to fulfil their duties to their voters under the current putative system of a 'liberal democracy':
"The library has adopted the phrase "Contributing to a well-informed democracy" as a summary of its mission statement."
"Our job is to provide a range of research and information services for MPs and MPs’ staff. Our work helps MPs scrutinise legislation, prepare for debates, develop policies and support their constituents.
We are a team of researchers, statisticians, librarians, indexers, communications and customer service professionals, working together to provide an impartial and trusted service."
Really? Seriously? They now put 'diversity and inclusion' ahead of their commitment to impartial information:
In the House of Commons, we aspire to be:
Inclusive: We value everyone equally. We respect each other and all have a voice.
Courageous: We try new things. We own our actions and decisions and learn from our mistakes.
Trusted: We trust each other to do a good job. We are impartial and build confidence in Parliament through our integrity.
Collaborative: We share our knowledge and experience. We work towards a shared vision and know we work better in partnership.
The House of Commons Library is a research and information service based in the UK Parliament. Our impartial analysis, statistical research and resources help MPs and their staff scrutinise legislation, develop policy, and support constituents.
We are part of the wider Research and Information (R&I) team with the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST). Our team includes communications professionals, data and information managers, librarians, researchers, scientists, statisticians and more.
We recognise that we still have more to do to ensure that our workforce is diverse and reflects society. We also recognise the importance of creating and sustaining an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive, in line with our values.
We are doing this by embedding key areas of the House of Commons Inclusion and Diversity Strategy into our work and behaviours. Our goal is to:
decrease the ethnicity pay gap
improve accessibility
foster inclusive environments"
They are obviously obsessed by 'diversity and inclusion', almost certainly to the detriment of impartiality. And there's nothing quite so Woke as the 'just' clean, Green energy transition which addresses the fossil fuel based eco-crimes of our ancestors here in the UK. As such, given MPs' reliance upon their 'impartial' research to inform them in critical debates, they are a clear and present danger to our liberal parliamentary democracy:
"Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology[footnote 3] based on violence, hatred or intolerance[footnote 4], that aims to:
negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms[footnote 5] of others; or
undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy[footnote 6] and democratic rights[footnote 7]; or
intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2)."
It’s not the House of Commons Library gaslighting MPs, it’s the entire establishment including almost all the MPS who are gaslighting us, the people, on the bidding of their globalist overlords. The really annoying thing is that their lies, deceptions and propaganda are so easily seen through, be it on climate change, Covid, wars on other countries and on children, families, motorists, farmers or whatever, as you have once again demonstrated in this admirable post.
When you consider our likely next incompetent Energy Minister will be that great bastion of socialism, Ed Milliband, things are likely to get a whole lot worse - he still quotes renewables are 9x cheaper than fossil fuels - what an utter spam mallet he will be
Net Zero is a giant fraud that can never happen, what will happen is the transfer of wealth from the bill payer to the criminals who profit from “green” energy.
It is frightening how such truth/reality-bending information, that degrades the standard of living for all, can persist for so many years. Maybe 90+% of Parliamentarians are energy-inept and have been gaslighted by relatively few people in the renewables industries and their NGO 'backers'.
Sadly, the poorest in society suffer the most from high energy bills and I wonder if those with the 'presentational' skills, who perpetrate this colossal and ultra-effective propaganda scandal have any pangs of conscience?
Dan McGrail at renewableUK, along with social media activists Michael Liebreich and Doug Parr of Greenpeace all spring to mind and all of whom will have directly inputted into political group-think.
David, fairly new to your substack, and really appreciative of it. Your diligence, depth and detail 'through the cycle', are an eye opening tour de force. I invariably want to shout and scream reading them, for highlighting my, societies ' gullibility. I believe in and WANT renewable energy, and planned, it CAN deliver even when the wind doesn't blow. I don't want a legalised, govt sanctioned redistribution of wealth, from users to offshore tax abusers dressed up as the solution. Why can't we have honest provision with a honest profit? Why do we have this legalised money laundering and extortion?
Going through their report I have to say it is misleading, and relies on outdated information. From the top:
"Despite this, the price paid for wholesale electricity on the ‘spot market’, where, according to the Competition and Market’s Authority around two fifths of electricity is thought to be sold (PDF), is largely determined by the price of natural gas."
The report dates from 2016, when that might have been true, but it is no longer the case. Since then large tranches of interconnector capacity have opened which now play a key role in price setting, and the very volatile market during the energy crisis has had a huge impact on trading patterns, with long forward sales (especially at fixed prices) a rarity because of credit risk and performance risk (the costs if a counterparty fails on its side of the deal - a retailer going bust rather than paying a high price it agreed in the past, or a nuclear generator unable to generate because it is shut for safety for example). A few recent PPAs indicate that the credit market is normalising - but it is a credit market, not an electricity market, and helps to provide security for financing: the actual electricity pricing will almost certainly for renewables be based on day ahead markers, since market forecasts are for lower gas prices as more LNG comes on stream over the next few years.
It is a delusion to think that in the crisis prices were being set by gas: they were being set by the need to destroy demand to be within available supply. Gas prices simply rose in sympathy with that. In practice from April onwards prices were underpinned in the UK by the French need to import due to nuclear shortage: that was either direct to France, or additionally via the Netherlands and Belgium when their shortages were bigger.
In 2023 there were large swings in interconnector volumes as their prices determined which CCGT plants could be competitive, or even because we had a renewables surplus for export.
The idea that the GB system (NI is in a separate all-Ireland market) operates via marginal cost pricing is a travesty of the truth. Most power is sold ahead of gate closure, with only quite small volumes trading in the Balancing Mechanism (albeit sometimes at exorbitant prices). You can get a flavour of that from these (new) mouseover charts (unfortunately as yet with little back history) - bear in mind that settlement periods are half an hour, so average MW are twice the MWh.
Prices bid and offered in the Balancing Mechanism reflect a combination of economics and guessing what the market (NGESO) will pay. If you are a coal fired station warmed up as a last resort, you know that NGESO will more or less have to pay whatever you ask. If you are a wind farm you will refuse to curtail unless your consequent loss of subsidies is paid for. The result is a reverse merit order system, with the largest subsidies being most costly to recompense, so the costliest generation gets to carry on, while the cheapest gets curtailed. As has been found (see Intini and Waterson https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723000292?via%3Dihub ), they will likely overestimate the loss of production and egg the price at which they will curtail. As you have shown, with the exception of the brief period when CFDs were repaying all ROC generators and almost all CFDs in payment cost more than market price by virtue of the subsidies.
In the run up to gate closure the market adjusts as the wind forecast gets firmed up. Wind forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty much of the time. If they are looking optimistic, purchases from other generators or via interconnectors will help fill the gap. If they are pessimistic then perhaps it will be necessary for generators who have already sold output to agree to buy from wind farms at a price that generates a bigger profit (saving fuel and other operating cost) than generating would give. This is a negotiation, and prices will be lower the more wind farms are having to make last minute sales. Wind and solar farms are naturally wary of over or under selling volumes, because imbalance prices in the Balancing Mechanism are likely to prove much more ruinous than trying to match sales with likely output ahead of gate closure, unless they can count on being in line for curtailment payments.
Worth noting too that when we get a renewables surplus some generators get paid to provide ancillary services (inertia, short circuit strength, etc.) and keep generating, even though the value of their energy output on its own would not cover their costs. Just because wind farms are curtailed on the excuse of insufficient transmission capacity, the reality is that there would still be curtailment to create space for ancillary service providers. Of course, the idea that wind and solar get subsidised to export at negative prices with GB consumers picking up the bill is also forgotten.
The “contracts for difference” (CfDs) that give guaranteed prices to new renewable energy schemes are currently costing the average household just 28p per year.
They will turn negative and start reducing consumer energy costs from October. The design of the contracts means projects pay money back to consumers when electricity prices are very high.
The current portfolio of roughly 18 gigawatts (GW) of CfD projects – mainly offshore wind – will be cutting average bills by around £11 per year under the October cap.
As wholesale gas prices are rising and the portfolio is expanding, this saving will increase to around £18 in January, according to Auxilione’s detailed forecasts shared with Carbon Brief.
A UK government auction has secured a record 11 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity that will generate electricity nine times more cheaply than current gas prices.
The projects are all due to start operating within the next five years up to 2026/27 and have agreed to generate electricity for an average price of £48 per megawatt hour (MWh) in today’s money. This is nine times cheaper than the £446/MWh current cost of running gas-fired power stations.
In reality, the UK’s rapid deployment of renewables has reduced our reliance on costly fossil fuels.
To put this argument in perspective, Carbon Brief calculated the cost of extra gas that the UK would have needed to buy, if it did not already get a third of its electricity from renewables.
The chart below shows this cost broken down by year, with renewables having helped the UK avoid the need to buy nearly £12.5bn of gas in 2022 to date, more than in any other year.
Fossil generators across the UK and Europe pay carbon prices that are below the cost that CO2 imposes on society, known as the social cost of carbon. From this perspective, raising CO2 prices removes hidden subsidies to the fossil fuel sector.
Wind & Solar are a total waste of capital. Their only value is for small niche applications like off grid homes, on a diesel grid or a grid with lots of reservoir hydro. Adding fluctuating solar and wind to the electrical grid makes it much less efficient at producing electricity. The electrical grid runs at maximum efficiency when most generation is high efficiency, high capital cost baseload power Nuclear, Hydro, high cost CCGT not low cost OCGT, high cost supercritical coal not low cost conventional coal. Wind & solar favor low cost, fuel guzzling OCGT & diesel generation to mirror the wind & solar variation. That means high overall emissions.
In fact the Bentek study of the Texas & Colorado big Wind Power expansions showed they caused emissions to INCREASE rather then the theoretical decrease expected.
How Less Became More: Wind, Power and Unintended Consequences in the Colorado & Texas Energy Markets:
Other inefficiencies forced upon the grid by wind & solar include:
-- idling big coal & gas power plants when wind or solar is low (Germany disconnects the generators from the grid so it can falsely ignore those emissions)
-- running big thermal plants at less than full output which is inefficient
-- large line losses from the highly peaking supply on wind & solar long distance transmission lines
-- overbuild (excess generation when not needed) i.e. wind & solar both peak in spring when hydro also peaks and electricity demand is minimum
-- curtailment of operating low emissions nuclear/hydro plants
-- rooftop solar in sub-optimal locations (i.e. poor alignment, shade from trees & buildings)
-- cycling inefficiencies
-- high energy cost from needing a duplicate power grid
-- low EROI (energy return on invested) for wind & solar. In fact so low that they are physically impossible replacements for fossil
-- high material inputs of wind & solar ~20X conventional fossil, nuclear hydro per unit energy produced
-- vast areas of productive land made useless by wind or solar installations. There is a high opportunity cost to that. ~300X the land area of fossil/nuclear. That is more inefficiency.
-- EV charging in the most inefficient method = fast charging stations in the daytime when grid is already at max output rather than at home charging at a slow rate overnight when there is surplus low cost baseload generation supply. Using nighttime baseload electricity for EV charging increases the efficiency of the grid. Using daytime solar or random wind peaks reduces grid efficiency for EV charging.
-- Energy storage losses. Battery storage from 10-30% round trip efficiency losses. H2 storage as much as 70% efficiency losses. And high additional energy & material inputs energy losses. An EROI too low to be physically capable of replacing fossil
-- negative pricing when there is surplus wind or solar causing electricity dumping.
These massive inefficiencies of wind & solar are confirmed by a survey of 68 nations over the past 52 years done by Environmental Progress and duplicated by the New York Times, which shows conventional hydro was quite successful at decarbonization, nuclear energy was also very successful and both wind and solar show no correlation between grid penetration and decarbonization. An expensive total waste of capital and material resources:
Solar Panels Are Three Times More Carbon-Intensive Than IPCC Claims, Shellenberger, Environmental Progress, Enrico Mariutti analysis, 170-250 gms/kwh not IPCC's 48:
In my humble opinion, the HoCL now comes under the aegis of the new definition of an 'extremist' organisation. Their stated purpose (and their moral, if not legal duty) is to provide elected MPs with impartial information in order for those MPs to fulfil their duties to their voters under the current putative system of a 'liberal democracy':
"The library has adopted the phrase "Contributing to a well-informed democracy" as a summary of its mission statement."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_Library
"Our job is to provide a range of research and information services for MPs and MPs’ staff. Our work helps MPs scrutinise legislation, prepare for debates, develop policies and support their constituents.
We are a team of researchers, statisticians, librarians, indexers, communications and customer service professionals, working together to provide an impartial and trusted service."
Really? Seriously? They now put 'diversity and inclusion' ahead of their commitment to impartial information:
In the House of Commons, we aspire to be:
Inclusive: We value everyone equally. We respect each other and all have a voice.
Courageous: We try new things. We own our actions and decisions and learn from our mistakes.
Trusted: We trust each other to do a good job. We are impartial and build confidence in Parliament through our integrity.
Collaborative: We share our knowledge and experience. We work towards a shared vision and know we work better in partnership.
The House of Commons Library is a research and information service based in the UK Parliament. Our impartial analysis, statistical research and resources help MPs and their staff scrutinise legislation, develop policy, and support constituents.
We are part of the wider Research and Information (R&I) team with the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST). Our team includes communications professionals, data and information managers, librarians, researchers, scientists, statisticians and more.
We recognise that we still have more to do to ensure that our workforce is diverse and reflects society. We also recognise the importance of creating and sustaining an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive, in line with our values.
We are doing this by embedding key areas of the House of Commons Inclusion and Diversity Strategy into our work and behaviours. Our goal is to:
decrease the ethnicity pay gap
improve accessibility
foster inclusive environments"
They are obviously obsessed by 'diversity and inclusion', almost certainly to the detriment of impartiality. And there's nothing quite so Woke as the 'just' clean, Green energy transition which addresses the fossil fuel based eco-crimes of our ancestors here in the UK. As such, given MPs' reliance upon their 'impartial' research to inform them in critical debates, they are a clear and present danger to our liberal parliamentary democracy:
"Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology[footnote 3] based on violence, hatred or intolerance[footnote 4], that aims to:
negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms[footnote 5] of others; or
undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy[footnote 6] and democratic rights[footnote 7]; or
intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2)."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-definition-of-extremism-2024/new-definition-of-extremism-2024
It's not even funny anymore. We are not amused.
It’s not the House of Commons Library gaslighting MPs, it’s the entire establishment including almost all the MPS who are gaslighting us, the people, on the bidding of their globalist overlords. The really annoying thing is that their lies, deceptions and propaganda are so easily seen through, be it on climate change, Covid, wars on other countries and on children, families, motorists, farmers or whatever, as you have once again demonstrated in this admirable post.
Well done David, another superb analysis
When you consider our likely next incompetent Energy Minister will be that great bastion of socialism, Ed Milliband, things are likely to get a whole lot worse - he still quotes renewables are 9x cheaper than fossil fuels - what an utter spam mallet he will be
Net Zero is a giant fraud that can never happen, what will happen is the transfer of wealth from the bill payer to the criminals who profit from “green” energy.
It is frightening how such truth/reality-bending information, that degrades the standard of living for all, can persist for so many years. Maybe 90+% of Parliamentarians are energy-inept and have been gaslighted by relatively few people in the renewables industries and their NGO 'backers'.
Sadly, the poorest in society suffer the most from high energy bills and I wonder if those with the 'presentational' skills, who perpetrate this colossal and ultra-effective propaganda scandal have any pangs of conscience?
Dan McGrail at renewableUK, along with social media activists Michael Liebreich and Doug Parr of Greenpeace all spring to mind and all of whom will have directly inputted into political group-think.
David, fairly new to your substack, and really appreciative of it. Your diligence, depth and detail 'through the cycle', are an eye opening tour de force. I invariably want to shout and scream reading them, for highlighting my, societies ' gullibility. I believe in and WANT renewable energy, and planned, it CAN deliver even when the wind doesn't blow. I don't want a legalised, govt sanctioned redistribution of wealth, from users to offshore tax abusers dressed up as the solution. Why can't we have honest provision with a honest profit? Why do we have this legalised money laundering and extortion?
Thanks again for your contribution.
Gas lighting might have been more illuminating.
Going through their report I have to say it is misleading, and relies on outdated information. From the top:
"Despite this, the price paid for wholesale electricity on the ‘spot market’, where, according to the Competition and Market’s Authority around two fifths of electricity is thought to be sold (PDF), is largely determined by the price of natural gas."
The report dates from 2016, when that might have been true, but it is no longer the case. Since then large tranches of interconnector capacity have opened which now play a key role in price setting, and the very volatile market during the energy crisis has had a huge impact on trading patterns, with long forward sales (especially at fixed prices) a rarity because of credit risk and performance risk (the costs if a counterparty fails on its side of the deal - a retailer going bust rather than paying a high price it agreed in the past, or a nuclear generator unable to generate because it is shut for safety for example). A few recent PPAs indicate that the credit market is normalising - but it is a credit market, not an electricity market, and helps to provide security for financing: the actual electricity pricing will almost certainly for renewables be based on day ahead markers, since market forecasts are for lower gas prices as more LNG comes on stream over the next few years.
It is a delusion to think that in the crisis prices were being set by gas: they were being set by the need to destroy demand to be within available supply. Gas prices simply rose in sympathy with that. In practice from April onwards prices were underpinned in the UK by the French need to import due to nuclear shortage: that was either direct to France, or additionally via the Netherlands and Belgium when their shortages were bigger.
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GB-Gen-Price-HQ-1676233783.8236.png
In 2023 there were large swings in interconnector volumes as their prices determined which CCGT plants could be competitive, or even because we had a renewables surplus for export.
The idea that the GB system (NI is in a separate all-Ireland market) operates via marginal cost pricing is a travesty of the truth. Most power is sold ahead of gate closure, with only quite small volumes trading in the Balancing Mechanism (albeit sometimes at exorbitant prices). You can get a flavour of that from these (new) mouseover charts (unfortunately as yet with little back history) - bear in mind that settlement periods are half an hour, so average MW are twice the MWh.
https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/system-prices
Prices bid and offered in the Balancing Mechanism reflect a combination of economics and guessing what the market (NGESO) will pay. If you are a coal fired station warmed up as a last resort, you know that NGESO will more or less have to pay whatever you ask. If you are a wind farm you will refuse to curtail unless your consequent loss of subsidies is paid for. The result is a reverse merit order system, with the largest subsidies being most costly to recompense, so the costliest generation gets to carry on, while the cheapest gets curtailed. As has been found (see Intini and Waterson https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723000292?via%3Dihub ), they will likely overestimate the loss of production and egg the price at which they will curtail. As you have shown, with the exception of the brief period when CFDs were repaying all ROC generators and almost all CFDs in payment cost more than market price by virtue of the subsidies.
In the run up to gate closure the market adjusts as the wind forecast gets firmed up. Wind forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty much of the time. If they are looking optimistic, purchases from other generators or via interconnectors will help fill the gap. If they are pessimistic then perhaps it will be necessary for generators who have already sold output to agree to buy from wind farms at a price that generates a bigger profit (saving fuel and other operating cost) than generating would give. This is a negotiation, and prices will be lower the more wind farms are having to make last minute sales. Wind and solar farms are naturally wary of over or under selling volumes, because imbalance prices in the Balancing Mechanism are likely to prove much more ruinous than trying to match sales with likely output ahead of gate closure, unless they can count on being in line for curtailment payments.
Worth noting too that when we get a renewables surplus some generators get paid to provide ancillary services (inertia, short circuit strength, etc.) and keep generating, even though the value of their energy output on its own would not cover their costs. Just because wind farms are curtailed on the excuse of insufficient transmission capacity, the reality is that there would still be curtailment to create space for ancillary service providers. Of course, the idea that wind and solar get subsidised to export at negative prices with GB consumers picking up the bill is also forgotten.
Great article. Very much into your thinking process
although your analytics are way better than mine.
Would you take the time to critique my video n Demand side response.
by HoC Library gives away real reason for Smartmeter promotion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjUcY92-EgY
The “contracts for difference” (CfDs) that give guaranteed prices to new renewable energy schemes are currently costing the average household just 28p per year.
They will turn negative and start reducing consumer energy costs from October. The design of the contracts means projects pay money back to consumers when electricity prices are very high.
The current portfolio of roughly 18 gigawatts (GW) of CfD projects – mainly offshore wind – will be cutting average bills by around £11 per year under the October cap.
As wholesale gas prices are rising and the portfolio is expanding, this saving will increase to around £18 in January, according to Auxilione’s detailed forecasts shared with Carbon Brief.
A UK government auction has secured a record 11 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity that will generate electricity nine times more cheaply than current gas prices.
The projects are all due to start operating within the next five years up to 2026/27 and have agreed to generate electricity for an average price of £48 per megawatt hour (MWh) in today’s money. This is nine times cheaper than the £446/MWh current cost of running gas-fired power stations.
In reality, the UK’s rapid deployment of renewables has reduced our reliance on costly fossil fuels.
To put this argument in perspective, Carbon Brief calculated the cost of extra gas that the UK would have needed to buy, if it did not already get a third of its electricity from renewables.
The chart below shows this cost broken down by year, with renewables having helped the UK avoid the need to buy nearly £12.5bn of gas in 2022 to date, more than in any other year.
Fossil generators across the UK and Europe pay carbon prices that are below the cost that CO2 imposes on society, known as the social cost of carbon. From this perspective, raising CO2 prices removes hidden subsidies to the fossil fuel sector.
Wind & Solar are a total waste of capital. Their only value is for small niche applications like off grid homes, on a diesel grid or a grid with lots of reservoir hydro. Adding fluctuating solar and wind to the electrical grid makes it much less efficient at producing electricity. The electrical grid runs at maximum efficiency when most generation is high efficiency, high capital cost baseload power Nuclear, Hydro, high cost CCGT not low cost OCGT, high cost supercritical coal not low cost conventional coal. Wind & solar favor low cost, fuel guzzling OCGT & diesel generation to mirror the wind & solar variation. That means high overall emissions.
In fact the Bentek study of the Texas & Colorado big Wind Power expansions showed they caused emissions to INCREASE rather then the theoretical decrease expected.
How Less Became More: Wind, Power and Unintended Consequences in the Colorado & Texas Energy Markets:
https://docs.wind-watch.org/BENTEK-How-Less-Became-More.pdf
Other inefficiencies forced upon the grid by wind & solar include:
-- idling big coal & gas power plants when wind or solar is low (Germany disconnects the generators from the grid so it can falsely ignore those emissions)
-- running big thermal plants at less than full output which is inefficient
-- large line losses from the highly peaking supply on wind & solar long distance transmission lines
-- overbuild (excess generation when not needed) i.e. wind & solar both peak in spring when hydro also peaks and electricity demand is minimum
-- curtailment of operating low emissions nuclear/hydro plants
-- rooftop solar in sub-optimal locations (i.e. poor alignment, shade from trees & buildings)
-- cycling inefficiencies
-- high energy cost from needing a duplicate power grid
-- low EROI (energy return on invested) for wind & solar. In fact so low that they are physically impossible replacements for fossil
-- high material inputs of wind & solar ~20X conventional fossil, nuclear hydro per unit energy produced
-- vast areas of productive land made useless by wind or solar installations. There is a high opportunity cost to that. ~300X the land area of fossil/nuclear. That is more inefficiency.
-- EV charging in the most inefficient method = fast charging stations in the daytime when grid is already at max output rather than at home charging at a slow rate overnight when there is surplus low cost baseload generation supply. Using nighttime baseload electricity for EV charging increases the efficiency of the grid. Using daytime solar or random wind peaks reduces grid efficiency for EV charging.
-- Energy storage losses. Battery storage from 10-30% round trip efficiency losses. H2 storage as much as 70% efficiency losses. And high additional energy & material inputs energy losses. An EROI too low to be physically capable of replacing fossil
-- negative pricing when there is surplus wind or solar causing electricity dumping.
These massive inefficiencies of wind & solar are confirmed by a survey of 68 nations over the past 52 years done by Environmental Progress and duplicated by the New York Times, which shows conventional hydro was quite successful at decarbonization, nuclear energy was also very successful and both wind and solar show no correlation between grid penetration and decarbonization. An expensive total waste of capital and material resources:
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/11/7/the-power-to-decarbonize
Solar Panels Are Three Times More Carbon-Intensive Than IPCC Claims, Shellenberger, Environmental Progress, Enrico Mariutti analysis, 170-250 gms/kwh not IPCC's 48:
https://public.substack.com/p/solar-panels-more-carbon-intensive