I mention Paul’s post because I have just noticed an awakening in some of his commenters. For many years most of them (and myself until recently) have taken the view that our politicians are “technically challenged” and can be educated to see sense. In this post, several of them have realised that this approach is futile because the looming Net Zero energy infrastructure disaster is deliberate policy. For example see https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/07/10/fes-2023-the-emperor-still-has-no-clothes/#comment-254876 and the two comments above it.
The best way to debunk Net Zero is to expose it as deliberate policy to deindustrialise and depopulate the Western world. Our politicians are acting as puppets to their globalist overlords and paymasters. In the words of the Club of Rome “The real enemy, then, is humanity itself”.
Collapse of our energy infrastructure is not a bug, it's a feature. The ONLY way to address this madness is for the Climate Change Act Net Zero 2050 statutory instrument amendment put in place by Theresa May at the end of her failed premiership to be repealed immediately and a moratorium placed on further expansion of renewables. Then, amendments to the Climate Change Act 2008 should be put in place which prioritise energy security and affordability over ideological carbon reduction goals and the 'settled science' clauses should be removed. Preferably, the entire Act should be scrapped. None of this will happen because the intention is to destroy the UK economy, impoverish and immiserate UK residents and ultimately kill UK residents.
In the Andrew Montford article linked in my second comment, Pretty Polly gives a convincing top comment on how Theresa May’s 2019 Net Zero was a stitch-up orchestrated by George Soros.
Another approach to debunking Net Zero is to expose “climate catastrophism”. Andrew Montford of the GWPF has sponsored the book “Climate Catastrophism and the Cult of Culture” by a US psychologist which convincingly proves that climate catastrophism has become a secular religion. Andrew gives a very good summary of it here: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-religious-cult-of-climate-catastrophism/.
He warms that this is very dangerous because such cultures work through subconscious behaviours and so are entirely irrational. They can lead to the building of great civilisations, but also to their complete and utter collapse. The book gives several such examples.
This paper seems to endorse my daily Telegraph paper that points out that before any country gets into a large scale wind and solar power it needs to have a storage technology that is large-scale and low cost. No such technology appears to exist at the moment. Until it does, wind and solar power are pointless.
When a turbine is end-of-lifed, presumably the minerals, metals, magnets etc can be reclaimed/recycled into a new one? Do you have any info on this aspect?
Maybe some can. However that doesn't really change the EROEI calculations. It will take energy to recycle those materials. Plus, quite a lot of the machines cannot currently be recycled and end up in land fill. Some of the manufacturers are working on recyclable blades.
Quite possibly, but the recycling is 20-25 years away. That's a lot of ore that needs mining before recycling becomes a significant part of the calculation
David, you have done an excellent job in highlighting many of the ludicrous inconsistencies and desperate "hail Mary" nonsense in the FES and output from other disingenuous climate scam fools.
As you imply, their fantasies rely on 4 main myths:
1. Technology which doesn't exist.
2. Ridiculous & unachievable efficiency gains due to idealised (fantasy) HP COP & BEV gains. Most people will not have a HP or BEV in any foreseeable timeframe.
3. DSM/R based on customer incentives & imaginary "Smart Grids" with LMP markets - ridiculous for multiple reasons, including:
a. DSM/R inherently requires that peak power prices are exorbitant - for "motivation".
b. The IT systems to support smart grids & LMP are not even on the distant horizon.
c. If & when the demand curve is manipulated to match supply, there will be no "off-peak", so prices will rise.
d. Energy users are not the puppets of the tyrannical lunatics of the ESO & the CCC.
4. That the UK posseses the programme management skills to achieve a fraction of the work required.
The huge issue I have with these idiots is that none of their fantasies are even plausible scenarios, much less any kind of concrete plan - far less any *costed* plan. But they present their lies to politicians & the public as "achievable and net cost saving".
I think it’s a mistake to characterize demand side response as energy rationing. Really it’s just allowing energy users to participate in the same flexibility market as generators and predates renewables eg economy 7.
You would still want DSR in a high nuclear scenario. Higher load factor is good for the economics of nuclear so you want DSR to encourage people to charge EVs up overnight on low prices. And assuming in high nuclear scenario you would still want some gas peakers so if if it’s cheaper to pay people to turn down than turn down than turn on gas generation then why not have a market for that?
Charging and discharging EV's is usually referred to as V2G and is usually considered separately to DSR. As I understand it DSR is paying large consumers (like factories and chemical plants) to turn down their industrial processes and use less power at certain times. The cost of those payments must be borne by consumers.
I know it's been around a while, but it seems that interest in it is growing as a means of masking the intermittent nature of their proposed generation mix.
"As I understand it DSR is paying large consumers (like factories and chemical plants) ..."
That's what it is at the moment, but it's not what these nutters plan for the future. It's much more about what they trialled last winter - i.e. for *residential* customers - and what some suppliers, notably Octopus Energy (see https://octopus.energy/agile/) are now offering, to a degree. The issue is that these half-hourly tariffs can only reflect the half-hourly variation in wholesale prices - the data to take account of what's happening in local networks (consumer demand and network loading) simply doesn't exist.
The idiots have come up with yet another sound-bite - Locational Marginal Pricing (LMP) - but they only consider the limitations of, and impact on, the transmission grid. Local distribution networks will collapse (see here: https://twitter.com/EyesOnThePriz12/status/1674125502225735682).
The (criminal) lunacy is so much worse than is generally understood.
Electricity is usually a small part of total costs of most production. If it is expensive enough to justify juggling production it is far too expensive.
Extra cycling an electric car battery does not come cheap as if reduces the value of the car.
Excellent analysis. As you say, National Grid seem to be living in fantasy land and this is bound to end in disaster.
Paul Homewood of the NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat blog has already posted on the madness of National Grid’s FES 2023, see https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/07/10/fes-2023-the-emperor-still-has-no-clothes/.
I mention Paul’s post because I have just noticed an awakening in some of his commenters. For many years most of them (and myself until recently) have taken the view that our politicians are “technically challenged” and can be educated to see sense. In this post, several of them have realised that this approach is futile because the looming Net Zero energy infrastructure disaster is deliberate policy. For example see https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/07/10/fes-2023-the-emperor-still-has-no-clothes/#comment-254876 and the two comments above it.
The best way to debunk Net Zero is to expose it as deliberate policy to deindustrialise and depopulate the Western world. Our politicians are acting as puppets to their globalist overlords and paymasters. In the words of the Club of Rome “The real enemy, then, is humanity itself”.
Collapse of our energy infrastructure is not a bug, it's a feature. The ONLY way to address this madness is for the Climate Change Act Net Zero 2050 statutory instrument amendment put in place by Theresa May at the end of her failed premiership to be repealed immediately and a moratorium placed on further expansion of renewables. Then, amendments to the Climate Change Act 2008 should be put in place which prioritise energy security and affordability over ideological carbon reduction goals and the 'settled science' clauses should be removed. Preferably, the entire Act should be scrapped. None of this will happen because the intention is to destroy the UK economy, impoverish and immiserate UK residents and ultimately kill UK residents.
In the Andrew Montford article linked in my second comment, Pretty Polly gives a convincing top comment on how Theresa May’s 2019 Net Zero was a stitch-up orchestrated by George Soros.
Another approach to debunking Net Zero is to expose “climate catastrophism”. Andrew Montford of the GWPF has sponsored the book “Climate Catastrophism and the Cult of Culture” by a US psychologist which convincingly proves that climate catastrophism has become a secular religion. Andrew gives a very good summary of it here: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-religious-cult-of-climate-catastrophism/.
He warms that this is very dangerous because such cultures work through subconscious behaviours and so are entirely irrational. They can lead to the building of great civilisations, but also to their complete and utter collapse. The book gives several such examples.
This paper seems to endorse my daily Telegraph paper that points out that before any country gets into a large scale wind and solar power it needs to have a storage technology that is large-scale and low cost. No such technology appears to exist at the moment. Until it does, wind and solar power are pointless.
http://www.bryanleyland.co.nz/newspaper-articles.html "Cheap storage" (amended for New Zealand
Arguably, they are pointless anyway, because of low EROEI and mineral consumption. Extra storage will just make both of those parameters worse.
When a turbine is end-of-lifed, presumably the minerals, metals, magnets etc can be reclaimed/recycled into a new one? Do you have any info on this aspect?
Maybe some can. However that doesn't really change the EROEI calculations. It will take energy to recycle those materials. Plus, quite a lot of the machines cannot currently be recycled and end up in land fill. Some of the manufacturers are working on recyclable blades.
Sure but where are the EROEI calculations? Gotta be more energy-efficient than processing raw ores etc surely?
Quite possibly, but the recycling is 20-25 years away. That's a lot of ore that needs mining before recycling becomes a significant part of the calculation
David, you have done an excellent job in highlighting many of the ludicrous inconsistencies and desperate "hail Mary" nonsense in the FES and output from other disingenuous climate scam fools.
As you imply, their fantasies rely on 4 main myths:
1. Technology which doesn't exist.
2. Ridiculous & unachievable efficiency gains due to idealised (fantasy) HP COP & BEV gains. Most people will not have a HP or BEV in any foreseeable timeframe.
3. DSM/R based on customer incentives & imaginary "Smart Grids" with LMP markets - ridiculous for multiple reasons, including:
a. DSM/R inherently requires that peak power prices are exorbitant - for "motivation".
b. The IT systems to support smart grids & LMP are not even on the distant horizon.
c. If & when the demand curve is manipulated to match supply, there will be no "off-peak", so prices will rise.
d. Energy users are not the puppets of the tyrannical lunatics of the ESO & the CCC.
4. That the UK posseses the programme management skills to achieve a fraction of the work required.
The huge issue I have with these idiots is that none of their fantasies are even plausible scenarios, much less any kind of concrete plan - far less any *costed* plan. But they present their lies to politicians & the public as "achievable and net cost saving".
They're nothing but criminal charlatans.
I think it’s a mistake to characterize demand side response as energy rationing. Really it’s just allowing energy users to participate in the same flexibility market as generators and predates renewables eg economy 7.
You would still want DSR in a high nuclear scenario. Higher load factor is good for the economics of nuclear so you want DSR to encourage people to charge EVs up overnight on low prices. And assuming in high nuclear scenario you would still want some gas peakers so if if it’s cheaper to pay people to turn down than turn down than turn on gas generation then why not have a market for that?
Charging and discharging EV's is usually referred to as V2G and is usually considered separately to DSR. As I understand it DSR is paying large consumers (like factories and chemical plants) to turn down their industrial processes and use less power at certain times. The cost of those payments must be borne by consumers.
I know it's been around a while, but it seems that interest in it is growing as a means of masking the intermittent nature of their proposed generation mix.
"As I understand it DSR is paying large consumers (like factories and chemical plants) ..."
That's what it is at the moment, but it's not what these nutters plan for the future. It's much more about what they trialled last winter - i.e. for *residential* customers - and what some suppliers, notably Octopus Energy (see https://octopus.energy/agile/) are now offering, to a degree. The issue is that these half-hourly tariffs can only reflect the half-hourly variation in wholesale prices - the data to take account of what's happening in local networks (consumer demand and network loading) simply doesn't exist.
The idiots have come up with yet another sound-bite - Locational Marginal Pricing (LMP) - but they only consider the limitations of, and impact on, the transmission grid. Local distribution networks will collapse (see here: https://twitter.com/EyesOnThePriz12/status/1674125502225735682).
The (criminal) lunacy is so much worse than is generally understood.
Electricity is usually a small part of total costs of most production. If it is expensive enough to justify juggling production it is far too expensive.
Extra cycling an electric car battery does not come cheap as if reduces the value of the car.
Thank you.