As an American who lived in London during Margaret Thatcher times and the coal miner strike, I simply cannot comprehend a Tory writing such proposals. The Tories are now the crazy Left-wing party!
Netzero by 2050 is unachievable, it will make virtually no difference for future temperatures and attempting to achieve it will devastate the economy and hurt those who have less.
It cannot be tinkered with; it must be abolished as a goal.
Things will only get worse for the UK and Europe until they give up on it.
Thank you David Turver - on the money, as ever. The 7 bullet points at the end cut to the chase. Back to energy policy determined by physics, engineering and economics, not climate claptrap, green piety and wishful thinking.
How to overturn the groupthink, vested interest and embedded ideology that currently run the energy show? Maybe give it a few more weeks of dunkelflaute and falling temperatures, compounded by a couple of unforeseen energy infrastructure failures...
It’s time for all governments to ask far more questions about the need for NetZero…..
Its clear there now are two scientific factions … Those that believe all this climate emergency stuff and think that there is a so-called scientific consensus, and others that I align with, and have signed up with, who have come to a far different conclusion. This group we call climate realists is growing and will be getting a lot more attention from new western governments that are fast running out of confidence with the NetZero approach.
Climate Realists …. Key points
The climate is slightly warming.
It has warmed 5 times in the last 10,000 years and has been warmer than now.
CO2 has increased …. but no proof that all of the increase is caused by humans.
No proof that CO2 has caused all the temperature increase.
Long range average adverse weather or environmental extremes are declining.
Disaster losses have been increasing but not directly due to climate change.
No models exist that can correctly predict any risks of future climate changes.
Fossil fuels will be the prime energy source across the globe for the rest of this century.
Renewables such as Wind & Solar and EVs are not a future solution in terms of reliability, scalability and affordability, and will have supply chains with high waste and pollution issues far worse than fossil fuels.
Nuclear power and natural gas are the best outlook for affordable and reliable energy.
Conclusion
NetZero is unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish.
Prosperity must be the priority.
Fossil fuels must be utilized and developed across the globe for the rest of this century to support prosperity and be driven by affordability.
Nuclear power must be a new focus.
Climate adaptation must be prioritized over any mitigation.
We must adopt a more balanced global sustainability plan by engaging all scientific and policy factions that better balances and prioritizes…. Economic prosperity, Social improvements and Environmental goals.
Summary
We have data that demonstrates that by nearly every long-term metric earths ecosystems using the power of fossil fuels are thriving, and the human condition is improving and is accruing from a modest warming and an increase in CO2.
It’s now becoming clear that the population has been hoaxed by the current power grabbing politicos, the sensation seeking media and scientists too scared to set things straight due to funding subjugation.
The recommendation is that we need to refocus on prosperity through re-industrialization and technological innovation rather than continuing to waste our wealth on NetZero.
I don't think Penrose has a clue about alternative pricing. We already have it in part of the CFD portfolio. Here's what it did to biomass generation during the energy crisis, just when we needed every MWh.
The Baseload Market Reference Price had offered a fairly stable level of subsidy until we wer faced with energy shortages. Then it went sky high, because baseload generators were faced with potentially existential financial consequences if they had agreed to sell ahead and their plant suffered a breakdown. So baseload prices ended up higher than day ahead market prices, which you can see in this chart:
The effect was that producing under the CFD incurred a tax of the difference between BMRP and the CFD strike price, so the plants shut down altogether, except when the spot market was so tight that they could cover the cost of the tax.
Looking at recent data we can see that when excess wind drives day ahead prices very low or even negative, the ROC supported part of biomass generation shuts down because their ROC entitlement isn't big enough to allow profitable operation.
The more complicated the pricing scheme the greater the inevitability that it will produce perverse outcomes. They are already with us in many other ways too, adding to our costs. I'd cite the perverse incentive not to curtail costly generation during periods of surplus, the subsidy paid by consumers to export surpluses at low and negative prices for the benefit of others, the uncertain future for curtailment and storage that will drive up prices for future CFDs because too much output will go unremunerated due to negative prices as examples.
Great post. This helps me understand the 3 different kinds of subsidies. Not only does Net Zero need to be challenged; the whole idea that "climate change" (aka global warming) is "existential" needs to be challenged.
Our collective experience far outweighs that of the formal think tanks. It is enriched by global experience and technological and practical and financial understanding. It recognises geopolitical realities. It understands how markets function and how they are distorted by subsidies, taxes, tariffs, quotas, preferred suppliers and regulation. It appreciates that the key to societal success is founded on securing cheap and reliable energy, which allows us the luxury of aspiring to higher goals of creating a more pleasant environment and striving to maintain a good and viable future for generations to come. It encourages productive innovation. It seeks to cut waste on unsuccessful paths doomed to failure. It looks for paths out of our current sorry state.
Public awareness is definitely increasing as a read of comments on many mainstream media sites reveals. We are getting a message across. But there is a way to go before it becomes the norm and the foundation of political discourse.
“If climate change becomes a problem, we can use some of our energy to invest in adaptation measures like flood defences and new crop varieties. These have the advantage of being effective regardless of what others do and will undoubtedly cheaper than destroying the economy.”
I don’t know how you did it … but you’ve managed to cram so much misinformation, arrogance, and dismissive thinking into such a small paragraph.
What a paper-over-the-cracks mentality. You might as well have said “let’s just spend a fraction of the money building an ark and we can all 8 billion of us just float on the melted ice caps”
There is a very fundamental difference in the design of a dispatchable grid and a renewables heavy grid.
For the former, it is sufficient to look at the profile of demand. Minimum demand defines baseload, ever present, where low marginal cost is key and can offset larger capital cost, particularly when plant has a long life. At the other extreme, close to maximum demand only occurs a few hours per year, so the ideal marginal technology has a low capital cost, even if its operating cost is much higher. Blending technologies can achieve a lower system cost. The transmission capacity has to be sized to deliver peak demand. There are legitimate questions to be asked about whether the required peak transmission capacity can be reduced by having onsite peaker generation, which is essentially what the Triad system of charging large industrial consumers for demand during system demand peaks achieved. Although peak generation has a high marginal cost in such systems, the volume of peaker power required is small, and the cost is still way below the value of the output, demonstrated by the investment in onsite generation. Therefore there is no sense in trying to influence behaviour by time of use charging.
With a renewables system the dynamic changes completely. The capacity installed becomes vastly greater than peak demand. The hours when output is high are unlikely to coincide with peak demand. Transmission required now includes long distance interconnectors trying to find a market for surplus power, which are likely faced with low prices for output because the weather is likely similar in putative markets. Generated power must be curtailed, because it is too expensive to store more than a small fraction of the surplus, where there is a high enough storage turnover rate to justify it economically. At the same time the need to maintain supply during Dunkelflaute means that a fully dispatchable backup is required in the full amount of peak demand. Instead of trying to reduce the need for a few hundred extra MW of peak demand in a dispatchable system, suddenly the alternative becomes widespread demand destruction by extreme pricing and rationing.
The overall system cost is horrendous, and the societal cost in destruction of industry, and generally making the population poor, cold and hungry is unsustainable in a democracy, and likely to provoke revolution in an autocracy.
David - many thanks for the flow of reliably excellent analysis. Three thoughts to add:
First, I disagree with your opposition to a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. This is not there to correct for the cost of renewables, but to adjust terms of trade between countries that do and do not attempt to internalise the external cost of carbon through some sort of carbon pricing. Internalising external costs is good practice and not at odds with an efficient market and trade policy.
Second, the ONLY useful thing that the UK can do in mitigation is to join an international effort to demonstrate "proof of concept" consistent with reality-based engineering, economic and political constraints. This would mean dumping ridiculous short term objectives like "clean power by 2030" and developing a viable long term trajectory, relying on nuclear, renewables and gas. No low or middle income country will or should be following such a pathway unless and until its viability has been proven in the countries that have overwhelmingly caused the problem.
Third, mitigation is an international, intergenerational collective action problem and it will not work if there are free riders the size of the United States (under Trump) or China. The case for a relentless focus on adaptation becomes stronger all the time and will be overwhelming by 2030 when most NDCs proposals will have spectacularly failed. The most important adaptation strategy by far is economic growth - that that must not be inhibited by excessive constraints on energy, especially in poorer countries (where it is obviously an imperative in its own right).
I disagree with your support for the CBAM. The first problem is that at the global level it may not even be a cost after we account for increased crop yields, and making former desert habitable and the reality that further increases in CO2 are only going to have a highly marginal impact on climate, which at least initially will tend to be favourable with less harsh winters for example. There is a huge disconnect between estimates of the true social cost and carbon prices based on the Stern criterion of setting a price high enough to achieve an arbitrary target level of emissions with all the collateral damage that entails. In general the only justifiable tariffs are anti-dumping, where the sale of goods below cost is designed to eliminate competition and to secure economic dependence and hegemony. Otherwise free trade should ensure the spread of the best technologies at the lowest cost.
Once upon a time the UK spread its technological advances around the world by building railways, factories, power stations etc. These days we tell them to buy solar panels from China instead.
As an American who lived in London during Margaret Thatcher times and the coal miner strike, I simply cannot comprehend a Tory writing such proposals. The Tories are now the crazy Left-wing party!
Netzero by 2050 is unachievable, it will make virtually no difference for future temperatures and attempting to achieve it will devastate the economy and hurt those who have less.
It cannot be tinkered with; it must be abolished as a goal.
Things will only get worse for the UK and Europe until they give up on it.
Thank you David Turver - on the money, as ever. The 7 bullet points at the end cut to the chase. Back to energy policy determined by physics, engineering and economics, not climate claptrap, green piety and wishful thinking.
How to overturn the groupthink, vested interest and embedded ideology that currently run the energy show? Maybe give it a few more weeks of dunkelflaute and falling temperatures, compounded by a couple of unforeseen energy infrastructure failures...
It’s time for all governments to ask far more questions about the need for NetZero…..
Its clear there now are two scientific factions … Those that believe all this climate emergency stuff and think that there is a so-called scientific consensus, and others that I align with, and have signed up with, who have come to a far different conclusion. This group we call climate realists is growing and will be getting a lot more attention from new western governments that are fast running out of confidence with the NetZero approach.
Climate Realists …. Key points
The climate is slightly warming.
It has warmed 5 times in the last 10,000 years and has been warmer than now.
CO2 has increased …. but no proof that all of the increase is caused by humans.
No proof that CO2 has caused all the temperature increase.
Long range average adverse weather or environmental extremes are declining.
Disaster losses have been increasing but not directly due to climate change.
No models exist that can correctly predict any risks of future climate changes.
Fossil fuels will be the prime energy source across the globe for the rest of this century.
Renewables such as Wind & Solar and EVs are not a future solution in terms of reliability, scalability and affordability, and will have supply chains with high waste and pollution issues far worse than fossil fuels.
Nuclear power and natural gas are the best outlook for affordable and reliable energy.
Conclusion
NetZero is unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish.
Prosperity must be the priority.
Fossil fuels must be utilized and developed across the globe for the rest of this century to support prosperity and be driven by affordability.
Nuclear power must be a new focus.
Climate adaptation must be prioritized over any mitigation.
We must adopt a more balanced global sustainability plan by engaging all scientific and policy factions that better balances and prioritizes…. Economic prosperity, Social improvements and Environmental goals.
Summary
We have data that demonstrates that by nearly every long-term metric earths ecosystems using the power of fossil fuels are thriving, and the human condition is improving and is accruing from a modest warming and an increase in CO2.
It’s now becoming clear that the population has been hoaxed by the current power grabbing politicos, the sensation seeking media and scientists too scared to set things straight due to funding subjugation.
Time to go back to cheapest affordable energy.
References
Here is some reference material.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmfRG8-RHEI&t=1471s
The recommendation is that we need to refocus on prosperity through re-industrialization and technological innovation rather than continuing to waste our wealth on NetZero.
https://nigelsouthway.substack.com/p/netzero-versus-prosperity
https://www.brainzmagazine.com/post/take-back-manufacturing-climate-realism
https://clintel.org/
https://co2coalition.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IraXQCWQZhs&t=1233s
More about how to refocus on prosperity through re-industrialization in the TBM book.
www.nigelsouthwayauthor.com
I don't think Penrose has a clue about alternative pricing. We already have it in part of the CFD portfolio. Here's what it did to biomass generation during the energy crisis, just when we needed every MWh.
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Biomass-CFD-Gen-1715539112.4049.png
The Baseload Market Reference Price had offered a fairly stable level of subsidy until we wer faced with energy shortages. Then it went sky high, because baseload generators were faced with potentially existential financial consequences if they had agreed to sell ahead and their plant suffered a breakdown. So baseload prices ended up higher than day ahead market prices, which you can see in this chart:
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Biomass-CFD-Gen-1715539112.4049.png
The effect was that producing under the CFD incurred a tax of the difference between BMRP and the CFD strike price, so the plants shut down altogether, except when the spot market was so tight that they could cover the cost of the tax.
Looking at recent data we can see that when excess wind drives day ahead prices very low or even negative, the ROC supported part of biomass generation shuts down because their ROC entitlement isn't big enough to allow profitable operation.
The more complicated the pricing scheme the greater the inevitability that it will produce perverse outcomes. They are already with us in many other ways too, adding to our costs. I'd cite the perverse incentive not to curtail costly generation during periods of surplus, the subsidy paid by consumers to export surpluses at low and negative prices for the benefit of others, the uncertain future for curtailment and storage that will drive up prices for future CFDs because too much output will go unremunerated due to negative prices as examples.
Seriously investigating moving energy intensive operations offshore, at the cost of direct 200 jobs and related 1,200.
In a global competition, we can't survive with the most expensive electricity, diesel and increasingly people.
Did I mention those jobs would be in a " catch-up" area
Seriously investigating moving energy intensive operations offshore, at the cost of direct 200 jobs and related 1,200.
In a global competition, we can't survive with the most expensive electricity, diesel and increasingly people.
Did I mention those jobs would be in a " catch-up" area
Seriously investigating moving energy intensive operations offshore, at the cost of direct 200 jobs and related 1,200.
In a global competition, we can't survive with the most expensive electricity, diesel and increasingly people.
Did I mention those jobs would be in a " catch-up" area
Penrose is married to Dido Harding, which explains a lot.
Keep up the great work David.
Great post. This helps me understand the 3 different kinds of subsidies. Not only does Net Zero need to be challenged; the whole idea that "climate change" (aka global warming) is "existential" needs to be challenged.
We are now the think tanks.
Our collective experience far outweighs that of the formal think tanks. It is enriched by global experience and technological and practical and financial understanding. It recognises geopolitical realities. It understands how markets function and how they are distorted by subsidies, taxes, tariffs, quotas, preferred suppliers and regulation. It appreciates that the key to societal success is founded on securing cheap and reliable energy, which allows us the luxury of aspiring to higher goals of creating a more pleasant environment and striving to maintain a good and viable future for generations to come. It encourages productive innovation. It seeks to cut waste on unsuccessful paths doomed to failure. It looks for paths out of our current sorry state.
Public awareness is definitely increasing as a read of comments on many mainstream media sites reveals. We are getting a message across. But there is a way to go before it becomes the norm and the foundation of political discourse.
KBO
You can't decouple gas prices from electricity cost, today 43% of our electricity is from gas.
Presumably, they've got a plan for when the grid is totally decarbonised and there isn't a gas reference price. Presumably ...
Well, obviously. Probably a "cunning plan".
“If climate change becomes a problem, we can use some of our energy to invest in adaptation measures like flood defences and new crop varieties. These have the advantage of being effective regardless of what others do and will undoubtedly cheaper than destroying the economy.”
I don’t know how you did it … but you’ve managed to cram so much misinformation, arrogance, and dismissive thinking into such a small paragraph.
What a paper-over-the-cracks mentality. You might as well have said “let’s just spend a fraction of the money building an ark and we can all 8 billion of us just float on the melted ice caps”
Is this satire?
We do evidence and rational argument on here.
What evidence do you have to back up your assertions?
“I advise growth-stage climate tech companies on structuring and raising capital.”
Aha - a green grifter announces himself.
Excellent article. Seems to me that any global warming happening is good for humans.
There is a very fundamental difference in the design of a dispatchable grid and a renewables heavy grid.
For the former, it is sufficient to look at the profile of demand. Minimum demand defines baseload, ever present, where low marginal cost is key and can offset larger capital cost, particularly when plant has a long life. At the other extreme, close to maximum demand only occurs a few hours per year, so the ideal marginal technology has a low capital cost, even if its operating cost is much higher. Blending technologies can achieve a lower system cost. The transmission capacity has to be sized to deliver peak demand. There are legitimate questions to be asked about whether the required peak transmission capacity can be reduced by having onsite peaker generation, which is essentially what the Triad system of charging large industrial consumers for demand during system demand peaks achieved. Although peak generation has a high marginal cost in such systems, the volume of peaker power required is small, and the cost is still way below the value of the output, demonstrated by the investment in onsite generation. Therefore there is no sense in trying to influence behaviour by time of use charging.
With a renewables system the dynamic changes completely. The capacity installed becomes vastly greater than peak demand. The hours when output is high are unlikely to coincide with peak demand. Transmission required now includes long distance interconnectors trying to find a market for surplus power, which are likely faced with low prices for output because the weather is likely similar in putative markets. Generated power must be curtailed, because it is too expensive to store more than a small fraction of the surplus, where there is a high enough storage turnover rate to justify it economically. At the same time the need to maintain supply during Dunkelflaute means that a fully dispatchable backup is required in the full amount of peak demand. Instead of trying to reduce the need for a few hundred extra MW of peak demand in a dispatchable system, suddenly the alternative becomes widespread demand destruction by extreme pricing and rationing.
The overall system cost is horrendous, and the societal cost in destruction of industry, and generally making the population poor, cold and hungry is unsustainable in a democracy, and likely to provoke revolution in an autocracy.
David - many thanks for the flow of reliably excellent analysis. Three thoughts to add:
First, I disagree with your opposition to a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. This is not there to correct for the cost of renewables, but to adjust terms of trade between countries that do and do not attempt to internalise the external cost of carbon through some sort of carbon pricing. Internalising external costs is good practice and not at odds with an efficient market and trade policy.
Second, the ONLY useful thing that the UK can do in mitigation is to join an international effort to demonstrate "proof of concept" consistent with reality-based engineering, economic and political constraints. This would mean dumping ridiculous short term objectives like "clean power by 2030" and developing a viable long term trajectory, relying on nuclear, renewables and gas. No low or middle income country will or should be following such a pathway unless and until its viability has been proven in the countries that have overwhelmingly caused the problem.
Third, mitigation is an international, intergenerational collective action problem and it will not work if there are free riders the size of the United States (under Trump) or China. The case for a relentless focus on adaptation becomes stronger all the time and will be overwhelming by 2030 when most NDCs proposals will have spectacularly failed. The most important adaptation strategy by far is economic growth - that that must not be inhibited by excessive constraints on energy, especially in poorer countries (where it is obviously an imperative in its own right).
I disagree with your support for the CBAM. The first problem is that at the global level it may not even be a cost after we account for increased crop yields, and making former desert habitable and the reality that further increases in CO2 are only going to have a highly marginal impact on climate, which at least initially will tend to be favourable with less harsh winters for example. There is a huge disconnect between estimates of the true social cost and carbon prices based on the Stern criterion of setting a price high enough to achieve an arbitrary target level of emissions with all the collateral damage that entails. In general the only justifiable tariffs are anti-dumping, where the sale of goods below cost is designed to eliminate competition and to secure economic dependence and hegemony. Otherwise free trade should ensure the spread of the best technologies at the lowest cost.
Once upon a time the UK spread its technological advances around the world by building railways, factories, power stations etc. These days we tell them to buy solar panels from China instead.
Any form of carbon tax is totally unjustified and merely a very lucrative excuse to fleece the public in any way they can think of.
It’s a SCAM.