February 04, 2022

The Shifting Politics Of The So-Called "Green" Energy Transition

February 04, 2022/ Francis Menton

When I began this blog back in 2012, I had already studied up on the “climate change” issue. And I had already come to the conclusions that not only was the science of human-caused catastrophic global warming hogwash, but also that the proposed solution of replacing energy from fossil fuels with the wind and sun could never work at reasonable cost. My first post on the subject was on December 4, 2012.
But at that time there was almost no organized political opposition to the program to “save the planet” by transitioning to “green” energy.
Here in the U.S., the Democrats were unanimous in their plans to replace fossil fuels, and Republicans mostly went along — some enthusiastically, others perhaps trying to slow things down a little. Indeed, when I began the blog, I had only recently attended a fundraiser for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election (yes, I gave the guy money) where he chose to make his speech mostly about how he would fix the environment by promoting green energy.
And over in Europe it was even crazier, with essentially no major political party in any country taking a position in opposition to the forced elimination of fossil fuels. The so-called “Energiewende” in Germany had kicked off in 2010, with essentially no significant political opposition.

After a long wait, the costs are bubbling to the surface, and the opposition is growing rapidly and headed toward critical mass.

February 01, 2022

More Focus On The Impossible Costs Of A Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Energy System

February 01, 2022/ Francis Menton

It should be glaringly obvious that, if we are shortly going to try to convert to a “net zero” carbon emissions energy system based entirely on wind, sun and batteries, then there needs to be serious focus on the feasibility and costs of such a system.
The particular part of such a prospective system that needs the most focus is the method of energy storage, its cost and, indeed, feasibility. That part needs focus because, as wind and solar increase their share of generation over 50% of the total, storage becomes far and away the dominant driver of the total costs.
Moreover, there is no clear way to identify some fixed amount of storage that will be sufficient to make such a system reliable enough to power a modern economy without full backup from dispatchable sources. This also should be glaringly obvious to anyone who thinks about the problem for any amount of time.

January 29, 2022

January 29, 2022/ Francis Menton

A couple of posts a week ago at this site on the subject of the enormous storage requirements of a fully wind/solar electricity generation system attracted several commenters who confidently asserted that a fully wind/solar energy generation system will prove cheaper than fossil fuels as soon as it is given a real chance.
I invited those commenters to provide their own detailed calculations of how much storage it would take to get a fully wind/solar electric generation system through a year without fossil fuel backup with real-world weather conditions, but so far none of them have taken up my invitation.
While waiting for to hear from those people, the most serious effort I have seen to estimate the storage requirements and cost of a fully wind/solar/battery electricity system for the United States, with everything electrified, is Ken Gregory’s workup at Friends of Science. Gregory’s estimated cost (rounded) is around $400 trillion.
But meanwhile, the really smart people — or perhaps I should say, the really, really smart people — have a different approach.

January 28, 2022

January 28, 2022/ Francis Menton

The American Friends of the GWPF has circulated the information below, announcing that we are organizing speaking events in North America on the subject of Europe’s self-inflicted energy crisis, and related matters in the U.S.
Readers interested in organizing one of these events can contact Dr. Peiser as indicated below, or can also contact me via this website.

January 25, 2022

January 25, 2022/ Francis Menton

At this current crazy moment, most of the “Western” world (Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia) is hell bent on achieving a “net zero” energy system.
As I understand this concept, it means that, within two or three decades, all electricity production will be converted from the current mostly-fossil-fuel generation mix to almost entirely wind, solar and storage. On top of that, all or nearly all energy consumption that is not currently electricity (e.g., transportation, industry, heat, agriculture) must be converted to electricity, so that the energy for these things can also be supplied solely by the wind, sun, and batteries.
Since electricity is currently only about a quarter of final energy consumption, that means that we are soon to have an all-electric energy generation and consumption system producing around four times the output of our current electricity system, all from wind and solar, backed up as necessary only by batteries or other storage.
A reasonable question is, has anybody thought to construct a small-to-moderate scale pilot project to demonstrate that this is feasible?

January 22, 2022

January 22, 2022/ Francis Menton

Most comments at this site tend to have a perspective generally consistent with my own. But sometimes a post will attract comments from people with a very different point of view. That occurred on a post earlier this week titled “Two More Contributions On The impossibility Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar, And Batteries.”
The import of all of these studies is that as renewables come to dominate the mix of electricity generation, and particularly as their share of generation goes above 50% and on towards 100%, and fossil fuel backup gets phased out, then the cost of necessary storage becomes far and away the dominant cost of the overall system. Therefore, any meaningful proposal to replace fossil fuel generation with renewables must grapple with this issue.
So what is the solution that the dissenting commenters offer for the problem of increasing need for expensive storage? They don’t offer any at all. Instead, they appear to think that the whole problem can be assumed away or ignored.