Simple Swarbrick

"Mainstream Media reports that the Green Party will campaign on mass electrification for the election, saying the sun, wind, water and geothermal energy 'don’t come through the Strait of Hormuz.'

"Chloe Swarbrick with that wild-eyed enthusiasm that only she is capable of offers a simplistic solution. I use the word 'simplistic' advisedly. She herself says the solution is simple. ... Swarbrick said the Government needed to create a national electrification plan ...starting with improving access to 'cheap, easy loans for solar panels and batteries' ... 'tak[ing] control of our country’s own needs by powering ourselves, with every renewable resource available in abundance around us.' Would that it were so easy. ...

"[T]hink about a few things.;

• Is what Swarbrick proposes really a solution?
• Does she really know what she is talking about?
• Is she aware of the pervasiveness of the petrochemical industry in our day to day lives and how much we depend upon it?
• Have she and the Greens really thought through this policy or is it an easy one to articulate.
• Or in fact are Swarbrick and the Greens speaking and policy making from a position of unawareness or ignorance of the nature of the problem?

"And if the answer to the preceding question is in the affirmative, do they have any business being near the levers of power. ...

"Think about it and ... about the pervasiveness of the petrochemical industry and how much we depend upon it."

~ David Harvey from his post 'Unawareness, Blind Ignorance and a Sense of Unreality'

Not so sunny solar

I've been reading an 

RNZ investigation [that] has found that [Luxon's] ministers were presented with clear evidence [sic] that rooftop solar is now among the cheapest sources of electricity households can access; that upfront cost is the primary barrier to uptake; and that Australia's rapid expansion was driven by more than $11 billion in state subsidies. But [that] the coalition government [here] chose not to follow the same path. ...  

[The investigation says that] one in three Australian homes now ... [have solar panels installed] saving those families an average 40 percent on their electricity bills each year ...

As part of their work, officials prepared detailed material comparing New Zealand's approach with overseas subsidy regimes, particularly Australia's small-scale solar and battery incentives.

[Documents released to RNZ under the Official Information Act ] noted Australia's "solar revolution" was aided by $11.5 billion AUD in government grants, which reduced upfront costs by 30% and allowed the industry to achieve massive economies of scale.

Total cost to Australians then, if subsidy covers only 30% of the cost of installing rooftop solar, is $38.3B billion AUD (a subsidy to wealthy home-owning Australians of almost $1000 per Australian taxpater).  Which the "investigation" says has reduced prices for those 1 in 3 subsidised Australian families by an average of 40%. Not a great return for all those billions, I would have said. 

Note that Australia's entire peak demand is roughly 35,000 MW. So at a typical capital cost of ~$1.5–2M per MW, if one were to spend that $38.3B on, say, a system of Combined Cycle Gas Turbine plants, then Australians could theoretically have built enough extra gas capacity to supply the whole country!

Or, maybe, spent those billions on something else. (For that money, going to those already wealthy enough to afford the cost of installation, you could have around 300 new schools, or 30 new hospitals, or one hell of a tax cut ... )

Meanwhile, in New South Wales, this morning, here is where power is coming from ...

What does this mean? It means that to have reliable power, Australians need to build duplicate capacity anyway for when the sun is not delivering. That's the main problem with unreliables.

So much for that "clear evidence."

"...Coal Is a Physical Manifestation of Progress"

 

"Southeast Asian nations that include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam ... [are] an economic juggernaut that will drive some of the planet’s largest growth in [the world's] energy demand. ...

"Each of these economic engines demands reliable, affordable electricity that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. ... 2023 witnessed a demand increase of nearly 45 terawatt-hours (TWh), an amount of energy that must be generated, transmitted regionally, and delivered locally on a continual basis. Where did this new power come from? Coal. An astonishing 96% of that new demand was met by coal-fired power plants.

"Let that sink in. Coal, the energy source routinely demonised in Western capitals and at global climate summits, met nearly all the region’s new electricity needs. This reality stands in direct contradiction to rosy predictions of a transition to 'renewables' manufactured by highly compensated executives at elite consulting firms who have spent the better part of a decade selling energy fairy tales to governments and investors.

"Indonesia alone added 11 TWh of coal-generated electricity in 2023, while its electricity demand rose by 17 TWh, with coal meeting two-thirds of this increase. The Philippines generates more than 60% of its electricity from coal, and Malaysia and Vietnam each around 50%. ...

"The wind and solar share across ASEAN remained a pitiful 4.5% in 2023. This minuscule contribution exposes the bankruptcy of consultants’ promises of 'renewables' dominating the regional power mix by mid-2020s. ...

"Oil, natural gas and coal collectively hold the major share of ASEAN’s primary energy mix ... 

"Factories, petrochemicals, shipping, aviation, and agriculture all consume fossil fuels in large quantities. 
ASEAN countries are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to fossil fuel infrastructure that will operate for decades. ... Nineteen projects across Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, and Myanmar hold more than 540 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas. Countries don’t spend billions developing gas fields if they plan to abandon fossil fuels within the next decade. ...

"These nations aren’t chasing arbitrary climate targets; they’re building the infrastructure of their future and prosperity for people."

~ Vijay Jayaraj from his post 'In ASEAN Nations, Coal Is a Physical Manifestation of Progress'

"Yet Another Misleading Report on 'Low-Cost' Wind and Solar"

"In a just-released report, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) claims that renewable energy is the most cost-competitive source of new electricity generation worldwide, The report further claims that '91% of new renewable power projects commissioned last year were more cost-effective than any new fossil fuel alternative” ...

"If those claims sound too good to be true, it’s because they are. IRENA’s boasts ignore a fundamental reality: the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar is fundamentally different than electricity generated by traditional generating resources that are not subject to the whims of the weather. ...

"The inherent intermittency of wind and solar reduces the physical and economic value of their capacity relative to traditional generating resources, since sufficient reserves or storage must be maintained to meet demand when they are unavailable. Merely reporting total wind and solar capacity misleads because it does not account for the adequacy of the electrical energy generated to meet demand, and the actual costs to do so. ...

"Promoting misleading claims about wind and solar power distorts policymaking and will only exacerbate the growing inadequacy of electric supplies to meet increased demand .... It will lead to more frequent electricity rationing ...

"That may appeal to hairshirt environmentalists, but it won’t appeal to the broader populace ..."

~ Jonathan Lesser from his report 'The U.S. Energy Information Administration Needs to Fix How It Reports Renewable Power Capacity' (hat tip Watts Up With That?)

The DEFINITIVE Climate Change Rap Battle

From the folks who brought us the Keynes v Hayek rap battle ...

Live from Davos, it’s your morning update on the future of the planet. Representing the alarm bells and carbon cuts, it’s environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore, but he’s not alone. Enter the unapologetic fossil fuel defender, Alex Epstein, armed with charts, charisma, and a whole lot of hydrocarbons. Just when things start boiling over, in steps Mr. Moderate—Bjorn Lomborg—trying to cool the room with cost-benefit calculations. Is the planet on fire? Are fossil fuels the secret to success? Or is there a third path no one wants to rap about? Tune in, turn up, and try to keep your cool—this is the DEFINITIVE Climate Change Rap Battle.

"So why are energy policies of leading Western countries afflicted by magical thinking and irrationality?"

"What leads a country to begin winding down domestic oil and gas production while promoting the use of imported wood – a wasteful and inefficient fuel — for power generation?
    "What leads policymakers to shut down a nation’s last and still-functional coal generating power plant after almost 150 years of using coal and within months arrive at a situation where blackout prevention notices have to be issued to its power generators?
    "The UK is by no means the only Western country to go down this perverse path of deindustrialisation and national economic suicide. 

    "So why are energy policies of leading Western countries afflicted by magical thinking and irrationality? [Because] The Western World is in a hypnotic trance from 30 years of relentless propaganda pushing climate alarmism."

~ Tilak Doshi from his post 'The Irrationality of Western Energy Policies'

"We cannot run an industrial nation only with pressure differences in the atmosphere. Stand up for weather-independent electricity!"

 

We're short of energy in New Zealand because we don't build enough reliable energy production, hampered by the RMA and relying too much on unreliables — so-called renewables, or 'green energy,' which need real back-up energy when sun doesn't shine or wind doesn't blow — and finding it damned difficult even to build these unreliable sometime-producers.

So, we are running short because we're shooting ourselves in the foot by not building enough. In Germany, they're running short because politicians decided to shut down the reliable (and clean) nuclear producers they had, and rely instead on unreliables — and on buying extra from France's reliable nuclear fleet.

So how's that going? A: It's expensive. So much so that German automakers are struggling. And B: well, as Staffan Reveman points out, whatever capacity is cited for unreliable energy production, it just doesn't produce it reliably, if at all:

German #wind power in the first 9 months of the year 2024. [Graph: Agorameter with 1h resolution]

The installed capacity is 70 gigawatts. Wind power delivered everything between almost nothing and

50 gigawatts. We see here that we cannot run an industrial nation only with pressure differences

in the atmosphere. Stand up for ... weather-independent electricity!

In the words of one local, "This country hat nicht alle Tassen im Schrank."

It goes double for us.

And it goes for us too.

"Australia’s federal treasurer Jim Chalmers has criticised the Reserve Bank for raising interest rates, instead of taking responsibility for the green inflation he and his fellow incompetents unleashed. ...
    "'[A]s the government braces for more weak economic figures due this week ... Chalmers said the government was focused on walking the tightrope of bringing down inflation without further pressuring people “already being hammered by higher interest rates”. ... '
    "The failure of Chalmers and his fellow incompetents to address grid instability, plummeting dispatchable capacity, and unpredictable price spikes is particularly reprehensible, given that all they need to do to fix this problem is ditch all their green energy mandates, and encourage the construction of enough new coal plants to stabilise the grid.
    "In my opinion Australia is now all but un-investable. With an uncertain electricity grid, spiralling prices, crumbling wage restraint, rampant inflation and soaring interest rates, and an incompetent government which is more focussed on shooting the messenger than addressing the underlying economic problems, who in their right mind would risk investing in Australia?"

~ Eric Worrall from his post 'Aussie Green Economy Blame Storm Gathers Momentum'

'And then the climate pledges evaporated...'

"The Tech-Giants are backing away. Microsoft and Google have given up — they’re not bragging about their carbon neutrality anymore. Not now that their emissions have increased 29% and 50% respectively in the last four or five years. Over 500 companies pledged to get to net zero by 2040, but 96% of them are failing to stay on track. ...
    "The truth is that if net zero technologies were cheap and useful, and the CEO’s ever cared about the planet, they wouldn’t be abandoning them. But they are…
    "The truth is that if the Earth was in danger, smart CEO’s and billionaires, who have to live on the planet too, would be pushing nuclear power like their children’s lives depended on it.
    "Instead it was all an intellectual fashion contest and a quick subsidy buck, and maybe a few even believed wind and solar power did something useful, but they don’t anymore.."

~ Jo Nova, from her post 'And then the climate pledges evaporated'

How come "free energy" is so expensive?

Source: OWID: 'Australian solar and wind penetration'

"Back in the dinosaur days when Australia had virtually no wind and solar power, the price for wholesale electricity was $30 a megawatt hour year after year. Then Kevin Rudd was elected in 2007, and we started to add the intermittent, unreliable generators which have free fuel, but need thousands of kilometres of wires, batteries, subsidies, schemes, farmland, FCAS markets, and an entire duplicated back-up grid that sits around not-earning money for hours, days or five years at a time.
    "And [apart from that brief respite during Covid] we wondered why electricity got more expensive..."

~ Jo Nova from her post 'The more renewables Australia added the more expensive electricity got'

Source: 'AEMO Quarterly Report'

But renewable energy is free...

 

You'll often hear it said that so-called "renewable energy" is free energy. Energy from the sun, from the wind — it's just there for the collection.

But because collection locations are so dispersed, 'cos collection itself not to straightforward — and because the energy density is so low — it takes a lot of stuff to collect all that "free" energy. 

A 2015 estimate by the US Department of Energy showed just how much stuff:

So free energy is not free.

And since mining for all these raw materials would have to increase by >300% to achieve “net zero” goals, which would make that [arbitrary] target date by 2050 impossible. In order for the world to meet Net Zero by 2050 one estimate says the amount of stuff needed would be 4,575,523,674 tons of copper. 940,578,114 tons of Nickel. 8,973,640,257 tons of Graphite, and 4,163,162 tons of Germanium. At todays mining rates that would take over 1000 years. Not to mention the many rare earth metals, which are so-called for good reason.

So it's not so straightforward. And nowhere near so free.

But, in case you didn't notice (it's bar chart being so small down there) it's gas for the win.

[Hat tip Chris Martz]

Giving it the gas [updated]

 

NZ Electricity Generation, 8:10am to 11:20am, 13 June 2024.
Source: NZ Interactive Electricity Grid by @morganfrnchstgg

Today's a normal kind of cloudy, breezy winter day around the motu (as they say).

As you were enjoying your breakfast toast and coffee this morning, at today's first peak-power time, the electricity grid was supplied with 82% renewable power. Good stuff, right! 

As you can see above (and I've enlarged it for you just below), the bulk of that renewable power came from hydro — almost two-thirds — with a decent amount (17%) from geothermal. Good stuff. Thank you. But can you see the anaemic offering from the other two renewable contributors, solar and wind? Just 129MW from the country's wind farms — contributing just 2% to your breakfast toaster — and from solar just a risible 1.3MW. Virtually zero percent.

And that's a normal morning.  (As we were reminded by Transpower on May 10th, we're so close to being underpowered here that the gap between peak production and consumption on still, cloudy days is dangerously small.) If we zoom out to see the contribution of New Zealand's largest solar "farm" up in Kaitaia over the last seven days, even it's useful-but-insubstantial peak of 20MW is only achieved momentarily in the middle of the day, offering little help for morning or evening peak.  Sure, more solar "farms" are planned, but they all have that same problem. And they all take time to get going. Lots of time.

But what about wind? Sure, this morning it only gave the grid a measly 2%. But on other mornings (Monday for example, see below) wind "farms" put in around 17% of the power that made your shower hot and your kettle boil.

But — and here's the big but — that wind doesn't blow all the time. If we zoom out again to the last seven days (below) we see that the contribution of New Zealand's largest wind farm, just outside Palmerston North, is literally up and down. from zero to 150MW (and back again, see that drop-off on Monday afternoon) in the time it takes to yell "turn that bloody heater on!"

In fairly simple terms, that's why we need gas. Even when the wind does blow and the sun still shines, it's gas that helps make up that sizeable difference. Just one plant, Todd Generation's Junction Road plant running on Taranaki gas produces almost as much peak power as the windmills do on the Tararuas, and at times that the windmills don't, and can't. It's almost like the two are symbiotic. (Just for fun, compare the two graphs above and below, and with the peak morning and evening times at which we need to cook.

Maybe that's why we say, "now we're cooking with gas!"

Even at Huntly — which uses both gas (light brown below) and Indonesian coal(because we're no longer able to produce our own) — and which  produces up to a massive peak of 850MW, you can see it keeping your kettle on the boil even when the wind isn't blowing.

This is why commentators like Alex Epstein describe unreliable wind and solar as "parasitic" on reliable power. And not cheap. Essentially to rely on wind and solar, we need generators to build enough capacity — in the form of power that's easily turned on and off — so that when wind don't blow and sun don't shine the lights can still be kept on. Which essentially means that the more wind and solar are built, exactly the same capacity of reliable power needs to be built to double that, so it can come on the field as a reserve.

But we can't build dams any more — too expensive, takes too damn long under the RMA, and too many objections. And batteries, while promising, still only contribute a maximum of 13MW here, and take oodles of new mining to produce. (And the more unreliables you have, the more expensive battery power would be necessary, one reason this is still is not being tried anywhere.)

So what does that leave? Answer: gas. If you want your breakfast sausages, you need this place to be be cooking – or at least producing power — with gas.

Sure, good old Chloe Swarbrick told the nation on Monday that Australia does all this with domestic solar panels. She didn't tell you however that the price of power in Australia has gone through the roof those solar panels are on. Or how often Victoria, say, suffers brownouts. Or how small a proportion of the grid those panels produce even at peak time. (All of Australia's solar panels, domestic and commercial, contribute just 12% of the grid's power and, like here, need still non-existent battery power and reliable backup generation of the same capacity when they're not producing.) But in any case, New Zealand is not that sunburnt land — not even as sunburnt as Victoria.. And no amount of solar panels can fill the gap when the sun don't shine.

For that, and for some time to come, we still need gas.

(NB: These graphs come from the really neat interactive electricity grid charts made possible by Morgan French-Stagg. Thank you sir.)

UPDATE: The UK has noticed the results of Jacinda Ardern's 'energy suicide note' of banning gas exploration, and warns its politicians not to contemplate the same there. The Telegraph writes:

[UK Labour leader] Keir Starmer is standing by a pledge to ban new drilling in the North Sea, despite New Zealand abandoning a similar policy amid blackout fears. [UK] Labour’s manifesto, due out on Thursday, will feature a pledge to block all new licensing for oil and gas as one of its key energy policies. It follows last weekend’s announcement that New Zealand’s government was lifting a ban on new oil and gas exploration.
    The ban was announced by former prime minister Jacinda Ardern in 2018. “The world has moved on from fossil fuels,” Ardern proclaimed at the time. New Zealand’s trailblazing policy, which was the first of its kind, became a key inspiration for [the UK] Labour Party’s own plan. However, some in the party are now questioning the commitment after New Zealand resources minister Shane Jones last weekend denounced its own ban as a disaster – and revoked it. It followed three years of rising energy prices that have left 110,000 households unable to warm their homes, 19pc of households struggling with bills and 40,000 of them having their power cut off due to unpaid bills, according to Consumer NZ.
    Since April the situation has further deteriorated: Transpower, the equivalent of our National Grid, warned that the nation was at high risk of blackouts. New Zealand’s shift to renewables meant it no longer had the generating power to keep the lights on during the cold spells that mark the Antipodean winter, said Transpower, as it begged consumers to cut their electricity consumption.
    The threat to New Zealand’s energy security comes despite the fact that geologists have discovered billions of cubic metres of natural gas in the seabeds around the country.
    Sean Rush, a leading New Zealand barrister specialising in petroleum licensing law and climate litigation, called the oil and gas ban “economic vandalism at its worst in exchange for virtue signalling at its finest”.... [Shane] Jones said last week: “Natural gas is critical to keeping our lights on and our economy running, especially during peak electricity demand and when generation dips because of more intermittent sources like wind, solar and hydro.” ...
    

Jenny Stanning, director of external affairs at OEUK, says exploration is essential to simply slowing the decline in output. “The New Zealand experience shows how important it is for countries to carefully manage energy transition and energy security. We will need oil and gas for decades to come so it makes sense to back our own industry rather than ramping up imports from abroad.” ... Russell Borthwick, chief executive of Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce – the region that lies at the heart of the UK offshore industry – says the UK needs a managed and nuanced transition to low carbon energy. ... New Zealand’s experience suggests much of the UK industry would not survive a ban on new drilling.
    “Back in 2018, at the time of the ban, there were 20 international and five local companies engaged in exploration and production in New Zealand,” says John Carnegie, chief executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa, the local industry trade body. “Since then, exploration has fallen dramatically. We only have nine remaining investors, seven international and two local. The rest have left.” ...

Robin Allan, chairman of Brindex, which represents the UK’s independent offshore companies, says: “New Zealand’s ban was a politically motivated decision which ignored data on oil and gas demand, the advantages of domestic production and a realistic pace of decarbonisation. The [UK] Labour Party should see what is happening in front of their eyes in another island nation which has already implemented a poorly reasoned policy – and think again.” [Hat tip Ele Ludemann]

"Getting green energy to work, if this is even possible, is a different order of problem to the moon landing."

"Has Britain truly wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on useless green projects, because a bunch of British politicians wanted to feel like JFK?
    "Getting green energy to work, if this is even possible, is a different order of problem to the moon landing... a remarkable feat, decades ahead of its time, which to date only one great nation has achieved. 

    "But from the outset of the moon landing project, there was a plausible technological path to success. There were huge engineering challenges to be overcome along the way ... But in a very real sense, the Saturn V rocket which carried men to the moon was a massively scaled up version of genius American inventor Robert Goddard’s original Liquid Fuel Rocket. ... even in 1920, Goddard knew his remarkable technological breakthrough provided a clear path to spaceflight.
    "No similar technological path to success exists for creating a renewable energy powered economy.
    "How do we store energy for months, or years, to stabilise an expensive, intermittent source of energy which collapses in Winter, just when we need it most? Nobody knows how to affordably stabilise renewable supplies. There isn’t even an affordable answer to time shifting renewable energy into the evening demand peak, without burning lots of fossil fuel in the 'backup' generators.
    "How will future historians make sense of this blunder?
    "I wish future historians luck, I can barely make sense of it. Trillions of taxpayer dollars and pounds have been committed to the green energy dead end. The politicians who committed that taxpayer cash are only now starting to wake up to the scale of their blunder."

~ Eric Worrall from his post 'BBC Asks “Are the politics of climate change going out of fashion?”'

"Eric's Principle of Green Energy: Green policies are self limiting. The ultimate backstop on political climate ambition is the catastrophic economic mess green policies cause."

 

Pic: Tadeáš Bednarz, via Jo Nova

"When climate advocates say 'Net Zero,' are they actually referring to how much cash green investors will have left when the last bubble bursts?'
    "It seems people only wanted renewable energy if they got cheap loans.
    "The general US S&P shares index gained 15% this year but The Invesco Solar ETF (Fund) which invests in solar energy stocks around the world — fell by a dire 40%. Even the [ill-named pork barrel subsidy-packed] US 'Inflation Reduction Act' couldn’t save the solar sector. As finances tighten with rising interest rates, apparently solar panel orders are among the first to be cancelled.
    "Some of the worst performers in the whole US share market are solar shares ... Solar panels [are] a luxury item. If only solar panels were cheaper, in tough economic times, everyone would want them. [Instead, some headlines:]

• Solar Stocks Shaken By High Interest Rates And Supply Chain Issues ...
• What happened to solar stocks? Investors ‘pick up the pieces’ after a brutal earnings season ...
• Solar Stocks Still Searching For A Bottom ...

"This once again demonstrate’s Eric [Worrall]’s Principle of Green Energy – green policies are self limiting. The ultimate backstop on political climate ambition is the catastrophic economic mess green policies cause.
    "The high interest rates which are crippling green energy and EV supply chains are largely due to energy price inflation, which is a direct consequence of green obsessed regulatory hostility towards fossil fuel. Green energy policies are directly driving the demise of the green energy industry.
    "Personally if I was invested in companies with exposure to this insanity, I’d be calling for the scalp of whichever intellectually challenged executive decided to gamble with my shareholder capital. This crash was inevitable and obvious, it was only the timing of the crash which was uncertain."

~ composite quote from Jo Nova and Eric Worrall, from their respective posts 'Solar Stocks crashed in the last quarter too, down 40% so far this year around the world' and 'The Great Green Crash – Solar Down 40%'

RELATED:

"Those who think the world will soon be doing without fossil fuels need to get real."

"A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), published last week, claims that the world will reach peak demand for oil, coal and gas by 2030. This has been seized on by the likes of the World Economic Forum as proof that we’re about to enter a brave, green future, free of evil fossil fuels.
    "But other developments this month suggest otherwise. At the same time as the IEA and the WEF have been heralding an imminent end to fossil fuels, Germany has been firing up an extra coal facility, energy giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron are doubling down on their fossil-fuel businesses and the wind-power industry has been begging governments for more subsidies and bailouts.
    "It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that those anticipating an imminent decline in fossil-fuel use are indulging in wishful thinking. This is largely because they are ignoring the huge geopolitical changes the world is now undergoing. The fact is that global energy markets have been fundamentally transformed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It means that governments and nations are now putting energy and national security above concerns over climate. ... [In short, g]eopolitical conflict has exposed Net Zero as a fantasy. ...
    "Across the world, there’s little sense that fossil-fuel use will be in decline any time soon. ... Even the most ardent environmental zealot will soon have to reckon with the new geopolitical reality. After all, if Greens in Germany’s governing coalition can be convinced to defend coal plants, there’s every chance American politicians will soon be encouraging fracking and drilling from Alaska to Texas.
    "Those who think the world will soon be doing without fossil fuels need to get real. Far from entering terminal decline, fossil-fuel use is set to scale new heights."

~ Ralph Schoellhammer, from his post 'Why fossil fuels are here to stay'

"...the lack of thought going into the demands that will be placed on the grid with increasing amounts of electric vehicle adoption."

The Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger station is an impressive beast. With 98 charging bays, 

the facility in Coalinga, California, is the largest charging station in the world. But to provide 

that kind of power takes something solar can’t provide — diesel generators.

"THE HARRIS RANCH TESLA station is an impressive beast. With 98 charging bays, the facility in Coalinga, California, is the largest charging station in the world. ...
    "Superchargers charge vehicles up to the 80% sweet spot in as little as 20 minutes, but to provide that kind of power for nearly 100 bays takes something solar can’t provide — diesel generators. 
    "Investigative journalist Edward Niedermeyer discovered that the station was powered by diesel generators hidden behind a Shell station. ...
    "The station isn’t connected to any dedicated solar farms, which means that absent the diesel generators, the station is powered by California’s grid. ...
    "Energy analyst and writer David Blackmon, author of the blog 'Energy Transition Absurdities,' [says] that the use of diesel-powered generators is not limited to the Harris Ranch station.
    "He used to shop at a Whole Foods in Houston. The company had installed a charging station in front of the store for its customers.
    "'It was the best parking spot in the lot, and it crowded out a bunch of handicap spaces,' Blackmon said.
    "He said there were diesel generators behind the store and whenever someone was using the chargers, the generators would kick on.

"JUST AS THESE CHARGING stations find they can’t run without some fossil fuel backup, the retirement of a coal-fired power plant in Kansas is being delayed to accommodate the energy demands of an electric vehicle battery factory that’s under construction.
    "Blackmon said that these stories illustrate well the lack of thought going into the demands that will be placed on the grid with increasing amounts of electric vehicle adoption."

~ Kevin Killough, from his article 'Largest EV Charging Station In World Powered By Diesel-Powered Generators'

 

"Supercharging EV Infrastructure is part of National's plan to
rebuild the economy," says Christopher Luxon

"Wind energy might be free..."

"Wind energy might be free, but collecting it costs the Earth."

~ Jo Nova, from her post ' Failing underwater cables “pose global threat to offshore wind” '

"Hydrogen is no more the wonder gas than CO2 is the opposite."

"Hydrogen is no more the wonder gas than CO2 is the opposite. Apart from being very expensive to produce using so-called ‘green’ methods, it’s running into various obstacles elsewhere, such as absence of infrastructure....
    "Europe’s time spent sleepwalking to the tune of hydrogen lobbyists – draining funds and political capital for far too long – appears to be coming to an end as leaders come face-to-face with physical realities....
    " The European Commission estimates that to produce, transport and consume 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen domestically, investment worth up to €471 billion will be necessary.
    "For the odourless gas to be climate-friendly, it must be produced through electrolysis using renewable electricity. To avoid electrolysers taking up all the green power in the grid and boosting demand for coal power, two-thirds of the €471 billion will have to be invested into additional renewables.
    "To meet the second half of the EU’s hydrogen targets – 10 million tonnes of imports – will require another estimated €500 billion.
    "That amounts to a €1 trillion dream to get the hydrogen economy from non-existent to infancy into 2030, and the spending certainly wouldn’t end there....

    "Finally, what will all that hydrogen be used for?

    "Once, lobbyists painted a rosy picture of an entire economy running on hydrogen. But hydrogen cars proved a non-starter while heating with hydrogen has thankfully been banished from people’s minds.... Politicians find the idea of hydrogen as a form of long-term energy storage tempting.... [Yet] Industry demand is projected to be far below the EU’s lofty targets....
    "After years of hydrogen hype, Brussels may just focus on electricity – the true fuel of the future."

~ Nikolaus J. Kurmayer, from his article 'Waking up from hydrogen daydreams' [hat tip Jim Rose and TallBloke's Talkshop]

"Environmentalism is austerity on steroids."

 

"The left claims to hate austerity and yet its eco-dystopia would plunge millions into poverty....
    "We’re against austerity, they insist, and yet then they agitate for an austerity of apocalyptic proportions. This, surely, is the most stark incongruity of the modern left. They rail against every library closure or reform of welfare payments as an intolerable assault on people’s living standards, and then they take to the streets in their thousands in support of a degrowth agenda that would plunge vast swathes of humankind into penury. They’re far meaner than any right-wing penny-pincher they claim to oppose....
    "[T]hese privileged hysterics are determined to drum into the small minds of the polluting masses just how dangerous climate change has become.... if [this eco-leftist movement] were to get its way, if its Malthusian dream of leaving fossil fuels in the ground were ever to be realised, it would make [politicians'] post-2008 austerity programme[s] look like an era of milk and honey. The impact of Just Stop Oil’s Anti-Industrial Revolution, its misanthropic urge to wind back modernity itself, would be truly dire – especially for the working classes.
    "Environmentalism is austerity on steroids. Consider one of Just Stop Oil’s key demands: ‘No new oil or gas.’ This would be – there’s no other word for it – psychotic.... [T]o ‘rapidly eliminate fossil-fuel use’ would make the world an impoverished, dangerous and miserable place for most people. Fossil fuels provide 80 per cent of the world’s energy. Just three per cent comes from solar and wind power, so beloved of green anti-modernists. And even that measly slice of global energy production is ... totally dependent on fossil fuels, especially natural gas, for 24/7 back-up. That is, if the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, we have to crank up the fossil fuels. Ours is a world in which three-billion people still use less electricity than your average American fridge. Agitating for less energy production in such a time is callous beyond belief. It would issue a death sentence on the world’s poor....
    "We are already getting daily tasters of how destructive eco-austerity can be. The Net Zero ideology, embraced by governments across the West, aims to do in slow-motion what Just Stop Oil would do overnight: wean mankind off fossil fuels. And its consequences are awful. Farms closed down, farmers losing their jobs, truckers’ lives being made more difficult, driving being made more expensive, air travel once again becoming the preserve of the rich, power stations going unbuilt… the elites’ unhinged hostility towards fossil fuels has already birthed all of this. Imagine how much worse it would get if Just Stop Oil’s vision of a fossil-free world came to fruition."

~ Brendan O'Neill, from his post 'Environmentalism is austerity on steroids'

"Relying on weather-dependent energy sources for an energy transition, ostensibly needed to fix the weather…"

"1. In a world that is apparently getting both warmer and colder because of global warming, how is it that we can increasingly rely on non-dispatchable (i.e., intermittent, usually unavailable), weather-dependent electricity from wind and solar plants to displace, not just supplement, dspatchable (i.e., baseload, almost always available) coal, gas, and nuclear power? In other words, if our weather is becoming less predictable, how is it that a consuming economy like ours can, or should even try, predictably rely on weather-dependent resources?

[…]

"2. Climate change is a global issue, so how is it that we can claim [local] climate benefits for unilateral climate policy. For example, [James Shaw claims that his gift of taxpayers' money to the owners of NZ steel will save one percent of NZ's total emission, which constitute just 0.17% of global CO2 emissions'] and that this will somehow impact climate change? But this dose of real science doesn’t stop [politicians like him] from telling us that this will stop the global emissions [that caused our local storms].

[…]

"3. Back to electric vehicles. Green-tinted but surely practical Bloomberg admits that more than 85% of Americans can’t afford an electric car, since they are well more than double the price of oil-based cars. [So just ask yourself how many NZers can?]

[…]

"4. How on Earth could anybody expect those in Africa and the other horrifically poor nations to 'get off fossil fuels' when the rich countries haven’t come close to doing it."

~ energy researcher Jude Clemente, from his article 'Five Things I Don 't Understand About the 'Energy Transition''

 

Life Expectancy: Our World in Data

Energy Consumption: Bjorn Lomborg, LinkedIn

"There has never been an energy transition.
    "Nor will there ever be an energy 'transition' before we harness nuclear fusion power… And that’s a good thing.
    "On a per-capita basis, we consume as much 'traditional biomass' for energy as we did when we started burning coal. We have just piled new forms of energy on top of older ones. Now, we have changed the way we consume energy sources. In the 1800’s the biomass came from whale oil and clear-cutting forests. Today’s biomass is less harmful to whales and forests.
    "From 1800 to 1900, per-capita energy consumption, primarily from biomass, remained relatively flat; as did the average life expectancy. From 1900 to 1978, per-capita energy consumption roughly tripled with the rapid growth in fossil fuel production (coal, oil & gas). This was accompanied by a doubling of average life expectancy. While I can’t say that fossil fuels caused the increase in life expectancy, I can unequivocally state that everything that enabled the increase in life expectancy wouldn’t have existed or happened without fossil fuels, particularly petroleum."

~ David Middleton from his reposting of Jude Clemente's article [emphasis in the original]