By Paul Homewood

h/t Dennis Ambler

Oil and gas giant Shell has plans for a 100-megawatt grid storage battery in the west of England. It is slated to be the biggest battery in Europe once it is completed later this year and will be crucial to the UK’s quest to remain the continent’s top wind power player.

The battery project in the county of Wiltshire aims to store renewable power in two 50MW cells and then sell it to consumers when demand and prices are high.

“Projects like this will be vital for balancing the UK’s electricity demand and supply as wind and solar power play bigger roles in powering our lives,” said Shell Energy Europe vice president David Wells.

“Batteries are uniquely suited to optimising power supplies as the UK moves towards a net-zero carbon system,” he added. It is the Dutch firm’s latest attempt to diversify its business holdings away from fossil fuels towards more sustainable energy.

Chinese investment fund CNIC and state-run utility Huaneng Group will build the battery but Shell insists neither will be involved with its day-to-day operations once construction is completed.

The battery will hold enough juice to power 10,000 homes for a single day once fully charged, given that UK energy regulator Ofgem says that a typical household needs about 10 kilowatts every 24-hour period.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/batteries/news/biggest-battery-in-europe-set-to-land-on-british-shores/ 

Despite the claim that it will be will be crucial to the UK’s quest to remain the continent’s top wind power player, it will in fact be nothing of the sort.

According to Shell’s blurb, the battery will store 100 MWh. UK wind output is running on average at 60 TWh a year, which equates to 6854 MWh per hour. In other words, Shell’s new shiny battery will only be able to replace wind output for less than a minute, if the wind stopped blowing.

The business logic is, of course, no different to that of small scale peakers, such as diesel engines and OCGTs, which come on stream to cover small fluctuations in supply and demand, thus earning premium tariffs.

The difference, however, is that they can run for much longer than an hour when needed.

Shell’s new battery may be a cheaper option than other peakers, but it certainly does make a jot of difference to the energy outlook, nor the problems created by the intermittency of wind power.

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February 22, 2020 at 12:42PM

The German government recently decided to exit from coal generated power by 2038, and now one expert says that the exit is going to cost handsomely, and bring zero result. Still, that 2038 target is too slow for some.

That’s how German politicians make decisions on things that concern the economy and environment. The German government’s aim of a coal phaseout is to contribute to protecting the climate. In reality, it will have no impact at all.

German online FOCUS magazine reports here: “80 billion euros are to be given to the affected regions and companies in the coming years as aid and compensation.”

But for some experts, the 2018 target date for completing the coal exit is too late, and thus risks seeing Germany emitting another 140 million tonnes of extra CO2 between 2020 and 2040 by exiting so slowly, so claims the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).

To keep that 140 million ton figure in a global perspective, it is barely a drop in the bucket when compared to the 33 billion tonnes emitted globally and annually. The climate is not even going to notice it.

And over the next 20 years, global Co2 emissions could total 700 billion tonnes, which is a figure that is roughly 5000 times greater than the 140 million tons the DIW is bellyaching about and wishes to eliminate by speeding up the coal phaseout.

“The coal exit changes the CO2 emissions of the European Union by 0,” FOCUS quotes economics professor Christian Bayer of the University of Bonn at Twitter. “A German coal phase-out in itself only shifts emissions abroad.”

In summary, the 2038 coal exit will cost the German government (taxpayers) 80 billion euros, will have no effect on CO2 reductions, have no impact on climate, will ultimately lead to higher electricity costs, result in a more unstable grid, make Germany more dependent on foreign energy, and encourage companies to leave for places with more stable and cheaper electricity.

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February 22, 2020 at 12:37PM

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

John Cook and Lewandowsky appear to have moved on from claiming climate skeptics are mentally defective to a new position, a claim that climate skeptics don’t actually exist, that we are mostly software masquerading as humans.

Revealed: quarter of all tweets about climate crisis produced by bots

Draft of Brown study says findings suggest ‘substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages’

Oliver Milman in New York @olliemilman
Fri 21 Feb 2020 19.00 AEDT

The social media conversation over the climate crisis is being reshaped by an army of automated Twitter bots, with a new analysis finding that a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, the Guardian can reveal.

…

The study of Twitter bots and climate was undertaken by Brown University and has yet to be published. Bots are a type of software that can be directed to autonomously tweet, retweet, like or direct message on Twitter, under the guise of a human-fronted account.

“These findings suggest a substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages about climate change, including support for Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement,” states the draft study, seen by the Guardian.

…

Thomas Marlow, a PhD candidate at Brown who led the study, said the research came about as he and his colleagues are “always kind of wondering why there’s persistent levels of denial about something that the science is more or less settled on”.

…

Marlow said he was surprised that bots were responsible for a quarter of climate tweets on an average day. “I was like, ‘Wow that seems really high,’” he said.

…

Stephan Lewandowsky, an academic at the University of Bristol who co-authored the research, said he was “not at all surprised” at the Brown University study due to his own interactions with climate-related messages on Twitter.

“More often than not, they turn out to have all the fingerprints of bots,” he said. “The more denialist trolls are out there, the more likely people will think that there is a diversity of opinion and hence will weaken their support for climate science.

…

John Cook, an Australian cognitive scientist and co-author with Lewandowsky, said that bots are “dangerous and potentially influential”, with evidence showing that when people are exposed to facts and misinformation they are often left misled.

“This is one of the most insidious and dangerous elements of misinformation spread by bots – not just that misinformation is convincing to people but that just the mere existence of misinformation in social networks can cause people to trust accurate information less or disengage from the facts,” Cook said.

…

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-tweets-twitter-bots-analysis

If only those pesky bot writers would donate their software services to climate modellers.

Now if you will all excuse me, I have adjust my circuits.

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February 22, 2020 at 12:02PM

COSMIC DISASTER | Introduction

“Earth’s magnetic excursion cycle is almost up again. We’re due, the field is changing exactly how one would expect, and the sun waits to cap off the event with the micronova. What cycles on the sun are relevant? How is the solar system changing now? How did the CIA try to cover this up?”

COSMIC DISASTER: https://youtu.be/B_zfMyzXqfI

Note: This video reiterates what I’ve been saying about magnetic reversals for years in both Not by Fire but by Ice and Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps. (Except I never mentioned a CIA cover-up.)

The post Earth’s magnetic excursion cycle is almost up again – Video appeared first on Ice Age Now.

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February 22, 2020 at 10:23AM