Josh writes:
The Climate Red Pill, really easy to take, zero side effects. Thanks to @ScottAdamsSays and another free speech periscope.
I’m guessing the “blue pill” is so chock-full of political ingredients, it is impossibly large to swallow.
Like his work? Buy him a pint.
via Watts Up With That?
July 8, 2020 at 08:23AM
The imminent announcement of the next round of regulatory spending control for the UK’s energy networks, RIIO-2, will tell us whether the regulator, Ofgem, has any real regard for the consumer interest. Two resignations reported in the last week, of Ofgem’s Executive Director for Consumers and Markets, as well as the Chief Economist, suggest the worst.
The British electricity industry regulator, Ofgem, is on the verge of publishing details of the next round of spending controls for the electricity and gas industry transmission, distribution and system operation companies, which comes into effect in April next year. These controls are known under the term RIIO (Revenue = Incentives + Innovation + Outputs), which boils down to the prosaic reality of:
a) How much the regulator will allow the regulated energy industries to spend on capital investment and system operation
b) How large a return on this expenditure the regulated industries will be allowed to derive from consumer bills.
This second round of spending control, RIIO-2, will endure for five years, and forms the first major test of the new Chief Executive at Ofgem, Jonathan Brearley, a former civil servant at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and personally responsible for the design of some of policies that he now oversees on behalf of consumers. By any standard he was a very odd choice to run the regulator (see my earlier comments: “The Decline and Fall of Britain’s Energy Regulator, Ofgem”, and we shall soon find out whether he has changed his spots, or caved in to industry pressure to permit them more generous terms in order to deliver the Net Zero target.
The early signs are not particularly encouraging. In an Op-Ed on RIIO-2 published in the Sunday Times on the 5th of July (“Energy firms need to take the public with them to build a greener future“) Mr Brearley remarked that:
Companies are also invited to bid for additional funding as new technologies emerge so that we can get to net zero in the most efficient, smartest way. In return, companies will have to reduce their ongoing costs significantly and accept much lower returns.
Mr Brearley is saying that while he is unable to permit the 6.5% return the industry claims to want, as opposed to the 4.3% that Ofgem thinks reasonable, there will be an opportunity to enlarge capital spending very significantly, meaning that the asset base and hence the valuation of these companies will grow, making up for the lower returns, and implying a major wealth transfer to shareholders in the regulated energy companies.
Of course, a truly consumer-oriented regulator would be very reluctant to allow either increased capex or high rates of return, but Mr Brearley does not look like a consumer-oriented regulator. This, after all, is a man who resigned very publicly and noisily from his position in the Department of Energy in 2013 because the Treasury had moved to prevent him from offering lucrative incentives to investors in the low carbon policies.
Given that background it is a matter of particular concern that Mr Brearley is now engaged in a reorganisation at Ofgem that seems set to consolidate his power and reduce internal opposition. The industry journal Utility Week has reported in the last few days that both Mary Starks, Ofgem’s Executive Director for Consumers & Markets, and Joe Perkins the Chief Economist, have resigned. Mary Starks was formerly at the Office of Fair Trading, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Bank of England, while Joe Perkins was formerly at Her Majesty’s Treasury and the National Audit Office. Neither has been at Ofgem long, and their resignations are a surprise.
Utility Week quotes Mr Brearley as explaining that an internal consultation was taking place on a new “flatter and broader leadership”, a phrase that he doubtless hopes will suggest egalitarian openness. However, it seems as likely that such a reform would in fact have the consequence of weakening the authority of the Directorships, Consumers and Markets, and Systems and Networks for example, as well as the Office for Research and Economics, while leaving the Chief Executive himself as the sole power in the land. A “flatter” leadership could easily mean that there is no effective challenge within the organisation to Mr Brearley’s own position. Is that why Mary Starks and Joe Perkins are leaving?
Whatever the explanation for their departure, the consumer has much to fear from any concentration of power in Mr Brearley’s hands. Electricity demand has been falling in the UK since 2005, and the public health measures to address the pandemic have deepened the trend. Whether demand will recover soon or indeed ever is very unclear. This has important implications for electricity prices. The very large costs entailed by the current renewables policies (£10 billion a year in subsidies alone), as well as the consumer charges required to pay for all the Net Zero capital expenditure that will be allowed by RIIO-2, must now be recovered from a much smaller volume of electricity sales. This is a sure and certain recipe for higher prices. Will Mr Brearley do anything to put a brake on this, or will he allow it to accelerate, pleading the overwhelming imperative of meeting climate change targets and safe in the knowledge that the grim political impact will fall on Boris Johnson’s government while Ofgem escapes unscathed?
Dr John Constable: GWPF Energy Editor
The post Is Britain’s Energy Regulator a Consumer Champion or a Green Industry Patsy? appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
July 8, 2020 at 07:35AM
Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Mexico have experienced dramatic increases in recent weeks. So have New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
click for source
Nick Cordero was born an hour’s drive from where I reside, here in Canada. He attended Ryerson University in downtown Toronto (I did so briefly, as well). He earned a living by performing in Broadway musicals, movies, and television shows.
Before contracting the coronavirus in March, Cordero was healthy, with no known underlying medical issues. Nevertheless, he spent three months in a Los Angeles hospital, hooked up to numerous ICU machines, in a coma for much of that time. In April, his right leg was amputated due to blood clots.
Cordero has now died as a result of COVID-19. He was 41. His one-year-old son will never know him.
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Five weeks ago, out of every 1 million Americans, 327 had died from COVID-19. Compared to harder-hit European countries, that was a modest number. Yet six US states, as well as the District of Columbia, had already exceeded Italy’s deaths-per-million rate. I published this chart at that time (click to enlarge):
How do things look 35 days later? America’s overall deaths-per-million rate has increased by 78. It’s now 405.
click to enlarge
Numbers have risen in Europe as well, but less aggressively – except in Sweden and the UK:
Belgium went from 820 to 843 (+23)
Italy: from 555 to 577 (+22)
France: from 443 to 459 (+16)
Spain: from 580 to 607 (+27)
Sweden: from 443 to 539 (+96)
UK: from 580 to 654 (+74)
Back in America, the most dramatic increase took place in New Jersey. In a span of five weeks, it went from 1,327 deaths-per-million to 1,728. That’s +401.
The chart below doesn’t show deaths-per-million – just the increase in deaths-per-million:
click to enlarge
Canada is at +35 (it went from 195 to 231).
Chile increased fivefold, from 62 to 337. It’s +275.
Mexico tripled. It’s +165 (from 83 to 248).
Peru doubled. It’s +187 (from 145 to 332).
Brazil also doubled. It’s now+168 (from 147 to 315).
In the following 12 US states, plus the District of Columbia, the deaths-per-million rate has risen faster in recent weeks than the US national rate of +78: New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, Illinois, Arizona, Mississippi, New York, Maryland, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
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via Big Picture News, Informed Analysis
July 8, 2020 at 05:59AM
Guest post by Roger Caiazza
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently published “Special Report on Clean Energy Innovation” that concludes that innovation is necessary for jurisdictions and companies to fulfill their de-carbonization targets. While the authors could not keep from using the Covid-19 crisis as a call for more innovation, the report does provide useful reference information on the technical readiness of decarbonization technologies.
The report explains:
“Without a major acceleration in clean energy innovation, net-zero emissions targets will not be achievable. The world has seen a proliferating number of pledges by numerous governments and companies to reach net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the coming decades as part of global efforts to meet long-term sustainability goals, such as the Paris Agreement on climate change. But there is a stark disconnect between these high-profile pledges and the current state of clean energy technology. While the technologies in use today can deliver a large amount of the emissions reductions called for by these goals, they are insufficient on their own to bring the world to net zero while ensuring energy systems remain secure – even with much stronger policies supporting them”.
The IEA website describing this report explains why innovation is necessary and the magnitude of the effort needed to decarbonize and the innovation necessary to make it work. I found the Energy Transition Plan Clean Energy Technology Guide to be a useful summary of around 400 component technologies and identifies their stage of readiness for the market.. It includes an interactive section where you can choose a sector, various filters and get a summary of the readiness of different technologies. There also is a poster that you can download and magnify to see similar information. IEA uses the technology readiness level (TRL) scale to assess where a technology is on its journey from initial idea to market use so I will discuss that aspect in more detail.
The EIA report notes that de-carbonization comes from four main technology approaches. These are the electrification of end-use sectors such as heating and transport; the application of carbon capture, utilization and storage; the use of low-carbon hydrogen and hydrogen-derived fuels; and the use of bioenergy. EIA explains that each of these areas faces challenges in making all parts of the technological application process, what they call the value chain, commercially viable in the sectors where reducing emissions is hardest. The IEA report uses the technology readiness level (TRL) scale where the level of maturity of a given technology is measured against a defined scale that defines where the technology stands:
For illustration purposes I will describe three figures in the document that use the simple four stage scale described above. The Energy Transition Plan Clean Energy Technology Guide uses a more refined 11 stage scale.
Electrification of the transport, industry and buildings sectors combined with the deployment of renewables in power generation are important components of any de-carbonization plan. Figure 3.2, Technology Readiness Level of technologies along the low-carbon electricity value chain, in the report shows that some technologies have reached maturity but many others have a long way to go. The report notes that this problem with readiness is “particularly true in demand areas such as heavy industry and long-distance transport that are proving difficult to electrify”.
De-carbonization plans will also have to include capture, transport and utilization or storage of CO2 emissions. Figure 3.3, Technology Readiness Level of technologies along the CO2 value chain, shows that “not all parts of the CO2 value chain are operating at commercial scale today: many of the relevant technologies are still at the demonstration and the large prototype stage”.
The report notes that “The value chain for low-carbon hydrogen is not completely developed at commercial scale today. It comprises many technologies that are necessary to produce, transport, store and consume low-carbon hydrogen, each of them at a different stage of maturity and facing specific technical challenges” as shown in Figure 3.4 Technology Readiness Level of technologies along the low-carbon hydrogen value chain.
Although I was impressed with the technical approach for assessing the readiness of technology, the IEA website goes away from the technical aspects of the report to sermonize on the current situation. The report goes on to argue that innovation is needed to help reach net-zero emissions goals faster. They argue that industrial development is based on cyclical investments so if the new technologies are not ready for deployment when industries start a new investment cycle there will be “locked-in” investments. Not surprisingly then they note:
“At a time when faster innovation is sorely needed, the Covid-19 pandemic has delivered a major setback. In the immediate future, the world’s capacity to bring new technologies to market will be weaker as a result of the disruptions caused by the pandemic. Market and policy uncertainties threaten to reduce the funds available to entrepreneurs.”
At a time when government revenues are down across the world, it certainly is time to take stock of priorities. It may well be that proponents of the net-zero future realize that when financial choices are made between basic human services and clean energy innovation that the public may start looking behind the curtain and not be impressed with their plans. IEA argues “If governments rise to the challenge created by the Covid-19 crisis, they have an opportunity to accelerate clean energy innovation” and they propose five key innovation principles:
“For governments aiming to achieve net-zero emissions goals while maintaining energy security, these principles primarily address national policy challenges in the context of global needs, but are relevant to all policy makers and strategists concerned with energy technologies and transitions:
As countries around the world pursue a more secure and sustainable energy future, the IEA will continue to support governments, industry, investors and other stakeholders in advancing energy innovation with the aim of accelerating transitions to cleaner and more resilient energy systems.”
Conclusion
I recommend looking at the report and their technical readiness evaluation of technologies. Because it is an overview, I suspect that those with specific experience with some of the technologies included may argue with the readiness levels listed. I did have trouble finding some of the technologies proposed for New York’s net-zero aspirations in the IEA report. I presume that is because of nomenclature differences and not because the promoters of New York’s decarbonization pathways have not chosen some technology that IEA rejects out of hand. On the other hand, the call for clean energy innovation as a response to the challenge created by the Covid-19 crisis seems to be nothing more than not letting a crisis go to waste.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company he has been associated with.
via Watts Up With That?
July 8, 2020 at 04:36AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 