By Paul Homewood
Joe Biden promised to “achieve net zero carbon emissions in the power sector by 2035.”
I’m sure the inhabitants of New England will be over the moon. It’s been a pretty average week temperature wise there and electricity demand is around normal, peaking below the summer air conditioning highs:
Yet even then wind and solar are only managing to supply 3% of generation. Most of that is solar power at midday.
New England already relies on imports for a third of its power, mainly from across the border in Canada:
Canada exports about 50 TWh a year to the US, about a tenth of output, of which hydro and nuclear make up 75% (BP Energy Review). New England takes mainly surplus hydro power from Quebec and New Brunswick, but transmission capacity limits the scope for New England to take much more than the 2 GW it does now.
In any event. were Canada to step up exports to the US, it could only do this by increasing fossil fuel generation, as the other sources are fixed.
Which all begs the question – where will New England get all the power it needs when fossil fuels, which currently supply 65%, are excluded from the mix. Nuclear, we are led to believe, has no future in Biden’s green utopia. Instead his main hope is solar power, which has supplied just half a percent this week so far.
But it gets worse!
Although natural gas provides nearly half of New England’s electricity, about three quarters of gas consumption goes elsewhere, mainly for residential heating:
Just as in the UK, the use of gas for heating will have to be drastically reduced very quickly, if decarbonisation targets are to be met.
Gas usage in New England is running at around 3 bcf/day at this time of year, excluding power generation. This is equivalent in energy terms to 879 GWh/day, or 36 GW.
In other words, if this heating is switched from gas to electricity, New England’s power demand would rise from about 17 GW to 53 GW. That’s triple current demand, and more than double the summertime peak.
Most of the US will be in a similar position in winter, so they cannot all rely on piping solar power in from Nevada.
There is no easy way to say this. People will die, and lots of them, if Joe Biden’s crazy green agenda is implemented.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
January 24, 2022 at 01:15PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 