From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

 Francis Menton

As discussed here many, many times, the big problem with generating electricity from wind and solar sources is that they are intermittent. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they don’t work for days on end. The times when both wind and sun fail at the same time for multiple days tend to be concentrated in the very coldest days of the winter. This poses a huge problem for central planners’ dreams of “net zero” electricity. Try to solve the problem with grid-scale batteries, and suddenly you’re talking wildly unaffordable costs in the trillions of dollars.

Not to worry. Recently everywhere talk has emerged of a new and seemingly easy solution to the problem of intermittency. Have you heard of it? It’s the “Virtual Power Plant.” I mean, today pretty much everything can be “virtual” if you want it to be. We have the “virtual” meeting, the “virtual” office, and the “virtual” school — even “virtual” reality. So why not a “virtual” power plant?

But, in the context of generating electricity, what does this business of “virtual” mean? Don’t you actually need to have something to produce the juice? A Manhattan Contrarian investigation now reveals that the Virtual Power Plant is exactly what you undoubtedly already suspect it to be: another new level of Orwellian doubletalk. “Virtual Power Plant” turns out to be another term for pointless enforced sacrifice in service to the climate cult.

If you have been paying attention, you probably have already noticed that this “Virtual Power Plant” thing is the latest talking point of the central planners. For those who have been paying less attention, let me provide a little sampling: here is the web page from the federal government’s Department of Energy (“Virtual power plants, generally considered a connected aggregation of distributed energy resource (DER) technologies, offer deeper integration of renewables and demand flexibility, which in turn offers more Americans cleaner and more affordable power”); a recent (2023) Report from the Rocky Mountain Institute (“Virtual Power Plants, Real Benefits: How aggregating distributed energy resources can benefit communities, society, and the grid”); a piece from Reuters, January 31, 2023 (“Explainer: What is a virtual power plant?”); a piece from Elektrek, September 2, 2022, informing us that none other than Tesla is in the middle of this new fad (“Tesla virtual power plant is rocketing up, reaches 50 MW”).

OK, then, this VPP thing has something to do with “a connected aggregation of distributed power resources.” What the heck does that mean?

Trying to get to the bottom of this, I come upon a piece from Utility Dive on May 5, and a Report from the Brattle Group with a May 2023 date. (You may recognize the Brattle Group as the people who put out the 2021 New York Power Grid Study that I criticized in this post on April 22.)

Both Utility Dive and the Brattle Group start out with excited descriptions of this VPP thing as some magical concoction to defeat the intermittency problem with almost no cost or sweat. From Utility Dive’s summary of the Brattle Group’s conclusions:

The net cost for a utility to provide resource adequacy from a virtual power plant is about 40% to 60% less than natural gas peaker plants and utility-scale batteries. Deploying 60 GW of VPPs “could meet future U.S. resource adequacy needs at $15-$35 billion less than the cost of the alternative options over the ensuing decade,” Brattle’s report said.

And it gets even more magical. From page 12 of the Brattle Group Report:

In fact, a VPP does not even need to generate power.

Wait a minute — what is a “power plant” that doesn’t generate any power? Let us in on the secret! We have to get that by working our way through a model set forth in the Report. In that model, the “Virtual Power Plant” derives its input (if you want to call it that) almost entirely from the following three things:

Smart Thermostats. A/C and electric heating are controlled to reduce usage during peak times. Customer comfort is managed through pre-cooling/heating. Smart Water Heating. Electric water heaters act as a grid-interactive thermal battery, providing daily load shifting and even real-time grid balancing. Home EV Managed Charging. EV charging is a large, flexible source of load that can be shifted overnight.

It’s “smart” thermostats, and “smart” water heaters, and “managed” EV charging. If I might, let me translate that into layman’s terms. On the coldest days of the winter, when the grid does not have enough power, first we will take the liberty of draining the power out of your EV battery. In the all EV utopia that we envision, you are now stuck at home. Then, we will remotely turn off your heat and hot water. Hey, it’s to save the planet!

In this vision, the convenience and comfort, let alone the physical safety, of the people are of no importance. No more the American dream, where you can improve your life by hard work. Now it’s to be forced sacrifice to satisfy the jealous gods of the pagan climate cult.

It’s one more front in the all-out war against your well-being now being waged by our government.

From CLIMATE DEPOT

Great Food Reset: John Kerry targets agriculture as part of climate crusade – Slashing farm emissions critical to fighting climate change, John Kerry says

Kerry: “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.” … Kerry added that “lives depend” on world leaders and scientists developing the tools necessary to lower agriculture emissions. … I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.”

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“Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term. Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge,” said John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

By: Admin – Climate Depot

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry warned Wednesday that the world can’t tackle climate change without first addressing the agriculture sector’s emissions.

Kerry lamented that agriculture production alone creates 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming, during remarks Wednesday morning at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit. The former secretary of state also touted so-called climate smart agriculture as a potential solution.

“A lot of people have no clue that agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world,” he said during his keynote address. “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.”

“Food systems themselves contribute a significant amount of emissions just in the way in which we do the things we’ve been doing,” he continued. “With a growing population on the planet – we just crossed the threshold of 8 billion fellow citizens around the world – emissions from the food system alone are projected to cause another half a degree of warming by mid-century.”

Kerry added that “lives depend” on world leaders and scientists developing the tools necessary to lower agriculture emissions.

Overall, the global food system – which includes land-use change, actual agricultural production, packaging and waste management – generates about 18 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent of 34% of total worldwide emissions, according to a March 2021 study published in the Nature Food journal.

In the U.S., though, agriculture alone generates about 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions, federal data showed.

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“This sector needs innovation now more than ever,” Kerry continued Wednesday. “We’re facing record malnutrition at a time when agriculture, more than any other sector, is suffering from the impacts of the climate crisis. And I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.”

“We need economic, social and policy innovation in order to scale adaptation of these technical solutions and get them into the hands of folks in the fields of small farmers on a worldwide basis. This is the promise of AIM for Climate Summit.”

Slashing farm emissions critical to fighting climate change, John Kerry says

WASHINGTON, May 10 (Reuters) – Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production is essential to the global fight against climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said on Wednesday.

Agriculture generates 10% to 12% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The food system as a whole – including packaging, transportation, and waste management – generates a third of global emissions, according to a 2021 study published in the academic journal Nature Food.

“We can’t get to net zero, we don’t get this job done, unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said at the AIM for Climate summit in Washington.

He said that without cutting agricultural emissions, the world may not reach its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – which scientists say must be achieved to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

President Joe Biden has pledged the U.S. will reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Rising global temperatures have severe implications for malnutrition and food security worldwide, Kerry said.

“A 2-degree future could result in another 600 million people not getting enough to eat,” said the former U.S. secretary of state. “You can’t continue to warm the planet while also expecting to feed it.”

AIM for Climate is a global initiative, co-led by the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates, to drive investment in farming practices that cut the sector’s emissions.

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Major Livestock Producing Countries Commit to Mitigate Methane in Agriculture

Santiago, Chile – Today, the Global Methane Hub announced that agriculture and environment ministers and ambassadors from 13 countries, including the United States, have issued a commitment to reduce methane emissions in agriculture. Last month, the Global Methane Hub collaborated with the Ministries of Agriculture of Chile and Spain to convene the first-ever global ministerial on agricultural practices to reduce methane emissions.

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“Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term. Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge,” said John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

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Related: 

Daily Mail: ‘Leave us alone to do what we do best’: Fury at UK plan to hand millions to farmers to turn 741,000 acres of land into nature reserves pushed by ‘rewilding cult’

• George Eustice launches £2.4billion-a-year plan replacing EU’s £2.4bn common agricultural policy 
• Farmers and landowners will be paid for planting trees and restoring wetlands in 15 new nature reserves 
• The ‘landscape recovery scheme’ will eventually cost the taxpayer £800million a year from 2028  
• But there are concerns about risk to food security and policy will benefit Britain’s richest landowners 
• Farmers say Boris Johnson’s ‘mad’ obsession with rewilding will drive smaller farmers out of business 
• Ministers claim plans will turn 741,000 acres into wildlife habitats in 20 years and will not risk food supply