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via realclimatescience.com
September 3, 2023 at 06:44PM
Month: September 2023
Green Energy Activists are hitting hard realities, as summarized by Jonathan Lesser at New York Post Why wind and solar power are running out of juice. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images
Green energy and the push to electrify everything have been in the news recently but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of the green energy nirvana politicians and green energy advocates have promised, economic and physical reality has begun to set in.
Painful Green Economics
Start with the economic realities of Wind Energy
The result: Even while Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch insists that “energy transition without wind energy does not work,” 2022 saw 16% less new wind-power capacity than in 2021, according to the American Clean Power Association.
Wind turbine manufacturers like Siemens and General Electric have reported huge losses for the first half of this year, almost $5 billion for the former and $1 billion for the latter. Among other problems, turbine quality control has suffered, forcing manufacturers such as Siemens and Vestas to incur costly warranty repairs.
In Europe, offshore wind output has been less than promised, while operating costs have been much higher than advertised. Offshore wind developers in Europe and the US are canceling projects because of higher materials and construction costs.
In Massachusetts, Avangrid, the developer of the 1,200 MW Commonwealth Wind project paid $48 million to get out of its existing contract to sell power to ratepayers. That way, the company can rebid the project next year at an even higher price.
Close by, the developers of the 1,200 MW SouthCoast Wind Project off Martha’s Vineyard will pay about $60 million to exit their existing contract.
Rhode Island Energy, the state’s main electric utility, recently rejected the second Revolution Wind Project because the contract price was too high.
And Ørsted, the Danish government-owned company that is developing the Southfork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects off Long Island — as well as the Ocean Wind project off the New Jersey coast — last week announced that, without additional subsidies and higher contract prices, it will have to write-off billions of dollars in potential losses.
In New Jersey, the legislature passed a law in July, which is likely unconstitutional, to bail out Ørsted. The legislation will award the company with several billion dollars of investment tax credits that were supposed to go to consumers.
Few Hosts for Land-Gobbling Wind and Solar Projects
Back on dry land, opposition to siting land-gobbling wind and solar projects continues to grow.
Local governments in Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio have all rejected or restricted projects. Rural communities, it seems, do not want to host massive turbine farms — nor the high-voltage transmission lines needed to deliver electricity to power-hungry cities.
Electric Vehicles Leaking Money
Then there are electric vehicles.
Ford, which has bet heavily on its electric Lightning pickup and Mustang and received a $9.2 billion government-subsidized loan in January, revealed that it has lost $60,000 for every EV it sold in the first half of this year.
Rivian, another EV company, managed to reduce its losses per EV to around $33,000, a big improvement over the $67,000 loss per EV in the first quarter of the year.
Proterra, a Bay Area-based manufacturer of electric buses and batteries that had a $10 million loan forgiven by the Biden Administration, just filed for bankruptcy.
Alternative Energy Madness
Like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, alternative energy proponents claim these are just temporary little potholes on the road to economic and climate nirvana — all of which can be filled with more money through renegotiated power purchase contracts and more zero-emissions mandates.
Alternative energy madness – and that’s what it is – has had its biggest impact in California. But New York and New Jersey have adopted most of that state’s mandates.
Sales of new internal combustion vehicles will be banned beginning in 2035 in the states. All of the electricity sold to retail consumers will have to be “zero-emissions.”
Homeowners and building owners will be forced to replace gas- and oil-burning space and water heaters with electric heat pumps. And, gas stoves will be regulated out of existence.
Carbon Taxes Draining Wallets
New York also will soon implement another California import: a carbon “cap-and-invest” program, which will impose a tax on fossil fuels sold by wholesalers and utilities. The billions of dollars collected each year will provide a green slush fund, allowing the governor and legislators to hand out money to their politically favored cronies, as has so often been the case in the past.
Washington State began its “cap-and-invest” program in January of this year. Modeled after California’s, Governor Jay Inslee promised the program would have “minimal impact, if any. We are talking about pennies.”
Instead, the program has raised gasoline prices – almost 50 cents per gallon so far this year. Washington State now claims the honor of having the highest gasoline prices in the nation: In Seattle, for example, the average price of regular gasoline is over $5 per gallon.
Of course, the entire point of the program was to raise gasoline and fossil fuel prices to encourage consumers to switch to electric vehicles, mass transit, electric heat pumps, and so forth.
But politics being what it is, Governor Inslee, along with environmentalists and legislative proponents, now blames greedy oil companies for the price increases. ‘We won’t stand for’ corporate greed,” the Governor said at a July 20, 2023, press conference.
Once New York’s cap-and-invest program starts, probably next year, you can expect a similar outcome: higher gasoline and diesel prices, higher prices for natural gas and fuel oil used to heat homes and apartment buildings, and endless political demagoguery denouncing it all.
And Basic Physics Stand in the Way
As the push toward electric-everything powered by green energy barrels along, proponents also refuse to confront basic physical realities.
Electricity accounts for just one-sixth of all energy use. The rest is fossil fuels consumed for transportation, space and water heating, and manufacturing. Convert everything to electricity and electricity consumption will increase. A lot.
According to the New York Climate Action Committee’s Final Scoping Plan, New York will meet that increased demand by building almost 15,000 MW of offshore wind, like the Southfork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, and over 40,000 MW of solar panels. (By comparison, the emissions-free Indian Point Nuclear Plant, which former Governor Cuomo forced to close, had a capacity of just over 1,000 MW.)
Because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, keeping the lights on will require far more backup resources. This “reserve margin” – basically, the amount of generating capacity available to step in and meet electric demand – will need to increase from the current 20% to over 100%.
In other words, for every MW of generating capacity in 2040,
there will have to be an equal amount or more in reserve.
That’s like having to buy a second car and keep it idling all the time in case the first one won’t start. The Scoping Plan claims this will be accomplished by building over 20,000 MW of so-called “dispatchable emissions-free generating resources” (DEFRs) and installing over 12,000 MW of battery storage.
Transition Plans Depend on Green Fantasies
Those claims are fantasy.
Start with DEFRs, which are generators that burn pure hydrogen manufactured from surplus wind and solar power. They have yet to be invented (we repeat – they do not yet exist). Nor do any large-scale commercial plants to manufacture green hydrogen exist either.
Hydrogen cannot be transported in existing natural gas pipelines. An entirely new infrastructure will need to be built.
Assuming a new technology will be invented by whatever date politicians decree is foolish. That’s not how technology works. Just ask everyone working on commercial fusion power, which has been just 30 years off for the last 50 years.
As for battery storage, 12,000 MW will provide at most 48,000 megawatt-hours of actual electricity. That may sound like a lot but based on the New York Independent System Operator’s (NYISO) most recent forecast, on a windless and cold winter evening in 2040, it would keep the lights on for only one hour.
The materials requirements for batteries also are staggering, which is one reason why replacing existing internal combustion cars and trucks will be impossible. Batteries require large quantities of cobalt, much of which is now mined in the Congo using child and slave labor. They also require lots of graphite, most of which comes from China – the same with the rare minerals needed for wind turbines and solar panels.
Much Pain for a Drop in the Bucket
Ultimately, nothing New York does will have any measurable impact on world climate because the state’s carbon emissions are minuscule compared to the 35 billion metric tons of total global emissions. As long as China, which accounts for almost one-third of world energy-related carbon emissions, India, and other developing nations focus policies on economic growth, rather than cutting emissions, New York’s efforts will have no environmental value.
Nuclear Energy Denial
Nevertheless, if politicians and environmentalists were serious about zero-emissions goals, they would abandon the electrification mandates, and abandon reliance on wind, solar, battery storage, DEFRs, green hydrogen, and other unrealistic and unreliable energy sources.
Instead, they would embrace the one existing technology that dare not speak its name: nuclear power. Unlike wind and solar, nuclear plants run all the time. New, small modular reactors will offer greater safety, lower costs, and easy scalability to meet increased electricity demand.
Storing spent fuel is a political issue, not a technological one, for which the best solution is to recycle and reuse it, as France has done for the last half-century without incident. The country is also developing a permanent storage site for nuclear waste that can no longer be reprocessed.
The economist Herb Stein once quipped that anything that cannot go on forever, won’t.
That’s true of New York’s current alternative energy madness.
It won’t save the world, but it will grind down the state’s economy
and its residents until the folly is too great to ignore.
Jonathan Lesser is the president of Continental Economics and an adjunct fellow with the Manhattan Institute.
via Science Matters
September 3, 2023 at 04:53PM
Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova; A just published Australian Energy Market Operator report highlights the urgent “opportunity” for the provision of reliable electricity to Australia’s East Coast grid.
2023 Electricity Statement of Opportunities August 2023
…
With up to 62% of its coal fleet now expected to close before 20331, Australia’s NEM is perched on the edge of one of the largest transformations since the market was formed over 20 years ago. The scale of opportunity to meet an imminent and growing need for firm capacity, new forms of energy production, and significant consumer energy investments is unparalleled in Australia’s energy history. This ESOO shows that imminent and urgent investment is needed to meet this opportunity, or the reliability of the NEM will be at risk.
In this 2023 ESOO assessment:
When considering only energy supply infrastructure developments that meet AEMO’s commitment criteria2, AEMO forecasts larger reliability gaps than were forecast in the February 2023 Update to 2022 Electricity Statement of Opportunities, and in some cases, larger than forecast in the 2022 ESOO. Over the next 10 years, in the 2023 ESOO Central scenario, reliability risks are forecast to be higher than the relevant reliability standard requires in:
South Australia in summer 2023-24 (against the Interim Reliability Measure [IRM] of 0.0006% unserved energy [USE]) and from 2028-29 (against the reliability standard of 0.002% USE).
Victoria this coming summer and over the entire ESOO horizon against the IRM, and from 2026-27 against the reliability standard.
New South Wales from 2025-26 against the reliability standard.
Queensland in 2029-30 and 2030-31 against the reliability standard.
Once federal and state government programs, actionable transmission developments, and orchestration of forecast consumer energy resources (CER) are also considered, beyond the short term, reliability risks have the potential to be managed within relevant standards over most of the next 10-year horizon.
While these programs and developments have not yet progressed far enough to implementation to meet the strict criteria to be included in the ESOO Central outlook, federal and state governments have policies and frameworks to develop and implement delivery plans.
All jurisdictions have a range of policies that support the development of new capacity to replace retiring generators. Each policy must now prioritise delivering the transmission, and renewable energy and firming generation they target, ahead of announced closures. Just-in-time investment may not maintain suitable reliability, and delivering on the current development opportunities is now essential.
The impact of potential coal, gas and diesel fuel shortfalls has been identified as a material risk to the reliability of the NEM. In addition to the need for new generation, transmission and other solutions, the ongoing availability of coal, gas and distillate fuels, and effective management of their supply chains, will be critical to the reliability of the NEM.
These forecasts highlight the high value of solutions in which resources owned by consumers, such as residential electricity generation and storage devices, and increased demand flexibility, can help meet power system needs. With a high level of consumer participation and coordination of consumer energy assets and demand to help meet power system needs, the need for utility-scale solutions would be much lower.
…
Read more: [Page 3-4] https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/planning_and_forecasting/nem_esoo/2023/2023-electricity-statement-of-opportunities.pdf?la=en&hash=D8CC2D9AC8D9F353194C9DD117095FB4
Once you cut through the “opportunity” doublespeak, the stark reality is South Australia has already fallen below the reliability standard. Other states are set to join them in the near future – NSW (2025-25), Victoria (2026-27) and Queensland (2029-30 and 2030-31).
Any businesses operating in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland are sometimes required by the government to curtain operations to reduce the risk of domestic supply blackouts during periods of peak demand, like heatwaves or cold snaps.
Why has the outlook suddenly worsened?
The big problem is a perfect storm of neglect of fossil fuel assets, and the failure of renewable systems and battery grid firming measures to contribute sufficiently to grid stability. The green electrify everything push is also forecast to drive up demand for grid electricity, just as grid stability is on its knees from lack of dispatchable capacity.
- Generator unplanned outage rates are forecast higher than previously, reflecting recent trends of poor performance among some generator technologies.
- AEMO has observed that the initial target delivery dates provided by developers of new generation and storage investments often have not accounted for delays that could occur during the project financing, planning, development and delivery stages of projects. To ensure the accuracy of its reliability outlook, AEMO now applies delays to reflect observed development and delivery risks of new projects in the reliability forecast.
- New and improved weather data and modelling for renewable generation has improved the accuracy of variable renewable energy (VRE) correlations with maximum demand, identifying a higher forecast occurrence of low wind and high demand conditions in Victoria, resulting in higher forecast reliability risks for South Australia and Victoria.
- Many new wind, solar, battery and pumped hydro developments have advanced sufficiently to be considered in the 2023 ESOO, however solutions which orchestrate and coordinate consumers’ generation and storage devices to support reliability have not yet demonstrated success at significant scale. Consistent with other reliability input assumptions, AEMO has now only assumed consumers will install CER and make them available to be orchestrated to help meet power system needs at current levels; this is lower than the levels of CER orchestration previously assumed.
- Forecasts of energy consumption and maximum demand are higher in some NEM regions, driven by projected electrification of households and businesses, and forecast expansion of industrial facilities.
Read more: [Page 4] Same link as above
When will the blackouts start biting? The coming southern hemisphere Summer, December this year to February, is looking very iffy in Victoria and South Australia.
2023-24 outlook
Reliability risks are forecast to be greater than the Interim Reliability Measure in South Australia and Victoria this summer. Any adverse conditions for wind or solar generation, which happens quite frequently with Victoria’s notoriously unpredictable Summer weather, coupled with expected El Nino heatwaves, could tip the grid in Victoria and South Australia over the brink.
- Electricity consumption over the year is forecast to be marginally lower than in 2022-23, as growth in newly electrified loads (switching to electricity from alternative energy sources such as gas and diesel) is more than offset by business energy efficiency savings and lower household disposable income, lessening previously forecast growth.
- Annual maximum demand forecasts for 2023-24, however, remain similar to those previously forecast, because consumer demand during hot weather is forecast to be less impacted by energy efficiency investments and potential consumer responses to high prices. Annual maximum demand occurs close to or after sunset in most regions, after the impact of distributed photovoltaics (PV) has subsided.
- Approximately 3.4 gigawatts (GW) more new generation and storage capacity from a range of technologies is expected to be available compared to what was available last summer.
- The reliability of the thermal (coal and gas) generation fleet generally stayed at historically poor levels in 2022-23, and most plant operators have advised that overall plant reliability is unlikely to materially improve.
- Expected unserved energy (USE) is forecast to be above the IRM of 0.0006% USE in South Australia and Victoria in the coming year, although risks remain in all regions under extreme conditions. Table 1 shows the forecast risk for a larger USE outcome3 for the coming summer. The probability is provided for all possible maximum demand outcomes, and under 10% POE demand conditions. Factors that influence when and how USE occurs include occurrences of generator outages and high demand at the same time as low wind and solar generation conditions.
- For the coming summer, the Bureau of Meteorology is currently advising that hot dry conditions, with elevated bushfire risks, and El Niño weather patterns are likely. The maximum demand forecast range is forecast based on all climate conditions and does not target these specific forecast weather conditions. Hence there is an increased likelihood this summer that demand outcomes will fall in the upper end of the forecast range (that is, the 10% probability of exceedance [POE] forecast is more likely), in most regions.
Read more: [Page 5-6] Same link as above
What will bring relief to Australia’s faltering East Coast grid?
The AEMO included the development of hydrogen electrolyser energy storage capacity, as a major source of grid stability post 2032. Hydrogen energy storage technology which has not yet been developed.
…
Potential development of hydrogen electrolysers is forecast to increase NEM electricity consumption by up to 10% by 2032-335. The forecast for hydrogen electrolysis development has increased significantly since the 2022 ESOO, due to the introduction of the New South Wales Renewable Fuels Scheme, which is legislated to commence in 2024, and the South Australian Hydrogen Jobs Plan, which includes a 250 megawatts (MW) electrolyser with a target to commence operations in 2025-26.
…
Assuming that electrolysers operate to provide new energy options to consumers, including potential hydrogen-ready gas generators that are not yet advanced enough to consider in the Central scenario. The development of hydrogen generation sources is, however, noted among numerous jurisdictional plans.
…
Read more: [Page 7] Same link as above
But all predicted storage capacity, including all known pumped storage dam projects, even if completed on time, are insufficient to provide the backup and stability that the grid will require once coal plants are closed.
…
While generation, storage and transmission developments continue to connect to the power system, the assessment shows these committed and anticipated developments (generation, transmission and other solutions) are not yet sufficient to offset the forecast impact of higher electricity use and advised generator retirements. Delays to any other currently considered development may further worsen the reliability outlook.
…
A much larger pipeline of proposed generation and storage projects – totalling 173 GW of VRE and 74 GW of dispatchable resources (including battery, pumped hydro, and other technologies) – demonstrate the opportunity for the market to respond to emerging reliability gaps, if projects are developed in a timely manner. Numerous federal and state government schemes and programs have been implemented to further incentivise or fund the required developments in the NEM.
…
Read more: [Page 9-10] Same link as above
The AEMO is open to ideas to fix the grid reliability crisis opportunity, they published a tender for reliable energy provision a few days after publishing their latest report. So if you happen to have a multi-gigalitre dam and hydro generator which you forgot to tell anyone about, tucked away on an alpine back paddock, the AEMO is waiting for your phone call [h/t JoNova].
Hands up who wants to invest in energy intensive manufacturing jobs and building new factories in East Coast Australia?
The AEMO report provides the following helpful explanation to what the percentages on the vertical graph mean in terms of grid reliability.
0.0006% (the lower dashed line “interim reliability measure”):
When expected USE is forecast in a region at the level of the IRM, the following reliability risks are forecast:
- USE events would statistically occur approximately once every six years.
- Larger USE outcomes would occur approximately once every 10 years (equivalent to approximately 10% of average regional demand for five hours, or comprising multiple events that aggregate to this total).
- Load shedding events of even greater magnitude are possible, particularly if combined with transmission outages, and/or persistent generator or transmission outages following power system security events.
- Out of market mechanisms may be available and could be utilised to mitigate some of these risks with associated costs.
0.02% (the upper dashed line “Reliability Standard”):
When expected USE is forecast in a region at the level of the reliability standard of 0.002% USE, the following reliability risks are forecast:
- USE events would occur approximately once in every three years.
- Larger USE outcomes would occur approximately once every five years (equivalent to approximately12% of average regional demand for eight hours).
- Load shedding events of even greater magnitude are possible, particularly if combined with transmission outages, and/or persistent generator or transmission outages following power system security events.
- Out of market mechanisms may be available and could be utilised to mitigate some of these risks with associated costs.
According to page 18 of the report, The AEMO is considering retiring the 0.0006% interim reliability measure, or changing how it is calculated. In my opinion this re-consideration is likely because there doesn’t seem to be any point keeping the current 0.0006% definition, given that all East Coast states other than Tasmania have or will shortly begin prolonged breaches of the interim reliability standard. The Net Zero push is explicitly mentioned as a reason the AEMO are considering redefinition or retirement of the interim reliability standard.
For more information on the devastating impact on grid reliability of the Net Zero push, click here.
via Watts Up With That?
September 3, 2023 at 04:06PM
A new study published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Climate, by 37 researchers from 18 countries suggests that current estimates of global warming are contaminated by urban warming biases.
Press release from CERES Science, hat-tip: Klimanachrichten
The study also suggests that the solar activity estimates considered in the most recent reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimated the role of the Sun in global warming since the 19th century.
It is well-known that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside. While urban areas only account for less than 4% of the global land surface, many of the weather stations used for calculating global temperatures are located in urban areas. For this reason, some scientists have been concerned that the current global warming estimates may have been contaminated by urban heat island effects. In their latest report, the IPCC estimated that urban warming accounted for less than 10% of global warming. However, this new study suggests that urban warming might account for up to 40% of the warming since 1850.
The study also found that the IPCC’s chosen estimate of solar activity appeared to have prematurely ruled out a substantial role for the Sun in the observed warming.
Solar activity plays a role
When the authors analyzed the temperature data only using the IPCC’s solar dataset, they could not explain any of the warming since the mid-20th century. That is, they replicated the IPCC’s iconic finding that global warming is mostly human-caused. However, when the authors repeated the analysis using a different estimate of solar activity – one that is often used by the scientific community – they found that most of the warming and cooling trends of the rural data could actually be explained in terms of changing solar activity.
The lead author of the study, Dr. Willie Soon, of the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES-Science.com) described the implications of their findings,
“For many years, the general public has been assuming that the science on climate change is settled. This new study shows that this is not the case.”
Another author of the study, Prof. Ana Elias, the Director of the Laboratorio de Ionosfera, Atmósfera Neutra y Magnetosfera (LIANM) at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina, explained:
“This analysis opens the door to a proper scientific investigation into the causes of climate change.”
This study finds similar conclusions to another study that was recently published in a separate scientific peer-reviewed journal, Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics. This other study involved many of the same co-authors (led by Dr. Ronan Connolly, also at the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences). It took a different approach to analyzing the causes of climate change – using an additional 25 estimates of solar activity and three extra temperature estimates.
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via NoTricksZone
September 3, 2023 at 12:41PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 