By Bernard L. McNamee

March 14, 2024

Though windmills and solar panels get the headlines, the big energy topic in Washington is electric transmission. Whether it is Congress’s newfound interest in permitting reform, the U.S. Department of Energy’s new Grid Deployment Office, or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) upcoming final rule on transmission planning and cost allocation, how to build and pay for long-range transmission to connect generators to customers is considered the final piece in the quest to meet net-zero goals.   

Like so many issues in Washington, the need for more transmission lines is accepted without question and the costs are not considered. But for American consumers, especially low-income and elderly, as well as small businesses and energy intense manufacturers, building new transmission lines could result in much higher monthly bills and leave them on the hook for stranded assets.

Traditionally, high-voltage transmission lines, consisting of 150-foot lattice towers crossing the landscape for hundreds of miles, were planned for by local utilities to meet their customers’ energy needs and subject to approval by state public utility commissions. But public policy goals to promote renewables are changing how the grid is being developed.

Over the past few years, States established renewable energy mandates; Congress enacted over $1 trillion in taxpayer subsidies for renewable energy; and President Biden issued an executive order setting net-zero goals for electricity generation by 2035. To fulfill these policies, the grid needs new high-voltage transmission lines—lots of them—and they will be expensive.

According to the “Net-Zero America” analysis published by Princeton researchers, achieving net zero goals with 100% wind and solar by 2050 will require an additional $3.5 trillion in capital spending for new transmission lines. If net-zero goals are pursued with a mix of renewables, nuclear, and natural gas generation (which may include carbon capture), then a significant portion of this transmission investment would be unnecessary. Furthermore, a balanced resource mix of dispatchable and renewable resources would enhance grid reliability without overbuilding renewables or transmission.

Contributing to the cost is that renewable projects are often built far away from where the electricity will be consumed. For example, the Midwest is a great place to build windmills, but long-distance transmission lines are needed to deliver their electricity to big population centers on coasts. Not only are these lines capital intensive, but they also require purchasing or condemning private property to site them. Adding insult to injury, many of these transmission lines will not serve the people whose land is used.       

Renewable power developers see the potential for selling their electricity in higher priced power systems near urban centers, while also being able to harvest generous taxpayer subsidies. But having to pay for transmission cuts into profits. Furthermore, property owners impacted by the transmission lines are objecting. The solution: a wave of lobbyists and special interests pressing policy makers to eliminate permitting barriers and to socialize the $3.5 trillion cost of building new transmission lines to more Americans.   

In response, FERC is engaged in a rulemaking to change transmission planning and cost allocation.Among the proposals is requiring grid planners to consider factors like “geographic zones”, such as wind potential in the Midwest; state and federal “public policy goals”; and “trends” in technology. If adopted, these factors would provide more subjective ways to justify building big, expensive, long-range transmission projects that would be paid for by a broader number of Americans.  

With public concerns about costs, transmission advocates now argue that more transmission is needed for grid reliability. Yet, the threat of blackouts is the result of the very net-zero policies that now require more transmission. For example, Maryland’s recent decision to shut down the Brandon Shores coal plant will cause customers across 12 states and the District of Columbia to pay $796 million for new transmission projects to support reliability.  

Customers may also be left paying for transmission projects that are no longer needed. New technology, such as small modular nuclear reactors that can be built at existing power plants that already have transmission access, may negate the need for new transmission lines to serve renewable generators. The current push for transmission reform may be another expensive example of Washington trying to solve yesterday’s problem. This is not mere speculation, since 2008 customers have paid $250 million for the PATH transmission line that crossed three states, even though it was never built and never served customers.  

It is time for policy makers to reaffirm that the electric grid exists to serve customers, not developers and investors. Transmission planning and cost allocation should be driven by the needs of customers and overseen by the state regulators who are best suited to protect their citizens. At a time when inflation is making its tougher from families and businesses to thrive, imposing additional costs for transmission buildouts for special interests makes little sense.  

Bernard L. McNamee was a Commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2018-2020. 

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Australia’s prime agricultural land is being carpeted with endless seas of solar panels and thousands of these things are being speared everywhere the panels can’t go.

Dilute and diffuse, wind and solar require a staggering amount of space, and way more than their occasional, weather (and/or sunshine) dependent power generation can ever hope to justify.

Taking up vast tracts of farmland with solar panels means that that land produces nothing else. While the solar panels are lucky to produce power for 5-6 hours every day (ie 20-25% of the time).

Spearing hundreds of 300 tonne, 280m high turbines into productive farmland brings its own range of special ‘challenges’ for primary producers.

Aerial spraying of fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides is out of the question. Pilots will not go anywhere near these things (and the associated MET masts), thanks to the very real risk of a fatal collision. Self-immolating turbines are a deadly bushfire risk. Then there’s the soul-destroying noise they generate.

Followed by the multi-million-dollar cleanup costs when these things finally give up the ghost after 10 or 15 years: a single turbine costs more than $700,000 to demolish and remove.

Those behind the grand wind and solar transition have been rather coy about the amount of land involved. The great bulk of it is privately owned, and in south-eastern Australia, the great bulk of it is highly productive farming land.

Hence the embarrassment that followed the (apparently inadvertent) release of a paper put together by bureaucrats in the People’s Republic of Victoria, which showed that the grand wind and solar push requires more than 70% of the land in the State of Victoria and similar proportions across New South Wales, and large tracts of South Australia.

As the team from Jo Nova outline below, ‘arrogance’ doesn’t quite cover it.

Victorian govt accidentally admits wind and solar could use 70% of all agricultural land in the state
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
16 February 2024

Victoria is just not big enough to fit all the solar and wind industrial plants

It’s no wonder the Victorian government is desperate to begin building offshore wind turbines. Their own targets for the forced transition are so crazy-brave, they would “need” to use as much as two thirds of the state’s agricultural land instead. It sounds delusional but they told us this straight up in their own policy document released in March 2022.

Thanks to Aidan Morrison at the Centre for Independent Studies, who not only reads these boring tomes, but also noticed that they quietly disappeared the  Victorian Offshore Wind Policy Directions Paper.  He explained in The Australian that he believes they hid it because they’ve realized how embarrassing it looks.

Apparently 227,000 square kilometers is not enough land to power 7 million people in a NetZero world.

Victorian planners had farmland in their sights (as if it was their own). They mapped it out and described it as “available for onshore renewables”.

If farmers were not aware of the totalitarian disregard the NetZero bureaucrats have for farmers, they know now.

Think about the captive mindset it takes to publish a ludicrous document like this without blinking? These are people who never meet a skeptic. Whoever wrote and approved it didn’t even try to hide the ghastly cost of building wind and solar power onshore. And they certainly didn’t spend a nanosecond imagining what Victorian farmers might think of it. (Or checking their own maths — 70% of agricultural land is not the same as “four times the area of Greater Melbourne”.)

Presumably some bureaucrats were tasked with justifying the big Offshore wind developments and it didn’t even cross their minds that “Net Zero” is an option, a frivolous quest, and that farmers, and everyone (outside the party room) might just say “No”.

Billions of dollars are on the table and no one even reads the policy documents. We live in an era of distilled incompetence.

The Bottom Line:
Victoria is supposedly aiming to be 95% renewable by 2035, and at this point gets about 50% of its electricity from fossil fuels (and even more of its total energy). Even after the mass installation of unreliable energy for the last ten years Victoria needs to build 15 times as much to reach its target.

There are no offshore wind farms in Australia, and the federal government just put a poleaxe through the offshore plans of the Victorian government. But around the world investors are running away, share prices are falling, and insurance firms are balking at the million dollar cost of repairing the cables.

Now would be the perfect time for Australia to get out of offshore wind — right before it gets into it.

Victoria farmers won’t be pleased,
If their lands are confiscated or seized,
For vast solar panel fields,
Decimating food yields,
Nor by wind turbine pipe dreams appeased.

–Ruairi

REFERENCES

The original government source page contains the dead link. Luckily for us the Wayback Machine captured the site and the PDF: Offshore-Wind-Policy-Directions-Paper.
Jo Nova Blog

Ironically, these actions are also violating the Paris Agreement itself.

We are breaking the Paris Agreement
New Catallaxy
Rafe Champion
2 March 2024

Taking over farmland to build facilities to produce intermittent energy is a violation of Article 2(b) of the Paris Agreement.

Article 2 of the 2015 Paris Agreement states:

“This Agreement… aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, including by:

“(b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production”;

Bill Stinson of the Energy Realists has pointed out the critical final clause in 2(b). In a manner that does not threaten food production!

Clearly every encroachment on farmland violates that clause.

And intermittent energy is not sustainable anyway, so why would we spend billions of dollars to get more expensive and less reliable energy from facilities with a massive environmental footprint?
New Catallaxy 

 

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby/Paul Kolk

Will somebody please stop this nonsense now, before people die!

The NHS is to introduce electric ambulances, raising concerns that its drive for net zero is being put above patient safety.

Paramedics fear patients will be forced to wait longer because of the hours lost recharging the vehicles, with particular concern about coverage of rural areas, given the limited range.

The move next month is part of a series of measures that whistleblowers fear put green credentials above medical priorities.

The drive had created a bureaucracy that was diverting vast sums from the front line, and placing “grossly unethical” obstacles in the way of clinical decisions, one whistleblower warned.

NHS England has set up a Greener NHS team with a combined salary bill of £3 million a year, leaked documents reveal.

Officials created 48 roles, including five on six-figure salaries, as part of efforts to pursue an environmental agenda which means every medicine and product has to undergo an “evergreen assessment”.

The 135-question process means that no decision can be taken without a product’s social values and contribution to emissions targets being considered.

One supplier alleged that devices such as plastic cannulas were routinely being rejected on environmental grounds, despite the fact they would improve patient safety.

An extra layer of bureaucracy will be added next month, with every NHS supplier asked to draw up a carbon reduction plan.

Other eco-initiatives being rolled out include “climate-friendly pain relief” for mothers in labour and chemotherapy deliveries and GP visits via e-bikes.

A whistleblower told the Telegraph: “Every part of the NHS is under-resourced and waiting lists remain historically high, but commitment to green zealotry remains unchanged.

“The amount of resources dedicated to the green agenda is astounding, and the fact that it is now impacting clinical decision-making is, I believe, grossly unethical.”

Next month, electric ambulances will be piloted across swathes of the country. Under the scheme, electric ambulances will be trailed across the North West, East of England, Yorkshire, South West and London at a cost of around £150,000 each.

The West Midlands has already introduced the vehicles, although last year board papers from the West Midlands Ambulance Service revealed major concerns.

An evaluation of the pilot scheme found the ambulances took up to four hours to charge and travelled an average of 70 miles between charging, with the papers warning “range and recharge time is a significant limiting factor”.

While the vehicles had a range of 100 miles, which would cover a shift in urban areas, this would not be the case from most of its hubs, it states, adding: “Rural areas in particular are covering twice this mileage and more in a shift.” The report says that, as a minimum, ambulances need to be able to cover 160 miles.

Standard ambulances can cover up to 800 miles a day and be filled up in just minutes.

It follows warnings that ambulances are already spending vast amounts of time off the road, with two millions hours lost to waits in hospital car parks in the 12 months ending March 2023, while heart attack and stroke victims faced average waits of 36 minutes in 2023, twice the target.

Paramedics said they were fearful of the risks if electric ambulances were rolled out widely without a proper safety assessment.

Richard Webber, a paramedic and spokesman for the College of Paramedics, said he could see the benefits of such schemes in urban areas, for short distances.

He said: “I think they really need to produce the evidence that this is safe before this is rolled out beyond urban areas. I would be very wary of that. If I have got a very sick patient, someone who has had a heart attack and I am trying to get them to hospital I don’t want to be worrying about the battery.”

“Staff will want some convincing,” Mr Webber added, urging the health service to “go very cautiously” pushing the green agenda when safety was at risk.

One emergency medical consultant said: “If they could put the charging points at hospitals I would have less of a concern: waits are so long at Emergency Departments you could charge a jumbo jet. My worry is that they are looking to have charging points only in the ambulance station, so that’s even more time lost.”

One in 10 ambulances already spends more than an hour waiting outside hospitals, latest NHS data show.

The emergency medical consultant said: “The worst-case scenario is running out of juice with a patient in the back. I think this is untested territory, I would rather they started testing all of this in Patient Transport Services, where patterns are much more predictable, than in emergency care.”

Paul Bristow, a Tory member of the Commons health and social care committee, said: “Saving lives and patient safety must always come first. The idea that anyone can consider that climate concerns and green zealotry should come before what is best for patients boggles the mind.

“If concerns of first responders and ambulance crews are being overridden it just shows that eco group-think in our NHS is a very real concern.”

Mark Francois, a Conservative member of the public accounts committee urged the NHS not to forget its true purpose.

He said: “Florence Nightingale once famously said that ‘the very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.’ While achieving net zero is a laudable aim, we cannot allow it to trump common sense, especially if it compromises patient safety.

“The most important consideration must be patient safety, comfort and wellbeing.”

An NHS spokesman said: “NHS services must always put patients first when procuring products and it is also right we seek green alternatives, but only when they save the taxpayer money.

“The new electric ambulances are benefiting thousands of patients, hospitals report they are working efficiently, and they could help deliver annual operational savings of £59 million.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/14/nhs-electric-ambulances-concern-net-zero-above-patients/

The chart shown above highlights everything that is wrong with the NHS’s obsession with Net Zero. Anybody who thinks it is appropriate to analyse carbon emissions in such minute detail, even down into supply chains, should not be working in the NHS. Or for that matter in any position of public responsibility.

Unlike buses, for instance, ambulances are needed around the clock, so every hour of downtime recharging is an hour when patients are not being treated/taken to hospital. This can only lead to patients dying – it is that simple.

The NHS claims electric ambulances will save £59 million a year, but this is farthings in terms of the £100 billion cost of running the NHS, even if true, which anybody with an ounce of commonsense would know disbelieve. (To be fair, patients dead on arrival will save the NHS money).

And note they use the weasel words “operational savings, but don’t mention the extra capital costs entailed in buying electric ambulances, and of course installing all of the charging points/sub stations required.

In any event, the NHS’ overriding priority is healing patients. If it is that concerned about money, it would immediately disband its decarbonisation team.

As usual the Telegraph’s commenters show why they should be deciding policy, but this comment stands out:

As we know too well, EVs struggle to get anywhere near their advertised mileage even in the best of conditions, never mind in winter.

Poppy is quite right to point out all of the other energy hungry devices in an ambulance. No wonder they only average 70 miles per charge.

And in an average environment, that would mean recharging maybe three or four times a day. In short, ambulances will be out of action for half of the time.