Virginia is pulling out of California EV mandate that requires participating states to only sell 100% EVs by 2035.
via CFACT
June 10, 2024 at 11:03AM
Month: June 2024
When the weather systems reaching the UK are coming from the northerly Icelandic direction instead of from the sub-tropical Azores, no prizes for guessing what happens next. While the UK searches for any signs of summer, Eastern Europe has a heatwave. Sky decides to explain about the jet stream anyway, in case you overdosed on the media’s human-caused warming propaganda and thought you were entitled to expect warmer weather than what’s arriving now.
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June’s wet and grey weather does not feel particularly summery, so what is going on and, more importantly, when will it warm up?
Last month was the UK’s hottest May on record, as higher temperatures during the night and warm weather in Scotland pushed up the temperature to about one degree above average, says Sky News.
But just over a week into June, the mercury has dropped.
“It seems like we’re one to three degrees below normal for this time of year,” David Schultz, a professor of Synoptic Meteorology at The University of Manchester, told Sky News.
The temperatures across the UK on Sunday were between 10C and 17C from midday, according to the Met Office.
The average temperatures for this time of year are usually between 13C-16C in the north and 17C-19C further south, so this weekend was “average or just below”, but the showers and breeze made it feel colder, according to Met Office meteorologist Marco Petagna.
The drop in temperature is down to a change in the jet stream, a core of strong winds about four to seven miles above the Earth’s surface.
These winds impact the weather closer to the surface. Currently, the jet stream is further south than usual and coming from the northwest.
Jet-stream switch
“Normally in the UK, we get the jet stream from the southwest,” Prof Schultz said.
. . .
Prof Schultz added because climate change has pushed up average temperatures, we notice more when our weather gets colder.
“We might be complaining about a few degrees cooler than normal but historically, this spell might actually be closer to normal,” he said.
Full article here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
June 10, 2024 at 10:13AM
By Paul Homewood
The cost of producing and installing electrolysers for green hydrogen production in China, the US and Europe — three of the world’s biggest markets — has risen by more than 50% compared to last year, research house BloombergNEF (BNEF) has found, rather than the gradual reduction its analysis had previously indicated.
The main culprit for Western manufacturers has been inflation, which has pushed up the costs of materials, utilities (such as water and electricity) and labour in the US and Europe, said BNEF in its new report, Electrolyser Price Survey 2024.
As a result, average system-level cost (including both stack and balance of plant) is now at a mid-range of $600/kW for an electrolyser made in China, while machines made in Europe or the US are around $2,500/kW.
This makes Western electrolysers four times more expensive than Chinese equivalents, a gap that has not closed at all since the previous report, BNEF noted.
The research house had previously predicted that costs would gradually decline over three years from 2022, as more large-scale projects approached completion.
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Green hydrogen, once touted as a saviour of Net Zero, seems to have gone off the radar recently. A few years ago there were wild, unsubstantiated predictions that hydrogen would become so cheap and easy to produce that we could all give up fossil fuels.
Instead, as Bloomberg now report, costs of electrolysers are going up, not down. Moreover the real cost of wind power is also much higher than previously thought, so green hydrogen will be much more expensive as a result.
So let’s take a closer look at these costs.
Back in 2018, BEIS published this report:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hydrogen-supply-chain-evidence-base.
I analysed the report here.
It featured this table:
I gather that PEM technology (Proton Exchange Membrane) is the most likely one to be rolled out. The Base Cost in 2025 was predicted at £500/kW.
A study last October suggested a mid-range cost of Eu727, equivalent to about £630/kW. Bloomberg reckon $600, but this is based on ultra-low Chinese manufacturing costs, almost certainly highly subsidised. Significantly they estimate that European made electrolysers are four times the price.
We can reasonably work on a cost therefore of around £600.
The BEIS study assumed 52.0 kWh/kg H2 in 2025. The energy density of hydrogen , however, is 33.3 Kwh per kg, which means that the electrolysis process only works at 64% efficiency. In other words, 36% of the energy input is wasted.
Previous cost estimates have been based on rock bottom costs of renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, which would have to supply most of the power needed for electrolysis in the UK. As we now know, these costs were never realistic. The Administrative Strike Price of offshore wind for AR6 is now £100/MWh at 2023 prices. Allowing for energy efficiency of only 64%, the energy input cost of hydrogen is therefore £156/MWh.
On top of that, are operational costs. BEIS reckoned £21/MWh in 2018, which is probably in the range of £30 now.
Already, therefore, we are up to £186/MWh, before adding CAPEX. BEIS estimated this at about £30/MWh in 2018. But this assumed loan interest rates of 5%. Given interest rate rises since then and general inflation, a CAPEX of £60/MWh is not unreasonable.
This therefore gives us a total cost of £246/MWh.
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Wholesale prices of natural gas have been ranging between about 55 and 85p/therm this year. The conversion rate is 29.3 kWh/therm, giving a cost of £23.90/MWh, based on a mid-point of 70p.
Anybody still think hydrogen is a good idea?
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
June 10, 2024 at 08:15AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 