By Jo Nova

Thanks to Paul Homewood at NotAlotofPeopleKnowThat for finding this gem of a video.

Commiserations to friends in the UK, where Ed Miliband, or worse, his new National Electricity System Operator (NESO)  think that flywheels will save money because the UK won’t need to maintain back up power stations and import so much electricity.

Ed Miliband is the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero, which is a bit like being the Minister for War and Peace at the same time, or perhaps more like Health and Ebola.  His big new plan is to set up a big new bureaucracy (NESO) and their big idea is to stop blackouts by installing giant flywheels around the country.

Flywheels are good at smoothing out the frequency glitches, but the second largest flywheel operation in the world would only power the UK for a fraction of a second. It’s going to take a lot of flywheels, or as David Evans dryly remarked, if they can speed up the flywheels it might work, but to put enough energy in, they may need to get close to the speed of light.

by Johnathon Leake, The Telegraph

Giant flywheels are to be installed around the UK to minimise the risk of blackouts as the power system goes carbon-free.

Flywheels are energy storage systems that use surplus electricity to accelerate a massive metal “wheel”…

NESO said the schemes would save consumers money by cutting the need for maintaining backup power stations and importing power from overseas via interconnectors.

A spokesman said: “The pathfinders alone are expected to provide consumers with savings of £14.9bn between 2025 and 2035.”

As Paul Burgess explains, the flywheel sales team often talk in megawatts but rarely mention megawatt-hours (probably because they are embarrassed). The worlds second largest flywheel system has 200 carbon fibre flywheels spinning in a vacuum chamber and provides 20 megawatts. But it can only supply 1 megawatt for 15 minutes, which is a quarter of a MWh, which is a problem because the UK uses about 860,000 MWh every day.

Paul Burgess estimates the second largest flywheel installation in the world can power the UK for about one 200th of a second.

A flywheel is like a coal generator the second after it runs out of coal.

Then there’s “The Cost”

Burgess points at a study by Dongxu et al reviews the costs of supplying energy via flywheels, which are in the ballpark of $1,000 to $5,000 per kilowatt hour. (That’s a million dollars a megawatt hour). It’s 1,200 to 4,600 times as expensive as gas in the UK, and about 100,000 times as expensive as Australian brown coal power.

It’s cheaper to cook food over a pile of burning money.

…the capital cost per unit power of a FESS [Flywheel Energy Storage System] with a rated power of 250 kW and a maximum expected storage time of 15 min is 250 to 350$/kW, and the corresponding unit energy cost is 1000 to 5000$/kWh. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that the unit energy installation cost of FESS will decrease by 35 % by 2030, from the current estimate of 1500–6000$/kWh to 1000–3900$/kWh [14]. — Dongxu et al.

Yet NESO says it will “save consumers money”. Aren’t there laws about fraud or dishonest advertising that apply to statements like these?

Then there’s “industrial accidents”

The same paper mentions that things can get fairly hairy with heavy objects moving at high speeds:

In order to fully utilize material strength to achieve higher energy storage density, rotors are increasingly operating at extremely high tip speeds. However, this trend will lead to severe centripetal stress and potential safety threats caused by rotor failure.

In 2011, two carbon fiber composite rotors weighing 1 ton and storing about 30 kWh failed and began to disintegrate.

Flywheels are also known as “Synchronous Condensers” though coal, hydro, nuclear and gas plants effectively have free flywheels built into the system. The only reason to add flywheels to the grid today is to allow the wind and solar generators to run without crashing the system. It’s yet another subsidy for wind and solar generators, and the costs should be laid at their feet.

The real issue here is that the people running the country are innumerate simpletons, and the professors who know that are too afraid to say anything lest they lose their next grant, or fall off the Honours list, and the journalists are too indoctrinated, and the editors too captured for the bad news to make it to the front page.

REFERENCE

Dongxu et al (2023) A review of flywheel energy storage rotor materials and structures, Journal of Energy Storage, Volume 74, Part A, 25 December 2023, 109076.

 

In October 2008, Parliament passed the Climate Change Act requiring the UK Government to ensure that by 2050 ‘the net UK carbon account’ was reduced to a level at least 80% lower than that of 1990; ‘carbon account’ refers to CO₂ and ‘other targeted greenhouse gas emissions’. Only five MPs voted against it. Then in 2019, by secondary legislation and without serious debate, Parliament increased the 80% reduction requirement to 100% – thereby creating the Net Zero policy.ⁱ

Unfortunately, it’s a policy that’s unachievable, potentially disastrous and in any case pointless – and that’s the case whether or not human caused greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to a rise in global temperature.

1. It’s unachievable.

A modern, advanced economy depends on fossil fuels, something that’s unlikely to change for a long time.ⁱⁱ Examples fall into two categories: (i) vehicles and machines such as those used in agriculture, mining, mineral processing, building, heavy transportation, commercial shipping and aviation, the military and emergency services and (ii) products such as cement and concrete, primary steel, plastics, nitrogen fertilisers, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, anaesthetics, lubricants, solvents, paints, adhesives, insulation, tyres and asphalt. All the above require either the combustion of fossil fuels or are made from oil derivatives; there are no easily deployable, commercially viable alternatives.

Although wind is the most effective source of renewable electricity in the U.K. – because of its latitude, solar power contributes only a small percentage of the UK’s electricity – it has significant problems: (i) the substantial and increasing costs of building, operating and maintaining the huge numbers of turbines needed for Net Zero; (ii) the complex engineering and cost challenges of establishing a stable, reliable, comprehensive non-fossil fuel grid by 2030 as planned by the Government; (iii) the vast scale of what’s involved (a multitude of enormous wind turbines, immense amounts of space ⁱⁱⁱ and large quantities of increasingly unavailable and expensive raw materials); and (iv) the intermittency of renewable energy (see 2 below).^iv This means that the UK may be unable to generate sufficient electricity by 2030 for current needs let alone for the mandated EVs (electric vehicles) and heat pumps and for the energy requirements of industry and the huge new data centres used in particular by rapidly expanding AI (artificial intelligence).

In any case, the UK doesn’t have enough skilled technical managers, electrical, heating and other engineers, electricians, plumbers, welders, mechanics and other skilled tradespeople required to do the multitude of tasks essential to achieve Net Zero – a problem worsened by the Government’s plans for massively increased house building.^v

2. It would be socially and economically disastrous.

The Government aims for 100% renewable electricity by 2030 but has yet to publish a fully costed engineering plan for the provision of comprehensive grid-scale back-up when there’s little or no wind or sun; a problem that’s complicated by the imminent retirement of elderly nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. The Government has indicated that back-up may be provided by new gas-fired power plants ^vi but it has yet to publish any detail. That of course would not be a ‘clean’ solution and it seems the Government’s answer is to fit them with carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) systems: a ‘solution’ that’s very expensive, controversial and commercially unproven at scale.^vii This issue is desperately important: without full back-up, electricity blackouts would be inevitable – potentially ruining many businesses and causing dreadful problems for millions of people, including health consequences threatening everyone and in particular the poor and vulnerable.^viii

Net Zero’s most serious problem however is its overall cost and the impact of that on the economy. Because there’s no coherent plan for the project’s delivery, little attention has been given to overall cost; but with several trillion pounds seeming likely to be a correct estimate it would almost certainly be unaffordable.^ix The borrowing and taxes required for costs at this scale could destroy Britain’s credit standing and would put an impossible burden onto millions of households and businesses.

But Net Zero is already causing a serious problem: because of renewable subsidies, carbon taxes, grid balancing costs and capacity market costs, the UK has the highest industrial and domestic electricity prices in the developed world.^x The additional costs referred to elsewhere in this essay – for example the costs of establishing a comprehensive non-fossil transition network and of providing a back-up for gas-fired power plants – can only make this worse. Unless urgent remedial action is taken, the government cannot possibly achieve its principal mission of increased economic growth. Worse than that, the UK could face economic collapse.

Net Zero would have two other dire consequences:

(i) As China essentially controls the supply of key materials (for example, lithium, cobalt, aluminium, processed graphite, nickel, copper and so-called rare earths) without which renewables cannot be manufactured, the UK would greatly increase its already damaging dependence on it, putting its energy and overall national security at most serious risk.^xi While impoverishing Britain, Net Zero would enrich China.^xii

(ii) The vast mining and mineral processing operations required for renewables are already causing appalling environmental damage and dreadful human suffering throughout the world, affecting in particular fragile, unspoilt ecosystems and many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people; the continued pursuit of Net Zero would make all this far worse.^xiii

3. In any case it’s pointless.

For two reasons:

(i) It’s absurd to regard the closure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting plants in the UK and their ‘export’ mainly to SE Asian countries, commonly with poor environmental regulation and often powered by coal-fired electricity, as a positive step towards Net Zero as such action will increase global emissions. Yet efforts to ‘decarbonise’ the UK mean that’s what’s happening: it’s why we no longer produce key chemicals and, by closing our few remaining blast furnaces, will soon be unable to produce primary steel.^xiv

(ii) Most major non-Western countries – the source of over 70% of GHG emissions and home to 84% of humanity – don’t regard emission reduction as a priority and, either exempt (by international agreement) from or ignoring any obligation to reduce their emissions, are focused instead on economic and social development, poverty eradication and energy security.^xv As a result, global emissions are increasing (by 62% since 1990) and are set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. The UK is the source of less than 1% of global emissions – so any further emission reduction it may achieve would essentially have no impact on the global position.^xvi

In other words, Net Zero means the UK is legally obliged to pursue an unachievable, potentially disastrous and pointless policy – a policy that could result in Britain’s economic destruction.

Robin Guenier October 2024

Guenier is a retired, writer, speaker and business consultant. He has a degree in law from Oxford, is qualified as a barrister and for twenty years was chief executive of various high-tech companies, including the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency reporting to the UK Cabinet Office. A Freeman of the City of London, he was Executive Director of Taskforce 2000, founder chair of the medical online research company MedixGlobal and a regular contributor to TV and radio.

End notes:

ihttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/27/part/1/crossheading/the-target-for-2050

ii See Vaclav Smil’s important book, How the World Really Works: https://time.com/6175734/reliance-on-fossil-fuels/

iii See Andrews & Jelley, “Energy Science”, 3rd ed., Oxford, page 16: http://tiny.cc/4jhezz

iv For a view of wind power’s many problems, see this: https://watt-logic.com/2023/06/14/wind-farm-costs/ This is also relevant: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/debunking-cheap-renewables-myth

v A detailed Government report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65855506fc07f3000d8d46bd/Employer_skills_survey_2022_research_report.pdf See also pages 10 and 11 of the Royal Academy of Engineering report (Note 6 below).

vi See this report by the Royal Academy of Engineering: https://nepc.raeng.org.uk/media/uoqclnri/electricity-decarbonisation-report.pdf (Go to section 2.4.3 on page 22.) This interesting report contains a lot of valuable information.

vii This International Institute for Sustainable Development report on CCS is informative : https://www.iisd.org/articles/insight/unpacking-carbon-capture-storage-technology And see the second and third paragraphs here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/12/fossil-fuel-companies-environment-greenwashing (the rest of the article is also interesting).

viii This article shows how more renewables could result in blackouts: http://tiny.cc/lnhezz

ix The National Grid ESO has said net zero will cost £3 trillion: https://www.current-news.co.uk/reaching-net-zero-to-cost-3bn-says-national-grid-eso/. And in this presentation Michael Kelly, Emeritus Professor of Technology at Cambridge, shows how the cost would amount to several trillion pounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkImqOxMqvU

x The facts, an explanation of why Net Zero is responsible and a proposed solution are cogently set out here: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/uk-electricity-prices-highest-in-world.

xihttps://www.dw.com/en/the-eus-risky-dependency-on-critical-chinese-metals/a-61462687

xii Discussed here: https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/24/net-zero-is-impoverishing-the-west-and-enriching-china/

xiii See this for example: http://tiny.cc/3lhezz. Arguably however the most compelling and harrowing evidence is found in Siddharth Kara’s book Cobalt Red – about the horrors of cobalt mining in the Congo: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred

xiv A current example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70zxjldqnxo

xv This essay shows how developing countries have taken control of climate negotiations: https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/the-west-vs-the-rest-2.1.1.pdf (Nothing that’s happened since 2020 changes the conclusion: for example see the ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 of which item 38 unambiguously confirms developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation.)

xvi This comprehensive analysis, based on an EU Commission database, provides – re global greenhouse gas (GHG) and CO₂ emissions – detailed information by country from 1990 to 2023: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2024?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table

By Michael O’Sullivan

Ah, election season. That festive time when politicians suddenly have new ideas about how to make our lives better. This year the limelight shines brightly on our revered American economy, which is presently either good or bad, depending on whom you ask. But it’s election season, so voters rule and the experts can take a powder. And that’s why today we have both presidential candidates proposing economic policies that make economists wince and voters cheer.

The remarkable gap between experts and ordinary people is nicely illustrated in a recent Wall Street Journal poll targeting economic policy ideas from both campaigns. The Journal asked 750 registered voters what they think. Then they commissioned the University of Chicago’s Clark Center to get a reading from 39 “top academic experts.” The policies in question include things like tax-free tips and Social Security income, tariffs on imported goods, penalties for price gouging, free money for first-time homebuyers or parents of newborns, and caps on various drug prices.

The experts hate much of this because it runs counter to their preferred economic theories. But regular folks, whose frame of reference comes mainly from the realities of daily living, gave an average 63% thumbs-up. The starkest contrast comes with tax elimination, where voters are nearly 80% for and economists are about 90% against. Makes you wonder if we’re not living in parallel universes.

At this point much could be said about economic philosophy and lessons from history. But instead let’s think about this: roughly half of this country votes conservative, which means they typically don’t like big government. But according to this survey, around three quarters of all voters favor economic policies that involve more government spending. That means something like one half of conservative voters are willing to suspend their principles in the interest of helping people get through tough times.

I realize I’m playing fast and loose with the numbers, but it does indeed look like a society in economic distress — where relatively small numbers become meaningful to many households. Perhaps that’s why nearly 8 of 10 American adults live paycheck to paycheck and more than 20 million households are behind on their utility bills. This is where even the staunchest Jeffersonian is tempted to look to Uncle Sam for help.

And yet we have that pesky free lunch myth. Milton Friedman described it as “the belief that somehow or other government can spend money at no one’s expense.” It doesn’t require higher math to know that more government spending brings relief only at the expense of more problems. The piper always gets paid.

But what if there were a way to help people without more government spending? What if we could give something to some people without first taking money from other people? Surely that would bring tears of joy to both the ill-informed voters and the enlightened experts.

If 20 million households are in arrears on their utility bills, and so many are living paycheck to paycheck, then there must be many more who are not behind but still struggling to pay. And we know the average cost of electricity in the U.S. has been rising steadily, up nearly 30% since just 2019. In a society where a few dollars mean a lot, many people each month must decide between the light bill, the rent, and food.

So, here’s an idea: what if we simply bring down the cost of electricity? It helps everyone and it doesn’t require more government (i.e., taxpayer) money. It only requires the government stop forcing a premature “transition” that has only served to make energy more expensive and less reliable.

If we want to get crazy, then Uncle Sam could take some of the big money he throws at wind and solar (which come up short) and invest in something with a better pay-off, like responsibly sourced natural gas, which is cheap, reliable, and reasonably clean. Or maybe put a few chips on nuclear, which is safer and cleaner than you might think. If Uncle Sam were really concerned about return on investment, he’d realign his portfolio. At least that wouldn’t be new spending — and it would bring down energy costs more quickly.

Imagine if a presidential candidate stood up and said, “Listen folks — here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to put a couple hundred bucks in everyone’s pocket. Every month. Forever.”

Point me to the nearest voting booth.

Michael O’Sullivan is Program Director and COO for Blue Energy Nation, a non-profit committed to educating young people on energy realities. He is also a popular podcast host and an advocate for smart energy choices.

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