Germany, the United Kingdom and France account for close to half of all European Weather-Dependent “Renewables”.
The illustrations here show the hourly power production by all generation technologies. The data is as complete as possible for the UK.
The United Kingdom power generation illustrated 2024
The Gridwatch UK data had a major deficiency from 1/6/2024 to 10/7/2024, accordingly a batch of data was substituted from later in July that year. This substitution will not materially affect any cumulative results shown here.
UK Weather-Dependent “Renewables”
Productivity matters
The illustrations of UK power generation in 2024 shown above, indicate:
the imposition of an additional ~48 Gigawatt of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” has reduced the overall UK power fleet productivity, normally ~90%, down to ~39.5%.
in 2024 ~48GW of installed Weather-Dependent “Renewables” contributed the equivalent of ~9GW to the UK grid.
in 2024 UK Weather-Dependent “Renewables” achieved a combined productivity of ~18.4%, a relatively low value.
in 2024 Offshore UK wind power, which is normally quite productive, only achieved the low level of productivity of 23.5%.
the unreliability and intermittency of both Onshore and Offshore Wind power is clear from the third graphic above:
Wind power output can vary from close to full power on occasions down to virtually nil power output within a few hours.
Solar power is inevitably diurnal, very variable Summer to Winter and dependent on cloudiness. The UK is one of the cloudiest nations.
Solar power consistently has continued its low overall productivity of only ~10%.
Solar power contributed most power at periods of low demand during the summer and very little during the winter, the period of high demand.
the daily timing of the contribution from Solar power does not meet the high power demand in winter evenings.
although capital installation costs of Solar power are almost comparable to Gas-firing for nameplate capital costs, Solar power output actually costs ~10 times as much as Gas-firing to install and maintain when its low productivity is taken into account.
the UK is heavily dependent on imported power, largely Nuclear from France, the Netherlands and Norway, amounting to ~15% of power generation over the year, with the UK exporting power only on rare occasions.
UK energy security is at risk by having to rely on imported power:
Norway is already considering curtailing its exports to the UK and retaining its power output for its own domestic use.
France has threatened its supply to the UK in a dispute over the Channel Islands.
imported power was close to equivalent to the output of the whole of the UK’s current indigenous consistent Nuclear power generation.
the final closure of the last UK Coal-fired power station occurred in 2024, it contributed less than 1% of power demand before closure.
the installation of ~48GW, Weather-Dependent “Renewables” ~65% of the present UK generation fleet, also produced a similar ~30% cumulative power output as from Gas-firing but that “Renewable” power output was non-dispatchable on demand: “Renewables” achieved at a combined productivity of only ~18.5% in 2024.
imported Biomass, with CO2 emissions about 4 times that of Gas-firing, contributed a dispatchable ~7% of UK demand.
using imported Biomass negated all and any CO2 emissions savings made by other Weather-Dependent “Renewables”.
with a installation of ~10GW+ Natural gas generated about 30% of all UK power at a productivity of ~87%: this power output was flexibly dispatchable, available to meet demand.
Gas-firing, but not using indigenous UK gas resources, was largely able to compensate for the intermittency and unreliability of the large scale imposition of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” already installed in the UK.
Satellites show that global temperatures have been in freefall in recent months. Since September 2024, they have fallen by a full half a degree celsius, and yet the BBC claims that last month was the world’s warmest January on record. So what is going on?
Editor note: The wealth of free-market capitalism creates a robust civil society, where nonprofits and foundations can support the causes of their choosing, many of which might not be viable otherwise. The problem is where philanthropy goes political against the the free society and human betterment. Jane Shaw Stroup takes a look at good money going in negative directions, even violating original intent.
You’ve probably heard that Henry Ford II resigned from the board of the Ford Foundation because it had veered far away from its donor’s intent. In his 1976 resignation letter, Ford (grandson of Ford Sr.) wrote:
In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff people in the field of philanthropy. It is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the. foundation does. It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the beneficiaries of the foundation’s grant programs.”[1]
What had the foundation been doing? Essentially it had gone rogue.
A 1919 photograph of the senior Henry Ford,. From the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division and in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
True, the elder Ford had been eccentric and viciously antisemitic, but he changed the world with his autos, he paid workers well, and he hired disabled veterans, the elderly, and the handicapped. He revived a Detroit suburb, Inkster, during the Great Depression by hiring many of its largely black population, paying them $6 a day even if he only had routine chores for them. He started the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
By 1976, the foundation had become the largest charitable foundation in the world, and was leaning toward Democratic Party politics. One of its projects supported the Democratic Party by funding a voter registration drive in Cleveland to elect a Democratic mayor, Carl Stokes. Another gave money to the staff of Robert Kennedy after his assassination—even though former staff members such as Frank Mankiewicz and Peter Edelman were lawyers earning up to $500,000 a year.
Henry Ford II asked McGeorge Bundy (Ford’s president) to support the Henry Ford Hospital. Bundy refused. Only when Henry Ford II’s wife, Cristina, interceded with Robert McNamara, a prominent trustee, did McBundy agree to a one-time $100 million donation in 1973. That appears to be the foundation’s last gift to the hospital. In 2024, the hospital started on a funding campaign and the Ford Foundation is nowhere in sight.
Henry Ford II. From a photograph by Hugo van Gelderen in the public domain under Creative Commons license CC0 1.0 .
Finally, in 1974, the foundation authorized a 530-page report on energy by S. David Freeman (later the head of the government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority).[2] The report set energy conservation as “a matter of highest national priority.”[3] It elevated government planning and control over the oil and auto industries. It proposed appliance energy efficiency standards, mortgage subsidies for people who bought homes that met the standards, pushed for car miles-per-gallon standards, and promoted pollution taxes. (Our sluggish dishwashers are an example of what this report led to.)
The Freeman report also mused that “a political decision must be made: to restrain windfall profits by price controls; to tax some of them away and spend the proceeds in ways that will benefit the poor; or to do nothing.“[4]
By the way, you won’t read about Henry Ford II’s disaffection in the history page on the Ford Foundation’s website.[5] However, the New YorkTimes published portions of his resignation letter, including the quotes above.
Other Foundations Went Rogue, Too
The Ford Foundation was not alone. Others that turned against their creators include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Pew Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, the Buck Foundation, and the Barnes Foundation.
We have this full picture because one person brought the examples together. He was the late Martin Morse Wooster, who studied philanthropic organizations for years for the Capital Research Center. Wooster died in 2022 in a hit-and-run accident, but he left rich histories of American foundations in a book that went through four editions.
The final edition (published in 2017) is called How Great Philanthropists Failed and You Can Succeed in Protecting Your Legacy. [6] As the title indicates, Wooster not only identified the ways the founders of these organizations lost control but advised wealthy readers who might be contemplating a foundation how to avoid their predecessors’ mistakes. And he showed all potential donors, small or large, the pitfalls that almost inevitably occur over time.
Let’s look at a few other examples of foundations that went astray:
The MacArthur Foundation is famed for its mostly left-wing “genius awards” (ten on the left for every one on the right, wrote Wooster). Who would have thought that it was built on the money of a capitalist who turned around a bankrupt insurance company in the Depression, making it a great success, partly by hiring handicapped workers and discounting rates? John MacArthur then grew his fortune by developing land in New York and Florida. He was a giant proponent of private enterprise and, as Wooster says, “pugnacious.” MacArthur opposed the planners who wanted to block his land developments in Florida (“they think alligators are more important than people’”) and he refused to give money to politicians.[7]
Who would have thought that the Pew Charitable Trust, created by the money from Howard Pew, an entrepreneur in the oil industry (founder of Sun Oil or Sunoco), would abandon its origins? The Pew Trust has supported a plethora of social causes, among them “environmentalists who favored restrictions on oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness,” Wooster observed. [8] Surely, Howard Pew would have been stunned.
These are just a couple of examples. But Wooster’s book is not only about foundations that ended up disparaging the capitalistic sources of their money. It’s about donor intent.
Barnes Foundation: A Sad Tale
One of the most disturbing illustrations of foiling the intent of the donor is the Barnes Foundation. Albert C. Barnes was a leftist liberal who supported the New Republic and the earlier Masses magazine. An entrepreneurial genius in the medical field, over the years he built one of the world’s most outstanding collections of modern art. But he wanted students of art, not the public, to see it—and especially not members of the art establishment. When he exhibited his early collection in 1923, art critics called the works “trash” and the “creations of a disintegrating mind” (not Barnes’ mind; rather, the works of artists like Chaim Soutine). Today the Barnes collection is worth about $25 billion.
To make a long story short, the Philadelphia art establishment had its revenge after Barnes died in 1951. Using court cases and public pressure, the establishment eventually forced the foundation to leave its home location, a small suburb of Philadelphia, and house the artwork in a public Philadelphia museum. The story is complicated, but you can get an idea of the course of things by the name of a documentary about Barnes’ experience, “The Art of the Steal”. The movie, on Youtube, is unforgettable.
Not every foundation has turned on its creator, and Wooster praises those that didn’t. He goes on to argue that there are two ways a wealthy philanthropist can prevent such takeovers:
Spend your money as effectively as possible while you are alive.
Set a sunset date for your foundation.
There’s much more to this book, of course, and much more to the entire issue of donor intent. But this is my start.
[2] Energy Policy Project of the Ford Foundation, A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future (Cambridge, MA : Ballinger Publishing. 1976). S. David Freeman was the lead author.
