Posted on 12/18/2021 5:03:08 AM PST by MtnClimber
In the fantasy of wealthy woke environmentalists, the world has recognized that it is on the brink of an existential climate crisis that can only be avoided by rapid elimination of the use of fossil fuels, and the transformation of the world energy economy to be based upon “renewables” like the wind and sun. The generation of electricity will be “decarbonized” by some time in the 2030s, and the world will reach “net zero” carbon emissions by around 2050.
In the real world, anyone with eyes can see that this is not happening. The countries with the large majority of world population (China, India, the remainder of Asia, and Africa) mouth a few platitudes to appease the foolish Western elites, even as they continue to build hundreds of new coal and other fossil fuel facilities. Even the U.S. federal government, under left-wing Democrat control, has had its ambitious “Green New Deal” plans stalled in Congress. Worldwide, fossil fuel usage continues on a steady upward trajectory, pretty much as if the whole decarbonization obsession didn’t exist.
But then there is that handful of very wealthy, small population jurisdictions that have convinced themselves that they can save the planet by eliminating their own fossil fuel use and substituting wind and solar power, even as the rest of the world laughs at them behind their back. Four jurisdictions stand out from the rest, two of them European countries and the other two U.S. states: Germany, the UK, California, and New York. In the aggregate, these four places have population of about 200 million, or about 2.5% or world population. Each of the four has announced draconian targets for net zero carbon emissions by mid-century, with even more stringent interim targets for eliminating carbon emissions from things like electricity generation and home heating.
All these places, despite their wealth and seeming sophistication, are embarking on their ambitious plans without ever having conducted any kind of detailed engineering study of how their new proposed energy systems will work or how much they will cost. Sure, a wind/solar electric grid can function with 100% natural gas backup, if you’re willing to have the ratepayers foot the bill for two overlapping and redundant generation systems when you could have had just one. But “net zero” emissions means no more fossil fuel backup. What’s the plan to keep the grid operating 24/7 when the coal and natural gas are gone?
As these jurisdictions ramp up their wind and solar generation, and gradually eliminate the coal and natural gas, sooner or later one or another of them is highly likely to hit a “wall” — that is, a situation where the electricity system stops functioning, or the price goes through the roof, or both, forcing a drastic alteration or even abandonment of the whole scheme. But which jurisdiction will hit it first, and how will the “wall” emerge?
It’s time for Manhattan Contrarian readers to start placing their bets on this issue. To kick things off, here are a few thoughts from me:
California. I have written several posts highly critical of California’s pie-in-the-sky green energy plans, which include a 2045 “zero carbon” target. For example see here and here. However, California does have a deep secret to help it stave off the possibility of hitting the renewable energy wall: it imports a very high percentage of its power from neighboring states. Some of the imports are fossil fuel based (coal and natural gas from Arizona and Nevada), and some are reliable non-fossil fuel based sources (nuclear from Arizona and hydro from Oregon and Washington).
Here are charts from the California Energy Commission of “total system electric generation” for the state for 2018 and 2020. In 2018 California imported about 32% of its electricity (91,000 GWH out of 285,000 GWH), and in 2020 about 30% (82,000 GWH out of 273,000 GWH). According to data from the EIA, California imports far more electricity from other states than does any other state (although there are a few states that import more on a percentage basis). The ability to import large amounts of electricity from neighboring states means that California has a high degree of insurance against its own energy folly. As long as Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have some electricity to sell, blackouts can be staved off even though California’s wind and solar generators may be completely quiet. You may say that this is cheating in the game of “zero emissions” electricity, which it is, but don’t count on California’s politicians to level with the voters.
New York. New York’s energy system transformation has been defined by something called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act), passed in 2019. This state website provides a summary of the goals to which this Climate Act has supposedly committed us. The main targets:
85% Reduction in GHG Emissions by 2050
100% Zero-emission Electricity by 2040
70% Renewable Energy by 2030
9,000 MW of Offshore Wind by 2035
3,000 MW of Energy Storage by 2030
6,000 MW of Solar by 2025
Here in New York City, the City Council just this week passed a bill banning natural gas hookups for buildings under seven stories starting in 2024, and for larger buildings starting in 2027. Mayor de Blasio, heading into his last week in office, is expected to sign the bill.
But is there any reality to any of this? My prediction is that, rather than our hitting some kind of wall of a failing energy system or sudden price spikes, these ridiculous targets will just be abandoned and forgotten as they get closer and it becomes obvious that they cannot be achieved. The prototype was a matter involving the natural gas utility in Long Island, National Grid, in 2019. National Grid was running out of natural gas capacity for new customers, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens (parts of New York City that are on Long Island and served by National Grid). National Grid wanted to build a pipeline under New York Harbor to bring in the gas, but Governor Cuomo blocked it on fake environmental grounds (supposedly, threats to water quality). When the existing pipelines hit capacity, National Grid began refusing new natural gas hookups. Within a few weeks, some 3000 people had been refused, and the political blowback began. Facing pressure from actual voters, Cuomo did not relent on the pipeline, but instead threatened to pull NG’s license unless it figured out some other way to bring in the gas. NG began to bring in the gas by truck (much more expensive and dangerous than the pipeline), and as far as I know that is what it continues to do. Here is a New York Times account with more details.
My strong bet is that this scenario repeats itself in 2024 when the City Council’s supposed natural gas ban kicks in. Right now the public is only dimly aware of the coming ban, and paying no attention. But natural gas is hugely superior to electricity for home heat, particularly an area like this where winter temperatures regularly go into the 20s and below, a range at which electric heat pumps basically don’t work at all. People building and renovating homes are acutely aware of this difference, and will push back forcefully when told that they can’t have gas.
Similarly, the goals of the Climate Act for enormous numbers of wind turbines and solar arrays are completely unrealistic, and nobody has even started building any meaningful number of them yet. Moreover, the amount of storage proposed is not even stated in relevant units (should be MWH instead of MW), and storage to last the months that would be needed has not even been invented. These targets are so ridiculous that, I predict, we will never even start very far down the road before they are either dropped or just ignored. Sure, we will spend a few tens of billions first, and everybody’s energy bills will go up substantially, but not to a degree that it will be recognized as a crisis.
Germany and UK. So I’m putting my money on one or the other of Germany or the UK to be the first to hit some kind of wall.
-Compared to California, they don’t have any good Plan B when the new wind/solar system doesn’t work. Both have banned fracking for natural gas within their own borders, as have most of their near European neighbors. That leaves Russia as the principal backup supplier, and let’s say that the Russkies are somewhat less reliable than Nevada and Arizona.
-Compared to New York, Germany and the UK have so far actually taken seriously the task of building wind turbines and solar arrays. Germany has gotten its percent of electricity generation from wind and solar up to around 50% for some periods of time (although it fell back to 43% for the first three quarters of 2021 due to lack of wind). Germany’s new coalition government has grand plans to further ramp of the building of wind turbines particularly, while continuing to phase out both nuclear and all fossil fuels, with only Russia to catch them when they fall. In the UK. PM Boris Johnson has become completely obsessed with his “net zero” ambitions, even as low wind has put pressure on limited natural gas supplies and caused prices to spike dramatically.
A prolonged period of unfavorable weather (calm and overcast) could cause a serious energy crunch to hit one or both or Germany or the UK as soon as this winter. Or they could get lucky and go another year or two. But for both of them, a wall is looming.
Big Wind
and Big Sun
When winter comes
Can’t get it done
I read a article about the expansion of a nickel mine in Indonesia that threatens a rain forest to produce more nickel for green energy. I remind people that the internal combustion engine was the solution for pollution caused by hay burners. There is no free lunch.
And we can’t advance the technology for nuclear power generation either.>>> I thot the miltary is going nuclear for military bases. Like small plants with salt or something.
I’m betting on Germany. They plan to shut down their last nukes in 2022.
Also, Russians love to make Germans shiver.
“BS, had operators winterized their plant equipment, no outages would have been necessary. Plant management should have been fired for gross incompetence.”
Agree, and other factors too, such as the feds not allowing the natural gas pumping stations to use the gas they pumped for power...instead having to rely on a collapsed grid. Plus, I suspect, a lot of back-slapping “Trust Us” kind of crap that happens virtually everywhere.
Anyway, Abbott handled it well...Cruz, not so good.
Nice write-up. A couple of comments:
1) A huge factor is the marginal cost for power. For me in Texas, it’s about 10 cents per kwh, in California it’s over 30 cents. In Texas, solar still has its place, but it should be looked at more as a way to at least partially remove oneself from the grid and partially ensure some stability in electric prices (in case the state goes Blue), rather than an assured investment.
2) If you do want all-electric, you’ll do best in the south, where heat pumps cost no more to heat than natural gas furnaces. The colder you get, the more fossil fuels make sense (and the less power you’ll get in winter) and heat pumps don’t do nearly as well (although a new one seems to work much better at cold temperatures).
3) If you have a new standard roof (i.e., composition roof), of decent quality, you should get 20 years out of it, or close enough, so it comes pretty close to the 25 year panels.
4) For youngsters trying to build wealth, if you are in an expensive place like California, having a 5 to 7 year guaranteed payback on a solar investment is not a bad deal, basically a 10% plus guaranteed investment. Other than that, don’t bother.
I’m waiting for California to crash the grid in Washington state...and then demand they build more windmills.
“I bring this up only to show that the arm chair bureaucrats in Washington DC and state capitols simply have no clue how to solve problems that the free market system easily eliminates.”
Well the free market failed to winterize against record cold. And why should they, if it’s record cold? Why spend a ton of money so you can get your reliability up from 99.9% to 99.99%? Stupid to do, if you own a plant, since the return is next to nothing - just shut down in those cases.
But people rely on those plants...so there is a community need for them to keep operating, but the free market isn’t going to fill that need...which is part of why we got caught short last winter.
The sooner the better.
NYS beat them to it.
None of them. When liberals fail they double down on it.
None of them. When liberals fail they double down on it.
More BS.
Politicized bureaucrats with bribes in hand mandated conversion on a timeline developed by no one with any idea how to do this. So, the operators (incented by $$$) installed what they could get their hands on.
This was not an operators’ problem, it was corrupt politicos imposing their virtue signaling upon the citizens. That the operators went along with it just ID’s the pack of criminally corrupt “businessmen” in charge — who ought to be up against the wall after the politicos.
That Tx didn’t do that just shows how far they have fallen from their Alamo roots.
The intellectual disconnects with the enviros are maddening. They should be in favor of nuclear energy, basically a zero greenhouse gas emitter.
In my most recent bill I was paying 13.3 cents per kWh (that includes the 4% tax). That's because there are rate riders added to the bill. Some of those riders are monthly (in my case a 75 cent rider for natural disaster expenses on top of my $14.50 flat bill, both with a 4% tax making it $15.86 per month just to stay connected even if I don't buy any power from them). But most riders are consumption based (per kWh) like energy riders and such. When Obama forced many utilities to close some of their coal plants and switch to natural gas plants and such, that was added as a rider to the bill without raising the "official" rate. The same with my power utility having to pay more for natural gas because Biden is blocking some of the fracking leases -- it's added as a rider increase. There are many other rate riders.
The way I calculate it without getting into all the riders is to figure out how much my overall flat rate is (with the riders and tax) because that's simple. For me that's $15.86. Any part of my bill above that is what I call the usage part of my bill, even if part of it is tax. My last bill was $93.82 for buying 584 kWh from them. Since the first $15.86 was the flat fees, my usage was $77.96. Divided by 584 kWh, that's 13.3493 cents per kWh. Because I consumed 1214.9 kWh during that date range (according to my solar inverter) I saved 630.9 kWh, which translates into saving $84.22. But last month was the last month for which I still had gas service for a while. My next bill will be my first true all-electric bill.
Once I realized that every kWh I'd save with solar would save me 13.3 cents instead of 10.4 cents (I think my true rate was 12.9 cents back when I figured this all out before I got solar), that greatly changed the math on how much spending on solar would be feasible.
There are also other variables for whether or not it's feasible for you. Like how many peak solar hours you get at your zip code. How much of your energy consumption is during daylight hours (for that I had to estimate, but it's good to live in the south where most of our A/C is during the day, so less need for batteries, unlike up north where they have heavy energy usage is at night for heating). If your energy usage will change soon (i.e. kids grow up and move out). If you have a lot of soot in the air that'll build up on your solar panels and require frequent cleaning. Etc.
Doing this on your own (or getting a professional solar installer to do it like I did, but only after I researched it heavily so I wouldn't be taken advantage of) is a methodical and pain-staking exercise. But I'm used to doing that kind of stuff in my line of work. And long-term financial planning is important to me, especially after I realized that my energy bills didn't go way down after my kids moved out like I thought they would. That was about the time Obama was closing coal plants and adding pollution fines. That's what took me down the path to figure out how to minimize how much the Dims can harm my finances while I'm transitioning into retirement.
<>The generation of electricity will be “decarbonized” by some time in the 2030s, and the world will reach “net zero” carbon emissions by around 2050.<>
Free beer tomorrow.
When electric vehicles become a greater percentage of transportation, power generation capacity will be stretched. There will probably be a need to go back to more coal power. Of course power companies could possibly do this if they buy enough “Carbon Credits” from environmentalists like Al Gore who has the carbon footprint of a sasquach, but hey, he did invent the internet.
“Texas should be starting construction on 2-4 nukes way out in the badlands of West Texas where an accident (unlikely) would affect only the wildlife.”
Texas has four large nuclear reactors at two sites. Those sites were designed for double the capacity they are at now. They each have empty pads for two more reactors at each site and more importantly the cooling ponds were sized for four reactors one sites the two they are at now. Nuclear power is about 18% of total Texas power just adding to the existing sites would double that without having to even apply for more land or exclusion zones. Those pad sites don’t have to be used for massive concrete some PWR era reactors the cooling ponds only care about the thermal flux per hour. Texas should use the next Gen III+ tech that would be the ESBWR for the 1200 gigawatt capacity range. With 7 days of walk away safe built in and after 7 days you only need to put water in the condenser pools via a fire hose or tanker truck. You could also just put a surface level water tank outside the containment building that holds enough water to fill those condenser pools three more times using a simple gravity flow line to a automatic floating ball valve in the pools as the water evaporates the ball sinks letting exterior water inside the pool. You only need three more 7 days worth of water to bring the reactor to cold shut down a tank that size would be 50 feet in diameter and twice that height not large enough to worry about just build in 30 days of condenser pool reserve and have full scram to cold shut down with not a live human on site.
https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/esbwr
Then Texas should plan for small modular reactors near the cities that also do district heating / cooling water grids plus desalination on the coast.
A good one is the modular BWRX 300 that has capital and O&M costs that are natural gas level.
https://www.reutersevents.com/nuclear/ge-hitachi-chases-gas-plant-displacement-new-300-mw-reactor
Rolls Royce is also making SMRs that will be competitive with gas plants on a LCOE basis. That have exclusion zones of 100 meters by 100 meters. Rolls makes submarine reactors for the British government they have a perfect safety record just like the U.S. Navy does.
https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx
Korea has already proven that the costs of reprocessing “waste” into new fuel rods is not that much more than a once through fuel cycle this eliminates the need for massive under ground storage of tonnes of spent fuel. Reprocessing wastes are orders of magnitude smaller and more dense you then take those and put them down a bore hole into granite and seal it with bentonite mud and concrete. The cost difference is under half a cent per kWh to reprocess spent fuel into new fuel while closing the fuel cycle. The costs were 6.78 mils/kWh vs 6.34 mils/kWh one mil is one thousandth of a U.S. dollar so the fuel costs were 0.678 US cents per kWh vs 0.634 the difference is 0.44 cents per kWh to not only double the amount of energy you get per lb of mined uranium but to eliminate the spent fuel “waste” issue. The antinuke zealots got Carter to ban reprocessing in the USA this was designed from the start to cripple the U.S. nuclear industry with a mountain of spent fuel that has to be stored for millions of years. The wastes from reprocessing are such small volumes that deep bore hole storage works economically deep bore hole into granite that has been tectonic stable for billions of years will easily hold reprocessing wastes for the few thousand years it need a to decay back to natural uranium ore levels. It cannot be stressed enough spent fuel is not wastes it contains 96% perfectly good reactor fuel 99% of its original energy content and only 4% fission products with only two of those having half lives above 10,000 years the vast majority have HL in the 30 to 1,000 year ranges. It is the major / minor actinides that have long half lives and every one of those is either fissile fuel or fertile that with thermal neutron capture becomes fissile. With MOX capable reactors you quadruple your energy per lb mined and the waste volume drops to 4% by mass the USA are absolute fools for not reprocessing spent fuel into MOX its criminal what Carter did an actual crime against humanity.
https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/521381
I live in a fairly small sized community of 2 small cities & we depend on gas & electricity. So far, it is working OK, but there is a sizeable solar array near one city that is apparently online. I can never get any information as to what it is actually supplying or the cost of same. I am assuming it feeds into the electrical grid of one city & no one knows(but the power company) what the actual cost is as the consumers are paying a certain amount without knowing the cost breakdown of the two sources. To my knowledge, it is all owned by one company(both sources) & I doubt they are about to let anyone know all the details & can declare that the solar array is actually saving money; which is doubtful. Probably all they know is that their electric bill gets higher without knowing the reason why.
How? Because I put solar power onto my house with my own money and had a system custom made for mine and my wife's power consumptions. Also because my new electric appliances are efficient with power consumption (i.e. my A/C and gas heater were replaced with a variable speed heat pump). The Dim greenies don't want to take it onto themselves to use their own resources and do the homework about their own situation to figure out how best to manage their own affairs according to their ideals. They always think the solution is to force the rest of us to figure out how to bring about their false utopia regardless of the consequences.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.