Sometimes I just don’t have time to put together an article about specific posts I have read about the net-zero transition and climate change that I think are relevant. This is a summary of posts that I think would be of interest to my readers.
I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed and most of the articles described are related to it. I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Another Wind and Solar Risk to Reliability
The Climate Act mandates zero emissions electric generation by 2040 and proposes to use wind and solar. I have no doubts that wind and solar pose risks to reliability, but it is difficult to convey all of the reasons why. Obviously, both wind and solar need energy storage for the periods when they are unavailable. It is clear that because wind and solar energy is diffuse you need to collect the energy away from load centers so providing enough transmission to get it where it is needed is going to mean that there will be more transmission lines that are subject to weather disruptions. There are other factors that are difficult to describe.
Ed Ireland describes some other issues that affect reliability. The very nature of the energy produced by wind and solar is a reliability concern because it is different than existing generating resources. Ireland describes the history of electric generation and the implications of the alternating current frequency of 60 Hz produced by generators running at 60 revolutions per second. Today “the critical factor underlying the integrity of electricity grids is maintaining a frequency of 60 Hz. If the frequency of the electricity moves outside the range of plus or minus 0.25 Hz, immediate countermeasures are taken to restore 60 Hz”. The built-in inertia of mechanical rotation form existing generating plants is a necessary component for reliability.. “Inertia refers to the kinetic energy stored in large rotating generators in conventional generators that help stabilize the electrical system.”
The problem is that the wind, solar, and energy storage systems are asynchronous. Ireland explains:
The electrical current they produce is direct current, which must be converted to alternating current by inverters, referred to as inverter-based resources, or IBRs, before the electricity is transferred to power grids. Inverters have had a history of tripping offline randomly, creating havoc on power grids. FERC has been monitoring IBR for the last few years and finally decided to enact regulations.
The article also describes other issues associated with wind and solar that are a significant problem for all US power grids.
Not Zero is Pragmatic.
Terry Etam writing at the BOE report has a way with words and story telling that I admire. He recently described a training program open to those who have left prison and wish to be trained as automotive technicians. He describes the program that has potential to help multiple groups of people in multiple ways, and not through handouts and then provides a lesson applicable to the plans to reduce GHG emissions:
Take what works and add to it what we can. EVs work extremely well in certain functions and particularly in urban areas. Focus on building those networks and maintaining the system that works so well in other parts of the country where EVs don’t. Try forcing a singular solution – which is a meagre post-2035 buy-electric or buy-nothing – is insanity, and it won’t work. It just won’t.
Other examples abound and they all come to the same point. For example, the insistence on a “zero-emissions” electric grid without using nuclear means that a dispatchable emissions-free resource needs to be created, developed, and deployed that must be on the same order of size as the existing fossil-fired generating capacity but will only be used a fraction of the time. If you calculate the emissions from fossil-fired units that only are used for the rare cases that this new technology is needed, they are small and could be reduced if new capacity were built. It would be expensive but cheaper than an entirely new technology and we know it would work. Not going to zero emissions is a pragmatic approach.
Climate Change Virtue Signaling
This is a funny take on the clueless activists. Alex Berenson writes “The New York Times somehow casts a Massachusetts couple who spent $7 million on building an oceanfront (second) home as environmental activists. Can’t make it up.”
Conference of Parties – 28
Climate Discussion Nexus on the COP28 meeting in Dubai. This would be the meeting for 70,000 being held in new facilities built with oil money.
The conference thus perfectly symbolizes the entire modern climate movement: wealthy out-of-touch busybodies wandering about in a miraculous world made possible by affordable fossil energy feasting on fine food and wine while they discuss how everyone else should be forced to do without. And then wondering why no one is listening.
COP 28 is a really big fossil fuel trade show by David Wojick. He writes “What was supposed to be a big deal climate treaty negotiation has morphed into an enormous trade fair. Even funnier the focus is on fossil fuel production which the UN treaty is supposed to curb.” The article describes the meeting:
COP 28 has an astounding number of attendees, with over 100,000 official registrants, more than twice the previous record. Meanwhile the number of actual climate treaty negotiators is somewhere in the hundreds, so maybe 1% at most. The negotiations area is small and walled of, while the general attendees area is huge. What do the other 99% (or 99,000 people) do as the two week session rolls slowly by? They talk to each other and a lot of that talk is apparently business related because a lot of the attendees are reportedly corporate or trade professionals doing deals.
Lessons to Be Learned from Ontario
Parker Gallant has written three parts of a series of articles about the transition. The articles describe happenings around the world where members of the Church of Climate Change Cult (CCCC) are starting to question their beliefs. According to his contact link “Parker’s retirement allows him to spend time researching the energy sector and apply his banker’s common sense to analyzing the sector’s approach to the production, transmission and distribution of electricity to Ontario’s consumers.”
Part 1 pointed out that the momentum to end fossil fuel use for electricity consumption is slowing as one town council chose a natural gas plant over wind, solar and potential imported hydro. He also addressed current trends of the electric vehicle transition rollout.
Part 2 dug deeper into electric vehicles issues. Electric buses in Edmonton appear to be a $41.5 million failure. To much fanfare an electric truck and school bus manufacturer Lion Electric received $100 million in 2021 and received another $50 million that was not announced. Even though Lion Electric’s school buses are almost 67% more expensive then fossil fueled buses they are still losing money as their September 30, 2023 quarterly report noted. Gallant makes the cogent observation that “it appears obvious we should never trust elected politicians to pick industrial winners.”
In Part 3, he looks into the latest resource outlooks by the Ontario version of the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). Similar to the NYISO’s Comprehensive Reliability Plan, IESO is projecting increases in load at the same time generating resources are in a state of change. He points out the difficulties that renewable resource developers are having trying to stay solvent and the resulting impact on renewable energy stocks. He concludes that “The market drop of renewable energy stocks will inevitably cause those companies to ask the various politicians in power to increase their rates for the power they supply but we consumers and taxpayers should hope we have recently elected smarter politicians, and they simply say NO!”
Temperature Trend Data
Tony Heller has spent a lot of time evaluating the temperature data archived at climate centers across the world. He specializes in comparing raw data to the data reported by those centers for public consumption that invariably produce imaginary warming trends. Recently he described a Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) data availability report that states: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.” I commented that this is infuriating. Original data should be preserved is a cornerstone for transparency and trust. We need to be able to compare the raw data against any modifications that are done for many valid reasons. The issue is that those modifications are subject to the biases of the researcher.
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 