In Germany as 20 years of wind subsidies comes to an end in 2020, half to three quarters of the industry may disappear.
So many parallels with Australia. The Germans have had wind subsidies for 20 years, but even after two decades of support, the industry is still not profitable on a stand-alone basis. In 2016, some 4600MW of new wind plants were installed, but that may drop to one quarter as much by 2019 as subsidies shrink. According to Pierre Gosselin (August 31st, 2017) there are more wind protests, electricity prices are “skyrocketing” and “the grid has become riddled with inefficiencies and has become increasingly prone to grid collapses from unstable power feed in.”
Pierre Gosslin writes that “Germany is more in the green energy retreat mode”.
German flagship business daily “Handelsblatt” reported … how Germany’s wind energy market is now “threatening to implode” and as a result “thousands of jobs are at risk“. José Luis Blanco, CEO of German wind energy giant Nordex, blames the market chaos on “policymakers changing the rules“. Subsidies have been getting cut back substantially. The problem, Blanco says, is that worldwide green energy subsidies are being capped and wind parks as a result are no longer looking profitable to investors. The Handelsblatt writes that “things have never been this bad“.
Development of Germany’s 20-year guaranteed support rates for onshore wind power. Source: CLEW.
CleanEnergyWire reports that the end of subsidies threatens the profitability of nearly all wind plants due to maintenance costs:
Operating wind turbines in Germany will only be profitable for a small fraction of the installations once their 20-year support period via the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) has ended, consultancy Energy Brainpoolsays in a white paper. The first turbines in Germany will lose eligibility for support from the renewables surcharge that customers pay with their power bill in 2021 and “at the current [wholesale power] price level, only a few installations can be operated at a profit” after that due to maintenance costs, the consultancy says.
Maintenance is one of the big hidden costs of trying to collect low density energy from a vast area. All those gears, bearings, and long transmission lines are, by definition, subject to extreme weather. Who builds a wind “farm” in a calm location?
Booming German wind power sector fears 2019 cliff:
“The situation in the wind power industry is coming to a head much quicker than we feared,” trade union IG Metall recently said in a press release. IG asked dozens of turbine manufacturers and their suppliers about their business prospects. 40 percent expected market conditions to deteriorate in the near future. The German Wind Energy Association (BWE) says companies now have to rely entirely on existing orders, and that “a reliable projection for expansion over the next years is scarcely possible.”
According to Windresearch’s analysis, a worst-case scenario would see just 1,000 mega-watts (MW) of new capacity in 2019, compared to the 2,800 MW set by the EEG and auctioned off. That’s less than a quarter of the onshore wind power capacity added in 2016.
Another hidden cost is complexity
The artificial rules and auction system are being gamed and rorted by the big players:
Gsänger says a lax definition of citizens’ projects has enabled larger bidders to secure a substantial chunk of the tendered volume for themselves, while no truly citizen-led initiative was granted a licence through the second auction. “There’s a great deal of frustration in the citizens’ energy scene,” Gsänger says.
This is always the price of complicated government schemes. No matter how carefully rules are crafted, where there are billions of dollars involved, there are billions of reasons for the top brains in an industry to find the loopholes.
Even socialists in Germany are talking about coal being essential:
Comeback coal
Yesterday at the East German Energy Forum in Leipzig, both the centrist CDU and the SPD socialists were in agreement: brown coal (lignite) must remain a part of Germany’s energy mix, the online Lausitzer Rundschau writes. Speaking before 400 industry representatives, Brandenburg’s Minister President Dietmar Woidke (SPD) complained that green energies are foremost “unreliable energy sources“.
The Germans appear to be way ahead. The socialists in Australia still talk about coal as if it were an anti-christ-dinosaur.
I hope Germany sticks with the subsidy deadline of 2020 and isn’t bamboozled into extending the subsidies. This is their chance to
get out from under the burden of renewables on their economy and their poorest citizens.
481
Well, we do have the opportunity to point this out, and the zombie of the South Australian renewables debacle just keeps on proving sceptics right.
The simple reality of renewables not working in practical terms has to come home to roost eventually….. unfortunately for the Lefties, it wasnt some chicken, but rather a very cranky 40 tonne emu landing on your house in the middle of the night….
330
Political reality: Merkel now desperate for a coalition and will “compromise” on anything that sustains her delusion of power and her apparent objective to destroy Germany and all that is “German”. Such includes as a consequence; things that we regard as foundations of Western Civilization.
Germans of the former GDR are not as easily bamboozled, recognizing the state-owned (and often “private”) media for the mouthpiece of dogmatic bias that it is. They are a numeric minority but have somehow managed to produce a stronghold of reason in Saxony.
500
Bernd Felsche,
Quite correct. The citizens of the ex-DDR (East Germany) are familiar with state propaganda and are immune to it – just like the citizens of Russia. Russian TV is quite happy to show CNN with subtitles to make the people know what the Americans are being told. The people there are amazed at how naive the American public is. 🙂
We in the West are under the delusion that we have a free press and that what the press says is true and that unpleasant facts are exposed by the press. Young people don’t know that there used be something called investigative journalism. The fiasco in Las Vegas with officialdom and a compliant press changing repeatedly the story line – a story that makes no sense to any reasonably intelligent person – is typical. They have reached the stage where they think (rightly) that they can say whatever they like and change and 90% of the people won’t find that odd.
In reality, Germany – just like Australia BTW – is an American satrapy. All journalists toe the party line and so-called opinion pieces are nothing of the sort and what passes for news is actually the detritus of press-conferences in Washington.
Editor of Major German Newspaper Says He Planted Stories for the CIA
341
No. I disagree. Let’s adjust what appears as an inaccurate generalisation and present an arguably far more accurate one.
In reality, Germany – just like Australia BTW – is an
AmericanGlobalist satrapy.120
Is that the one headquartered at 229 West 43rd Street, New York?
00
The European wind industry began heavy lobbying in June 2017 when Wind Europe published “Repowering and Lifetime Extension – Making the most of Europe’s wind energy resource”.
(You can see this here).
The paper states that without long term subsidy and New Subsidy for end-of-life wind turbines and out-of-subsidy wind farms they will have to close.
That gives the lie to the recent claims from the wind industry that electricity from wind turbines it is now competitive with and cheaper than conventional fuels.
The sooner the wind industry implodes the better, and the sooner that politicians wake up to the economic disasters they are heaping on their industry and citizens the better.
380
I support your hope, however, there is little chance of subsidies ending, as Merkel is forced to form a coalition which includes the Green Party.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/weakened-merkel-warns-compromise-talks-coalition-start-095752224–business.html
40
The good news is that as each propeller must be replaced and is not, the generators come on the used market. They are useful. The problem is some idiot put them up a pole so they are hard to get down.
60
You can get them down easily – its called controlled demolition….comes down neatly in its own footprint…ask americans in NY what that’s like…..
20
It has taken the wind from the sails of investors.
Without taxpayer funding the green machines are no longer competitive.
Prime Minister Turnbull and Opposition Leader Shorten, please note carefully.
390
Would this be the Turnbull reportedly trying to introduce a carbon “price” once again by stealth?
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbulls-national-energy-guarantee-plan-masks-a-carbon-price-20171017-gz32lb.html
90
Malc is a globalist through and through, he is the man on the spot for Sacks of Gold bnk, he will do as he’s told.
The Establishment are gaia worshippers, this is a *religious war*, Malc is just another useful drone who has been promised lost of shiny ( but will ultimately be useless ) trinkets in exchange for all delivering up Australians to the globalist slaughter-house like a judas sheep…oh look…pretty trinkets….I wonder if it will be my friend….?
80
I understand that Germany decided to close their nuclear power stations and use so called renewable energy but as time went by the wind turbines revolution (no pun intended) resulted in an energy crisis developing, Germany had to buy electricity from coal fired power stations in Poland and from nuclear power stations in France.
Australia, we are on our own.
360
The decision to close down German nuclear power stations seems to have been made because of heavy green lobbying from green blob and green party politicians. The
reasonexcuse given was they didn’t want a repeat of the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima when a tsunami hit that nuclear plant which was located on the coast.Frau Merkel appears not to have appreciated that there is no possibility of German nuclear power stations being hit by a tsunami or some other inundation from the sea.
But hey, when did greens ever deal with or accept reality ???
They much prefer their little fantasy world and faithful belief in false-fact propaganda.
350
And nobody died from a nuclear problem at Fukishima – which was actually caused by a back-up power problem anyway. But then the Greens and the Left simply cannot accept that just about everything is a compromise, that people are killed manufacturing and erecting wind turbines for example.
261
Tim Hammond said:
Nor can they accept that Nature ( Not that journal, but Real Life ) is both a bigger `polluter’ and far and away more powerful than a mere seven and a half billion animals. Until they can wrap their tiny minds around those facts, we’re going to have to suffer their inanities and stupidities for more years to come.
30
Roger
How about we write that as
“Green B.L.O.B” standing for
Biggest Loads of Bulls***
90
Like it Ian….. must remember that one.
30
The green blob is a clear and present danger to this country and future generations.
70
@ Dennis, Germany is also building new coal fired power stations to help replace nuclear ….
Only in an addled green ‘mind’ could that make sense !
230
Dennis
Some of the German nuclear plants were due for decommissioning due to their age. The German Government pushed back the planned date for doing this. Then Fukishima occurred and under pressure from the Greens they returned to the old date and added ( I think ) no new nuclear plants would be built. So they were forced to build 15-20 new brown coal burning plants.
10
No one saw that coming (LOL). Too bad Australia is usually 10 or so years behind the rest of the world.
260
Now, there’s the thing, “Too bad Australia is usually 10 or so years behind the rest of the world.”.
A little further down-under the virtue-signalling Con-artistes are the University of Otago have just announced their full embrace of that eco-Marxist euphemism, “sustainability” and its associatede UNEP dogma. The move is guaranteed to install NZ 15 years behind the ball game in years to come. Coal is to be banned, the notional carbon footprint will be urgently reduced to a theoretical baby cast and the Uni will start burning renewable wood … just like Drax in London with seemingly little consideration of the unintended consequences that may have on the local market or indeed the city environment. And all this Leftist huffing and puffing in a country where 60% of base load power is hydro renewable, i.e. all domestic consumption. Surely someone will have asked them exactly how much they will have inspirationally reduced the theoretical contribution to UNFCCC defined ‘climate change’ and associated theoretical reduction in temperature anomaly?
Meanwhile in a kind of Über reality, “Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.”
If you want prosperity, development and cheap power, neither NZ nor Australia will be the places to be. And to think that both countries were once considered to be ‘The Future’ and the ‘New World’. Instead both have fallen to their knees to worship at the altar of the UN NWO. Quite why, remains entirely beyond me.
Push back while you can.
191
and another 13% is Geothermal renewable …
30
With regard wind and solar, Australia has the South Australian test case, which is leading the world in wind and solar market share while being sufficiently isolated from the rest of the Australian grid to highlight the issues. It does get support in terms of the 600MW link to Victoria and the LGCs transfer payments from other states but, even with all that support, it is already a basket case at 40% wind and solar market share.
Germany is yet to experience a complete system blackout. Wind and solar has only achieved 33% market share in Germany.
The difference with Germany is that it has managed to retain some of its manufacturing; albeit steel making is gradually going elsewhere. The consequence of this is that it has not exported the vast majority of its CO2 production out of the country, unlike SA. Hence Germany proves the case that substituting coal and nuclear generation with wind and solar does not lower CO2 output. Building and maintaining the wind and solar components is CO2 intensive.
An aside – my son has recently bought a house and has been making use of ALDI special buys to acquire some tools, furniture and appliances. So far all the special buys have been made in China although some have familiar German brand names.
40
There’s a bit of irony lost on these poor souls that think burning wood is the answer. Do they realise that coal is ostensibly fossilised wood (and other vegetable matter)?
40
Bemused said:
That’s a darned sight better than NZ’s 25 years.
(Standard joke: “Welcome to Auckland, New Zealand. It’s twenty two degrees outside. The time is XX hours and YY minutes minus twenty five years. Thank you for flying …”)
50
Meanwhile over at the dashboard both Australian communist states with a dependence on wind seem to be struggling for power at the moment .
240
Pretty windy in Newy today.
Wonder how the Kooragang Island wind turbine is going ?
OOPS.. I forgot.. they removed it a few years ago to make way for the new COAL TERMINAL 🙂
202
That’s the one that used to go woosh, woosh, woosh, woosh, woosh, woosh, etc – even with the car windows up!!!!
100
Always turned when there was a greenie conference in town…
…… even when there was no wind at all 🙂
152
It was a pioneer. At least it should have generated some useful data for us.
20
I an surprised that only half or three quarters of the industry will disappear.
How is it possible for the remaining ones to stay in business at all without subsidies? There must be some other scam going on to allow them to stay in business.
232
Maintenance, existing forward contracts, management and applying propeller grease at high elevation in the middle of the ocean.
160
Another question arises, what productive entity provides to loot to fund the unreliables?
It must be Lindsay’s Magic Pudding!
10
The Pharoah has ordered an end to the building of pyramids. As the people live in rudimentary huts and lack basic services, the building of enormous and pointless pyramids for a hundred years has to end and tens of thousands of Egyptians will have to find alternative employment.
The exact point of building pyramids has been long forgotten and at one stage multiple pyramids were being built simultaneously, such was the demand. The Pharoah blames the IPCC, the Infernal Pyramid Construction Company for the poverty created by the near slave conditions and the collapse of other industries in this pointless and massively expensive exercise. Later generation may puzzle that they were ever built at all.
341
There was a story that the Pyramids were built to appease the Climate Gods and ensure the end of the great drought which had a normal 11 year cycle and ended as always. Still the high priests lead by Scribe Flannery in cahoots with the Infernal Pyramid Construction Company claimed the drought would never end, that Luxor would become a ghost town and showed that you can fool some of the people some of the time.
302
To be fair, pyramids are not pointless. They are in fact pointy.
300
I noticed in the himalayas there are layers of dust laid down approx every 10-11 years due to drought, seen very clearly in the pack ice up on the mountains….
110
Dust storms used to be more prevalent years ago in Australia. I think the last was in the earlier part of the millennium and covered much of eastern Australia in red dust. The source of the dust was the deposits left over from the drying out of flood waters in the centre. The 19th and 20th century dust storms was the result of massive stocks of sheep.Apparently. Anyway you can see the strata laid down on the Tasman Alps- red strips in the ice.All that top soil from OZ.
30
The Sphinx is dated a few thousand years older, the earlier Egyptians apparently could not move rocks.
70
Unsurprising when one considers the energy required to use the great sphincter.
70
A broken pencil is pointless.
80
I have often wondered why plastic writing sticks are called ballpoints – if it has a ball at the business end it can’t be a point!
60
Missing the point.
40
You’re on a roll.
50
Good point.
50
Enbiromental?
70
Now i am really dis-a-pointed!
60
Far too much Bicering on this site!
50
I don’t have an inkling what you guys are talking about.
31
Birodegradable
20
You point to the ball.
10
Some quite useless” ball point pen” information!
The Chinese manufacturers of ball point pens until very recently imported the balls for their pens from France where the ball point pen was invented.
The Chinese until very recently did not have the technology to manufacture the super hard steels used in the manufacture of the balls of the ball point pen
30
Despite all the negative propaganda about Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen etc. the reality sometimes shines through.
The World’s Oldest Papyrus and What It Can Tell Us About the Great Pyramids. Ancient Egyptians leveraged a massive shipping, mining and farming economy to propel their civilization forward (Smithsonian Museum)
Papyrus has been found that was written by some of the workers on the great pyramids. It proves that these people were not slaves, they got salaries and they even went on holidays elsewhere in Egypt.
In the ancient world, the economy of Egypt was 30% of the world’s economy – according to modern scholars.
100
I just want TdeF to finish that book idea on the pharaoh’s and can I pay for a copy in advance .
That was histerical please master may we have some more !
20
“The Germans appear to be way ahead. The socialists in Australia still talk about coal as if it were an anti-christ-dinosaur.”
Socialists are either “Champagne Charlies”, or inner city clueless “Up The Workers!” types, most of whom cant function without other peoples money.
Like wind farms, Socialism is a non viable activity.
QED
220
In the spirit of schadenfreude I’d like to suggest Klimafreude or Verlängerbarfreude 🙂
40
I suggest that “Blackout Bill” Shorten be sent to Germany for an update on how useless wind turbines really are when it comes to electricity generation. No wait: he only needs to go to South Australia for that but he has so indoctrinated himself he would be blind to the evidence.
100
Blinded by self interest.
50
Is it really self interest if the activity is irrational and ultimately self destructive? I think not. It is at best a short term whim fulfillment.
50
He needs to be sent to North korea to help out in the bread lines….the little chap will come back tail between legs after discovering that the glorious life in the “workers paradise”, isnt…..
People should listen to those who have actually lived it and escaped.
My unclue escaped communist hungary to come to Oz. He can tell you some pretty awful stories of what life is like under communism and why people just seem to always run away from it…
Common sense says that its awful, and yet Little Bill wants Australia to go down that path.
No.
30
I think that your “unclue “ is probably pretty “cluey “ really. An experience like that can really open one’s mind to the alternatives. Nice typo, I like it, I think it is a perfect description for our Malcolm.
10
Let me show you how the removal of subsidies has a major effect on wind power.
The only way they can make any profit from any form of power generation is to add it to the cost of generated electricity from the plant.
Keep in mind here that I am comparing one coal fired plant with just one wind plant, and the Nameplate is different, but the principle still remains.
Take a Wind Plant, and here I’ll make it a big one, say with a Nameplate of 500MW. It generates its electricity at a Capacity factor of 25%. (the current approximate average in Germany, and in reality, probably closer to 20% but I’ll go with the higher figure) So, this wind plant will generate around 1,095,750,000KWH, and I’ve put it in KWH because that is the unit that consumers pay for.
Now take the new two Unit brown coal HELE USC Neurath coal fired power plant with a Nameplate of 2200MW and a yearly power delivery of 15,874,550,000KWH, so almost 15.5 times as much power.
They can spread their profit margin over that 15 times more power, charging much less addition to the unit cost of generating the power than the wind plant can, and then on top of that, the coal fired plant has a minimum of double the lifespan, meaning they can spread that profit margin even a little thinner again.
So, if wind now has to compete on an even footing, then the coal fired power is (infinitely) cheaper than the wind power.
The only way they could turn a profit and have cheap competitively costed power was to have that cost per unit of generated power in place, and that is a part of the original contract, where the Government pays that cost per generated unit of power to the wind plant operators.
Without them, they cannot compete because coal fired power, generating huge amounts of power will always be able to spread their profit margin that little bit thinner than for wind.
So, at the proposal stage, wind plants got (sometimes up to and even more than) half of the original construction cost paid by Governments, both at a Federal and State level, as is the case even here in Australia, and also that added cost of X cents per KWH for every KWH of power that they generate. So, now only having to recover half their construction cost over the life of the plant, they can reduce the unit cost of their generated electricity (KWH) and with that subsidy, even lower again.
Can you now see why wind power seems to be cheaper than coal fired power.
Tony.
400
Anything that requires subsidies indicates that it can’t economically stand on its own two feet, or one pole as is the case with windmills.
140
Such as the Australian automotive manufacturing industry, well subsidised from the start of GMH late 1940s including government fleet sales to boost production numbers. But over time Australians chose imported vehicles 8 out of every 10 purchases. The taxpayer subsidies, and import duty, continued. The unions’ took advantage too and members churned out inferior products based on poor work practises and pushed operating costs higher and higher with well over award wages demands and way out of step with general manufacturing industry conditions.
In other words Australians were forced to pay for products that were inferior and far more expensive than imports before duty was levied.
And today we have the energy industry.
110
Why is Australia no longer a logical base of manufacturing, electricity cost is of course one important consideration, unFair Work Australia industrial relations legislation is another factor and there are many others including red and green tape regulations that cost businesses considerable amounts of compliance costs.
The Australian Financial Review summed it up about two years ago from memory, figures rounded off, that employment of a skilled worker in Australia after accounting for all operating costs of a business, on average, is A$600/day. In the US (before POTUS Trump) the cost is A$400/day.
100
You can add white goods, electrical goods, clothing, machinery and many other things to that list. Overseas competition most certainly has had an major impact, but unions haven’t been of any help either. The other thing that’s now being screwed is farming. With expanding suburbs, market gardens and other farms are rapidly disappearing, or forced to move or close, and relocation is being stymied by the NIMBY philosophy.
If this keeps up, Australia won’t be manufacturing or producing anything, everything will be imported. I wrote about it three years ago and things are not improving: https://australianimage.com.au/a-land-of-plenty/. It’s pretty much the same (small) crowd/community that objected to this: https://australianimage.com.au/blessing-of-the-bikes-2017-san-remo-part-1/ and saw it run out of town.
110
Like this?
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/zealots.htm
30
Even more: https://australianimage.com.au/the-nanny-state/. My absolute pet hate above everything else.
50
You can sometimes make a case for subsidies to allow a new business to set up (though it is rare.) The trouble is that once civil servants and government have given some money, they cannot stop themselves giving more Partly it is our fault – we moan and complain if the state wastes our money – and partly it is because there is no mechanism for “state failure” in the way there is for “market failure” (misnamed as ever).
Interestingly, I worked for GE for a while, which is like working for government. They wanted employees to be entrepreneurial and try new things, but then fired anybody that failed!
30
Bemused, point well made. Now just take a mind boggling look at this:
By Christos, you’ll get electric cars whether they’re any use, you like them, need them or can afford them or that they cannot fit any definition of sustainability you care to refer to.
YOU WILL DO AS WE SAY … Verdammt noch mal!
110
The big question is what has Weatherdill offered the Musketeer?
80
An opportunity to showcase his snake oil! Weatherdill was a patsy in the palm of his hand! He knew he was in deep do doo’s, and along comes the Musketeer, with, I’ll solve all your problems and make this pain go away!
90
Ha…one easy way to fix the noxious greenistas….give a Tesla to a rancher/farmer, tell them to cut the back off it, turn it into a ute/pickup.
Now load the ute with 20 hay bales or 5 sheep, and drive it through a creek crossing with water up to the bonnet/hood.
Hear that sizzling sound and white flash with loud bang…thats water giving you a reality check that the gummint just wont.
Now repeat process iwth a diesel and notice how the diesel does it again and again.
Now convert a 4 trailer road train into batteries…notice how the road train travels approx 1 km before running out of charge. Now repeat with deisel – notice how it can go 100s of miles before requiring refueling in very harsh conditions….
Sparks are good for the clueless inner-city lefties ( who shouldnt play with harp objects, they are kiddies after all…..) , but out in the real world, the green dream just doesnt work…now why is that?
70
Green dreams are made of this,
some of them want to use you,
some of them want to be used by you…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjlTKHFjG5g
10
Naychur’s the real live six ton elephant in the room isn’t it?
Like floods, droughts, famine, glaciers, antarctic ice, difficult
to overlook or expunge from the record. however tricksy mann might try
to fiddle data, remove data or splice it, Naychur ‘ll prevail.
70
Tony, it’s no wonder you’re never invited to writers’ festivals in the South Australian wine country. And as for COP 23 in the birthplace of Beethoven…
60
Beethoven was born in the Electorate of Cologne, Holy Roman Empire. 🙂
30
Tony, I think you may be stretching the numbers on Germany wind as % of nameplate
Here is the supply data as calculated by a rabid wind apostle
https://s19.postimg.org/4z7h09rlf/German_Windpower.png
As you can see, it reached 50% nameplate less than 5% of the time.
And for half the time, it was operating below about 15-16% capacity
81
If you ask the question,
“What percentage of nameplate can you guarantee to provide 80% of the time,
….. the answer is “LESS THAN 10%”
111
The German land based wind turbine industry electrical generation annually averages about a total of 18% of its total plated installed capacity of 45, 910 MW’s.
STATUS OF LAND‐BASED WIND ENERGY DEVELOPMENT IN GERMANY. [ 31 / 12 / 2016 ]
June 2016 saw Germany’s 27, 750 land based wind turbines drop below an average 10% capacity factor .
June, July, August, September, October, 2016 Germany’s land based turbines, all 27, 750 of them all generated less than an average 15% of their plated nominal capacity.
In November they reached about 24% of their plated nominal generating capacity.
——————
Re the GREAT LIE of the renewable’s industry in its claims of increasing employment.
Spanish researchers at the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid did the classic study on the effects on Spanish employment figures with the increasing subsidies for wind, solar, micro turbines [ lots of in Spain ] and etc renewables into the Spanish Grid way back in 2009.
.
Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources
.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: LESSONS FROM THE SPANISH RENEWABLES BUBBLE.
5. Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) “green jobs” policies it appears that Spain likely has created a surprisingly low number of jobs, two- thirds of which came in construction, fabrication and installation, one quarter in administrative positions, marketing and projects engineering, and just one out of ten jobs has been created at the more permanent level of actual operation and maintenance of the renewable sources of electricity.
.
6. This came at great financial cost as well as cost in terms of jobs destroyed elsewhere in the economy.
.
7. The study calculates that since 2000 Spain spent €571,138 to create each “green job”, including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind industry job.
.
8. The study calculates that the programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every “green job” created.
.
9. Principally, the high cost of electricity affects costs of production and employment levels in metallurgy, non-metallic mining and food processing, beverage and tobacco industries.
.
10. Each “green” megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro.
.
11. These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain’s approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources.
________________________________
To an Australian it seems truly astonishing that something like this study by Spanish researchers which has been existent since 2009 and lays out in detail the effects on employment and an economy of a high penetration of the unpredictable , low efficiency, very high priced renewable energy technologies seems to have been completely ignored perhaps deliberately so by the almost our entire political, bureaucratic and academic elitist caste.
Alternatively that same cabal of renewables pushers and pimps has deliberately ignored or worse are so totally ill read on the serious and debilitating economic and employment effects of a high penetration of renewables on economies wherever they have been encouraged by insanely expensive subsidies to proliferate across an economy.
I simply can not get my mind around the utter outright arrogance and then ultimate stupidity of our political caste in promoting renewable energy by forcing our populace to finance renewable energies in all their inherent obscene gross inefficiencies with massive and forced consumer provided subsidies when the effects of a high penetration of renewables on an economy and employment has been so extensively researched in Europe and the USA.
10
Really good stuff ROM! Thank you.
00
Andy,
it’s ironic in a way. Wind power in Germany is what kicked me off with a deeper understanding of wind power and its failures.
When I started doing all this, way back in 2008, and I was chasing down info on wind power, I was really puzzled that the actual output being delivered was indeed so low, when compared to Nameplate. Having never really done anything like this at all, I sort of just believed what we were being told, that (at that time) wind power was going to (outright) replace coal fired power. The more I looked, the more puzzled I became, because real data was showing me something I couldn’t believe. From there, it was a crash course in Capacity Factor (CF) and then chasing info from as many independent sources as I could possibly find.
The first time I posted about the intermittency of wind power, due to that CF, it was heart in the mouth stuff for me, because now it was in black and white, and I was even then still thinking I was somehow wrong.
I wasn’t.
Then I stumbled across something from Germany, and then it was a crash course in ‘Google Translate Page’ and when I saw that, I had an inkling now I was on the right track.
From that point forward, I contributed Posts about wind with confidence.
The first of those is at the link below, and it was in two parts, and the link to the second Posts a day later is at the bottom of this first Post. After you’ve read it, (if you want to that is) note the date at the top of the Post, October 2009. It’s amateur stuff because I was stll feeling my way around, but again, as I mentioned above, the facts are the facts.
Wind Power – Epic Fail
Tony
210
“note the date at the top of the Post, October 2009”
The real question is WHY is it taking so long for people to WAKE UP to the truth !!
60
Pretty sure most people don’t want to… it’s hard work!
00
Not following Tony. Why did you compare a 2200Mw coal plant with a 500Mw wind array? Do you mean that they are both nameplate 2200Mw and the wind is operating at 23%?
Also how do they compare in cost?
Also “the coal fired plant has a minimum of double the lifespan”. Why wouldn’t the coal fired plant have an infinite lifespan if regularly maintained and upgraded, like the axe with five new heads and four new handles. I expect a windmill is disposable. Perhaps that’s what they mean by renewable?
60
I am afraid that Tony reduced the problem ad absurdum. The problem of wind is not a nameplate capacity, but capital costs and maintenance costs.
10
Tony also ignores a major problem: Green Power is unreliable Part Time Power. Proponents of so-called “renewables” should be forced to travel only in horse drawn carriages, and on tall ships over oceans.
10
Wind Europe, the european wind industry trade body published a lobbying paper in June 2017 calling for new or continued subsidies at the same rate as new installations for end-of-life wind turbines and end-of-subsidy wind farms.
They state that without that new subsidy then end-of-life turbines cannot be replaced and end-of-subsidy wind farms will be forced to close down. Quite the opposite of the wind industry’s publicly-made claims that wind is now competitive with (or cheaper than) conventional power generation.
You can see the lobbying paper “Repowering and Lifetime Extension – Making the most of Europe’s wind energy resource”. here
70
Of course they could have said “replacing and repairing”, but this would not fit the framework and may displease the stakeholders. I can’t understand why these people can’t express themselves in plain english. Maybe I shouldn’t have had a glass of red before trying to decipher their post modern drivel.
50
I need more than a glass of red after reading claptrap like that ….. a large gin or brandy helps …
30
Tony:
I have being fiddling with a spreadsheet and some numbers for wind farms.
For a Capacity Factor of 30% (about the reported average for Australia) and a selling price of $92 a MWh ** the ‘farm’ pays for itself in 6.15 years which is longer than most commercial decisions would require, especially with the short life of a wind turbine. At $174 a MWh (i.e. including the RET subsidy) the payback time reduces to 2 years and 8 months, a much more profitable chance.
If the capital cost dropped as low as $780 (which would have to include installation costs of roughly a third) then the payback times are 4.4 years and 2 years.
For a Capacity Factor of 18% (which is the average for German wind turbines) and a selling price of $92 then payback time is over 10 years so quite uncommercial. It would take extremely high selling prices and low construction costs to make an installation at this CF even a marginal commercial decision.
**(and running costs of $24 per MWh as per Infigen, and a capital cost of $1100 per nominal MW capacity.)
So, while construction costs have dropped somewhat, the turbine operators are forcing the wholesale selling price down as they try to force more and more output onto the grids. They are absolutely dependent on the (subsidy) payments loaded onto the retail price and if that is reduced or eliminated then those turbines are going to be abandoned.
40
Profit is not simply a bit extra charged above cost. It is the difference between the cost to produce by a willing seller and the price paid by a willing buyer. If there is no profit, there is no production and no future production.
For example, if you plant 100 pounds of seed potatoes. Then you harvest only 100 pounds of potatoes at the end of the growing season. You clearly have produced no potatoes. Worse, you didn’t even produce the cost to plant, cultivate, and harvest. Worse still, you didn’t even cover the cost to live during the process. In fact, you lost big time.
On the other hand, had you harvested 300 pounds of potatoes, ate 100 pounds of stored food potatoes while producing them, and sold 100 pounds of potatoes you actually produced something and earned a profit.
NOTE: subsidies are not profit, it is wealth transferred from the producer of the wealth to those who did not earn it and who used the force of government to do it. That it was voted for by the majority of voters does not change the fundamental fact that it was theft.
Profit is earned by exchanging a value you produced for the value produced by someone else. Each party in the trade values what he received more than the value he gave. Thus both parties earned a profit. The underlying mechanism is division of labor (mental and physical) such that each can produce at a lower cost what they do best.
You must look at what actually happens rather than accepting the distorted verbal misdirections offered by those interested only in taking.
60
Subsidies for renewable power are enforced wealth transfer from the poorest to the richest.
80
I see that a 25 year old offshore wind farm in Denmark – Vindeby – is being decommissioned. There is a very interesting analysis (post mortem) of its performance and a comparison of it with coal and gas generators at GWPF. Not good news for wind I’m afraid (not). See the story here: https://www.thegwpf.com/worlds-first-offshore-wind-farm-retires-a-post-mortem/
00
Here’s an idea!
All the money wasted on “Wind Energy Jobs”, could be put into “Coal (or Nuke) Energy Jobs”.
Or, All the money wasted by energy customers on inflated prices, propping up this inefficient industry, could be spent on goods and services that people want, and the jobs to provide them.
Do these people listen to themselves?
“Waaaahhh, removing subsidies will remove subsidised jobs.”
80
I’m not sure what the problem is. Everyone knows renewables are now as cost effective as those outdated polluting technologies. Based on this knowledge, my modelling shows renewables going from strength to strength. Anyone who questions this must be a denier. 😉
53
On the principle of energy in must equal energy out + losses, renewables are a downhill journey. All the subsidies in the World simply mess with the gradient, while the destination remains the same. In the end there will be insufficient energy and money in the World to build new windmills and photovoltaics, do great industry, prosperity and growth.
Ironically, in some ways? Sure is. This idea resembles greenhouse theory and the delay in departure of ‘heat’. Do we cook ourselves to oblivion or harness all the extra heat for a free ride?
Not a chance. Neither. Not even with a millennium of Paris’ one after the other.
30
NB @ # 11
Which Climate model are you using this time?
🙂
00
“…half to three quarters of the industry may disappear.”
Well, that just leaves half to one quarter yet to dispose of. But why dawdle? The Germans have been expanding coal for years, even while Angela was singing her green serenades for the Guardian-perusing classes.
Germany was able to rebuild after war. It will have to rebuild after Big Green. (Might help if it ditches its crummy empire. Those captive markets won’t be worth all the Mediterranean lead in the saddlebags as customers become beggars. And recent peer-reviewed studies have shown you can only rob taxpayers to save lenders about fifty times before taxpayers start to notice.)
50
Interesting development. 🙂
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/17/60-scientists-call-for-epa-endangerment-finding-to-be-reversed/
71
There is nothing wrong with renewables if you are OK with unreliable
expensive power . The public has paid dearly for this politically correct exercise
to control the earth’s temperature . Unfortunately the public will probably pay
when the subsidy industry flames out too .
Who is going to pay to remove the bankrupt bird blenders from the landscape ?
Not the guys pounding back umbrella drinks in Maui that’s for sure .
80
Funny how the lefties conveniently ignore videos like this that you’d think they’d make a huge squawk about.
Large bird (vulture?) killed by wind turbine, warning disturbing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVz5hdAMGU
41
Australia must be the most backward looking nation on the planet. We have so many politicians and much of the MSM still telling everyone that we must move to renewables with great haste yet all other nations are taking a cautious and practical approach by building mixed power generation solutions that include nuclear, coal and renewables since it’s the ONLY way to provide reliable electricity at minimal cost. To do otherwise, like we are, is committing not only economic suicide but tantamount to a direct attack on our nation, which under any other circumstances would be considered and treated as a very serious crime.
90
The red flag will go up when energy poverty starts to bite, huge swathes of the lower middle class falling below the poverty line. We are talking about hard working Australians depending on the bank of mum and dad to survive.
The pseudo Marxist consortium of politicians and corrupt media need to be brought into line, but my crystal ball is foggy on this and I was wondering if you can visualise Australia in 2020?
71
el gordo FYI
Chiefio on DIY, wages, taxes etc
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/a-fence-a-brew-a-diy-economy-story/
20
Wages in the US and Australia have stagnated, except for those in the upper middle class. This disparity produced Trump and may cause political upheaval down under.
40
Howdy El G. The old site is in its death throes. It gets the traffic it deserves.
30
Hang around here Tony, we are on the right side of history and Jo has attracted an international audience.
By coincidence I’m off to Melbourne today (a wedding) and I’ll be there for a few days, it would be nice to meet up and talk paleohistory.
20
The problem is that the death of Australia due to high electricity prices will be long and drawn out because more electricity is becoming available to the consumer due to the shut down of industry.
40
It’s very telling that our overseas gas and coal customers can supply far cheaper energy than than any Australian States, despite significant additional transport and handling costs.
20
While back in that model windmill province of Canada, Ontario, Winnie the Poo is busy with the d.u.n.g shovel burying the bloody contrarian evidence of her “The Wind is free in the willows” project in the political basement of failed ideas….
https://globalnews.ca/news/3809116/ontario-hydro-audit-rising-cost/
20
Those idiots. I wondered where they were getting the money to reduce my bill. I knew they weren’t addressing the root causes, so it had to be some kind of funny money. I’m sure my kids will love paying that back with lots of interest…
00
Yes it is clear that the writing is on the wall as far as so called renewables is concerned.
However there is one inescapable truism. Irrespective of whether we face warming or cooling, the essential factor in surviving comfortably, is a supply of abundant, reliable and affordable electrical energy.
60
I guess we can be thankful that Germany and some other Euro nations have now shown that wind and reliable electricity don’t mix. Maybe Malcolm can stop the subsidies before 2020.
Any 2nd hand market for used wind towers?
30
Contracts, lawyers, exploitation of politician stupidity.
30
They may have shown that renewable energy and reliable energy are an oxymoron and incompatible BUT there is little sign that this truism is yet sinking into or making any impact on political brains.
Civil services are full of people who were green-washed at school and university and they ‘advise’ politicians based on the latest green blob propaganda they have swallowed and can’t wait to regurgitate into ‘policy’
30
Not sure why this is in moderation ?
10
Is it the 5 letters after oxy in the word ‘oxymor0n’?
20
Probably. I was in moderation once for that! Or an equivalent word anyway.
00
Coal fired power stations lowest cost electricity, some emissions, no threat.
Nuclear power stations higher cost electricity, storage of fuel depleted Uranium.
So called renewables: Manufacturing emissions exceed operating emissions reduced. Disposal emissions plus manufacturing emissions means, going backwards.
50
the CAGW “renewables” mob are putting the hit on China. Reuters leaves it for the reader to work out the extra cost of raising the target for non-fossil fuel from 15% to 26% (setting aside how sincere China is about the 15% target in the first place):
17 Oct: Thomson Reuters Foundation: China needs tougher clean fuel targets to meet Paris climate pact: report
Reporting by Muyu Xu and Josephine Mason; Editing by Tom Hogue
China will have to launch more ambitious renewable energy and non-fossil fuel targets and ramp up efforts to enforce them to avoid missing global climate accord requirements, two government think tanks said on Monday.
China’s capacity for renewable energy, including hydro, wind and solar, will significantly exceed Beijing’s own target set in the five-year plan to 2020, according to the report jointly issued by China National Renewable Energy Centre (CNREC) and the Energy Research Institute of Academy of Macroeconomic Research.
The world’s top energy consumer pledged to install 340 gigawatts (GW) of hydropower capacity, 210 GW of wind and 110 GW solar by 2020 in the five-year plan.
But to meet commitments agreed to in 2015 in the Paris global pact to fight climate change, China should raise its target for non-fossil fuel to 26 percent of its total energy mix from a current target of 15 percent by 2020, the report said.
“The Paris agreement of reducing the global temperature by two degrees puts pressure on the short-term energy transition from coal and oil to non-fossil fuels,” said Wang Zhongying, deputy director general at CNREC…
Still, getting stranded clean power in the west to urban users has been a major headache for the government as Beijing seeks wean the nation off coal, the nation’s favorite fuel.
An official at the National Energy Administration said at the conference on Monday he reckons the country will solve the problem of wasted energy by 2020…
Chinese authorities have been striving to improve energy efficiency and upgrade energy infrastructure by introducing measures including ***national carbon trade, green certificates and promoting energy storage systems.
“(But) to ensure compliance with the Paris agreement, strong support to renewable energy deployment is needed on both the national and local levels,” said Wang.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-energy-renewables-fuel/china-needs-tougher-clean-fuel-targets-to-meet-paris-climate-pact-report-idUSKBN1CL187?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews
good luck with that.
***btw “national carbon trade” isn’t doing well:
17 Oct: CarbonPulse: ANALYSIS: China’s CO2 markets ignore fundamentals as govt intervention drives prices
China’s pilot emissions trading schemes have ignored energy and commodity fundamentals as regulatory intervention has been the chief price driver, highlighting a major challenge to turn the national cap-and-trade programme into an effective mechanism.
10
pat:
The Chinese saw through the AGW scam years ago. They have used the installation of renewables as
1. a publicity stunt for gullible westerners
2. a way of introducing some electricity to remote areas before the grid can built to them.
3. a way of subsiding turbine and PV panel manufacturers (with economy of scale) so they can grab the overseas market.
There is no way they are going to raise the amount of unreliable generation just because some AGW believers are getting frantic as the scam disappears down the gurgler.
80
China’s Paris commitment is to Double their CO2 emissions by 2030 – eco-warriors, COP and MSM keep very, very quiet about that as they praise China as a global leader in emission reductions.
Snake Oil anyone ?
90
Slightly off topic!
In South Australia, Jay is buying the Giant Tesla Musk 100MW battery?
The wind farm next door is going to fill it up so the battery can then be a back up!
The Wind Mills will automatically gain Renewable Energy Certificates!
What worries me is the Battery also going to claim Renewable Energy certificates?
Will this be the Double Dipping of the Year?
60
I don’t think batteries are eligible BUT does it matter? Taxpayers in SA are still forking out an undisclosed amount but thought to be at least $100 million to buy Musk’s Big Battery, the principal purpose of which will be to act as a tourist attraction representing the failure of critical thinking and Leftist pagan idolatry of Gaia / Γαῖα and of course enriching Musk personally using his business model of fooling illiterate and stupid Leftist politicians into transferring large amounts of victim-taxpayer’s money to his accounts.
91
Dave:
don’t forget the extra cost of the advertising program (funded by the public) about how “we are seizing control of our electricity system”.
So far this has publically meant “the world’s biggest battery” (1), a supposedly on/off decision to install lots of diesel generators (2) and the HUGE solar heat tower near Pt. Augusta (3).
(1) it won’t be.
(2) According to the electrician who installed my generator these diesel units are being installed but have only been hired for a year or more. The 9 Open Cycle Gas Turbines which replaced the prevvious thought bubble (and which will burn diesel) will be temporarily installed some time after the election, then moved to permanent homes sometime in the future.
(3) This is the biggest lie of them all. As Tony has pointed out these things depend on the 5 hours when the sun is shining high in the sky to generate the storage. Effectively 70MW seems possible if they only operate for the morning and evening peak hours, otherwise if they are run 24 hours a day then around 36MW average output with 3 months shut down in winter.
40
Teslas storage battery prices are well known. Even Wiki has them recorded at us$400,000 /MWh installed.
So for SAs 129MWh BFB, that sums up to about us$50 million….say Au$60 million.
But also, Musk offered to “share” that cost as this will be the first such installation with a high power output (100 MW)……so SA may end up with a bargain at a mere $30 million. ?
30
Chad:
And who will be saddled with the clean up costs? Not Elon Musk nor our beloved Premier (now at 21% preferred choice).
20
Clean up cost ?..really ?
Im not supporting this battery idea, but of all the angles to pick, you probably found the weakest.
This isnt some leaky collection of lead acid car batteries, or a mountain of used Ever Ready’s…if/when they fail as a grid buffer, they can be repurposed as a great emergency back up packs for a few remote community hospitals etc.
Worst case, Tesla has a complete recycling process for these batteries.
OR..currently, used/salvaged EV lithium packs sell for big money on Ebay !!
…if you want to worry about clean up, i would be thinking of that 30,000 tons of molten salt JW is planning for SA. ,
10
Disposal comments noted.
The molten salt is usually an eutectic mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate. Almost usably as fertiliser although that load of sodium ion wouldn’t be that welcome.
00
Interesting observation Dave! I wonder if this can be confirmed/denied?
40
The worlds biggest battery.
Unfortunately, I could not find the cost of this monster.
http://www.windpowerengineering.com/electrical/battery-stores-40-mw-for-ankorage-emergencies/
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z43q49/behold-the-worlds-largest-battery
31
that Fairbanks battery install is unique, but much superseded now in technology and capacity.
More recent battery farms include the 80 MWh Miraloma Tesla install in California..
https://electrek.co/2017/01/23/tesla-mira-loma-powerpack-station-southern-california-edison/
and the 52MWh system in Kauai , Hawaii together with a solar farm.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/8/14854858/tesla-solar-hawaii-kauai-kiuc-powerpack-battery-generator
you can estimate the costs at us$400,000 per MWh installed.
overall, none of these huge , expensive batteries will provide any meaningful cover for a failed power supply, but they do provide a fill in for switching over to other generation sources, and most critically they can provide frequency stabilization for the grid , which is a primary cause of blackouts when a generator has to be taken off line to protect itself from grid frequency changes.
10
When the battery gets used for the first time it’ll explode in a fireball. The taxpayer will then foot the clean up bill as well.
00
Its attitudes like yours that will prevent us ever seeing a Nuclear solution to this mess we are headed for.
Show me one example og a modern utility battery farm exploding ?
00
O/T
Just heard a sickening interview on ABC-RN Radio and the warmist said Turnbull’s supposed restrictions on unreliables will cause electricity prices to go up (because we all know unreliables are much cheaper and better than evil polluting coal). I had to turn it off. One moron “interviewing” another moron.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/drive/richard-di-natale-on-energy/9062250
41
The carpetbagger life didn’t choose them, they chose the carpetbagger life.
30
“Part Time Power ”
http://pickeringpost.com/story/part-time-power-/7683
30
Five hours later and that pesky wind still won’t cooperate with the two failed communist states , almost makes me want to shed a tear ! It’s ok I’ll turn the pool pump the aircons and the shed lights off soon I promise .
20
In the same week we have seen Turnbull belittle Abbott’s speech and then implement one of the key points.
The disgusting performance of Turnbull as PM is being cunningly concealed by the press. Why?
He is a disgrace.
90
Because he’s a lefty.
The media always protects its own.
And yes. He is a disgrace.
As is the left-wing media.
50
“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness.”
( Prov 26:11 )
50
Subsidies are NOT profit because they are not earned by voluntary trade between buyer and seller of their OWNED value. They are one way legalized theft – a transfer of wealth from its creator to a parasite by means of government force.
Note: a reduction in taxes is not a subsidy. It is the government not taking quite as much wealth from its producer by force – a reduction in theft.
70
IPCC physics has been fraudulent since 1976. The 33 K GHE claim is false, based on fake physics buried in the text of R D Cess 1976, backed up in the same year by fake ‘negative convection’ in GISS 2d modelling, admitted by Hansen to an AIP interviewer 25 years later.
The real physics is defined by self-absorption of atmospheric GHG molecules. The fully self-absorbed GHGs near the surface turn off about 60% of surface radiant exitance because of the equal IR density of states across the boundary. That transfers each band’s IR emitting surface to be at whatever altitude loses self-absorption, about 20 km for CO2 15 micron. There is no atmospheric heating from surface IR.
Furthermore, subject to constant tsi, there can be no GHG warming of the surface; the temperature is held constant by negative feedback from the very strong dependence of partial self absorption by 16-23 micron water vapour GHG bands. plus other feedbacks including 15% more green Earth.
For 40 years we have had a group of scientists connected with various state organisations who have been pushing the GHG warming concept to trace [CO2] variation, when it doesn’t exist. The true PID control system is subtle with new physics including enhanced extinction factor for rain clouds missed by van der Hulst and Hansen in the late 1960.
This is a new phlogiston: that theory collapsed in 3 years; same for CESS’ claims, which no professional accepts, no matter the insults of those who have ridden the grant gravy train for 40 years and made terrible mistakes. E.g., Goody and Yung’s bidirectional photon diffusion theory failed to understand that Planck 1913 assumed a vacuum and a pyrgeometer signal, >95% from a theoretical calculation of internal reference S-B emission, is a radiant exitance, not an energy flux.
The only net IR radiant exitance is the atmospheric window, which cannot heat the atmosphere, so goes to space. Cosmic microwave background offsets a tiny part of the AW signal. There is an oscillation of surface exitance about the mean due to local surface air radiant excitation fluctuations. NASA knows this but couldn’t measure it, so model it.
20
very lengthy – and fascinating – read all:
18 Oct: Reuters: COLUMN-Fuel security and power generation in the United States:
by John Kemp
“The resiliency of the nation’s electric grid is threatened by the premature retirements of power plants that can withstand major fuel supply disruptions caused by natural or man-made disasters,” the U.S. Department of Energy warned last week.
Fuel security is the crux of the argument made by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry in proposing a new grid resiliency pricing rule to save coal-fired and nuclear power plants from closure.
“Fuel-secure resources are indispensable for the reliability and resiliency of our electric grid,” the Department of Energy wrote in its justification for the proposed rule, which was gazetted in the Federal Register on Oct. 10.
Gas-fired power plants can generate large amounts of electricity and provide crucial reliability services to the grid, including frequency regulation, reactive power and voltage support, operating reserves and black start.
In most respects, gas-fired power plants, including highly efficient combined-cycle units, can provide generation and ancillary services more cheaply and flexibly than their coal-fired and nuclear counterparts.
But unlike coal-fired and nuclear power plants, gas-fired generators do not typically store large amounts of fuel on site, which makes them vulnerable to any disruption of their supply chain…
The growing number of gas-fired power plants on the grid has increased the interdependency between the gas and electricity systems.
“Growing reliance on natural gas continues to raise reliability concerns,” the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) wrote in a synopsis of reliability issues prepared for the energy secretary…
The fear is that growing interdependency might leave regulators with a choice between keeping the lights on and keeping homes warm during the darkest and coldest days of winter…
“During the polar vortex, the cold weather also increased demand for natural gas, which resulted in a significant amount of gas-fired generation being unavailable,” NERC wrote in a post-event study…
Gas-fired generators accounted for 55 percent of forced outages during the vortex, even though they represented only 40 percent of capacity in the impacted areas.
By contrast, coal-fired units accounted for 26 percent of outages and 31 percent of capacity, while nuclear generators suffered 3 percent of the outages but provided 12 percent of capacity…
But it is not the only time that unusually cold weather has disrupted power generation in the eastern United States.
For example, there were major cold weather incidents in Texas in 1983, 1989, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2011, according to a joint report prepared for NERC and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Cold weather events of 1989 and 2011 were particularly severe, causing widespread power outages with rolling blackouts…
“In general terms, there is no free market in the energy industry,” Perry has stated repeatedly when asked to defend his proposed grid rule.
Consultants from IHS Market have argued the electricity market is already so distorted by government interventions, particularly in favour of renewables, that price signals are not working properly…
https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-electricity-kemp/column-fuel-security-and-power-generation-in-the-united-states-kemp-idINL8N1MS60S
30
underfunded maintenance, huh?
Shocking, that.
Of a par with underfunded pensions, unfilled rainy day funds,
and unfillable potholes.
There is another industry that lives high in the hog we can shut down…
the one that makes forecasts for government.
Like, ridership for mass transit, economic impact for stadiums, jobs created by raising, or lowering taxes,
improvements in reading by paying teachers more, or, in this case, the glory of wind power.
Where else can you make an upper class income for being wildly wrong every. single. time.
70
Work for BoM?
81
University?
20
The problem is not an end to subsidies, the problem, is a lack of battery storage which more than doubles the cost of wind farm electric power.
Germany has reach the hard engineering limit of wind and solar. Germany has installed wind and solar that is 100% of base German power load for the peak nameplate rating of the wind and solar installation. The problem is German wind and solar installation runs at less than 20% average efficiency.
German wind and solar total power output varies from 100% of grid output to close to zero. Germany has 100% natural gas/coal back-up to supply the 80% of power when the wind does not blow and the sun is not shining.
It is cheaper to pay wind farms to not produce electricity when there is no demand for electricity than to install battery systems. Installing more wind farms will result in more wind farms being payed to not produce electricity which will result in no increase in ‘green’ energy.
German CO2 ‘savings’ do not include the energy input required to build, install, maintain, and replace wind and solar systems and does not include the energy loss to use single cycle natural gas turbines that can be turned on/off/on/off/on/off as compared to the 20% more efficient combined cycle (produce steam from the waste heat from the first pass turbines) natural gas power plants that take 10 hours to start and hence cannot be turned on/off/on/off/on/off multiple times per day in respond to changes in wind speed.
Comment: The EU is also cutting down forests to burn in power plants which results in also no net reduction in CO2 emissions. This is how EU get their phony quoted ‘renewable’ energy above 10%.
http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/04/germanys-energiewende-leading-to-suicide-by-cannibalism-huge-oversupply-risks-destabilization/#sthash.8tE9YRDj.PSllYaQF.dpbs
50
“MATT CANAVAN: IN DEFENCE OF SCEPTICS”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/matt-canavan-in-defence-of-sceptics/news-story/43737b739c0a1de5c9238a0c8a93a8ae
20
I’m positive I heard him being interviewed yesterday and he was going on about the science is in and we have a consensus etc etc .
Just pick a side for $&$&s sake .
00
BRAD NORINGTON
GetUp! has appointed two new directors with strong Labor ties, fuelling claims that the group is a party ‘front’.
30
I thought getup was founded by Labor and the unions Dennis .
20
Bill Shorten founded GetUp using union membership monies, and one foreign donor is US billionaire George Soros.
30
The ties that bind Get Up to Labor, ‘ The Australian’ 12 August 2017.
Bill Shorten founding Board Director and big donor of Union Funds,
Lachlan Harris, founding Staff Member and former Media Adviser to
Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd, Phil Ireland, Union director chairman
Get Up – and others.
20
8:25AMMICHAELIA CASH
Union bosses frequently rail against the “big end of town”. In truth, they are the big end of town.
31
If “renewable” energy was ever viable in a free market and was as good as claimed (cheaper, free etc.) the marketplace would have embraced it, investors would have flocked to it and it would never had needed the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the form of so-called subsidies or whatever other term is used to describe them.
As I always say it is never a good business model to rely on subsidies or other protections from the free market so there is no need to feel sympathy for those greedy anti-free-market investors when they lose after the Green Dream collapses.
*Green Dream is also the colloquial name for the pentobarbital euthanising solution used by vets (and also for humans in the Netherlands).
51
The failure of ‘consensus’ science
30
“‘Way to go, Greenies’”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/18/way-to-go-greenies/
Green B.L.O.B. in action
21
Are there any figures that let you convert the cost of coal per ton to cost of kWh of electricity produced? Obviously they would be fairly rough but I think it would be interesting to convert the cost of exported Australian coal into what foreign customers pay for electricity produced with it.
11
18 Oct: Reuters: Nina Chestney: EBRD board approves $500 mln loan for TANAP gas pipeline project
(Additional reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel in Brussels; Editing by Dale Hudson)
The board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has approved a $500 million loan for the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), the largest part of a $40 billion project to bring new gas supplies to Europe…
The so-called Southern Gas Corridor is expected to bring around 16 billion cubic metres per year to Europe by 2020 from the Shah Deniz 2 field in Azerbaijan via TANAP through Turkey, the South Caucasus pipeline extension through Georgia and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to Greece, Albania and Italy.
Shah Deniz 2 is one of the world’s largest gas fields and is developed by a BP-led consortium…
The World Bank has committed $800 million of financing and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has committed $600 million…
The project is progressing on time, said Eric Rasmussen, director of natural resources at the London-based EBRD.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is also considering $2 billion of financing for TANAP, but its final decision is not expected until next month, Rasmussen said…
Separately, the EBRD and the EIB are also considering loans for TAP…
“Hopefully we will go to the board (with that) by the end of Q1 next year,” said Nandita Parshad, the EBRD’s managing director of energy and natural resources.
An EIB decision on TAP is not expected “for a number of months”, an EIB spokesman said…
https://uk.reuters.com/article/europe-gas-ebrd/ebrd-board-approves-500-mln-loan-for-tanap-gas-pipeline-project-idUKL8N1MR4YS
00
“curtailment dropped 7 percentage points”! from what, Reuters?
16 Oct: Reuters: UPDATE 2-China can solve wasted renewable energy problem by 2020 – NEA
By Muyu Xu and Josephine Mason
* Stranded solar, wind a major challenge for Beijing
* China seeking to wean nation of coal, its favourite fuel
* Govt should boost use of small-scale wind projects -NEA official (Adding details)
China expects to solve the problem of renewable energy going to waste by 2020, an official at the National Energy Administration (NEA) said on Monday, as the government takes aim at one of the biggest challenges in its efforts to promote clean energy.
Liang Zhipeng, deputy director of the NEA’s new energy and renewable energy department, also said at a conference that the agency expects the wind sector to wean itself off government subsidies by 2022.
Wind power is often wasted as there is not enough transmission capacity to handle all the electricity generated, resulting in curtailments. But in the first three quarters of this year, curtailment dropped 7 percentage points, he said.
Getting stranded power in the west to urban users in the world’s top energy consumer has been a major headache for the government…
To reduce dependency on subsidies, more technology innovation and an improvement in government policy are required, Liang said. He did not give details…
http://af.reuters.com/article/africaTech/idAFL4N1MR2OY
00
News spreading
“VICTORIA NOW NEEDS TO IMPORT ELECTRICITY, WITH HAZELWOOD GONE”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/victoria-now-needs-to-import-electricity-with-hazelwood-gone/news-story/38aa4cc471e300feedeb51d89b413649
30
Going, going, going ………..
40
Anyone who watches the dash board will know the juggling that the AEMO does to keep power to the eastern states .
Since temps have started to rise it’s becoming more apparent that once the unreliables suffer from low wind or low light we struggle , but as the demand for electricity goes up we also struggle regardless.
We in Victoriastan rely more and more on outside influences to keep the lights on and if just one happens to fail such as the basslink cable we are going to be in trouble as well as SA .
00
18 Oct: DailyTelegraph: Audit makes mockery of E10’s lower emission claims
KYLAR LOUSSIKIAN, EXCLUSIVE
LOWER greenhouse gas emissions from supposedly environmentally friendly E10 petrol have never been verified by official testing in NSW.
A Daily Telegraph investigation has found auditors of government-approved monopoly supplier of ethanol fuel Manildra are hired by the company and simply accept its assurances about E10 emissions.
A “commercial-in-confidence” Manildra audit report also shows “there is no legislative requirement in Australia for biofuel producers to have lower (greenhouse gas) emissions than fossil fuel derived petrol and diesel”.
The situation has raised concerns in the Department of Fair Trading about the green-friendly claims by Manildra — a major political donor to both the Coalition and ALP — about E10 which is mandated for sale at NSW petrol stations.
In briefings provided in March last year to then Fair Trading Minister Victor Dominello, Manildra said E10 “delivers a 30 per cent reduction of greenhouse gases and other harmful exhaust emissions”.
Fair Trading bureaucrats visited Manildra’s plant in June to check the claim.
A chain of internal emails show Fair Trading staff — including the director of consumer protection — were concerned auditors “do not do anything to confirm or deny the information given to them by the company concerned”.
“The auditor makes it quite clear that he has issued the certificate based on information supplied by Manildra,” Fair Trading’s director of consumer protection Michael Cooper wrote.
Senior policy officer Sonia Thompson said in an email to Mr Cooper: “My feeling would be that we don’t allow businesses to self-verify compliance where there is an external certification process as part of the standard.”
Manildra is required by law to be certified by the Geneva-based Roundtable On Sustainable Biomaterials. But its greenhouse gas emission standards for ethanol fuel are not enforced by law in Australia…ETC
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/audit-makes-mockery-of-e10s-lower-emission-claims/news-story/443e2c441764105cdc202300f9323adf
00
“swift growth”? “noteworthy” and “significant”?
18 Oct: Guardian: Adam Vaughan: Shell to open electric vehicle charging points at UK petrol stations
Oil firm’s first step into UK electric car sector allows drivers to rapid charge battery at handful of forecourts from this week
Drivers will be able to recharge 80% of their battery in half an hour at forecourts in London, Surrey and Derby from this week, with a total of 10 service stations to be equipped with rapid chargers by the end of the year…
The move marks the Shell’s first step into the UK electric car sector and comes days after the Anglo-Dutch oil company bought NewMotion, a Dutch firm with 30,000 private charging points at homes and offices in Europe…
Shell said the forays into charging were spurred by the swift growth in battery-powered cars, which now number more than 115,000 in the UK, up from almost zero a decade ago…
BOLD SUB-HEADING: There are now more than 115,000 electric cars in the UK…
Shell acknowledged it was taking baby steps into the market, with just 10 out of its 1,000 fuelling stations in the UK adding charging points to begin with…
The company is also catering for the tiny number of hydrogen cars on UK roads – believed to number as few as 50 – and this year installed a hydrogen pump at its Cobham services on the M25. Shell will have three stations with hydrogen refuelling by the end of the year.
With rapid electric charging points typically costing $30,000-$50,000 (£22,700-£38,000) each, the 10 electric charging stations mark a minuscule fraction of the $25bn Shell spends on oil each year.
But industry watchers said the infrastructure and recent acquisition were noteworthy…
Colin McKerracher, an analyst at ***Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “I think it is significant that a major oil company is investing in charging infrastructure and that they bought NewMotion…
Greenpeace, which has previously protested at Shell’s UK service stations over its oil drilling plans, said the country needed more charging points…
Branded Shell Recharge, the charging points will cost a discounted 25p per kilowatt hour of power until next June, when the price will revert to its normal level of 49p per kWh.
At the normal price, that means recharging a Nissan Leaf from virtually flat to a full charge would cost nearly £20, while a top-end Tesla Model S would cost almost £50…
Shell said that in a handful of cases it paid for upgrades to the local energy grid, to make it capable of handling the rapid charging points…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/18/shell-to-open-electric-vehicle-charging-points-at-uk-petrol-stations
***Bloomberg’s own rave didn’t bother to mention the “minor” detail that it would take half an hour to recharge 80% of the battery:
18 Oct: Bloomberg: You Can Now Charge Electric Cars at Shell in the U.K.
By Jess Shankleman
Rapid charging will be offered at 10 stations by end of year
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/shell-s-u-k-gasoline-stations-start-charging-for-electric-cars
00
18 Oct: Guardian: John Abraham: CliFi – A new way to talk about climate change
If you’re not familiar with the new genre of climate fiction, you might be soon.
What makes a Cli-Fi novel good? Well in my opinion, it has to have some real science in it. And it has to get the science right…
As I write this, we are getting a steady stream of stories out of Puerto Rico the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria. It is hard to imagine the devastation, what life is like without electricity, food, or water. What is life like on an island of 3 million people, each fending for themselves, just trying to survive…
If you find something you like that I didn’t mention, please send it to me.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/oct/18/clifi-a-new-way-to-talk-about-climate-change
add this one, Abraham:
17 Oct: PittsburghLive: Wes Venteicher: Al Gore brings global warming message to Pittsburgh, warns of its effect on Pennsylvania
Climate change is impacting life in Pennsylvania, and its effects will become increasingly obvious as the century progresses, former vice president Al Gore told a room of 1,300 people at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.
Gore tucked state-specific stats into a two-hour presentation peppered with images of melting roads, collapsing glaciers, flooded cities and other dramatic weather events scientists have linked to climate change.
The presentation was part of a Climate Reality Leadership Corps meeting…
Pittsburgh, which recorded five so-called “excessive heat events” per year from 1975 to 1995, could experience 45 of them per year between 2020 and 2029, Gore said, and even more toward the end of the century…
Much of the heat trapped in the atmosphere makes its way into the oceans, he said. Cool water in the Gulf of Mexico that had weakened hurricanes approaching the United States has warmed, making it more likely that stronger storms will make landfall, he said…
and this one:
17 Oct: Reuters: Alister Doyle: Fiji urges “absolute dedication” to toughest climate target
OSLO: Fiji is hosting a preparatory meeting of delegates before the Nov. 6-17 talks in Bonn, Germany, where environment ministers from around the world will work on a set of international guidelines for the Paris accord.
“We can no longer ignore this (climate) crisis,” Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said in an address to the delegates…
“It’s hard to find any part of the world that is unaffected” by a changing climate, he said, listing Atlantic storms such as Ophelia battering Ireland, wildfires in California, Portugal and Spain, and floods in Nigeria, India and Bangladesh…
Many scientists say that the 1.5 degree goal is fast slipping out of reach because of insufficient action by almost all governments to rein in climate change…
In Oslo, Hoesung Lee, head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists which is studying the 1.5C goal, declined to say whether early drafts indicated it was still feasible.
“The conclusion will be available one year from now… we should be patient,” he told reporters in Oslo after a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
Solberg said the Paris temperature targets had to be built into wider development goals. “We have to make sure that we do have job creation, fight poverty at the same time,” she said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-fiji/fiji-urges-absolute-dedication-to-toughest-climate-target-idUSKBN1CM1GN
00
remember this one which upset the “climate change community”!?
Wikipedia: “The Uninhabitable Earth” is a New York magazine article by American journalist David Wallace-Wells published on July 9, 2017. The long-form article depicts a pessimistic worst-case scenario of what might happen in the near-future due to global warming…
The story received immediate criticism from the climate change community along two fronts: the piece is too pessimistic; or it contains some factual errors…
The major criticism is that David Wallace-Wells was trying to scare people…
well, Wallace-Wells has doubled down…and this is just the first para!
11 Oct: New York Mag: David Wallace-Wells: This Isn’t ‘the New Normal’ for Climate Change — That Will Be Worse
It’s been a terrifying season for what we used to call natural disasters. For the first time in recorded history, three hurricanes arose simultaneously in the Caribbean. Harvey and Irma ravaged a series of islands then turned north and hit the U.S. mainland. Days later came Maria, the third storm this season to register among the top-four most devastating hurricanes in dollar terms to ever make landfall in the U.S. (Maria seems likely to be remembered as among the worst humanitarian disasters America has ever seen, with 40 percent of Puerto Rico still without running water, power out for likely six months, and native agriculture devastated for a full year.) For years, we’ve conceived of climate change in terms of sea level, meaning it was often possible to believe its devastating impacts would be felt mostly by those living elsewhere, on the coasts; extreme weather seems poised to break that delusion, beginning with hurricanes. And then the unprecedented California wildfires broke out over the weekend, fueled by the Diablo Winds, killing 17 already and burning through 115,000 acres across several counties by Wednesday, casting even the sky above Disneyland in an eerie postapocalyptic orange glow and lighting up satellite images with flames visible from space. The smoke was visible from there, too…
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/why-this-isnt-the-new-normal-for-climate-change.html
VIDEO: 16 Oct: YaleClimateConnections: Peter Sinclair: Using emotion in discussing climate change
Climate and social scientists offer suggestions on how – and how not – to discuss climate change.
Wait. Stop reading right here. Don’t dare think of an elephant.
Didn’t work, did it. Just mentioning it implanted it in your mind, in your consciousness.
It’s an argument made by Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, among others, and a key point in climate communicators’ lessons on how to – and how not to – talk about that dreaded “climate change” term.
In this month’s Yale Climate Connections “This Is Not Cool” video, by regular contributor and independent videographer Peter Sinclair, Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe points out that the “greatest advances” in understanding of climate change over the past decade have come not from the physical sciences, but from the social sciences.
A mere headline along the lines of “Myth XYZ” implants that myth, even if subsequently and thoroughly “debunked,” in the audience’s mind, says John Cook of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. “After time, all the details fade,” says Cook, the founder of the Skeptical Science website. “And all they can remember is the headline,” reinforcing the myth…
TV meteorologist Amber Sullins of ABC 15 in Phoenix says avoiding the words “global warming or climate change” is part of her strategy to avoid turning-off some of her audience. “You remove those two words and just talk about how they’re going to be affected as things change,” she says, “and they’re much more open to listening.”…
“You want to introduce people to the field of climate science?” (climate scientist Sarah Myhre of the University of Washington) asks rhetorically. “You got to say something like, yeah, this hurt, this is scary. You have to say, ‘Hey, I want to ski with my kid in the future. I want to eat salmon in the future … I have a stake in this, I am invested, I am not separate from this. And I do have emotions around this, and I share this with you.”
VIDEEO: 5mins13secs: LOTS OF JOHN COOK; ALSO INCLUDES STEPHAN LEWANDOWSKY
CREDITS: made with support of Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/10/using-emotion-discussing-climate-change/
00
more cli-fi contenders for Abraham:
18 Oct: EveningStandardUK: More hurricane-force storms could hit UK because of climate change, experts warn
by Ella Wills, Francesca Gillett
“There is evidence that hurricane-force storms hitting the UK, like Ophelia, will be enhanced in the future due to human-induced climate change,” said Dr Dann Mitchell, a research fellow studying global and regional climate change at the University of Bristol.
He said Ophelia was “a very interesting” storm because it formed in the tropics and moved north. “It was already quite rare,” he said…
Dr Mitchell, who is researching climate change over the past century and next 100 years, added: “We’re not going to see a sudden dramatic change in storms. We may see some change at some point.”…
Martin Bowles, from the Met Office, said: “It’s never happened exactly like this [Ophelia]…
“We have had situations where tropical hurricanes have come fairly close, but not very often”…
“In this particular case, because we had a warm stream of air, it lasted a lot longer”.
“As we get slowly warmer temperatures, it’s more likely to happen.
“Climate change could make hurricanes more frequent further north,” he said, but added there is much more variation which can affect the hurricane’s path and development – not just warmer air.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/more-hurricaneforce-storms-could-hit-uk-because-of-climate-change-experts-warn-a3661311.html
00
Jo, could you remove that picture from the Gruniad.
Reminds me of the wicked witches from a Macbeth film..
Bubble, bubble toil and trouble……
or a low end version of the wizard of Oz.
Gives me the heebies !! shudder. !!!
20
I think that Christi looks kinda cool and really “in the moment”.
The women in the back row know where they want to be next time around.
KK
10
ROBERT GOTTLIEBSEN
At last, government politicians understand why Australia faces a long term blackout power crisis.
The Australian
20
If wind and solar electricity generation worked, it would have been introduced after the 1973 oil crisis, it was not because engineers designed and operated the whole industry. Now politicians own and operate it. See the Irish Energy Blog and my web site Valmartin Ireland Your tube. Renewable don’t work
10