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The extraordinary attempts to prevent sceptics being heard at the Institute of Physics
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Entries in Energy: wind (213)

Friday
Jun072019

Curiouser and curiouser

While looking for something else, I came across an article in the Mail about the recent report on Net Zero from the Committee on Climate Change. Apparently, in order to reach that target, we are going to need to quadruple the offshore wind fleet to 7500 turbines.

This took me aback somewhat because 7500 is a much smaller figure than I had assumed would be necessary. Reading on, these 7500 turbines were supposed to produce 75 GW of output, implying that they are all 10MW machines. (This also caused me to raise an eyebrow, because it’s quite a lot larger than anything in operation today, but that’s by the by.)

The problem is that 75GW of output at a load factor of 40% will produce only 261 TWh, or 22,466 kilotonnes of oil equivalent, which is about 15% of current energy demand.

This raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions. How much energy are we going to be allowed to use in this brave new world? And where is it going to come from if not from offshore wind?

A little further digging reveals the CCC’s illustrative scenarios for power generation in 2050. Item 2.5 gives us the CCC’s idea of total energy use: a figure of 645 TWh, around 40% (!) of current levels. (Update - this is electricity not energy - they have 270TWh of hydrogen too) Of this, 369 TWh is “variable renewables (largely offshore wind)”.

Which causes my eyebrows to raise again. How are you going to get 75 GW of offshore turbines to generate 369 TWh of electricity? That implies a load factor of 55% averaged over the lifetime of the turbine. This is entirely implausible. The best, biggest, newest turbines start out at around 40% and decline from there.

Incidentally, the cost of 75GW of offshore wind turbines, at an optimistic £3m/GW, is £0.2 trillion.

Update:
The CCC seems to be using a figure of 58% for offshore wind load factor (see p.27 here). They cite as their source a BEIS report, which can be found here. BEIS do not explain how they arrived at this figure.

Wednesday
Oct052016

Dark down under - Josh 382

In the news this week:

A dramatic, sudden loss of wind power generation was the root cause of South Australia’s state wide blackout last week.

Read about it at The Global Warming Policy Forum

Cartoons by Josh

Saturday
Aug202016

'Tiny the Turbine'

It might not look like it has been a busy summer but I've been beavering away on a follow up to the Subisdy Sam story produced earlier in the year. Today we are launching 'Tiny the Turbine' written by Lyndsey Ward and illustrated by me.

Lyndsey writes:

Tiny the Turbine is a story that really is for children. Following Subsidy Sam’s release it was clear that there was a need for something that would help children understand the negative impacts of large scale wind developments. Happily Josh agreed and we have worked together to produce this second story specifically for children. Subsidy Sam is a dark tale but Tiny the Turbine is a moral and uplifting story and shows that it is possible to succeed in fighting against the bad things in life no matter how daunting it may seem.

If you head over to this page on the Cartoons by Josh website you can download the story and, if you haven't yet, donate something - all funds greatly appreciated - please share on social media and generally spread the word - that would also be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks,

Cartoons by Josh 

Wednesday
Mar302016

Jolly green giants toppled

Two of the headlines on Greenpeace's daily news review stuck out at me this morning.

Coal: Nearly $1 trillion could be wasted on unneeded plants

Renewables: SunEdison on brink of bankruptcy, Abengoa files

The companies named in the second headline are two of the largest players in the renewables field, so it's pretty big news that they are on the brink of exctinction, despite all the millions in taxpayers' money that has been poured into them by wise and noble politicians.

Who knows, perhaps there might be room in the marketplace for coal-fired power stations after all.

Thursday
Mar102016

Barefaced

Professor Catherine Mitchell is one of the those public funded political activists who masquerades as an academic researcher. She has come to the attention of this blog from time to time over the years.

Today's Telegraph carries a letter from the good professor, responding to a Rupert Darwall article about the UK's energy crisis. Here it is:

SIR – Rupert Darwall’s polemic on our energy crunch makes three major mistakes.

First, Britain is not going to see a US-style “shale revolution”; the economics don’t stack up, and British people don’t want fracking.

Secondly, wind and solar do not impose significant “hidden” costs on consumers. The Committee on Climate Change, which advises the Government, calculates the cost at about £10 per year per household.

Thirdly, Mr Darwall assumes that climate change is not a serious issue. It is serious, so a fossil-fuels-as-usual electricity system will not do.

Renewable energy can deliver the market-based electricity system that Mr Darwall wants, but getting there entails some years of transitional support. Renewables will not need the endless subsidies associated with nuclear power and fossil fuels.

Catherine Mitchell
Professor of Energy Policy, University of Exeter
Penryn, Cornwall

Of course, the Committee on Climate Change's estimate on the cost of renewables policies are based on a comparison of renewables against a theoretical world in which fossil fuel prices start high and then get even higher. It's hard to imagine that a "Professor of Energy Policy" is unaware of this.

File under "barefaced".

 

Monday
Jan182016

Renewables slump on the way

The Independent is reporting research that suggests that investment in renewable energy is about to slump dramatically. The research comes from BNEF, so the usual caveats about reliability apply.

The dour forecast comes as the industry celebrated a record-breaking year in 2015, with billions of pounds poured into solar and wind energy and more homes powered by nature than ever before. But experts have warned this is all about to grind to a halt as the Government abandons its commitment to green energy and instead invests in fracking and nuclear power.

And of course this is all happening just as renewables become cost competitive with fossil fuels.

Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist and policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Wind and solar energy are at the point of becoming really competitive with fossil fuels, but failure to support them for another few years will result in huge losses of potential jobs.”

If this is true then it's good news for everyone other than the subsidy junkies. But we will have to wait and see.

Monday
Jan112016

AEP and the GLCL*

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has an article in the Telegraph boldly declaring that the UK is backing away from wind power just as they become competitive with fossil fuels. The story seems to be that if only wind turbines could be made really, really huge, then everything would be OK.

Cue a barrage of graphs to support the (alleged) case.

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Dec152015

Windfall

The Press and Journal has details of some truly phenomenal payments to wind farms in order to get them to switch off.

An energy giant was paid nearly £600,000 in less than a month – to turn off its windfarm and not produce any electricity.

Some or all of SSE’s 33 turbines at Strathy North were shut down almost daily between November 12 and December 10.

Last night, campaigners branded the situation “scandalous”, but the power company said it had to play its part in balancing the needs of the National Grid.

Westminster politicians: enabling graft and corruption since 1265AD.

Tuesday
Nov172015

Mackay bashes EU energy policy

David Mackay is in the headlines this morning, having described the EU Green Energy Directive as "scientifically illiterate" in a forthcoming episode of Costing the Earth.  He takes a potshot Ed Miliband for the foolishness of his policy decisions. Excerpts were included in the Today programme this morning, alongside a response from Ed Davey, who comes over very badly in my opinion.

Inevitably a BBC journalist - Tom Feilden - has tried to spin Mackay's comments as an attack on the government. Fortunately Mackay has corrected him - given that the current government was not mentioned at all in the Today programme, Feilden was not even allowing himself a level of plausible deniability, which was a bit daft, even by BBC standards of shamelessness. The offending tweet has now been removed.

 

 

The Today programme piece is well worth a listen. It's here.

 

Mackay Today

Thursday
Nov122015

Some weapons-grade sophistry

Take a look at Mark Lynas's latest piece in the Guardian, in which he tries to absolve the wind fleet of any part in the close call the electricity grid suffered last week. This is pretty remarkable, given that at the time - as readers will no doubt recall - the wind fleet was becalmed and delivering just 3% of its installed capacity. Meanwhile the ageing coal fleet was only delivering 65% of capacity because of breakdowns.

Lynas's position is that this was fine and dandy because the near-total failure of the wind fleet was predicted.

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Nov052015

Dead calm

Yesterday it seems that National Grid had to invoke its emergency procedures as outages at coal-fired power stations and an almost complete lack of a contribution from the wind fleet led to generation margins falling to dangerously low levels.

Given that the weather is very mild at the moment, this is worrying to say the least.

Wind remains very low this morning, although it looks as though it will pick up later in the day.

Interesting times.

Monday
Nov022015

South Australia today, UK tomorrow?

The authorities in South Australia have been pretty right on in terms of their devotion to the green cause, and the state has been in the forefront of efforts to increase renewables' share of electricity generation. That being the case, the state is something of a leading indicator for us here in the UK. Over the weekend there were strong hints that the chickens are coming home to roost.

Click to read more ...

Saturday
Oct242015

Saturday singalong

Thursday
Oct222015

Non sequitur

A free map containing the most detailed publicly available information on global wind energy potential has been launched this week…

…Lars Christian Lilleholt, Danish minister for energy, utilities and climate, said the new tool will help the wind energy sector to expand by curbing risks and costs for developers around the world.

"The release of the Global Wind Atlas demonstrates the support of the international community to expand global renewable energy to address global climate change, increase electricity access and stimulate economic development," he said in a statement.

 Spot the non sequitur.

Monday
Sep282015

Windfarms' gannet problem

A new paper has apparently found that offshore windfarms pose a much greater threat to gannet populations than was previously thought. This is because when hunting they turn out to fly at a height that puts them in danger from turbine blades.

The RSPB are going to have an interesting time responding to these findings. They have previously said that they will only support windfarms that do not threaten bird populations. That's fine, but potentially problematic when you consider a map of gannet distribution in the UK.

There doesn't seem to be anywhere that you can put a windfarm offshore without it posing a threat to gannets.

Does this mean that the RSPB now has to oppose all offshore windfarms?