It looks like Australia is mobilising,

against it's Carbon Taxes, with their

“Convoy of no confidence”.
http://justgroundsonline.com/events/convoy-of-no-confidence-in

What an idea…!

At least they are conscious that they're being taken for suckers, and doing something about it.

What the chances of anything like this happening in Europe, where the stealthily introduction has largely avoided any popular consciousness.

But now fuel bills leap again, who knows...

Jul 17, 2011 at 3:29 PM | Phillip Bratby

Oil? How many of those are left operational?

There are 3 major oil fired power stations: Grain, Littlebrook and Fawley.

As of 31 May 2011, Grain and Littlebrook have not generated anything since 1 January 2011 and Fawley since 1 February 2011.

In fact, when assessing the effect on capacity due to LCPD, National Grid just ignore these three. So, when Huhne speaks of 20GW of old polluting power stations going out of service this decade, we are already well on the way because these three have a notional capacity of 3.5GW.

To return to your interatctions with the totally useless Hendrey, in some ways Sir Humphrey is correct in saying there is no answer, but for the wrong reasons.

The real reason, which they dare not utter, is that at the current level of penetration and output, the windmills' ups and downs are treated by Nataional Grid as a reduction in demand, so these wind farmers are in effect "stealing" the margin that NG have put in place every day to cover any problems with proper power stations (see the excellent "The Wind Farm Scam" by John Etherington).

Supposing on a given day, NG have put in place a margin of 4GW, then if this was called upon, but not because of proper power stations ringing up to declare a problem, then surely you could lay the cost of that provision at wind farmers. These costs could then be converted to MWh which could then be converted to tonnes of CO2, using an average rate of CO2 to MWh. Posibly.

National Grid have said that when penetration gets to 25GW (nameplate) wind capacity they will need 20GW of standby plant, or Capacity Mechanism as it to be called from now on. At that time the CO2 put out by this standby plant will be much easier to estimate. Possibly.

Sorry, should have included Breath Of Fresh Air

Brownedoff and Messenger:

It has taken me a year to get this far. I write a letter (snailmail) to my MP who forwards it to the relevant minister. I then get an answer signed by the minister (written by Sir Humphrey) via my MP. It usually takes about 3 months per go.

The truth is they don't know the effect of back-up on CO2 emissions. They know that if they tried to analyse it they would likely get the answer that for both coal and gas, the effect of wind turbines including the effect of back-up, is a net increase in emissions. If they don't analyse it, then they can show that they are meeting the EU renewables energy targets (installed - except they won't meet them), but if they did analyse it, they would show that the CO2 emissions reductions targets in the Climate Change Act 2008 will never be met. So they don't do the analysis and there is no way I will get an answer from Hendry.

Yes Phillip an non answer, but as Messenger suggests a follow up question of what the 4 different costs would be may shine some light.

CERN chief forbids “interpretation” of CLOUD results

The results must be favourable for Svensmark or there would be no such anxiety about them.

CERN has joined a long line of lesser institutions obliged to remain politically correct about the man-made global warming hypothesis. It’s OK to enter “the highly political arena of the climate change debate” provided your results endorse man-made warming, but not if they support Svensmark’s heresy that the Sun alters the climate by influencing the cosmic ray influx and cloud formation.

https://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/%e2%80%9cno-you-mustnt-say-what-it-means%e2%80%9d/

I feel sure there will be some honest scientists who feel unconstrained by this strange edict?

@Philip Bratby:
Hendry should surely have given you four answers for each fuel type, if that was what was required. How difficult could that be? Still at least you got an answer from him- that's more than I get now from my Westminster MP.

Brownedoff:

I had a response yesterday from our wonderful energy minister Charles Hendry, the last in a series going back a year, played out through my MP. Hendry has admitted that he cannot add anything further to his previous non-answers (drawn up by his Sir Humphreys). There is a hand-written note to my Q1a (Q1a was: "I have studied the life cycle of wind turbines for several years. The response fails to address the emissions saved and does not answer the question of emissions caused by back-up power stations operating continuously in an inefficient manner. Please provide this information."). The note says:

Unfortunately Dr Bratby asks questions for which there is no answer - for example Q1a on back-up generation, the answer will obviously be completely different if the back-up is coal, gas, oil, pumped storage ar imported by interconnector.

He obviously doesn't understand it at all. We only have gas and oil for back-up.
Oil? How many of those are left operational?
Pumped storage? Oh yes, Dinorwic runs for a few minutes for the Coronation Street effect.
Interconnectors? DC as I recall, very fast response, I don't think.

So we have it from the ministers pen. They don't know if wind turbines result in any CO2 emissions reductions; and so we now know that for no benefit, Huhne is going to throw half the population into fuel poverty and ruin the economy with millions out of work.

Listen to this attempt at deconstruction of : Lord Monckton’s present tour of Australasia.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2011/3268730.htm

by that publicly funded organ of information management the ABC.

This on the day that the Aus Govt. Launches it's AUD 12 million campaign to promote it's Carbon Tax.
the more the thought seems to occur : Is this what (most of) the AUD 12 million is being spent on ?

Vocabulary Alert.

Huhne has invented a new catch phrase to confuse the peasants: "capacity mechanism".

The greenest government ever has finally realised that there is a major problem with the supply of electricity in the UK during the next few years:

See "Planning our electric future: a white paper for secure, affordable and low-carbon electricity" http://tinyurl.com/5w9l5na

page 5
security of supply is threatened as existing plant closes: over the next decade we will lose around a quarter (around 20 GW) of our existing generation capacity as old or more polluting plant close. ..... In addition to this huge reduction in existing capacity, the future electricity system will also contain more intermittent generation (such as wind) and inflexible generation (such as nuclear). This raises additional challenges in terms of meeting demand at all times, for example when the wind does not blow.

page 9

19. In order to ensure resource adequacy, the Government will legislate for a new contracting framework for capacity: a new "Capacity Mechanism."

page 14 has a time table which shows:

(a) White Paper and Legislation from mid 2011 to end 2014
(b) Institutional framework to set up an Organisation from late 2012 to late 2013
(c) Organisation receives legal powers late 2013
(d) Organisation up and running, delivers first contracts from 2014
(e) Capacity Mechanism (CM) in place end 2014
(f) Capacity procured during 2015
(g) Lead in time for Capacity - approx 3.5 years, ends early 2019
(h) Capacity in place from early 2019.

Now, there are a few clues there:

(c) The Organisation sounds a little bit like ...erm .... the old CEGB ( deceased about 20 years ago)!

and

(g) what sort of generating capacity has a lead time of about three years? Why, that must be gas-fired power stations, surely.

So there you have it: Capacity Mechanism in broad terms means procuring spinning reserve to accommodate "for example, when the wind does not blow".

Other aspects of this euphemism include DSR or demand side response, or if you prefer, cutting you off via a smart meter when the wind does not blow or blows too hard.

Finally we get:

page 117

7.23
Electricity Market Reform measures have an impact on consumer electricity bills both
through their effect on wholesale electricity prices, and through the low-carbon (and
Capacity Mechanism) support costs passed on to consumers by suppliers.

So the old fashioned phrase "standby plant" is out and "capacity mechanism" is in.

To be fair, Huhne does mention "spinning reserve" and "warm standby" on pages 78 and 79, but that is the only place in the document.

What will the greens do now that Huhne has expunged "standby" from our vocabulary; do you remember not long ago when "Standby = Vampire Power" sucking the life out of the planet?

Capacity Mechanism = Vampire Power does not have the same ring, does it?