Power-hungry AI problem for climate policymakers

How AI Is Outsmarting Green Energy, Zero Carbon Fantasies

– – – Closing thermal power stations, and insisting on renewables instead in the name of climate obsessions, leads to reductions in reliable electricity supply. But the rise of data centres and AI increases the need for that reliable supply. Somebody has to lose out.

Electricity barrier: net zero climate policy means the UK housing crisis is getting worse

If there isn’t enough power for the new homes, where’s the power for all the soon-to-be mandatory electric vehicles supposed to come from? Net zero policy by climate obsessives is busy degrading the entire power grid to an increasingly part-time system. This is just one of the knock-on effects.
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Our inadequate electricity network is stopping the building of thousands of new homes. And the necessary move to low-carbon heating and cars is only increasing demand, says The Guardian.

Oxford has a severe housing problem. With house prices 12 times the average salary, it has become one of the least affordable cities in the country. Its council house waiting list has grown to more than 3,000 households, with many having to live in temporary accommodation.

An obvious solution is to build more homes, but those trying to do this face a big barrier: electricity.

UK Government defeated in High Court over climate plans – as usual

Time for yet another revised ‘net zero emissions’ plan. Whether any country that used to depend largely on fuel-burning power stations for electricity can meet the demands of its own time-limited climate plans/targets is open to question. The BBC report once again wheels out the old climate propaganda con trick of pretending that sunset shadow effects are scary pollution clouds in its report image.
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The government has been defeated in court – for a second time – for not doing enough to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, reports BBC News.

Environmental campaigners argued that the energy minister signed off the government’s climate plan without evidence it could be achieved.

The High Court ruled on Friday that the government will now be required to redraft the plan again.

In response the government defended its record on climate action.

How the death of a mega-turbine rattled US offshore wind

Three New York wind projects were dropped after the massive wind tower they were to be based on was cancelled. This report notes that analysts say ‘bigger wind turbines tend to break more’. Planting ever-larger top-heavy objects on long thin poles in zones with potentially stronger winds clearly has its challenges. Even getting them to their site can be a major undertaking.
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The wind industry’s global race to make ever-bigger turbines stumbled to a sudden slowdown last week, jarring U.S. offshore wind projects, says E&E News.

When GE Vernova confirmed that it was canceling one of the largest wind turbines ever designed, it signaled a pause in an arms race that for years had led manufacturers to go higher, longer and wider when building towers, blades and other components.

Now, that decision is reverberating across U.S. efforts to build wind projects in the Atlantic.

New coal plants in China ‘soar’, dismaying climate worriers

Obsessing about Chinese coal power, and its imagined effect on air temperatures, doesn’t stop the same people doing the obsessing from buying Chinese products made using that power, such as wind turbines, batteries and solar panels.
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China ramped up coal power capacity last year, according to new analysis, despite a pledge to “strictly control” the dirtiest fossil fuel, says Sky News.

The country added 47.4 Gigawatts (GW) of new coal power in 2023, more than double the amount added by the rest of the world combined.

It raises concerns that gains in clean power, including by China, are being undermined by the persistent use of coal, the worst energy form for climate change and air pollution. [Talkshop comment – CO2 makes zero difference to air pollution].

World first UK prototype could pave the way for constant energy all the time – from space

Building the solar power ‘farm’ in space would take more than 60 rocket flights, possibly with SpaceX, and a team of robot builders. The power would be directed away from inhabited areas, probably offshore. Whether the finance numbers would add up is anyone’s guess, but it’s claimed to be a lot cheaper than nuclear power for example, with no waste product.
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A company hoping to launch the first solar farm into space has passed a critical milestone with a prototype on Earth, says Sky News.

Oxfordshire-based Space Solar plans to power more than a million homes by the 2030s with mile-wide complex of mirrors and solar panels orbiting 22,000 miles above the planet.

But its super-efficient design for harvesting constant sunlight – called CASSIOPeiA – requires the system to rotate towards the sun, whatever its position, while still sending power to a fixed receiver on the ground.

Is it time to abandon the idea of phasing out oil and gas? – asks Saudi oil boss

Can oil bosses be blamed for pointing out real world facts and calling for a ‘transition strategy reset’? At present, wind and solar energy contribute just three percent of the global energy supply, and developing countries can’t afford, and/or don’t want, to have to rely on renewables for power as demanded by climate obsessives with big ‘carbon footprints’.
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Despite feigning interest, Big Oil still appears to oppose the global green transition and could well stand in its way, says OilPrice.com.

As Saudi’s state oil company leader condemns the green transition and calls for long-term oil production, other major industry players are voicing their scepticism around renewable energy and clean tech.

Despite large investments into green energy and carbon-cutting projects from several oil and gas majors, Big Oil still appears to be heavily favouring fossil fuel production.

First Ever Advanced Reactor Submitted for Justification in UK

Press release – the application ‘has been accepted for Government consideration’. Electricity supply is too important to be left mainly to erratic and weather-dependent power sources.
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LONDON, UK – 5 April 2024 – The Nuclear Industry Association has applied for a justification decision for newcleo’s lead-cooled fast reactor, the LFR-AS-200, says newcleo.

Our application makes the case that the benefits of clean, firm, flexible power from the LFR-AS-200 would far outweigh any potential risks, which are in any event rigorously controlled by robust safety features, including passive safety systems, built into the design and incorporated into the operating arrangements, in line with the UK’s regulatory requirements.

The application also demonstrates that the reactor design would support nuclear energy’s contribution to a stable and well-balanced electricity grid, which is essential to reduce consumer bills and maintain economic competitiveness.

Scientists unlock the secrets of sand for revolutionary energy storage

Sand batteries ahead? It’s no secret that sand holds heat quite well.
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Have you ever raced across a hot beach and noticed how warm the sand gets?

That simple experience hints at a powerful idea that could change how we store energy, says Knowridge.

Researchers are now looking at heated sand as a promising solution to store energy for the future.

Unlike the batteries we usually think of for storing energy, this method offers a new and potentially game-changing approach.

In the new world of EVs and AI, renewable green energy means more gas or coal capacity, not less

Technology demands are outrunning misguided climate/energy policies. ‘Officials admit – more hogs means a bigger trough’ (Telegraph) but laws of physics can’t be overridden by government demands, however much they insist on barking up the wrong tree with puny renewables and rejecting available fuel sources.
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It is no secret that the expanding suite of AI technologies are becoming powerful drivers of additional demand for electricity, says The Telegraph.

They are, simply put, enormous energy hogs.

This technological revolution seems destined to soon overwhelm and dominate almost every aspect of modern society, but there’s a catch: It is taking place simultaneously with coordinated efforts by national and international governments to prematurely do away with some of the cheapest and most abundant forms of 24/7 power generation.

The energy hogs, in other words, are lined up at the electricity trough, but that trough is being forced to run dry by ill-considered public policies.

How China captured the sun – and cast a shadow over Europe

UK plans mean ‘we will be covering an area of countryside the size of Middlesex with Chinese solar panels’ by 2035, while China’s market share in the EU has reached 97%. Can energy/climate policymakers explain what is supposed to happen to all these millions of panels at replacement time?
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Europe’s ambitious plans to expand green energy generation with “Made in EU” solar panels face a distinctly cloudy future as the continent faces a massive glut of the devices, says The Telegraph (via Yahoo News).

Millions of solar panels are piling up in warehouses across the Continent because of a manufacturing battle in China, where cut-throat competition has driven the world’s biggest panel-makers to expand production far faster than they can be installed.

The supply glut has caused solar panel prices to halve.

UN warns against thirsty tech to solve water crisis – ‘carbon’ capture, AI and lithium in the frame

Drought conditions in Northern China

Is lithium more of a problem than a solution? Climate worriers wouldn’t like that as it goes against their visions of a battery-filled future.
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The world needs to better manage its freshwater resources, says AFP (via Phys.org), but thirsty new technologies touted as solutions could lead to “serious problems” if left unchecked, a UN report warned Friday.

Roughly half of the planet’s population is facing grave water shortages, with climate change-linked droughts affecting more than 1.4 billion people between 2002 and 2021, the report for the UN cultural agency UNESCO said.

As of 2022, more than 2 billion people were without access to safely managed drinking water, while 3.5 billion people lacked access to decent toilets, it added.
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The report, titled “Water for prosperity and peace”, called for more water education, data collection and investment to address the crisis.
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It also highlighted the limits of new computer-led solutions.

Scientists divided over ‘record heat’

Is ‘speed of change’ a problem? Climate models make predictions, but the reality is quite often something else. Solar activity including flares has been high in the last year or so, but this is often ignored. CO2 theory struggles with anomalies.
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Record temperatures in 2024 on land and at sea have prompted scientists to question whether these anomalies are in line with predicted global heating patterns or if they represent a concerning acceleration of climate breakdown, says The Guardian.

Heat above the oceans remains persistently, freakishly high, despite a weakening of El Niño, which has been one of the major drivers of record global temperatures over the past year.

Scientists are divided about the extraordinary temperatures of marine air.

UK carbon capture strategy ‘outdated and unrealistic’ as costs doubled

The policy was unrealistic even before it became outdated. The costs have already put most climate-obsessed countries off, and the UK can’t avoid that barrier either.
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The UK Government’s energy policy centred around carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) is outdated and unrealistic, a new report has warned.

Think tank Carbon Tracker has today said that cost estimates for deploying CCUS have more than doubled from the £20bn in taxpayer funding initially scoped in December last year, reports City AM.

This strategy was based on the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, published in the sixth carbon budget in December 2020.

Nuclear fusion for the grid is coming much sooner than you think – Telegraph

Credit: ITER

Nuclear fusion has been pursued for decades, but is it now ‘time to drop the old joke that fusion is 30 years away, and always will be’ as the author suggests?
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Commercial nuclear fusion has gone from science fiction to science fact in less than a decade, claims The Telegraph.

Even well-informed members of the West’s political class are mostly unaware of the quantum leap in superconductors, lasers, and advanced materials suddenly changing the economics of fusion power.

Britain’s First Light Fusion announced last week that it had broken the world record for pressure at the Sandia National Laboratories in the US, pushing the boundary to 1.85 terapascal, five times the pressure at the core of the Earth.

UK faces ‘blackouts’ without new gas-fired power stations, ministers claim

That’s more a statement of fact than a claim, but climate obsessives often ignore inconvenient truths. The proposal is for ‘peaker’ type plants (like this) to replace some of the UK’s ageing baseload ones.
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The UK will face “blackouts” without building new gas power stations, ministers have claimed.

The government has said that while it will continue to move forward with its net zero targets and a focus on renewables, gas was needed as a “back-up” – with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying climate goals must be reached “in a sustainable way that doesn’t leave people without energy on a cloudy, windless day”, reports Sky News.

Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho will outline the plans for new stations in a speech later today, which include a full review of the electricity market and changes to the law to make the plants ready convert to low-carbon alternatives.

France’s Economy Minister slams EU’s ‘no longer wanted’ renewable targets

So-called climate targets are once more proving to be a recipe for trouble wherever they appear. With a large nuclear fleet for its electricity generation, France is calling EU demands “the Europe we no longer want” and ignoring its directives, incurring the wagging finger of warning from Brussels.
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The EU’s renewable energy targets adopted in March last year are too restrictive and unsatisfactory as climate goals, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, who took over the Energy portfolio in a recent government reshuffle, said on Monday (4 March).

Despite repeated requests from the European Commission, France remains opposed to the calculation method used by Brussels to set targets for the use of renewable energy, says Euractiv.

“The targets can no longer be to have so many windmills here, so many photovoltaic panels here,” Le Maire said on Monday, criticising “the Europe we no longer want”.

Britain to harness power of Sahara solar farms using world’s biggest cable-laying ship

‘The project has already been declared one of “national significance” by Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, who has also set a team of civil servants to work on it’, says the story. A claim of ‘near-constant’ electricity supply from one of the project team sounds a tad optimistic. Sandstorms are not unheard of in the Sahara region, for example. [Click on image to enlarge]
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A project to power Britain using solar farms thousands of miles away in the Sahara is moving a step closer to fruition as its backers prepare to commission the world’s biggest cable-laying ship, says The Telegraph.

The 700ft vessel will lay four parallel cables linking solar and wind farms spread across the desert in Morocco with a substation in Alverdiscott, a tiny village near the coast of north Devon.

Once completed, the scheme is expected to deliver about 3.6 gigawatts of electricity to the UK’s national grid – equating to about 8pc of total power demand.

‘Our old way of life will be gone forever’: The tenant farmers targeted by solar developers

Just 0.1% of farmland is currently taken by solar panels – similar to the area claimed by Christmas trees (says Sky). But if solar developers get their way, backed by climate-obsessed politicians, tenant farmers could be facing a fate like the notorious Highland clearances when crofters were forcibly evicted from their smallholdings to make way for sheep farming. Goodbye to the bother of rent collection, hello bigger profits.
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It’s a frosty morning on Kidsley Farm in Derbyshire, a rare thing in this unusually warm winter, says Sky News.

Andrew Dakin’s beef herd is housed in the old brick barns, their breath steaming in the chill air. Alongside scuttling chickens and tractors of varying vintages, this is the very image of a traditional farmyard.

But for how long? Andrew is a tenant farmer and his landlord, who owns the land, wants to turn his pasture into a solar farm.

Belgian central banker claims climate fight will leave EU poorer — upsets Green chief

Is the EU’s attempt to ‘confront climate change’, as some see it, with a so-called energy transition creating an economic millstone round the necks of countries in the form of high industrial energy costs? Such costs are likely to go even higher on present policy trends.
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The co-president of the Greens/EFA European parliamentary group, Philippe Lamberts, rebuked recent warnings by the head of Belgium’s central bank that the green transition will make Europe poorer, saying that anyone who does not see the transition as a matter of survival should give the floor to “more serious people”, reports Euractiv.

Talking to Euractiv on Tuesday (13 February), Lamberts challenged Pierre Wunsch’s remarks to the European Parliament’s plenary session on Tuesday that EU policymakers needed to be “more candid” about the climate transition being “a negative supply shock that will reduce [Europe’s] growth potential”.

“If we start saying that basically we cannot afford to invest for [our own] survival then I believe that we need to have a discussion with more serious people,” Lamberts rebutted. [That] Europe should engage full-on in the green transition to me cannot be questioned. It’s a matter of environmental and economic survival.”

Contesting Wunsch’s prediction that the energy transition would not make Europeans “collectively richer”, the Greens MEP said Europe’s failure to confront climate change would be tantamount to “collective suicide”.

Jean-Marc Nollet, co-president of Belgian environmental party Ecolo, echoed Lambert’s warnings.

“It is the absence of a [green] transition that will impoverish Europe and its citizens,” Nollet told Euractiv. “A society that does not invest in the transition is a society that condemns its companies. Conversely, investing means being a pioneer, relocating, and capturing the jobs of tomorrow.”

The price of inaction
Nollet added that Wunsch “should know what the scientists are telling us”, namely that “the cost of inaction is five times higher than the cost of action”.

Antoine Oger, research director at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), said yet more daunting forecasts are set to come from a European Environmental Agency (EEA)’s report showing that the accumulated costs of inaction could prove significantly more severe – as much as “one hundred times higher than mitigation measures”.

“It is now clearly cheaper to save the planet than to ruin it.”
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Industrial woes
Wunsch’s remarks, however, channelled widespread worries around the effects the transition will yield on different sectors.

On the industrial front, he suggested that high energy prices may have made European industrial firms permanently uncompetitive compared to those in China and America.

“Before the war in Ukraine [European natural gas] was at around €20 [per MWh]. The new normal is between €30 and €50 [per MWh], and if you add to that carbon capture or the cost of blue hydrogen you need to add another €20 to €30 [per MWh].”

That compares with US natural gas at €10 per MWh, which would make European energy “about five to eight times more expensive than in the US. So yes, one might ask: Is there a future in the EU for energy-intensive firms?”

Full report here.