The UK blackout of 9 August 2019 is unlikely to be the last one

This GWPF report paints an uncomfortable picture of increasing instability in the UK electricity supply system, as ever more renewables are injected into it while older but more predictable thermal power plants are retired. The author says bluntly that until recently customers ‘could rely on the system. That is not the case today.’ Come the power cut, you’re on your own.

It has been widely claimed that Distributed (or embedded) Generation, such as solar and wind connected to the low voltage distribution network, reinforces electricity system stability.

The final reports into the widespread blackout of the 9th of August last year by the UK electricity regulator, Ofgem, and the British government’s Energy Emergency Executive Committee, E3C show that this is not the case.

Distributed Generation is now under the spotlight as a leading cause of the severity of the 9 August blackout, and as a hazard increasing future risks to security of supply.

California dreaming of an energy storage miracle

Solar power complex in California [USA.Gov – BLM – BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT]

This public statement looks long on ambition but short on realistic and/or affordable possibilities. They openly admit that existing ‘green’ tech won’t cut the mustard on its own, as everyone knew – or should have known – all along. In other words their legislated targets can’t be met, as things stand. The same problems will exist everywhere else that tries to enforce similar energy policies in pursuit of a ‘carbon-free’ mirage.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) has released a solicitation (GFO-19-305) to fund innovative, non-Li-ion energy storage research projects, including green electrolytic hydrogen systems, reports Green Car Congress.

The Commission notes that the state’s statutory requirements (SB-350, SB-100) for low-GHG electricity cannot be met with currently fielded technologies alone, because those technologies do not have the energy density, daily cycle capability, longevity, safety, and price to be viable for the diverse set of applications that will be needed in the State.

Converting coal plants to biomass could fuel climate crisis, scientists warn

You couldn’t make it up. Having for years rejected claims that industrial-scale burning of wood was not sustainable, climate obsessives now discover…exactly that. At least the media waited until the COP conference in Madrid ended, to avoid upsetting the delegates.

Experts horrified at large-scale forest removal to meet wood pellet demand, says The Guardian.

A few snippets from the article:

Climate thinktank Sandbag said the heavily subsidised plans to cut carbon emissions will result in a “staggering” amount of tree cutting, potentially destroying forests faster than they can regrow.

Biofuel sparks hundreds of farmer machinery repair complaints

What happened to testing, prior to making what looks like a disastrous change to working machinery in the name of climate ideology? Looks like the farmers are the testers.

The use of biofuel has sparked hundreds of complaints from farmers who claim it is forcing them into “unacceptable” costly machinery repairs, reports BBC News.

Adding biofuel – which is made from organic materials rather than fossil fuels – to diesel supplies is seen as one way of reducing carbon emissions from vehicles such as tractors.

But farmers say it has been clogging up filters and causing breakdowns.

NFU Scotland said more than 400 complaints have been made.

Opinion – Carbon capture and storage: Hasn’t Alberta learned its lesson?

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) [credit: cnet.com]

The author points to a recent report on CCS in a science journal which found “that it reduces only a small fraction of carbon emissions, and it usually increases air pollution.” Or in layman’s terms, it’s a waste of time and money even for greenhouse gas theory devotees.

Politicians tend to use CCS as a distraction when they don’t have a workable plan, says Graham Thomson @ CBC News.
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Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

An Alberta cabinet minister walks into a news conference and praises the merits of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a way to significantly reduce the province’s emissions of greenhouse gases.

Not much of a joke, I know.

It wasn’t funny when on October 8, 2009 Alberta Energy Minister Mel Knight declared of CCS, “This, ladies and gentlemen, is action, action that will have immediate results locally as it markedly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.”

Summer Blackouts Beckon: Australia’s Renewable Energy Debacle Won’t Be Fixed with Batteries

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The greenblob will have to conjure up some other magic solution to their chronic power intermittency problems, if they hope to keep their ‘zero carbon’ myth going for a bit longer.

STOP THESE THINGS

Almost as soon as Joe Public worked out that wind and solar can never work, RE rent seekers started babbling about giant batteries saving the day.

STT will keep smashing the line about giant batteries overcoming the chaotic delivery of wind and solar, while RE zealots keep pushing it.

The pitch from RE zealots is that the solution to the chaos delivered by wind and solar is giant lithium-ion batteries, of the kind peddled by Elon Musk.

The reefer-smoking, Californian carpetbagger managed to offload one unit in wind power obsessed, South Australia, collecting $150 million for a battery that would power SA for all of 4 minutes.

Bill Gates has called the idea complete and utter nonsense: Bill Gates Slams Unreliable Wind & Solar: ‘Let’s Quit Jerking Around With Renewables & Batteries’

Apply a little maths, physics and economics and it’s pretty clear that the mega-battery myth is just…

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Filthy Future: The Staggering Cost of Cleaning Up ‘Clean’ Energy’s Toxic Mess

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What really happens – if anything – to land-based wind turbines at the end of their brief working lives?

STOP THESE THINGS

Wind turbines don’t run on wind, they run on subsidies: cut the subsidies and once these things inevitably grind to a halt, they’ll never be replaced.

With an economic lifespan of something like 10-12 years (rather than the overblown 25 put forward by turbine makers and wind power outfits), over the next decade countries like Germany will be left with hundreds of thousands of 2-300 tonne ‘problems’ littering the landscape. With hundreds of turbines totally kaput, Germans have already been smacked with the harsh and toxic reality of their government’s so-called ‘green’ obsession.

And they aren’t alone.

Iowa’s wind industry has been going for barely a decade and already wind power outfits are sending thousands of tonnes of toxic waste to landfill.

In addition to 10-15 tonne toxic plastic and fibreglass blades, there’s a smorgasbord of toxic plastics, oils, lubricants, metals and fibreglass in the tower and nacelle; and…

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Study casts doubt on carbon capture

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

There was plenty of doubt already. Here they once again try to conflate life-giving CO2 with air pollution. This kind of crude and highly misleading propaganda intended to demonise an important trace gas has to be called out.

One proposed method for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere—and reducing the risk of climate change (claims Phys.org)—is to capture carbon from the air or prevent it from getting there in the first place.

However, research from Mark Z. Jacobson at Stanford University, published in Energy and Environmental Science, suggests that carbon capture technologies can cause more harm than good.

“All sorts of scenarios have been developed under the assumption that carbon capture actually reduces substantial amounts of carbon. However, this research finds that it reduces only a small fraction of carbon emissions, and it usually increases air pollution,” said Jacobson, who is a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

European Green Deal portfolio handed to EU vice president, in major elevation

Money to burn?

A major elevation of the delusion of having some control over the weather, that is. Looks like evr more vast sums of money will have to poured down the drain before anyone notices it’s not having any effect on the climate, if they ever do notice.

Dutch social democrat Frans Timmermans has been named executive vice president responsible for strategy to make the EU climate neutral by 2050, reports Climate Home News.
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Climate action is getting a promotion in the next European Commission, with the portfolio assigned to one of three executive vice presidents.

Dutch social democrat Frans Timmermans was nominated on Tuesday to develop the “European green deal” over the next five years. He is to directly manage the climate change directorate (DG Clima) and coordinate efforts across agriculture, health, transport, energy, cohesion and environment.

Announcing the line-up in a webcast press conference, commission president Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted to create a “flexible, agile” team to deliver on the bloc’s priorities.

The world’s first solar road has officially crumbled into a total failure

Solar panel road [image credit: Wattway]

The rotting leaves didn’t help, says ScienceAlert. Neither did the local tractors. Solar panels should be angled towards the Sun anyway, but that kills the whole road idea.

In July, the French daily newspaper Le Monde reported that the 0.6-mile (1 kilometre) solar road was a fiasco.

In December 2016, when the trial road was unveiled, the French Ministry of the Environment called it “unprecedented”. French officials said the road, made of photovoltaic panels, would generate electricity to power streetlights in Tourouvre, a local town.

But less than three years later, a report published by Global Construction Review says France’s road dream may be over.

Battery Bollocks: Why Giant Batteries Won’t Solve Wind & Solar’s Chaotic Intermittency

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Expensive batteries were never an issue for electricity grids before renewables came along, for obvious reasons. Now that a fog of misleading climate propaganda has descended, too many leaders can’t seem to think straight any more.

STOP THESE THINGS

Almost as soon as Joe Public worked out that wind and solar can never work, RE rent seekers started babbling about giant batteries saving the day.

STT will keep smashing the line about giant batteries overcoming the chaotic delivery of wind and solar, while RE zealots keep pushing it.

The pitch from RE zealots is that solution to the chaos delivered by wind and solar is giant lithium-ion batteries, of the kind peddled by Elon Musk. The reefer-smoking, Californian carpetbagger managed to offload one unit in wind power obsessed, South Australia, collected $150 million, and was never seen again.

Bill Gates has called the idea complete and utter nonsense: Bill Gates Slams Unreliable Wind & Solar: ‘Let’s Quit Jerking Around With Renewables & Batteries’

Apply a little maths, physics and economics and it’s pretty clear that the mega-battery myth is just that. Norman Rogers picks up the thread below.

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Why Green Energy Won’t Work In The Alarmists’ Future

Image credit: MIT

If the global warming nightmare was to happen, solar and wind systems simply don’t work in high-heat environments. So why are activists pushing them, asks Climate Change Dispatch?

Everything, and I mean everything about the man-made global warming movement is rotten to the core, says Dr. Joel Adams.

Tens of thousands of our own brave and brilliant scientists, as well as websites such as Climate Change Dispatch, are fighting the good fight against the climate change fraud every day. It’s a fight we are working hard to win.

I just completed a 435-page book on the subject of climate change fraud and the people and motivations behind it.

I discovered that as bad as the scientific fraud is, the motivations behind it turned out to be worse. These motivations are to put it in a few words: money and a political totalitarian power grab by the political Left.

No deal: Senate blocks Green New Deal

[image credit: beforeitsnews.com]

Giving up primary energy sources in favour of vast expense on inferior alternatives is ‘progressive’? Not in the real world. We’re not trying to be experts on American politics here, but any outbreak of sanity on (supposedly) climate-related matters must rate as progress, even if not deemed ‘progressive’.

The Senate on Tuesday blocked the Green New Deal, a progressive climate change resolution that Republicans view as prime fodder heading into the 2020 presidential election, reports The Hill.

The Senate voted 0-57 on taking up the resolution, with 43 Democrats voting present.

Alan Carlin: The “Green New Dealers” have lost all perspective

Do we have a climate problem or a bad science problem? The author argues for the latter.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the “Green New Deal” (GND) recently proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey is that the authors have lost (or possibly never had) all perspective on climate change, writes Alan Carlin.

They are acting as if climate change were as bad a problem as the Great Depression, and that another “New Deal” is required for the US to survive.

This shows that they they really have no understanding of climate change and that Congress should never appropriate any funds for the purposes proposed by the GNDers.

Bill Gates Slams Unreliable Wind & Solar: ‘Let’s Quit Jerking Around With Renewables & Batteries’

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Quite right, but not what climate-obsessed politicians and the ‘Greenblob’ crowd want to hear.

STOP THESE THINGS

Bill says it’s time to stop jerking around with wind & solar.

When the world’s richest entrepreneur says wind and solar will never work, it’s probably time to listen.

Bill Gates made a fortune applying common sense to the untapped market of home computing. The meme has it that IBM’s CEO believed there was only a market for five computers in the entire world. Gates thought otherwise. Building a better system than any of his rivals and shrewdly working the marketplace, resulted in hundreds of millions hooked on PCs, Windows and Office. This is a man that knows a thing or two about systems and a lot about what it takes to satisfy the market.

For almost a century, electricity generation and distribution were treated as a tightly integrated system: it was designed and built as one, and is meant to operate as designed. However, the chaotic delivery of wind…

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Grid-scale electricity storage can’t save renewables

Image credit: energy-storage.news

No surprise there, but the points made deserve emphasis. No amount of ideology can defeat the realities of engineering and economics.

Engineer pours cold water on battery and hydrogen technologies – GWPF press release.
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A new briefing paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) dismisses the idea that grid-scale electricity storage can help bring about a UK renewables revolution.

AAA: Cold weather can cut electric car range over 40 percent

One for the ‘worse than we thought’ file. Anyone running out of power in an EV in winter due to sudden cold weather range reduction has no in-car way to keep warm while waiting for rescue.

Cold temperatures can sap electric car batteries, temporarily reducing their range by more than 40 percent when interior heaters are used, a new study found.

The study of five electric vehicles by AAA also found that high temperatures can cut into battery range, but not nearly as much as the cold, reports TechXplore. The range returns to normal in more comfortable temperatures.

‘Sustainable’ aviation fuels – more pie in the sky

Airport scene
[image credit: Wikipedia]

Land-grown biofuel is in enough trouble already as an enemy of the environment. But the vain pursuit of the imaginary CO2 enemy leads to numerous bad policy decisions.

“Hydrocarbon fuels will remain essential for modern air travel. So-called sustainable aviation fuels are expensive, produced in negligible volumes, and provide CO2 savings only on paper. As such, they fail the real sustainability test of affordability, plenty, and reliability.”

Air travel is a miracle of our modern society, writes Steve Goreham at MasterResource.

Wind Farm Victims Vindicated: WHO Declares Turbine Noise ‘Serious Health Hazard’

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This report from the WHO ought to be hard for wind power promoters and their ideology-bound supporters to ignore.

STOP THESE THINGS

The World Health Organization’s declaration that wind turbine noise is a serious health hazard, is a liability bombshell for developers and governments, alike.

No longer can wind power outfits and those that make a living running propaganda for them claim that ‘there’s nothing to see here, move on.’ The wind industry’s victims – mocked and denigrated for years – have been vindicated. Now comes the vengeance. Litigation is already on foot in Victoria, with more claims to follow.

The significance of the WHO’s new noise guidelines hasn’t been lost on STT Champions Alan Jones and Liberal MP, Craig Kelly.

Liberal MP Craig Kelly on renewables and the Paris agreement
2GB
Alan Jones and Craig Kelly
19 October 2018

Alan Jones: Look, this Wentworth stuff, seriously. Dave Sharma is an outstanding candidate, but you’ve got Kerryn Phelps. She has a profile. They’re saying in Wentworth, climate change is an issue. If…

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End of the road for solar panels on roadways?

Solar panel road [image credit: Wattway]

For several obvious reasons cited below, the conclusion should be that solar panels on road surfaces perform extremely poorly and are essentially an irrelevant waste of money. If the money has to be spent, putting the same amount of panels somewhere more suitable would be an easy improvement to make.
H/T Phys.org

Four years ago a viral campaign wooed the world with a promise of fighting climate change and jump-starting the economy by replacing tarmac on the world’s roads with solar panels, says Dylan Ryan at The Conversation.

The bold idea has undergone some road testing since then. The first results from preliminary studies have recently come out, and they’re a bit underwhelming.