Losing the war on CO2
The 'unreliables,' wind and solar, are not fit for purpose to power a modern grid
The Net Zero program is essentially a war on plant food.
In case you are worried about warming and CO2 emissions, just read a good book or two and relax! Warming, since the Little Ice Age ended some 300 years ago, has been unequivocally beneficial and we are still a degree or two short of the Roman Warm Period. That was the best time for living things in recorded history.
Fear of warming (and plant food) is driving the greatest misallocation of resources ever, equating to trillions of dollars worldwide, wasted on the so-called transition to wind and solar power.
Would you spend a single dollar to get the results of this great experiment?
Electricity costs have doubled or tripled. The supply is less secure, with blackouts looming in Germany, Britain, and Australia. The current is less stable in voltage and frequency, which are vital for modern manufacturing machinery.
And the environmental carnage!
From the overseas mines to the cancerous proliferation of wind and solar facilities carving up our forests and farmlands, to the impending tsunami of toxic waste when the hardware has to be thrown away and replaced. Replacement… That is the only way that wind and solar can be described as renewable.
Blackouts have been deferred in Australia thanks to a loss of industries and businesses, large and small, which has flattened the demand curve. This can’t go on forever. How many more smelters can we close?
The German experience was a warning to the world.
But did you read about it in the press? They initiated the Energiewende, an energy transformation to lead the way to a green future. This was reckless. After the Fukushima disaster, caused by an earthquake and tidal wave, Germany decided to close down the nuclear plants that were providing 30 per cent of electricity.
In 2011, their leadership ramped up the targets for greenhouse gas reduction to 40 per cent by 2020 and 95 per cent by 2050.
So much for sensible targets.
The official report in 2018 documented abject failure on the three sides of the ‘energy policy target triangle’ – affordability, security, and reduction of emissions. Things are much worse now, because the green zealots in the parallel universe were not to be deterred, and Germany is becoming an industrial wasteland as iconic industries shift to China and the US.
In one universe, the governments of Australia and most of the Western world are committed to the flight from coal to so-called renewable energy. In the other, we have already gone as far as we can go in that direction.
The most obvious sign of failure in the war on CO2.
The use of coal is increasing worldwide, not just in absolute terms, but also as a proportion of total energy consumption.
In the parallel universe there are regular celebrations as wind and solar reach new heights of penetration on sunny and windy Sunday afternoons, but they are looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
A chain is only as strong as the weakest link and nocturnal wind droughts are the weak links in the chain of the renewable energy transition. The combination of wind droughts and the lack of grid-scale storage guarantees that there will not be a transition to wind and solar because the ‘unreliables’ are simply not fit for purpose to power a post-industrial society.
It’s as simple as ABC.
A: The grid must have continuous input from generators to meet the demand, second by second.
B: The continuity of wind and solar input is broken at night when there is little or no wind.
C: Storage at the scale required to bridge the gaps is not feasible or affordable with current technology.
Limited wind means limited wind power. At night, when we are depending on wind and solar, wind droughts will turn out the lights and everything else that runs on electricity.
Farmers are alert to the threat of rain droughts, but the meteorologists never issued wind drought warnings, and the wind farmers and their sponsors in government apparently didn’t check.
Contemplate the disastrous outcomes enabled by failing to check the supply chain for the most important input to the wind power industry! How did that happen?
Insert ‘For want of checking the wind supply’ in this poem.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
And then the rider, the message, the battle and the kingdom.
Now the once-proud industrial kingdoms of Britain and Germany are virtually lost, and Australia is circling the drain. It is up to the Coalition to put coal back into their energy policy and convince the public that we will have to burn coal or die in the cold and dark!