The Netherlands faces power outages in the future, grid operator says - "The reason for the looming crisis is two-fold, Tennet said. On the one hand, demand for electricity is increasing as people switch away from fossil fuels. On the other, less electricity is being generated from sources which can be adapted quickly when demand increases – such as coal and gas. In addition, with coal, gas and nuclear power plants closing across Europe, the Netherlands will be less likely to get support from its neighbouring countries if problems arise, Tennet said."
This Dutch guy was boasting that they use a renewable energy and don't have blackouts.
Gridlock: how the Netherlands hit capacity - "The European energy transition is characterised by a plethora of buzzwords – sustainability, green energy, digital innovation, AI and automation, to name a few. But there are two words on the tip of utility tongues that might leave them a little afraid – at capacity. This heavy phrase refers to the state of the grid when there is no more space for renewable energy integration. The grid being at capacity – for any country – is a cloud blocking out the sunny landscape of our energy transition. Its implications? Immense. Its ETA? Already here... To meet the ever-increasing quantity of renewables coming online, the country’s grid has been similarly evolving. Whereas in the past the grid would grow incrementally on an annual basis, the grid is now hoped and needed to more than double by the time the 2030 targets come around the corner. Furthermore, the grid not only needs to expand; it needs to be created from scratch. Although expanding is an answer for increasing connections, there is also the elephant in the room of stretches of area that were not electrified when the electric grid was initially built. For such areas, the grid still needs to be rebuilt and extended. In an interview during Enlit on the Road’s visit to Rotterdam, Arjen Jongepier of Dutch grid operator Stedin, explained that, because of the immense amounts of renewables coming online, grid congestion management has been, and will almost assuredly continue to be, one of the main priorities for the grid to maintain a safe distance from over congestion... Across network companies Stedin, Enexis and Liander, a total of €30 billion will be needed in investments up to 2030 to ensure that the Dutch grid is expanded and reinforced appropriately to ensure climate goals are reached and the grid maintains stability... As citizens and companies steadily invest in their own green energy generation, the problem keeps on worsening as the positive trend of the energy transition continues to spread... to add to an already complex equation, low-carbon technologies such as heat pumps coming in apace are adding a certain amount of strain as the everyday consumer seeks to contribute to a net-zero future."
Grid-Scale Power Storage Myth Busted: Giant Batteries Can’t Save Unreliable Wind & Solar - "Regular readers know I have been writing about the astronomical cost of energy storage required to make solar and wind (SAW) power reliable. I have published some simple engineering analyses showing that short term intermittency, a few cloudy or low wind days, requires a huge amount of storage. Now we have a wonderful analysis of the long term storage requirements for making solar and wind reliable. As expected the numbers are enormous. They are also precise. The study is “The Cost of Net Zero Electrification of the U.S.A.” by engineer Ken Gregory"
Someone claimed the 2018 MIT article on how batteries wouldn't make renewable energy feasible was outdated, without saying what had changed in the meantime (and of course claiming climate change would kill us all). This is from 2022. Of course, all facts they hate are obviously "outdated" and no proof is needed to show how
Could laughable eco-hypocrites get any more ridiculous? - "Back in 2019 a slew of luvvies including Jude Law and Benedict Cumberbatch wrote an open letter answering charges of eco-hypocrisy: “We live high carbon lives and the industries that we are part of have huge carbon footprints. Like you – and everyone else – we are stuck in this fossil fuel economy and without systemic change, our lifestyles will keep on causing climate and ecological harm.” It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the self-serving sanctimony. It’s not my fault guv’nor, it’s the lack of “systemic” change. If that all sounds very convenient, then that’s because it is. The eco warriors, whether they’re hobnobbing in Glasgow or gluing themselves to the M25, have convinced themselves that the problem is so great their own behaviour is by the by. The upshot is a movement where the only rule for membership is spouting the right well-meaning guff, while your actions – and your hypocrisy – barely matter at all."
Italy approves bigger fines for 'eco vandals' targeting artworks
Damn censorship and threatening freedom of speech!
Alberta emergency power alert underlines challenge of energy transition on Prairies - "Saturday evening's emergency alert from the province of Alberta, warning of rotating power outages because of pressure on the electrical grid caused by the extreme cold, underlines just how difficult the energy transition is going to be in the Prairie provinces, according to economist Andrew Leach. It also demonstrates why more flexibility is needed in Ottawa's Clean Energy Regulations to decarbonize the country's electricity grids, he says. The emergency alert was issued at 6:44 p.m. Saturday. Residents were asked to immediately reduce electricity use to essentials only. The Alberta Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) urged Albertans to turn off unnecessary lights, avoid cooking with a stove and delay charging electric vehicles... "You had, for much of Alberta, the coldest night in 50 years, you had … a particularly acute low wind event, and last night a lack of import availability because of a lot of pressures on the Saskatchewan grid and on the B.C. grid at the same time as we were facing pressures. Add to that the unexpected outage of a gas plant. That alone puts you there," Leach said. The province's energy grid had as little as 10 megawatts in reserve power at one point... Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe put out a tweet, saying his province was providing 153 megawatts of power to Alberta to help them during the shortage. The tweet included a pointed barb aimed at the prime minister... "That power will be coming from natural gas and coal-fired plants, the ones the Trudeau government is telling us to shut down (which we won't)... Leach says he understands where that impulse to fight back against Ottawa's new Clean Energy Regulations comes from. He says just because other markets in the U.S. and Canada can make this switch to largely renewable systems without risking grid reliability, that doesn't mean that Alberta and Saskatchewan are being too pro-fossil fuel when they push back. "That presents a really big challenge and I think people have been too quick to wave that away"... Pointing to the fact that the province had a 12 per cent increase in power generating capacity last year, and is expecting similar growth this year, Sollid said grid alerts, like those issued over the past few days, should become less necessary in the future. "The supply picture is actually very positive, and that will help us over the longer term," he said. But Leach says not all additional capacity is created equal, especially on the Prairies. "A lot of that increase last year was solar power, so solar capacity doesn't change anything at all for a 7 p.m. January spike," he said. "You could have had 50,000 megawatts, all the solar farms and wind farms in the world located in Alberta, and it still wouldn't have come anywhere close to closing that gap." That's why Leach says regulatory flexibility is needed for the part of the country that is awash in cheap energy in the summer, from wind and solar, but in the depths of winter, during really cold conditions and really high energy loads, those resources do not generate a lot of power. "A solution relying exclusively on wind power, solar power and trade isn't going to get you through a really cold, dark night in Alberta," he said."
Of course, all the left wingers were mocking the ad about not wanting blackouts. Because of course crippling your electricity supply even more will lead to fewer blackouts
Good luck when ICE cars are banned
Jesse Kline: Don't worry Alberta, freezing in the dark will become normal - "federal regulations designed to electrify transportation and home heating, coupled with clean electricity regulations intended to phase out fossil-fuel generation, will exacerbate the problem in the coming years... the federal government is trying to strong-arm the provinces into decarbonizing their grids by 2035 — just in time for the mass influx of power-hungry EVs. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has promised to fight Ottawa’s net-zero electricity regulations and there’s no guarantee the Liberals will be in power long enough to see them through. But the uncertainty the Liberals have created will undoubtedly reduce investment in new gas plants, leaving provinces like Alberta to scramble for new sources of base-load power to handle the coming spike in demand. Options do exist, but it will take a huge amount of private investment or government funds to replace existing coal and natural gas generators, which constituted over 80 per cent of Alberta’s energy mix in 2022, or implement costly carbon capture systems, while vastly increasing generating capacity. On Monday, Alberta-based Capital Power Corp. announced an agreement with Ontario Power Generation to “jointly assess the development and deployment of grid-scale small modular (nuclear) reactors” in the province. If they deem them to be viable, the province’s first reactor could be operational by 2035. But that’s a big if, given that the technology is very much in its infancy and the province would have to create a whole new regulatory regime to deal with it. And even if it did come to fruition, Alberta would need many more to charge all the EVs expected to be on the road... Other technologies, such as grid-scale batteries and pump-storage hydroelectricity , can also be used to provide base-load power by storing excess energy produced from wind and solar. Alberta currently only has a handful of battery storage facilities and will need many more if it hopes to supply sufficient power to the grid during peak times. But that would mean vastly increasing its clean energy production, which is hampered by the government’s moratorium on new green energy projects and limited by short days during wintertime and the fact that wind turbines can’t operate below -30 C. And then there’s the issue of batteries only being able to supply the grid for short periods of time. None of these problems are insurmountable, but they will be costly, as electricity prices will have to be high enough to attract investment in nuclear, renewables and energy-storage facilities. They will also take time, which is not something Ottawa seems all that interested in providing... After Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau implemented the National Energy Program in the early 1980s, it was common to see bumper stickers in Alberta reading, “Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark.” It seems as though Trudeau the younger is intent on enacting his revenge — ensuring westerners will be the ones freezing in the dark."
Garett Jones on X - "Cancel climate hysteria: "The welfare loss (or gain) caused by climate change is equivalent to the welfare loss caused by an income drop of at most ten percent—a century of climate change is not worse than losing a decade of economic growth.""
A meta-analysis of the total economic impact of climate change - "Earlier meta-analyses of the economic impact of climate change are updated with more data, with three new results: (1) The central estimate of the economic impact of global warming is always negative. (2) The confidence interval about the estimates is much wider. (3) Elicitation methods are most pessimistic, econometric studies most optimistic. Two previous results remain: (4) The uncertainty about the impact is skewed towards negative surprises. (5) Poorer countries are much more vulnerable than richer ones. A meta-analysis of the impact of weather shocks reveals that studies, which relate economic growth to temperature levels, cannot agree on the sign of the impact whereas studies, which make economic growth a function of temperature change do agree on the sign but differ an order of magnitude in effect size. The former studies posit that climate change has a permanent effect on economic growth, the latter that the effect is transient. The impact on economic growth implied by studies of the impact of climate change is close to the growth impact estimated as a function of weather shocks. The social cost of carbon shows a similar pattern to the total impact estimates, but with more emphasis on the impacts of moderate warming in the near and medium term."
The left hates economics, even while they claim the science is "settled". But they don't know how money works, anyway
‘Net Zero’ Fails the Cost-Benefit Test - WSJ - "A new special issue of the journal Climate Change Economics contains two ground-breaking economic analyses of policies to hold global temperatures to 1.5 degrees and its practical political interpretation, mandates to reach net zero, usually by 2050. Though more than 130 countries, including most of the globe’s big emitters, have passed or are considering laws mandating net-zero carbon emissions, there’s been no comprehensive cost-benefit evaluation of that policy—until now. One of the Climate Change Economics papers is authored by Richard Tol, one of the world’s most-cited climate economists. He calculates the benefits of climate policy using a meta-analysis of 39 papers with 61 published estimates of total climate change damage in economic terms. Across all this, Mr. Tol finds that if the world meets its 1.5 degree promise, it would prevent a less than 0.5% loss in annual global domestic product by 2050 and a 3.1% loss by 2100. If that sounds underwhelming, blame one-sided reporting on climate issues... Writ large, the damage the world experiences each year from climate-related disasters is shrinking, both as expressed in fraction of GDP and lives lost. While media coverage tends to hype the benefits of climate policy, it plays down the costs, which Mr. Tol’s analysis shows are substantial. Based on the latest cost estimates of emission reductions from the United Nations climate panel, he finds that fully delivering on the 1.5-degree Paris promise will cost 4.5% of global GDP each year by midcentury and 5.5% by 2100. This means that likely climate policy costs will be much higher than the likely benefits for every year throughout this century and into the next. Under any realistic assumptions, the Paris agreement fails a basic cost-benefit test. The reality would likely be worse than Mr. Tol’s estimate. He unrealistically assumes governments will implement policies that meet these temperature targets at the lowest possible cost, such as a globally uniform, increasing carbon tax. In real life, climate policy has been needlessly expensive, with a plethora of inefficient, disconnected measures such as electric-vehicle subsidies. Studies show that the policies actually being enacted to curb carbon emissions will cost more than twice the theoretical expense Mr. Tol outlines. This is borne out in the second Climate Change Economics study. The peer-reviewed paper from MIT economists identifies the cost of holding the temperature’s rise below 1.5 degrees as well as that of achieving net zero globally by 2050. The researchers find that these Paris policies would cost 8% to 18% of annual GDP by 2050 and 11% to 13% annually by 2100. Climate economic models all show that moderate policies make sense—initial carbon cuts are cheap and prevent the most damaging temperature rise—but net zero doesn’t. Averaged across the century, delivering the Paris climate promises would create benefits worth $4.5 trillion (in 2023 dollars) annually. That’s dramatically smaller than the $27 trillion annual cost that Paris promises would incur, as derived from averaging the three cost estimates from the two Climate Change Economics papers through 2100. In other words, each dollar spent will avoid less than 17 cents of climate damage. The total, undiscounted loss over the century is beyond $1,800 trillion. For comparison, global GDP last year was a little over $100 trillion. Although well-intentioned, current climate policy would end up destroying a sizable fraction of future prosperity... A study by a researcher for the Copenhagen Consensus shows that competitive government investment in green R&D would be 66 times as effective as Paris policies, while costing between 1% and 10% as much."
More die of cold: Media's heat-death climate obsession leads to lousy fixes - "Headlines from around the world tell us of hundreds of deaths caused by recent heat waves. The stories invariably blame climate change and admonish us to tackle it urgently. But they mostly reveal how one-sided climate-alarmist reporting leaves us badly informed... Heat deaths are beguilingly click-worthy, and studies show that heat kills about 2,500 people every year in the United States and Canada. However, rising temperatures also reduce cold waves and cold deaths. Cold restricts blood flow to keep our core warm, increasing blood pressure and killing through strokes, heart attacks and respiratory diseases. Those deaths are rarely reported, because they don’t fit the current climate narrative. Of course, if they were just a curiosity, the indifference might be justified, but they are anything but. Each year, more than 100,000 people die from cold in the United States, and 13,000 in Canada — more than 40 cold deaths for every heat death. The same pattern holds, including in countries not typically associated with frigid winters. In India, cold deaths outnumber heat deaths 7 to 1. Globally, 1.7 million people die of cold each year, dwarfing heat deaths (300,000). For now, rising temperatures likely save lives. A landmark study in the medical journal Lancet found that climate change over the past decades has across every region averted more cold deaths than it has caused additional heat deaths. On average, it saves upwards of 100,000 lives each year. Yet the obsession with cutting CO₂ emissions ends up promoting some of the least effective ways to help future victims of heat and cold. Climate policy will at best slightly check the increase in heat deaths. We already know much more effective and simple ways to help. These include making air conditioning more widely available, issuing heat alerts, opening public pools and air-conditioned malls and urging people to use fans and drink plenty of water. This is abundantly clear for the United States: The share of hot days has increased since 1960 and affected a steadily larger population. Yet the numbers of heat deaths have halved over the same period — thanks to technology. The rest of the world needs access to the same simple technologies to drastically reduce heat deaths. Tackling cold deaths turns out to be much harder, because it requires well-heated homes over weeks and months. Moreover, heavy-handed climate policies will increase heating costs and make cold deaths even more prevalent. Here again, the US case is instructive. The hydraulic-fracturing revolution has dramatically slashed the cost of natural gas, in turn making gas-heated homes warmer and safer and allowing poorer households to afford better heating. Indeed, according to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, lower energy prices saved some 11,000 Americans from dying in winter annually between 2005 to 2010. In other words, fracking saved four times the lives lost from all North American heat deaths each year. Conversely, climate policies that drives gas prices up will mean fewer people can afford to properly heat their homes; the cold-death rate will shoot back up."
Terence Corcoran: Climate war has a new star: Captain Kirk - "The title of his presentation, jammed in among others from the investment, governance and consulting world, was titled “Why Investors need not worry about climate change.” Within a minute, Kirk — a former FT journalist — highlighted his “heresy” with a slide that referred to “unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings that are ALWAYS wrong.” Below that line were a list of climate investment perpetrators: Mark Carney, Henry Paulson, the United Nations, the Bank of England, the World Economic Forum (now meeting in Davos). He also laced into another panelist who delivered comments an hour earlier. “I completely disagree with the presentation that Sharon from Deloitte’s gave.” According to Kirk, Sharon Stone, chair of Deloitte’s Global Board, joined the doomsters when she said “we are not going to survive” the climate crisis. Kirk wondered why no one ran from the room, given that the global economy and the investment world had survived wonderfully over centuries and especially through that last 100 years of economic and political calamities. Kirk took shots at Mark Carney, the world’s leading financial activist on the climate file. “The Mark Carneys of this world have convinced us” that the global economy is threatened despite the long line of experience and evidence that suggest even the worst outlooks for climate change are within the ability of humans to overcome and thrive. “Human beings have been fantastic in adapting,” he said. Kirk put up a series of slides that demonstrated the likely investment and economic reality going forward that bears no resemblance to the claims of climate activists at the United Nations. The investment industry faces innumerable non-climate problems — inflation, war, interest rates, supply chains — that are far more important than climate risk. For example, the shares of retailer Target fell 25 per cent last week, said Kirk, and “people are asking the boards of U.S. companies to spend time dealing with climate risk.” At his own bank, HSBC, Kirk complained about the number of people in his team who had to deal with long-term climate risk and about the number of other pressures facing the banking industry. Dealing with long-term climate risks are interfering with the world as it really is today... He complained that “there is aways some nut-job telling me about the end of the world.” And his comments about Miami were ill-advised. “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”"
From 2022
Meme - Melanie Vogel @ @Melani...: "Sex is good but have you tried having your country shutting down its last nuclear power plants in 30 mn?"
Bloomberg Energy @Blo...: "Germany will bring several mothballed coal plants back to the market this winter to ensure that Europe's largest economy can keep the lights on"
Meme - "Citing the dire threat of rising Oceans,World Elites keep buying beachfront properties...
GATES x3. GORE. OBAMA x2. BIDEN. KERRY. DICAPRIO. OPRAH. BEZOS. SOROS."
Carbon footprint of homegrown food five times greater than those grown conventionally - "Growing your own food in an allotment may not be as good for the environment as expected, a study suggests. The carbon footprint of homegrown foods is five times greater than produce from conventional agricultural practices, such as rural farms... The majority of the emissions do not come from the growing of the food themselves, the scientists say, but from the infrastructure needed to allow the food to be grown"
Oops
The Net Zero agenda is class war by other means - YouTube - "I think what people are realizing is the fact that this Net Zero agenda it's it's sort of class war by other means. It's the, it's something which can flatter the egos of um Bourgeois activists and will barely dent the pockets of people who can afford to pay more for their energy and for their lifestyles. Almost as a you know as as a kind of status symbol. But for the people who are struggling to get by, for the people who just need a cheap reliable car to get the kids to school, for the people who actually are really feeling the pinch at the moment, that's just not going to fly anymore. And I think what it's only starting I think we're only really at the beginnings of this as it being a new distinct front particularly in the populist politics of recent times."
Critics slam province for Pickering nuclear plant plans - "The Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) said in a statement it's disappointed in the decision released yesterday by the Ontario Minister of Energy Todd Smith, directing Ontario Power Generation to proceed to seek a licence to refurbish four nuclear reactors. The plant, which had originally been scheduled to shut down in the coming years, will now operate for another 30 years. CELA has participated in licensing matters related to the plant for many years. Namely, CELA has expressed high concern for the protection of the surrounding communities in the event of a severe offsite nuclear accident... Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA) calls the announcement “yet another backroom deal bonanza.”"
Climate change is only important when you can push a left wing agenda. Weird how nuclear energy is bad for clean air despite having no emissions. And we get the usual myths about nuclear waste and solar/wind energy
'A wake-up call': alarm raised over B.C. electrical grid amid plans for natural gas heating ban - "Alarm bells are ringing about B.C.’s electricity supply and grid reliability at the same time that the province is slowly choking off access to natural gas heating. B.C.'s electrical supply is “at risk of shortfall” in extreme conditions, such as a deep freeze, according to a recent report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. The annual report, which did not recognize B.C. as an at-risk area in its previous edition, notes “unserved energy risks increase in 2026 as forecasted demand increases and natural-gas-fired generation retires.” “That should be a wake up call, and should shake us out of our complacency that we have enough electricity to meet all of our potential desires, whether it's electrification of vehicles, industry or home heating,” said Barry Penner, a former B.C. cabinet minister now with Resource Works, a nonprofit that advocates for responsible resource development. The December 2023 report came in the same month the BC Utilities Commission rejected a $327 million proposal from FortisBC for an expansion of natural gas infrastructure in the rapidly-growing Okanagan, primarily through the construction of a new pipeline between Chute Lake and Penticton. FortisBC’s warnings of natural gas shortfalls in the region as early as 2026/27 were dismissed by the BCUC, which said natural gas demand may actually decrease as a result of the CleanBC climate plan, which includes a ban on natural gas space and water heating in new homes by 2030... New homes will be constructed with heat pumps, which have minimum outdoor operating temperatures of roughly -20 C, backed up options like electrical baseboard heat. At the same time, B.C. is aiming to have all new vehicles sold in 2035 be fully-electric, sending demand for power soaring even higher. BC Hydro was forced in 2023 to import 20% of the electricity it served, a situation exacerbated the recent drought’s impact on hydroelectric stations... “If you pull up to a BC Hydro charging station for your car… it says ‘powered by water’ Well, 2023, not so much,” said Penner, explaining that about 60% of power imported into B.C. was generated using fossil fuels... BC Hydro has also been dragging its feet on investing in a second power transmission line for the Westside of Okanagan Lake. The region is the most populous in the province served by one power line, which has been threatened by wildfires multiples times... Construction of the Site C project was announced in 2010 and is expected to be fully online by 2025. With that mega project only denting last year’s energy shortfall, the energy landscape in B.C. has been turned upside down in the lifespan of one construction project. In 2017 when the BC NDP came to power and nearly killed the project, the BC Utilities Commission said the province may not need the electricity from Site C and that demand would not likely grow as much as BC Hydro forecast—a prediction that missed the mark wildly. The 10,000 gigawatt hours of electricity BC Hydro imported last year cost the utility about $450 million. "We're exporting dollars to purchase electricity to bring back into B.C., instead of using made-in-B.C. resources like natural gas," Penner added. FortisBC, which also supplies electricity to a large part of the Southern Interior, generates about 40% of its own power and purchases the remainder from BC Hydro and the open market. The private utility pointed to the increased costs of buying electricity as a "significant driver" as the reason for a 6.74% rate increase. "The cost of electricity has risen in recent years with the phasing out of coal plants, lower hydroelectricity generation and greater than anticipated demand for electricity with population growth in the region and increasing electrification of parts of the economy," FortisBC said in its rate-hike announcement."
Maybe it's a left wing plot to increase their vote share by getting rural voters to freeze to death
Damn greedy companies!