December 03, 2023

Another Critical Thinker Reaches The Obvious Conclusion: Intermittent Renewables Can't Work On Their Own

December 03, 2023/ Francis Menton

Let me welcome to the small and elite club of critical thinkers on the supposed energy transition a guy named Balázs Fekete.
Fekete, with several co-authors, has recently (September 18) succeeded in getting an article published in a journal called Frontiers of Environmental Science, with the title “Storage requirements to mitigate intermittent renewable energy sources: analysis for the US Northeast.” Fekete then followed up by publishing on November 14 at Judith Curry’s Climate, Etc. blog a lengthy post summarizing the article, titled “Net-Zero Targets: Sustainable Future or CO2 Obsession Driven Dead-end?”
As with the previous competent analyses of energy storage requirements needed to back up intermittent renewable generation that have been featured on this blog and in my energy storage Report, there is nothing complicated about the Fekete, et al., analysis. The authors call it “a modified surplus/deficit calculation [as] taught to water engineers to size reservoirs for meeting water demand when the water resources vary.” When there is surplus production you add it to storage, and when there is a deficit you subtract; and then you sum over a year (or two, or ten) to calculate how much storage you need. It’s all basic arithmetic. What could be simpler?
You will not be surprised that the conclusion is “CO2 obsession driven dead-end.”

November 30, 2023

No Amount Of Subsidies Will Ever Make A Wind/Solar Electricity System Economically Feasible

November 30, 2023/ Francis Menton

The COP 28 climate confab opened today in Dubai. Some 70,000 true believers in the energy transition are said to be gathering. And not one of them appears to be either willing or able to do the simple arithmetic that shows that this can’t possibly work.
So far, no country that has made a commitment to “net zero” has officially backed off. (Argentina may soon become the first.). Things proceed as if all that is needed is to build sufficient wind and solar generation facilities, until eventually you have enough of them to meet demand.
But that’s not how this works. The absurdity becomes more obvious every day. Can somebody please tell the poor people making fools of themselves in Dubai?
Let’s consider the latest from Germany.

November 28, 2023

November 28, 2023/ Francis Menton

New York thinks it is going to be the “leader” in showing the world how to transition away from fossil fuels to “green” energy. Our politicians and bureaucrats have not bothered with things like feasibility studies or demonstration projects showing that this can be done, because after all they are geniuses and it is up to the little people to figure out the details.
So the energy transition has been ordered up via statutes filled with mandates and deadlines and penalties, with no attention paid to feasibility or cost. We now all get to sit back and watch as this crashes and burns.
In New York City, the main statute on this subject, enacted in 2019, has the title of Climate Mobilization Act, also known as Local Law (LL) 97. The most significant impending mandates are for reductions in “emissions” from buildings, with the first deadline for residential buildings coming right up in January 2024. Few building will fail the 2024 cap, but the mandated emissions limits keep ratcheting down over time. The mandate for 2030 for residential buildings over 25,000 square feet is set such that it cannot be met if the building continues to use gas or oil for heat; so effectively this is a mandate to convert to electric heat by that time.
So how big a problem will it be for these buildings to convert to electric heat? Nobody really knows. However, things are about to change.

November 26, 2023

November 26, 2023/ Francis Menton

For the last several centuries, and increasingly so in recent years, millions of people have moved from one country to another. In the language of the Left, many of those people are referred to by the term “migrants,” while others get the label “settlers,” or even worse, “settler colonialists.”
Do you know the difference? Clearly, people who are “migrants” are associated with only positive connotations. They are decent human beings, just struggling to better their lives. Existing populations in the recipient countries are morally obligated not only to welcome them, but to accord them all rights of pre-existing residents, including rights to hold jobs, to attend public schools, to own or rent property, and even to receive generous welfare benefits.
“Settlers,” on the other hand, are bad, while “settler colonialists” are even worse, maybe the ultimate evil. Pre-existing populations don’t have to accept them at all, and indeed, are perfectly entitled to kill them.
But how can you tell the which are which?

November 24, 2023

November 24, 2023/ Francis Menton

It’s been obvious for many years that electricity generation from the intermittent wind and sun would never work to power a modern economy. But how would the infeasibility of the proposed energy transition finally manifest itself to put an end to the madness?
A couple of years ago I began writing about the the upcoming “Renewable Energy Wall,” for example in this piece from December 2021 titled “Which Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Renewable Energy Wall?” I called for readers to place their bets as to which among various jurisdictions would be the first to recognize that it could never achieve the net zero goal.
But what would be the aspects of reality that would put an end to further renewable development? Would it be the soaring costs? Or perhaps the spreading blackouts? Or maybe the voters wising up? Or maybe other things that nobody had yet guessed?
Over the past few weeks and months, several parts of the coming Green Energy Wall have started to come into focus.

November 21, 2023

November 21, 2023/ Francis Menton

In an election held on Sunday, Argentina chose as its new President self-described libertarian Javier Milei. Milei won by a not-close margin of about 56/44 over Sergio Massa, who has been the economics minister under the incumbent President Alberto Fernandez. Milei is known for a bombastic style of speaking, and for using a chainsaw in his campaign appearances as a symbol of how he plans to hack away at the government. He is also known for having even worse hair than Donald Trump.
The Perónist model of economic policy basically tracks the Democratic Party/Paul Krugman/blue state model here in the U.S.
The last 100 years — and particularly the Perónist period from 1946 on — have seen Argentina decline from one of the richest countries in the world to a kind of perennial basket case.