Solving climate crisis will require a total transformation of global energy

This guy, Francis Menton, is asking non-professionals (people who read his columns in the Manhattan Contrarian) for their opinions on how to solve the storage problem. I posted an article from professionals at 2 prestigious U.S. universities, the University of California and Caltech, who found a solution.
This is another example of relying on people who are not professionals for expert advice and avoiding the best minds in the country who published
an article sponsored by the National Science Foundation in a peer-reviewed journal. Francis Menton doubts the scientific concensus on the urgency
to do anything about climate change.

 

They are examples of people who make claims without foundation. Your cited sources are little better.

 

China and India are leading coal to new heights.
Global Coal Consumption Reaches New Record High In 2021…China, India Consuming Two Thirds
By P Gosselin on 23. January 2022

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According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Coal 2021 report, coal-fired electricity generation reached an all-time high in 2021, increasing a whopping 9% in 2021.



Chart source: IEA

The increase was driven by the rapid economic recovery. Globally, a total of 10,350 terawatt-hours of electricity was generated from coal.

Even worse in terms of the climate protection perspective, the IEA report says that global coal demand could well reach a new all-time high in the next two years and would likely stay near these levels for the next few years.

More than 600 new coal-fired power plants are planned in Asia.

The IEA says China and India now account for two-thirds of global coal consumption, despite their efforts to expand renewables and other low-carbon energy sources. . . .

 

Some people try to have it both ways.
It's Time for Larry Fink to Come Clean About Fossil Fuels
Alex Epstein

 

Oil remains valuable.
Crude Climbs to Highest Since 2014 After Abu Dhabi Attack
MarketWatch

 

I can't imaging anything more stupid:

 

Where green energy goes, economic stagnation follows.
European Green Energy Crisis is Crushing Metal, Silicon Production
Eric Worrall
A quadrupling of EU energy prices is crippling energy intensive industries, but the EU sees this as a reason to invest in more renewables. . . .

 

Beware of rigged models.
Mark Krebs on Energy Efficiency under Biden’s DOE (Part II of IV: EERE Modeling)
Guest Blogger
Tricks include inflated energy-price forecasts (for the disfavored energy, gas), lowballed maintenance costs for favored appliances (electric), and so on. . . .

 

This seems like a good idea.
How About A Pilot Project To Demonstrate The Feasibility Of Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Electricity Generation?
January 25, 2022/ Francis Menton

• 
  At this current crazy moment, most of the “Western” world (Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia) is hell bent on achieving a “net zero” energy system.
  
  
• As I understand this concept, it means that, within two or three decades, all electricity production will be converted from the current mostly-fossil-fuel generation mix to almost entirely wind, solar and storage. On top of that, all or nearly all energy consumption that is not currently electricity (e.g., transportation, industry, heat, agriculture) must be converted to electricity, so that the energy for these things can also be supplied solely by the wind, sun, and batteries.
  
  
• Since electricity is currently only about a quarter of final energy consumption, that means that we are soon to have an all-electric energy generation and consumption system producing around four times the output of our current electricity system, all from wind and solar, backed up as necessary only by batteries or other storage.
  
  
• A reasonable question is, has anybody thought to construct a small-to-moderate scale pilot project to demonstrate that this is feasible?
  

READ MORE

 

Try McKinsey & Company.
The Costs of Government ‘Net Zero’ Commitments Are Much Higher Than Claimed by Alarmists Pushing Them
UNCATEGORIZED JANUARY 26, 2022

An article in The National Pulse discusses a recent study which shows the enormous economic costs that would be imposed to hit net zero carbon dioxide emission commitments by 2050, as proposed by several national governments and endorsed by the United Nations. The costs are far higher than claimed by climate activists. The study shows every sector of the economy and probably every person’s life would be effected to some degree or another. Yet the transition would likely fail to prevent temperatures from rising by 1.5℃.

The National Pulse article titled, “2050 ‘Net Zero’ Climate Target Will Cost $275 TRILLION; More Than U.S. Govt Currently Spends Per Day,” discusses the findings contained in report from management consulting company McKinsey & Company (McKinsey). Mckinsey’s report titled, “The Net Zero Transition,” provided a detailed analysis of the costs of the economic transition necessary to hit net zero by 2050.

According to the report, the economic cost as the transition are a staggering $275 trillion by 2050, or approximately $30 billion per day for the next 25 years. In an almost laughable degree of understatement, the McKinsey reports writes, “our estimates of the annual spending on physical assets for a net-zero transition exceed to a meaningful degree the $3 trillion–$4.5 trillion total spending estimates that previous analyses have produced.”

As high as these figures are, McKinsey doesn’t claim its analysis is comprehensive. . . .

 

Drill baby, drill!
A year after pausing oil, gas leasing, a Biden reversal

The widening gulf between the president's policies on oil, gas and coal extraction and his initial promises has raised questions about his climate goals.

'Disappointed and really kind of confused' »

 

The more we learn, the more there is to learn.
Assessing Virginia’s Hidden Wind and Solar Costs
Guest Blogger
But that will happen only when winds are blowing at speeds required for full rated capacity, perhaps 40-45% of the year, sporadically and unpredictably. When winds do not cooperate, Virginia…

 

This stuff isn't that difficult. Especially with the information available for the price of an internet connection.

Here is a link to an estimate from the EIA of 2020 US total electricity demand,

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php

3.8 E +12 kWh

There are 365 * 24 hours in a year,

Instantaneous demand on average is then about 424 GW - close to the 450 GW value your PDF link uses.

If we use 450 GW as the required design then we will need 4.5 E +9 100W solar panels and at $100/ea that works out to $450B.
They won't install themselves though, so you can bet that total installed cost for these will at least be double the material cost, but 3x is a more reasonable number to use for a capital project estimate. It's actually still probably on the low side. But let's say it'll run $1.5T to $2T.

The first change order has just come in when engineering noticed that these panels will only generate full power for at most 6 hours a day and in order to provide power for the on demand load during those 6 hours we will need to have enough excess power to generate a minimum of 18 hours for battery charging. We'll need four times the panels. So now we're looking at $6T to $8T and will need to install about 20 billion 100 W panels or equivalent.

Keep in mind, if we only want to cover some smaller percentage of total US demand then we can at this point scale the estimate linearly.

50% - we only need 10 billion 100W solar panels or their equivalent.

Another thing to keep in mind is that each panel is about 7.5 sqft. For 18 E +9 panels that's roughly a 70x70 mile square. Zuma AZ gets the most sun so that's where we're building it.

Now how about those batteries. We want reliable power cycles on these batteries so we're going with a 50% powercycle so we'll need 36 hours of storage and peak instantaneous discharge of the full 450 GW.

We can use the Hornsdale Power Reserve as our base case. Hornsdale is 193.5 MWh capacity with a 150MW discharge rate. We'll need 81,000 Hornsdale Power Reserves or equivalent. Going by the plot shown for the Hornsdale Power Reserve on Google Earth it looks like the batteries themselves take up about 71,000 sqft and the substations and switchgear takes up about 470,000 sqft. We'll estimate about 550,000 sqft per Hornsdale equivalent for a total of about 40x40 miles. The cost will be about 81,000 times the Hornsdale cost which was about $126M USD. This works out to about $12.15T USD.

So yeah, aside from the sheer complexity of the size issue, the cost is around $20T USD for the solar cells and the batteries. If we install the panels above the batteries and the switchgear then we're only looking at covering up about 5000 sqmi of AZ that most of US won't mind at all. Yuma will be a boomtown.

Please check my math if you're so inclined, I'd appreciate it.

 

Please see the McKinsey & Company data linked in #435. Total is $275T.

 

Alarmist claims about the transition to total green energy are based on magical thinking.
More Focus On The Impossible Costs Of A Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Energy System
February 01, 2022/ Francis Menton

• 
  It should be glaringly obvious that, if we are shortly going to try to convert to a “net zero” carbon emissions energy system based entirely on wind, sun and batteries, then there needs to be serious focus on the feasibility and costs of such a system.
  
  
• The particular part of such a prospective system that needs the most focus is the method of energy storage, its cost and, indeed, feasibility. That part needs focus because, as wind and solar increase their share of generation over 50% of the total, storage becomes far and away the dominant driver of the total costs.
  
  
• Moreover, there is no clear way to identify some fixed amount of storage that will be sufficient to make such a system reliable enough to power a modern economy without full backup from dispatchable sources. This also should be glaringly obvious to anyone who thinks about the problem for any amount of time.
  

READ MORE

 

How is that report supposed to help anyone understand the sheer immensity of what it would take to power civilization with wind and solar. Big deal, $275T means nothing to anyone. 5 billion 100W 7.5 sqft solar panels to supply the total US grid demand is a lot more helpful and no one can claim my source is bogus this or bogus that. It's dirt simple conversion factors.

But yeah, if the US alone would have to spend about $20T for a CONUS solar power station then it's not much of a stretch to consider $275T in the ballpark for a global net zero by 2050 fiasco. And then papa, we shall have no more hurricanes? Yes son, nor shall we have wildfires either. It's SCIENCE!

 

No effort that is not global has any meaning.
Neither hurricanes nor wildfires are linked to emissions or warming.

 

So much for nature.
Green Wrecking Ball: Germany Clearing “Undisturbed” 1000-Year Old Forest, Make Way For Massive Wind Park
By P Gosselin on 4. February 2022

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Germany’s government has not only taken a wrecking ball to the nation in terms of COVID, but also to its biodiversity in its self-deluded bid to protect the climate.



Clearing of 2000 hectares in one of the last undisturbed forests has begun as State of Hesse issues the construction approval for massive industrial wind park. Image: https://rettet-den-reinhardswald.de/.

“Grimm’s fairy tale forest”

About a year ago we reported on disturbing plans by the government of the German state of Hesse to clear 20 million square meters of 1000-year old “fairy tale” forest in one of Germany’s most idyllic, fairy tale-like forests: the Reinhardswald located in the hilly region west of the city of Göttingen.

The Reinhardswald is known as the “treasure house of European forests” or the “Grimm’s fairy tale forest”.

A total of about 2000 hectares ( 20 million m²) of the thousand-year-old Reinhardswald was designated for destruction by the state in order to clear the way for a massive wind power plant development. . . .

 

With green energy costs impossible to hide any longer, fossil fuels may be poised for a comeback.
The Shifting Politics Of The So-Called "Green" Energy Transition
February 04, 2022/ Francis Menton

• 
  When I began this blog back in 2012, I had already studied up on the “climate change” issue. And I had already come to the conclusions that not only was the science of human-caused catastrophic global warming hogwash, but also that the proposed solution of replacing energy from fossil fuels with the wind and sun could never work at reasonable cost. My first post on the subject was on December 4, 2012.
  
  
• But at that time there was almost no organized political opposition to the program to “save the planet” by transitioning to “green” energy.
  
  
• Here in the U.S., the Democrats were unanimous in their plans to replace fossil fuels, and Republicans mostly went along — some enthusiastically, others perhaps trying to slow things down a little. Indeed, when I began the blog, I had only recently attended a fundraiser for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election (yes, I gave the guy money) where he chose to make his speech mostly about how he would fix the environment by promoting green energy.
  
  
• And over in Europe it was even crazier, with essentially no major political party in any country taking a position in opposition to the forced elimination of fossil fuels. The so-called “Energiewende” in Germany had kicked off in 2010, with essentially no significant political opposition.
  

• After a long wait, the costs are bubbling to the surface, and the opposition is growing rapidly and headed toward critical mass.
  

READ MORE

 

Never is a long time. Fossil fuels are becoming more expensive while solar is getting cheaper. These are one-way processes. At some point, the lines will cross, and fossil fuels will be obsolete except for niche applications like aviation and energy for high-latitude settlements.

 

We'll disagree about that.

 

I may not live to see it, but it's inevitable. There's only so much fossil fuel in the ground, and it will become prohibitively expensive to extract it long before it's all gone.

 

I don't think that will be a problem.
“Discoveries, like resources, may well be infinite: the more we discover, the more we are able to discover.”
― Julian L. Simon

 

But as a matter of objective physical fact, it will be.

Neither discoveries nor resources are infinite, and fossil fuels, specifically, are in not only finite but fixed supply. Don't allow yourself to be hypnotized by Julian Simon's wager victory over the absurd Paul Ehrlich. Fossil fuels are not like a chemical element that can be extracted from ores of lower and lower grade, and eventually from recycled garbage. The Second Law of Thermodynamics means that when you use energy, specifically, there is nothing you can ever do to recover or recycle it.

No doubt someday we will discover how to extract carbon from the atmosphere using solar energy (as plants do) efficiently enough to make synthetic hydrocarbon fuels cheaper than fossil fuels, effectively "recycling" carbon we have emitted by burning fossil fuels. Indeed, the more fossil fuels we burn, the more CO2 there will be in the air, and the more economical it will be to extract it by processes like photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is already easier at 400ppm than it was at 300 or 200ppm; imagine how much easier it will be at 600, 1000, 1500 or 2000ppm. But the resulting fuels will be some kind of biofuels, not fossil fuels.

 

We shall see.