Bishop Hill Balderdash, dishonesty and woo
Dec 4, 2012 Energy: gas Energy: wind There is much excitement this morning about a Cambridge Econometrics report on windfarms. The headline finding is this (according to the Independent):
British economy would be £20bn-a-year better off with focus on wind power, says think tank
There is a parallel article here at Greenpeace's Energy Desk, which is perhaps surprisingly slightly more honest than the Independent. For example we learn from Greenpeace that:
Based on the government's own price assumptions, and the rising cost of carbon, the report found the cost of power from offshore wind would be within 1% of the cost of power from unabated gas power.
That's the assumption that, contrary to all the available evidence, that gas prices will continue to rise in the face of a worldwide glut of shale gas. It also reads as if they have invoked the great levelised costs lie in their support.
The Independent doesn't mention this rather outlandish assumption, unlike Greenpeace:
Even if the gas price falls due to shale, the authors argue, the results would be similar.
But the economic benefit of a 'dash for wind' depends on foreign firms opening UK factories to supply any growth in renewables beyond 2020.
OK, so the result depends not only on an unrealistic assumption for gas prices, but also on manufacturing countries suddenly deciding to build their wind turbines here rather than somewhere cheap like China. If I said this was risible nonsense, I think I would probably be understating matters.
As an aside, I should mention that both articles quote Professor Paul Ekins as follows:
Much of the debate around the choice between gas-fired and offshore wind electricity generation in the years post-2020 assumes wind is more expensive. This study represents powerful evidence to the contrary.
In both articles, Professor Ekins is introduced as "professor of resources and environmental policy at University College London". It is perhaps worth noting, however, that Professor Ekins was also a long-time leading light in the green party. Oh yes, and he's a senior consultant to director of Cambridge Econometrics, the company that produced the report in the first place.
Normal day in the green media then.
Reader Comments (56)
Would China, Indian, Brazil and other rapidly growing countries also be better off switching to wind power?
Anything written in The "Independent" has to be put through the Lebedev filter - if you didn't know - a major holder of Gazprom - who have, so rumor has it - been filling the coffers of anti-fracking NGOs in the EU to protect their Nord Stream / Yuzhno-Russkoye field investments,
Its shale gas...despite the negative slant from the bbc today.
I was interested in the carbon price assumptions used in the report, and found them in appendix table B2: the carbon floor price is assumed to reach £74.20 per tonne CO2 by 2030. That is in line with the price I think is justified (see http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/research/working_papers/2011/wp1105.pdf), but is well above any carbon price we have at present.
@cwhope
This is really really good news. It means we can eliminate all subsidies and leave the electricity companies to buy from whoever they want. Wind is fully competitive. That is really great news. Look forward to getting rid of those unnecessary subsidies, like right now.
If gas prices refuse to go up, a suitable CO2 tax can be put on the thing thereby making wind "cheaper than".
Everybody wins! (apart from the taxpayer)
Paul Ekins is influential in the UK and the EU. He freely mixes advocacy, consultancy, research and education. He is also a signatory of the Ackerman-Munitz petition in defense of suppressing information.
Omnologos
Exact.
I've corrected the post. Ekins is a senior consultant to CE, not a director.
There was a two-pronged attack on the Today programme this morning and this report came up in the 2nd of those items.
It seems that Greenpeace commissioned the report by Econometrics and when pointed out to Ekins that that might make it biased an astute listener could hear the interviewee start to fall apart at the seams.
For the ordinary listener, though, the seed was sown. There must be some way of collectively getting balance into these BBC items.
They spent ages giving both sides of the argument on prostitution in the following report and while this is important, from women's point of view and society in general, is it less important than the cAGW nonsense and how that impacts the world?
Somebody must like wind turbines:
"AS Scottish households struggle to pay for rising heating bills, the Daily Record reveals that more than £18million has been paid out to the owners of 19 of Scotland's windfarms to stop them producing electricity when demand is low. (Source Daily Record)"
H/T SCEF
I have not seen this mentioned anywhere else, but this was on front page of the Scottish Express on Sunday:
Full text at:
SNP’S WIND FARMS WILL COST SCOTTISH FAMILIES £1.2BN
And now this
You really could not make it up!
It doesn't matter, by the time we get our 30 thou' bird chompers built, it will be too late lads and lasses.
Doha, and ever watched a dog chasing its tail?
It should be a bit clearer the temperature trend for the UK is not up or even straight but down. Some crystal ball folks point out Little and Big Ice Ages start first along the Brit-Northern EU zone. Then there's those that predict another 30 or so years of cooling. What seems to be happening is when the warmist and leftes have their posteriors frozen to the pub seat after converting to wind power, then, and only then, will their voices no longer be taken seriously. I.E., when Hell or London freezes over.
I just can not square the logic of artificially inflating the cost of conventional fuels. If there is a burden of social costs to be expected from a warming climate, contrary to historical experience (Roman and Medieval optimums), raising energy prices seem counterintuitive to me, only compounding the social grief. But of course research findings indicating any beneficial effects of warming on northern hemisphere expansion of cultivable land and growth season, or enhanced crop yields due to increased atmospheric CO2, greatly to be welcomed for a rising global population, are not on the menu du jour.
"But also on manufacturing countries suddenly deciding to build their wind turbines here rather than somewhere cheap like China"
They can't build them cheap enough even in China...
"CHINA: Nordex is to make 130 job cuts at its blade factory at Dongying, east China, citing falling orders at the plant."
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/news/login/1162561/
This report is balderdash because the key issue in wind power costs is the standby plant. CCGTs have efficiency curves which are extraordinarily sensitive to their operating envelope. Thus throttle back to 60% and cycle, low wind penetration, and you lose 25% efficiency. Throttle back to 20% [no steam cycle] and you lose 45% efficiency. This is why many nations are now stopping new windmills.
It seems kind of irrelevant to be talking about this when the EU look said to agree to "do nothing" at Doha. Or is the end of the global warming scam of no interest to sceptics?
"For the ordinary listener, though, the seed was sown. There must be some way of collectively getting balance into these BBC items.
Dec 4, 2012 at 9:31 AM | coldoldman"
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Indeed. Refuse their Charter renewal until utter impartiality on all matters is ensured.
Not going to happen tho', is it?
cedarhill: it is very likely we're heading to a new Little Ice Age. this is because such events are led by the planetary conjunction we had in 2003. The last equivalent was 1824, hence Dickens' cold London. The one prior to that was in 1645.
That combined with the cooling ENSO as well, and we are doing the same [2007]. So, come the 2040s, we'll be ~1.5 k cooler than now and the northern Great plains and Europe won't be able to grow wheat.
Mike, if only it were that simple.
The UK's "weapons-grade moron" and his associates Yeo and Deben are determined to continue down the green (non-)energy route either for sociological dogmatic reasons or because removing their snouts from the trough is too painful to contemplate.
The Germans are abandoning nuclear at the behest of the Greens (even though that is going to mean increased use of coal).
Here in France I am living right on top of what might be a major coal/gas/oil deposit (no-one seems quite sure which!) in an area that is crying out for jobs while Hollande refuses to countenance shale because he believes the tripe about earthquakes, burning tap water and groundwater contamination. He is also reducing reliance on nuclear because the Greens asked him to.
And everyone is ploughing ahead with biomass and corn ethanol without understanding the consequences.
There's no need even to mention global warming any more. All you have to do is put on a long balck hooded cloak and go around making magic signs and intoning, "These are not the energy sources you are looking for." and all the idiot politicians will fall for it.
I am strongly of the view that the main reason the IPCC was not invited to Doha is that the whole global warming meme is so passé that they would have been an embarrassment, like an elderly uncle still trying to entertain the Christmas guests with the same tunes on the same harmonica that delighted us so much (not) 20 years ago.
It's all sustainability and bio-diversity these days, Mike. Didn't you get the memo?
Beats me why wind is expensive. There is an up-front capital cost, ongoing maintenance cost and land rental. The generator is presumably brushless so maintenance should be only required on bearings/lubricated parts. Are they all expected to suffer catastrophic failure requiring repair by total replacement after a short life? Or are the subsidies distorting the market so that too much is being offered to landowners/construction companies/other in order to cash in?
ssat: the windmills are very expensive because firstly they are very inefficient, ~18% once you disconnect them 11% of the time as planned by 2020 and secondly, the bearings fail because if you put proper bearings in, they would lose too much power.
This is why their lifetime is much lower than claimed, 12 years onshore, perhaps 6 offshore.
"perhaps surprisingly slightly more honest than the Independent"
---
All things considered, that's pretty generous, if faintly damning in faintness of praise.
Still, at least the Indy is one of them thar 'qualities' Lord Leveson will soon be 'dealing with', applauded from the sidelines by such paragons of trustiworthiness as the BBC, those wonderful folk who have just lately brought us 28gate & Newsnight/McAlpine
Great to know truth and accuracy will remain in only the safest of hands.
Does anyone know how the "earthquakes" caused by tracking compare in intensity with those caused by coal mining or other forms of mining? Do our former coal mining areas still experience any tremors associated with old mines? How do the fracking tremors compare with those that would be expected in the absence of any tracking or mining activity in a country like Britain where all the geological faults are ancient and pretty stable?
ssat:
I once did a series of calculations looking at the capital costs of various turbines and the income they would get from the electricity produced if they were paid the wholesale price received by power stations. In none of the cases I looked at would the income over the 20 year life of the turbine be sufficient to pay back the capital cost, let alone interest on the capital, maintenance, insurance, decommissioning. Example below:
From memory, a 50kW turbine costs about £250,000. Electricity generated over lifetime = 1,750MWh. Wholesale value of electricity is about £50/MWh. Therefore lifetime income = £87,500.
They are profitable because the income they actually get from the Feed-in-Tariff is £255/MWh, ie 5 times the real value of the electricity. This gives a lifetime income of £447,000 - hence a big fat profit.
Roy,
AFAIR, the tremors caused by mining are / were as strong or stronger than the two in Lancashire, which were said to be the no worse than a heavy lorry passing (at what distance nobody said). I don't know if old mining areas still get associated tremors.
Roy,
they don't even compare with natural events in the recent past. Check out Comrie, Perthshire on a search engine
"Comrie gained fame in the late 19th century as the 'Shakey Toun' as it is very close to the Highland Boundary fault line which defines the edge of the highlands. Being so close to the line means it has been experiencing earth tremors for many centuries. These were first noted in 1597 and a major series of 70 shocks were noted in 1789. Comrie's Earthquake House, built in the 1870s, was the first purpose-built seismological observatory in the world. The building was originally constructed to house a simple device for marking when an earthquake had occurred. "
What else can you expect from charlatans and crooks who have a personal interest in promoting this scam?
@Roy. Back in the 1980's I was working in Stoke-on-Trent. All of a sudden all the glassware on the shelves in the lab I was working in started to shake. Some dropped off and smashed. You could also feel the vibrations through your feet.
Had I been on a ladder, I would have certainly fallen off (HT refracktion)
Turns out it was caused by the collapse of an old coal mine. There's lots of them about and they don't spark national headlines when they collapse.
Dec 4, 2012 at 3:30 PM | Roy
Here's a copy of my comment from the fracking thread spoiled by ScotsRenewables evil Lancastrian twin Refraktion:
Take a look at this link about geothermal energy in Iceland:
http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/?p=1514
This manmade 'swarm' of tremors included 400 of them with a maximum intensity of ML3.4.
AFAIK the Icelanders still use the geothermal source at Hengill.
@ Philip Bratby,
Thanks for that information. We are however assured that as the technology 'matures' the cost will come down. There is no need for it to mature, should that even be possible, as profitability in their operation is built-in by the FITs. A merry-go-round of a solution to a perceived problem to which they will never be the answer due to intermittent output. And I bet my shirt that if the FITs were to be slowly disappeared the technology would not 'mature' but would be abandoned.
ssat: Too right, the technology is about as "mature" as its going to get. Any inprovements to efficiency etc are second order effects. No subsidies, no turbines.
Our Climate Change Minister, Barking Barker, says that 'our' windmills are wonderful, majestic and are even becoming tourist attractions!
I give up. It is not possible to combat this much stupid, although the many commenters below the article have a damned good try.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9720685/Wind-farms-are-wonderful-and-majestic-says-climate-change-minister.html#disqus_thread
I can confirm that small tremors from coal mining operations are quite common - perhaps 6 or ten per year? (as indeed are small tremors NOT associated with mining). Those associated with Caudilla's trial fracking were at the threshold of perception.
Coal Mining tremors can probably be considered in two categories. Firstly, the collapse of modern long wall mechanised faces as (or briefly after) extraction takes place. There are only five deep mines of any consequence in the UK (and likely no more than a couple in 12 months time). Most faces collapse without causing a tremor. So tremors from that source (which very occasionally might occasion a glass falling from a shelf, for example) are likely to be a "rare and exciting event" as was once said in another context. And for modern workings 90% or more of the movement occurs within a few months of the face being worked. But the biggest problem isn't collapse or stress induced 'earthquakes', it is mining subsidence, of course.
The other type of tremor may rarely be caused in shallow pillar and stall workings (at least 60 years old?) where minewater rebound and gradual deterioration causes the pillars to fail unpredictably. Potentially much more serious, although I'm not aware of many cases. Collapsing shafts (or collapsing shaft caps) are perhaps even more serious and there have been a number of fatalities over the years. To put that into context, there are 100,000 coal mining shafts recorded in Yorkshire alone. And best guess is another 100,000 that aren't recorded.
But it is also worth pondering the possible future collapse of workings in other deep mining industries. The salt and gypsum mines are perhaps the most notorious for leaving huge underground voids.
But don't forget that coal was the main energy source in the industrial revolution. Coal made Britain 'Great'. And as an island, all our foreign trade was conducted by shipping.
All the ships were, of course, wind powered. And they couldn't change over to steam power fast enough. Ever wondered why that might be?
What a sad joke of a study and report.
Ah, the Independent.
That would be the one that published this, would it not?
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Tee hee!
Talking of damning with faint praise:
Yup, together with David Icke and... no idea, really. When these nobodies dare to expose themselves to the electorate (i.e. rarely, even in byelections) they are ritually trounced. Why they ever gained more political influence than Screaming Lord Sutch is beyond reason.
Dec 4, 2012 at 3:30 PM | Roy
The seismic energy yield from earthquakes has been compared in terms of TNT equivalents. First column is approximate Richter scale value:
1.0 480 g
1.2 1.1 kg (a single stick of dynamite)
2.0 15 kg
3.0 480 kg
As can be seen, this is a logarythmic scale. An increase in Richter number of 0.2 is a doubling in energy release while increase of 1.0 is equivalent to an energy release of x31.6 An increase of 2.0 Richter scale is 31.6 x 31.6 = 1000x
(From Wiki article on the Richter earthquake scale)
Here is an interesting current Greenpeace story that lifts the veil on what is really going on.
GREENPEACE has admitted receiving funding from a US philanthropic organisation but says there's nothing wrong with that.
Mining billionaire Clive Palmer made the extraordinary claim on Tuesday that Greenpeace and the Australian Greens were being funded by the CIA via the Rockefeller Foundation to hurt Australian mining exports.
Greenpeace campaigner John Hepburn says the organisation received $70,000 from the Rockefeller Family Fund to research the environmental impacts of the Australian coal industry.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/greenpeace-hits-back-at-clive-palmers-cia-claim/story-e6freoof-1226306515656
Dec 4, 2012 at 10:53 PM | Alan Bates
The most interesting part of that Wiki article is the classification of earthquake effects:
Reveals a lot about the comment in another thread referring to an M1.5 many miles away in Morecambe Bay as nearly causing a man to fall off his ladder. People in the renewables industry must be getting desperate to exaggerate so wildly.
Billy Liar...when you have so lttle grasp on reality as bitty and his mate refraktion, it is astonishing that they could even climb a ladder in the first place. A merepuff of wind would be enough to blow them away.
Cambridge Econometrics was set up by long time proponent of carbon taxation, Dr Terry Barker, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, (4CMR). He was a Co-ordinating Lead Author (CLA) for the IPCC’s TAR on the effects of greenhouse gas mitigation policies on the global energy industries and a member of the core writing team for the Synthesis Report, Climate Change 2001.
He was CLA for the IPCC AR4, in 2007, on cross-sectoral mitigation and is involved again with the forthcoming IPCC AR5.
In January 2006, at the opening of his new company, 4CMR, Dr Barker said “It may seem astonishing, but the global climate models, providing governments with estimates of the costs of climate stabilisation are nearly all reliant on one year’s data.”
Astonishing indeed, yet such material was incorporated into the Stern Review, for which he was a significant contributor.
In his 4CMR speech Dr Barker said, "I also want to thank Cambridge Econometrics, who is (sic) working closely with us to support the research programme. We would not have been able to build our global model without the company’s help."
This was the entry for Terry Barker on the web site of the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, on a page updated 18/05/2006: (‘4CMR’ opened in January 06).
"Dr Terry Barker is Chairman of Cambridge Econometrics, the company originally formed by DAE researchers under his leadership (Cambs Dept. of Appl. Economics), to apply the Cambridge Multisectoral Dynamic Model (MDM) of the British Economy. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of Economic Systems Research."
I love how 'concerned environmental groups' and individuals can't stop wailing about the seismic armageddon that awaits us when we start commercial EXPLOITATION of fra**ing in the UK.
It's not the knee-jerk reaction of the hand-wringers that amuses me whenever the possibility of low-cost energy threatens their vision of a future powered by wishful-thinking, neo-numeracy and the greedy-suckling at an increasingly dessicated public teat.
Nope. Not even close.
What tickles this old and wrinkled elbow is how these tectonic-prophecies remind me of that 1959 film; 'The Mouse that roared'
You're too old to remember this? Too young to have seen it?
Never mind, here's a link to the trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7L7WLFBYR4
Coming to a cabinet near you!
In my view, the science of global warming is almost irrelevant to the debate.
I worked in a cost accountancy section . By the end of the year, the accounts were quite literally fiction thanks to management interference. Same goes for climate science by the time it reaches the public.
Environmentalism is funded by old money. The former capitalist billionaire class. Here are Greenpeace accounts.
http://www.activistcash.com/organization_financials_full.cfm/oid/131
Here is my page on how the global elite run the environmental movement.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sealed/gw/aristocrats.htm
LOL at what happens when you troll the troll!
Phillip Bratby (here):
That's very helpful, Phillip, thank you.
Richard North fills in some more gaps today. More of a sausage factory than a think tank.