The Energy ‘Transition’ — a Leap into the Dark By Andrew Stuttaford
Not for the first time, it strikes me that the transition away from fossil fuels may be moving rather more quickly than the technology upon which it is supposed to rely.
Summer is around the corner, and we suggest you prepare by buying an emergency generator, if you can find one in stock. Last week the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warned that two-thirds of the U.S. could experience blackouts this summer. Welcome to the “green energy transition.”
We’ve been warning for years that climate policies would make the grid more vulnerable to vacillations in supply and demand. And here we are. Some of the mainstream press are belatedly catching on that blackouts are coming, but they still don’t grasp the real problem: The forced transition to green energy is distorting energy markets and destabilizing the grid.
Progressives blame the grid problems on climate change. There’s no doubt that drought in the western U.S. is a contributing factor. NERC’s report notes that hydropower generators in the western U.S. are running at lower levels, and output from thermal (i.e., nuclear and fossil fuel) generators that use the Missouri River for cooling may be affected this summer.
But the U.S. has experienced bad droughts in the past. The problem now is the loss of baseload generators that can provide reliable power 24/7. Solar and wind are rapidly increasing, but they’re as erratic as the weather and can’t be commanded to ramp up when electricity demand surges.
One of the markers of human progress has been the way that we have been able to break away from the constraints put upon us by the natural environment. For example, we have developed better and better methods of lighting — from candles and oil lamps onward. We have beaten, so to speak, the night. Equally, in more and more parts of the world we have managed to break away from the constraints imposed by weather or climate, another sign of progress.
And yet now, the climate warriors are telling us to put our faith in an electricity grid that may well find itself vulnerable to being crippled as a result of the inescapable reality that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. In all probability, storage technologies will, in due course, be developed that get around those problems, and nuclear energy will — if the political will can be found to turn to it — be able to help out. But the latter will also take time.
Meanwhile, the WSJ adds:
Natural-gas-fired plants can help pick up the slack, but there aren’t enough of them to back up all of the renewables coming onto the grid.
California last August scrambled to install five emergency gas-fired generators to avert blackouts, but its grid overseer recently warned of power outages this summer. The Golden State in past summers has relied on power imports from neighboring states. But coal plants across the West have been shutting down as renewables grow.
And, despite some encouraging signs of an emerging belief to the contrary in unexpected places such as the EU Commission, many climate warriors insist that natural gas is a climate crime, even when used as a “bridge” fuel.
Even Bloomberg, a news source that generally can be relied upon to reflect the climate obsessions of its owner, seems prepared to admit that climate change alone is not to blame for what might lie ahead, noting that
a historic drought is covering the western US, limiting supplies of hydroelectric power, and forecasts call for a hotter-than-average summer. But the fight against global warming poses its own risks as older coal-fired plants close faster than wind farms, solar facilities and batteries can replace them.
“The pace of our grid transformation is out of sync” with the physical realities of the existing power network, Moura said.
Moura? That would be John Moura, director of reliability assessment and performance analysis for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a regulatory body that oversees grid stability.
Oh.
Perhaps now would not be the moment to overload the grid further by “nudging” (or more) drivers into electric vehicles.
And then there are moves like this (via the LA Times):
Citing the climate crisis, the Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to ban most gas appliances in new construction, a policy that’s expected to result in new homes and businesses coming equipped with electric stoves, clothes dryers, water heaters and furnaces.
More than 50 California cities and counties have adopted similar rules banning or discouraging gas hookups in new homes and other buildings. The nation’s second-largest city was late to the game, said Councilmember Nithya Raman, the policy’s lead author — but no longer.
Friday’s vote “puts us in line with climate leaders across the country,” she said in an interview.
To the extent that rules such as these affect “only” new construction, for now they will make a difference only at the margin, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to suspect that they are a foretaste of what will be coming. And that’s not going to be good news for an overstretched grid either. Not only that, it raises some, uh, interesting questions about the wisdom of eliminating diversity from the sources of energy used in many homes, for heating, say, or cooking.
Then again, the combination of central planning and millenarianism is not often associated with wisdom.
Comments are closed.
