Unreliable nature of solar and wind makes electricity more expensive, new study finds

Michael Shellenberger, Contributor | Forbes | Apr 22, 2019 | www.forbes.com ~~

Solar panels and wind turbines are making electricity significantly more expensive, a major new study by a team of economists from the University of Chicago finds.

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) “significantly increase average retail electricity prices, with prices increasing by 11% (1.3 cents per kWh) seven years after the policy’s passage into law and 17% (2 cents per kWh) twelve years afterward,” the economists write.

The study, which has yet to go through peer-review, was done by Michael Greenstone, Richard McDowell, and Ishan Nath. It compared states with and without an RPS. It did so using what the economists say is “the most comprehensive state-level dataset ever compiled” which covered 1990 to 2015.

The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: “All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy,” they write.

Read more via the following weblink:

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/04/24/unreliable-nature-of-sol...

Bernie Sanders Wants To Phase Out Nuclear Power. One Vermont Town Was Hit Hard When Its Plant Closed

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/24/bernie-sanders-nuclear-power-ver...

No more electricity for Germany

Date: 19/04/19

In a few years, Germany’s last coal and nuclear power plants shall be taken off the grid and shut down. Nobody knows where the electricity will then come from. One thing is certain: wind and sun won’t do it.

The Wall Street Journal describes Germany’s phase-out of coal and nuclear power simply as “the stupidest energy policy in the world”. Although stupid environmental policy is routine, the paper continues, Germany still stands out clearly from this nonsense. While China’s coal consumption is rising, things are going downhill here.

In a few years the last coal-fired and nuclear power plants are to be taken off the grid and shut down. Nobody knows where the electricity will come from. One thing is certain: wind and sun won’t do it.

Given these predictions, Professor Harald Schwarz, Chair of Energy Distribution and High Voltage Technology at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, now has his say. A year ago, he worked on a study for the Brandenburg Ministry of Economics on secure power supply. In the regional Lausitz magazine he now gave a detailed interview (page 45f.), in which the dramatic errors of the Energiewende are made evident.

His verdict:

“We will not be able to cope with the shutdown of coal and nuclear power in three years’ time and can only hope that there are still sufficient reserves of coal and nuclear power in neighbouring countries to supply Germany when we can no longer do it ourselves”.

So foreign countries are the only hope for Germany’s energy revolution. Schwarz soberly notes that around 120 gigawatts of photovoltaic and wind power plants have been installed in the past 15 years.

But:

“The guaranteed output of PV is nevertheless 0%; for onshore wind it is only 1% and for offshore wind it’s 2%. In plain language, the 120 GW of renewables that we have built up over the last 15 years make almost no contribution to the secured output. We will never build a secure power supply with wind and PV alone. Ten years ago, we had around 100 GW of power from secure energy sources at our disposal – coal, gas, nuclear, biomass and hydroelectric plants.”

Wind and photovoltaic plants cannot provide a reliable output, because no electricity can be produced during dull periods or in the dark. An output is only considered “secure” if it can be delivered at any time when it is required.

Read the full article at the following weblink:

https://www.thegwpf.com/no-more-electricity-for-germany/

US Renewable Statistics: Real vs. Potential Output

https://www.masterresource.org/renewable-energy/us-renewables-real-...

Trump rescues NY from its self-inflicted natural-gas shortage

https://nypost.com/2019/04/16/trump-rescues-ny-from-its-self-inflic...

Electric Car-Owners Shocked: New Study Confirms EVs Considerably Worse For Climate Than Diesel Cars

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-21/new-study-shocks-electric...

Physicist: ‘Stop the Nonsense’ – Sign petition – ‘There is an epidemic of cities in N. America declaring their city is in a ‘climate emergency’

PURPOSE: Comments of Denis Rancourt to the Standing Committee on Environmental Protection, Water and Waste Management regarding two motions brought by Councillor Shawn Menard for the hearing of Tuesday, 16 April 2019: (1) Motion to declare a climate emergency in Ottawa; (2) Motion to delay introduction of plastic bags in Green Bins

FROM: Denis Rancourt, PhD, Long-time resident of Capital Ward (Ward 17), Internationally recognized environmental researcher: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=1ChsRsQAAAAJ

TO: Standing Committee on Environmental Protection, Water and Waste Management (Ottawa, or any city)

Motion to declare a climate emergency in Ottawa

This motion is ill-conceived and in-effect political rather than being evidence-based. It recommends a costly make-work project, and would not address real and important environmental matters. City staff and consultation resources would be expended with no benefit to residents of Ottawa.

First, I address each of the “WHEREAS” statements of the motion, as follows.

1.      “WHEREAS Climate change is currently contributing to billions of dollars in property and infrastructure damage worldwide …”

This is false. Violent weather events have always caused destruction. The more infrastructures are built, the more destruction there is of infrastructures from violent weather events.

Historical climatologists have not concluded increased incidences of violent weather events. There is no such statistical study from the field of historical climatology.

Specifically, there is no study establishing a higher or increasing or changing incidence of violent weather events (storms, drought, hurricanes…) in the Ottawa area. There is no study showing statistically deviant weather in the Ottawa area. Such studies performed elsewhere in North America have found null results for statistically meaningful weather incidence deviations.

There has not ever been a single scientific study that demonstrates from data either: (i) climate regime change, in terms of measured spatiotemporal weather incidences, since the 1950s surge in use of fossil fuel, or (ii) that any weather events or groups of events can be attributed to increased CO2 rather than statistical variations and the known decadal El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.

Virtually all such suggestions of CO2-induced weather in the scientific literature are inferred from tenuous global circulation model predictions, not actual weather data.

2.      “WHEREAS, Climate change is currently jeopardizing the health and survival of many species and other natural environments worldwide, stressing local and international ecosystems”

This is false and misleading.

It is misleading because by far the overwhelmingly dominant cause of threat to the natural environment and to animal species is habitat destruction, direct habitat destruction by industrial harvesting, industrial extraction, large-scale anthropogenic land-use re-assignment, and anthropogenic water and forest management practices; followed by unprecedented agricultural-sector tonnage application, world-wide, of herbicides (specifically, glyphosate) to crops, which are genetically engineered to be herbicide resistant.

In addition to its environmental impacts, glyphosate is now being recognized by several research groups as a cause of increased chronic diseases and conditions in humans, including in North America.

To attempt to resolve or finesse a “climate” component in these circumstances is a socio-political exercise, in which some well-meaning ecologists, who are not historical climatologists, are content to oblige.

It is false because there is no known 20th (or 21st) century example of climate change causing a species to become extinct. Not to mention that there are no demonstrated cases of regional or global climate regime change, in terms of measured spatiotemporal weather incidences, having occurred since the 1950s surge in use of fossil fuel.

3.      “WHEREAS Climate change is currently harming human populations through rising sea levels and other extraordinary phenomena like intense wildfires worldwide, extreme heat events, and more variable and unpredictable droughts and heavy rains …”

This is false and misleading.

It is false because there is no known example of the average global rise in sea level causing human or property damage.

The global sea level rise has been continuous and stable, with a rate of approximately 1.2 mm per year, for the last 200 years of measurements:[1]

The regular rise shows no feature that can be connected to the 1950s surge in use of fossil fuel.  The geophysics of sea level change is complex and largely unknown, as several experts have explained.

It is misleading because other factors are overwhelmingly dominant regarding ocean flooding events:

(1)   Building more human infrastructure near ocean shorelines necessarily increases the likelihood or “nuisance flooding”. (Not to mention that Ottawa is far from any ocean.)

(2)   Pacific island stability relies on complex bio-geological processes, especially natural erosion, and has always been variable in low islands of unconsolidated sand and gravel. (Not to mention that Ottawa is not a Pacific island.)

(3)   Natural erosion, after plate tectonics itself, is the most significant Earth-surface process, and it acts to reduce the altitude contrast between continent and ocean, everywhere, all the time.

(4)   Sea level change is negligible compared to all the relevant natural catastrophic events: typhoons, hurricanes, tide variability, coastal weather events, tsunamis, etc.

It is false, because “intense wildfires worldwide, extreme heat events, and more variable and unpredictable droughts and heavy rains” are not “extraordinary phenomena”. They are natural phenomena, ever present in a given climate era. Not a single study has shown a statistically meaningful increase in such events since the 1950s surge in use of fossil fuel.

Forest fires are a good example. My detailed review of forest-fire science shows how the false notion of increased modern forest fires was incorrectly introduced into the scientific literature, based on comparing distinct and incompatible US-government historical databases, and was corrected by historical climatologists, to no avail.[2]

Virtually all such suggestions of CO2-induced extreme weather events in the scientific literature are derived from tenuous global circulation model predictions, not actual extreme-events data analyzed by historical climatologists.[3]

4.      “WHEREAS recent international research has indicated a need for massive reduction in carbon emissions in the next 11 years to avoid further and devastating economic, ecological, and societal loss”

This is false.  There cannot be “further and devastating economic, ecological, and societal loss” if there has not yet been any “devastating economic, ecological, and societal loss” caused by the increased use of fossil fuel since the 1950s.

I infer that the Mover of the Motion is referring to IPCC executive summaries. These are political documents that reflect policy desires, not “international research”.

In conclusion, the Committee should take notice of the following facts when it considers this Motion:

(1)   There is no conclusive scientific evidence that climate change (unnatural increased extreme-weather incidence) has occurred since the surge in use of fossil fuel that started in the 1950s. There is only tenuous theoretical conjecture that such might occur.

(2)   Not a single death on Earth has been scientifically attributed to “climate change”, which includes Ottawa.

(3)   Not a single animal or plant species has been scientifically established to have become extinct from climate change. There is no scientific demonstration of such a thing.

(4)   Weather data for Ottawa does not show increased incidence of weather extremes, or any statistically meaningful deviations from the known natural variability (ENSO).

(5)   Changes in Ottawa canal skating-season schedules result from ice-management and safety protocol changes, not from (empirically known) weather data.

(6)   There is no rational reason, based on empirical data, to believe that Ottawa is at risk of climate change or is susceptible to anomalous future extreme weather events.

The Motion, in my opinion, is what can be termed “goodness propaganda”, which appears intended to convince citizens of being looked after. In fact, this Motion is a waste of resources and political attention.

It is verging on the ridiculous to think that the reality that 87% of world energy from fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) can be changed by policy statements or taxation.[4] The only significant alternative contributors, as now demonstrated by decades of publicly funded adventures, are nuclear and hydro, both requiring massive structural investments, and both having large environmental consequences.[5]

In contrast, real environmental issues that should concern the Committee are many and serious, and include:

(1)   Deposition of toxic heavy metals and cancer-causing PAHs (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) from major transportation lanes running through the populated city centre. Such deposition is a known and well-studied scientific reality.

(2)   Historical toxic-waste landfills in populated areas, including Vanier and the Mover of the Motion’s own riding.

(3)   The sustained and steadfast refusal of the City to disclose its soil toxicity study results for Old Ottawa East in Ward 17, even to the resident participants of the study, including me.

(4)   The disproportionate lack of family-oriented parks in densely populated neighbourhoods.

(5)   The narrowing river access corridors and shrinking river-area green space with every new river-adjacent or island urban development.

(6)   The lack of air-quality and noise monitoring near major transportation lanes through populated areas.

(7)   The increased littering along new foot paths, from lack of litter infrastructure and maintenance.

Motion to delay introduction of plastic bags in Green Bins

The plan to introduce plastic bags in Green Bins in Ottawa is a good plan. It takes the realities of household convenience, user psychology, and 4,000 tonnes of pet excrement per year into account. Otherwise, the Green Bin program is defeated.

The plan centralises plastic bag separation, thus accomplishing a task that users overwhelmingly refuse.

Any environmentally concerned councillor should be concerned with a few related issues, which are not mentioned in the Motion:

(1)   Will the plastic separation actually be done, without compromising the purpose of the organic recycling program?

(2)   What verifications are available to the City with respect to the plastic separation and its efficiency, and what reporting to councillors is planned regarding separation efficiency?

(3)   In the long term, what can be done (federal grants, research institute partnership) to develop dog-excrement collection and sealing devices that are inexpensive, practical, and paper or cardboard and organic-oil-wax or modified-paraffin based, and thus biodegradable, such as to circumvent the significant separation problem?

In my opinion, delaying inclusion of plastic in the Green Bins would be misguided. I would say that the solution is to monitor, report, and improve, rather than delay.

The Mover of the Motion appears to be motivated by removal of plastic bags through regulation, thus targeting the most disadvantaged members of society. The only real and immediate problem here is preventing plastic from entering waterways. Ottawa has no vector that leaks plastic into waterways, to my knowledge.

Please contact me if you have any questions or would like follow up documentation.

ALL OF WHICH IS RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.

[1] Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), USA
[2] “Anatomy of the false link between forest fires and anthropogenic CO2”, by D.G. Rancourt, Reseach Gate, May 2016, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2059.6087.  (18 pages, 69 references)  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303446052_Anatomy_of_the_f...
[3] Ibid.
[4] Source: World Energy Council, UN-accredited global energy body, representing the entire energy spectrum, with more than 3000 member organisations located in over 90 countries and drawn from governments, private and state corporations, academia, NGOs and energy-related stakeholders.
[5] Ibid.

Read the full article at the following weblink:

https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/04/23/physicist-stop-the-nonsense...