Revelation That U.K. Climate Target is Based on One Windy Year’s Data Threatens to Unravel Net Zero Credibility
By Paul Homewood
Here is Chris Morrison’s take on the CCC’s statistical deception:
In October the Daily Sceptic reported on a paper written for the Royal Society led by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Oxford University that concluded batteries were not the answer to the huge storage requirements of intermittent ‘green’ electricity power. Despite the prestigious academic fire power on parade, the paper died a death in the popular prints, presumably because of its unwelcome message about the much-touted battery solution. But recent revelations suggest the report could act as a loose thread that helps unravel the collectivist Net Zero agenda in the U.K. The Royal Society analysed decades of local wind speeds and found the electricity system needed the equivalent of at least a third of green energy to be stored as backup. Such a cost would be astronomical. Now it appears that the Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) fudged the issue by using just one year of high wind data in persuading Members of Parliament in 2019 to donkey-nod through Theresa May’s insane legislative rush to Net Zero by 2050.
Full story here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It won’t affect credibility at all as the powers that be ignore, obfuscate and remove material that doesn’t suit the agenda, from Climate to Covid, to the Post Office to Equitable life.
A jobsworth 1984 type Winston Smith consigns it all to the “memory hole” and improves and updates those records that need amending.
Dunno / cannot remember the Eq Life one, but from Climate to Covid, to the Post Office to Northern ROck, Foot n Mouth, Mill Bug. and a few more, currently maybe the MMR too – note the current talk of it … I wonder why, eh? Yes I agree with you.
I think you very nicely prove my point. There was a very good article about Equitable life in last weekends papers. After 22 years there is still some £2 billion plus owing to hundreds of thousands of former customers of Equitable. This is an oldish link.
https://inews.co.uk/news/business/equitable-life-customers-still-waiting-justice-1463965
I had great difficulty in finding anything newer because Winston Smith has either removed them or his higher up’s have decided that any information should be behind a pay wall. This latter device used on Newspapers, periodicals and science papers and general obfuscation, makes it very difficult to verify things so Paul Homewood does a splendid job.
on One Windy Year’s Data, eh? You’re guilty. Huh, that would never holdup in court, now, would it? (sarc) ( Huh but based on current judiciary events in UK, looks like it ….. ) 😉
and then we have this sort of thing : https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/UKONS/bulletins/386a652 what else are they telling us ( Not! ).
Re yesterday’s “The CCC must pay…”, I forwarded it to my local MP and this his reply: “I have escalated your concerns direct to the Government Minister responsible requesting an official response. As soon as I receive it I will send it to you.” The ball is rolling we’ll see where it stops.
It will stop with the usual response drawn up by a green and woke civil servant with no expertise in anything other than writing a response that doesn’t answer the question.
Thanks, Phillip.
Having done this before I know that is, exactly, what will happen, but under the current light of scrutiny one never knows.
After years of Watching “Yes Minister”, I have come to realise it was a documentary and not a comedy show.
I can never quite understand the kind of mentality that thinks that reality is somehow optional. If you base your plan to convert to wind power on false premises isn’t it obvious that this is going to come back and bite you on the arse further down the line when you don’t get as much power as you were claiming you would?
I know that I’ve mentioned this before but we have several arrays of wind turbines in my area and I’ve noticed that occasionally one or another of the turbines aren’t working but this is usually temporary. More recently there have been some that have now been stationary for several weeks. The closest windfarm has 13 turbines, two of which are not working and haven’t been for quite some time.
I have noticed that the available capacity at Moray East has been little more than half recently, because of planned maintenance. The wind farm is so new that it is one of the ones that didn’t take up its CFD. Doesn’t augur well for its future.
the much-touted battery solution
Only by those who have no idea about the magnitude required. Which leaves us with the much-touted problem: with low and shrinking capacity to generate electricity from easily storable fuels we’re going to be in ever bigger trouble when it’s not windy for any length of time, resulting in massive imported power costs and/or rolling blackouts.
.. and as Catweazle so often says that COAL – that black hard stuff which can be worked on to produce OIL – that lovely wet soft stuff, is an excellent safe & PORTABLE energy storage vehicle – some call a battery (storing chemical energy that can be converted into power )
Coal? So 1970. Lets trademark the name “organic battery nodules. Put them in an impossible to open plastic pack and I think we might be on to a winner.
Coal-fired fixes a lot of problems, using known, proven technology.
The problem for coal is securing an adequate low cost supply. We were reliant on imports when we last used significant quantities – mainly from Russia and the USA. Neither is a reliable long term source, and most coal exports are for Asian markets these days.
Of course there is still a large potential supply under our feet, but we need to be able to extract it at competitive cost.
” but we need to be able to extract it at competitive cost. ”
To compete with what? Gas that can be disrupted by others based outside the UK? Nuclear at a construction cost approaching £50 billion for 3GW at HPC, with a construction programme of a duration that might rival that of an AGR?
The data for UK coal reserves does vary by source, e.g.
” UK has identified hard coal resources of 3 910 million tonnes, although total resources could be as large as 187 billion tonnes. ” (c2019)
From https://euracoal.eu/info/country-profiles/united-kingdom/
Our own coal was not competitive with imports from open cast mines. At the moment imported coal is no cheaper than gas, although it has been cheap enough for RATS to run in recent months. But a major investment in coal would require a secure supply at a competitive price. There is not much diversity in potential coal supply: we’ve already lost Russia as a source, and the US would follow if Democrats win the election. Biden wants to ban coal exports.
Thanks Mark.
Your coal vs gas comparison figures, are they minus all taxes? My (limited) understanding is that coal is heavily penalised with a carbon tax.
Are the figures calculated in MWh at the connection between the power station and the grid?
I’m not certain how you would price in an element for the security of supply of the fuel.
Sums here:
If you instead build new HELE plant you will increase the efficiency which lowers the fuel and tax element to about 11/15ths of the current cost, but you will have the plant itself to pay for. That would cost around £3bn for 1GW, so a 7% amortisation capital charge on a 40 year life would give £210m a year to spread over 80% utilisation or 7TWh a year, or therefore another £30/MWh.
CCGT plant is rather cheaper at only £0.7bn/GW (Keadby 2, built at an existing site, was even cheaper) and therefore probably more competitive for newbuild capacity, as well as being better able to tolerate lower utilisation without killing project economics entirely.
Thanks IDAU,
I tried to assemble a “live” spreadsheet (from one of your previous posts) to show “live” pricing for coal-fired, but it was beyond me (must try harder!)
IDAU: ” API2 coal (6,000kcal/kg CIF Rotterdam) is currently around $95/tonne which gives power at £33/MWh, plus green taxes of another ~£40/MWh which no longer offers a huge advantage over gas at £23/MWh, giving power at £46/MWh plus green taxes of another £15/MWh.”
If I’ve read your posts correctly: excluding green taxes and excluding construction costs: coal-fired power currently £33/MWh (HELE £24.2/MWh) , gas-fired power currently £46/MWh.
My view is that coal provides higher resilience over gas with the possibility of stockpiling several months of fuel at the coal-fired power station and the possibility of using British coal.
As I recall, modern coal-fired can load-follow as per CCGT from “warm”, OCGT load-following out-performs coal-fired.
You forgot to add the £30/MWh cost for building the HELE plant. Using it as flex comes with two costs: lower efficiency and undrutilisation, pushing up the cost of plant amortisation per MWh.
For reference, if we used just one kind of generation to meet all demand, average utilisation would be about 60% of the peak capacity. If you ran CCGT as baseload you could expect efficiency of 60% rather than the 50% achieved in flex operation., so the cost would be 5/6ths.
Thanks for the additional reply IDAU, I’ve excluded construction costs from the MWh cost (at the moment), but yes, construction costs are important.
If I was in charge (!) I would probably seek to place some of the construction costs for new coal-fired onto a separate budget. Similar could have worked well for Magnox, the separate budget being the MOD (for nuclear material for weapons).
Perhaps for new coal-fired, some of the construction cost could be set against a “National Resilience” budget, intended to increase the resilience of the UK in times of international strife and adverse weather conditions.
Which year did the nefarious CCC use?
But Net Zero never had any credibility to unravel. Any more than its supposed driver, CO2, has any credibility. Fake problem, fake arbitrary solution; it’s for a malign agenda way beyond the normal petty greed, posturing, maladministration, corruption and navel-gazing of national politics. Have you noticed how the minnows pushing it, whether knowingly or unknowingly, become astonishingly rich almost out of nowhere. Odd that.
“Data? We don’t need no stinkin’ data!”
Aye, 1970? we are in the next century, so consider for at least the future, say 2220 where have you been lately ? 😉 🙂
Hmm? howzat now? supposed to be reply in response to @climatereason
Fame again ! I see Mr Homewood was honorably mentioned in the Daily Sceptic article (above). Well done.
Come on politicians wake up to what is going on here and get talking about the practicalities before we drive over the cliff