New study warns of soaring energy bills
By Paul Homewood
London, 26 January – It has recently been revealed that almost all major studies on Net Zero contain serious modelling errors, and thus have grossly underestimated the cost.[1]
A new paper from Net Zero Watch presents a new model of the 2050 electricity system that corrects these errors. It thus supercedes all the erroneous official studies.
The new paper also reveals that official studies have suppressed the apparent cost of Net Zero still further by using extreme speculations about the costs and efficiencies of all the equipment required in the 2050 grid.
According to Andrew Montford, the director of Net Zero Watch:
"The Royal Society, for example, assume that the cost of almost everything will halve, and the efficiency of almost everything will soar. It’s not impossible, but it is imprudent to assume that it will happen. If you correct the modelling errors, and use known costs and efficiencies rather than speculation about what might be available in 2050, you get a very different picture of the future."
The report warns that with current technology, the cost of a Net Zero grid would approach £8,000 per household per year.
Mr Montford says:
"The costs may come down somewhat, but policymakers need to be told what it would cost if they don’t. The numbers are staggering. The failure to explain the extreme nature of the underlying assumptions is culpable."
As a result of these problems, Net Zero Watch is calling for the Royal Society to withdraw its recent report [2] on electricity storage because it is so misleading for policymakers.
The report can be downloaded here.
Here’s the takeaways from the NZW report:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Perhaps the CCC, its management team, and all poliiians supporting the project should be made personally financially responsible for any cost-overrun of its pet project.
That’d concentrate a few minds.
Or perhaps we could just string them up…
*After due process.
Of course, Gamecock!
Only after a fair trial, naturally!
As most self respecting scientists know, man-made carbon dioxide has virtually no effect on the climate. It is a good gas essential to animals and plant life. Provided dirty emissions are cleaned up, we should be using our substantial store of fossil fuels while we develop a mix of alternatives including nuclear power to generate energy. There is no climate crisis, it has always changed and we have always adapted to it. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were many times higher during the last mini ice age. There was no industrial revolution then to be the cause . We have no control over the climate. The sun and our distance from it have by far the most effect. Most importantly, Net Zero Policy will do nothing for the climate either. Countries like China, Russia and India are sensibly ignoring it and using their fossil fuels. They will be astonished at how we are letting the power elites, mainstream media and government implement this Policy and Agenda 21 to needlessly impoverish us as well as causing great hardship and suffering.
Just read the report. Astounding that the respected and historic Royal Society should utter such inaccurate material. Feels like an improper agenda in play somewhere. Oh, it’s time to blow the whole scam out of the water by revealing modern ECS numbers. See notrickszone archive for over 100 papers on low ECS numbers. Scope for a brave journalist to make his name in history. Come on, somebody!
I wrote to all MPs about this, some 3 months ago.
I told them that Net Zero costs had been underestimated by an order of magnitude.
I also told them that electrical generation would need to quadruple, to cope with transport, space heating, and industry demands. The government denied this, but I caught Jeremy Hunt repeating my talking point last week.
Prof McKay (government science advisor 2015) said electrical generation would need to triple, but that was only possible if we all had heat pumps. Recent experience indicates that these heat pumps are not working, and are socially unacceptable (noisy).
I don’t think the heat-pump revolution will happen. My reverse airconditioner heat pump in Spain used to switch to direct electric heating quite often in winter, because the heat pump side of it could not produce warm enough air.
R
I am a Charted Mechanical Engineer with almost 50 years of experience since graduating. The way some of our “esteemed” Engineers and scientists are bending the science’s to fit their Nut Zero cult following is disgraceful and an affront to their profession.
” …. an affront to their profession. “
Any scientist who subscribes to the belief that AGW = dangerous and ignores the lack of proof of the existence of dangerous AGW is someone who is demolishing the foundation stone of science.
Similarly many other professional bodies have gone down the same route.
The laughable thing, is that Net Zero has no cost … because it is uncostable. And, it is uncostable, because the cost is so huge, that it will break the economic system to such a degree that money had no meaning.
Or to put it another way, what Net Zero does, is to make the cost of living too high. Which doesn’t sound too bad, until you actually read it and understand that if the cost of living is too high, the only alternative is death.
Exactly. The cost is irrelevant, as you aren’t going to have any money, anyway.
Nothing new here in a way, except that they have done some work with more realistic assumptions. Back when the Royal Society report came out I pointed out its many flaws in relying on the orthodox assumptions made by the CCC, NGESO (as creator of the Future Energy Scenarios and sponsor of underlying analysis), DESNZ and OFGEM (now to take the lead on delivering Net Zero following the latest Energy Act). I did my own work on using long run data to show the large storage need several years ago, and have found that TPTB simply ignored my criticisms.
However, I welcomed the report for daring to lift the corner of the carpet and show that at least one set of assumptions was seriously wrong. Having that identified by a senior member of the Royal Society with quite a supporting army of analysis from a number of academics finally gives the storage problem some proper daylight that couldn’t be achieved by Roger Andrews’ many articles at Energy Matters that helped inspire me to look at the problems in detail for myself.
The trick now is to get the other straw bricks supporting the narrative demolished in similar public fashion. That means trying to co-opt the support of Chris Llewellyn Smith and some of his team.
I can understand why they may have chosen not to try to demolish the whole enterprise all at once. Much better to go with one message at a time, and get that publicly recognised.
Clearly the unicorn technology assumptions are a major weakness, as are the costs. Correcting the demand assumptions is probably a rather easier task, especially with new tools available to estimate weather related demand. Forcing a proper analysis of demand side response (which seems to assume that heating demand can effectively be infinitely deferred in a cold snap, and that car batteries don’t create extra recharge demand if used to support the grid, etc.) is another. Cost is yet another, along with issues such as whether we could rely on interconnectors, the cost of grid and distribution investment etc.. All the issues need their own sunlight rather than being submerged in a hail of blunderbus pellets.
The Royal Society used to be a respectable organisation. Sir Isaac Newton must be spinning in his grave.
Was Lady Bracknell addressing Del Boy when she observed, “To lose or obscure one optimistic assumption, Mr Trotter, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. But to lose a whole handbag’s worth – well! – you’re hav’in a larf, int ya?”