Clueless Ben Marlow Strikes Again
By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier
There’s only here that’s clueless, and that’s you Mr Marlow.
Anybody with half a braincell was warning about this years ago, so where were you then?
There’s also a genuine question to be asked about whether the UK needs more renewable energy at present. Sir Keir claims that a state-backed energy provider will give the UK “real energy independence” but if the shift to clean power is accelerated, as he is suggesting without also building the massive infrastructure that is required, there is a risk that Britain becomes more reliant on fossil fuel imports, not less.
Better perhaps to concentrate on modernising the grid and building the vast electricity storage facilities required to store wind and solar-generated electricity before we double down on renewables. That means more batteries, advanced compressed air energy storage, pumped hydroelectric dams, and underground salt caverns for collecting hydrogen.
Even now Clueless Ben does not grasp the fact the batteries and other forms of storage are far too small to make the slightest difference when the wind stops blowing for weeks on end.
The only possible solution is mass storage of hydrogen. But he does not tell us where all of this hydrogen will actually come from – presumably he thinks you can pluck it out of thin air.
There is only one viable solution, and that is to embark on an emergency expansion of our CCGT fleet, and immediately abandon any further expansion of renewables.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
‘Britain’s major parties are failing to offer any real solutions to the energy crisis.’
Would have been better used as the main article to this twaddle.
At least this idiot manages to acknowledge there is an energy crisis on the near horizon.
I am a little surprised we are not hearing more from that deep thinker Ed Milliband; since he is so knowledgeable on this complex, yet vitality important subject.
A crisis wholly the result of government.
* main title
I agree, we need an emergency expansion of our CCGT fleet. But we also need to get fracking, exploit offshore gas fields and get on with building lots of SMRs.
Ben is saying that both Sir Kier and Rishi are backing plans that leave the UK is a sorry state. He making the point that they are clueless. He has a valid point as their plans are woful.
His proposed solutions are either not feasible (e.g. massive hydro schemes in unnamed locations, and hydrogen-from-somewhere stores) or not large-scale solutions at all (e.g. batteries).
I guess he and his mates think that if he can keep his mobile phone and tablet running on a daily charge of their batteries then it surely can’t be that difficult to scale up to run a few other gadgets. I just wish he could be shown the sheer size and costs of any battery needed to back up the mains, even for his local area.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
A tempest heading our way certainly.
Not just any old tempest but The Tempest !.
Brilliant choice, …. “we are such stuff as dreams are made of”.
We know the Tempest is coming, a lucky few will survive but the rest will dissolve”. Fools, our castles in the air will not save us.
After Mr Shakespeare “The Tempest”
A (naïve) query that I have not seen answered elsewhere is this. Hydrogen combusts with oxygen for produce energy and water vapour; the water vapour can condense to form clouds or, at ground level, fog. So why are all these proposed ground-based hydrogen-fueled vehicles [cars, lorries, buses, trains etc.] not going to create a pea-souper of a fog the like of which we have not seen in decades – well, not seen here in my neck of the English Midlands?
Regards, John.
The pea-souper fogs to which you refer were produced when pollution was a major constituent of the cloud, produced at that time by the burning of brown coal, and other low quality solid fuels.
You don’t see mists produced by ice cars and accordingly you wouldn’t see mists produced by hydrogen cars. However hydrogen is a poor fuel for cars with a list of problems, which is why the Miraj from Toyota has not taken off.
Hamish, thank you for these comments.
Yes, I remember the smog (= smoke + fog) from my youth when the winter air was full of particulates from the poor quality fuels burnt in those days.
I also recall that hydrogen has many problems as a fuel for cars, not least the problems with liquid hydrogen [Ref. 1]. However, my main concern was that, working in an air atmosphere, water is the primary combustion product in a hydrogen-powered engine but, I had presumed, is not a major combustion product of ICE engines. Prompted thus by your comments, a search in [Ref. 2] led me to these figures:-
1kg H2 combusts to give 9kg H2O, whereas ‘petrol’ (hexane, C6H14) reacts thus: 1kg C6H14 produces about 1.5kg H2O. So, at first sight, hydrogen fuel produces about 6 times as much H2O as petrol. Fortunately, matters are much improved when the energy densities of the two fuels are compared. [Ref. 3] shows that H2 has an energy density 3 times that of petrol. The final result is that, for the same energy output from the fuel (and assuming that other things remain equal), the hydrogen engine produces only twice as much H2O as a petrol engine.
References
Thanks for your help.
Regards, John.
Britain’s major parties offer the energy crisis
Fixed.
Anyone who mentions ‘storage’ marks themself as an idiot.
It’s an absurdity as a matter of scale.
The solution is to repeal the Climate Change Act and abandon NetZero – then we shall all be winners.
Here is a business opportunity, blogs are great, especially this one, but the format does not work well for providing information on specific topics. It seems to me that there is a huge gap in the market for a website, regularly updated, that provides key info for all energy topics, such as batteries and hydrogen.
Journos could then check what they write about these topics, though most will continue to cut and paste marketing material from Big Green.
there is a huge gap in the market for a website, regularly updated, that provides key info for all energy topics, such as batteries and hydrogen.
First page = simple sentences and simple images about the risk and cost associated with net zero.
An incrementing counter of the estimated UK costs of net zero would be eye catching, perhaps one trillion ££££ to date.
There is a large repository of investigations of many energy topics at Euan Mearns’ Energy Matters site which is very valuable. I’d also cite Kathryn Porter’s Watt-logic, Timera’s blog and David Turver’s Eigenvalues substack which is growing in its coverage of topics week by week.There is also the GWPF which has published many pamphlets at its Netzerowatch website.
The problem I suspect is that journalists in particular are disinclined to do proper research when they are spoon-fed nonsense through other channels. Indeed, many of them are trained to ignore anything that questions the narrative.
I suspect is that journalists in particular are disinclined to do proper research
I doubt if most journos understand the technical issues e.g. rated power vs measured energy, which is why simple sentences and simple images could be of benefit. Also “simple” is generally easier to defend.
Every physicist knows electricity is a method of transferring energy. It takes an environmentalist to think storing it is a good idea.
As the carnival float of Net Zero hits the tank-stopping bollards of reality …
The absurd thing is this nonsense about energy “security”, as if all of a sudden getting gas is a problem. I’d rather try and find gas from around the world than hope the wind blows.
Mr. Marlow needs to read the Royal Society’s “Large Scale Electricity Storage” report. They estimate we need 55 TWhrs (e) to guarantee reliable, dispatchable power from an 80/20 wind/solar mix.
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/large-scale-electricity-storage/large-scale-electricity-storage-report.pdf
Taking Europe’s biggest battery, supplied by Tesla, which can store 196MWhrs, located at Pillswood near Cottingham, East Yorkshire, cost £75m, the battery cost would be £21 trillion.
The Royal Society recommend using hydrogen storage and for the 570 TWhrs of annual supply required by 2050 from wind/solar calculate (BTW assuming that wind capacity and the electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity round trip both double in efficiency by 2050) that the final price would be double the price of the initial renewable supplied electricity. So, taking the price of fixed offshore wind at the next renewables auction (AR6) as £100/MWhr, the resulting price would be £200/MWhr or 4 times that for hydrocarbon energy and not forgetting the £ trillions in upgrading the national and local grids….
the battery cost would be £21 trillion.
That increases the estimated cost of net zero substantially. Perhaps now a total estimated cost of twenty five trillion ££££ if batteries are the storage solution.
The current Westminster cohort, minus around a dozen sensible, right thinking ones, are either benefitting from net zero, or have been so ideologically captured by activists, that they ought to be nowhere near Parliament – the vast majority of voters in the UK do not want expensive net zero, even those who don’t understand it technically, fully understand the effect on their living costs and standards
“ideologically captured”, exactly, like my own “transport decarbonisation lead” MP. No amount of rational argument exposing the stupidity and impossibility of net zero makes any difference with him!