Another Report Reluctantly Admits that 'Green' Energy is a Disastrous Flop - Financial Post

The naive and dishonest claims by Green Energy,

along with the climate hysteria, leads Canada to 

trash fossil fuel energy systems much too prematurely

The report confirms what should have been obvious from the start: the more “variable” wind and solar are introduced into any electricity system, the more they make it both more expensive and less reliable.David McNew/AFP/Getty Images

Peter Foster, FP

Amid hundreds of graphs, charts and tables in the latest World Energy Outlook (WEO) released last week by the International Energy Agency, there is one fundamental piece of information that you have to work out for yourself: the percentage of total global primary energy demand provided by wind and solar. The answer is 1.1 per cent. The policy mountains have laboured and brought forth not just a mouse, but — as the report reluctantly acknowledges — an enormously disruptive mouse.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has in recent years become an increasingly schizophrenic organization. As both a source of energy information and a shill for the UN’s climate-focused sustainable development agenda, it has to talk up the “transition to a low-carbon future” while simultaneously reporting that it’s not happening. But it will!

This report should be profoundly embarrassing to the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, which has virtue-signalled itself to the front of a parade that is going nowhere, although it can certainly claim genuine leadership in the more forceful route to transition: killing the fossil fuel industry by edict.

The WEO report, yet again, projects that global fossil fuel use — and related emissions — will grow out to 2040, as oil, gas and coal continue to dominate the energy picture. But it also struggles to put a positive spin on wind and solar. Solar had a “record-setting” year in 2017. The Chinese solar business is “booming.” New wind and solar additions “outpaced those of fossil fuels in 2017, driven by policy support and declining costs.

“Policy support” means subsidies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As for declining costs, solar is at least twice as expensive a generator as coal and almost twice as expensive as gas.

Finally, and most significantly, the report confirms what should have been obvious from the start: the more “variable” wind and solar are introduced into any electricity system, the more they make it both more expensive and less reliable.

The term Variable Renewable Energy, VRE, could more accurately be described as Unreliable Renewable Energy, URE, due to the terribly obvious fact that the sun doesn’t shine at night, and sometimes not during the day either, while the wind doesn’t always blow. Thus the more that wind and solar are part of your system, the more technical contortions they demand from backup power and the structure of the grid. The efficient part of the system has to twist itself into a technical pretzel to accommodate the inefficient part. Accommodating unreliability has led to outright perversity. The widespread adoption of wind and solar under Germany’s Energiewende (“energy transition”) has resulted in rising overall emissions, mainly from coal-fired backup facilities. Meanwhile the green Godot is battery storage, which is always on the point of turning up, but never quite does. Still, the IEA has a scenario for that: “What if battery storage becomes really cheap?”

Supply isn’t the only area where expensive and unreliable wind and solar need to be accommodated. There is also “demand flexibility.” This includes having solar panels installed on your roof, or adopting — or being forced to adopt — “smart meters,” which can monitor a household’s electricity usage in minute-by-minute detail. According to the report, “The spreading of rooftop solar PV (photovoltaics) and the falling costs of digital technologies, combined with affordable wind and solar power options, are creating a host of new opportunities that enable consumers to take a more active role in meeting their own energy needs.”

But wind and solar are not “affordable,” and few people want to take a “more active role” in meeting their energy needs (That is, unless they are being heavily “policy supported” to stick solar panels on their roofs). They just want to flip a switch.

As for smart meters, the IEA notes that many countries “have successfully rolled out smart meters on a large scale, such as Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden.” Would such success be like the smart meter program in Ontario, which was panned by provincial auditor Bonnie Lysyk for costing an extra billion dollars and not working as advertised, while several thousand meters were found to represent a fire hazard?

Although it mentions nothing of the absurdities attached to Ontario’s Green Energy Act, the WEO report confirms that Canada has the most stringent emissions pricing program in the world, at least out to 2025, at $35 a tonne (in 2017 U.S. dollars), thus cementing its competitive disadvantage. Others, such as the EU and Korea, are prepared to make marginally more self-damaging commitments out to 2040 (at US$43 and US$44 respectively), but these levels nowhere near approach that allegedly required by the beyond-fantasy “Sustainable Development Scenario,” which, for developed countries, is US$63 in 2025 and US$140 in 2040. In fact, those figures, like most of the IEA’s projections, are not worth a solar fig.

The Sustainable Development Scenario not only solves the climate issue, but also takes care of universal access to modern energy and air pollution, too. Even more amazing, it achieves all this via imposing swathes of expensive and unreliable energy, but without the slightest impact on economic growth. How? By simply assuming so.

The report’s solution to policy mayhem is inevitably to call for more — and more complex — policy. “Can an integrated approach spur faster action?” it asks. Since governments have screwed up so badly, might they screw up less if they try to do much more?

At least they are assured of firm support from the IEA.

Liberals Hysterical Opposition to Oil Pipelines Makes No Sense

The Globe and Mail is Canada's national liberal-leaning newspaper as is obvious from this piece. The article puts forward some good questions but leaves out the most important ones.

Some huge decisions will be made in the coming weeks with regard to the environment and the economy; the Globe and Mail seems totally concerned with one and totally unconcerned with the other.

MARK HUME, VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Panel reviewing Trans Mountain pipeline poses troubling questions for cabinet

    Kinder-Morgan loading dock, Burnaby, British Columbia

The ministerial panel appointed by the federal government to review the National Energy Board’s appraisal of the Trans Mountain pipeline proposal concluded its report last week without any recommendations.

Instead, the panel posed six troubling questions for the cabinet to consider before it rules on the controversial pipeline next month.

Ottawa had not wanted any recommendations from the panel, but rather sought a broad report that would allow the government to make its own unencumbered decision.

That might seem like a smart, keep-the-options-open approach by Ottawa, but to many on the West Coast, it looks like political manoeuvring by a government bent on approval.

However, the panel report did not let the government completely off the hook, because it made clear just how profoundly important the questions being posed are to British Columbians.

If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approves the pipeline without providing adequate answers, he will only inflame opponents who are already anticipating bad news from Ottawa.

Greenpeace is organizing a civil disobedience workshop in Vancouver on Nov. 12, and the weekend after that, a protest march is planned.

“Twenty-one municipalities, 61 First Nations, 210,000 petition signers (so far) and 91% presenters at this summer’s public meetings [by the ministerial panel] on Kinder Morgan oppose this reckless pipeline and tanker project,” an organizing protest group, FortheCoast, said in a recent press release. “On November 19th, a rally and march is expected to draw thousands, marching from City Hall across the Cambie Bridge and culminating in a pledge to resist the pipeline with civil disobedience if necessary.”

The pipeline is being opposed for a number of reasons, but foremost is the concern that if it goes ahead, it will promote oil sands development for 50 more years, dooming any attempts in Canada to meaningfully tackle climate change.

It's remarkable how easily Mark Hume dismisses 50 years of operation of the single most important economic engine in Canada. How many trillions of dollars would that mean to Canada's already suffering economy? Apparently, it doesn't matter.

The first question posed by the panel is this: “Can construction of a new Trans Mountain pipeline be reconciled with Canada’s climate change commitments?”

The federal government clearly thinks it can. The panel report notes that Mr. Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley both say Canada has to transition slowly away from fossil fuels.

“We need to make smart strategic investments in clean growth and new infrastructure, but we must also continue to generate wealth from our abundant natural resources to fund this transition,” the report quotes the Prime Minister as saying.

But if Mr. Trudeau thinks that answer will wash with critics of the pipeline, he is wrong. The panel’s report makes the depth of public concerns clear, quoting an unnamed woman as testifying at the hearings on how “deeply hopeless about the future” her daughters feel because of climate change.

“She said: ‘It’s hard to hear that I will never have grandchildren.’ She then went on to condemn the Trans Mountain proposal as the kind of ‘tipping-point project’ that cannot be allowed if Canadians hope to slow the advance of climate change. And the crowd cheered,” the report says.

Mark Hume - What? What is the connection between a woman who will never have grandchildren, and anything? Are her children sterile because of climate change? Did you just throw that in there to provoke some emotion?

You think it is right and proper to base a decision worth billions of dollars, if not trillions, on how someone's daughters feel? Wouldn't it be better to tell them the truth - that Canada is responsible for less than 2% of anthropogenic CO2, and anthropogenic CO2 makes up less than 4% of total CO2 production. Consequently, Canada's contribution to total CO2 production is less than 0.08%. 

Do you think reducing that to 0.07%, or 0.05% will make any difference in the global temperature? Don't be absurd! Yet you seem willing to throw away kazillions of dollars for what will amount to a global temperature reduction that is far too infinitesimal to measure.

In fact, if we shut down the oil sands; all other industry that produces smoke; if we closed all highways and made cars and trucks illegal, only horses allowed on the roads, it would still make no measurable difference in global warming. 

It's way too premature to shut down the fossil fuel industry; we don't have the means to replace it yet. We should be investing in those means, but right now, if we stopped all fossil fuels there are thousands, if not millions of homes in Canada that would have to resort to burning wood or coal for heat - just as an example.

Meanwhile, where does the money come from to invest in green energy if we cut-off the main economic engine in the country? 

The panel also notes that Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and current Governor of the Bank of England, “said the world cannot safely – or profitably – continue to exploit fossil fuels.”

From the angry mother to the head of the Bank of England – that’s quite a gamut of opposition to try to counter with sunny ways.

Among other things, the panel also asked how the government can effectively assess projects such as the pipeline in the absence of a comprehensive national energy strategy, how it can grant approval while meeting its commitment to reconciliation with First Nations, and how it can be confident of its assessment, given the many perceived flaws of the NEB process.

Mr. Trudeau hasn’t answered those difficult questions yet. And critics of the pipeline apparently don’t expect him to, at least not convincingly. They know that the government cannot justify to them a decision based on a process they don’t trust, to override the rights of First Nations and to proceed with a project that can only exacerbate climate change.

So they are preparing for battle now. The only question they think needs answering is: How can we save the planet?

How utterly ridiculous! Reducing CO2 production in Canada cannot save the planet. Completely eliminating CO2 production in Canada, an impossibility, not only cannot save the planet, it will not make any difference whatsoever! 

It's time liberal-minded people stopped the hysterical panic and turned their attention to things they can actually do something about like poverty and child sex abuse.

India's Kerala Airport Runs Entirely on Green Energy

It is the world’s first airport to run completely on solar energy

An aerial view of the solar field. Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL)
currently uses 48,000 units of power it generates. (Akhel Mathew/Gulf News)

Gulf News
Akhel Mathew, Correspondent

Kochi, Kerala: The next time you wing into the Kochi airport in Kerala, on the southern tip of India, you will have another visual treat in addition to the majestic coconut palms, the meandering waterways and the multiple hues of lush green vegetation.

To those pretty sights have been added thousands of solar power panels spread over a 18-hectare area, combining a visual treat with the promise of clean energy. The achievement makes the Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL) the world’s first airport to run completely on solar energy, authorities claim.

The airport company hopes to generate 18 million units of power a year from its 12 megawatt generation facility on the airport premises. That will also cut 175,000 tonnes of carbon emissions over the next 25 years, according to CIAL officials. That, they say, is the equivalent of planting three million trees or running a car for 1.2 billion kilometres without the use of fuel.

“It has been a matter of satisfaction for us to be producing our own requirement of power. I am seeing the fruits of solar energy right in front of my eyes,” V.J. Kurian, managing director of CIAL told Gulf News.

“On an average, we produce about 52,000 units of power a day, and we consume about 48,000 units daily. The power produced is fed into the grid of the Kerala State Electricity Board, and we can draw power from the grid when the solar panels go to sleep at night,” Kurian says.

For a state that is perennially short of power, that is a significant window of opportunity. Kerala relies mainly on hydro power, with the Idukki hydroelectric station being its flagship power producer.

“It would be a good idea to add generation capacity at Idukki in the night, and rely on solar power during the day”, says Kurian, who feels Kerala should embrace more of solar energy.

The solar energy facility at CIAL was established by the German technology and services giant, Bosch. The Bosch Energy and Building Solutions team reportedly expects an average daily power generation of 50,000 units.

Kerala, India

CIAL is among the rare profit-making entities in the public sector in Kerala, and its latest initiative for self-sufficiency in power will further improve its bottom line.

“We invested Rs51.70 million [Dh2.86 million] per mega watt, or about Rs620 million for the 12 mega watt solar plant. We hope to break even in about five and a half years, but more than that, we realise it is a viable model for power generation,” Kurian says.

What is significant is that while different airports around the world have used solar energy to partially meet power requirements, CIAL is the first to generate all the power that is needed to run the airport, and even produce a little bit of surplus energy, point out CIAL officials.

Kerala state, India

CIAL is located some 30km to the north of Kerala’s commercial capital, Kochi and is the fourth largest in India in terms of international passenger movement and seventh largest in domestic passenger movement. In the past year, it handled 5.4 million passengers.

The 21-year-old airport company has two major subsidiaries, the Cochin International Aviation Services Limited (CIASL) and Cial infrastructure Limited. It also owns an 18-hole golf course and a trade centre.

Opening the solar energy unit at the airport, chief minister Oommen Chandy pointed out the need for more profitmaking, forward-looking ventures like CIAL. The airport company appears focused on a similar ambition: It hopes to be a Rs30-billion company by 2030. The solar farm that it has just established, not too far from the paddy fields nearby, reflects the sunny side of the airport company that has kept soaring since its take-off in the mid-1990s.

Congratulations CIAL, you obviously have some very intelligent people at the top.