Relying On ‘Renewables’ Alone Means Frequent Blackouts
Twenty-three US states have adopted goals to move to 100 percent ‘clean’ energy by 2050
State governments propose to retire coal and gas-fired power plants and adopt wind and solar systems.
But these goals conflict with efforts to promote electric vehicles (EVs), electric appliances, and a new application (AI) that will increase the demand for electric power.
The ‘green’ energy push seeks to eliminate ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions to fight human-caused global warming.
Leaders tell us that without a complete transformation of electric power, transportation, and home appliances to achieve Net Zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, we are doomed to suffer from increasingly severe ‘climate change’ impacts.
For example, Michigan passed Senate Bill 271 on December 29 of last year, as part of its “Healthy Climate Plan”. The bill requires 100 percent ‘carbon’-free electricity by 2050.
Michigan’s electrical power in 2022 was generated by gas (34 percent), coal (29 percent), nuclear (22 percent), with wind and solar at 12 percent.
Michigan plans to close its gas and coal plants, which provide 63 percent of the electric power, while also retiring nuclear plants. At the same time, the state wants residents to switch to EVs and electric appliances.
The Healthy Climate Plan calls for two million EVs to be on the road by 2030 along with expanded electric-powered mass transit. It calls for replacement of gas appliances with electric heat pumps.
But today, more than three quarters of Michigan homes are heated with natural gas. The state is also the largest user of propane fuel for home heating.
Efforts to adopt EVs and heat pumps will produce rising electricity demand and directly conflict with efforts to close power plants. Michigan’s ‘carbon’-free electricity goals appear to be impossible to achieve.
In 2022, 60 percent of US electric power was generated by coal and natural gas. About 85 percent came from the traditional generators: gas (40 percent), coal (20 percent), nuclear (18 percent), and hydroelectric (six percent).
After two decades of subsidies, wind and solar provided only about 15 percent of US electricity.
US demand for electricity has not grown since about 2005. But the push to electrify homes and transition to EVs will usher in a new era of rising power demand.
Almost all states striving for Net Zero by 2050 will run into the problem that Michigan faces. Shutting down coal and gas plants while promoting electric vehicles and heat pumps will produce electric power shortages.
The only states that may be able to approach ‘carbon’-free electricity are Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, where hydroelectric generators produce most of the power.
The New England Integrated System Operator (ISO) issued a report in 2022 that looked at four scenarios to ‘decarbonize’ the New England power grid by 2040. The report projected increases in power demand from EVs and electrification of home and business heating.
Only one scenario could meet state ‘decarbonization’ goals and rising demand. That scenario called for 84 gigawatts of new wind, solar, and storage, to provide 56 percent of electricity by 2040.
But the ISO concluded that such a wind, solar, and battery-dominated system would not be reliable, requiring periodic operator-imposed blackouts.
Even with 2,400 gigawatt-hours of battery-energy capacity and system reserve margins that were 300 percent over typical electricity demand, the system would fail for an estimated 15 days, and be at risk of failure an additional 36 days each year.
Wind and solar buildouts also conflict with alarming climate forecasts. Climate warnings call for increasingly severe weather, including stronger and more frequent storms, floods, and droughts.
Yet climate-policy advocates demand a switch to intermittent wind and solar electricity sources. Wind and solar typically fail to operate during heatwave, cloudy, rainy, snowy, or stormy weather conditions.
After a transition to electrified energy systems, blackouts would be more severe. When the lights go out, residents won’t be able to cook with an electric stove or drive an EV either.
Other nations also depend upon coal, gas, and oil generators for much of their electricity. Examples of hydrocarbon-produced power in 2022 were Australia (52 percent), China (64 percent), Europe (38 percent), India (77 percent), and Japan (65 percent).
Switching to EVs and heat pumps while shuttering coal and natural gas generators will not be possible in most countries.
Two additional trends will drive electric power demand. First, the revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) requires data centers to upgrade servers with high-performance computer processors.
Data center power consumption will jump by a factor of six to ten over the next decade, rising from about 1.5 percent of world power demand today to approach ten percent of world demand.
Second, governments are pushing to establish a new ‘green’ hydrogen fuel business to power heavy industries such as steel. Production of hydrogen from electrolysis of water is very electricity intensive.
The electricity required to drive electrolyzers to produce hydrogen to power a single steel plant with a four-million-ton annual capacity will require solar installations covering an area of approximately 70 square miles.
About 5,000 terawatt-hours of electricity would be needed to drive electrolyzers to generate hydrogen for the world steel industry, equaling one and one-half times total non-hydroelectric global renewable electricity generated today.
The green movement calls for a shutdown of coal and gas power plants. At the same time, it demands a switch to electric vehicles, electric home appliances, and ‘green’ hydrogen produced by power-intensive electrolyzers.
This and the AI revolution portend a breakdown of the so-called energy transition.
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VOWG
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Memo to all………There is no such thing as “clean energy”, all electricity generation requires fossil fuels for all stages of manufacture and when finally in actual use.
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Tom
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Wow! The marvel of new technology and human advancement retreating full speed ahead all the way back to the stone age. What entity or industry can run on partial or intermittent power? Medical, Wall Street, bitcoin, cell phones, banks, manufacturing, stores, Internet, the government?
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Carmel
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Re: ‘… the revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) requires data centers to upgrade servers with high-performance computer processors.
Data center power consumption will jump by a factor of six to ten over the next decade…’
If that is the case then such a revolution in Artificial Intelligence (AI) may mean that Ireland’s overall electricity generating capacity will have to at least be doubled over the next decade just to meet the increasing electricity demand from Data Centres alone!!!
‘In 2023 the consulting company BitPower put the number of data centres in Ireland at 82.
Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported in 2021 that these (data) centres were using up to 18% of the country’s metered electricity, the same amount as every urban household in Ireland combined.’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/power-grab-hidden-costs-of-ireland-datacentre-boom
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Carmel
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Update….a 200MW Data Centre has just been granted planning permission near Ennis, Co. Clare by the Irish planning appeals board (An Bord Pleanála).
See extracts from Clare Echo article….with some comments interspersed….
‘The campus will comprise six data halls of 33mw each, Energy Centre & Vertical Farm designed on a flexible and modular basis, covering 145 acres and 1.3 million sq ft. Construction of the Art Data Centre Campus will be phased over a seven-year year period commencing in 2022. It has been designed by data centre specialists Colin Hyde of ARC:MC, and Robert Thorogood of HDRInc.
(Comment: what kind of vertical farm one wonders?!)
It has access to 200 mega-watts of power from both the network grid and gas generation on site & aligns with the current CRU requirements for dispatchable Power & being located in an unconstrained area. The proposed site, adjacent to Ennis, was zoned in 2019 for ‘Data Centres & Power Generating Infrastructure’.’
(Comment: 200MW is half the capacity of a typical OCGT/CCGT power plant.)
‘McNamara added, “This Ennis Project fulfils the Government’s key requirements immediately while state bodies, regulators and the electricity sector work to upgrade infrastructure, connect more renewable energy and ensure security of supply”. He said, “The infrastructure that is available in the Ennis site will assist Government in national ambitions to deliver ongoing opportunities for the country in the tech industry.”
(Comment: Data Centres can be controlled remotely from outside of the country and provide very few onsite permanent jobs)
Last Wednesday, the Government Policy Statement on the role of Data Centres in Ireland’s Enterprise Strategy was published, the Ennis Campus is considered to align well with the policies set out therein.
(Comment: Where’s the cost benefit analysis and the Environmental Impact Statement?)
When submitting further information, the developers outlined that heat from the facility could be used to power over 1,100 houses.
(Comment: Apple said something similar back in 2015 regarding the 240MW data centre in Denmark. However the recipients of the waste heat had to supply the infrastructure to capture and distribute the heat and the cost was prohibitive and so it never materialised. So unless Art Data Centre Ltd. is investing in a local district heating supply system then the district heating system proposal is an empty offer. And they would have to know this.)
“There will be good high grade heat available from the exhausts which can be harnessed and transported off site. Calculations have been derived to show how much capacity could be made available off site with suggest supply and return temperatures of 105 / 75 degrees C which are common for district heating schemes. It is suggested and capacities are calculated, that this heat could be used to support over 1,100 homes or over 250,000 m2 of commercial office space or light industrial buildings within a 5km radius of the Art Data Centre site. Alternatively, if available, the heat could be connected into a District Heat Network to support local needs”.’
(Comment: 200MW would be equal to about a further 20% of the currently installed data centres in Ireland that currently are using up about 20% of the national electricity supply, equal to the electricity demand of all of the urban homes in Ireland. So offering waste heat free or otherwise for 1,100 homes and at a potential huge infrastructural cost to the recipients is a pittance and highly insulting when home owners will end up paying more per kW/h through their electricity bills to cover the highly subsidised electricity rates that have been negotiated for data centres.
‘In 2023 the consulting company BitPower put the number of data centres in Ireland at 82.
Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported in 2021 that these (data) centres were using up to 18% of the country’s metered electricity, the same amount as every urban household in Ireland combined.’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/power-grab-hidden-costs-of-ireland-datacentre-boom
The proposed Ennis Data Centre would add around another 4% of electricity demand to the National electricity supply in Ireland or increase the current data centre electricity demand to 24% of the current total national electricity demand.)
https://www.clareecho.ie/ennis-data-centre-granted-planning-permission/
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