The last week has seen some further extraordinary developments in Ed Miliband’s Net Zero agenda and his continuing divorce from material and political reality. While the Prime Minister is plagued by a seemingly unending series of scandals caused by his hypocrisy and impropriety, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has been summoning up unicorns with taxpayer’s cash.
Miliband’s team of unicorn hunters was convened this week and came up with quite a plan for ‘grid stabilisation’. As was reported by David Turver here back in August, Miliband and his new chief of Mission Control – the former Chief Exec of the Climate Change Committee, Chris Stark – wrote to National Grid ESO Director Fintan Slye, asking him for ideas on how to meet the new Government’s Clean Power 2030 target. In doing so, Stark and Miliband were admitting that they do not know what they’re doing and have no idea how to reach their political targets. National Grid Energy System Operator was subsequently bought by the Government last month to become National Energy System Operator (NESO). The handover completed on Tuesday October 1st.
As the Telegraph reported the following day, NESO’s first suggestion is that giant flywheels will store mechanical energy, which, in the event of the grid’s failure to maintain frequency, can be released back into the grid by engaging generators. This facility replaces the inertia that was inherent to the operation of generators in coal and gas-fired plants, which by virtue of their size, weight
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Katie Hopkins has a point in her video “Turning off the UK Electricity is being rationed”…Here https://youtu.be/oYrAff3CklQ
There does seem to be a lot of confusion in the political class about the flywheels.
They are NOT intended to store energy for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. That is a problem with renewables that has yet to be addressed in any serious way by any of our green overlords, least of all by Mad Ed Miliband
The flywheels are aimed at another, separate, problem with renewables, which is that they don’t have the inertia of traditional generators. Solar panels of course have literally zero inertia. Wind generators have far less than a traditional power station.
Without the flywheels, the frequency produced by the grid would start to become unstable, which could have catastrophic consequences.
With the flywheels, the frequency will be stable. But there will still be power cuts on those cold, still winter evenings.
The whole concept of removing a trace gas from the atmosphere is mad in several ways:
1. If we remove some of the CO2 emitted by China and India, who does that help?
2:The removal process is very energy intensive, where does this energy come from? We are already short of electricity!
3: Removing CO2 from the atmosphere requires that all the water vapour be removed first. As there are many times as much water vapour as CO2, what is Millibrain going to do with this waste water, and therefore the energy required to remove it which is largely unrecoverable?
Is any of this covered by $30Billion to give a scale that makes any difference to World CO2 levels? If not it is a complete waste of money and otherwise useful energy!
It takes a particularly stupid mindset to not know or understand any of these things! I think picobrain may be his new name. Of course it could be a new kind of virtue signaling at our expense, probably to get him a peerage. Or perhaps free stuff from the takers of our cash?
I have had a further thought, it would be possible to carry out separation using gas centrifuges. Because CO2 has a considerably higher molecular weight than the other constituents so would probably work. However still energy intensive and the same to compress the (not pure) product CO2. Getting pure CO2 is not needed, and a further waste of money!
Flywheels. Right. Here’s an easy and cheap flywheel solution. Supply static bicycles to all households, wired into the grid, so pedal power can generate electricity at peak periods. Put televisions in front of them, so people won’t miss Eastenders (many gyms do this already). And the spin-off is that the exercise will keep pensioners warm and fit, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and obesity. Win win win win.
Is this more or less sensible than Miliband? The potential output of our homes should be modelled.
Groucho Marx starred as a crooked lawyer in a radio show called Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel. Nuff said…
It’s a mental block/defect. These fools can’t see that the very problem they want flywheels and batteries to solve – intermittency – will affect the availability of wind/solar power to recharge those flywheels and batteries.
Flywheels anyway are used – as they have been since the start of the Industrial Revolution – to smooth output not supply it.
I’m just ignoring the nonsense, getting on with life and waiting for the blackouts to start.
Another case of bio-ethanol was delivered this week, so I won’t be going cold for a couple of years.
The £460 pension increase will cover partly for the money lost from the Winter Fuel Allowance; but as the increase was to cover the increased cost of living, pensioners will end up poorer. No journalists seem to have pointed that out?
The giant flywheels are a good idea – what we could do, is bolt large power stations to them, say nuclear/gas/coal, and the output of those stations could spin the flywheels…. oh hang on, we’ve just gone back to what we had before
Millibrain’s green energy plans will be as successful as Professor Lysenko’s plans to grow rice in Siberia, Stalin’s agricultural reforms in Ukraine and Chairman Mao’s attempts to increase grain production by killing sparrows.
In fact, one common theme of leftist regimes is their dogged determination to implement unworkable ideas at massive cost to mankind. Personally I find that there is an interesting parallelism between Satan’s rebellion against God and the Left’s rebellion against reality. But that’s just me being religious.
Talk about “déjà vu all over again”! Labour started planning for carbon capture and storage (CCS) in 2006, even before their wretchedly misconceived 2008 Climate Change Act, but they had got nowhere by the time they were thrown out of power in 2010.
In the interim, it seemed as if the realists had scotched the lunacy of hugely expensive, inefficient and pointless CCS. Here is a 2014 article from energy analyst Euan Mearns describing CCS as “bonkers”: https://euanmearns.com/carbon-capture-and-storage-and-1984/.
In 2015 George Osborne put the kibosh on the planned CCS scheme at the gas-fired Peterhead power station (and another in North Yorkshire), much to the chagrin of the climate looney SNP: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-38687835.
Yet here we are in late 2024 with Labour trying to breathe life into the moribund lunacy of CCS. Unbelievable, especially as unpoliticiced science tells us very clearly that from a climate point of view there is no need whatsoever to “decarbonise” the economy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2nhssPW77I&t=11s.
This about sums it up.
Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel. I didn’t realise Karl was one of the Marx Brothers.
I have been away for 10 days and not following news etc. These people are deranged clowns. Dangerous and have to be stopped!
Why didn’t you stay away?
Some battles cannot even be fought, let alone won. Sometimes, instead of trying to fight, you have to run away.
It’s what I have done.
it’s tempting but running doesn’t solve the problem. Just your awareness of it.
Journalism school 1.01 – “If a politician says something was ‘the right thing to do,’ always respond with ‘Why, exactly?’.”
On the same tack, Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus, who surrendered the German 6th Army at the Battle of Stalingrad, became very vocal in his criticism of A.H. and came up with the following 4 questions.
Even when you think something appears clear, question it and do not rest. Doubt everything that appears to be beautiful and true. Always ask yourself: “What for?”.
Don’t think that one thing alone is good; straight is not straight and neither is curved curved. If someone says a value is absolute, ask them quietly, “Why?”
Today’s truth may already lie tomorrow. Follow the river from where the torrent began. Isolated parts are not enough for you. Always ask yourself, “Since when?”.
Look for the causes, unite and dissolve, dare to look behind the words. If someone says, “This is good (or bad),” ask quietly: “For whom?”
And follow up with: Compared to what?
https://ref.org.uk/ref-blog/365-wind-power-economics-rhetoric-and-reality
‘I will conclude with some general lessons from the study:
1. Stop pretending!
The projections of the costs of achieving Net Zero put out by government bodies and many others rely on cost estimates that are just wishful thinking.
They have no basis in actual experience and a realistic appraisal of trends in costs.
As a very broad brush calculation the cost of meeting the Net Zero target by 2050 is much more likely to be 10+% of annual GDP than the claimed 1-2% of GDP.’
Professor Gordon Hughes, Edinburgh University
I can’t imagine it’s possible even throwing money at it. Even if you ride roughshod over established planning and safety protocols, does the technology exist at present to achieve it? We would need to be on a war footing, starting now.
Net Zero is impossible and no crummy politician can prove otherwise.
Well, technically and theoretically it is possible if the entire world is prepared to transitions its economy back to the Stone Age.
We could keep fire, but might need to give up the wheel, and kids might have to give up their smartphones and consoles.
With a Stone Age sized populous as well of course… so ~8 billion less people give or take?
Now you are close to the rationale of this ludicrous cult.
8 Billion less people.
Precisely the aim of the Green Blob.
Get rid of, not only the “useless eaters”, but also the entire hoi polloi.
Remember how often people like David Attenborough admitted that the real problem was humankind itself?
What kids? Most would be dead before age 10, all but a few survivors would make it out of their teens, and those, not past 30.
Impossible and unnecessary.
As the demand for materials, particularly copper, and the resources needed for labour, manufacture, construction, transportation increasingly far exceeds supply, the cost of these things will rise significantly, month on month, year on year.
I think 10% of GDP is likely just to be the down payment. In fact it will be unachievable at any price.