Al Gore is Determined to Look Like a Complete Moron, and it’s Working!
Arctic Alarmist Disaster – Much Worse Than It Seems
As bad as this year has been for Arctic alarmists, their pain is just beginning. Melt has been extremely slow in August, in fact area has not changed for about a week, and is now larger than 2006
The ice has been getting compacted close to the pole, where it is too cold to melt. But the high pressure system which has been compacting the ice is breaking down, and in a week or so, the open water close to the pole in the Laptev Sea will begin to freeze, likely leading to an early minimum.
As I mentioned earlier, ice area is the highest in ten years, and may be higher than 1971.
Nobel Laureate Al Gore says there is a 75% chance the Arctic will be ice-free this summer.
Many Parts of the World, Are Returning to Sanity! No More Climate Alarmism!
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Chancellor Angela Merkel’s abrupt exit from nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster in Japan and aggressive push into renewables has unnerved German industry. A recent overhaul of the country’s complex renewable energy law has done little to alleviate uncertainty over future policy or assuage fears about German energy competitiveness. “Energy intensive industries in particular have lost confidence in the future of Germany as a business location,” said Thomas Mayer, a former chief economist at Deutsche Bank. —Reuters, 16 August 2014 The Green Party has criticised Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, for cancelling her attendance at the UN Climate Summit on 23 September in New York and accused her of giving preference to lobby interests. “Instead of fighting for global climate protection on the international stage, she rather goes to speak to the lobby group of German industry which is not known to be a haven of climate change activism,” said the party’s parliamentary deputy Oliver Krischer.–Die Welt, 15 August 2014 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas-emitting nation, won’t join his U.S. and Chinese counterparts at a United Nations climate summit next month in New York. Modi will skip the Sept. 23 event, according to the Economic Times, thwarting a potential meeting between the heads of states for the three largest greenhouse gas emitters — arguably the nations that will drive international negotiations next year in Paris. Modi’s absence is a bit of a blow to the summit, as India hasn’t made the type of ambitious gestures that China and the U.S. have floated. –Zack Colman, Washington Examiner, 15 August 2014 According to a group of Norwegian researchers, the prospects for achieving an effective international climate treaty are poor. The measures that are politically feasible are ineffective and the measures that would be effective are politically infeasible. The world is actually further away from achieving an effective international climate agreement today than it was 15 years ago, when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. Little basis for optimism exists. —The Research Council of Norway, 14 August 2014 The movement to push through a binding international climate change treaty has lost most of its momentum in recent years, having failed at conference after conference, summit after summit, to reach any sort of consensus about how the world ought to respond to the pervasive threats brought on by our warming world. The reason all this chatter is proving futile is that the developing and the developed world are engaged in a showdown. Attempting to reach a global agreement is the same as banging one’s head against the wall. The Global Climate Treaty movement wastes time and jet fuel, but sadly there’s no end to the charade in sight. –Walter Russell Mead,The American Interest, 13 August 2014 The chapter analysing the history of the industry in Spain is laugh-a-minute stuff, a tale of incompetent politicians and civil servants bumbling from one disaster to another and fraudulent investors cheating their way to a slice of public funds. We hear about the diesel generators generating “solar power” at night and that at one point the authorities estimated that half of new solar PV connections to the grid were fraudulent. You can see why the revolution led to disaster. I leave you with this apposite quote from the text: “Modern renewable energies, supposedly born to support a sustainable world, became one jewel of the most unsustainable of human activities, financial greed.” –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 17 August 2014 In the run up to the general election, the mood music among political leaders seems to have become somewhat more cautious on shale development. At this stage in the political cycle, local opposition is bound to be at the forefront of politicians’ minds. But the public understands that shale development is a matter of national interest – recent polling suggests that 57 per cent are in support, while just 16 per cent oppose it. Shale could be a boon to our energy-intensive industries, creating jobs in the north of England, and increasing domestic gas production to keep wholesale prices down. Policymakers should keep these huge potential benefits in mind in the run-up to the general election. –Benny Peiser & Daniel Mahoney, City A.M. 15 August 2014 |
Now We Are Told to be Afraid of Heavy Rains. What Have We Become? Paranoid?
Met Office Advice On What To Do When It’s Raining
AUGUST 18, 2014
What we do without the Met Office?
People should Learn to “Adapt”, Rather than Playing the “Blame Game”!
Spot the Portion on the Map, caused by ‘climate change’
From “The Hill”, even California Democrats aren’t buying the climate BS Obama and Holdren are selling on drought: (h/t to WUWT reader “Green Sand”)
Voters don’t hear the words “climate change” when Democrats in competitive races in California explain what’s causing the worst drought in the state’s history.
President Obama has repeatedly blamed global warming for episodes of severe weather, including wildfires and droughts in the Golden State, but Democrats seeking to unseat Republicans in the hard-hit Central Valley region are balking at that argument.
The drought is an issue in three of the five closest House races in California, but Democrats are opting against drawing a direct link between the drought and climate change.
“The way folks talk about the drought out here is: ‘We have a problem, let’s fix the problem,’” said Amanda Renteria, a Democrat challenging Rep. David Valadao (R).
“Climate change doesn’t really belong in the question, or answer,” said Renteria, one of her party’s best hopes of gaining a House seat this fall.
California’s drought is in its third year, with no signs of ending. It’s expected to cost the state $2.2 billion this year.
Renteria’s race against Valadao in California’s 21st District is smack dab in the middle of the agriculture-heavy Central Valley, where the drought is the single biggest issue for voters.
Renteria isn’t a climate skeptic and thinks there is something “going on” with climate change.
But her campaign isn’t focused on pinning the drought to the effects of global warming.
It’s focused on how federal and state officials were unprepared to deal with the drought, and how Central Valley lawmakers should have pushed Congress to take steps to build water storage infrastructure to help farmers.
“The fact that we need an answer, and needed an answer for years — this has been coming, we knew it was coming — adds to questions about who our leaders are, and what is going on in Congress,” she said.
Other Democrats in California districts impacted by the drought are tacking a similar tack.
OK, spot the portion caused by climate change:
The paper:
North American drought: Reconstructions, causes, and consequences, Cook et al. 2007
PDF here: NADrought
Figure 10 is the source of the above graph:
Fig. 10. Long-term aridity changes in the West (A) as measured by the percent area affected by drought (PDSIb−1) each year (B) (redrawn from Cook et al., 2004). The four most significant ( pb0.05) dry and wet epochs since AD 800 are indicated by arrows. The 20th century, up through 2003, is highlighted by the yellow box. The average drought area during that time, and that for the AD 900–1300 interval, are indicated by the thick blue and red lines, respectively. The difference between these two means is highly significant ( pb0.001).
Aussie Politicians, We Can ALL Be Proud Of!!!
Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey & Mathias Cormann: Natural Born RET Killers
August 18, 2014 by
Tony Abbott has made no secret of his eagerness to do away with the most colossal corporate welfare scheme in the history of the Commonwealth (see our posts here and here and here).
And his Treasurer, Joe Hockey has pinned his colours to the mast as someone who can’t stand wind farms – and whose political mission is to bring the “age of entitlement” to an end, which includes the stream of subsidies directed at wind power outfits (see our posts here and here).
The Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann made his disdain for the great wind power fraud known by joining Hockey to prevent the Clean Energy Finance Corporation signing up anymore unsecured loans to wind power outfits (see our post here).
So it comes as no surprise that Abbott, Hockey and Cormann would team up as Natural Born RET Killers. Here’s the Australian Financial Review heralding the beginning of the end for the mandatory RET and, with it, the end of the great Australian wind power fraud.
Abbott’s plan to axe RET
Australian Financial Review
Phillip Coorey
18 August 2014
The federal government is moving towards abolishing the Renewable Energy Target rather than scaling it back in a move that will cost almost $11 billion in proposed investment and which is at odds with the views of its own Environment Minister.
The Australian Financial Review understands Prime Minister Tony Abbott has asked businessman Dick Warburton, whom he handpicked after the election to review the RET, to do more work on the option of terminating the target altogether. This was after Mr Warburton’s review leant towards scaling back the RET.
Sources said Environment Minister Greg Hunt, who advocated scaling back the RET as a compromise, has been sidelined from the process and is understood to be unhappy. They said Mr Abbott, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann are pushing the issue now.
A government source said when the government announced its decision, possibly before the end of this month, it was now “more likely” the RET will be abolished under a so-called “closed to new entrants scenario” in which existing contracts only would be honoured.
Given Clive Palmer has vowed to block any change to the RET until after the 2016 election, it remains unclear when the government could declare the RET terminated.
Independent modelling commissioned by the Climate Institute and other environmental groups, and which will be released Monday, found that under the termination scenario, coal-fired power generators would reap an extra $25 billion in profits between 2015 and 2030.
There would be no reduction to household power prices and carbon emissions would climb by 15 million tonnes a year on the back of a 9 percent increase in coal-fired power.
Diminished investments
Abolishing the RET would diminish investment in renewable energy by $10.6 billion, said the modelling, conducted by consulting firm Jacobs.
Conceived under the Howard government, the RET mandated that 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2020. The Abbott government has been lobbied heavily by the business and energy sectors to abolish or water it down as renewable energy gained a larger than expected share of the electricity market.
When the RET was first conceived, it was envisaged 20 per cent of total power production by 2020 would equate to 41,000 gigawatt/hours of renewable energy produced each year.
Under the scaleback favoured by Mr Hunt, annual production of renewable energy in 2020 would be reduced to 27,000GWh. But this would still amount to 20 per cent of total energy production because forecast total energy production for 2020 had been downgraded due to the decline in manufacturing, especially the collapse of the car industry and the closure of two aluminium smelters. This is known as the “real 20 per cent” option.
The abolition proposal would reduce renewable energy production in 2020 to 16,000GWh.
It is understood Mr Abbott’s office was briefed on the recommendations of the Warburton review in late July. The review found the RET did not add significantly to household and commercial power bills, as its critics, including Mr Abbott, had argued, and that it should be scaled back to the real 20 per cent model as advocated by Mr Hunt.
With the government favouring termination, Mr Warburton was asked to give the option more consideration and his report is expected this week.
Energy oversupply
The government source said the market was oversupplied with energy and there was no longer any cause for a mandated use of any specific type of power. The source said while there would be investment losses if the RET was abolished, or even scaled back, investors “would have to have been blind to know this wasn’t coming”.
Miles George, managing director of renewable company Infigen Energy, said either scaling back or terminating the RET “would be devastating”.
He said the creation of sovereign risk would be significant and the very issue had been raised by prospective foreign investors, including Canadian pension funds which Mr Abbott sought to woo when abroad in June.
“Infigen’s shareholder base of over 20,000 investors has invested in renewable energy in Australia on the basis of a fixed target of 41,000 GWh by 2020,” Mr George said. “This is no different to investors in private public partnerships acquiring a toll road concession, or a port lease.
“If the Government pulls the rug from under institutional investors in renewable energy we shouldn’t expect those investors to come back to buy other infrastructure assets here, including the electricity networks and generation assets that the governments of NSW and Queensland are proposing to sell or lease.”
Australian Financial Review
The AFR touts the wind industry line about “diminished investments”, as if wind power outfits are lining up to make an outright, “no-strings-attached” gift of $10.6 billion to Australian power consumers.
On that spin, Australia’s power punters are meant to fear the “loss” and shed a tear for cowboys like Infigen (aka Babcock & Brown) who are, apparently, just itching to give their investors’ money away.
Of course, like every investment, those stumping up the capital will only do so where a juicy return is on offer; and, under the current 41,000 GWh target set by the mandatory RET, the returns promised to be very “juicy”, indeed. Until now.
So let’s have a look at just who ends up paying for the promised (or, rather, threatened) $billions in wind power investment: we’ll call it $10 billion for ease of reference.
Before we kick off, there are a few things to note.
First, is that around 50% of the value of the threatened “investment” will go to foreign turbine manufacturers in China, India and Denmark. So that sends at least $5 billion offshore; adding to Australia’s current account deficit.
Next, is the fact that the great bulk of any wind power “investment” is underwritten by all Australian power consumers via the mandatory RET – as detailed below.
And it needs to borne in mind that any “investment” in wind power generation capacity has to be matched with an equal investment in fossil fuel generation capacity (principally fast-start-up Open Cycle Gas Turbines) to provide power to balance the grid (the need for which increases – along with the need for additional spinning reserve held by base-load thermal generators – due to the wild fluctuations in wind power output – see our post here) and to accommodate routine, but unpredictable, collapses in wind power output (our posts here and hereand here and here and here and here and here and here).
The greater the amount of installed wind power capacity, the greater the need for highly inefficient OCGTs – the installation of which needs to be financed, allowing for returns to those providing the capital: a cost that is never included in calculations accounting for the costs attached to wind power generation (see our post here).
As noted by the AFR, the Australian energy market is oversupplied, which means any further investment in an unpredictable and unreliable source like wind power will simply cause further and substantial increases in retail power prices, additional grid instability and energy market chaos – precisely the circumstances the Germans now find themselves in, after years of runaway renewable energy policy (see our post here).
An “investment” NOT a “gift”
Any investor naturally looks for a return on a capital investment. Ideally, that return exceeds bank interest and – if there is any risk involved – accounts for that risk by way of higher returns. Investors in wind farm projects aim for a gross return on the capital invested in the order of 20% per annum.
That means that the investors stumping up $10 billion to build new wind power capacity will be looking to recover $2 billion from power consumers each and every year to achieve that level of return: returns on wind power investments can only be recouped via income received from power sales – there is NO other source of revenue.
So, rather than being the objects of $10 billion in wind industry largesse, power consumers are being lined up for an enormous, additional and – because there is already ample generating capacity to meet (declining) demand well into the future – completely unnecessary $2 billion hit in the hip pocket each and every year.
A fair slice of the $2 billion annual return on investment required by investors would be recouped via power bills in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs): a Federal Tax on all Australian electricity consumers. RECs are issued to wind power generators and transferred to retailers under the Power Purchase Agreements signed between them (see our post here).
Which brings us to another furphy trotted out in the AFR piece – based on “modelling” by wind industry cheer squad, the Climate Institute – that the mandatory RET hasn’t had any significant effect on retail power prices; and that scrapping it would not result in any decrease in power bills.
As we’ve just pointed out, the $10 billion in threatened wind power investment would, alone, add $2 billion to Australian power bills each and every year: no return, no “investment” – simple as that.
The true cost of the mandatory RET
As is the style of the wind industry and its parasites, whenever they’re pitching about the “wonders” of wind it’s all done with “modelling” and never with real numbers. Smoke and mirrors stuff, using assumptions that never hold water – and always ignoring the terms of the legislation upon which the whole rort depends.
So – let’s forget about “models” – based on nonsensical and unjustified assumptions – and simply apply a little old fashioned arithmetic to the provisions that make up the mandatory RET.
Putting aside the hidden costs of providing fossil fuel back up to cover the occasions when wind power output plummets every day – and for days on end (see our post here); putting aside the need for a duplicated network to carry wind power from the back blocks to urban markets (seeour post here); putting aside the cost of running highly inefficient Open Cycle Gas Turbines to cover wind power “outages” (see our post here), for the purpose of this argument let’s just focus on the cost of Renewable Energy Certificates and their bedmate – the mandated shortfall charge.
Under the mandatory RET – retailers are fined $65 per MWh for every MW they fall below the mandated annual target: what’s called the “shortfall charge” – follow the links here and here. The shortfall charge is directed straight to the Commonwealth, ending up as general revenue.
The alternative is to buy RECs (which is done via the retailer’s PPA with the wind power generator) and surrender them as proof that the retailer has purchased a MWh of renewable energy.
Wind power generators are issued 1 REC for every MWh of power dispatched to the grid – and this deal continues until 2031: the operator of a turbine erected in 2005 will receive RECs (1 per MWh dispatched) each and every year for 26 years.
Since the RET began in April 2001, over 195 million RECs have been created – worth more than $8 billion – the cost of which has all been added to our power bills.
The cost of the REC is ultimately borne by retail customers and, therefore, constitutes a Federal Tax on all Australian electricity consumers (see our post here).
Time for a little arithmetic.
If no RECs were purchased, retailers would simply be hit with the $65 per MWh shortfall charge on the entire figure set by the mandatory RET legislation (see the link here).
That cost alone would add $2.665 billion to power bills annually from 2020 to 2031.
Alternatively, if sufficient RECs to satisfy the target were purchased at $100, say, the cost rises to $4.1 billion a year from 2020 through to 2031.
| Year | RET in MWh (millions) | Shortfall Charge (or RECs) @ $65 |
RECs @ $100 |
| 2014 | 16.1 | $1,046,500,000 | $1,610,000,000 |
| 2015 | 18 | $1,117,000,000 | $1,800,000,000 |
| 2016 | 22.6 | $1,469,000,000 | $2,260,000,000 |
| 2017 | 27.2 | $1,768,000,000 | $2,720,000,000 |
| 2018 | 31.8 | $2,067,000,000 | $3,180,000,000 |
| 2019 | 36.4 | $2,366,000,000 | $3,640,000,000 |
| 2020 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2021 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2022 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2023 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2024 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2025 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2026 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2027 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2028 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2029 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| 2030 | 41 | $2,665,000,000 | $4,100,000,000 |
| Total | $36,483,500,000 | $56,210,000,000 |
RECs are currently trading around $30, but, as the target starts to bite from 2017, the price is expected to reach $90 and is tipped to reach $100 beyond that.
The shortfall charge (as a fine) is a cost that the retailer can’t claim as a legitimate tax deduction, whereas the REC is – this places an added value on the REC to the extent that its face value can reduce the retailer’s taxable income. At a minimum then, RECs can be expected to trade at a figure at least equal to the shortfall charge. But with the tax benefit attached, RECs would be worth at least $94 – based on a shortfall charge of $65.
At the bottom end, this means the value of RECs surrendered (and/or the shortfall charge applied) will add over $36 billion to power bills over the next 17 years. At the top end, the figure (assuming RECs hit $100 by 2017) will exceed $50 billion.
These figures represent the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the Commonwealth: a transfer that comes at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable in society; struggling manufacturing businesses, real jobs and families. To call the mandatory RET obscene is pure understatement. No single policy has ever threatened to cost so much for nothing in return.
It’s these hard and fast facts that have united the PM, his Treasurer and Finance Minister with the intention of killing the mandatory RET outright; and the vast majority of the Coalition are right behind them. The sooner the Coalition axe it, the better. The mandatory RET must go now.
Getting Rid of Windweasels is Easy….Just Turn Off the Money Tap!
European Governments Rip Up Wind Power Contracts
August 17, 2014 by
In recent weeks there has been a cacophony of wind industry rent-seeker bleating. Turbine makers, like America’s GE have been running hard in the press touting the “merits” of retaining the mandatory Renewable Energy Target – a scheme that will see $50 billion added to Australian power bills and directed to wind power outfits over the next 17 years (see our post here): a whopping proportion of which would end up in the pockets of fan makers like GE – no self-interest there.
Retaining the RET would allow GE to line up for a double-helping. Not only does it make giant fans, it also makes the Open Cycle Gas Turbines that provide the “fire-up-in-a-heartbeat” back-up essential to accommodate daily collapses in wind power output – that can’t be predicted, but which happen on a routine basis (see our posts here andhere and here and here and here and here and here and here). The greater the installed capacity of wind power, the more OCGTs that are needed to balance the grid and back it up when it goes AWOL (see our post here).
The wind industry and its coterie of parasites, consultants and hangers-on are in flat panic about what the RET Review Panel is going to recommend; seizing on every recent breath and utterance from Panel head, Dick Warburton – and dissecting it with the earnestness of a Witch Doctor looking for omens in entrails. Here’s a little piece from The Australian that suggests the omens aren’t what the wind industry was looking for.
AEMO report ‘a very large part’ of RET Review
The Australian
John Conroy
11 August 2014
Dick Warburton, the head of the federal government’s panel reviewing the Renewable Energy Target, has told journalists that a report finding Australia would not need to add any generation capacity to meet demand in the next 10 years had formed “a very large part” of his panel’s findings, Fairfax Media reports.
According to the news service, Mr Warburton, a businessman and climate sceptic appointed by the Abbott Government to head the review, was referring to an Australia Energy Market Operator analysis finding there will be more electricity generation than required until 2024.
“It’s hard to interpret those remarks any other way – that they’re likely to recommend that the [target] be scaled back,” Hugh Saddler, of consultants Pitt & Sherry, told Fairfax.
The Australian
Just what Dick Warburton’s views on climate change have to do with the RET review is a little puzzling?
The largest current (and potential) beneficiary of the RET rort is the wind industry and (assuming “climate change” is all down to carbon dioxide gas) it’s yet to produce any credible evidence that wind power has reduced CO2 emissions in the electricity sector, which is probably because studies based on actual data point in the opposite direction (see this American article here; this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here). If CO2 emissions are the cause of “climate change”, then wind power sure ain’t the solution.
With the current 41,000 GWh target set by the mandatory RET almost certain to get the chop, the wind industry has been wailing louder than ever about “sovereign risk” and the need to be “compensated” for any change to the target; as if Renewable Energy Certificates were some God-given-right. In this post, WA Senator, Chris Back slammed that one straight over the long-boundary, based on Parliamentary advice which, funnily enough, reflects what STT has already said on the issue (see our postshere and here).
Meanwhile in Europe, governments – being bled to death by the obscene subsidy streams set up by their renewables policies – are tearing up contracts with wind and solar power outfits – apparently unmoved by the howls of outfits that would have never existed, but for the unwilling largesse of taxpayers and power consumers. The Spanish, Italians, French and Belgians have all woken up to the fact that these schemes are simply unsustainable and have to go. Here’s the Financial Post on the great renewables retreat.
Governments rip up renewable contracts
Financial Post
Brady Yauch
19 March 2014
Companies ‘do not have a right [to expect the compensation] not to be changed’.
Governments across Europe, regretting the over-generous deals doled out to the renewable energy sector, have begun reneging on them. To slow ruinous power bills hikes, governments are unilaterally rewriting contracts and clawing back unseemly profits.
In Italy, one of Europe’s largest economies and one that lavished billions in subsidies on the renewable sector, the government in 2013 applied its so-called “Robin Hood tax” to renewable energy producers. Under the new rule, renewable energy producers with more than €3 million in revenue and income greater than €300,000 must now pay a tax of 10.5%.
That follows a 2012 move to charge all solar producers a five cent tax per kilowatt hour on all self-consumed energy. The government also told solar producers that it would stop taking their power – and would offer no compensation – when their output overwhelms the system.
The result of these and other changes, says the solar industry, has been a surge in bankruptcies and a massive decrease in solar investment.
In Belgium – where both regional and federal bodies hand out renewable subsidies – a number of retroactive changes have capped the largesse renewable producers once received. In one region the price for “green certificates” – which producers received for renewable energy – was slashed by 79%. The government original committed to buy green certificates at a benchmarked price for 20 years, then cut it to 10 years.
Belgium’s regulators tried to impose a fee on all energy added to the grid from small- to medium-sized solar producers. While the country’s court of appeals struck down that fee, a defiant regional government plans to reintroduce it next year, forcing all solar producers to pay an annual fee that varies with the power they pump into the grid. Various municipalities, meanwhile, are introducing taxes on new and existing wind turbines.
As in Italy, Belgium’s renewable sector in the country has gone dark –“imploded” in the view of a solar industry publication. Many companies shrank or went bankrupt.
In France the government last year cut by 20% the “guaranteed” rate offered to all solar producers, and retroactively applied it to projects connected to the grid in the previous three months. The government is also considering ending an 11% tax break on solar energy producers.
Perhaps the most dramatic moves occurred in Spain, for years the poster child for those touting a transition to green energy. Since 2000, Spain has given renewable producers $41-billion more for their power than it has fetched on the open market.
To recover those subsidies, the Spanish government recently killed its Feed In Tariff (FIT) program for renewables, which paid them an outlandishly high guaranteed price for their power, replacing it with the market price for their power plus a subsidy deemed more “reasonable.” Companies’ profits are now capped at a 7.4% return, following which they must then sell their power at market rates. That measure is retroactive, with renewable energy producers who got too fat off their profits now being starved until they reach the 7.4% cap.
For example, if a company spent $100-million on a solar installation in Spain and was posting a return of 14%, or $14-million, annually on that investment, then the government would cut it off from subsidies until its total return – starting from when it was first built – fell to 7.4%, or $7.4 million, a year.
Wind projects built before 2005 will no longer receive any form of subsidy – a move a wind energy trade group called a “sacking” of the sector that will see more than a third of wind producers lose their subsidy.
The fallout in Spain was immediate. Its solar sector, which once employed 60,000 workers, now employs 5,000. The wind sector is estimated to have laid off 20,000 workers. Ikea – the Swedish furniture retailer that became enamoured of renewables – announced it was cutting its losses and abandoning a solar plant it had built in Spain. Investment in the sector also collapsed. In 2011, Spain attracted $10 billion in solar investment. In 2013, the level of investment dropped by almost 90%.
Spain’s Supreme Court offered no sympathy to the solar industry, in ruling against its argument that the government’s retroactive changes were wrong. “The evolution of the energy sector … was putting the financial sustainability of the electricity system at risk,” the court decided, adding that the companies “do not have a right [to expect the government compensation regime] not to be changed.”
Europe’s renewable energy investors are facing a harsh reality – that the promises from politicians can be taken away at any moment. Canada’s renewable energy investors may soon face that same reality.
Brady Yauch is an economist and executive director of Consumer Policy Institute, a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation.
Financial Post
Climate Change Will Happen With, or Without Us…Fear Mongers Losing Their Power?
Communicating Climate Change Without The Scary Green Monsters (Oxymoron)
If you cry wolf as the fable goes people listen, if however, you keep crying wolf and the wolf never turns up and eats the sheep then eventually people cease to listen.
Here is the crux of the problem facing the Green propaganda machine, not one of their Green Armageddon scenarios has ever come pass, the Arctic was going to ice free by 2012, when that failed happen the date changed to 2020 and then moved on to 2058.
Our children would not know what snow was, there were 50 days to save the world which eventually evolved into 120 months to save the world.
It was Climategate that did the damage to the Green Dream, and in the years since then, the fear stories have been ramped up, where every extreme weather event is immediately linked to Anthropogenic Global Warming, by the new Green science of attribution.
Attribution is a simple science that most people can comprehend, it goes like this everything that has ever happened, or will happen in the future is caused by man made climate change.
In reality it is the science of predictive fear, underlined by the hope a major natural disaster will occur, and that the Greens can profit from the ensuing human misery. Puts a whole new slant on “I told you so.”
The Greens have visited the doubts about the fear meme before, back in December 2013 the Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN) based in Oxford, England concluded that the public were suffering from fatigue of climate fear stories.
In September 2014 UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon is holding a Climate Summit in New York for world leaders to try and prop up the UN backed AGW boondoggle, PR company Havas have been retained to promote Ban ki-moon’s summit.
It’s a question exercising Pete Bowyer, who heads up the climate arm of PR firm Havas, charged with promoting UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s climate summit.
“They say all politics is local – but all communications is local – and that’s particularly true of climate change,” he tells RTCC.
“I think people respond better to the impacts they see and feel on the ground, as opposed to abstract theories of theses. We can say it’s 95% certain it’s man-made, but that doesn’t really mean anything to people.”
Bowyer was once the previous UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s spokesman on Climate Justice, so Bowyer has the seen rise and continued fall of the AGW scam firsthand.
A one-time spokesperson for former UN secretary general Kofi Annan on climate justice, Bowyer is now kept busy providing strategic communications to clients who want to see a global emissions reduction deal signed in Paris next December.
What has helped, he says, is the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) three recent reports, which examined the physical science, global vulnerabilities and possible solutions to climate change.
Bowyer believes the IPCC’s dire warnings – and attempts to chart a cleaner energy future – have raised the political focus.
The Green problem of fear surfaces again, this is supposed to be a story about getting rid of the scary Green monsters, instead we are treated to more dire warnings from the IPCC and its Green NGO contributors.
“There is a political momentum which has evolved over the past 18 months, and I think IPCC has been part of that process, so there is a sense that something does need to be done,” he says.
“Given the failure of Copenhagen, which has taken us six years to get back on track… we need – the community as a whole – to see it as an opportunity to do something about it.”
That would be true had the global political landscape remained the same as it was in 2009, the fall of the socialist regime of Julia Gillard in Australia and that of Gordon Brown in Britain, the death of Hugo Chavez, all champions of Agenda 21 now gone from the world stage.
So as the Climate Scam is back on track world leaders must queuing up for Ban ki-moon’s climate summit.
Well no actually, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wont be going, neither will German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Tony Abbot from Australia and Stephen Harper from Canada are likely no shows, as is British Prime Minister David Cameron, then there is Vladamir Putin not much hope there.
Privately, people close to the preparations admit they are still unclear about what the summit can really achieve. Most of the efforts so far have focused on getting leaders to turn up.
This story is really bad news for the Green Dream, what it really shows is that AGW scam was set back 6 years by Climategate and the best efforts by the UN Secretary General to keep the UN driven climate lie alive are failing.
The plan is to replace one set of lies about impending Green Armageddon, with another set of old lies, Green policies create jobs and wealth.
The Green jobs lie was disproved by a House of Representatives report in September 2011 that concluded after a global study that: “there was no such thing as lasting Green jobs“
So the plan for Big Green is to replace lies drenched in fear, with lies gilded with wealth and jobs and when this fails, inevitably another set of lies will be dusted off and recycled.
Wind Power Does Nothing to Help Our Environment! Faux-green…
How Much CO2 Gets Emitted to Build a Wind Turbine?
August 16, 2014 by
The ONLY justification for wind power – the massive subsidies upon which it entirely depends (see our post here); spiralling power prices (seeour post here); and the suffering caused to neighbours by incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound (see our post here) – is the claim that it reduces CO2 emissions in the electricity sector.
STT has pointed out – just once or twice – that that claim is nothing more than a central, endlessly repeated lie. Because wind power fails to deliver at all hundreds of times each year, 100% of its capacity has to be backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation sources – which run constantly in the background to balance the grid and prevent blackouts when wind power output collapses – as it does on a routine, but unpredictable, basis (see our posts here and here and here and here andhere and here and here and here).
But – even before the blades start spinning – the average wind farm clocks up thousands of tonnes of CO2 emissions: “embedded” in thousands of tonnes of steel and concrete. So, every wind farm starts with its CO2 abatement ledger in the negative. Here’s Andy’s Rant with a breakdown of just how much CO2 goes to build a giant fan.
So what’s the carbon foot print of a wind turbine with 45 tons of rebar & 481m3 of concrete?
Andy’s Rant
4 August 2014
Its carbon footprint is massive – try 241.85 tons of CO2.
Here’s the breakdown of the CO2 numbers.
To create a 1,000 Kg of pig iron, you start with 1,800 Kg of iron ore, 900 Kg of coking coal 450 Kg of limestone. The blast furnace consumes 4,500 Kg of air. The temperature at the core of the blast furnace reaches nearly 1,600 degrees C (about 3,000 degrees F).
The pig iron is then transferred to the basic oxygen furnace to make steel.
1,350 Kg of CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg pig iron produced.
A further 1,460 Kg CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg of Steel produced so all up 2,810 Kg CO2 is emitted.
45 tons of rebar (steel) are required so that equals 126.45 tons of CO2 are emitted.
To create a 1,000 Kg of Portland cement, calcium carbonate (60%), silicon (20%), aluminium (10%), iron (10%) and very small amounts of other ingredients are heated in a large kiln to over 1,500 degrees C to convert the raw materials into clinker. The clinker is then interground with other ingredients to produce the final cement product. When cement is mixed with water, sand and gravel forms the rock-like mass know as concrete.
An average of 927 Kg of CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg of Portland cement. On average, concrete has 10% cement, with the balance being gravel (41%), sand (25%), water (18%) and air (6%). One cubic metre of concrete weighs approx. 2,400 Kg so approx. 240 Kg of CO2 is emitted for every cubic metre.
481m3 of concrete are required so that equals 115.4 tons of CO2 are emitted.
Now I have not included the emissions of the mining of the raw materials or the transportation of the fabricated materials to the turbine site so the emission calculation above would be on the low end at best.
Extra stats about wind turbines you may not know about:
The average towering wind turbine being installed around beautiful Australia right now is over 80 metres in height (nearly the same height as the pylons on the Sydney Harbour Bridge). The rotor assembly for one turbine – that’s the blades and hub – weighs over 22,000 Kg and the nacelle, which contains the generator components, weighs over 52,000 Kg.
All this stands on a concrete base constructed from 45,000 Kg of reinforcing rebar which also contains over 481 cubic metres of concrete (that’s over 481,000 litres of concrete – about 20% of the volume of an Olympic swimming pool).
Each turbine blade is made of glass fibre reinforced plastics, (GRP), i.e. glass fibre reinforced polyester or epoxy and on average each turbine blade weighs around 7,000 Kg each.
Each turbine has three blades so there’s 21,000 Kgs of GRP and each blade can be as long as 50 metres.
A typical wind farm of 20 turbines can extend over 101 hectares of land (1.01 Km2).
Each and every wind turbine has a magnet made of a metal called neodymium. There are 2,500 Kg of it in each of the behemoths that have just gone up around Australia.
The mining and refining of neodymium is so dirty and toxic – involving repeated boiling in acid, with radioactive thorium as a waste product – that only one country does it – China. (See our posts here and here).
All this for an intermittent highly unreliable energy source.
And I haven’t even considered the manufacture of the thousands of pylons and tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission wire needed to get the power to the grid. And what about the land space needed to house thousands of these bird chomping death machines?
You see, renewables like wind turbines will incur far more carbon dioxide emissions in their manufacture and installation than what their operational life will ever save.
Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the “cure” of using wind turbines sound worse than the problem? A bit like amputating your leg to “cure” your in-growing toe nail?
Metal emission stats from page 25 from the 2006 IPCC Chapter 4 Metal Industry Emissions report.
Cement and concrete stats from page 6 & 7 from the 2012 NRMCA Concrete CO2 Fact Sheet.
Andy’s Rant
Fracking is a Far Greener Choice, than Wind!
WIND POWER REQUIRES 700 TIMES AS MUCH LAND AS FRACKING
One of the weirder facts of contemporary life is that “environmentalists” generally prefer wind power to fracking. Unless you suffer from an anti-carbon fetish, there is no comparison, as the Telegraph reports:
A wind farm requires 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site, according to analysis by the energy department’s recently-departed chief scientific advisor. …
Prof MacKay said that a shale gas site uses less land and “creates the least visual intrusion”, compared with a wind farm or solar farm capable of producing the equivalent amount of energy over 25 years.
This is not surprising. Wind power is generally feeble, and intermittent at best.
A spokesman for Cuadrilla said: “This comparison by David MacKay clearly demonstrates that, contrary to what some people may assume, exploration for and production of shale gas would actually have less far less impact on the countryside than wind or solar energy.
“To supply an equivalent amount of energy a shale gas site would occupy just a small fraction of the land required for either wind or solar sites, would have less visual intrusion and significantly less transport impact, given that in the UK we do not anticipate having to truck water to our proposed sites.”
In my experience, many environmentalists don’t actually care much about the environment. “Environmentalism” is most often a cover for something else–either a financial interest, or a general yearning for the government (controlled by them, of course) to have more power over the people they don’t like. There are, no doubt, a few honorable exceptions. But the vast disproportion in environmental impact between fracking and wind power illustrates the point.
"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising... 