The Renewables Scam, The Threat Of Winter Dunkelflautes And The Impossibility Of 'Decarbonising The Grid'

Another day, another ‘grid decarbonisation’ propaganda exercise by the renewables vested interests industry, aka the Profits of Doom:

Evans claims, that because fossil fuels contributed a record low 2.4% of energy to the grid for half an hour on 15th April 2024, this somehow debunks arguments that we will never be able to completely decarbonise the grid! This is a ludicrous claim to be making, not backed up by the hard evidence. It’s pure propaganda and Evans is an absolute Green plonker who’s got his filthy hands inside all of our pockets. Because the harder we try to decarbonise the grid, the more the impossibility of the enterprise will become obvious to all, but at the same time, the higher will be the cost to taxpayers and bill payers and the richer will be the fraudsters who are building and investing in the ‘Green’ environment-trashing technology which will fail to achieve the promised sustainable utopia of a 100% carbon free grid.

David Turver points out that which Evans pointedly ignores:

The reason that peak fossil fuels usage is not changing is simple: the low hanging fruit from 2009 onwards has all been picked and without grid scale storage (which technology does not exist and which would be hideously expensive even if it were technologically feasible using super efficient, ultra high capacity batteries and/or ‘Green’ hydrogen) they are never going to be able to eliminate the need for fossil fuel back up due to the fundamental variability of natural weather, however much capacity they add. Because when the sun don’t shine at night or during the winter, you can’t make it shine and, despite the claims of the geoengineering conspiracy peeps, when the wind ain’t blowing, it ain’t blowing, and that’s that. If we had grid scale battery or green hydrogen storage right now, we would probably be looking at a 100% carbon free grid already, or very soon, without the need to build more bird chopping, whale culling, natural landscape and farmland destroying turbines and solar panels. But they want to build more and more, because it makes green crony capitalists richer and richer whilst we get poorer and poorer, spinning the lie that more capacity equates to eventual 100% planet saving decarbonisation. It does not. It will not. Ever. A few simple graphs illustrate why. First, the energy generation split for 15th April:

Sure enough, coal and gas supplied just 6.7% all day, wind a whopping 54.1% and solar 7.1%. PSH (pumped storage hydro) provided a measly 1%. It never supplies much more than that, being basically limited by the geography of the British Isles. There isn’t even a category for battery storage because it’s so miniscule and hydrogen storage is still a fairy tale promise. Most of the rest of our energy came from interconnectors and nuclear power. At 1.30pm solar and wind were supplying 70.8% of energy to the grid and gas was just 1.8%. Tantalizingly close to grid decarbonisation eh? No, not really. Over the course of 2023, we see that gas and coal generation still supplied a third of energy to the grid:

Wind and solar accounted for just slightly more: 33.9%. Realistically, adding more capacity, at huge expense to the environment and huge economic cost, we might get to 50% in the next 5-10 years. But after that, unless battery storage magically becomes a lot more efficient, dirt cheap and does not require huge resources of minerals mined in far away countries, we are still going to need significant amounts of gas back up in order to keep the lights on, assuming that modular nuclear reactors are not developed quickly enough. You’ll note also that the wind drops off during the summer months and gas picks up the slack. But even in the depths of winter, the wind can drop off to nothing and if we have no gas generation capacity during such dunkelflautes then the lights (and heating) will go out and thousands will die from the cold and Swiss pensioners complaining about summer heatwaves won’t seem like such a big human rights issue after all. Take February 23rd to February 25th for instance. Simon Evans and carbon brief won’t tell you about these days:

For a 48 hour period from late afternoon 23rd Feb to late afternoon on the 25th wind dropped off to almost nothing and gas had to do the heavy lifting in order to keep the lights on. At the peak of this thankfully short-lived dunkelflaute, gas was hauling 50% of electricity generation, wind just 1.5% and solar bugger all. Such windless days during winter can and have turned into weeks. 2nd December 2023 is another day Evans won’t tell you about:

In the early morning, gas was supplying a whopping almost 70% of our electricity generation and wind was supplying just over 5%, with solar bugger all again as usual. That was just 5 months ago. So tell me again, when should we look forward to a 100% decarbonised grid? Not soon. Not by 2030. Not by 2050. Probably not for the foreseeable future.