Abstract: Sun and wind are INTERMITTENT energy sources. But there is no commensurate storage of this intermittence. Thus, for each Gigawatt of Intermittent Energy, one Gigawatt of back-up power needs to be installed. ABSENT CARBON-FREE NUCLEAR or HYDROGEN, this means one Gigawatt of FOSSIL FUELS back-up for each Gigawatt of intermittent energy installed. As observed. Hence the position of self-proclaimed anti-nuclear ecologists is truly pro-fossil fuels (the hydrogen technology would take a while to develop, but nuclear exists already). Thus CO2 emissions are at an all time high.
***
PUTIN And The HYDROCARBON LOBBY Seem To Have Devised The Renewable Energy Hoax. The same plutocrats, oligarchs and media propaganda are behind it all… The Biden administration own studies show this.
4 trillion dollars spent in so-called renewables, in 40 years and a reduction of only 1% or so in primary energy production from hydrocarbons. We are still above 80% in total primary energy from hydrocarbons… And that doesn’t count making plastics from hydrocarbons…
4 trillion dollars in bogus renewable energy is as much not applied in research, education, health care, etc. And the bogus renewable energy, by comforting those who engage in air travel and other energy sins, acts as a moral hazard. Bogus renewable only encourages surfers to fly on the other side of the planet to catch that wave (I had a memorable clash with a group of world class surfers flying from Paris to Tahiti, to catch that wave, and who, per their status, got priority over yours truly… although I was in line first and had paid for my family reason flight myself… I travelled for family reasons, indeed. The horde of surfers was paid by magazines, that is, plutocrats…)
Clearly the strategy of the world has been so bad in this CO2 crisis, that it’s laughable, and should be discontinued. Is it? No, and there is doubling down, especially in Europe, where some politicians, with a straight face, have decided to reduce energy use by 10% (ten percent)… next year. No problem! Uncle Xi has just reelected himself dictator of China and he commands hundreds of millions of obsequious slaves to make stuff… And Uncle Xi builds one coal plant a week! As Comrade Xi takes over the planet, he will take care of his little Europeans…
Forget Trump and his dreams of national self-sufficiency, and listen to Biden’s administration: “Nuclear Power is the Most Reliable Energy Source and It’s Not Even Close… “ An official government report, March 24, 2021.
***
The intermittent wind and solar have a problem: they are intermittent, unpredictable, and their average power output is way lower than official maximum output.
Solar delivers only 25% of its rated output in electricity, wind only 35%, and natural gas 57%. As recently as 2010, coal delivered 67% but has fallen precipitously to 40%.
Why is coal becoming inefficient? According to the National Energy Technology Laboratory, America’s coal plants increasingly are operated in inefficient, stop-start fashion to support wind and solar. A coal furnace may need hours to reach the temperature to make steam. The same holds for gas and oil, magnifying the risk of breakdowns and blackouts as observed all over the countries switching to renewables.
Nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity factor of any other energy source. This means nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 92% of the time during the year.
That’s about nearly 2 times more than natural gas and coal units, and almost 3 times or more reliable than wind and solar plants.
***
Another aspect is deindustrialization in democracies. It is striking that hundreds of French schools are too cold, and that in France the Prime Minister announced energy consumption will have to be reduced by 10%, with cuts to industry. Now French industry is a shadow of its former self, already. Moreover, the country’s CO2 emissions per capita are already less than world average, 4 tons per capita, per year. That’s about 20% of Australia. Meanwhile a thousand kilometers to the east, more than 10,000 armored military vehicles have been destroyed in 8 months in an all-out war. One would think the time is to reindustrialization and rearmament. But no: the so-called “ecologists” look forward to a return to the Middle Ages under Czar Putin.
Indeed, as industry is cut in democracies, it flourishes in other parts with less democracy and more arrangements for crooks… The global plutocracy profits from this traffic and tax mitigation it brings. (One should notice that, starting under Trump, and now much extended under Biden, a program of reindustrialization is under way in the USA… Differently from Western Europe.)
As I said many times, hydrogen has to be developed for storage and transportation (especially fuel cell-electric…) But that’s fully compatible with nuclear power. Actually a way to cool high temperature reactors would be to make hydrogen, and that has the advantage of making the reactors water independent…
The so-called “renewable” policy in energy for the last 40 years looks like something devised by Putin and the hydrocarbon lobbies… And also those financial operators who instinctively fear to be replaced, in awe due to them, by vulgar scientists rolling out new forms of nuclear power, immensely mighty, safe and effective: small modular reactors, thorium, high temperature, pebble, radioactive waste burning, etc.
Aanother aspect is deindustrialization in democracies. It is striking that hundreds of French schools are too cold, and that in France the Prime Minister annouced energy consumption will have to be reduced by 10%, with cuts to industry. Now French industry is a shadow of its former self, already. Moreover, the country’s CO2 emissions, per capita ar already lees than world average, 4 tons per capita, per year. That’s about 20% of Australia. Meanwhile a thousand kilometer to the east, more than 10,000 armored military vehicles have been destroyed in 8 months in an all-out war. One would think the time is to reindustrialization and rearmament. But no: the so-called “ecologists” look forward a return to the Middle Ages under Czar Putin.
Indeed, as industry is cut in democracies, it flourishes in other parts with less democracy and more accomodations for crooks… The global plutocracy profits from this traffic and tax mitigation it brings. (One should notice that, starting under Trump, and now much extended under Biden, a program of reindustrialization is under way in the USA… Differently from Western Europe.)
As I said many times, hydrogen has to be developed, for storage and transportation (fuel cell-electric…) But that’s fully compatible with nuclear. Actually a way to cool high temperature reactors would be to make hydrogen, and that has the advantage of making the reactors water independent…
So called renewables will be very useful if hydrogen storage and transportation is available. So the hydrogen economy has to be developed, and the base energy has to be nuclear.
Patrice Ayme
Tags: Biden Trump, Capacity Utilization, Energy, Hoax, Nuclear, Renewables
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
October 24, 2022 at 9:41 pm |
Patrice, an excellent review of what is actually happening.
I am going to republish this, I believe I have your permission, next Tuesday week.
All the best,
Paul
Please visit Learning from Dogs
Innate wisdom from Man’s best friend.
Sent with Proton Mail secure email.
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October 25, 2022 at 2:40 am |
You are more than welcome, Paul! Thanks!
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October 25, 2022 at 1:48 am |
What a great essay! We in Europe are dying from this hoax. The capacity utilization is the primordial notion that needs to be focused on.
As you pointed out a while back, there are corpses of old windmills along the coasts. Dieu seul sait how long those wind farms they’re installing offshore will last. These are ferocious seas out there.
Macron destroyed 2 nuclear reactors and want to shut down another 22 while going all electric. He is mad, too young. Over his head
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October 25, 2022 at 7:15 pm |
Ian miller
on October 24, 2022 at 8:49 pm said:
You can’t blame everything on Putin. Fair enough, you don’t like him, but on this he is innocent. The solar and wind lobbies have got where they are by offering politicians “a solution” without pointing out what it is a solution to. My feeling is with the possible exception of solar being useful in places where air conditioning is in demand, solar and wind can only be bit players. You are correct that coal-fired stations take hours to heat up from a cold start. However, gas turbines can start up quickly and are useful for peak loads.
The varying loads depending on time of day is a problem. But “renewables” (the equipment has a lot of rare metals in it so it is not exactly renewable) cannot be a main load solution.
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October 25, 2022 at 7:16 pm |
I had to condense meaning…. By “Putin” I meant here the policy of entrusting Russia with fossil fuel production for Europe. Since Putin massacred Chechnya in 1999, before this policy was enacted, and thus should have been recognized then a genocider, this policy accepted to trade fossil fuels for genocide. So this contributed to make the Putin who invaded Ukraine, because the EU thought that genocided was a safe and solid currency, encouraging Putin to make some more genocide, as observed.
(It’s not just my opinion: Turkey officially just accused Russia of genocide against the Crimean Tartars… Took Turkey a while to declare the obvious, but they finally did, Oct 25, 2022…)
So on this, indeed, Putin was not the primary agent, indeed!
For example, France passed a law outlawing fracking in France. That’s curious, first of all, because fracking was invented generations ago (and became dominant only recently). It also meant that France was going to depend upon US fracking… Except France felt genocidal fossil fuels were morally superior.
It depends what one means by “quickly”. Natural gas combined-cycle systems, which involve both a steam turbine and a combustion turbine, account for more capacity than any other generating technology in the United States. Most of those systems can reach full operations in between 1 hour to 12 hours, although some can start up within an hour. (Nov 19, 2020.)
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October 25, 2022 at 7:28 pm |
Ian miller
on October 24, 2022 at 8:38 pm said:
Ah, Patrice, it is not what is spent that matters; it is what is done. I watched this farce in the US, and recall a number of “renewable projects”. As one example, one company raised 100 million dollars from the US government to make fuels from biomass. I saw what was proposed and it was painfully obvious this could not work, at least not vaguely with any thought to economics. Basically, it was how to spend $100 million of someone else’s money, have some fun doing engineering, then go off and find some other way to waste money. There was no preliminary analysis of the available data! For what this is worth, I consulted for one company and more or less designed their research. They spend $3 million NZD and got much further that a couple of companies in the US using the same raw material (microalgae) got while burning through $100 M. We got our raw material from sewage treatment, so apart from the cost of harvest, it was free, and we got to the stage of having about half a tonne of bench scale material with some refined up to aircraft fuel standards, as well as petrol and diesel., That failed, however, because it needed refinancing, and their time-scale put them up for financing about a month after Lehmans. Oops.
You can make fuels from biomass, BUT to make money you have to make something else at the same time because nothing is cheaper than Saudi crude. Except when the Saudis don’t pump enough.
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October 25, 2022 at 7:29 pm |
Right now huge investment is needed in hydrogen: it’s the low hanging fruit. Huge advances in fuel cells efficiency (60%) and how to make green hydrogen from electricity have apparently been achieved in the labs… Already hydrogen electric fuel cell cars are price competitive with state subsidized BEV (Battery Electric Vehicles)…
At this point the US seems to have understood energy, manufacturing, technological and science independence is crucial. Biden is pursuing Trump policies: Biden just slapped interdiction of advanced electronic chips exports to China, boosting the Trump policy… and the Intel CEO applauded (while his stock collapsed)…
Europe does not have achieved the same understanding, and this is creating Franco-German drift. Germany wants US system against missiles… neglecting the better MAMBA system of MDMA and Thales, Franco(-Italian) Aster. So Macron met Georgia Melloni less than 10 hours after she became Italian PM….
The US has the correct interpretation of the world, same as Xi’s: first security through military dominance.
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October 26, 2022 at 2:14 am |
Ian miller on October 25, 2022 at 9:38 pm said:
The reason I favour biofuels, at least right now, is that the science is known, with a few minor issues and the engineering is possible, although work is needed to optimize it. However, in WW II Germany made millions of tonnes from lignite using the Bergius process, so it is all possible. The big difference is there are vehicles there to use all you can produce. The problem with hydrogen is you have to develop the market at the same time. There is also the minor problem that the hydrogen fuel cells tend to use platinum, and it is far from clear there is enough platinum around to enable full mass transport. However, I agree it could be useful in selected niches, such as buses where the vehicle goes on a known route and returns home regularly.
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October 26, 2022 at 2:27 am |
Biofuels? My car in California uses lots of biofuels… still goes to 100km/h in less than 6 seconds, enough to make Tesla drivers furious (so they race with me, and then get out of the freeway within a few minutes, their cars half exploded and out of juice…)… Also it goes 800 kilometers on one tank, no problem, although I often go at 90 mph… Turbo-diesel with biofuels…. where was I…
Too much growing of bad corn in bad places using too much water… But it’s the law in CA, so I fill up with my biodiesel….
Was not that NAZI synthetic gasoline highly inefficient? In any case, thanks to aerial bombing, the NAZIS ran out of fuel to the point they couldn’t fly, drive, let alone train… Let’s bomb whatever needs to be bomb in Putinreich…
The HYDROGEN MARKET is super easy to develop: it already exists. The French showed how to put hydrogen in gas lines… A CENTURY ago…. Any mix works…
Just a paper in Science this week about using LESS Platinum…
Nearly all hydrogen FUEL STATIONS are in the SF Bay Area, where I fester, infuriating hopefully everybody.The TRUMP (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) adminstration found the Alameda COUNTY (Berkeley Oakland) buses to work splendidly (Hydrogen + fuel cells). I see them everyday… Biden is discreetly financing and expending…
Paris too is going hydrogen, they have a deal with a taxi company….
AIRBUS has given up (discreetly) on massive flying batteries projects and instead is reasonably going to develop hydrogen planes
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October 26, 2022 at 7:27 pm |
Ian miller
on October 26, 2022 at 3:33 am said:
I don’t mean trivial blends, and I definitely do not mean using corn.
The Bergius process produced a gasoline suitable for the Luftwaffe, and their piston-engined planes could manage anything the allies had up until the Mustang, but the Germans had given up by then. Their real problem was a shortage of vanadium and chromium for the turbines of their jet motors. But their jet fuel was quite valid as jet fuel. Also, I don’t think you can discard biofuels because Germany got bombed to bits.
In lab experiments I have made a distillate that is the sort of hydrocarbons the USAF adds to their jet fuel to boost performance.
I’m still suspicious of hydrogen. Recently NASA had to delay the launch of their Artemis program at least three times because the hydrogen was leaking during filling. If NASA has trouble, I fear that sooner or later Joe Bloggs will have worse trouble.
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October 26, 2022 at 7:28 pm |
I am thoroughly confused… I thought the Nazis were making “synthetic” fuel from coal… That, in my mind, has nothing to do with biofuels.
As the Nazi fuel procurement was blown to bits from the air, they ran out of fuel… The Nazis had not “given up”, but they couldn’t train their pilots, not just for combat, but even flying, for example. US pilots getting in their first combat were thoroughly trained to combat.
In any case, I don’t see the connection between biofuels and Nazis. The thing put in my car comes from corn, indeed… And I am against it, because it’s unsustainable because it uses huge amounts of fertilizers and aquifers…
There is hydrogen and then hydrogen. Hydrogen as used in Artemis is epic: thousands of tons, back and forth. It makes more sense to use methane. In a fuel cell car, one needs just 5 kilograms to go 500 kilometers, and it’s just compressed.
Hydrogen cell fuel buses have been used around the SF Bay Area for years. They are expanded. San Mateo will compare them to BEVs… Something Alameda Co has been doing for more than a decade, getting kudos from… Trump. Biden is expanding the whole thing.
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October 27, 2022 at 4:30 am |
All very discouraging and frustrating. Are there good news anywhere?
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October 30, 2022 at 3:24 am |
Lots of good news: Putin proved me right, the James Webb telescope say the LCDM (Big Bang) model is wrong… and I am right… LIPS (giant volcano eruption, what I called “core eruption”) hammered Venus, and could destroy earth biosphere too, etc…
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December 16, 2022 at 7:39 pm |
European ecologists, in their biggest results have been, contrarily to what they claimed they wanted to achieve, on the side of Putin and the fossil fuel plutocracy. Because each gigawatt of renewables, the way theu pushed renewables, requires a gigawatt of fossil fuel backup!
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