"Net Zero" is a complete fantasy...

There- I said it.

As I may have mentioned before, it would appear that the prevailing thinking amongst some in society today seems to be that we exist in some sort of “climate emergency.” This, it is supposed, arises from the idea that human emissions of carbon dioxide are in the process of causing a global catastrophic change in the climate such that vast swathes of the planet could become uninhabitable within the next few years. Successions of politicians, public figures, small sulky children, oddly clad protestors and (it would appear), middle class evidently well to do retired people are telling us this and insisting that we mend our ways before it is too late.

You too may think it is the case that there is some sort of existential climate emergency. If that is so, then this piece is for you. I myself am somewhat sceptical about the matter.

“Net zero” as it is known seems to be the driving means by which some countries around the world are seeking to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to a level that it is felt that will not affect the climate, which they all tell us is out of control. What they do not tell us however is by just how much they would like the CO2 level to be reduced. It is further surmised in some quarters that this is an existential crisis and that everything must be sacrificed in order to lower the emissions created by mankind.

The solution being offered is called “decarbonisation.” This is touted as the answer apparently as, amongst many other things, replacing the current fossil fuel power generation with other forms of generation and replacing petrol and diesel vehicles with electrically driven systems will stop CO2, this maleficent gas, from entering the atmosphere and causing, (so it is said) more warming which will trigger supposed tipping points in the climate system leading to further disasters and so it goes on. Ad bloody infinitum.

Since successive governments in this country have embraced this as a policy and committed in a wholesale way to this “decarbonisation” mission, it might be worth looking at what precisely this means to us all. The reason for this is that the underlying facts are worth examining in more detail than folk like the millipede do, or even it would appear, want you to do.

Over a few articles, I will take a look at one or two aspects of this “decarbonisation” experiment to which the people of England have been subjected. I will do this intermittently, a bit like wind power I suppose and will begin with the national grid.

In order to understand why I assert that net zero is a fantasy, it might first be a good idea to look at the electricity generating network and how it operates as well as looking in a little detail at why traditional generation methods are not compatible with the “decarbonised” ones that are attempting to replace them. Then perhaps we can look at the costs of this proposed changeover.

The national grid includes the power generation and distribution network, the high voltage network from the power stations which generate the electricity upon which we all rely and the substations which switch and distribute the power to various places around the country. It further includes the lower voltage network from which homes and businesses draw their power.

The grid operates using alternating current. AC as it is known, can be represented as a sine wave:

The diagram above shows a sine wave with two cycles visible. If the distance in time from the start of the horizontal axis to the arrow was one second, then the frequency of this waveform would be 2 hertz. AC electricity in this country has a frequency that is twenty five times greater than this. It is important to recognise that electrical equipment connected to the grid is very sensitive to changes in the frequency of the power being fed to it, so changes outside around 1- 2% may cause damage and this means that it is rather important to keep the frequency steady.

The generation of power in this country has traditionally been accomplished by the use of spinning turbines. There is a standard speed at which the turbines are built to spin and it is 3,000RPM. This is where the 50 hertz frequency comes from, (3,000rpm/ 60s= 50hz). Power generated with turbines spinning employs coal, gas or nuclear means to heat water which creates steam to drive the turbine. This has an advantage in the sense that spinning objects have a property known as “inertia” which simply stated is a resistance to change. Once an object is moving, it will continue to move, (according to Newton’s first law) unless acted on by an external force. If the turbine, (for example) is attached to a flywheel, then the resistance to change, (ie slowing down) is greater. This allows a turbine to spin for a period even if the driving power of the steam is discontinued. This methodology allows all turbines to deliver reliable power of a usable frequency on a continuous basis. This is called “deliverable power.”

This is a simplified explanation of the generation system because I am a simple man. The key point about all of this is that reliability is paramount. By the way, all traditional spinning generators provide AC power.

What happens if we generate power from different sources, for example wind and solar? Wind and solar generation creates “direct current” electricity. This type of electricity is not a wave pattern, but a rise in potential and is loosely represented in this diagram:

As you can see from the graphs above, AC and DC power are quite different from one another and cannot therefore be mixed on the grid. This means that DC power generated from solar panels and windmills must first be converted to AC power using electronics. The subsequent AC power must then be frequency matched to the prevailing grid frequency in order to use it. This is much more difficult to do than it sounds and requires a good deal of expertise and also incurs significant additional cost. Another point about this type of generation is that it is intermittent because wind turbines won’t generate when there is no breeze and solar panels don't work when the sun doesn’t shine.

The German people have a name for extended periods without wind or sun. They call it “Dunkelflautte,” and it happens much more often than you might think. We also have a name for regular periods without sun- it is known as “night,” which is when an awful lot of electricity seems to be used. You may also be aware that at night, the wind speed often drops also- ask any sailor.

Traditional methods of power generation are known as “high inertia” generators whilst wind and solar are called “low inertia” generators. In other words, the point at which the low inertia source will cease to generate power comes considerably sooner after the motive power, (the sun or wind in this case), has ceased. Solar and wind are also subject to variable generation depending upon how bright the sun is or how strongly the wind blows and so it delivers variable power to the grid which is very hard to manage. So called “low inertia” generation is also very susceptible to changes in grid frequency, for example if a large source goes off line in an unexpected way. The grid is set up to monitor the frequency on it and if that changes outside a certain limit, breakers operate and switch the power off as a safety measure which prevents damage to connected equipment.

This frequency variation can give rise to a cascading switch offs across a network powered by low inertia generation systems and seems most likely to have been the cause of the massive power outage in Spain and Portugal a short while ago.

Perhaps you weren't aware of this, but seven people died in the black out, some because their breathing assistance apparatus failed to operate owing to there being no power. Black outs you see, have consequences. Now, you might argue that this could have happened in a country that wasn’t powered chiefly by wind and solar, but the chances of this occurring are much lower. Very much lower in fact.

Wind and Solar generation does not create a robust network and is intermittent. Therefore such plant cannot be relied upon as a sole power source.

The next problem we encounter when using wind power is where we might place the generators. Wind turbines need to be placed in an area that is open and windy pretty much of the time. We may reason that the sea is like that, hence the site of the Seagreen generating field. The unfortunate thing about this site is that it is far away from the grid and therefore a new high voltage infrastructure must be built to accommodate it. This is a further cost (over and above conversion from DC to AC which we discussed earlier), and will require to be installed for every wind park.

Imagine the cost of having to undertake this for every single installation of generation like this. Doing this is not required for Hinkley point C for example because it is near the current cable network. Therefore that cost is not incurred. One might argue the same for new generation systems being installed on the sites of earlier plant.

This additional cost is being loaded onto the bills of UK customers and also results in a doubling up of grid infrastructure as the spinning capacity will need to be retained if the network is to remain robust. It is undeniable that intermittent power generation sources require a back up source- that very spinning capacity we talked of earlier.

Intermittent sources require backup.

Another point to be made about wind power is the capacity factor. This is not often mentioned in any discussion about wind generation. Capacity factor is a way of describing how much deliverable power can be generated by a particular form of generation. The capacity factors of gas power stations around the world are at the very least 60%. This means that if a station is rated at 100Gw then it will actually generate around 60Gw for a given period of time, although it should be added that these systems have a considerably higher capacity factor in real life situations because they are built to spin continuously and often do.

However, the capacity factor will drop if other power sources are used in the network. Since, some of the time, around 50% of UK generation is renewable, the efficiency of the gas power stations (which could be much higher), sits at a lower level- right now at around 30%. This is a natural by product of gas stations being used less and not (as may be portrayed) a reason to move to other forms of generation because gas powered stations are less efficient. The so called “always on” sources like gas, coal and nuclear work at their most efficient when they are running continuously. By the way, the capacity factor for most wind power in the UK sits at around 30% and is not ever likely to improve.

This means that if your wind turbine farm is rated at 100Gw (the so called “name plate capacity”), you will obtain 30Gw of power from it. If you require 100Gw of power, you will need more than three times the number of windmills to achieve your aim.

This capacity factor problem is but one in a multitude.

Let’s look now at the practicalities of installing the power distribution network that might be required to support the wind farms that would need to be installed if we attempt to work with the wind power scenario. The money is one thing and a great deal of it will be needed, but what only a very few people seem to have talked about is the manpower required, both in terms of highly professional individuals- that is to say electrical engineers and also semi skilled individuals- by which I mean skilled tradesmen and other support workers. In the UK workforce, there are currently 38,000 electrical engineers right now. It has been calculated, (by Michael Kelly) that to build the network needed to carry the power generated by wind and solar, we would require another 42,000 engineers if we wanted to complete the job by around 2050. We would also need another 130,000 skilled tradespeople. In short, we don’t have enough people to do this job.

Let us also look at the material cost of this energy transition. I will draw (again) from the example given by Michael Kelly, (whom I will reference later):

There are some things to note:

• A steam turbine will last 60 years with one mid-life refit.

• A 5MW wind turbine lasts around 30 years so you need double the turbines for the same generation capability.

• A gas turbine and one 5 MW wind turbine are approximately equal in terms of material used.

• The material required for the generation of power is much greater for wind than for gas.

• The energy density of wind turbines is an order of magnitude lower than for gas turbines.

This example shows a power system of just 600MW. This wouldn’t go so far as the average daily use of electricity in the UK is around 31GW.

Can you see the problem here?

As ever, the whole bewildering scale of the challenge is not being properly represented to the public by the government. Either they have not looked at the logistical challenges posed, or they are being wilfully blind to the necessity of using trillions of pounds, (value) of equipment and manpower. The potential for problems here is huge. I am not the cleverest fellow around and I can see that there are clouds ahead.

The national grid requires constant, steady power from its generation sources. Multiple sources are fine provided that they can supply on demand and in a reliable manner. As I have mentioned before, solar and wind are not reliable. The intermittency problem is not one that will go away. The intermittency problem gives rise to the requirement to run two power networks- one powered by sunshine and sea breezes and the other powered by gas or nuclear. We could use coal as we have easy access to our own storehouse of this fuel and it is in the main quite clean- certainly compared to the so called “brown coal” being used by Germany right now, I invite you to search for Lignite for more information on this.

The integration of the power output from wind turbines and solar panels is not simple. The blackout in the Iberian peninsula appears to demonstrate this. The government there have obfuscated for all that they are worth in order to prevent the public at large discovering exactly what happened. Many people will have seen the vague and ridiculous explanations proffered by various authorities in the locale immediately following this occurrence.

The people of this country are being told that we stand on the brink of a “clean energy revolution” and that cheap power is just around the corner if we rely on wind and solar. By 2030, the target is for gas generation to be at 5% of the total. Coal fired generation is now gone from this country with the closure of Radcliffe on Soar and the bills keep rising. The uncomfortable fact of the matter for the advocates of wind and solar is that it is not less costly than traditional methods of generating electricity, it is far, far more so. The oft mentioned “free power from wind and solar” is piffle. If you want an example of this, ask yourself how much the windmills and solar panels cost to both buy and install and then look at the level of constraint payments made by the government to those who run windmills and solar farms. That would just be a starting point of course.

To amplify the point- since 2006, successive governments have spent £220 billion of your money on the renewable experiment and we have nothing to show for it but increased electricity costs. There is a correlation here. Look carefully at Germany, who came under the malevolent influence of the eco mentalists and Gaia types some years ago. They shut down their nuclear power stations and now have to rely on Lignite to run their coal power stations because the wind and solar generation is not reliable. Spain is looking to decommission their nuclear fleet early as well. The green nutters suggest that energy must be “clean” but do not want nuclear despite that source being both clean and reliable. I suppose we must conclude that they have some agenda other than care for the environment and people.

What is the solution? I have mentioned this before, but will say it again. Build out the nuclear fleet in this country whilst replacing the existing CCG (combined cycle gas) power stations with new ones. Do it soon, because the current fleet of CCG stations are coming towards the end of their lives. We have, in Rolls Royce, a company that leads the world in constructing small modular nuclear reactors which could easily and safely be deployed nationwide to provide power exactly where it is required and to do so for approximately 60 years per reactor with very little in the way of maintenance. Stop wasting our money on the ludicrous and unachievable daydream of clean power from the wind and the sun- as a major grid level source upon which people rely it’s actually not that clean and it’s more than likely not to be successful, no matter how much you want it to be.

Governments and ideologues who ignore this sort of thinking, (which comes from many more qualified people than I) are demonstrating a wilful blindness to the facts and blithely condemning the people of this country to a future of expensive and scarce energy which would ultimately lead to a lowering in standards of living.

I say abandon this useless and expensive net zero crusade.

Michael Kelly is the Emeritus Professor of engineering at Cambridge University and a former government adviser. He is the author of a number of papers about the energy transition

You may also care to read this piece by Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus which goes into some detail about the Spanish blackout:

https://archive.ph/gESod