The energy transition leads to blackouts and rising costs

The energy transition and the Green Deal lead to blackouts and rising costs

Dr. Peter F. Mayer, tkp.at (German)

Further release of CO2 must be prevented at all costs – that is currently the credo in globalist organisations such as the WEF, the UN and the EU. Apart from the fact that the influence of CO2 on the climate – if it exists at all – is insignificant, an energy supply based on sun and wind is unreliable and extremely expensive.

Physicists and engineers have been pointing this out to politicians (German) for decades. So does a study by the North Dakota Transmission Authority (NDTA). The current Biden administration is also pursuing the “net zero” strategy, which will bring American taxpayers power cuts and high costs. The Biden administration has already set in motion the measures to achieve these goals. In April, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted a rule, the so-called Power Plant Greenhouse Gas Rule.

The rule consists of four regulations aimed at the states’ power grids. These state grids must now comply with new global performance standards and are to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions”. The ultimate goal is the complete shutdown of hydrocarbon-fired power plants.

These plants are to be replaced by ones powered by so-called “green” energy such as wind and sun. A recent NDTA study, however, states that the EPA bases its rule on flawed reasoning. The EPA examined whether sufficient resources are available to convert the power grids into more environmentally friendly versions and concluded that they are.

However, it did not carry out hourly stress tests, which check whether a power grid can meet electricity demand at any given hour of the day. Had the EPA carried out these tests, it would have concluded that power grids running on photovoltaic and wind energy would not be able to meet the population’s electricity needs, according to the NDTA study.

The power plants would probably be overloaded, leading to power cuts. The NDTA examined in particular the power grids in the Midwest and South of the USA, which are managed by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) respectively.

The study explains:

“We found that closing lignite power plants in the MISO and SPP footprints would increase the magnitude of projected future capacity shortfalls, i.e. rolling blackouts, in the MISO and SPP systems, even if these resources were replaced by wind, solar, battery storage and natural gas plants.”

Power cuts come with costs, referred to as the value of lost load (VoLL). VoLL is the loss consumers suffer from an interruption in the power supply. The NDTA estimates that taxpayers in the Midwest will experience an additional 377,300 hours of power cuts over the next 27 years. The VoLL costs for taxpayers will amount to $3.77 billion.

In the area covered by the SPP, American taxpayers are likely to be affected by power cuts for 8.3 million hours. This results in enormous VoLL costs of $83 billion. All this comes on top of the $447.5 billion that building new clean-energy grids will cost taxpayers.

These findings require little more know-how than basic arithmetic and a willingness to deal with reality rather than ideology.

And the findings are anything but new. In a lecture in 2014, Professor Michael J. Kelly of the Electrical Engineering Division at the University of Cambridge addressed the challenges under the title “Future Energy Needs and Engineering Reality”.

He stated, as reported here (German), that the scale of the decarbonisation problem is unprecedented:

• 90% of the energy consumed in the world since 1800 has been based on fossil fuels
• Today, 15% of energy is generated by biomass, hydropower, geothermal energy and nuclear power
• First-generation renewables generate less than 1% of the world’s energy

Kelly then explains that 80% decarbonisation by 2050 is impossible without mass deaths.

As early as 1820, the British economist Thomas Malthus described overpopulation as a serious problem. In 1973 the Club of Rome took the same line with its theses on “The Limits to Growth”. Today there is a whole series of population-reduction initiatives: the Green Deal, mass vaccination campaigns with mRNA injections, childhood vaccination schedules, the culling of livestock and the shift of food to purely industrial production are the cornerstones of today’s policy.

Original article on tkp.at (German)

The blog for science & politics

To the platform (German)

Decentralised energy

Neutrinovoltaics based on freely oscillating graphene offers a scientifically proven, viable way of generating baseload-capable, environmentally neutral renewable energy. This could also slow down the subsidised expansion of weather-dependent technologies.

More info