“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit. –– Warren Buffett
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” –– Top Google engineers
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. –– James Hansen (The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)
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Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and resides in Bengaluru, India. He received his M.Sc in Environmental Science from the University of East Anglia (UEA), England. His first hand experience of the controversy within the climate fraternity came when he was a graduate student at UEA, which also houses the Climatic Research Unit – the heart of the Climategate scandal in 2009. (Climategate: Emails leaked from personal accounts of alarmist climate scientists revealed their attempts to deliberately exaggerate the warming rate in the 20th century).
His subsequent journey in understanding the reality of the climatic system made him espouse the position of climate realism, a position that views climate in terms of the real-world climate measurements (that shows no signs of dangerous increase) and not through the lenses of faulty forecasts that predict a climate apocalypse. He advocates for the use of fossil fuels in developing countries, the very same energy sources that lifted the Western society out of poverty in the last two centuries.
In this exclusive op-ed written for Climatism blog, Vijay illustrates the brazen hypocrisy of the climate-obsessed Western mainstream media, vilifying conservative leaders such as Australia’s PM Scott Morrison for supporting fossil fuels and coal, while remaining silent on – ‘green’ energy darling of the Left – Angela Merkel’s ramping up of coal-fired power stations in order to negate the disastrous economic and environmental fallout from her countries disastrous 500 billion Euro (failed) Energiewende experiment.
From a perspective of humanity, Vijay highlights the deadly importance of utilising cheap, reliable fossil fuels in order to lift billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty by allowing an estimated 1.3 billion of them to experience actual electricity. According to the Washington Post, “around the world, 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity. More than 600 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than 300 million are in India alone.”
As well, Vijay recognises the undeniable need for advanced societies to maintain their use of cheap, reliable and clean fossil fuel technologies, such as HELE, in order to maintain economic wealth, keep the lights on, as well to maintain environmental health. After all, the greatest threat to the environment is not affluence, it is poverty. The border between Haiti and Dominican Republic, a fine example. See : UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity And The Environment
As a stage when the Paris agreement conveners are looking up to Germany to represent itself as a leader in emission reduction, the opening up of coal plants comes across as a slap in the face of the agreement between Berlin and Paris.
When a nation like Germany, touted as the global leader in ‘clean’ energy, can open up new coal plants, why can’t economies like Australia do the same?
Why are the left and the greenies branding Australia as a “fossil badboy”? Are only leftists and developed European nations entitled to reliable and affordable power from fossil fuels?
Germany Chancellor and Fossil Hypocrisy
Germany is a leading economy, not just in Europe, but in the world. But that status is under threat as the country’s political leadership is struggling with its obsession for “clean” energy and the increasing pressure to provide energy access at an affordable rate.
Though being touted as the global leader in renewable energy, the country failed miserably in fulfilling its emission reduction targets during recent years and made headlines across the globe for its failure. Despite setting aside $580 billion in expenses to transform its energy systems away from fossil, the country could not achieve its own emission reduction targets.
This year, the country’s premier Merkel went a step further to upgrade her dismal record in keeping promises and embraced fossil fuels.
Surprisingly, the chancellor did not go through the same treatment that some of her counterparts in other parts of the world are going through for embracing fossil fuels!
Mocking Australia’s Coal Embrace is Heights of Hypocrisy
In contrast to the treatment Merkel enjoys in the global mainstream media, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been the subject of ridicule for his open embrace of fossil fuels, especially coal.
The global mainstream media’s treatment of the Australian PM is nothing but blatant hypocrisy! While leaders like Angela Merkel are allowed to use fossils, those like Morrison are ridiculed for doing the same.
In fact, the hypocrisy becomes more intense when considers the total CO2 emissions from different countries so far! Australia is ranked 16th but Germany is ranked 6th. China, who are currently being praised for their announcement of carbon neutrality target, stands number one in the ranking for total CO2 emissions.
Make no mistake, CO2 emission is not a bad thing! But the fact that the leftist’s mainstream media chose to blacklist few political leaders while allow others to run scot-free exposes their hypocrisy.
Media Morphing the Importance of Australian Coal as Evil
Moreover, the leftists seldom care about the lives of millions in Asia who directly depend on Australian coal. Though countries like India and China have abundant coal reserves, they still depend on Australian coal to meet domestic energy needs.
In addition to fueling their energy plants, Australian coal—which is a cleaner form of black anthracite coal—is the preferred fuel in their steel plants. Australian coal production increase is partly induced by the soaring export demands from developing nations like India and China, and even developed economies like Japan.
In 2019, Australia’s total coal export was valued at $64 billion, with Japan alone buying $17 billion worth of coal. China bought coal worth $13.7 billion and India $10.5 billion. Ironically, the host of Paris agreement, France, took in $0.6 billion worth of coal from Australia in 2019.
In fact, the energy sectors of these coal import countries are highly sensitive to disruptions in supply of Australian coal. This was evident recently when a ban on import of Australian coal—due to the on-going political tensions between China and Australia—plunged thousands of homes into darkness in China.
Institute of Public Affairs in India estimates that Australian coal could help 82 million Indians access electricity. In a nation where hundreds of millions are yet to experience uninterrupted power supply, Australian coal supply could be vital.
And it is not just the foreign economies that benefit from Australian coal. Coal is mined in every state in Australia and it is one of the country’s economic lifeline. In 2019, It was responsible for 56% of the nation’s electricity requirements.
Estimates indicate that the Australian economy has been strongly supported by 9,100 million tonnes of black coal and about 2,300 million tonnes of brown coal since the 1700s. Mining and resources have been a key contributor to Australia’s economic growth, according to 2019 National Accounts data by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Instead of broadcasting actual benefit of superior grade Australian coal in Asia Pacific, the liberal mainstream media has branded Australia’s coal sector as evil and cast Prime Minister Morrison as the villain in their anti-fossil propaganda drama. To rub salt on the wound, they’ve cast climate hypocrites in Europe as climate saviors.
If the CO2 emissions are the real concern—to the climate alarmists—then they must actually promote Australian coal and clean coal technology like the HELE supercritical coal technology that emit 30 percent less CO2.
Rather, the failure of support for high grade Australian coal and the HELE technology has revealed the alarmist’s and left’s unwillingness to the rising cost of energy prices from renewables or the huge financial burden non-fossil technologies are having on the economies and the industries which act as their backbone.
Author: Vijay Jayaraj is an environmental researcher and commentator on climate and energy issues globally. He graduated with a Master’s in Environmental Science from the University of East Anglia, which was home to the infamous Climategate scandal.
“California was the experiment, and now it is the proof: environmentalism is worse for ‘social justice’ than any degree of climate change is.
Environmentalism is the indulgent fantasy of remote political elites and their self-serving business backers. If California doesn’t prove this, what would?”
The heatwaves and the fires are natural – the electricity blackouts are not.
Events leading up to today’s power cuts follow a bizarre history. The fact that advanced economies need a continuous supply of power is well understood. Yet for three decades, the political agenda, dominated by self-proclaimed ‘progressives’, has put lofty green idealism before security of supply and before the consumer’s interest in reasonable prices. Even if the heatwaves experienced by California were caused by climate change, are their direct effects worse than the loss of electricity supply?
California’s green and tech billionaires, and its business and political elites, certainly seem to think so. But they are largely protected from reality by vast wealth, private security, gated estates, and battery banks. The high cost of…
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
–– Top Google engineers
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.
–– Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
– James Hansen (The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)
***
JUST as socialist central-planning failed miserably before it was replaced by free market economies, green central-planning will have to be discarded before Australia and other Western nations will see a return to energy security, competitive pricing and business prosperity.
GOOD to see Mexico heading in the smart direction. Led by an apparent reasoned and rational government who understands that “the only things ‘inevitable’ about the ‘transition’ to wind and solar are skyrocketing electricity prices and unstable power grids.”
As Mexico is poised to plunge into its worst recession in recent-memory the leftist president is making cuts and pulling the plug on subsidy dependent intermittent power from wind and solar that has been driving up the cost of electricity for its financially challenged population.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the 2018 election by a landslide. His approach to government spending — even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout — might best be compared to that of conservative icons Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
Recognizing that industrial wind and solar electricity bring little to no value to electrical grids, Mexico is moving to avoid the higher electrical prices experienced by Germany, Denmark, Great Britain, South Australia, California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other governments that have heavily subsidized their supply of intermittent electricity.
The only things ‘inevitable’ about the ‘transition’ to wind and solar are rocketing electricity prices and unstable power grids. As to the latter, the Mexican government has taken a stand that has sent renewable energy rent seekers into a tailspin.
The Mexican government’s concept, not without merit, is that if you are looking for a reliable electricity supply, then it does not make much sense to rely on the ‘unreliables’. Mexico needs reliable and affordable power, more than ever.
The stage is now set for yet another legal dispute between Mexico’s government and the intermittent electricity sector, with the Mexican government acting to freeze project connections in a supposed bid to underpin system stability in the COVID-19 era.
While the wind and solar industries seem eager to deliver their peculiar brand of a ‘healthy environment’ for Mexicans, their government appears more inclined to ensure the delivery of affordable electricity as and when Mexicans need it.
Whether you’re a South Australian business owner trying to keep your head above water, a farmer’s wife in Ontario trying to keep your head on your pillow and sleep despite incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound or an Eagle just trying to keep its head, you’ve probably formed a pretty strong opinion about the ‘merits’ of subsidized wind electricity.
Oaxaca is a state in southern Mexico that is home to almost two-thirds of Mexico’s wind-power capacity, including the Tehuantepec turbines. Many people in towns with wind parks seem to still favor them, but over time, people have seen less benefits than originally promised. Job opportunities, for example, have fallen short of expectations, locals say. And the touted improvements to roads or schools also have not materialized, overall.
After the trillions spent on industrial wind turbines and solar panels that do not deliver as advertised, the worldwide ecological destruction from the mining of precious minerals leave lands uninhabitable and worthless for plants and trees. Renewable taxpayer handouts have stripped landscapes. Left in the wake of intermittent electricity farms and subsidized biomass-fueled power plants is cynical at best, and mercenary in their ability to destroy nature’s ability to alleviate the coronavirus via cleaner air.
During this global pandemic, dependence on China for rare earth minerals, which solar panels and wind turbines are useless without, makes clean energy a costly proposition.
The environmental destruction that wind turbines create is extraordinary – “building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic.”
Wind and solar also bring little to no value to electrical grids. When the sun does not shine, and the wind does not blow at set speeds it destroys a grid spinning reserve mode, peaking mode, and backup mode. Similarly, in Great Britain Prime Minister Boris Johnson catches coronavirus, and his country struggles with an unstable grid over widespread adoption of renewables for electricity. In the age of COVID-19 there are life and death matters if electricity is hampered for any length of time.
Renewables then make no sense when the entire world is sick. Only using Warren Buffet’s logic does chaotic wind power bring financial wealth when Mr. Buffett said: “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That is the only reasons to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
What makes the entire notion of relying on chaotically intermittent renewables dangerous is a seminal work by energy expert Robert Bryce titled, “Question of Power: Electricity and Wealth of Nations,” which highlights this startling fact:
“Roughly 3.3 billion people – about 45 percent of all the people on the planet – live in places where per-capita electricity consumption is less than 1,000 kilowatt-hours per year, or less than the amount used by a refrigerator.”
Uncertainty is the one constant the coronavirus has shown. Long-term planning is no longer in vogue – now it is understanding cratering oil prices and a possible Great Depression. If the World does not get back to work soon, trillion-dollar deficits as the new norm, and prosperity taking a backseat to police-state-like shut-ins.
More than 6,000 products come from the derivatives of crude oil, including every part in solar panels and wind turbines. Additionally, renewables cannot produce the critical medical equipment like ultrasound systems, ventilators, CT systems, and X-ray, medicines, masks, gloves, soap and hand sanitizers for hospitals, and protective gear for doctors and nurses. All those products begin from crude oil, or as the Wall Street Journal states – “Big Oil to the Coronavirus Rescue.”
More damning for renewables than endless subsidies or the billions of people needing reliable electricity, is the fact that without the products from petroleum derivatives the coronavirus would rage unchecked.
IMAGINE Our Covid-19 Response Running On Windmills And Mirrors | Climatism
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
–– Top Google engineers
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.
–– Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
– James Hansen (The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)
***
ISN’T it a little strange that a century ago electrification and its fossil fuel source was revered and now so many despise the source but think they can just keep the electricity. No one told them you can not have your cake and eat it too, or that there are no free lunches.
Imagine Our Covid-19 Response Running On Wind And Solar Power
By Dr. Jay Lehr~
UNTIL the Pandemic struck the world, the desire of the progressive political movement in the United States and much of the world was focused on ridding the planet of fossil fuels, said to be negatively altering the planet’s climate. These folks are fully convinced that the world, at its present state of technological advance, could be run entirely on renewable refuels lead by solar and wind power. They have always ignored the intermittency of these sources when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. While they know we have no economic method to store such energy, they assume one will come along.
It has been futile yet interesting to continue such a debate in the face of a calm period where conjecture was but an intellectual exercise. Then reality hit us all in the face with a disaster never seen in our life times. Where would the two million Covid-19 afflicted people be who depended on ventilators run by electricity from coal and natural gas be today, if they only had power from the wind and the sun. The obvious answer is that many more would be dead.
While not much good will come from this world wide tragedy, perhaps more of the people deluded by the climate change fear mongering will come to their senses. Eliminating fossil fuels to produce electricity or power automobiles would not support life as we know it today but only life as we knew it a century and a half ago. It may also be time to rename the electric cars, beloved by many, to what they really are, coal, natural gas or nuclear powered cars.
It is a mystery that virtually all the electric car owners believe their power comes magically out of a wall socket at home or a charging station on the road. The power really comes from a nearby power plant all of which burn coal, natural gas or obtain heat from nuclear fuel. Even if the plant gets some energy from local wind turbines or solar photovoltaic cells this amount is minimal. If we really want a huge increase in the number of electric automobiles on the road we must build more fossil fuel burning power plants, not more wind or solar farms.
Perhaps a little history of the electrification of our nation is in order. It was the development of our fossil fuels that made possible the greatest contribution to health and prosperity which was to make electricity affordable everywhere. In 2000 the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced “the 20 engineering achievements that have had the greatest impact on the quality of life in the 20th century”. The achievements were nominated by 29 professional engineering societies and ranked by a distinguished panel of the nation’s top engineers. They ranked electrification as the number one achievement.
It powered almost every pursuit and enterprise in modern society. Aside from lighting the world, it impacted countless areas of daily life including food production and processing, air conditioning, heating, refrigeration, entertainment, transportation, communication, health care and eventually computers.
In the NAE announcement regarding electrification it stated : “One hundred years ago life was a constant struggle against disease, pollution, deforestation, treacherous working conditions and enormous cultural divides ……. By the end of the 20th century, the world had become a healthier, safer and more productive place, primarily because of this engineering achievement”.
Fossil fuels brought electricity to the homes and workplaces of billions of people around the world. Wind and solar power in anyone’s wildest dreams can never support what electricity provided us in these past 148 years since Thomas Edison built the world’s first coal fired generating plant on Pearl Street in New York City in 1882.
Part of our collective problem as to energy and electricity is that technology has past us by. We all once understood how an automobile engine worked, how a home was wired, what a fuse was. When computers and GPS and smart phones came along most of us gave up trying to understand. Many believe there really is a cloud up there keeping our data safe. So why not think electric cars reap the magic from the wall socket and the wind and sun can keep us doing all that we do. And that scientists have high tech crystal balls to tell us the climate decades from now. It should become clear as technology advanced beyond the average persons ability to comprehend, we have actually become dumber. Perhaps being rationally ignorant of things we do not need to know is okay. Unfortunately people in leadership positions are then able to lead us astray. The elimination of fossil fuels is a poor path to follow.
Isn’t it a little strange that a century ago electrification and its fossil fuel source was revered and now so many despise the source but think they can just keep the electricity. No one told them you can not have your cake and eat it too, or that there are no free lunches.
Note: Portions of this article were excerpted from Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels (CCRII: Fossil Fuels), produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) published by The Heartland Institute, with permission of the editors Joseph Bast and Diane Bast. The authors strongly recommend the book for a complete exposé of the fallacies behind the climate delusion.
Dr Jay Lehr contributes posts at the CFACT site. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition, and he is the author of more than 1,000 magazine and journal articles and 36 books.
A nuclear power plant under construction in China’s Shandong province. Picture AAP
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong, founder of UNEP
IN the collective age of ClimateChange™️ eco-insanity that we currently inhabit, common sense, reason and logic have become an increasingly rare commodity, perhaps even a “thing of the past“, as those who dare speak truth-to-the-virtuous are heckled and jeered as “deniers”, in a calculated effort to muzzle.
THANKFULLY, a few cool and sane heads still prevail within the majority-Leftist mainstream media establishment.
WE ought listen to and evaluate their arguments, no matter how far they divert from the preferred ‘wisdom’ of the day. A preferred wisdom that emanates from a cancer of groupthink collectivism, nourished by an individuals fear of being isolated, intimidated and persecuted by the mob of feel-good intentions. But, as Henry G. Bohn first published in 1855, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
A legend of Australian media, and someone who is not willing to take us down the “road to hell”, is columnist Terry McCrann.
READ his excellent summary on critical energy-security solutions hopelessly mired in politics and weak leadership.
Australia has three electricity futures — coal, nuclear or chaos. It’s time to bring Australia into the 21st century by aggressively embracing the nuclear one.
The prime minister’s thought bubble — fathered by political ineptitude out of policy stupidity — that a future could be crafted out of some hybrid mix of gas generation and so-called renewables is an embarrassingly inefficient and unworkable dead-end.
The idea that we could go all renewables — with assorted batteries from the Tesla version in South Australia to the Turnbull one in the Snowy included — is a fantasy; it would be the embracing of the third future: chaos.
In very simple terms, unless and until the laws of physics are repealed, if we want a power grid to deliver the cheap, reliable and plentiful electricity that has been the basis of our economy, our society and indeed our very civilisation, the base-load has to be carried by coal or nuclear.
I would have no problem continuing to have it based on coal, with the next generation of coal-fired generation far more efficient and much cleaner, in the real sense, of not pumping out particulates, than our existing ageing and indeed dying pre-1980s fleet.
But you have to recognise reality. Before the bushfires that was an unlikely prospect. After the bushfires — however irrational the demonisation of our carbon dioxide emissions and our coal-fired stations — even a single coal-fired station has become impossible.
Indeed the PM who carried a lump of coal into parliament symbolically returned it to the ground in his speech midweek. Yes, to digging coal up to power the thousands of coal-fired stations in China and all the other countries; no, to powering another one in Australia.
What’s wrong with the gas-renewables mix? Isn’t it — actually, more a gas-gas mix — working in the US, to both cut CO2 emissions and deliver cheap electricity?
Well, yes, but that’s also the answer to why it wouldn’t work in Australia. That’s the US, this is Australia. Another way of putting it, they have President Trump, we have PM Morrison.
We also have a near-uniform consensus across the truncated spectrum of state political leaders against the finding — far less the development — of gas. Did anyone mention fracking?
A mainstream spectrum that runs, not exactly unimportantly, borrowing from Dorothy Parker, all the way from A to B; or borrowing from Mark Steyn, from our Labor parties which are left-of left-of centre to Liberal parties which are right-of left-of centre.
Simply, there are three things wrong with the idea that gas could replace coal in the energy mix.
Inefficient gas
We don’t have enough, absent redirecting all exports to domestic use. We are not going to find enough anytime soon, if indeed we are even allowed to look for it.
Using gas to generate electricity is a hugely inefficient use of what should be a premium fuel; only slightly less inefficient than using petrol.
And that points to the third, in the context of the (hysterical) reason we want to kill coal: it’s still a CO2 emitting, if less than coal, fossil fuel.
Now, there are three arguments presented against nuclear, which is the only means of delivering non CO2-emitting reliable base-load power.
The first is the safety aspect — both the operation and disposal of waste. The first simply does not stand up, if you look through the hysteria at each of the three major accidents over the past half-century: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukashima.
It is the hysteria which has also created the other two objections: it takes too long to build a nuclear station and the capital cost — both over-engineering and time-value of money — makes the power too expensive.
According to the Asia Times last year, the average build-time for a nuclear reactor in China was five years. OK, this is Australia; if everything went right we could probably do it in 10. I doubt we could build a hospital in even two months, far less two weeks.
That is why we need to start now — we need at least three major stations to anchor the grid across the three eastern states, for starters, by 2030, as the coal stations continue to close with accelerating rapidity.
This can only happen with absolute bipartisan commitment from the two major parties. We also need it from the lunatic Green left.
The best, if faint, hope of “winning that”, is via bipartisan Labor-Coalition commitment not simply to nuclear, but that it is either three nuclear stations or three new coal stations.
If the left is serious about reducing our power-generated CO2 emissions, it can only happen by embracing nuclear.
And embracing it in a China-like way that allows the stations to be built in 10 years (I’d hang out for seven in my dreams), and not red-taped and green-taped or Nimby-ied away past 20 years and so into our third future of chaos.
A mix of base-load nuclear and peak-demand gas would be both efficiently viable and able to accommodate — in a fairly rational way — the vanity virtue-signalling generation by wind and solar.
Breaking the hoodoo against nuclear power might also help terminate what stands as the single most stupid decision ever by an Australian government — the purchase of the French nuclear submarines on the basis they are re-engineered back to an old (fossil fuel) technology.
Why didn’t we buy the US F-35 fighters on the same basis? That they be re-engineered to go back to propjets? And for delivery in 2050?
Yes, prime minister, go for it. You could find it liberating. Dare to be free of your predecessor and his utter, numbing across-the-board ineptitude. Try uttering the word nuclear.
And when you have uttered it a few times in connection with power generation; why, you will find it effortless to have it followed by the word submarines.
NUCLEAR power is the world’s future. Nuclear has a few inherent disadvantages. It is without doubt the cleanest, greenest and safest form of power production. Contrary to what you may have heard about the Fukushima nuclear plant that was hit by the 2011 tsunami, not one single person was killed or injured by nuclear radiation. Not one. Also, no private property was harmed by radiation.
OVER recent years, engineers have developed an innovative alternative nuclear reactor design, known as High Temperature Gas Reactors. Instead of water, they employ helium gas as a coolant. In South Africa, a similar reactor design was developed: the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). Its fuel is small tennis-ball-sized graphite balls containing granules of uranium, rather than large metal fuel elements. The balls cannot melt.
Another major advantage of nuclear power is that it uses so little fuel. The total annual fuel usage of even a large nuclear plant can be carried in a couple of trucks. It can be airlifted-in, if need be. There is no need for long supply lines, which can be prone to weather or political disruptions. Nuclear reactors are refuelled only every 18 months.
Critics say nuclear is expensive. It’s not if you look at the total life cycle. A modern reactor is designed to last for 60 years and will probably last for 80 – versus 15-20 for wind turbines and solar panels. While money must be spent upfront in construction, benefits are reaped over many decades. What is required is an innovative approach to the project-cycle funding. Right now in South Africa, nuclear-generated electricity is the cheapest by far. The current nuclear plant, Koeberg, is over 30 years old and is now running very profitably, since the construction costs have been paid off.
Another plus is that the price of uranium is almost irrelevant. Such a little amount of uranium is used in a nuclear plant that even if the international uranium price were to double, it would make extremely little difference to the annual fuel bill. It is nothing like a variation in coal or oil prices.
Large-scale nuclear needs water cooling, which means plants must be built on a coastline or on a large inland water source. But big nuclear is probably too large for many nations to start with. There is a second solution: SMR-class Small Modular Reactors that are currently being developed. South Africa’s SMR is the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor – and a small PBMR can be only 10% the size of a large traditional reactor. A PBMR does not need large water cooling, so you can place it anywhere.
In fact, close to the point of consumption is no problem. “Modular” means that you can add extra reactors to the initial system, as you wish or need, when you wish or need. It’s something like adding extra locomotives to a large train, all controlled by one driver.
PBMRs are also considerably cheaper than large reactors. So, a very viable answer for any African country is to plan for PBMR nuclear systems. One PBMR reactor will produce 100 to 200 Megawatts, depending on its design. As the country requires more power, it simply installs more PMBRs.
An important consideration with nuclear power in Africa is for countries to work together. Africa needs a nuclear network for operations, training and general nuclear development. In the spirit of Fourth Industrial Revolution thinking, now is the time to plan an African nuclear network. Thankfully a number of African countries have already launched that process.
Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and CEO of Nuclear Africa (Pty) Ltd, a project management company based in Pretoria, South Africa. He is the recipient of the prestigious Lifetime Achievers Award of the National Science and Technology Forum of South Africa. He does international consultancy work in strategic development.
The PBMR design was developed to be “walk away safe,” which means that the nuclear reactor and its cooling system can be stopped dead in their tracks. The reactor cannot overheat, but will just cool down by itself.
Nuclear power will one day power Africa, and the world – helping to lift billions out of poverty and ensuring that billions more continue to enjoy living standards that poor nations also deserve to have.
ANGELA MERKEL : The New Climate Change ‘Denier’ | Climatism
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.
–– Warren Buffett
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
–– Top Google engineers
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
– James Hansen (The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)
AFTER hundreds of €Billions of taxpayer’s hard-earned-money spent on sunshine and breezes, Germany’s Energiewende program has been exposed as a catastrophic failure, with carbon dioxide emissions higher now than in 2009.
SKYROCKETING ‘green energy’ power prices have decimated Germany’s once proud industrial heartland and unleashed a globally-familiar pattern of rampant energy poverty throughout the nation.
AND, before the CO2-centrics lose their collective minds, understand that HELE, supercritical coal plants guarantee an automatic 30% reduction in CO2 emissions.
A far, far better result than Germany’s efforts under the 1/2 trillion Euro Energiewende debacle!
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.
–– Warren Buffett
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
–– Top Google engineers
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
– James Hansen (The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)
“It is unfortunate that politicians and environmental campaigners are ignorant of the technicalities of energy supply, or wish to ignore them. MPs may have the power to change the laws of the land, but not to change the laws of physics.”
SIR – As a chartered engineer who worked in the electricity supply industry for 39 years, I despair to hear politicians like Rebecca Long-Bailey claiming that renewables will provide for most of our energy needs by 2030.
Renewable generation – solar, wind and tidal – is, by definition, non-synchronous and it is technically impossible to operate our electricity transmission system solely on non-synchronous generation. There is a real danger of system instability and consequential widespread blackouts once non-synchronous generation exceeds around 30 per cent of total generation at any one time.
The National Grid report on the recent major outage makes numerous references to the lack of inertia in the system. This resulted from insufficient large synchronous generators (nuclear, coal, gas) being connected.
Given the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the only option is to increase significantly nuclear build rapidly. Both Labour…
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)
***
WESTERN climate change-theory-obsessed politicians continue their ruinous and costly obsession with wind and solar ‘energy’. UNreliable ‘power’ that repeatedly fails the environment, communities and economies wherever installed.
ENERGY poverty, blackouts, skyrocketing power bills, business and heavy industry closures, grid instability and the destruction of pristine landscapes, among the many deleterious effects of the mad rush into low energy-density, weather and fossil-fuel dependent windmills and solar panels.
IN the latest round of insane proposals offered to hard-working taxpayers, in order to cover ‘renewable’ energy shortfalls, the Victorian State Government of Australia is offering cash payments to consumers to “switch off their AC’s to help prevent blackouts this summer”.
AND, you thought that you were living in the 21st Century? Wrong again…
THE twisted merry-go-round of ‘renewable’ energy payments to keep the lights on gives true meaning to the old adage, “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
ENERGY poverty, rising insurance premiums, business closures, job losses and the highest electricity prices in the world is the grim reality of what life looks like under the totalitarian rule of the feel-good ‘Greens’. The zero-emissions zealots who want to force us backwards down the energy ladder to the days of human, animal and solar power.
JUST as socialist central planning failed miserably before it was replaced by free market economies, green central planning will have to be discarded before Australia and other Western nations, crippled by pseudoscientific climatology and the mad rush into costly and intermittent ‘green’ energy, will see a return to energy security, competitive pricing, business prosperity, job opportunities and a ‘liveable’ existence for our most vulnerable.
•••
“BLACKOUT” UPDATE AUGUST, 22
MORE than a million Victorian households are at risk of being without power this summer during extreme heat if coal and gas plants are not returned to service in time for peak periods, the energy market operator has warned…
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
– Voltaire
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“
– TimothyWirth,
President of the UN Foundation
***
THOSE sceptical of the “Save The Planet” inspired, mad rush into supposedly ‘green’ energy sources by the climate change theory-obsessed West, leading to skyrocketing power prices, rampant energy poverty and an exodus of jobs and industry to China, will be keenly aware of the poignant and concerning realities expressed in this must read op-ed by Todd Royal :
“Without having a basic understanding that every single wind turbine and solar panel is intermittent and has to be continually backed-up by fossil fuels, the west is committing environmental degradation, and putting itself at risk against China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Based on self-interest rightly understood, India will then choose aligning with countries hostile to western interests over environmental concerns.”
China and India will allow the west – led by the United States (US) and European Union (EU) – to destroythemselves through dysfunctional, domestic, and continent-wide politics. This isn’t a Donald Trump or EU issue, but electorates having a vague understanding of how societies function, particularly, when it comes to energy.
The “Green New Deal” is evident of that fact, which has no chance of ever working under current technology, taxpayer monies available, and the first “New Deal” was a failure. China and India will allow the US, EU, NATO and their Asian allies to:
“Muddle through endemic crises menacing to its very existence (e.g., economic stagnation, demographic decline, rising unassimilated Islamic populations in many EU democracies, high taxes, mounting debt and the fiscal unsustainability of Western European social democracy)”
Without energy you have nothing. China and India understand this better than the west since their citizenry and leaders view energy through the lens of what will help over two-billion-combined-citizens; join the prosperous, western, consumer-driven world. Most western, environmentally sensitive nations believe fossil fuels are evil. Instead, western countries strive for a renewable energy, carbon-free world. Even if the US were to cut its CO2 emissions, “100 percent it would not make a difference in abating global warming.”
China and India have never bought into that notion of energy, or economies based on supposedly carbon-free renewables that inspire their nations toward a cleaner world. I wish they would, but that isn’t reality. Both countries will continue importing, exporting, and excavating tankers full of coal, oil, and natural gas from countries that are authoritarian, human right abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Nigeria, Angola and Algeria.
Furthermore, Chinese and Indian politics, and increasingly Africa, will never allow lack of pipelines, domestic politics, or sensitivity to western environmentalists keep them from first world status enjoyed by the US, EU, and Asian nations like South Korea and Japan.
Naïve-thinking, bordering on western suicide, believes China and India will stop using fossil fuels, led by coal. Each country understands coal is plentiful (“estimated 1.1 trillion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide that at current rates of production will last 150 years”), and it is scalable, reliable, cost-effective to the end user, and has the best energy density of all fossil fuels or renewables available.
China is currently building hundreds of new, coal-fired power plants. To counter China, “India has 589 coal-fired power plants, they are building 446 more, bringing their total to 1,036.” These figures are after both governments signed the Paris Climate Agreement, and touted their green credentials.
Since the US, Russia, China and India have the largest global coal reserves, and each country is vying for geopolitical dominance, they will continue using coal in record amounts. Energy is then a geopolitical weapon. Europe does not understand this fact.
Only Trump seems to have gained clarity on this issue, with the US using their newfound shale oil and natural gas power, to their geopolitical and global advantage. Daily global, media onslaughts, US Democrats, and Never-Trump Republicans constrain Trump at every turn, and facilitate the US’ waning power. China and India sit back and do nothing, knowing the west is too weak to come to the US or Trump’s rescue.
Renewable energy advocates can speak, write and publicly lobby that solar and wind-produced electricity is the same cost, or dropping compared to oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear. This claim is false. Renewables cost more to ratepayers and nations compared to fossil fuels or nuclear.
Without having a basic understanding that every single wind turbine and solar panel is intermittent and has to be continually backed-up by fossil fuels, the west is committing environmental degradation, and putting itself at risk against China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Based on self-interest rightly understood, India will then choose aligning with countries hostile to western interests over environmental concerns.
A great power struggle has broken out between the world’s largest democracy – India – and the world’s largest authoritarian state – China – and whichever country uses the most energy will win Asia for the rest of this century. National security and the competition between them over Asia are at the crutch of why they will watch the west destroy their economies over bad energy policies.
Sure, India and China will use natural gas, nuclear and oil, but coal is where each economy finds its basic energy resource. Horrible for world emissions, air pollution and global health, but how do westerners, the United Nations, and environmental organizations tell both, growing countries they cannot have access to the same energy opportunities and growth the west has now had for over seventy years?
It simply won’t happen; world health organizations, research universities, think tanks, and multinational corporations interested in global longevity and clean air should begin working towards clean coal technology.
All great nations, including China and India, view energy as a domain of power. The west already has their power, but no longer knows how to use it the way it did during the Cold War. Global warming, abortion, gay marriage, and renewables versus fossil fuels have overtaken realism in all facets of government, military strategy, economics and countering the global threats from China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.
Raw, amoral geopolitics that will grow economies, engage realist strategies, house militaries and feed energy-hungry populations is the new Cold War. Social issues are important, but unless you are talking about the unintended consequences of abortion in the US and China, these issues have no valid correlation within energy geopolitics. Energy and electricity are at the forefront, of which ideological viewpoint, will win the 21st century.
Accessible energy becomes more important than ever, as the competition between China and India heats up. Unless something drastically changes the west will diminish significantly – ushering in the “Asian century” – with China and India biding their time to take over the US-led, liberal order that was created after World War II ended.
California’s green and tech billionaires, and its business and political elites, certainly seem to think so. But they are largely protected from reality by vast wealth, private security, gated estates, and battery banks. The high cost of…
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