Europe’s Climate Strategy is a Failure

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…Europe’s Climate Strategy is a Failure...

As mentioned in earlier articles, Europe is failing to meet its climate objectives.

European scientists and multidisciplinary experts have reached the same conclusion, Europe Can’t meet its climate objectives, and published their report:

ROAD TO EU CLIMATE NEUTRALITY BY 2050,

A Peer-Reviewed Publication for ECR Group and Renew Europe, European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium.

The study begins by saying:

“Europe is committed to achieving climate neutrality (i.e. net zero greenhouse gas emissions) by 2050. Electrification of the energy system is a key component of this strategy. This implies that the electricity (or power) system must be completely ‘decarbonized’ over the next three decades.”

The study then explains why Europe can’t achieve its climate objective.

  • Wind and solar require more space, i.e., land area, than is available. 
  • Wind and solar are too expensive … when compared with nuclear power.

The study said:

“The renewable energy revolution places very substantial spatial demands on society and the economy.”

The study mentioned, but didn’t include, the added costs of adapting the electric grid to accommodate wind and solar, such as storage, which, if included, would have further increased nuclear’s cost advantage.

This chart, from data found in the appendix, shows how supplemental costs, i.e., connection, T&D, balancing, and utilization, vary between types of power generation. The chart show that these added costs are almost solely associated with wind and solar.

Proceeding from the left: Natural gas, coal, nuclear, onshore wind, offshore wind, residential PV, and commercial PV solar.

Quoting from the report: 

“The assumption that deployment of wind or solar power is competitive and economically efficient, is erroneous.”

That bears repeating:

“The assumption that deployment of wind or solar power is competitive and economically efficient, is erroneous.”

Wind and solar are not competitive. Period.

Another startling conclusion is that achieving Europe’s goal of “climate neutrality” would result in a decrease in temperature rise of only 0.02 to 0.06 degrees C, by 2050. A virtually unnoticeable effect.

The study did a detailed analysis of The Netherlands, which had access to off-shore wind, and the Czech Republic, which was landlocked. If only wind and solar were relied on, the area required to provide the needed electricity was between 70% and 180% of the land area of the Netherlands, and between 19% and 55% of the available land in the Czech republic.

Nuclear would require a tiny fraction of the area required by wind and solar: A minimum of 0.5% to a maximum of 1.8% of the acres required by wind and solar.

Another interesting point made by the report was that some of the reductions in CO2 emissions appear to have been the result of offshoring manufacturing.

Finally, the report addressed levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), pointing out that it can be manipulated by policy makers.

While the report singles out the weighted cost of capital as a component that can be manipulated, other components of the LCOE equation can also be manipulated, such as Lazard’s use of contrived capacity factors. See, Misleading Levelized Cost of Electricity 

Summary

  1. Europe is failing to achieve its objective of cutting or eliminating CO2 emissions.
  2. Even if Europe was to meet its objective, it would have no significant effect on worldwide temperatures.
  3. Europe should adopt nuclear power:
  • Nuclear power is less costly than wind and solar.
  • Nuclear avoids the added cost of supplemental expenses incurred for linking wind and solar to the grid. See above chart.
  1. The LCOE can be manipulated

It should be added that the United States is in a more favorable position than Europe, because it has an abundant supply of cheap natural gas that produces electricity at lower cost than wind, solar.

And similar to Europe, the United States would have virtually no effect on global temperatures if it eliminated its CO2 emissions.

Link to European study: http://bit.ly/2OuaFWI

. . .

Related Article: Europe’s Environmental Disaster

 

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5 Replies to “Europe’s Climate Strategy is a Failure”

  1. Failure was always the plan. The IPCC is a charade. The ruling elite never intend to get rid of fossil fuels to reduce CO2, otherwise they would have gone nuclear long ago. Global warming is just a paper tiger to scare people into voting for socialism. There is no climate change crisis, just a climate education crisis.

  2. Perhaps the true reason for the CO2 scare was to establish a trading market for carbon credits. I once worked for an alternative energy company (hydrogen cars) where one of the members of the Board of Directors was an economist who wanted to establish a Carbon Trading market based in Chicago.

    • I suspect that was the motivation of a number of people. I remember the Chicago Climate Exchange when I lived in Illinois. I think, but am not sure, that Ken Lay had similar ambitions before Enron went down in disgrace. A retired GE Vice President was on the Enron board, but was never implicated in any wrong doing. It was that contact that probably resulted in GE buying the wind turbine business. I knew another member of the Enron Board early in his career at GE, but had different ambitions.

  3. Pingback: Weekly Climate And Energy News Roundup #448 – Watts Up With That?