The UK’s “The Telegraph” newspaper published an article by Bryan Leyland that show that wind and solar power are completely pointless. It was cross posted by Paul Homewood. Bryan Leyland is a power systems engineer with more than 60 years worldwide experience. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of “The Global Warming Policy Foundation”. It’s widely believed that wind and solar power can achieve “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This belief has led many governments to heavily subsidise wind and solar power. Leyland wrote “These plans have a single, fatal flaw: they are reliant on the pipe-dream that there is some affordable way to store surplus electricity at scale.” The necessary miracle doesn’t exist to make wind and solar power useful. A wind farm’s output often drops below 10% of its rated capacity for days at a time. Solar power disappears completely every night and drops by 50% or more during cloudy days. About 3000 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar capacity is needed to produce that same amount of energy over time as a 1000 MW conventional power station, however, the conventional power station will still be needed frequently once the wind and solar are online. Power stations that are used as backup for wind and solar systems have to offset unpredictable fluctuations in wind and solar power. This dramatically increases operating and maintenance costs. Efficient combined-cycle gas turbines are often replaced by open-cycle ones because they can be throttled up and down easily, but open-cycle gas turbines burn about twice as much natural gas as combined cycle gas turbines. Leyland exclaims “Switching to high-emissions machinery as part of an effort to reduce emissions is, frankly, madness!” As efficient natural gas plants are shut down, power prices will soar, making more or less everything more expensive, and there will be frequent blackouts. For every MW of wind or solar power in California, $120 million would need to be spent on battery storage. The battery costs would be 80 times the cost of the wind farm. Leyland goes on to explain that it is not possible to mine enough minerals to build the batteries. Hydro pumped storage can’t provide anywhere near enough storage capacity. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) for fossil fuel stations is “just a case of wishful thinking” due to high costs and the lack of geological storage locations. Emissions-free “green” hydrogen is made from water using huge amounts of electrical energy, 60% of which is lost in the process. Hydrogen technology has been suggested for energy storage. Hydrogen under pressure is extremely dangerous as it make metal brittle, leaks through almost anything, and may cause devastating explosions. Hydrogen would have to be mostly stored and handled cryogenically due to its low density, creating even more losses and costs. There is next to no possibility that a suitable storage technology will be developed by 2050 to make wind and solar workable. We might as well just enjoy the huge benefits of CO2 fertilization and the mild warming!

Credits to Friends of Science, Ken Gregory, P.Eng.
friendsofscience.org

Photo Credit to Chelsea
unsplash.com