RUTHFULLY YOURS

Essentially the entire developed part of the world is currently embarked on a crash program to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy system of the economy. The program has two main parts: first the suppression of the production and distribution of fossil fuels; and second the construction of large numbers of wind and solar generation facilities to replace them. Both parts of the program are currently underway simultaneously in all advanced countries, as a matter of what we are told is the highest moral urgency.

But will the coming fossil-fuel-free system actually work to provide the energy we need to run our modern economies? There are very substantial reasons to think that big problems are inevitable, the main one being that wind and solar generators don’t produce anything most of the time, and can’t be ramped up on demand at a time of need.

So surely, there must be multiple small to medium-scale demonstration projects around the world showing exactly how this fossil-fuel-free future system can be accomplished, and how much it will cost.

Actually, and incredibly, no. There is no such thing anywhere in the world as a functioning demonstration project that provides full energy to an economy of any size without reliance on fossil fuels, and using only carbon-emissions-free sources like wind, solar, hydro and/or storage. There isn’t even a demonstration project that supplies just the electricity sector of any economy (typically about 25-35% of final energy usage) with the energy it needs free of fossil fuels. Indeed, there isn’t anything remotely close.

It is very instructive to compare how important technological advances happen in the real world to how the advance to a fossil-fuel-free future energy system is supposed to occur in the fantasy world of the climate cult.

In the real world, any serious person proposing a major transformation of the energy system would begin with a functioning demonstration project to establish feasibility and cost. in the 1880s, when Thomas Edison wanted to start building central station power plants to supply electricity for his new devices like incandescent lightbulbs, he began by building a prototype facility in London under the Holborn Viaduct. When that was shown to work, Edison quickly followed with a larger demonstration plant on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan that supplied electricity to only a few square blocks.  Only after those had been demonstrated as successful did a larger build-out begin.

Similarly, the development of consumer nuclear power began with small government-funded prototypes in the late 1940s and early 1950s, followed by larger demonstration projects in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Only in the late 1960s, twenty years into the effort and after feasibility and cost had been demonstrated, were the first large-scale commercial nuclear reactors built.

Or consider the series of developments that have led to today’s smart phones. Nobody in the government ordered that smart phones be created before all the necessary technologies were in place. Rather, the sequence was the opposite. First came the various advances — principally vast increases in computing power and miniaturization of components — that made the smart phone feasible; and only then did engineers put those now-existing technologies to work to create the devices.

Now compare those examples of the progression of technology to the way it is expected to happen in transition away from carbon based fuels in the energy economy.

To begin, as noted, there is no such thing as a working demonstration project anywhere in the world. Nor is there any demonstration project in development or under construction anywhere in the world — unless you count the entire country of Germany or State of California as a “demonstration project.” Politicians in their boundless hubris just think that they can order up the energy transition and it will happen because it has been ordered.

And it gets worse. The closest thing to a demonstration project in the world has failed disastrously. The project in question is known as Gorona del Vento, on the island of El Hierro, which is one of the Canary Islands that is part of Spain. El Hierro has a population of about 10,000. Beginning in about 2010, they built a system of some five massive wind turbines, plus a large pumped-storage reservoir in the top of an extinct volcano that they happened to have on the island. The wind system was built with capacity of close to double peak electricity usage on the island, with the idea that when the wind blew at full strength the excess capacity would be used to pump water up to the reservoir, to be released later at times of calm. The system opened to great fanfare in 2014. Here is a picture of the pumped storage reservoir:

On August 20, 2015 the Spanish daily El Pais reported that the island “aspires to energy self-sufficiency to provide light and water from 100%-renewable sources.” If you go to the website of Gorona del Viento today you will still find the goal of “An island 100% renewable energy” stated as the first thing you see on the first page of the site.

But El Hierro has never gotten anywhere near energy self-sufficiency from its wind/storage system in the eight years of operation. For starters, they don’t even pretend to deal with the majority of energy consumption on the island that is not electrified, including automobiles, air transport, and agriculture. But even as to the minority of energy consumption that is electrified, they struggle to get to 50% from the wind/storage system when averaged over a year. Fortunately, they have retained a diesel generator that can provide full backup when the wind/storage system provides nothing, which is about half the time. Gorona del Viento provides monthly data as to how much of the electricity for the island came from the wind/storage system versus the diesel backup, with the most recent data covering January to September 2021. The wind/storage system provided the following percentages of the electricity for the island during the first nine months of 2021: January 28%, February 36%, March 48%, April 21%, May 77%, June 72%, July 81%, August 59%, and September 34%. Without the diesel backup they would have been blacked out at least half the time.

With that as the closest thing to a demonstration project of an energy system free of fossil fuels, our politicians proceed gleefully to suppress production and distribution of fossil fuels before any kind of replacement has been shown to work. Throughout Europe, coal and nuclear power plants have been closed, and fracking for oil and gas has been banned. (The UK may be reversing course on the fracking issue.). In the US, coal plants have been closed, new pipelines are blocked, large areas of federal lands are declared off-limits for drilling, leasing on the remaining federal lands has slowed to a crawl, and so forth.

And what happens when the proposed replacements for the fossil fuels turn out not to be able to do the job of keeping the economy running? Europe is about to show us the answer to that question this winter.

UPDATE, October 3:

In comments multiple readers have cited other projects from around the world as the potential example of the “demonstration project.” However, if the meaningful usage of the term “demonstration project” in this context is something that can be scaled up to work for the entire world energy system, I don’t think anything qualifies — even El Hierro.

• King Island, Tasmania. Unlike El Hierro, I don’t think that King Island ever claimed to be constructing a system that could achieve 100% emissions-free electricity. At least, I can’t find that. El Hierro did make that claim. Their storage capacity at King Island would need to be multiplied by more than an order of magnitude to begin a serious effort.

• Iceland. Iceland’s system uses unique geothermal resources that cannot be duplicated anywhere else.

• Samso Island, Denmark. Another non-replicable non-scalable one-off. There is not nearly enough garbage in the world to be used as the backup for a fully wind/solar energy system.

• Woven City, Japan. According to this piece from March 2022, Toyota and a Japanese company ENEOS have just signed an agreement to “explore CO2-free hydrogen production.” That’s rather a long way from a demonstration project of a carbon-free electricity system. What happens when they find out that “green” hydrogen costs a large multiple of the cost of natural gas?

Even El Hierro is dubious as a “demonstration project,” because other places don’t have a handy extinct volcano for a pumped storage reservoir. But they did publicly claim that they were going to achieve 100% renewable electricity, so I consider them fair game for ridicule.