From THE MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN
Francis Menton
I claim to be the first to call for a demonstration project to show how a zero-emissions grid should work before attempting to build one for our entire population of 300 million people as involuntary guinea pigs.
How is it that many others have not been calling for this for years? It's as if everyone has lost their minds. Before climate hysteria erupted, the idea of embarking on such a massive engineering project as a zero-emissions power grid for the United States, or even for a single state, without first having a working demonstration project would have been completely unthinkable. But under the powerful influence of fear of climate Armageddon, the need for a demonstration project to prove its feasibility never seems to occur to anyone. And so trillions of dollars are being spent—wasted—on facilities that anyone with a brain can easily see will never be able to provide anything close to a zero-emissions power grid—even though building those facilities will drive up electricity costs for consumers enormously.
Let me then welcome an important new voice in the still small chorus of those calling for a demonstration project. The new voice is Congresswoman Harriet Hageman of Wyoming. (Ms. Hageman is the woman who knocked former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney out of the race in a 2022 primary.) Here is a picture of Ms. Hageman from her website:
Ms. Hageman made her request public last Tuesday, August 6, at a town hall meeting in Jackson, Wyoming. She suggested that the ultra-liberal city of Boulder, Colorado, step in as a potential guinea pig. Wyoming-based news source WyoFile broke the story on August 7 with the headline “Hageman proposes fossil-fuel-free experiment in Boulder, Colorado.” Excerpt:
[Hageman] proposed a pilot project that would strip Boulder, Colorado, a progressive enclave, of its fossil fuel infrastructure and replace it with windmills and solar panels on the city's open spaces. “The pilot project is to remove all the gas stations,” she told a crowd of about 70 people at the Teton County Library. “We're removing all their internal combustion cars. We're removing all the highways and roads, because those are all fueled by oil and gas.” . . . “They've been a no-growth city for decades,” Hageman said, “so they've got a lot of open space around them. We're filling the open spaces with windmills and solar panels, and we'll see if we can actually power a city of 100,000 people.” [with] “No fossil fuels, not at all.”
According to WyoFile, Hageman's remarks drew “applause and laughter” from the supportive crowd in Jackson. However, the WyoFile reporter reached out to a Boulder city councilman named Mark Wallach for comment. Wallach was not amused. Here is Wallach's reaction:
“One of the reasons people are so suspicious of politics and politicians is because of such ridiculous proposals.” [Wallach] he said in a phone interview with WyoFile. “Nobody on the Boulder Council has said we can get rid of all fossil fuels right now,” he said. “We are striving to do better — we recognize that climate change is real, and we are doing what we can do to combat it.”
So, Mark, what am I missing? If the good people of Boulder are demanding that the entire country be forced into a zero-emissions future, why shouldn't they be willing to step in and show that the goal is achievable? A simple zero-emissions grid demonstration project is all that is needed.
And if I may make a suggestion to Mrs Hageman, there is no need to be punitive on this. Green energy advocates claim that electricity from wind and solar is cheaper than electricity from hydrocarbons, and that electric cars and electric heaters will be cheaper and better than the cars and heaters we have now. So there is no need to forcibly ban us from cars and gas stations. All they have to do is build the magic zero-emissions grid, and when they do that, they will have enough electricity to power everything, and the gasoline-powered cars and gas stations will quickly disappear.
The problem is that it's not going to be possible to build a zero-emissions grid. But the people of Boulder clearly believe it can be done, and I'm more than willing to be proven wrong.
But as time goes by, I'm becoming more and more certain that I'm right. The project that comes closest to demonstrating an emission-free power grid continues to fail spectacularly. That would be the Gorona del Viento project on the Spanish Canary Island of El Hierro.
I have written about the El Hierro project many times and will not go into all the background here. Suffice it to say that El Hierro was absolutely intended as a demonstration of a zero-emissions electricity grid. A facility with five large wind turbines and a huge pumped storage power plant (Gorona del Viento) was built and opened in 2014. The homepage of the Gorona del Viento website goes on to say: “An island with 100% renewable energy.” Haha!
It's an island of about 10,000 people. Average electricity demand is 4-5 MW, with peak demand around 7.5 MW. Roger Andrews did an independent analysis of the project in 2017 for the website Energy Matters. They built wind turbines rated at 11.5 MW on a mountainside in the trade wind zone – about the most favorable wind conditions in the world. The hydro storage facility has a capacity of about 270 MWh, which is about 54 to 68 hours of average use. (By comparison, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has launched a major storage initiative where she will spend about $10 billion to create one hour of storage capacity.) Doesn't that sound like El Hierro has everything it needs to make the whole thing work?
Here are the latest statistics from Gorona del Viento for the entire year of 2023. The share of electricity supplied to the island by the wind/storage system for the entire year was 35%. The other 65% came from the diesel generator as backup. The best month for the wind/storage system was July, when it supplied 62% of the island's electricity. But then there was October, when it only supplied 10%.
How could they fail so completely when they have so much excess generation capacity and a huge storage system that no one else in the world can replicate? You'll have to ask them. I'm just reporting the statistics they themselves have published.
This is the best thing anyone in the world has ever done. Boulder: It's up to you to show us how it's done!
Like this:
Load…
Comments are closed.