The Market, Energy, Political Page, Part 2, T+19 -- June 19, 2018

Background

Energy 101: capacity factor vs substitution factor.

Capacity factor equals {(total actual power output)/(total rated capacity assuming 100% utilization)}. The Capacity Factor of wind power in Germany equals about 28%. However, capacity factor is not a true measure of actual usefulness of grid-connected wind power.

The true factor that reflects the intermittency of wind power is the substitution capacity, which is about 5% in Germany – a large grid with a large wind power component.

Substitution capacity is the amount of dispatchable (conventional) power you can permanently retire when you add more wind power to the grid. In Germany they have to add ~20 units of wind power to replace 1 unit of dispatchable power.

I assume on one needs to sort out costs involved in adding 20 units of wind power vs one unit of dispatchable power.

Links:   

• Energyskeptic, December 14, 2018: 41 reasons why wind energy cannot replace fossil fuels
• World-Nuclear, updated October, 2018: renewable energy and electricity
• Forbes, January 24, 2017; why Germany is struggling and will continue to struggle; 
• MasterResource, March 14, 2010: key industry terms

Updates

June 23, 2018: Germany Neglects Renewables, Set to Miss 2020 Climate Goals.

Earlier this month, the German government conceded that the country is on track on miss its 2020 climate goal targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990.

Due to the economic boom, immigration, and high carbon emissions from the transport sector, Germany is on track to cut emissions compared to 1990 by 32 percent—an 8-percentage-point gap short of the goal.

Companies from all energy sectors and environmental organizations have criticized the German government for failing to clearly state future policies, incentives, renewables targets, and emissions targets. Germany has been lately slowing down climate action “domestically and at the European level,” Simone Peter, president of the Renewable Energy Federation, told Clean Energy Wire.

Original Post 

 As noted over the weekend I am not watching any television for the next week or so until the current nonsense fades away. Exceptions: sports, movies, comedy. I guess when I say I'm not watching television it means no mainstream media with talk shows, news, business news, etc. That includes Fox Business News which I don't watch much at all any way.

It really is refreshing. I say that because my notes may be completely out of sync with what's going on in the real world. I certainly don't get any up-to-the-minute analysis of what's going on.

A reader sent me this story from Forbes: an EU-China-Canada climate summit is about to get underway. I saw the headline and thought only those three "countries" were going to attend, but then I read the entire article: 35 countries. After reading the article my first thought: I am embarrassed to say I used to subscribe to Forbes. Not only have I not subscribed to Forbes for a very, very long time, I never read it unless a reader sends me an article or some other source I'm reading links me to it.

I digress.

What an incredibly poorly written article.

The article says 35 countries are attending, but doesn't list the countries. We know that the EU, China, and Canada are attending. China needs to solve their a) pollution problem; and, b) their overall energy problem,but China has absolutely nothing in common with either the EU or Canada when it comes to CO2 emissions.

Apparently the meeting is to set the agenda for the next UN climate summit to take place in the dead of winter in one of the colder spots in the world that time of year: Katowice, Poland.

The writer never provided any journalistic rigor when he/she wrote the following paragraphs:

The summit caps off a week of climate diplomacy in Europe. Today the ninth Petersberg Climate Dialogue wrapped up in Berlin, co-hosted by the German and Polish governments.

The main purpose of the Berlin summit was to stump up money for the Green Climate Fund, the vehicle to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 from the developed world to help the developing world fight and adjust to climate change. The fund is almost out of the $19 billion in start-up contributions it received at its launch several years ago.

Just those two paragraphs raise these questions/observations:

• Petersberg is not misspelled; it's a mountain/resort (apparently) near Bonn, Germany; I guess it's the equivalent of our Camp David; we lived near Cologne, Germany, for three years; never heard of Hotel Petersberg; must be for the really, really elite;
• the goal: $100 billion / year each year from now until 2020;
• the fund: it began with $19 billion in start-up contributions but is now gone; where did it go? who is accounting for it? what is there to show for that $19 billion? (my hunch: a lot of Hollywood and political celebrities made a lot of money giving speeches);
• a goal of $300 billion: where is it to go? how will it be spent?
• my understanding is that, seriously, there is a committee in South Korea that receives the money and then doles it out to atoll nations in the Pacific to help them combat raising sea levels; 
• how much of that $19 billion went to Tuvalu? and,
• of course, the blame for the failure to get any farther along rests almost completely on "Trump" -- who reneged on an American promise for $2 billion

I was surprised I read that far.

I was more surprised that the blame on Trump was not in the first paragraph. 

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US Exits UN Human Rights Council

A good start.

Members include: China, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.