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Originally posted by birdman29: ↑

MARCH 28, 2024

By Paul Homewood
Building new gas power plants will, of course, “only make the transition to renewables-based power unnecessarily costly”. How do I know? Because I heard it from a bunch of climate activists calling themselves Beyond Fossil Fuels. What’s more, building new gas plants runs contrary to the “emerging consensus” that Europe must phase out all fossil fuel-generation of power by 2035.
I’m used to activists making sweeping assertions and talking in generalities rather than addressing the boring old details like how we keep the lights on when there is little in the way of wind and solar energy on offer, but this really does take the biscuit. Only a “consensus” of climate activists with their heads in the clouds – plus Ed Miliband – thinks we could save consumers money by closing down all our gas power plants in the near future. Judge European governments by their actions rather than their words and the clear consensus is that we are very much going to need gas power in the future. As Beyond Fossil Fuels itself reveals, Britain is not the only country that is building new gas plants. Across Europe, 72 gigawatts-worth of themare being planned. This may well be contrary to the targets governments have set themselves to decarbonise their power sectors, but when forced to make a choice between virtue-signalling and keeping the lights on they are invariably choosing the latter.

It ought to be obvious that you cannot construct a national grid onsolar and wind power alone. Renewables are great on a sunny, windy day like today when wind and solar farms between them are generating 21 gigawatts of power. It is rather less good on calm winter evenings when they can struggle to generate 1 gigawatt. What makes it possible to incorporate so much wind and solar power in our energy mix is gas power plants, which can be turned up or down at short notice to balance variable and unpredictable renewable power.

Only a “consensus” of climate activists with their heads in the clouds – plus Ed Miliband – thinks we could save consumers money by closing down all our gas power plants in the near future

Take gas away and you have a serious problem. We could store energy in lithium batteries or pumped storage reservoirs – but at a very high cost. We could theoretically use surplus power to generate hydrogen via electrolysis of water, store the hydrogen in underground caverns and burn it to generate power on windless and sunless days – except that the technology doesn’t yet exist on a commercial scale and when it does it is likely to be as expensive, if not more so, than lithium batteries. It certainly won’t be saving consumers money.
Rather than seeing gas a great evil, green lobbyists should see it for what it is: part of a system which has allowed us hugely to reduce carbon emissions from power generation over the past three decades. It has enabled us to all-but banish coal power plants – a form of energy which, gigawatt for gigawatt, produces around twice as many carbon emissions. And it has enabled the rollout of wind and solar by providing reliable back-up. Moreover, it may be possible in future to fit gas plants with carbon capture technology – although that won’t be cheap, either.
Green lobbyists are making themselves an irrelevance by turning against all fossil fuels in all circumstances. Governments may have nodded along with their demands up until now, by settingnet zero targets. But clearly, when ideology collides with reality, governments are not going to sacrifice the well-being of their citizens. The move to build new gas plants is yet one more sign of Europe’s retreat from unrealistic net zero targets.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/europes-net-zero-retreat-is-gathering-steam/

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China Emissions Rose By 5.2% Last Year
MARCH 28, 2024
tags: China

By Paul Homewood
From Carbon Brief
China’s energy sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increased 5.2% in 2023, meaning a record fall of 4-6% is needed by 2025 to meet the government’s “carbon intensity” target.

The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, shows rapid electricity demand growth and weak rains boosted demand for coal power in 2023, while the rebound from zero-Covid boosted demand for oil.
Other key findings from the analysis include:
China’s CO2 emissions have now increased by 12% between 2020 and 2023, after a highly energy- and carbon-intensive response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This means CO2 emissions would need to fall by 4-6% by 2025, in order to meet the target of cutting China’s carbon intensity – its CO2 emissions per unit of economic output – by 18% during the 14th five-year plan period.
China is also at risk of missing all of its other key climate targets for 2025, including pledges to “strictly limit” coal demand growth and “strictly control” new coal power capacity, as well as targets for energy intensity, the share of low-carbon energy in overall demand and the share of renewables in energy demand growth.
Government pressure to hit the targets, most of which are in China’s updated international climate pledge under the Paris Agreement, makes it more likely that China’s CO2 emissions will peak before 2025 – far earlier than its target of peaking “before 2030”.

According to preliminary official data, China’s total energy consumption increased by 5.7% in 2023, the first time since at least 2005 that energy demand has grown faster than GDP.
With coal consumption growing by 4.4%, our analysis shows CO2 emissions increasing by 5.2% – at the same rate as GDP – highlighting energy-intensive recent growth patterns.
China’s economic growth during and after the Covid-19 pandemic has been highly energy- and carbon-intensive. CO2 emissions grew at an average of 3.8% per year in 2021-23, up from 0.9% a year in 2016-20, while GDP growth slowed from an average of 5.7% to 5.4%.
Another year of rapidly rising emissions in 2023 leaves China way off track against its target of cutting carbon intensity by 18% during the 14th five-year plan (2021-25).
As a result, CO2 emissions would now need to fall by 4-6% by 2025 to hit the goal. This is illustrated in the figure below, showing historical emissions (blue line) and the reductions needed by 2025 to hit the carbon intensity target, depending on the rate of GDP growth.
Even if China’s GDP growth is high and averages 6% per year in 2024-25, the intensity target requires CO2 emissions to fall by 4%.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-record-drop-in-chinas-co2-emissions-needed-to-meet-2025-target/
The idea that this is all some sort of bounce back from COVID is patently absurd, as there never really was a drop off in 2020. As the graph shows, the rate of increase has been steadily rising for years.
In simple numbers, CO2 emissions are now 11.7% higher than in 2019, pre pandemic.
None of this should surprise anybody, but apparently it still does.