Britain’s climate watchdog has privately admitted that a number of its key net zero recommendations may have relied on insufficient data, it has been claimed.
Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, said that the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero. [emphasis, links added]
“They have conceded privately that that was a mistake,” Sir Chris said in a presentation seen by this newspaper. In contrast, the Royal Society review examined 37 years’ worth of weather data.
Last week Sir Chris, an emeritus professor and former director of energy research at Oxford University, said that the remarks to which he was referring were made by Chris Stark, the Climate Change Committee’s chief executive.
He said: “Might be best to say that Chris Stark conceded that my comment that the CCC relied on modeling that only uses a single year of weather data … is ‘an entirely valid criticism’.”
The CCC said that Sir Chris’s comments in a presentation given in a personal capacity in October, following the publication of his review, related solely to a particular report it published last year on how to deliver “a reliable decarbonized power system”.
Enshrined in law
But, in response to further questions from this newspaper, the body admitted that its original recommendations in 2019 about the feasibility of meeting the 2050 net zero target were also based on just one year’s worth of weather data.
The recommendations were heavily relied on by ministers when Theresa May enshrined the 2050 target into law.
A CCC spokesman said: “We stand by the analysis.”
In October 2021 The Sunday Telegraph revealed that assumptions underpinning the committee’s 2019 advice to ministers included a projection that in 2050 there would be just seven days on which wind turbines would produce less than 10 percent of their potential electricity output.
That compared to 30 such days in 2020, 33 in 2019, and 56 in 2018, according to analysis by Net Zero Watch, a campaign group.
Sir Chris’s report for the Royal Society, published in September, concluded that a vast network of hydrogen-filled caves was needed to guard against the risk of blackouts under the shift to wind and solar generation, which the Royal Society described as “volatile” because it depends on wind and sun to produce energy.
The report was one of the starkest warnings to date of the risks faced when relying on intermittent weather-dependent energy sources without sufficient backup.
Overestimate
It stated: “The UK’s need for long-term energy storage has been seriously underestimated… Studies that do not consider long sequences of years underestimate the need for long-term storage. Studies of single years cannot cast light directly on the need for storage lasting over 12 months and overestimate the need for other supplies.”
In a presentation delivered on Oct. 31, 2023, Sir Chris said: “By looking at one year you underestimate storage and you grossly overestimate the need for everything else. That’s exactly what the Committee on Climate Change [has] done.”
He added: “The Committee on Climate Change, as I already said, looked at a single year and they have conceded privately that that was a mistake. But they are still saying they don’t differ that much from us. Well, that’s not quite true.”
The Royal Society report found that up to 100 Terawatt-hours (TWh) of storage will be needed by 2050 to mitigate variations in wind and sunshine. This was based on 37 years of weather data rather than the single year relied on by the CCC.
Real weather data
The report noted that the CCC model required “a much greater level of supply … from other sources, and/or wind and solar than would have been required if storage had been allowed to transfer energy between years.”
A CCC spokesman said: “Our recent report modeled the 12-month operation of Britain’s power system in 2035 using hourly energy demand and real weather data from a low-wind year, stress-tested to simulate a 30-day wind drought.
“We welcome Sir Chris’ work, which considers other aspects of the energy challenge in 2050, under different assumptions about the future energy mix.”
Asked if the CCC disputed Sir Chris’s account, the spokesman said: “We’ve got nothing further to add.”
Read more at Telegraph
I didn’t see anything on how those many caves were going to be filled with hydrogen and how that hydrogen was going to be created. To create that H2 requires a lot of electricity if coming from splitting water. Otherwise they need natural gas to strip the hydrogen from the methane.
Back in the 1970’s is was Global Cooling and a New Ice Age, Those very same liberal rags Time and Newsweek was giving it top coverage and episode of IN SEARCH OF(1978) was all about the Coming New Ice Age long before there was anything from the fake news and Climate Brat Greta wasn’t born yet
Consider that the grid must always be balanced Then, ANY shortfall requires load shedding since wind is not dispatchable. At 10% wind, 90% of load must be shed. At 50%, 50% of load must be shed. At 100% wind output – matching demand, no load must be shed, but no backup can be charged. The grid collapses when load shedding can no longer balance the grid. Then, a cold start of the grid requires a backup equal to demand. Demand would be shifted gradually to wind, IF it is blowing at 100% of demand. If wind is not equal to demand, and the backup is exhausted, then the grid collapses again. Since the backup is exhausted, there is no way to restart (NO FOSSIL FUEL IS ALLOWED). Wind energy (as electricity) can then fill the backup, but the grid is dead until that happens. Any wind fluctuation below demand will again collapse the grid. Wind must overbuild to meet peak, not average, demand plus a 20% dynamic reserve and then triple again to charge the backup since charging and use efficiency is much less than 50%.
Living with wind energy is going to be very difficult with unreliable intermittent electricity. And, remember, electricity is only 15-20% of our total energy demand. From WHERE is the other 80-85% coming? Intermittent energy is a blunder that has already absorbed 7 $trillion. For that money, dispatchable nuclear could have solved our electricity problem.
I keep wondering where the Electric Power Engineers are on all this. As you point out there has to be a match between supply and demand and wind (as well as solar) are not dispatchable. They produced what they do and you can neither increase it or decrease it to match demand. That is what fossil fuels (and hydro as well) are able to do. Especially the natural gas fired plants that can be adjusted up and down easily. Base-level power comes from the big coal and/or nuclear plants which can efficiently run at 100% capacity while gas-fired plants fill in the gap. Wind and solar have little use in providing cost-effective electricity.