Another Critical Thinker Reaches The Obvious Conclusion: Intermittent Renewables Can't Work On Their Own
December 03, 2023/ Francis Menton
Let me welcome to the small and elite club of critical thinkers on the supposed energy transition a guy named Balázs Fekete. Fekete, with several co-authors, has recently (September 18) succeeded in getting an article published in a journal called Frontiers of Environmental Science, with the title “Storage requirements to mitigate intermittent renewable energy sources: analysis for the US Northeast.” Fekete then followed up by publishing on November 14 at Judith Curry’s Climate, Etc. blog a lengthy post summarizing the article, titled “Net-Zero Targets: Sustainable Future or CO2 Obsession Driven Dead-end?”
As with the previous competent analyses of energy storage requirements needed to back up intermittent renewable generation that have been featured on this blog and in my energy storage Report, there is nothing complicated about the Fekete, et al., analysis. The authors call it “a modified surplus/deficit calculation [as] taught to water engineers to size reservoirs for meeting water demand when the water resources vary.” When there is surplus production you add it to storage, and when there is a deficit you subtract; and then you sum over a year (or two, or ten) to calculate how much storage you need. It’s all basic arithmetic. What could be simpler?
You will not be surprised that the conclusion is “CO2 obsession driven dead-end.”
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-12-3-another-critical-thinker-reaches-the-obvious-conclusion-intermittent-renewables-cant-work-on-their-own
