A tale of two errors
Director's column
2 Sep 2024
Written By Andrew Montford
Last year, the Royal Society published a paper on the production cost of electricity in a decarbonised grid, and we at Net Zero Watch responded with a critique – of its use of highly optimistic assumptions about technological improvements, and thus costs and efficiencies, and of its failure to show policymakers the much higher costs that would arise with currently available technology.
Over the last few months, there have been a few developments. In particular, two errors have been identified – one in the NZW paper, and one in the Royal Society’s paper.
My error was as follows. I had noticed that the Royal Society had used an inappropriate seasonal demand curve in their study, and had suggested that this made a material difference to the results. However, it turned out that there was an error in my spreadsheet, and in fact the difference is immaterial. I have amended the report, although I should note that my main findings are unaffected.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/tale-of-two-errors
