PSO Levy Reaches Highest Ever Amount to Fund Renewables

Electricity Bills Set to Rise (Once Again)

There is more headache on the way for Irish billpayers as the PSO Levy is set to reach it's highest ever amount at € 480 million, with the vast majority of it going to wind energy. This hike to electricity bills comes at a time when wholesale prices for electricity will be at their lowest since 2017 - when it was also €46 per MWh. So these savings will not be passed on to the consumer.

In fact, Irish consumers are locked into high energy costs for a long time. You may have voted for the Lisbon Treaty, which guaranteed an internal market with a highly competitive social market economy but you won't be getting that. 

The graph below shows how much electricity generating capacity has grown since 2006, at the height of the building boom. We had sufficient capacity then, but now we have twice as much as we need, with demand on or about the same. As wind farms cannot replace a conventional power station, it means that each new wind farm built is additional to our capacity requirements, and all of this excess capacity must be funded by consumers through taxes and levies and hidden costs.  

Electricity Generating Capacity for the Rep of Ireland

Dispatchable Plant is plant that can be switched on when required, e.g. gas, coal as opposed to 

wind energy which is intermittent and dependent on weather conditions

Threat to Salmon and Trout is not from Climate Change

Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) have been finding a significant amount of nets used by salmon and trout poachers since the lockdown. The nets are much longer than usual and there are many more of them. The fish are being netted at the estuaries as they prepare to spawn in the rivers. Salmon have survived changes in temperature, from the Ice Age to the Roman Warming Period, but they cannot survive systematic netting before they can even spawn. 

That's why catching these poachers should be a top priority for the government, not climate change. But instead, like with every other environmental disaster unfolding before us right now, the focus sadly will remain on generalised climate theories rather than with the specific cases and specific causes.  

German Court Challenges the Superciliousness of Media Commentators

The recent German Court ruling highlighted the superciliousness of Journalists who have become the arbiters of what is permissible and what is not :

The fact that commentators in legal scholarship, politics or the media have argued for the permissibility of certain measures does not generally rule out that such measures can be found to constitute a manifest exceeding of competences [by the ECB]. An exceeding of competences may be regarded as ‘manifest’even where this finding derives only from a careful and meticulously reasoned interpretation [German Court ruling].

Journalists do no have any training in philosophy or logic. They only know how to present or in most cases spin a story.  Yet we have allowed them to forget their own limitations and exceed their own abilities by deciding not only what is true but what is right. 

In this case, the German Court decided that the European Central Bank had exceeded  it's mandate in relation to it's large scale bond-buying, the mandate that was conferred to it by the German Parliament (and therefore the German people) and therefore at least in relation to Germany, its decision then lacks the minimum of democratic legitimation.

Aren't the media supposed to be a pillar of our democracy ?

The Rise in Diesel Generation Units

Diesel Generated Demand Side Unit Capacity Will Equal Two Moneypoint Units by 2022

A Demand Side Unit (DSU) consists of one or more individual demand sites that we can dispatch as if it was a generator. An individual demand site is typically a medium to large industrial premises.  In Ireland, 540 MW of DSU capacity cleared the 2019/2020 T-1 Capacity Market auction held in December 2018 and 620MW successfully cleared the 2022/2023 T-4 Capacity Auction held in March 2019.  Industrial generation refers to generation, usually powered by diesel engines, located on industrial or commercial premises, which acts as on-site supply during peak demand and emergency periods [Eirgrid Report]

 It is a remarkable fact that as more intermittent renewables are integrated into the grid, more industrial sites are relying on diesel generators for their electricity requirements. By 2022,  there will be 620MW, equivalent to two of the three Moneypoint coal powered units. There has been a lot of negative commentary written about Moneypoint and the evils of coal power in recent years , but where has been the outrage written about the rise of diesel generation? Because such demand side generation is off the grid, it is not reflected in the official fuel mix reports, so the media and the "experts" are none the wiser. Hence, why I started this blog six years ago.

EU Green Deal Consultation

Pat Swords responds to the EU on their Green Deal Consultation:

Link to Consultation - https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12382-Revision-of-the-guidelines-for-trans-European-Energy-infrastructure


The Commission is already aware of recent drafting findings and recommendations against it at the UNECE Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee, see attached in relation to Projects of Common Interest and Communication C96, in that it discriminated against non-native English speakers by not conducting such public participation exercises falling under Article 7 of the Convention in all the official languages of the EU. This TEN-E Regulation is a programme related to the environment and is the subject mater of Communication C96. The Irish grid, on an isolated island, is a small microcosm of those in the EU. Of its nineteen power stations, the oldest and largest is coal fired and to meet EU renewable targets in the period 2012 to 2018, half its output was ‘replaced’ by the output from 1,100 new wind turbines, each costing €4 million to install. Electricity generation, in modern Irish gas turbine power plants, emits 40% the CO2 arising from generation with more difficult to combust carbonaceous coal. In 2012, gas generated half of Irish electricity, as it did again in 2018, but this time with a significantly higher gas consumption. When your car comes off the motorway and goes into ‘stop start’ urban driving it burns more fuel, just like power plants forced into such operation, as more and more intermittent wind energy pours on and off the grid. The extra gas combusted was well capable of supplying Ireland with 4% of our electricity. Simply switching this coal generation to natural gas and running Irish plants efficiently could have realised over 70% of the emissions savings claimed for renewables. In fact, this is what the USA did in the period 2008 to 2017 and obtained a 27% reduction in CO2 emissions from their power generation sector. If instead of spending a trillion Euros on wind turbines and PV solar panels, a budget of €10 million was provided each day to sprinkle around the EU like ‘pixie dust’ for the ‘common good’, the trillion would run out in 274 years. Equally, it would have paid the majority of the EU’s total food and drink bill in 2018 of €1.1 trillion. Instead, we got EU power sector emissions to decrease 28% in the period 2008 to 2018. The EU publishes an energy price report every two years. Last year of ‘full data’ is 2016; circa €400 billion bill for energy sources, €212 billion being imported fossil fuels, plus an additional tax squeeze of €280 billion. €76 billion in subsidies for renewable sector equating to €208 million per day or €150 from each citizen. €48 billion paid direct to wind and solar generators on top of market price for 13% of EU’s electricity. Market price plus tax paid to gas and solid fuel generators for 41% of electricity, whose fuel costs were same €48 billion. Furthermore, the WTO is totally agnostic about whether countries (parties) want to allegedly save the planet or not. Such considerations can only be brought into WTO trade disputes, if both parties have in fact ratified specific environmental agreements, such as with UNECE and its Aarhus Convention. Hence, compliance with international law, e.g. UNECE Aarhus Convention, is important. For example, the EU could have put tariffs on goods coming from other countries, which have ratified the Aarhus Convention, as a tax to fund renewables, e.g. takes an awful lot of electricity to smelt aluminium, hence a tariff on cheaper aluminium coming from Norway or Azerbaijan. Except there are legal rulings that the EU didn't comply with the Convention in the manner in which it implemented its renewable programme, which it is refusing to comply with since 2012. So it would be unlawful for the EU to do this. EU chemical firms have invested many billions in new manufacturing capacity in the USA, these more modern and efficient plants with lower energy costs will flood the EU with products undercutting EU facilities and putting them out of business, under WTO rules the EU cannot lawfully apply tarrifs against the USA.

The Environmental Case Against Immigration

The Environmental case against Immigration is so strong and self evident that only the most conformist of environmentalists can still refuse to ignore it. Keith Woods has made an excellent video on the topic the mainstream media refuse to touch.

Irish Times Compares Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer to Greta Thunberg

Joe Humphreys of the Irish Times recently wrote an article about ten philosophers which included arguably the greatest philosopher of the past two hundred years, Arthur Schopenhauer :

"Think of him as a curmudgeonly Greta Thunberg with a side-act in cultural criticism", he wrote. 

How alike are these two people ? Have a read of the following quotes and make up your own mind.

Here is Greta appealing to the higher authority of the IPCC :

“With today’s emissions levels, the remaining budget is gone in less than eight years. These aren’t anyone’s views, this is the science,” Thunberg said, citing a 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. “I know you don’t want to report this or talk about this but I will keep repeating the numbers until you do.” 

The 2018 IPCC report said that the world had a limit of 420 gigatons of carbon to emit if there was to be a 67% chance of keeping the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees. Thunberg said that was now down to 340 gigatons.

Here is Schopenhauer on authority in his essay  "Thinking for Oneself" :

Hence every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognises nobody above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorised it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.

The people who are so eager and impatient to settle disputed questions, by bringing forward authorities, are really glad when they can place the understanding and insight of some one else in the field in place of their own, which are deficient. Their number is legion. For, as Seneca says, "Unusquisque mavult credere, quam judicare."

Schopenhauer's essays are well worth a read during the lockdown. One thing I can agree with the Irish Times on.