Note my 'increasingly disillusioned' at 5:21. The high tide of alarmism has passed and the receding belief is exposing the rocks of foolish alarmism.
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Dang, 'receding ocean of belief' is better.
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There are facts, and then there are KimFacts.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/polls-reveal-citizens-support-energiewende

It's very interesting to actually look at those polls. The most recently published, Oct. '16, was actually polled over a year before. At least one of those polls changed the question for this year, and all of them reveal a whole lot of discontent about Energiewende.

It ain't what you know, Phil, it's what you know that ain't so. You perch precariously atop a grand pile of alarmist twaddle; that's just what a lot of it is.
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Given how gung-ho the German people were for Energiewende at its inception and early stages, I'm quite sure that serial polls with the same question would show 'increasing disillusionment' with the program, and that is the question at hand.

And please, 'cleanenergywire.com'. You gotta quit absorbing the garbage from these propaganda organs so credulously. I tell you this for your own good.
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 I'm quite sure that serial polls with the same question would show 'increasing disillusionment' with the program, and that is the question at hand.

Nice shifting of the goalposts there, for the click-averse, the link shows a collection of polls from the last year or so showing widespread German popular support for the various aspects of the shift to renewables (EnergieWende or Energy Transition, roughly translated). For example a poll last month posed the question  “Increased use and expansion of renewable energy is…”
 
And got these answers (2012 results in brackets)
Extremely / very important 66% (70%)
Important   27% (24%)
Less important / not important at all      6% (6%)


So there' a small shift from 'very' to just 'important'. However:-

94% support EnergieWende.

That's a fact.

Heh, go ahead and type in his URL and evaluate for yourself. And seek other information than his biased site.
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kim, facts in climate science only exist when climate science says so.

One of climate science's outstanding contributions, has been the development of plastic shape-and-time shifting factual evidence, that can be re-interpreted as and when convenient to climate science's financial interests.

Once the historical record has been revised again, Climate Science will prove that Nostradamus foresaw this, with a high 97% Confidence Factor.

Yeah, gc, the very model of a corrupt and destructive technocracy. I've long hoped that this climate illusion will help immunize future societies against even more destructive exhibitions of such power.
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kim, unfortunately every generation has it's own version of "climate science", taking from the poor and needy, to ensure they stay poor and needy, whilst remaining grateful about assurances of a better crumb tomorrow, that never actually materialises for the poor and needy.

Analyses of CO2 emissions avoided by wind turbines in Ireland, ERCOT and Australia suggest they are about 50%-60% effective at reducing emissions at 20% wind energy penetration. That means, when wind's share of electricity is 20%, it avoids about half the average emissions intensity of the electricity grid.

See chart here for Australia http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17447&page=0 . The referenced Submission to the Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines (Australia) (Submission 259) provides the references to the Ireland, ERCOT and Australian (Submission 348) studies.

Peter Lang

Thank you for the link - interesting reading. It just goes to show that the "consensus" position that the true believers insist is the only correct option, is very much open to re-interpretation.

Phil C provided a link recently suggesting that in one (anomalous?) winter quarter, wind produced 15% of the UK's electricity (I paraphrase, and may be guilty of exaggeration, as I haven't been back to check the precise words used). I'm not sure I trust those figures, either. It's not been terribly windy recently, I accept, but I've been monitoring the figures for a while now, and have seen only one day when the figure from wind exceeded 15%. On most other days the figure was below 10%, and on the majority of days I've been monitoring, it has been below 5%.

There's another issue here, too. The figures have been bouncing about all over the place. 2% one day, 8% the next, 3% the next, etc etc. As I've stated many times, I'm a solicitor, not an engineer, but I imagine this level of daily variation must be a nightmare for the grid to deal with, and must add considerably to the costs of back-up.

Whilst the Australian article you linked to does make the point that the costs of wind turbine "CO2 reduction" are higher at lower wind penetration in the energy generation system, does it take into account the fact that the greater the reliance on wind, the more problematic are likely to be those daily fluctuations in its performance? If wind makes up a higher proportion of electricity generation, but its performance on a daily basis is highly inconsistent, it seems to me that must increase the scale of the back-up problem.

Mark Hodgson
I'm not sure if this is addressed in the Australian study.

Using a very rough mental calculation, in order to reach 20% consistently say 80% of the time, and using 25% as the actual v installed for wind for the entire UK then you need an installed base of wind equal to the average UK demand. So the CO2 saving equation would have to assessed on that basis rather than assuming wind works all the time everywhere. You would still have the fluctuation problems you describe.

Peter Lang 7:41

Sorry, but I am not sure those figures really mean very much at all. The wind industry likes to talk about "capacity" when it suits, not delivery, and now are quoting figures as a percentage of oil and coal, and penetration.

How many tons of CO2 are actually saved, when averaged out over a year? Knowing what can be saved when the wind is blowing at the right speed for 1 hour or 24, is not really helpful.

Mark

If you are unaware, the science of doom site did a series on renewables and this post on wind power has a useful debunking of the lcoe methodology

scienceofdoom.com/2015/09/07/renewables-ix-onshore-wind-costs/

It is also something that Euan Mearns is very interested in. But he suggests that energy return on energy invested is the proper metric and I think he is right
/eroei-for-beginners/

Diogenes

I was indeed unaware, and am grateful for the links. I'll take a look later.

Diogenes

Thanks again for the link - interesting reading.

By way of a bit of a subject-change, I wonder if anyone (especially Phil C) has any comments on this story in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/03/greece-set-to-win-175m-from-eu-climate-scheme-to-build-two-coal-plants

My main gripe with the world of climate alarmism isn't so much the science (I'm not qualified to criticise it, though occasionally I try - mea culpa); rather it's the policy prescriptions which flow from it, many of which are barking mad, and counter-productive in their own terms. If the above story in the Guardian is correct (and it must be, Phil - it's the Guardian after all!), then it's yet another example.

Mark Hodgson, I am a country bumpkin, from a very rural area, and worked on farms 30 ish years ago in school and university holidays, but I am not from a farming family.

The Common Market caused annoyance by paying farmers to produce food that was not needed, and we had butter mountains and wine lakes, plus phantom crops that had never been planted. We then had "Set Aside" which paid farmers not to farm land, which they couldn't farm anyway, or good agricultural land that they farmed anyway, despite being paid not to.

Putting a price on production of CO2, and importantly, non production of CO2, is a fraudsters paradise. All it has achieved, is to shift CO2 production out of the UK and EU, into developing countries, where genuine pollutants are emitted with CO2 in far greater quantities. The old Soviet Union was correctly ridiculed for operating a Command Economy, whereby a panel of experts decided how many toothbrushes should be made per year.

Greece, that desperately needs financial help is now being subsidised by the EU, by not being penalised for producing too much CO2. Yes, it is a complete and utter farce, and sums up CO2 Trading/Offsets, and the EU at it's worst. It is legal and sanctioned, and there is NO fraud involved (as far as anyone can tell so far)

Interestingly, there is Chinese money involved. I am sure the Chinese would love a Greek Island or large (10s of square miles) plot to develop Chinese trade on EU soil. It would be good for Greece aswell.

About 10 years ago I did work in Greece for 9 months. I am a fan of Greece, and the Greeks, but they are not fans of anyone taking money from them.

If there was anything of substance achieved then there would be a kink in the Mauna Loa CO2 curve, which there is not.
The effect can be discerned in the price of electricity, however.

golf charlie

I once rented a caravan from a farmer on a spare piece of land he had in the northern Lake District. One year, when agreeing the next year's rent, I asked him how things were, and he told me a story about how daft the EU (EEC then, I suspect) was - he had a small scrubby bit of forest in which he very occasionally grazed a few cattle for a few days - it could only be a few cattle and a few days, because the land was so poor. But by agreeing to keep the cattle out (no great loss to him) he had secured a set-aside payment (£10K a year if I remember rightly, and it was many years ago, so worth rather more than £10k today).

So I agree - we live in a mad world where the people in charge, who often have no meaningful experience of real life, manage to mess it up time and time again - always at the taxpayer's expense, of course.

Mark Hodgson, 6:26 I have heard many similar stories from the UK and EU! The frauds involving 6 or 7 zeros tend to involve "farmers" who know more about subsidies than crop rotation, and probably don't own a pair of wellies.

Carbon Trading and Emissions Regulations have never reduced CO2 production, just shifted it. I wish the Greeks every success, and hope other countries in the EU do the same, PROVIDED UK taxpayers, business and industry doesn't have to pay for it.

Mark Hodgson, Sandy S, Golf Charlie and other responders to my comment of 3 November, I'd refer you to the following sources for answers to your questions:

Dr. Joseph Wheatley analysed the emissions avoided by wind generation in Ireland (data year 2011) and in Australia (data year 2014). His submission to the Australian Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines is No. 348 here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Wind_Turbines/Wind_Turbines/Submissions

My submission on the CO2 abatement cost is Submissions No. 259 here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Wind_Turbines/Wind_Turbines/Submissions
However: note that my submission uses data from the analyses of Ireland and ERCOT because Wheatley's analysis for Australia had no yet been published. The link in my comment of 3 November (above) uses Wheatley's results for Australia.

Joseph Wheatley's blog page summary of his analysis of emissions saved by wind generation in Ireland: http://joewheatley.net/how-much-co2-does-wind-power-save/

The published papers on his analyses of emissions saved by wind generation can be accessed from here:
http://joewheatley.net/category/wind-energy/

Peter Lang, thank you for the links, unfortunately, Joseph Wheatley's links to the Institute of Public Policy Research. Quite why a "Charity" should be so closely linked to the UK Labour Party, and former Leader Ed Miliband, who had previously brought in the Climate Change Act, to price reliable electricity generation out of the market in favour of Unreliable wind, is beyond me. The UK Charity Watchdog seems to have drawn the same conclusion.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11321971/IPPR-thinktank-rapped-by-charity-watchdog-for-appearing-to-be-close-to-Labour.html

It seems that the "Charitable" thinktank, that requires UK Taxpayer grants to survive, has been paying for reports to help Green Blob taxpayer funded businesses to survive. The UK taxpayers are forced into a Lose/Lose situation, having to pay for technology that doesn't function, AND reports that say it does.

At Jo Nova's site there is a report by Peter Lang. Are you one and the same?

Wind turbines’ CO2 savings and abatement cost
Wind turbines are less effective and CO2 abatement cost is higher than commonly assumed
By Peter Lang
April 2015