Chargers on a pole and other tales from Transitionland

Back in the early 1990s, copper wire theft was a real plague around here. As Bulgaria embarked on its journey to a transition — hehe — from totalitarianism to democracy — hehe again — there were suddenly many poor people who either liked the easy way of making money or had no other option.

Blackouts were frequent at the time because the thieves did not care they were plunging a whole village or a neighbourhood in the dark. They cared about the copper.

Time passed, a semblance of order emerged from the chaos and regulators made sure stolen copper was no longer accepted by scrap metal processors. Imagine my shock, then, when I heard that copper theft is a major problem in parts of the U.S. Happily, the shock didn’t last long because I also discovered that copper thieves are specialising: they have started targeting EV chargers.

As a big fan of poetic justice I gave due appreciation to the news by clapping enthusiastically. Then I clapped even more enthusiastically when I learned that, in Seattle, the authorities have had a brilliant idea about how to solve the problem: mount the chargers on utility poles and make EV drivers use an app to get the charging cable down.

I realise this might sound like something out of comedy talk show but it’s not. Here it is, as laid out by a media relations manager for Seattle City Light: “Instead of via a charging station that someone would drove up to, it’s something that’s mounted up to a pole and then you have to have an app, so by accessing the app the charger comes down,” Jenn Strang told KOMO News.

Leaving atrocious grammar aside, it’s difficult to not admit this is a superb idea. Simple and effective. Apps for everything. No place for awkward questions about cost or, as my podcast partner Tammy Nemeth put it “So, thieves can’t climb?”

Other states are already putting their chargers on poles because it’s cheaper and quicker than putting them on the ground. But in Massachusetts, pole-mounted chargers have turned out to be… illegal, per the state’s very own climate law.

Apparently, all EV chargers in Massachusetts must comply with a set of efficiency standards — developed by a climate NGO, I don’t mind telling you, and an NGO that works across 12 states.

Pole-mounted chargers do not tick all the efficiency boxes because they are less energy-efficient than ground chargers. And here I feel the urge to quote because, well, you’ll see.

Per the Boston Globe, “That wasn’t the intention of the climate bill’s authors, Senator Mike Barrett, one of those authors, said. Although the pole-mounted chargers are less energy efficient than other kinds of chargers, greenhouse gas emissions can still be reduced if they encourage people to switch to EVs, Barrett noted.” The rest is silence. And plans to have the law fixed.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg dropped a wind bomb with an investigation revealing that a solid portion of wind farm operators in the UK consistently and in some cases dramatically overestimated their expected output on any given day.

In response, grid operators told them to shut down the turbines to avoid grid overload. For which those farm operators get paid. For, as the Bloomberg investigators put it, electricity they never planned to generate in the first place.

Ofgem, the energy regulator in the UK immediately started an investigation of its own, understandably disturbed by the numbers: 40 out of 121 farm operators overstated their expected output by 10% and 27 overstated it by at least 20%.

As a result of that, electricity consumers in the country, lovingly called ratepayers, overpaid a few dozen million pounds over the five years since 2018. Some 55 million, to be precise, per the Bloomberg investigators’ calculations.

How about that for a business model? You get paid for something that you not only didn’t produce but knew that you were never going to produce, either. There was a word for that but I can’t seem to remember it… Begins with sc and ends, I think, with am.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Siemens had a blowout during an interview with The Telegraph, in which he directed a wave of scathing comments towards those practicing “fairytale thinking” about the transition.

Joe Kaeser told The Telegraph that wind developers and governments were in denial about the costs of the transition, noting that “Every transformation comes at a cost and every transformation is painful. And that’s something which the energy industry and the public sector - governments - don’t really want to hear.”

Kaeser also said that people will just have to accept higher electricity prices for a while until the industry makes enough cash to start investing in cost reductions — through innovation that “might” happen.

So, we all thought wind didn’t need any cost reductions because it was already the second-cheapest source of electricity after solar and it turns out wind developers were lying about their own costs — even to themselves. What a turn-up for the books… it would’ve been if the hype had been confirmed by facts. Alas, facts have no mercy.

Speaking of hype, Spain is preparing to lead the world in green hydrogen. Well, if not the world, then certainly Europe. But there’s a bit of a problem: this leadership would necessitate a massive increase in wind and solar capacity. I know, a huge surprise. But why is it a problem?

Well, according to Spain’s very own “ecological transition minister” Teresa Ribera, that’s because the huge buildout in wind and solar to enable green hydrogen production at a meaningful scale would be a bit expensive. Well, very expensive. Okay, it’s going to cost billions, probably, all upfront — and the payback period will be long. If it ever comes to payback, that is.

This must be the first time someone is not jumping with excitement at the prospect of building more wind and solar. After all, that’s what most of the transition is about — building more wind and solar. But, apparently, these can’t be built fast enough, possibly because of physical constraints you can’t simply ignore.

Also, there is the water issue that nobody is talking about. Of course. Did you know that Spain was just hit by the “worst drought recorded”? Well, it was. There has been no sustained rainfall in northern Spain for three years and unless things change, and soon, “Spain may order two ships per day to carry water from Valencia to the Catalan capital, Barcelona port authorities said,” per Al Jazeera.

It’s such an irony that the places most suitable for solar power generation also happen to be the least suitable for green hydrogen production — you know, deserts, water-scarce places, that sort of thing.

As we know, however, the transition planners are utterly devoid of any sense of irony or any humour at all, so they ignore the inconvenient facts and soldier on, apparently under the misapprehension that “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” is universally true.

But hey, clean energy output in Europe broke a record in January, thanks to solar… and hydro. It should make for a fond memory when the Brussels Brain Trust starts tearing down dams to restore rivers because that’s another brilliant idea they had and there are plans.