By Paul Homewood
Solar photovoltaic and wind power are rapidly getting cheaper and more abundant – so much so that they are on track to entirely supplant fossil fuels worldwide within two decades, with the time frame depending mostly on politics. The protestation from some politicians that we need to build new coal stations sounds rather quaint.
The reality is that the rising tide of solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind energy offers our only realistic chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.
No other greenhouse solution comes close, and it is very hard to envision any timely response to climate change that does not involve PV and wind doing most of the heavy lifting.
Sadly, attempts to capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have come to naught due to technical difficulties and high cost. Thus, to curtail global warming we need to replace fossil fuel use entirely, with energy sources that meet these criteria:
- very large and preferably ubiquitous resource base
- low or zero greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts
- abundant or unlimited raw materials
- minimal security concerns in respect of warfare, terrorism and accidents
- low cost
- already available in mass production.
Solar PV meets all of these criteria, while wind energy also meets many of them, although wind is not as globally ubiquitous as sunshine. We will have sunshine and wind for billions of years to come. It is very hard to imagine humanity going to war over sunlight.
Most of the world’s population lives at low latitudes (less than 35°), where sunlight is abundant and varies little between seasons. Wind energy is also widely available, particularly at higher latitudes.
PV and wind have minimal environmental impacts and water requirements. The raw materials for PV – silicon, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, aluminium, glass, steel and small amounts of other materials – are effectively in unlimited supply.
Wind energy is an important complement to PV because it often produces at different times and places, allowing a smoother combined energy output. In terms of worldwide annual electricity production wind is still ahead of PV but is growing more slowly. The wind energy resource is much smaller than the solar resource, and so PV will likely dominate in the end….
Other clean energy technologies can realistically play only a minor supporting role. The solar thermal industry is hundreds of times smaller than the fast-growing PV industry (because of higher costs). Hydro power, geothermal, wave and tidal energy are only significant prospects in particular regions.
Biomass energy is inefficient and its requirement for soil, water and fertiliser put it in conflict with food production and ecosystems. Nuclear is too expensive, and its construction rates are too slow to catch PV and wind.
Read the rest here:
So, how do they come to this crackpot conclusion? More importantly, how do they attempt to convince their readers?
They start with this grossly deceptive graph, which pretends that PV and wind is now dominating the electricity market:
In fact, all it shows is that PV and wind are accounting for 60% of new generation capacity.
Capacity, of course, has little to do with actual generation, which will be far less in the case of PV and wind. But more significantly, there is little need for new fossil fuel capacity, as it is already in place.
The figure quoted for PV and wind of 200 GW (which is in any event pure guesswork) would be capable of producing about 260 TWh pa (assuming a load factor of 15%). Given that global electricity production in 2016 was 24816 TWh, this would only meet 1% of global demand.
Moreover, electricity generation has increased at a rate of 542 TWh every year since 2010. In other words, the projected increase in PV and wind capacity would only be able to supply about half of the increase in demand each year.
Worse still for promoters of renewable energy, electricity only accounts for about 40% of total energy, meaning that the contribution from PV and wind will be even tinier. In 2016, for instance, the two sectors only supplied 2% of global primary energy consumption.
These real figures hardly bear out the myth of renewable energy dominance, which the authors would like readers to believe.
The second trick is to pretend that PV and wind output will continue to grow each year at recent rates:
Together, PV and wind currently produce about 7% of the world’s electricity. Worldwide over the past five years, PV capacity has grown by 28% per year, and wind by 13% per year. Remarkably, because of the slow or nonexistent growth rates of coal and gas, current trends put the world on track to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2032.
This is quite idiotic. I noted some similar claim in a post a few weeks ago, and pointed out that, using the same logic, a car which did 0-60mph in 10 seconds would be travelling at the speed of light after a short while if the rate of acceleration continued.
In absolute terms, wind and solar generation has risen from 501 to 1293 TWh in the last five years, and now accounts for 5% of global electricity supply. Even assuming demand stays flat, at the current rate of increase, 158 TWh pa, wind and solar will still only account for 14% of global demand by 2030. (The increase between 2015 and 2016 was 179 TWh).
The article bases much of its case on the supposed cheapness of renewables, which are now claimed to be competitive with conventional power. Leaving aside the fact that the intrinsic value of intermittent power is much less than that of dispatchable power, and that the real cost of renewables must include the cost of intermittency, the authors make one huge, stonking blunder.
There is already enough conventional capacity in existence to supply most of the world’s needs. Why therefore would anybody want to spend money building more?
Would you buy a second car because its running costs were lower?
The whole question of intermittency is glossed over in the article:
PV and wind are often described as “intermittent” energy sources. But stabilising the grid is relatively straightforward, with the help of storage and high-voltage interconnectors to smooth out local weather effects.
By far the leading storage technologies are pumped hydro and batteries, with a combined market share of 97%.
The claim that pumped hydro and batteries will do the job, because they account for 97% of current storage, is yet another meaningless statistic from the authors.
In reality, that is about all the storage we have at the moment.
Pumped hydro is extremely limited by the availability of suitable resources. Energy from pumped storage in the UK for instance has not changed in the last 20 years.
You might also note that the authors are reluctant to compare the actual figures for pumped hydro with batteries. But this is what their link shows:
http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/data_visualization
In simple terms, we can forget about the various forms of non hydro storage. If you’ve got plenty of lakes and mountains, then fine. Otherwise, forget it.
But perhaps the most extraordinarily ludicrous claim made is that solar power, a long with a bit of wind, can meet mankind’s needs for energy:
Solar PV meets all of these criteria, while wind energy also meets many of them, although wind is not as globally ubiquitous as sunshine. We will have sunshine and wind for billions of years to come. It is very hard to imagine humanity going to war over sunlight.
Most of the world’s population lives at low latitudes (less than 35°), where sunlight is abundant and varies little between seasons. Wind energy is also widely available, particularly at higher latitudes.
It may be possible for solar power to fulfil a portion of energy needs in those low latitude countries. And, of course, that is for them to decide theirselves.
But in many northerly latitude countries, such policy would be suicide, both economically and literally.
In the UK, for instance, solar power ran at just 4.8% of capacity in Q4 last year, and in the mid winter months this figure will be lower still:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables
Wind power may be widely available, as the article suggests, but it is also disastrously unreliable. Any grid that relied largely on wind power would very quickly implode.
One would assume that the authors, given their accreditations, would know all of this. (Blakers is a Professor of Engineering, whilst Stocks is a Research Fellow). So one is entitled to question why they wrote this pile of rubbish in the first place.
But then when you read their full accreditations, you understand why:
In other words, Blakers and Stocks have been paid by the renewable lobby to write this rubbish.
Shame on The Conversation for printing such palpable nonsense, and shame on the Australian National University for funding it.
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April 29, 2018 at 04:21AM
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