Summary
These straightforward calculations are intended to answer the simple question:
“roughly how much would it cost to generate the same amount of power as is produced by the present fleet of UK Weather Dependent Renewables, using conventional generation technologies, (Nuclear or Gas-firing) ? and how do those figures compare ?”.
Accordingly the post quantifies the scale of the fiscal waste and the burdens on utility bills attributable to the use of UK Weather Dependent Renewables as in 2019. The approximate long-term cost commitment is ~250 £billion according to these calculations. The present long-term cost estimate for the UK Weather Dependent Renewables fleet amounts to about twice the annual, cost of the NHS or about 11% of annual UK GDP. As can be seen later these estimates show that using Weather Dependent Renewables costs about 12 times as much as using Natural Gas and about 3 times as much as Nuclear power.
An Appalling Delusion
The late Professor Sir David Mackay (former chef scientific advisor of the Department of Energy and Climate Change) in a final interview before his untimely death in 2016 said that the concept of powering a developed country such as the UK with Weather Dependent Renewable energy was:
“an appalling delusion”.
Weather Dependent Renewable Energy depends on capturing essentially dilute and very variable sources of power. Weather Dependent Renewables are thus both capital and maintenance expensive and inevitably unreliable.
Weather Dependent Renewables are universally more expensive than the conventional alternatives of Nuclear power or Gas-firing.
At the time he also said:
“there’s so much delusion, it’s so dangerous for humanity that people allow themselves to have such delusions, that they are willing to not think carefully about the numbers, and the reality of the laws of physics and the reality of engineering….humanity does need to pay attention to arithmetic and the laws of physics.”
and later in the same interview he said that:
“if it is possible to get through the winter with low CO2 Nuclear and possibly with Carbon Capture and Storage there is no point in having any Wind or Solar power in the UK generation mix”
But it seems that having bought into the assumption that Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming is an immediate and existential threat that Government elites when faced with these simple but devastatingly wasteful calculations assume a position of “wilful ignorance”, and a stance of “don’t confuse me with the facts, we are saving the world“.
https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/we-need-a-democratic-revolt-against-the-climate-extremists/ minute 40 onwards
There is also an irrational determination in Government that the only solution to reducing CO2 emissions is the use of Weather Dependent Renewables.
This is a fallacy: the only proven solutions to CO2 emissions reduction are the use Nuclear energy as in France and / or the use of Natural gas as in the USA, but these real solutions are somehow always rejected out of hand: they do not accord with the “Green” religion.
Accordingly this costing model has followed through on Professor Mackay’s back of the envelope calculations, in the UK, showing that Weather Dependent Renewables are plainly expensive. The excess overspend instead of using Gas-firing of the current UK generation fleet roughly amount to some 55£billion in capital costs and the long-term costs approach a further 240£billion.
Cost comparisons
In 2019 UK Weather dependent renewables generated a total of some 7.3 Gigawatts of power from an installed fleet with an installed Name Plate value of ~35 Gigawatts, thus achieving an overall productivity factor for Weather Dependent Renewables of ~20.9%. The graphic below shows the effect of combining the capital and long-term costs of the various generation technologies with their productivity factors as achieved in the UK in 2019. The model of comparative costs uses data from the US Energy Information Administration, (EIA), updated 2020 and translated to GB Pounds, see later.
Productivity / Capacity percentage is the performance measure for generation technologies, it consists of the actual Power output / Name Plate power rating.
The most useful comparison is to assess the costs in £Billion/Gigawatt of power produced accounting for Productivity, the comparison as shown below:
All traditional dispatchable power generation technologies are all capable of Productivity of up to 90%, only having to be curtailed by routine maintenance, whereas Weather Dependent Renewables when in combination over the year only return ~21% of their Name Plate rating. The resulting comparative costs of Weather Dependent Renewables are shown below.
According to these estimates overall the 2019 UK installed Weather Dependent Renewables fleet cost ~62£billion in overnight capital costs or ~8.5£billion/Gigawatt generated with a future commitment of some ~260£billion or ~35£billion/Gigawatt produced long-term. Conventional power generation, (Nuclear and Gas-firing) is more than competitive with Renewable costs with capital costs of ~5.5£billion/Gigawatt for Nuclear or less than 1£billion/Gigawatt for Gas-firing, as above.
Because of the comparative costs and productivity factors Offshore wind is certainly the most expensive to install at ~33£Billion to date and likely further ongoing costs of ~150£billion or ~52£billion/Gigawatt produced.
Current Solar PV cost ~13£billion to install and a further future costs of about 54£billion or ~42£billion/Gigawatt produced. UK on grid solar installations virtually ceased in 2019.
The installed UK Weather Dependent Renewables fleet of ~35Gigawatts, were it fully productive, would have often matched UK demand, however the limited average Renewables productivity factor of ~20% means that the Renewables fleet only managed to unreliably generate about a fifth of that UK requirement, and that output was often uncoordinated with demand.
https://www.ref.org.uk/energy-data
This post shows clearly the likely cost differentials and overspend over effective traditional Electricity generation technologies, (Gas-firing and Nuclear), that Weather Dependent Renewables are bound to incur.
These calculations clearly contradict the popular assertion that Weather Dependent Renewables are now price competitive with conventional power generation, Gas-firing and even Nuclear power. Those assertions ignore:
- all government subsidies and other fiscal support
- the productivity of Renewables when compared to traditional generation technologies.
The Costs of “Green Virtue Signalling”
The real costs of supporting political “Green Virtue Signalling” and the Government’s acceptance of the urgency of the “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming” hypothesis is exposed here.
At the same time, it must be realised that these substantial excess costs can only ever contribute to a reduction of about a quarter of the UK’s 1.1% of 2018 Global CO2 emissions resulting from electricity generation. In other words the temperature effect of these self-harming measures by the UK on Global temperature would eventually be undetectable.
These estimates count the full output productivity of Weather Dependent Renewable generation technologies. They are thus generous assessments of the true value of the power produced by Weather Dependent Renewables. They do not account for the timing and thus of the usefulness of the power those Renewables may produce at any one moment in time. In addition these data do not account for the difficulty in coping with the wide variability and intermittency of the power output by Weather Dependent Renewables within a Nation’s supply Grid, which is tasked to provide dependable and consistent power for that Nation.
This post gives indicative, (back of the envelope, expressed in £billions), estimates of the net capital and net 60 year long-term costs of Weather Dependent Renewables as compared to the use of Gas-firing and Nuclear for electricity generation in the UK. The calculations are reasonable estimates but should be in the right ball park and not over exaggerated.
They are in line with the sort of “back of the envelope” calculations that could have been carried out by the late Professor Sir David Mackay. These net calculations are free of the market distortions arising from the political support interventions that have had to have been made to support Renewables. They are based on the 2020 cost figures produced by the US Energy Information Association, (EIA) and Data from the Renewable Energy Foundation in the UK. They do account for a recent reduction in the likely costs of Solar PV power generation.
The introductory table above shows that the indicative overnight capital costs of the current UK Renewable fleet is ~62£billion and the anticipated further long-term costs would be ~260£billion, were those currently installed Renewables to be maintained for the 60 year long-term, a similar service life to Nuclear power Generation.
They give an idea of the present scale of the bare costs for “Green virtue signalling”, responding to the Green agenda in the UK. The equivalent costs using Gas-firing to provide the same level of consistent power generation would be ~7£billion in capital costs and a further ~21£billion long-term.
At 0.34 Gigatonnes in 2018, the UK produced ~1.1% of the Global CO2 emissions and power generation could only have accounted for less than one quarter of those CO2 emissions, transport and space heating, etc. accounting for the remaining CO2 emissions.
So making costly and self-harming modifications UK electrical generation technologies can only have a marginal and minor impact on a very small proportion of current UK and Global CO2 emissions. That impact is even less if one looks into the CO2 emission and energy requirements of Renewable technologies and from their use of fossil fuels essential for their manufacture, installation and on to their eventual demolition.
Whenever announcements are made about Weather Dependent Renewable Energy installations, they are reported as the full Name Plate rating, (in other words the maximum potential power output the installation can produce under ideal Weather conditions), and often disingenuously as the number of homes that could be supplied at their full level of power output.
The question of Productivity or Load Factors is never fully explained, so such announcements are deliberately deceptive, as the average Renewable productivity only amounts to about 20% of its full Name Plate rating. So such promotional Renewable Energy announcements thus illogically assume that the wind blows all the time at productive speeds and that the sun shines overhead 24 hours/day and the seasons never change from a clear day in summer.
The Renewable Energy Foundation time series data for the UK 2002 – 2019
The Renewable Energy Foundation reports on Weather Dependent Renewables and Green energy in the UK. It has provided the most up to date information available at the end of 2019.
https://ref.org.uk/energy-data
Its time series data on UK Renewable Installations runs from 2002 up to date. This includes the Nameplate rating of installations and the annual Gigawatt Hour electrical output over the year for each generation technology. Graphic representations of those data as time series presentations show the progress of UK Weather Dependent Renewables.
According the Renewable Energy Foundation data, 2019 was a poorer year than previously for UK Weather Dependent Renewables productivity.
Productivity expressed as a percentage load factor, (actual power produced / nameplate value), is crucial to evaluating the true comparative value of the power produced. The progress since 2002 of installation and production of Weather Dependent Renewables in the UK is shown below.
The history of Productivity figures that have been achieved in the UK are shown below.
Overall, the UK Weather Dependent Renewables performance has generally just exceeded ~20% productivity level, but provided a poorer performance in 2019. Onshore Wind power, now substantially curtailed in the UK, has achieved productivity around ~23%. Offshore Wind power has been more variable but achieved a productivity figure of ~32% in 2019. The productivity of Solar Power in the UK is consistently at or below ~10% productivity level.
But of course the “trip” of an Offshore wind farm on a breezy summer afternoon contributed to the major UK power outage of 9/8/2019. An outage like that will be all the more severe and probably longer lasting one still foggy winter evening soon. Weather Dependent Renewables can not provide inherent inertia in the grid to overcome short term sudden variability nor to enable a “Black Start”, if needed.
The two graphs below show the progress of Renewable installations in the UK since 2002 noting:
- the gross over commitment to Solar PV Power 2013-2016
- a remarkable further cut back from the previous enthusiastic Renewables installations occurred in 2019, as it seems to be coming to be realised that they do not provide a truly viable answer to maintaining a consistent power supply.
- the very large future cost commitments made in 2010 and 2017 particularly for Offshore Wind power. In 2017 this alone amounted a future cost of some 150£billion. Those future costs will be incurred just from the current UK Renewables installations. As pressure grows for further generation by nominally Renewables those future costs are bound to escalate.
Comparative Generation Costings
The table above gave a capital valuation of the current 2020 UK Weather Dependent Renewables fleet at ~62£billion with probable ongoing costs of ~260£billion. This is approximately twice the cost of providing the same power output with Nuclear power stations and more than 11 times the cost of using Gas-firing for equivalent power generation.
The excess capital expenditures of Renewables range from ~21£billion to ~55£billion. The long-term excess expenditures range from 160£billion to 236£billion depending on the substituted Nuclear or Gas-fired technology respectively.
These significant excess costs represent the wastage imposed on the UK population both via direct taxation supporting subsidies to Weather Dependent Renewables and added to UK utility bills by the Government mandates imposing Renewables on the UK electricity generation. That wastage amounts to a very regressive tax burden imposed on the poorest in UK society. It leading to ever increasing “Energy Poverty”.
The following three tables show how differing existing Renewable technologies contribute to the Government mandated excess costs.
Onshore Wind power is the most competitive achieving close to cost parity with Nuclear power in capital spend but only being about 1.3 times as expensive long-term. Onshore wind power is only about 5 – 6 times more costly than Gas-firing.
Offshore wind power is the least cost-effective being ~2.6 – 4.4 times more costly than Nuclear but in the region of 13 – 18 times more costly than Gas-firing.
Solar PV is more cost effective than Offshore being 2-3 times more costly than Nuclear to install and 12 – 14 times more costly than Gas-firing.
They together are responsible for more than 75% of the excess costs of the UK Renewables fleet even though they are responsible for only ~55% of the Renewable power output produced. Together wastage in the capital cost from Offshore wind and Solar power amounts to some 42£billion with a long-term anticipated cost of ~200billion.
The Comparative Cost Model for Electricity Generation Technologies
The comparative costings are derived from US EIA data updated in 2020.
The values used in this model ignore the “EIA Technological optimism factor” above, which would adversely affect the comparative costs of Offshore wind, (by about 9£billion/Gigawatt: long-term) and to a much less extent Nuclear power. These costs are summarised and translated into £billion in the table below, £1 ≅ US$1.2:
The US EIA table quotes the overnight capital costs of each technology and the above table condenses the total costs of the technology when maintained in operation for 60 years expressed as £billion/Gigawatt. These basic data should realistically avoid the distorting effects of Government fiscal and subsidy policies supporting Renewable Energy, whereby it can be claimed that Renewables approximate to cost parity. It is hoped therefore that these results give a valid comparative analysis of the true cost effectiveness of Weather Dependent Renewables. These recent 2020 EIA updates fully account for any recent cost reductions or underbids for Renewable technology, particularly those for Solar panels.
The table above assumes that the purchasing power of £1 is equivalent to ~US$1.20. The service life allocated for Renewables used above may well be generous, particularly for Offshore Wind and Solar Photovoltaics. The production capability of all Renewable technologies have been shown to progressively deteriorate significantly over their service life.
Note that in addition that these comparative figures are underestimates of the true costs of using Weather Dependent Renewables. The results above only account for the cost comparisons for the actual electrical power generated accounting for the measured productivity capability of each generating technology.
The costs projected here ignore the ancillary costs inevitably associated with Wind power and Solar Renewables resulting from:
- unreliability in terms of both intermittency and variability
- poor timing of power generation, often unlikely to be coordinated with demand
- long transmission lines incurring costly power losses and increased maintenance
- additional infrastructure necessary for access
- the costs of back up generation only used on occasions but wastefully running in spinning reserve nonetheless
- any consideration of electrical storage using batteries, which would impose very significant additional costs, were long term, (several days), battery storage even economically feasible
- unsynchronised generation with lack of inherent inertia.
- inability to recover from a “black start”, when essential after failure.
In addition these cost analyses do not account for:
- The “Carbon footprint” of Renewable technologies: they may never save as much CO2 during their service life as they are likely to require for their manufacture, installation and eventual demolition. When viewed in the round, all these activities are entirely dependent on the use of substantial amounts of fossil fuels as feedstocks or fuels.
- The Energy Return on Energy Invested, Renewables may well not produce as much Energy during their service life as was needed for their original manufacture and installation. They certainly do not provide the regular excess power sufficient to support the multiple needs of a developed society.
Conclusion
If the objectives of using Weather Dependent Renewables were not confused with possibly “saving the planet” from the output of the UK’s small level of CO2 emissions, (for electricity generation, ~25% of 1.1%, the UK 2018 portion of Man-made Global CO2 emissions), their actual cost, in-effectiveness and their inherent unreliability, Weather Dependent Renewables would have always been ruled them out of any engineering consideration as means of National scale electricity generation.
The annual UK CO2 emissions output is well surpassed just by the annual growth of CO2 emissions in China and the Developing world.
It is essential to ask the question what is the actual value of these government mandated excess expenditures to the improvement of the environment and for the possibility of perhaps preventing undetectable temperature increases by the end of the century, especially in a context where the Developing world will be increasing its CO2 emissions to attain it’s further enhancement of living standards over the coming decades.
Reducing CO2 emissions as a means to control a “warming” climate seems even less relevant when the long-term global temperature trend has been downwards for last 3 millennia, as the coming end of our current warm and benign Holocene interglacial epoch approaches.
The context in Spring 2020
In spite of all the noisy Climate Propaganda of the past 30 years, in Spring 2020 the world is faced with a different but VERY REAL economic emergency from the COVID-19 virus pandemic. That Emergency, with the world facing the immediate death of many citizens as well as global economic breakdown, should put the costly Government mandated attempts to control the future climate into stark perspective and show how irrelevant concerns over “Climate Change” truly are, when compared to the economic effects of this pandemic.
via Watts Up With That?
April 18, 2020 at 12:03PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 