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More than 100 comments found. Only the most recent 100 have been displayed.

Jobs in wind, solar, and energy storage are booming. Is your state keeping up?

michael sweet at 01:34 AM on 30 October, 2024

Nigelj,

This wind map shows more detail than the statewide averages you linked. There is a lot of wind in West Texas. California has windy areas in the southeast part of the state. Florida has little wind and the state recently passed a law forbiding offshore wind.

There are other sources of renewable jobs. A lot of solar panel manufacturing plants and wind turbine suppliers have been or are in the process of being built, primarily in republician areas, using money ftom Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. Other political issues cause uneven distribution of renewable energy. The OP points out that Montana, West Virginia, Wyoming and Alaska do not have much renewable energy, undoubtedly for political reasons. California has encouraged renewable energy so they have a lot of it.

Texas is an interesting case. They have their own grid to avoid federal regulations. In the past they have always gone with the cheapest producer to lower costs. Now that wind, solar and batteries are cheaper than gas they are changing their rules to protect the gas industry. It will be interesting to see how long Texas pays more for gas power instead of installing cheaper renewable energy. Since gas power plants take longer to build than renewable plants and they need power soon they will have to make some hard choices.

Renewables are now cheaper virtually everywhere so political reasons are the main reason they are not built out faster. It costs less to build a new renewable plant (including the mortgage) than to run a coal plant with no mortgage. If utility executives want to charge less for power they build renewables. Almost all new build power in the USA (and the world) is renewable because it is cheapest.

I remember in Australia several years ago the government supported building more coal plants. More recently solar was supported. Now Australia has a lot of renewable solar from those installations and coal is struggling to compete.

Jobs in wind, solar, and energy storage are booming. Is your state keeping up?

nigelj at 06:19 AM on 29 October, 2024

Great to see this jobs growth driven by renewables. Good for the economy.

I was curious how the states with high renewables penetration correlated with favourable wind speeds and solar irradiance levels. Texas, California and Florida have high renewables penetration. Curiously all three have quite low average wind speeds for the states as a whole, so I assume the wind farms must be coastal and / or offshore where winds would be highest. All three states have high average solar irradiance.

The western states towards the middle and south generally tend to have high average wind speeds and high average solar irradiance but generally low renewables penetration. I wonder if that is due to political factors, or good coal resources, or its because there are some local conditions that just dont suit renewables. Relevant maps:

worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/windiest-states

www.nrel.gov/gis/assets/images/solar-annual-ghi-2018-usa-scale-01.jpg

Climate Risk

nigelj at 11:08 AM on 24 October, 2024

Jess Scarlett, I appreciate your concerns, but the amount of CO2 released by drilling holes is totally insignificant. Even volcanic eruptions have not released enough CO2 to explain the recent warming trend. Scientists have spent thousands of hours researching these issues and every possible cause of warming and every possible source source of CO2 before ruling them out. You can find this material with a simple google search and by scanning through the information in the "climate myths" box on the left hand side of this page.

If you are suspicious of the temperature record in Australia then I suggest please look at the global surface temperature record over land. Look at the global temperature in the oceans. Look at the ballon temperature record. look at the upper atmosphere temperature record. They all show roughly the same warming trend. Urban and rural areas show the same warming trend. One set of data might be in error, but it seems very unlikely to me several would be.

Also sometimes the raw data has problems, so needs adjustments. For example data from early last century from ships were found to be in error, and the raw data was adjusted DOWN so actually reduced the warming record. This is hardly a sign of people wanting to exagerate the warming trend. If you are still sceptical about temperature data, look at the UAH satellite temperature record compiled by Roy Spencer a scientist and a climate change sceptic, but even his temperature record shows robust warming.

If you still dont believe the global temperature records, and that the world is warming, you are beyond being reasoned with.

Your comments do suggest you may have been persuaded by conspiracy theories. The idea that there is an international movement by tens of thousands of meterologists and scientists to deliberately exaggerate warming is just insanity. There is no rational motivation for such a thing. No government wants expensive problems to deal with and is certainly not going to invent them when it gets plenty dumped on its plate anyway. It would be impossible to have a giant conspiracy like this and keep it quiet. Some of these guys would leak the truth. Its like the idea that NASA faked the moon landings. This doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.

Yes the renewables have their downsides and require a lot of mining. And yes the corporate sector benefit from building renewables and sometimes the business world is a dirty affair. But what is your better solution to the climate problem? Because its a huge environmental problem that is affecting not just human society, but the natural world, and you say you are a greenie, right?

Lots of your statements are false at PC points out. And evidence free. I suggest don't let any concerns you might have that we are potentially neglecting our various other environmental problems bias you against the climate issue. I don't see evidence we are neglecting other problems. Personally I think we have to deal with both the climate problem and other environmental problems together , and humanity is obviously able to deal with several problems at the same time.

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

Cedders at 19:44 PM on 6 October, 2024

I would also welcome any expansion of the 'it's too hard' section of myths, as this has been such a boom area since about 2015. Generally industry and society has moved from denial that climate change is a human-caused threat, to delay and sometimes fatalism ('it's too late' could be a whole new top level of the taxonomy). While there are a small rump of people with 'dismissive' attitudes to climate science, a majority of people accept there is a major problem, but are helped to feel powerless to do anything (per Michael Mann's The New Climate War).

Addressing this trand could be seen as straying into technological and economic and policy questions, but objectivity is still possible (eg citing whichever economic opinions are expressed and a range of informed views where there are no scientific facts).

This would be very helpful to deal with in the same format as there are certainly a lot of myths circulating in political circles and media. Typically the misguided arguments concern technology and what can be permitted within remaining carbon budgets, but also sometimes groups of scientists and activists. For example in the context of a climate mitigation conversation, policy-makers can express a preference for hydrogen cars over EVs or even public transport. At that point someone lie Auke Hoekstra or Michael Liebreich can explain simple facts about energy losses in electrolysis and fuels cells or combustion engines. This makes it clear that the most efficient use of renewables will not be hydrogen cars or heating, so investmeet in some hydrogen infrastructure would be a misguided dead end, rather like 'low tar' cigarettes or diesel engines. This is also a consequence of understanding from about 2009 that carbon pollution has to be cut to ('net') zero.

Essentially to get a major policy through needs people to agree it is fair, effective and beneficial. Incumbent industries want to preserve their business model and deny access to new entrants by influencing regulation. So they need to suggest clean technology uptake is inherently unfair, or that it has inherent environmental costs. Informing people about not just why stopping fossil fuels is fundamental but that the transition can generally improve equity and have environmental co-benefits is the hard task ahead.

I hope this take wasn't too off-topic. My thanks to all the SkS authors and editors for their continuing work.

Correcting myths about the cost of clean energy

michael sweet at 06:12 AM on 6 October, 2024

David-acct at 8:

I do not need you to explain how electricity was generated in the 20th centuary. We are now replacing obsolete, polluting energy sources with cheaper, cleaner renewable sources. We need to evaluate how energy resources will contribute to a future renewable system. At the same time we want to keep prices down.

We currently have a hybrid system while the renewable system is being built. Renewable wind and solar can generate most needed power using existing peaker plants as storage. Old baseload plants cannot compete economically with cheap renewable energy. As more wind and solar is built obsolete plants are closing. Expensive coal and nuclear have closed first.

Batteries are now cheaper, more versatile and provide more grid support services than peaker plants. Batteries store extra power on sunny, windy days. As demonstrated by the EIA report you cited, (I note the EIA has always been biased against renewable energy in he past) the market is planning on building a lot of wind, solar and batteries in the next four years. Very litle, heavily subsidized, gas is planned. Everyone in the market can see the handwriting on the wall. The market is building out cheap renewables virtually everywhere in the world.

The professionals at Lazard. have chosen LCOE as the best metric to compare different technologies. The EIA report does not support your claim that obsolete technologies are cheaper than renewable energy. You have cited no authoritative sources to support your argument that Lazard is incorrect. Your argument that obsolete technology should be promoted is simply wrong.

In any case, the website Oil Price says all the best fracking sites in he USA have been tapped. Fracked wells decline in production very rapidly (just two or three years). Oil, gas and coal are finite resources that are declining. We have to build out a renewable system now before those nonrenewable sources run out.

I am surprised that someone with a background in cost accounting is so supportive of expensive, polluting, obsolete technologies when cheaper alternative sources are readily svailable.

Correcting myths about the cost of clean energy

nigelj at 04:38 AM on 4 October, 2024

David-acct @7

"Nuccitelli as you noted, uses the after tax credit LCOE cost for renewables. Those tax credits get paid by the consumer in the form of higher income taxes to cover the subsidy.

Yes but it should be noted that gas and coal fired powered generation and nuclear power also get very substantial tax credits or subsidies with costs passed onto consumers. All effects their LOCE numbers as well.

David-acct 8

I think M Sweets point about the electricity system might have been that criticising renewables based on the reliance on gas peaker plants is ultimately flawed because a fully renewables system would be generation and storage without a need for gas peaker plants. So your response quoting baseload and peaker plants doesnt address the point. We are talking about two completely different operating systems. Interesting though how the current system operates so good information in that respect.

Correcting myths about the cost of clean energy

David-acct at 11:00 AM on 3 October, 2024

The point of the article is "correcting myths about the cost of clean energy"

When compare costs of each type electric generation it is important to compare apples to apples.

Nuccitelli as you noted, uses the after tax credit LCOE cost for renewables. Those tax credits get paid by the consumer in the form of higher income taxes to cover the subsidy (subsidies arent free in macro economics) or paid by the consumer in the form of higher prices due to inflation which is the result of deficit spending. Thus using the after credit LCOE cost is hiding the full LCOE cost.

How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts

nigelj at 06:19 AM on 14 September, 2024

David acct @8, I agree there is a lot of misinformation by both sides. However I didn't say or imply wind provided plenty of output in other states. Much of the country had low levels of wind. I didnt dispute that.

The point I was trying to make is that other states did not have big problems with generation because their system is better managed than Texas, and has better de-icing equipment. The reason Texas had a disaster was not renewables, or intermittency of renewables, or fossil fules per se. It was lack of de-icing equipment reflecting bad management by Ercot.

How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts

David-acct at 21:34 PM on 13 September, 2024

Nigelj
Thanks for the comment.
As I stated, there is tremendous amount of misinformation being pushed by both sides who try to affix blame for the Texas fiasco on only fossil fuels or only renewables. The reality is that all forms of electric generation performed very poorly in the ERCOT grid. The major difference is that ERCOT was heavily dependent on natural gas because it was known 3-4 days in advance that wind was going to produce very little over the next 8-10 days due to the lack of wind . Unfortunately, electric generation from natural gas had a catastrophic failure at a time when it was known that wind could not perform.

I am always surprised by the claim that wind did perform on the other grids. That claim is easily debunked by reviewing the electric generation by source at the EIA grid monitor site. Both the performance of the SWPP and the MISO grids of electric generation from wind very similar to the performance of the ERCOT grid over that same time period.

regarding the icing, less than 10% of the wind loss was due to blades icing up, (probably less than 5%), in summary, the icing was a very minor factor with the loss of wind generation. The loss of wind generation due to icing is a common denier talking point, sounds good, but it is false.

Again thanks for your comments

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 08:11 AM on 3 June, 2024

An organization called Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) just released a report on small modular reactors. The title of the report is "Small Modular Reactors: Still too expensive, too slow and too risky". It says that small nuclear reactors will not be able to contribute significantly to the energy transition and the money spent on them is being wasted.

Key Findings;

1) Small modular reactors still look to be too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning from fossil fuels in the coming 10-15 years.

2) Investment in SMRs will take resources away from carbon-free and lower-cost renewable technologies that are available today and can push the transition from fossil fuels forward significantly in the coming 10 years.

3) Experience with operating and proposed SMRs shows that the reactors will continue to cost far more and take much longer to build than promised by proponents.

4) Regulators, utilities, investors and government officials should embrace the reality that renewables, not SMRs, are the near-term solution to the energy transition.

Follow the link above to read the full report. The IEEFA apparently is a left leaning think tank that opposes nuclear power.

The science isn't settled

scaddenp at 07:40 AM on 9 May, 2024

"a five gallon bucket of sand tossed upon your acre of oceanfront property every day will keep up with 8" of sea level rise over the next century."

I think that example is problematic.

8" = 200mm -> 2mm per year. Global sealevel rate is currently 3.4mm and accelerating.

Check your maths on the 5gal of sand. I make that 19L or 19,000 cubic cms. 1 acre = 40470000 cm2 19,000/40470000 isnt remotely keeping up with 2mm/year of sealevel. Out of curiousity, where did you find this statement about the 5gal bucket? Sounds like a source bent on misinformation.

Where do you get your sand? At a sustained 4mm/year of sealevel rise, your beachs vanish.

Sand or any other easily mined material is also highly erodable - without an expensive seawall, wave action will take it away.

And finally, the real point. Adaption is not free. It costs to make those changes. Why are you so confident that adaption is cheaper than just converting energy sources to renewables, especially as renewables+storage has better LCOE than FF?

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

michael sweet at 05:39 AM on 4 May, 2024

Ichinitz:

The problem with George Wills argument is that he only states the cost of one side of the equation and then concludes that it will be cheaper to just go on using fossil fuels. The current fossil fuel industry is about 10% of global gross gdp. If a renewable system only costs 2% than it will be much cheaper than the existing system. Many scientific papers (for example Jacobson et al) show that it will be much cheaper to switch to a completely renewable energy system.

I think your suggestion that you write a rebuttal to the myth "it's bad but it is cheaper than renewables" is a good one. The deniers make this type of absurd claim all the time.

Welcome to Skeptical Science

Eclectic at 15:40 PM on 1 May, 2024

Brtipton @123 :

Bob, you are correct. As you know, roughly 83% of society's energy use is coming from fossil fuels. And total energy use is continuing to increase. And it is unhelpful & misleading, when "renewable" wind & solar gets reported not as actual production, but as the potential maximum production (the real production being about 70% lower, on average, than the so-called "installed capacity").

However, the biggest need is for more technological advancement of the renewables sector (and especially in the economics of batteries). Maybe in 15-20 years, the picture will look much brighter. And maybe there will be progress in crop-waste fermentation to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuel for airplanes & other uses where the (doubtless expensive) liquid fuels will still be an attractive choice.

Carbon Tax (plus "dividend" repayment to citizens generally) would be helpful ~ if political opposition can be toned down. But technological advancement is the big requirement, for now. There is political opposition to more-than-slight subsidies to private corporations . . . but surely there is scope for re-directing "research money" into both private and non-profit research ~ so long as it can avoid being labelled as "a subsidy". Wording is important, in these things.

With the best will in the world, it will all take time.

Welcome to Skeptical Science

brtipton at 10:41 AM on 1 May, 2024

I spent a large part of my career investigating, exposing and debunking scientific and engineering boondoggles or fraud within US DOD.

The SCIENCE behind climate change as about as well done as humanly possible. I have found zero politically motivated exaggeration of the situation on the part of climate the climate scientists. If anything, many reports have been watered down somewhat on the positive side.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true on the climate SOLUTIONS side of the coin. While all of the statements I can find are legally, and scientifically accurate; they are highly misleading creating a false sense of progress.

This became painfully evident during the 2022 meeting of the World Climate Coalition's conference on finance when the ONE climatologist who spoke correctly pointed out that ALL efforts to date have had no measurable effect on reducing atmospheric CO2 levels. In fact, atmospheric CO levels are accelerating upward. The MC followed up with "well, that's unfortunate. Let's move on to the good news." Followed by that session not being published on conference website.

Examples:

US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data states that about 2/3 of planned new generating capacity is green (correct.) They omit that new generating capacity if 1.2% of US total consumption and 2/3 of 1.2% is 0.8% PER YEAR for US conversion from fossil fuels to renewables.

The same source correctly states that about 25% of US sustainable energy comes from wind, but obscures that only 11% of total consumption is sustainable. This results in installed wind accounting for 4% of US total consumption. Note: That is INSTALLED wind, not ACTIVELY operating wind. A casual drive or fly by usually shows a large percentage of wind turbines are inactive. I have been unable to find data documenting the actual operating levels.

An article in the UK Guardian, about a year ago, reported that the first UK offshore wind turbine was operating. Based on their reported number and size of turbines, the entire installation, when completed, would generate about 1.9% of UK total consumption.

This linked in articles further digs into the state of affairs on "solutions." - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-does-megwatt-114-watts-bob-tipton-asdfc/?trackingId=8eOLtQUcTwizRZ8AN%2Fe4Pg%3D%3D

All of these are observations and attempts to discover core facts and are in need of skeptical review. As a skeptical reviewer, I welcome this.

There is an engineering adage - you cannot control what you cannot sense. If our leaders do not know the true state of affairs it is not possible for them to make effective decisions. It's not enough to put laser focus on the accuracy of the risk reports from the climatologists while ignoring the over exaggerating capabilities of the solutions we are staking our success on.

In my OPINION, the tools we have are not adequate to win this battle. There are few to know effective efforts to develop new tools. The vast majority of out best and brightest minds are bogged down adding more volume to a case which is already well proven. Further documentation of our impending mass extinction is a poor use of strategic resources.
The true battlefield we are on is one of COST to the consumer and TAXATION of the taxpayers. Until we have solutions where the green way is the cheap way, we will be pushing a boulder up a mountain. When we achieve that point, progress will be rapid and viral.

Bob Tipton
Cofounder [Howard] Hughes Skunkworks

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

scaddenp at 06:19 AM on 15 April, 2024

William,I have been away.

The risk is : we try and transition aways from fossil fuels without a better alternative - all previous significant energy changes have occurred naturally - when we have had a better alternative.

I don't think you have provided any evidence that alternative energy systems are not a better alternative. Especially when considering all factors like climate change, health impacts of pollutions, etc

One day we likely will have a better cheaper alternative to fossil fuels - at the moment we don't . Renewables cannot replace fossil fuels they are too unreliable and expensive ,

Constantly repeating this does not make it true. You have been provided with peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary. The Lazard analysis of levelized energy costs is putting unsubsidized wind+storage and solar+storage ahead of all but fully depreciated FF stations.

Fossil fuels have brought untold benefits.

I don't dispute this for a second, but I fail to see why it is relevant. FF are now doing a great deal of harm and we have alternatives. We don't "owe" FF any loyalty for past benefits. That would be absurb.

What puzzles me is why you obviously dont believe peer-reviewed analysis of alternatives but instead opt for what seems to me to be either uninformed opinion or worse, FF propoganda. You seem to be deeply commited to the status quo, and trying to find arguments to defend that. Why do you think that is and how do go about evaluating competing claims?

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

William24205 at 03:36 AM on 13 April, 2024

Can renewables provide baseload power?

No , because we do not have the battery storage capacity . the USA currently has 7 minutes of storage capacity . - they need at least 3 months. So we are not even remotely close.

Is renewable energy too expensive?

Yes - because of the above - Renewables are cheap in theory but not in practice - not in practice because they don’ t do the job required . It is the equivalent of buying an expensive electric car and still having to use petrol.
From source to the end user they are expensive - which is why the Germany despite having spent billions on subsidies for renewables have one of if not the highest energy costs in Europe. And why they had to rely on Putin's gas. You have to pay twice.

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

William24205 at 02:59 AM on 13 April, 2024

William, it isn't clear what you meaning by risk. Financial risk, increased mortality? or what? I would say that in any case, how you transition would be relevant - and that varies country to country, region to region. Suddenly dropping fossil fuels without replacing with other energy sources or better efficiency would indeed be damaging but I am not seeing advocates for that.

The risk is : we try and transition aways from fossil fuels without a better alternative - all previous significant energy changes have occurred naturally - when we have had a better alternative.
One day we likely will have a better cheaper alternative to fossil fuels - at the moment we don't . Renewables cannot replace fossil fuels they are too unreliable and expensive ,

Spend money on R&D and keep investing in fossil fuels at the same time.
To answer your question directly .
Fossil fuels have brought untold benefits.
So by definition the inverse could unwind some of those benefits.
Fossil fuels are the main reason we are safer from the climate than ever before - it seems pointless to risk throwing all the gains or somehow the gains away.
Increased poverty brings many problems - expensive energy has inherent risks.

Renewable energy is too expensive

Just Dean at 22:15 PM on 5 April, 2024

I have now posted a reply to the Energy Bad Boys, EBB , with references to my Notes at Substack that include graphics. Here is a copy of that reply.

--------------------

A thorough review of electricity prices for the 48 contiguous states suggests that there is no correlation between increased use of wind and solar and higher electricity prices. If anything, the opposite appears to be true.

Using data available at the EIA electricity data browser, a comparison of the increase in average electricity prices from 2002 to 2022 for the contiguous U.S. as a function of the percentage of renewable electricity generated suggests that more renewables lead to lower electricity prices, not higher.

Note1

A comparison of the retail price of electricity for 2022 for the 48 states as a function of percentage of renewable electricity also shows a similar trend, states with more renewables tend to have lower electricity prices.

Note2

------------------

Renewable energy is too expensive

Just Dean at 03:36 AM on 4 April, 2024

I came across a recent substack post by Energy Bad Boys, EBB, claiming that wind and solar make for expensive electricity. They used a very limited example of California and their home state of Minnesota to make that claim. I countered with Iowa and South Dakota that have very high percentages of wind and cheaper electricity, which they dismissed.

This motivated a more complete analysis using data from EIA, EIA electricity data browser , for 2022 for all 48 contiguous states comparing average retail electricity prices to the percentage of renewable electricity generation - wind plus all solar, i.e., utility solar plus small solar. The data for 2022 extends the percentage of renewables out to greater than 60%, Hosted images . (Sorry, I could not get the image insert function to work.)

The conclusion is still the same. There is no correlation between state electricity prices and percentage of renewables. If anything there is a slight trend towards lower prices with increased penetration.

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

Bob Loblaw at 05:09 AM on 3 April, 2024

lchinitz @ 32:

Fossil fuels look a lot cheaper than they should, because of externalities.

Energy transition considers how costs will change. Production by renewables is already cheaper in may cases; storage to cover lulls is still an issue.

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

michael sweet at 23:01 PM on 2 April, 2024

William,

Once you build the wind and solar generators you don't have to buy fuel to run them every day so they are cheaper than fossil fuels. You continue to only measure the cost of the renewable side. Who cares if it costs L1.4 trl to build out renewables if the cost of fuel is L3 trl? The article I linked included storage for enough power so that there would be no shortages, you just didn't read it. Fossil or nuclear backup are not necessary.

I remember 10 years ago the IPCC report suggested that Global Warming would eventually cause sea level rise that endangered houses near the sea, wildfires and droughts that caused massive relocations of people. I wondered if I would see these damages in my lifetime. I expected to live about 25 years.

We see all these things happening now, only 10 years later. They are no longer future projections. Wildfires are destroying entire towns and massive amounts of forrest. Unprecedented droughts and floods are making it harder for farmers to turn a profit. Millions of climate refugees are already trying to access the Global North because they can no longer make a living due to climate change. The damages we currently see are much, much higher than scientists projected only 10 years ago. 40 years ago they thought the great ice sheets would take thousands of years to melt as much as they have already melted now. No-one thought that all the coral reefs worldwide would be dying off as we see today.

We do not need to wait 40 years to see these problems. You are blind to what is happening before your eyes.

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

William24205 at 22:36 PM on 2 April, 2024

Michael,
The £1.4trl ( likely an underestimate ) is amongst other things the cost of changing the grid.

As you also know ( without going into the whole thing ) renewables are intermittent you need fossil fuel or nuclear back up. So you pay twice.
Hopefully there will be a cheaper and cleaner alternative to fossil fuels , pretending renewables are - helps no one. They are part of the mix and a welcome one - but they are not a replacement

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 23:50 PM on 24 February, 2024

John Oneill at 357:

I note that you have made another post without a single cite to suport your wild claims.

Brandolini's Law certainly pertains to this exchange so I will be as brief as possible.

"Nuclear is not economic": All of the reactors currently being built are financed almost entirely by governments. The market has completely rejected nuclear power because it is not economic.

"Takes too long to build": According to the World Nuclear Industry Status report 2023 "For the 58 reactors being built, an average of 6 years has passed since construction start—slightly lower than the mid-2022 average of 6.8 years—and many remain far from completion." while "The mean time from construction start to grid connection for the seven reactors started up in 2022 was nine years," (my emphasis) This includes only construction time. The additional planning time, time to obtain construction permits etc is many years. Typical timeframes for nuclear are 10-15 years. By contrast, wind and solar projects typically take 2-4 years from proposal to completion.

"There is not enough uranium": According to Abbott (2012) as of 2012 there is only enough uranium in known deposits to power the world for 5 years. Nuclear supporters would not be attempting to obtain uranium from the ocean if there was enough uranium on land. You provide no references to support your wild claim that enough uranium exists. Frankly, this is common knowledge among informed people.

Your comments on renewable power are contradicted by experience. Educated readers here will not be fooled. Obviously in the 70's to the 2000's renewable sources did not contribute much because they were not economic at that time. Now they are the cheapest power in the world and are reducing carbon emissions more every day.

According to the World Nuclear Industry Status report, at least Italy, Japan and Sweden currently have no plans to build new reactors. Bertolini's Law applies, I have not checked the rest of your list. I note that France's much heralded announcement about building 6 new reactors will not replace their current 56 reactors that are at the end of their useful life. I note that over 50% of Frances nuclear fleet was offline in the past few years for unplanned repairs due to age. In addition, no money has been budgeted to build the announced reactors.

Meanwhile, according to the IEA:

"Over the coming five years, several renewable energy milestones are expected to be achieved:

In 2024, wind and solar PV together generate more electricity than hydropower.
In 2025, renewables surpass coal to become the largest source of electricity generation.
Wind and solar PV each surpass nuclear electricity generation in 2025 and 2026 respectively.
In 2028, renewable energy sources account for over 42% of global electricity generation, with the share of wind and solar PV doubling to 25%."

I note that the IEA has historically severely underestimated the amount of renewable energy that would be constructed in the future.

Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.

Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 06:59 AM on 3 February, 2024

Electricity is a natural monopoly, and its supply is a service, not a commodity. The introduction of the auction system for supply was pushed by Enron, which expanded like a cancer through the natural gas markets during the 90s, got a foothold in power through Oregon-based West Power, and proceeded to game the industry till a series of blackouts, massive power price increases, and financial scandals lead to its downfall. Enron also introduced large-scale wind into the US - after its bankruptcy, Enron Wind was the only surviving American wind manufacturer, and was bought by GE. Wind's erratic fluctuations are a natural partner for gas. Its alleged low price is for the developer - the power user pays it the same price as whatever supplier was needed to produce the last watt on the grid. Wind often bids negative prices, secure in the income from production tax credits and renewables mandates certificates. The increasingly-frequent negative wholesale prices seen, usually around midday, on high wind and solar grids are not shared by the customer at the end of the month.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 04:26 AM on 2 February, 2024

It is difficult to reply to a post filled with so many half-truths and mistakes. All your claims have been shown to be false upthread.

1) As you pointed out, Jacobson and hundreds of other researchers have shown that an all renewable energy system (primarily wind and solar) can support the entire economy. It will cost trillions of dollars less than fossil fuels and save millions of lives. Your mentioning a few days with low wind is simply fake news. Since you provide no links to support your wild claims I will not link any either. There are several countries that generate essentially all of their electricity using renewables, a technology that has only been installed widely for less than10 years. France had to purchase a boatload of expensive electricity from its neighbors during the electricity crisis because their reactors failed. I note that no energy researchers support using nuclear power as the primary energy to power the world. Few or no researchers support using even a small amount of new nuclear energy in the future.

2) Your claim that nuclear power "is already larger than wind and solar combined" is deliberately false. According to Our World in Data, in 2021 wind and solar produced 2900 TWH of electricity and in 2022 wind and solar produced 3422 TWH of power world wide. That will increase by at least 15% in 2023. In 2021 nuclear produced 2750 TWH of power and in 2022 nuclear power produced only 2632 TWH of power. The amount of power produced by nuclear has not increased significantly for over 20 years. It is unlikely that the amount of nuclear power will increase for at least 10 years and it is more likely to decrease substantially as old reactors are shut down.

3) Why would a sane person suggest pouring more public money into a failed technology like nuclear? The "new" modular reactor proposals are old designs that were rejected in the 1950's and 1960's as uneconomic or simply too difficlut ot build.

4) Projections of 2024 energy use are that renewable energy will be built at a fast enough rate to reduce world wide carbon dioxide emissions. After 70 years nuclear provides less than 4% of all energy in the world and has not helped reduce carbon emissions for over 20 years. I note that 70% of primary power produced by nuclear is wasted heating the surroundings versus essentially zero waste heat using renewables.

5) Your claim work on using renewables for "transport, steel and fertilisers has hardly even begun" is simply false. Nuclear has not done anything to address these technologies. I, and millions of other people, already drive an electric car. More electric cars are sold every year. Electric trains are widespread. Electric heavy trucks are being manufactured. It is easy to make ammonia fertilizer from renewable energy. Steel is being made with electric furnaces and using green hydrogen. As more and more renewable energy is built it will be used for those purposes since renewable energy is cheaper than fosil fuels. Since renewable energy has only been the cheapest energy for about 5 years there has not yet been time to build out a completely new power system yet. After 70 years nuclear cannot even keep up with its current production as old reactors are retired.

6) Nuclear power in France was down by 50% last year. At all times in a system with nuclear power they require at least enough spinning reserve to cover for the sudden shut down of the reactors because nuclear reactors are prone to unplanned shutdowns at any time. This is not needed for renewables since they do not shut down with no notice. Ways to control for down transmission lines are still required.

7) Nuclear is a failed technology. It is too expensive and takes way too long to build. Due to economies of scale, smaller, modular reactors will be more expensive than big reactors that are already too expensive to compete with renewable energy. Since reactors take so long to build, the entire electrical system will be renewable before new nuclear designs are ready to be widely built. I do not even need to mention that there is not enough uranium in the world to power more than 5% of all power, an insignificant amount.

Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.

Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there are not enough rare minerals.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

scaddenp at 11:01 AM on 1 February, 2024

John, to my mind you are still not addressing the key - why would you invest money in expensive nuclear rather than cheap renewables with storage? What wind and solar are producing now isn't the relative no. The question is what could they produce for the same money spent on the nuclear plant?

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Rob Honeycutt at 03:59 AM on 1 February, 2024

I would add, at least battery storage has the benefit of arbitrage (storing cheap renewables during peak generation to sell back later), whereas, nuclear is just expensive. Period. The only benefit I can see is relative to overall demand, where battery storage may run into deployment problems at full scale. Perhaps there nuclear can take up some of the available slack.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 01:11 AM on 29 January, 2024

Sekwisniewski,

Perhaps I should have said there is no approved method of disposal of the sodium waste. Given that there is no approved repository for the existing high level waste either, perhaps that is no reason to worry about.

I note that Terrapower originally had a completely different design that they gave up on. Terrapower has not applied for a design certification yet. Design certifications normally take 2 years or more. How does that fit into Terrapowers' plan to start construction this year? Where are they going to get the 16.5% enriched uranium now that Russia (the only current supplier) is constrained due to the Ukraine war? It takes many years to develop a new fuel chain.

According to your link the Natrium reactor would generate 345 MWE. SMR's are generally described as under 300 MWE.

I would prefer to delay any discussion of modular reactors until they have at least applied for design certification.

My first argument is always that nuclear is not economic. I am waiting for a cost estimate for the first natrium reactor. Bill Gates will be able to foot the cost, but that does not mean it will compete with renewables.

Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there are not enough rare minerals.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 03:33 AM on 25 January, 2024

John ONeil:

Are you addressing my link at 334? If you read the link it describes all modular reactors as costing at least twice as much as large reactors. This is due to economies of scale. Modular reactor supporters claim that by manufacturing thousands of reactors they will be able to learn by doing and reduce the cost of manufacture. I note that this does not happen most of the time in the nuclear industry.

The link provides analysis that shows it is virtually imposssible for modular reactors to be produced at the low prices that supporters claim. In addition, the costs of renewable energy continue to rapidly decrease. Modular reactors are trying to compete with coal. Coal is already too expensive compared to renewables.

I note that Terrapower claimed they would have operating reactors by 2020. They have not yet submittd a design to the regulators.

I note that there is no process for disposing of the sodium coolant after it becomes radioactive.

Nuclear power is too expensive, too slow to build and the materials do not exist.

Cranky Uncle with Dr. John Cook

Rob Honeycutt at 08:09 AM on 7 January, 2024

Ben... I think crashing the economy wouldn't be a wise approach to avoiding disaster. You can't rationally trade one form of human catastrophe for another. Crashing the economy would potentially be as bad or even worse than the path we're currently on.

I would note there are no researchers (that I am aware of) suggesting crashing the economy as a solution to the climate change crisis. My suggestion for you is to consider the idea that deployment of carbon-free energy is operating on a exponential scale. That could actually bring us in line with zero carbon goals, if we can achieve that. Probably the bigger concern is resource limitations to carry out exponential deployment of renewables.

I drove 6,000 miles in an EV. Here’s what I learned

nigelj at 05:37 AM on 29 December, 2023

Prove we are smart @5

Regarding the video:

.www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiRzpKWshwU

Its just more material from the same guy. Again I'm not going to tolerate that incessant stream of foul language and insults so I didn't watch it in full. I skipped though it very, very quickly stopping at a few random points:

He talked about "entitled twats" driving Ev's. Its just an unsubstantiated, empty appeal to hate, emotion and envy. Plenty of ordinary people are driving EVs and who cares who drives them, since its reducing emissions that matters. The same entitled twats would be driving ICE cars.

He stated that building smaller houses would reduce emissions more than taking an ICE car off the road. This is not good argument not to build EVs, because just building smaller homes wont fully solve the climate problem.

He complained about extra tire wear due to the weight of EVs. But its is a trivial issue. "A Tesla Model 3 Performance with AWD weighs 4,065 pounds — 379 pounds more than a BMW 330i XDrive.". Yes the EV is heavier but not hugely so therefore extra tire wear is trivial and pollutants from the tire wear are trivial. Refer for weight comparisons:

www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/americas-new-weight-problem-electric-cars/He

He mentioned that cars are only a small part of the transport fleet so why bother with Ev's. It's illogical reasoning along the same lines as his comments about houses. And we are starting to develop electric trucks etc,etc (eg Tesla)

These sorts of talking points have been long since debunked, so Im not prepared to go through the entire video for probabaly more of the same in a giant gish gallop.

I agreed with a couple of his criticisms of EV's and his factual statements about how much of the grid is renewables, etc,etc, seem correct, but his arguments agains't renewables and EV's I listed above lack basic logic and understanding.

I drove 6,000 miles in an EV. Here’s what I learned

nigelj at 04:44 AM on 29 December, 2023

Prove we are smart @5. Thank's for the comments and links. Looks like useful information.

"Nigelj@3 Sorry you only lasted 4minutes longer, I suppose that was a lot considering you said " I already know the downsides of EVs, and I doubt some motor repair mechanic will add anything."

The entire first five minutes of the video (might have been a bit less, I wasnt timing it) was devoted to sarcastic, insulting, generalised comments about EVs and their drivers. There was not one specific factual claim about the actual technology. I decided I wasn't going to risk yet more of this.

"We need more renewable wholesale electric to support clean electric cars. This is where some detractors have valid points when they argue that electric cars are shifting the problem..."

Ok, but they are stating the obvious about needing more renewables. The same EV critics who say the problem is that renewables aren't expanding fast enough are sometimes the same people who criticise or oppose renewables. They contradict themselves. Their aim in most cases doesn't seem like true scepticism. It is just to throw mud at anything to mitigate the climate problem.

"Every electric car is forcing these electricity generators to work harder. In Australia thats 68% worth from fossil fuels.

Yes ok, but this is better than cars burning petrol which is 100% fossil fuels. The grid will also have to expand due to the extra demands, but thats obvious.

IMO its also a logistical exercise like this: Would you deploy millions of EVs In Australia at day one when the grid is all fossil fuels? No this wouldn't make sense because it would put too much demand on the grid and there is no benefit.

Do you wait until the grid is entirely renewables before deploying any EV's? No because you then have a long delay while Evs are scaled up and with climate change time is an issue and you miss out on some benefits of Evs.

So you phase EV's in gradually while the grid gradually moves to renewables and gets larger (but preferably faster than it is) . So the critics dont have much of a point.

Will get back to you on the video.

Can we still avoid 1.5 degrees C of global warming?

nigelj at 06:31 AM on 14 November, 2023

"The report found that the net greenhouse gas emissions from human activity would need to be 43% lower by 2030 compared to 2019 to maintain a two-thirds chance of either meeting the long-term 1.5°C goal or only briefly overshooting it."

This looks technically and economically possible to me as follows.

"A new study by Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson and his team published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science calculates that the world would need to spend around $62 trillion to build up the wind, solar, and hydro power generating capacity to fully meet demand and completely replace fossil fuels. That looks like a huge number, even spread out across the 145 countries cited in the study. But after crunching the numbers, estimates show that countries would make the money back in cost-savings in a relatively short period of time: Between one to five years."

adventure.com/global-cost-of-renewable-energy/#:~:text=A%20new%20study%20by%20Stanford,and%20completely%20replace%20fossil%20fuels.

My view: To meet this goal of cutting emissions 43% by 2030, lets assume that we spend half the required 62 trillion, thus 30 trillion on renewables over the period 2023 - 2030 . That is 4.2 trillion dollars each year. Total global gdp (economic output) each year is currently about $100 trillion, so 4.2 trillion is about 4% of global gdp per year.

This looks a feasible amount of money to me if we really wanted. Its not going to impoverish the world. Its about what the USA spends on the military each year as a % of its own gdp. It would require cutting about 4% from other budgets including probably government spending and consumer goods spending. 4% is not a massive number.

It would mean a huge engineering effort to transfer capacity into renewables but America and other countries did a similar sort of thing producing military hardware in WW2. And we are already partly there with renewables growing fast.

Of course electricity generation is just one component but its the big issue, and the highest cost issue we need to address.

It's really a question of whether the world can find the motivation to do all this. There are just several impediments in the way 1) The denialist campaign 2) Our brains are hardwired to priortise massive immediate threats like covid or wars, not insidious longer term problems like climate change even although they are a larger threat, 3) Lots of resistance to lifestyle change for various reasons, 4) politics.

So I alternate between hope and despair.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44

Just Dean at 00:30 AM on 7 November, 2023

Evan@5, I understand. I prefer to look to the moderate voices in almost any circumstance. To quote Zeke, I am cautiously optimistic about our future and getting to net zero. We have bent the curve on global emissions and according to the IEA and others, e.g. Rystad energy, we may well hit peak emissons this year or at least by 2025.

I follow the progress of the U.S. electrical sector emissions. Here are three positive facts about our progress.

1. Renewable generation surpassed coal and nuclear in the U.S. electric power sector in 2022, link.

2. Add nuclear to the renewables and emission-free carbon sources account for almost 40% of the generation in the U.S.

3. The specific carbon intensity of the US electrical sector has decreased by 40% between 2000 and 2022, falling from 650 kg/MWh to 390 MWh.

New report has terrific news for the climate

nigelj at 10:08 AM on 21 October, 2023

Fred Torssander @5

"It's great - in a way - to have my suspicions and my amateurish comparisions between reported emissions of GHG and measured atmospheric CO2 confirmed by Washington Post no less!"

Yes although I think we all had those suspicions. However IMO while the under measurement of emissions is very concerning, for our purposes it isn't the big issue, because its been reasonably constant going well back. As I stated the big issue is the trend in emissions whether increasing or declining over time, and that trend is likely to be roughly accurate and the growth in emissions looks like it is nearing a plateau from data I've seen.

"Variations in atmospheric CO2, when and if such changes appear, will be hard or even impossible to claim this as an effect of human political (democratic?!) activity. "

Not really. Fistly atmopsheric CO2 levels have been increasing reasonably steadily except that the trend includes a lot of short term wiggles up and down, but those wiggles only last a year or two. They are a result of such things as the yearly seasonal growth cycle, el nino, and the occasional volcanic activity. But these all have very short term effects and known causes.

Once we see something like a change in this atmospheric CO2 trend that lasts at least ten years we could be pretty confident its because of reducing human emissions. It's very difficult to see what else it could be, because no natural cause of emissions is likely to cause a ten year effect on the trend. And if it did it would have to be massive, unprecedented volcanic / geothermal activity of some sort and we would certainly notice that.

"Even in the case that the figures and charts showing temperature confirmed the good news, they would have a margin of error +23%, -0%(!) depending on what the reporting parties (states/nations) pleases."

Temperatures will not be 100% accurately measured, but I doubt temperatures would be that innacurate as 23% out. Where did you get the number?

However I would say atmospheric CO2 levels would be a bit more accurate than temperatures (or emissions trends) and would be the most compelling proof we have made a difference provided we see a decent 5 - 10 year difference in the trend. CO2 levels are quite accurately measured.

"And worse. The emissions of type iii in my first comment, will be compleatly hidden!"

You mentioned el nino and volcanoes. But el nino is not hidden. It is a well known cycle and we know approximately what effect it has on CO2 emissions and its a very short term effect of a couple of years. El nino does not explain long term (greater than five years) trends in CO2 levels.

And volcanic activity is not hidden. Scientists monitor this activity. Unless there is a massive krakatoa sized eruption it is not a significant generator of CO2. Its more significant related to aerosols.

"Lastly: More power produced by "significant solar and wind power" does not neccesarily result in less power produced by burning fossil fuels.Remember Jevons Paradox!"

Jevons paradox says (roughly) that making energy use more efficient does not decrease total energy use, and this has proven to be true, unless you actively fight against the paradox. Germany has had some moderate success making energy use more efficient and also decreasing total energy use, but its required some tight government lead incentives and programmes. And Germany is very disciplined as a people, so other countries might struggle to emulate their modest success.

Regarding the wind and solar power issue, I'm not sure its strictly a Jevons paradox issue because we are not trying to achieve more efficent energy use "per se". We are substituting renewables for fossil fuels. So far those efforts have only stopped the growth in fossil fuels, but as wind and solar power uptake improves in scale, fossil fuel use will fall in absolute terms and has already done in some places. For example, Paraguay, Iceland, Sweden, and Uruguay and France get something like 90% of their electricity from low carbon sources.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

Eclectic at 08:37 AM on 9 September, 2023

Nigelj @12 ,

Agreed. Michaux seems determined to assert that "renewables" are an impossibility, or at least a cul-de-sac, on the path to electricity generation of the non-fossil-fuel type. But the adage is :- half a loaf is better than none . . . it would be foolish not to go the path of wind/solar, while we are gradually developing newer technologies.

@13 : Clauser appears to be a climate neophyte, suffering from the Happer-Giaever syndrome. One wonders at his choice of ignoring the rich lode of information available per the IPCC.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

nigelj at 06:10 AM on 9 September, 2023

Eclectic

"In comparison, Simon Michaux [referred to briefly in a different SkS thread, recently] does know what path we should be taking towards a wind-turbine & solar-panel powered economy . . . but says we cannot reach that goal, owing to inevitability of materials supply shortfalls. (We can't get there from here.)"

IMO Michaux is taking a very doomy, pessimistic approach to the materials issue. The crowd who wrote the limits to growth in around the 1970s were the same and proclaimed the world would run out of key metals like lead, zinc etc,etc, by the 1990s and of course that never happened. Lets explore why.

Now firstly obviously materials are a finite resource. Some of the elements are quite rare and so scattered in the crust they cant be extraced economically. Even the concentrated mineral despots of those elements are not common in the earths crust. So we have a problem and are at risk of running out of some things longer term.

But Michaux takes a particularly doomy view of the situation. He looks at known current high grade / medium grade reserves and says red alert we are running out. But he is basing his warnings on known reserves of good grade ore depoits. He makes insufficient allowance for our ingenuity in extracting low grade deposits, making new discoveries, mining the sea bed, extracting minerals from sea water (there are trillions of tons), high levels of recycling. And its highly likely we will get better at doing these things and in energy efficient ways.

Im not talking techno hype where anything is possible and we will conquer all problems. Im just taking the view that its very likely we will find ways of finding more materials.

If we do run into severe shortages of materials we will have to reduce our energy use. Michaux concerns do not seem a good enough reason to give up on renewables completely, and he doesnt provide an alternative if we did do that.

Climate Confusion

Markp at 00:47 AM on 5 September, 2023

Rob, thanks for the chart, but merely looking at a cost comparison between FF and renewables overlooks a lot. Have you seen Michaux's paper on this? You can find it here. It's a large report but worth looking at.

The report is called "Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels." One of his conclusions is that the amount of metals required far outstrips current reserves to build the needed infrastructure for the first generation of such a "transition" only (1st generation needs to be mined because until it's been built there is little to recycle). He writes: "Current expectations are that global industrial businesses will replace a complex industrial energy ecosystem that took more than a century to build. The current system was built with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of energy the world has ever known (oil), in cheap abundant quantities, with easily available credit, and seemingly unlimited mineral resources. The replacement needs to be done at a time when there is comparatively very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt, not enough minerals, and an unprecedented world population, embedded in a deteriorating natural environment. Most challenging of all, this has to be done within a few decades. It is the author’s opinion, based on the new calculations presented here, that this will likely not go fully to as planned."

So even if wind and solar energy is cheaper than FF, we may not be able to replace FF with them, even if the IPCC says "we MUST."

Thanks also for the IEA link to "Net Zero Emissions by 2050" but this is a big paper. When I asked you how you thought this could be done, I asked for a few bullets. I will have a look at the paper, but my fear is that, as Simon Michaux's has pointed out, a lot of the "plans" for a better climate future have, amazingly, been made without consideration for the reality of time, energy, resources, etc. So they contain bold statements about what MUST be done, as if saying it is all that's needed. Like I said, I'll look at it but I'm not going to be surprised if I don't find a realistic assessment.

Climate Confusion

Rob Honeycutt at 00:20 AM on 2 September, 2023

Markp @23...

"The fact is, when we talk about hypothetically achieving no more human emissions, we're talking about a time in the future that is not tomorrow or next year or next decade, but at the very least, several decades, at least going by the extremely lazy response by humanity thus far. Correct?"

I'd say this is a faulty assumption. It is most certainly a Herculean task that is required, made even more difficult by the need to pull ever more humans out of poverty. But when you look at the changes that are occurring, particularly in how quickly renewables are now getting deployed, I think there's a decent chance we'll get to net zero around 2050 and full zero in the decades following that.

It must be disheartening for all the scientists and engineers who have been working on renewable energy for decades, and for them to have now created methods that generate electricity that beat the cost of FF's, only to constantly hear people make statements like "the extremely lazy response by humanity thus far."

But perhaps they're too busy to take notice or even care what others say.

It's worth noting, we are definitely going to see huge global challenges in the coming decades as the planet likely warms another degree celcius. So, perhaps it's important to put yourself in the mind of someone living in 2050 with far worse climate impacts each and every year. I think all of humanity is going to be laser focused on getting the last vestigages of carbon emissions eliminated.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #32

nigelj at 08:11 AM on 13 August, 2023

Regarding "With Temperature and Other Climate Extremes Shattering Records, Should We Call it 'Global Boiling'? 'Weirding'? Or...? by Tom Yulsman"

The idea discussed is that too much doomy rhetoric demotivates people. This is correct. It can have a deadening effect on people where they give up on contemplating solutions and habituate to the doom and just choose to live with the problem as best they can, like people in a war zone frequently do.

If there is any doomy rhetoric, its important to at least offer people solutions.

Another idea discussed is that creating too much climate fear is not a good thing.This is different from doomy rhetoric. However fear is a natural human motivator. We are hardwired genetically to feel fear when threatened and this generally motivates action. We communicate threats to each other that will cause fear and motivate action. This is all psychology 101. So its absurd to suggest we should somehow soften rhetoric to not make people fearful. This would be a dangerous manipulation that could backfire. It would not even be accurate.

However if the climate threat is innacurately described or exaggerated to try to cause fear this could backfire horribly because its likely the innacuracies or exaggerations will be exposed. We also cant solve problems effectively If we dont state them as accurately as possible neither understating or overstating a problem.

The reasons for the slow pace of climate action are probably not so much the way the threat is communicated anyway. Most people must know the basic problem by now and the scientists consider it serious, unless they have been living under a rock for the last 25 years. The reasons for slow progress are many and varied but one issue is we are psychologically hardwired to respond most urgently to immediate threats (like a wild animal attacking us) rather than slowly unfolding future threats like climate change even if they are very serious. Given climate change is now being more present and dramatic this might start motivate more change. Reference:

LINK

Other reasons are raised by people like OPOF to do with many leaders in society being reluctant to make lifestyle changes or support carbon taxes, because they are very addicted to materialistic displays of wealth as status signals.

However these problems do suggest to me we should try to motivate people to make changes by putting a lot of focus on the wider benefits of climate solutions, like EV's being more reliable cars, less reliance on imported petrol, cleaner electricity generation, etcetera.This is actually probably why renewables are gaining some traction.

Daniel Glick says " In communicating about that threat, we’ve tried terms like global warming, global weirding, climate emergency, and now global boiling." And he asks if any of this gets through to people and motivates people to make changes.

I can only give my gut reaction. Global warming - accurate. Climate emergency - a bit too colourful for me and people easily dismiss it as an exaggeration by giving examples of obvious dramatic and very present emergencies like Ukraine war. Global boiling - quite good. Nobody with any sense takes it literally, but this sort of satirical hyperbole might resonate with people. It does with me. Global weirding - accurate.

Just call anthropogenic climate change what it is: a huge problem for reasons xyz but that we have viable solutions.

Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?

David-acct at 21:00 PM on 10 August, 2023

This article describes the massive increases in new electric generation from solar installations by noting the huge increases in solar "capacity" including the following quotes:

"....project that the U.S. will install about 63 gigawatts of new solar capacity by the end of 2024"

" the record 24 gigawatts of solar capacity added in 2021 will likely be broken in 2023 "

Gross increases in solar capacity should be read in full context. If one is going to discuss increases in electric generation from solar, one should be using realistic numbers. As noted by Jacobson in his study of 100% renewables, the US actual solar generation is approx 20.8% of capacity . See his table S11 in his recent 2022 study. Canada actual generation from solar is slightly less at 18% of capacity and Europe is only 17.6% of capacity. Also note that the winter months, the northern US and Canada the electric generation from solar is in the range of 10% or less of capacity.

Below is a link to the German electric generation by source. Note that during the summer months, solar generates 12k GW's -15k GW's daily, while in the winter months, the electricity generated from solar ranges from 1k GW/s -4k Gw's and often falls below 1k GW's.

www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electricity-data/chart/power_generation/09.08.2022/09.08.2023/today/

LINK

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Eclectic at 09:08 AM on 10 August, 2023

Nigelj @8 , you are correct about some of the characters that you yourself encounter at RealClimate blog. Psychiatrically though, the WUWT blog presents a "target-rich environment" for a wider range of pathologies. And Dr Pat Frank is still to be seen making brief comments in the WUWT threads . . . but mostly his comments match the run-of-the-mill WUWT craziness stuff, rather than relating to the Uncertainty Monster.

Anecdote ~ long ago, I knew a guy who had spent a decade or more tinkering in his garden shed, inventing an electrical Perpetual-Motion machine. Continual updates & modifications, but somehow never quite hitting the bullseye. He had a pleasant-enough personality, not a narcissist. But definitely had a bee in his bonnet or a crack in his pot [=pate]. R.I.P.

And the Uncertainty Monster still lives in the darker corners of public discussion. Living sometimes as a mathematical nonsense, but much more commonly in the form of: "Well, that AGW stuff is not absolutely certain to six decimal places, so we ought to ignore it all." Or existing in the practical sphere as: "It is not certain that we could eventually power all our economy with renewables & other non-fossil-fuel systems . . . so we should not even make a partial effort."

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30

nigelj at 06:55 AM on 4 August, 2023

Regarding the ERCOT grid controversy being discussed. I had a look at the EIA page with the interractive graph. I plugged in the Texas ERCOT grid for 28 June - 29 June 2023. (you do this under the select balancing authority / region and then the date selection panel). I discovered you can then hover the arrow over the point on the graph you want and the data appears.

The best case for renewables plus nuclear power was on 28 June (although both days were very similar). I got the following numbers: wind + solar + nuclear 35,562 mwhr and for Gas + coal 43,472 mwhr. This is 44.304 % for wind + solar+ nuclear (using an online percentage calculator that would only let me enter simple numbers 35 and 43 but this is useful enough) so this does seem to roughly confirm David Accts result.

However I'm wary of such things. Im just reading things off a web page. Im not an electrical engineer, and its not clear how the people in the article arrived at their numbers. Although all the raw data seems to be on the EIA page there is the perrenial problem of potentially comparing apples and oranges.

And 44.304% is still a very credible result. And obviously it should be noted that wind and solar are still only a smaller component of the grid relative to fossil fuels.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30

michael sweet at 02:12 AM on 4 August, 2023

David-acct:

Can you provide a link to where you say you found data that contradicts the CNN article? A claim without a link is not worth much. I note that even if renewables provided "only " 45% of total electricity that renewable energy was what kept the lights on in Texas the last two months.

SInce renewables have only been the cheapest electricity for about 5 years I would say they are doing great!!

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30

David-acct at 12:05 PM on 3 August, 2023

Below is an except of the statement in the CNN article linked to by michael sweet.

"And as the state struggled through an early heatwave in June, non-fossil fuel power including renewables and nuclear made up 55% of total generation on June 28 and 29 and close to 50% of the power needed during the evening peak, according to statistics from the federal Energy Information Administration."

I Went to the EIA electric generation by source, dialed into the ERCOT grid and compared the actual data against the claimed data in the article ( basic due diligence). At best , Wind solar and Nuclear only got to 45% of total electric generation and they article included Nuclear which is generally not considered a renewable.

As I have previously stated multiple times, cross check the claims against the actual source data to prevent being fooled.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30

John Hartz at 09:36 AM on 31 July, 2023

Michael Sweet:

Alas, the reality of renewable energy's performance in Texas is not acknowledged by the far right state elected officials who are beholding to the fossil fuel industry. The following article is illustrative:

Gov. Greg Abbott vows to exclude renewable energy from any revived economic incentive program by Patrick Svitek, The Texas Tribune, Mar 1, 2023

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30

michael sweet at 21:59 PM on 30 July, 2023

This article from The Guardian (US edition) describes how solar and wind have supplied Texas power to keep the Air Conditioning on this summer during record demand. (It is a month old). There have been a lot of outages at fossil plants but the large amounts of solar that were installed in the last two years are keeping the lights on. Wind has provided power in the evenings and at night.

Prices have stayed down, in contrast to the past two or three years when electricity and gas prices rose to extraordinary highs due to shortages from fossil plants failing during the heat. It points out that fossil fuel backers do not count all the times that fossil plants fail in challenging weather conditions and claim "always on". The Texas legislature has proposed new rules favoring fossil plants over renewable energy.

They point out that it is easier to get permits for a renewable plant since renewables do not use significant water and produce no air pollution. They are rapidly building more solar plants and are starting battery storage to replace peaker plants.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29

wilddouglascounty at 15:01 PM on 24 July, 2023

The term "climate change" has buried the lead for too long, so it's time to correct this. When Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire were not voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, it was not because of Home Run Change, it was because of Performance Enhancing Drugs. And everyone who watches baseball knows that.

When the severity and frequency of extreme weather increases, the sea level rises and gets more acidic, wildlife populations move and wildfires abound, it is not because of Climate Change. It's because fossil fuel use that has changed the atmospheric and oceanic chemistry, allowing it to store more heat, changing the climate. Everyone who watches the weather needs to be reminded of that, too.

It's time to stop using euphemisms that don't explicitly connect the changing climate to fossil fuel use so that folks understand in the same way that folks understand the role of performance enhancing drugs in sports. Everyone needs to be reminded of the role fossil fuels has in climate change, just as they know about the role of performance enhancing drugs in turbocharging the natural talents of the users. Whenever discussing any of the things related to Climate Change we should make that link explicit by using phrases like:

- Fossil fuel induced Climate Change

- Increased greenhouse gases from Fossil Fuel use

- Climate Change caused by Fossil Fuel use

- Changed atmospheric chemistry through the widespread use of fossil fuels

and the like. And if someone says that you're politicizing the weather, tell them that this isn't just political; it's based on overwhelming scientific evidence. Refer them to the IPCC or skepticalscience websites if they are still deniers, and change the focus to how to become more energy efficient first, replace fossil fuel use with renewables second, and nurture local ecosystems third. We don't have a choice but to make things super-clear if we are to have a chance to turn the ship away from almost unimaginable disasters for future generations.

“It’s almost like a cult.” Activists shout down rural renewable energy projects

PollutionMonster at 18:36 PM on 17 July, 2023

One part that stuck with me when watching the entire video was that they spent all their time as anti-renewables. This shows that the distrubtive protestors themselves were victims.

I was a denier in the past and perhaps the greatest harm was it was a huge time sink for me. All that time watching conspiracy thinking videos, books, and going to meetings could have been better spent.

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

scaddenp at 11:32 AM on 14 June, 2023

Likeitwarm - thanks for those answers, though if you realize that IR leaving the surface is captured by GHG (CO2, water) without having traveled very far; and then re-radiated, I am surprized that you were not understanding that GHG gases result in a warming surface. ok, file that away.

I leave others to discuss sources of your beliefs about renewables and chinese efforts, but I would have to ask this: If you became convinced that conversion to renewables was not going destroy world economies would that reduce your skeptics about global warming do you think? If it had been obvious to you when you first heard about global warming that getting off fossil fuels was both possible and economical, then would you have been so skeptical of science?

Do you feel differently about CO2"Science" now that you have seen them play with strawman arguments or would like other examples of their game before you wrote them off?

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

Rob Honeycutt at 09:02 AM on 14 June, 2023

Likeitwarm... This conversation is becoming a classic Gish gallop.

Regarding your HBR article, please read down to the bottom of the article.

None of this should raise serious doubts about the future or necessity of renewables. The science is indisputable: Continuing to rely on fossil fuels to the extent we currently do will bequeath a damaged if not dying planet to future generations. Compared with all we stand to gain or lose, the four decades or so it will likely take for the economics of solar to stabilize to the point that consumers won’t feel compelled to cut short the life cycle of their panels seems decidedly small. But that lofty purpose doesn’t make the shift to renewable energy any easier in reality. Of all sectors, sustainable technology can least afford to be shortsighted about the waste it creates. A strategy for entering the circular economy is absolutely essential — and the sooner, the better.

This article clearly isn't making the claim that you seem to think it does. They're not saying renewables are dirtier. They're merely discussing the challenges we're going to face with waste from renewables. No one denies that, but the alternative of continued use of oil for energy is vastly worse.

The little-known, massive advantage that renewables hold over coal

Leonard Bachman at 23:01 PM on 12 June, 2023

All critique of specific energy generation sources taken in isolation are myoptic and flawed. The SYSTEM of solar/wind/existing-hydropower as firmed with battery, pumped hydro, demand response control DRC, and distributed energy resources DER, is far superior to the SYSTEM of fossil/nuclear as firmed by natural gas peakers and substation burn-off of overcapacity all night.
It is equally flawed to ignore the SYSTEM of blending/sharing/pooling/shifting/shaving/smoothing functions of grid interconnection, especially as HVDC and transactive smart grid features continue to incorporate DRC and DER. Grids are going transcontinental now.
Finally, the efficiency ratio of output energy from input energy sources that are perpetual, ubiquitous, and essentially infinite is a meaningless number. Comparing technology based generation to fuel based generation on that basis is a logical fallacy. All that matters is $/kWh and grams CO2/kWh. The SYSTEM handles spatial distance and temporal load matching issues.
Much of this is evident in the prior comments here (thanks all) and the specific mention of Mark Z. Jacobson's work.
For those of you following the old PNAS Jacobson/Clack debate... Clack has long since come over to the 100% renewables side.... just follow Clack's publications to confirm.

The little-known, massive advantage that renewables hold over coal

nigelj at 08:42 AM on 11 June, 2023

David-acct

Nameplate ratings and related performance can be misleading:

"Rated output, also known as Nameplate Rating, is determined by the wind turbine manufacturer, based on their chosen wind speed. The rated output can be a high number or a low number, depending on the wind regime chosen for performance calculations. In its current state, there is no unified approach to wind turbine ratings, making the process capricious."

upriseenergy.com/blog/2012/9/12/capacity-factor-and-nameplate-rating-explained#:~:text=You%20can%20start%20to%20see,turbine%20maker's%20chosen%20power%20rating.

There are of course periods where output of wind turbiness drops meaning we need gas backup. This is better than using gas 100% of the time. And storage systems are developing as an alternative to gas backup. There are other solutions as well.

No system is going to be perfect, but until you propose an alternative to renewables you arent making much of a case.

I agree with M Sweets take on the situation.

The little-known, massive advantage that renewables hold over coal

Jim Eager at 00:29 AM on 9 June, 2023

Another advantage that renewables have over coal are the CO2 emissions of first extracting that coal from the ground, and then moving it from the mine to the power plant, which can be considerable.

True, some strip mines use electricly powered draglines to dig out the coal, and some power plants are located adjacent to the pit, but in the United States most extraction is by diesel-electric excavators and haul trucks, and then huge quantities of coal are moved very long distances by rail, powered almost exclusively by diesel-electric locomotives.

The little-known, massive advantage that renewables hold over coal

David-acct at 08:48 AM on 8 June, 2023

From Key takeaways in the article

· Selecting one example from the graph above, coal and renewables generated approximately the same amount of electricity in February 2022 — around 250,000 billion British thermal units, or BTUs.

While it is true that renewable electric generation with coal, One important point in the article which is missing is how poorly renewables did during parts of February 2022. Starting Feb 23, 2022 through Feb 28, 2022, electric generation from wind was only producing 30%-40% of the average for the month.

Similar though much worse drought of electric generation from wind occurred across the north amercian continent from February 8, 2021 through february 19, 2021 ( 11 days) with a loss of electric generation from wind averaging 60-80% over those 11 days. The month of august 2022 had nearly 3 weeks where electric generation from wind was only 20%-40% of the regular level of electric generation. ( even lower percentage of name plate capacity)

I have linked to the EIA.gov website which provides real time electric generation by source.

You can follow the link to see how frequently electric generation from wind drops percepiticely for several days at a time.

I can not over emphasize the benefits of using source data for understanding and comprehending the variability of electic generation by source

www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/electric_overview/US48/US48/GenerationByEnergySource-4/edit

It's not urgent

MA Rodger at 18:59 PM on 25 March, 2023

PollutionMonster @26,

The quoting of Schellnhuber in that Scientific American article is a bit of an add-on and somewhat out of context. The article is based on analysis dating back to 2018 here & here (so a little dated now) and is really concerned with the net negative emissions required after we reach the net zero emissions. These net negatives are not much discussed in the political arena, as though we can ignore them. The same is true of the "carbon budget" also addressed by the article. But the 'budget' and the 'negatives' are significant in tackling AGW. The climate scanario SSP1-1.9 (which prevents AGW exceeding +1.5ºC warming, roughly) requires we halve our emissions by 2030 (and indeed to have made serious progress toward that halving by now) as part of keeping-to the 'budget', and following that for all our emissions post-2007 to be removed by the 'negative' policy post net-zero. So keeping to SSP1-1.9 would mean the 'negative' totals something like 1,000 billion t(CO2) [so over 20 years-worth of today's emissions] although the majority of that (perhaps two-thirds) would be post-2100.

The Schellnhuber quote is lacking a bit of context but is presumably predicated on the view that we could lose control of AGW and kick off some extreme tipping points: Schellnhuber has co-authored work on such outcomes. Myself, I would be worried by allowing AGW to get significantly beyond +1.5ºC warming as the effect could easily destroy the world political order and bring about that sub-billion human world population through conflict.

Humanity does need to rough out a workable global plan (or set of plans) for keeping AGW to sensible levels, the first step in identifying how bad the situation actually is. Without such planning, your attempted triage is not going to work.

So what would a plan look like? The world is going to be short of energy sources in years to come as renewables will be required to power the economy as well as those 'negatives' which will be potentially bigger than SSP1-1.9 because we are not cutting our emissions and running out of 'budget'. We need to quickly replace FF with renewables, so build a few tens-of-thousand sq mile of sunny places with solar, connect it to the developed world's power grid as well as using it for hydrogen/ammonia production. And get ready to start sucking those 'negatives' out the atmosphere and pumping them into saline aquifers which have the capacity to take ample amounts of CO2. So a plan would rough out what all that would look like in terms of costs and resources.

Arguing with deniers is required to demonstrate they are the lunatic denialists. They do still have enough influence to slow and even stop mitigation measures. In UK they are now doing just that.

The Big Picture

Eclectic at 14:39 PM on 19 March, 2023

Gootmud @100 ,

you are right that shutting down the old reliable (fossil fuel) power sources is premature, pending the establishment of a fully resilient new renewables and/or nuclear power system. That's simply common sense. Just as it's simply common sense to press ahead rapidly to achieve "Zero Nett Carbon", even though that will take decades to complete the transition.

But you are in the wrong, to think that "models" are vital (or even mildly important) in making a sensible pragmatic assessment of the climate situation. For example, back in the 1890's [not a misprint] a scientist was able to make a reasonable assessment of what happens as CO2 atmospheric level increases. All he needed to use was a pencil & paper [not a model or a computer in sight]. Granted, he had a better brain than me (and possibly than you, too). He was not in any way dependent on complex "models". Nor, using common sense, do the conclusions of climate scientist of today need more than basic physics ~ helped along by paleontological knowledge of Earth's climate history.

Economics ~ yeah, not really much of a science. Too much Friedman and freedom from common sense.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #10

michael sweet at 14:42 PM on 13 March, 2023

This article at CleanTechnica.com gave interesting and hopeful data about the adoption of electric cars world wide. They document that the production of ICE cars peaked in 2017 and is now declining because battery electric cars are taking over the market.

In 2017 86 million ICE cars were sold and only 1 million battery and plug in hybrid cars were sold. In 2022 only 69 million ICE cars were sold while 10.4 million plug in cars were sold. About 7.4 million were battery only cars. Plug in vehicles were 26% of the market last year. It is expected that the electric market will substantially increase this year.

The more electric cars that are sold the less oil that will be burned in transportation. Combined with increasing electric power generation by renewables and the amount of carbon released every year will start to decrease. It is still far too low to achieve the 1.5 C goal. Everyone needs to push governments to stop fossil subsidies and increase renewable subsidies.

Which state is winning at renewable energy production?

nigelj at 06:50 AM on 8 March, 2023

Peppers appears to be saying solar panels are subsidised, but even with subsidies only high income people can afford solar panels, and the cost of the the subsidies falls on the avergage tax payer and this is unfair. The poor are allegedly subsididing the rich. I hear this same reasoning with electric car subsidies. I acknowledge what people are getting at and we have to be careful that the costs of the transition to renewables don't disproportionately fall on low income people .

But doesn't America have a progessive tax system, so the rich do ultimately contribute more to the subsidies for the solar panels than low income people? And the subsidies promote the deployment of solar panels, so their price eventually drops, making them more accessible to low income people. So there are some positives in the subsidy policy.

Other ways of speeding the uptake of solar panels are carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes, but these can potentially hurt low income people and have other downsides. There is no magic bullet, just a choice of the least worst option.

Whether subsides or carbon price schemes are best for promoting renewables is contested. Economists seem to prefer carbon price schemes over subsidies. However Norway has strong incentives to buy EV's and uptake has been very impressive.

Carbon pricing schemes are largely quite weak. The price has to be high to promote change but its politically difficult to have strong carbon pricing, strong carbon taxes, and the like. Quite a conundrum.

Which state is winning at renewable energy production?

David-acct at 12:53 PM on 28 February, 2023

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/electric_overview/US48/US48/GenerationByEnergySource-4/

While it is impressive that several states are generating large % of electric generation from renewables, we need to maintain a realistic appreciation of the limitations and realistic appreciation of real world data.

North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota among other states are part of Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc (MISO grid).

The US Energy Information association provides a wealth of real time information. Below is a link to the Electric generation by source EIA.gov. The real time data shows the following when electric generation from renewables dropped below 30% of average electric generation (approx 10% of name plate capacity). Note the frequency of 72+ hours of significantly reduced electric generation.

december 6 2022 , 1am through 12/11/2022, 5pm approx 5 days less than 30%

Dec 18, 2022 11am though Dec 21 8pm - approx 3 days less than 30%

Jan 5, 2023 9pm through Jan 8th 2023 9pm - approx 3 days less than 30%

jan 20, 2023 10Am though jan 23 2am approx 3 days less than 10%

Nov 12, 2022 through Nov 15, 2022 approx 3 days, less than 30%

9 day span in June 2022 with less than 40%

14 day span in august 2022 with less than 30%

40 day span in July August 2021 with less than 30%

It's not bad

Eclectic at 13:43 PM on 21 February, 2023

"It's Not Bad" is quite a general topic, and covers many Denialist areas.

"Denier" is a handy short label for those who are opposed to taking action for fixing the global warming problem. They themselves dislike it, and whinge greatly about the label : but after all, a label usually doesn't matter much ~ since every reasonable person can recognize an alligator / crocodile / caiman by sight, regardless of its exact label.

No point in joining the bunfight at the famous blogsite WattsUpWithThat. WUWT is 98% echochamber, and shows the interesting range of deniers ~ extending from the studious intelligent ones who are crippled by their own motivated reasoning . . . to the crackpots who deny CO2-physics and/or deny there is any true warming occurring. And through to the paranoid political wingnuts who deny any AGW (or alternatively, claim that AGW is good for us and we should have more of it).

At WUWT there is a kaleidoscopic churning of all sorts of "reasons" why we should stay on fossil fuels and avoid renewables. #Now, during the past decade (as car lithium batteries have soared in number) WUWT has ranted about the need to increase coal usage to: "lift those poor Africans out of poverty" . . . and even more particularly: "EV batteries are causing small Congolese children to work in slave-like conditions in the cobalt mines".

The "poor Africans" argument I find remarkable, as it typically comes from American wingnuts who oppose any decent governmental help to their own American poor ~ and who themselves for the past half-century have have not lifted a finger personally to aid the African poor. And even now they still do nothing to help these children ~ and they completely fail to see that it is sheer poverty which forces African parents to send young children to the mines. Fixing the Root Cause is unthinkable.

The Problem with Percentages

Evan at 23:35 PM on 20 February, 2023

Michael Sweet@28, I am not suggesting that renewables will replace fossil fuels instantly. Rather, when the NYTs report impressive-sounding renewable-energy growth numbers, I want the readers to put those number into context and not get lulled into a false sense of success. We have a long way to go, and we need the readers to know that ramping down fossil-fuel use will not occur quickly, nor will it occur without putting pressure on governments. Regardless of how cheap renewables are, there is likely to be active lobbying for years to come to sustain the fossil-fuel industry. You note the we all need to work harder to get governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels. I agree. We need readers to help apply pressure through their votes. What I want them to know is that although the renewable revolution is getting going, we are a long way from where we need to be and we need their help to get where we all want to be.

I will consider your's and all of the other comments in the rewrite. I am not trying to contribute to doomerism. Just trying to make sure people understand the full scope of the problem, because there is no time to waste in continuing the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

The Problem with Percentages

michael sweet at 23:09 PM on 20 February, 2023

Evan,

Renewable energy has only been the cheapest energy for about 5 years. For the first couple of those years renewables were only a little cheaper than fossil fuels and there were many locations where fossil was still cheaper. Now renewables are the cheapest everywhere. It takes 5-10 years to build most fossil plants. It takes years to build the factories that manufacture the panels and turbines for renewable energy. Your expectation that renewables will replace all fossil fuels instantly is misplaced.

We all need to work harder to get governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and make it easier to install renewabes. Environmental doomerism turne people off so that they do not take the actions necessary to turn the ship around before it hits the iceberg.

The Problem with Percentages

Evan at 23:09 PM on 20 February, 2023

Michael Sweet@26, you note,

"The claim that renewables can only generate 30% of all electricity was shown to be completely incorrect years ago."

I am not saying that renewables cannot generate more than 30%. I am saying that going beyond 30% on an annualized basis is difficult and will likely require storage. Figures that show renewables generating in excess of 30% on an annualized basis are, to my understanding, based on relatively short-term events and not averaged over an entire year.

I am not trying to propogate doomerism. Rather, I am trying to convey to the readers the task that lays ahead if we are to meet the goals of the Paris Accord. You note yourself the headwinds we face ramping down fossil-fuel use. Yes, I made a mistake in my analysis summarized in the first comment, and I will correct this. I will refine the rest of the text. But the main conclusions remain. Getting renewables to the point where they begin to supplant, and not supplement fossil fuels is still ahead of us and will not necessarily be easy. I read your comment as saying essentially the same thing.

The Problem with Percentages

michael sweet at 22:59 PM on 20 February, 2023

Doug,

I saw the reference. The entire point of the OP is derived from figure 4 which is the construction of the author and has no reference. Others have pointed out why this figure is not even wrong. According to the IEA report, global electricity demand will be approximately 29,000 TWh in 2025 not the 160,000 TWh shown in figure 4. It appears to me that the author has added a factor of ten to the world energy demand which makes it appear that renewable energy cannot replace fossil fuels. I note that checking the carbon intensity of the EU would immediately show that renewables have significantly reduced the amount of carbon released.

It appears to me that MA Rodgers analysis of figure 4 is correct. Wind and solar energy, especially solar which is the cheapest energy in the world today (only wind can come close to solar), are increasing exponentially. Averaging in hydro, which for all practical purposes has not significantly changed in the past 10 years, makes an exponential increase turn into a small increase.

In the OP it states "it is very difficult, without using energy storage, to generate more than about 30% of the energy from renewables." In comment 8 says " Any of these projections are risky, because continued expansion of renewables beyond producing about 30% of power requires storage technology that must be deployed on a large scale and may compete for materials used in the transportation industry." The published literature has analyzed this and there are sufficient materials for the foreseeable future available. There are bottlenecks that have to be overcome as more renewable energy manfacturing facilities are built. The claim that renewables can only generate 30% of all electricity was shown to be completely incorrect years ago.

The International Energy Agency report that I cited covers the entire globe. I used USA data to address the 30% claim because the data was the first hit on my Google search and met the criteria of wind and solar only. It takes some time to find renewable energy data where the hydro has been left out. The 30% claim was made without any supporting data. Data proving the 30% claim is false anywhere shows the 30% claim is false for the entire world.

The OP is terrible doomerism. The IEA data clearly shows that wind and solar currently replace essentially all of the increase in energy demand worldwide. The question is: can the installation of wind and solar increase fast enough to meet climate goals. Last year over $1 trillion (!!!!!) was spent by governments to subsidize the fossil fuel industry and only about 1/3 of that was spent (primarily by the free market) on building new renewables. How can the politics be overcome?

Renewables including storage are much cheaper than fossil fuels. In addition, fossil pollution kills over 5 million people every year worldwide. Switching to renewables will make everyone healthier because ofreduced pollution. It has been shown that even 2% of EVs replacing internal comustion engines results in less hospital visits for asthma.

The Paris accords could still be met if most governments worldwide subsidized renewable energy as much as fossil fuels.

The OP should be removed from Skeptical Science since the conclusions are false. It will be used as an example of environmental doomerism.

The Problem with Percentages

Evan at 22:02 PM on 20 February, 2023

Michael Sweet, thanks for your comments. As ubrew12@1 pointed out, I did not properly account for efficiencies in comparing electric generation from fossil fuels to determine, as you also point out, that renewables are expected to cover the growth in electric energy demand over the coming years. Others here have pointed out other analysis they would like to see in such a post. I will be redoing this post to clean up the points everyone has made here. As much as it hurts to be reminded of weaknesses in my analysis and writing, I will correct them.

None of this will change the basic points of this article, however, that percentages can hide real trends, and that renewable energy has yet to replace fossil fuels in any significant amount. Don't expect the fossil-fuel industry to just let that happen without a fight. One of my purposes in writing is to help the reader see the true magnitude of the problem we face so that they can properly gauage their response when they decide what to buy, and how to vote. Renewables meeting growing electric energy demand, instead of only 30% as I noted, may be a good thing in terms of our progress towards ramping down fossil-fuel use, but it is not a reason for too much celebration if we are to meet the objectives of the Parid Accord. We must do much much better. I want readers to be aware that we've done the easy work with renewables, and that what comes next will likely be much harder.

So thanks all for your comments. I have work to do to rewrite this paper. I will try hard to regain your respect with the rewrite.

The Problem with Percentages

Doug Bostrom at 16:35 PM on 20 February, 2023

Although they're not obvious, Evan's data sources are in the figure captions for figs. 1-3. Although OWIND is not specialized along the lines of IEA or the like, it's not pitching data ideally suitable for producing "industry propaganda." OWIND's renewables projections seem to be substantially (for the precision required here given Evan's thrust) in agreement with the IEA, which admittedly have been conservative (as has been so much else assessment in this rapidly evolving scene).

This brings us to figure 4, which shows quite a bit of daylight betwen overall demand increase and the contribution of renewables to that— back to the point Evan is making about percentages.

Michael, using the conservative IEA source (it's better to pick one, and IEA seems to be a benchmark for most discussion) and so that we can better understand: do you think the overall demand projection in fig 4 is incorrect, given that the renewables portion appears largely commensurate with IEA's projection?

I think Michael may have been typing in haste and dropped a clause when he wrote "Likewise your claim that renewables cannot generate more than 30% of all electricity was proven incorrect over 5 years ago when several countries exceeded that amount," because Evan did not make that claim.

Also and notably with regard to the latter remarks, Evan's analysis is speaking of global energy demand, supply. It's not an apples-apples critique to employ a handful of wind-heavy US states to form a comparison with what's under discussion, the global situation. Not saying Michael's wrong, but it would be better to employ broader geography— the same whole globe that is the subject of Evan's analysis. Otherwise we're talking about quite different things.

I'm pretty sure that whatever misunderstandings there are over this can easily be resolved with some collaboration. It's possible that Evan is wrong. That can more easily be established in an atmosphere of calm. I feel certain Evan would be fine with making his analysis better if such is shown necessary. Probably a good step would be to agree on data sources, make sure the subject being discussed is the same, and that what Evan is claiming is clearly understood.

The Problem with Percentages

michael sweet at 13:59 PM on 20 February, 2023

Evan,

Your article on renewable energy is so bad that it is not even wrong. Your claim that rneewables will only generate 30% of new demand for the next decade is simply fossil propaganda. The IEA released their Electricity Market Report for 2023 on February 8. Carbon Brief has a summary of the IEA report here. According to Carbon Brief:

"Carbon Brief analysis of the IEA figures shows that it expects global electricity generation to rise by 2,493TWh between 2022 and 2025.

The IEA expects the growth in renewable generation to cover the vast majority of this total, growing by 2,450TWh. This is equivalent to 98% of the overall increase in global demand. my emphasis

Do you really expect that renewables will replace 98% new energy demand for three years and then they will completely stop building renewables? Obviously in 2025 the IEA expecte renewables to replace all demand and significant existing fossil power. Obviously after renewables replace all new demand they will begin to replace existing fossil power. The Carbon Brief article cites several analysis that come to similar conclusions except they have renewables replacing all demand earlier than the IEA. I note that the IEA has a long track record of underestimating how much renewable energy will be built in the near future.

Likewise your claim that renewables cannot generate more than 30% of all electricity was proven incorrect over 5 years ago when several countries exceeded that amount. According to The Motley Fool, using the latest year of data on the USA (fourth quarter of 2021 and the first three of 2022), ten states produced more than 30% of their electricity from wind and solar alone. 3 states produced over 50% and Iowa produced over 62%. The analysis that I have seen indicate that over 80% of all electricity can be easily produced by renewables using existing fossil peaking plants as storage. Since new batteries are cheaper than existing peaking plants, Utilities will be building out batteries as fast as possible to save money.

Your post is a superb example of mathturbation.

The Problem with Percentages

MA Rodger at 22:51 PM on 19 February, 2023

Rob Honeycutt @10,

In terms of storage, I would expect excess electric power would be used to provide storeable things like hydrogen or ammonia. There will be losses in the conversions but the 'storage' problem is overcome, as would be the 'transport' problem.

Evan @8,

The point by PrzemStep@2 that individual forms of renewables should be projected individually is entirely correct. The OurWoldInData renewables page presents some very useful numbers on this.

OurWordInData renewables graph

Myself I see the big player in future being solar as it has less restrictions on its useful location. Its generation has been growing on average 30% annually since 1990 but in recent years this has dropped to perhaps 20% annually. A 20% annual increase woud give solar 200,000TWh/y by 2050 and if we could get back to increases of 30%/y that would be perhaps the 160,000TWh/y by 2032.

I see it as really depending on when we manage to put ideas like nuclear to one side and appreciate that 'mass' solar is the way to go, with for instance the Sahara powering Europe. (Some have already arrived at this conclusion with a £18 billion project to link Morroco with UK.)

Or Texas powering the US. I remember some time back a provocotive statement saying just 10,000 sq miles (or was it kms) of solar farms in Texas would provide the US with all its primary energy needs. The response from denialists was that 10,000 sq miles was far to big an area to cover in solar farms to which the reply was that it wasn't so big when 10,000 sq miles of the US had been strip-mined for coal. And now that strip-mined coal was gone. Solar farms are somewhat more sustainable than strip-mining as a power supply. (Whether numbers are here correct, or were ever correct, I know not.)

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7

One Planet Only Forever at 13:12 PM on 19 February, 2023

I just read this NPR report about how pursuers of benefit from fossil fuel use appear to be coordinating misleading 'local' campaigns against renewable energy developments.

An activist group is spreading misinformation to stop solar projects in rural America

The following is a quote from the article about the group coordinating opposition to Solar developments:

"Analysts who follow the industry say Citizens for Responsible Solar stokes opposition to solar projects by spreading misinformation online about health and environmental risks. The group's website says solar requires too much land for "unreliable energy," ignoring data showing power grids can run dependably on lots of renewables. And it claims large solar projects in rural areas wreck the land and contribute to climate change, despite evidence to the contrary."

The success of this type of 'claimed to be grass-roots' campaign is a reason that the "Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2023" (Story of the Week in 2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5) indicates there is a very low likelihood that the US will meet its current Paris Agreement NDCs (NDCs that need to be ratcheted up if global impacts are to be kept below 2.0 C).

The Problem with Percentages

Rob Honeycutt at 05:03 AM on 19 February, 2023

Important questions on this topic are going to be,

(a) what is the required penetration of grid storage?

(b) at what level will end-of-life auto batteries play into supplying those grid storage needs?

Recently, I was reading one energy researcher suggesting we'd only need ~10% storage, which was much lower than I would have guessed. (I think it was Andrew Dessler who said this, but I could be remembering wrong.)

Given the rapidly expanding volume of new EV models hitting the market, within the next decade those are going to all be batteries available for a second life on the grid. A big question mark in my own mind is related to how long EV's are going to last. Initial data suggests EV batteries are still performing well (<10% degradation after >150k miles, off the top of my head). Is that going to translate to people using cars longer, or is that going to mean EV batteries are going to have a lot of remaining life when placed on the grid?

Too often I read people discussing the constraints on resources producing an S-curve in deployment, which is an obviously important issue, but failing to acknowledge since those constraints are knowable new tech to address constraints is always in the works.

I think one of the big differences between legacy FF energy and renewable+storage energy is the expanded breadth of opportunities. There are limited ways to utilize FF combustion and we've probably exploited that potential to near theoretical maximums. Whereas, renewables+storage are announcing potential new materials and methods on a weekly basis.

Looking out even further, I'm fairly confident fusion technology is ultimately going to work, just not soon enough to address imminent climate change issues. But it's important to remember this framing: as likely as not, all of this is merely a bridge to 22nd century energy systems. The Herculean task our generation faces is building that bridge.

The Problem with Percentages

Evan at 21:26 PM on 18 February, 2023

PrzemStep, thanks again for your feedback. After the 2022 numbers are in, I will consider reposting this article by breaking down the numbers further. Perhaps it would be useful doing trend analysis as I've done and comparing to trend analysis as you suggest: breaking the numbers down further and extrapolating each. But 2023 may be the first year where the world is operating at full capacity again (barring any severe recessions), so a recovery in fossil energy use may still be delayed beyond the 2022 numbers. Any of these projections are risky, because continued expansion of renewables beyond producing about 30% of power requires storage technology that must be deployed on a large scale and may compete for materials used in the transportation industry. Tough to predict.

Bottom line, the analysis I provide gives a feel for the magnitude of the problem. My real goal is to demonstrate that just covering the growth of energy use is a mammoth task, one we're struggling to accomplish. Actually replacing fossil energy use is yet to come, and will require even more commitment to change. If people read optimistic-sounding reports and feel that we are doing better than we actually are, then they may prematurely relax the pressure that needs to be continued to really get this energy revolution going. I am trying to provide perspective.

But I will consider your suggestions in a rewrite. I appreciate you taking the time to write your very informative comments.

The Problem with Percentages

PrzemStep at 19:57 PM on 18 February, 2023

Evan, thanks for the feedback. I would underline that COViD is 2020, but fossil fuel energy used hasn't risen since 2018, so this could be a global trend - impact of EV and heat pumps should start being felt. Let's wait for 2022 stats, but I believe the picture will be similar. I still believe that the potential of stagnating growth or even a drop in fossil fuel energy use should have been mentioned.

As to the other point: In order for the argument to be more sound it would work better the actual numbers. And the fact is that by coupling wind and solar (degrading exponential) with hydro (linear) you muted the actual percentage growth of renewables. You reached 14000 TWh, I reached 26000 TWh. You must admit growth to 26000 TWh would look way more impactful on the above charts and over 100% of energy growth would be covered by renewables.

The Problem with Percentages

PrzemStep at 19:46 PM on 18 February, 2023

@Eclectic - Can "hydro" expand linearly? I don't know. That said growing linearly hydro from ca 4300 TWh would grow to ca 5000 TWh, so 700 TWh, so it is pretty insignificant given the scale of change needed. Or the numbers above. In total I assumed hydro and other renewables only add 1050 TWh by 2032. And as you said: you can only analyze the trend, you can't make an exact prediction. I'm just saying that there was an underlying mistake in the trend analysis, because hydro mutes wind and solar growth.

The Problem with Percentages

Evan at 11:28 AM on 18 February, 2023

PrzemStep, thanks for your comments.

Fossil-fuel usage seems to have stalled before the housing crisis, then started back up again. I am aware of the apparent stalling during the Covid pandemic, and am also aware that economies are starting to ramp up again. Will fossil-fuel usage stall or start back up? I am not making predictions, but simply showing where the overall trends have been leading for a long time, and what looks like a plateu may in fact be a temporary trend. Nobody knows the future, but trends are useful for showing the general direction.

What I'm really suggesting in this post is that isolated, impressive-sounding percentages can often be misleading, and in the case of population, show the opposite trend to what is happening. I am suggesting that people look at the totals, and not just isolated percentages. I am not making specific predictions about the future, but rather showing that based on long-term trends, renewable energy is far from replacing fossil fuels, even though the impressive percentage growth of renewables makes it sound like renewables are replacing fossil fuels.

The Problem with Percentages

PrzemStep at 08:31 AM on 18 February, 2023

Hi there,

Unfortunately I'm posting because I noticed what can only be called bad trend analysis.

1. The renewable energy growth trend is simply badly done.

a) Renewable energy has four distinct components with different growth trends. Wind, solar, hydro and the rest (primarily bioenergy). Hydro and other renewables is following a linear growth trend, while wind and hydro are growing exponentially. However this exponentiality is hidden if you throw them in together: the dominant hydro represses the actual growth rates of solar/wind. This means your analysis is inherently flawed.

b) Solar is growing from 2011 to 2021 by 38,8% annually, while wind by 16,5%. Assuming hydro and other renewables continue linear growth they reach respectively 5000 TWh and 1100 TWh by 2032. By comparison if solar and wind retain 38,8% and 16,5% annual growth rates they will reach 37600 TWh and 9900 TWh respectively, so jointly renewables would have 53600 TWh by 2032. That would be the result of a proper trend analysis. Surprisingly you seem to have had a problem with percentages...

c) Now both solar and wind seem to be following more of an S-curve, so 38,8% and 16,5% growth rates seem unlikely to hold. Basic analysis of trends suggests average growth rate for 2022-2032 at 25,5% and 14% respectively, worst case scenario 20% and 11%. This average scenario would mean 26300 TWh renewable energy by 2032, while the worst case scenario 19000 TWh. As you can see all result put it much higher than your wrongly done trend analysis suggests.

2. The fossil fuel usage graph has an even simpler flaw. It suggests continued linear growth, but absolutely ignore the fact that fossil fuel usage seems to have stalled in 2018 and shown little growth. We seem to have hit peak oil consumption. IEA notes all these facts. No does this mean that fossil fuel usage will stop growing or even start falling? No. But you should have at least noted the recent stagnation of fossil fuel growth as the sudden jump from 2022 is odd to say the east.

The Problem with Percentages

ubrew12 at 04:16 AM on 17 February, 2023

"renewable energy grew 25% in a single year, recent, historical trends indicate that the growth of renewables is not even keeping up with growing, global energy demand." Global energy demand may be accounted in terms if 'fossil energy in' rather than 'electricity out'. As mentioned a week ago on this website, 60-70% of 'fossil energy in' is lost as waste heat upon combustion, the remainder becomes electricity. For fossil energy, the 'energy in-to-power out' conversion is as low as 30%. For renewable energy, it's closer to 80%.

Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits

nigelj at 06:09 AM on 30 January, 2023

Peppers,

Your main concern seems to be that the transition to renewables and an electricity based energy system is going to cost people money in various ways. And it will and personally I think we should just acknowledge that. However read the research studies and it wont cost so much as to be impractical, even based on known technologies now. Theres plenty of material easily googled.

You also mentioned that we are taking a leap of faith that the technology will improve and become cheaper in the future. Theres some truth in this to an extent. We can actually be quite confident that the technology will improve and costs will drop a certain amount, based on what we know, and various studies anaylse this, but we dont know with the same certaintly if the costs will drop a whole lot.

However we have no real other option than a new energy system, as a civilisation because we will run out of fossil fuels anyway or extraction costs will get prohibitive, sometimes in the next 50 - 100 years. A transition to an economy based on electricity or synthetic fuels is therefore inevitable. We will either sink or swim. The climate problem has just bought the issue forwards.

I do see some positives: In New Zealand electric cars with just modest tax payer subsidies are now cost competitive to buy with mid price family friendly ICE cars and approximately four times cheaper to run. The point being they are now an attrractive package all things considered and sales have increased recently. Plenty of studies show the planet does have enough raw materials for the transition.

Solar and Wind are now providing much lower cost power than fossil fuels (refer to the Lazard energy analysis available free online) although as we need to build storage costs will probably go back to where fossil fuel costs have been.

In my view nuclear power has its place because its clean zero carbon energy, but there isnt enough uranium to power the world entirely by nuclear power for significant lengths of time. Remember the uranium gets pretty much used up and cant be recycled as well as the materials used to make solar and wind farms. And building nuclear power stations is a painfully slow process. So nuclear power can only be part of the solution at best. Fusion power might be a good long term solution but is still decades away despite some recent advances.

Gas where I live does provide relatively low cost cooking and heating. For people very dependent on gas the transition to things like heat pumps would be expensive for them. This is an area where the government will have to assist people with the costs, and it seems that America is doing this given other articles on this website.

For all those reasons I strongly support the move to zero carbon energy with renewables as the main component of that, and I strongly support electrified transport, perhaps with some PHEV as well, although Im getting a bit doomy like Evan about how quickly we will do all this. However its better to at least try to make some progress than just bury our heads in the sand.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2

Rob Honeycutt at 07:14 AM on 24 January, 2023

Evan... Oh, we absolutely will get to net zero carbon emissions. There's no doubt about that. It's a little like flying an airplane. You're eventually going to land, it's just a matter of how you land.

My personal optimism comes from the fact that energy technologies are coming forth in rapid succession. Years back I remember wondering why so much money was being poured into off-shore wind when the cost was >$300/MW. Then, I watched turbines escalate in size and fall in cost and I went, "Ohhh..." Same is happening with grid storage now. There are certainly going to be physical constraints to each solution that comes to market, but fortunately lots of solutions are coming to market.

All (or nearly all) energy generation plants are going to be replaced over the coming 30+ years. It already makes little sense to invest in new FF plants. There are aspects of decarbonization that are going to be more tenatious problems to solve, but I know smart people are eager to work on those problem. My larger 30,000 ft level view concern is the general notion out there that nothing is being done, and it's just plain wrong. People have been working on this for decades and those efforts are clearly bearing fruit.

Regarding the Keeling Curve, I believe it's going to be a lagging indicator of what's happening, and figures related to the growth of renewables (which have been tragically underestimated) is more of a leading indicator.

The biggest wild card, in my mind, is human behavior. We're sure to see some pretty serious socio-political upheaval over the coming 30 years. My biggest concern is whether such disruptions will further delay progress right as we need to further accelerate progress.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2

Rob Honeycutt at 03:02 AM on 17 January, 2023

Eddie... @1: Human extinction is highly unlikely in any scenario. Extinctions (plural) of a broad range of wild species is ongoing and likely to worsen. Those extinctions have impacts on humanity. High emissions scenarios could produce a collapse of modern society as we know it. That would entail a great deal of human suffering. But actual human extinction isn't likely.

@3: The recent research on "warming in the pipeline" is suggesting this is incorrect. Once we get carbon emissions down to "net zero" (to the point where atmospheric concentrations stabilize) warming is expected to stop. Currently, with renewables scaling exponentially, we could get to net zero by mid-century. (Haufather)

Climate related impacts are certainly going to keep getting worse until we can get our emissions stabilized. Bringing them back down to, say 350ppm, isn't in the cards any time in the foreseeable future. Thus, I think the climate we have for quite a while is the one where we stabilize emissions. That's a very different world than the one most of us were born into.

...but, again, human extinction? No.

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

michael sweet at 08:18 AM on 9 January, 2023

Doug Cannon,

You have completely left out the CO2 from the manufacture of the vehicles. Your estimates of carbon emissions by electric vehicles is incorrect. Your calculations are in error. I do not have time to review your incorrect calculations and find more of your errors. It is a waste of time if you leave out major contributions to the problem. The reference at Carbon Brief, and the references that Rob Honeycutt linked at 39 all conclude that driving an EV reduces carbon pollution by a lot.

Your original post at 15 stated:

"It would be good to have an unbiased source determine whether “driving using electricity is cleaner than gasoline even with the current mix in the United States”.

Multiple different posters have shown that multiple unbiased sources conclude that "using electricity is cleaner than gasoline even with the current mix in the United States". It appears that you are completely closed minded to any data that disagrees with your incorrect calculations.

There are a great many proposed renewable energy projects awaiting approval. If they are approved in a reasonable time frame the amount of renewable energy will increase much faster than you project. Since fossil fuels have increased in cost, smart investors will install renewables to make more money. The EIA has always been grossly wrong with their estimations of future renewable installations.

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

Doug Cannon at 05:33 AM on 9 January, 2023

Michael Sweet #40
Your reference in Carbon Brief Is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.
The data regarding the hybrid compare closely to mine: 55mpg vs mine of 52mpg
(Go to unitjuggler websitewww.unitjuggler.com/convert-fuelconsumption-from-gperkmgasoline-to-mpg.html?v
and you can convert their 99grams/km equivalent at the tail pipe to 55mpg. I did it the long way using 20.3 lb CO2/gallon and 12,500 miles/year to get 2.2 metric tons CO2 per year. From the Carbon Brief reference it works out to just under 2.0 metric tons CO2 per year from a hybrid's exhaust).
The Carbon Brief data for EV's assigns an average mix of fuels in each geographic area to generate the charging electricity. That gets to the basic proposition I began with:
In the U.S with a constant demand over the next few decades, natural gas pegged at its optimum capacity factor and solar and wind operating at their maximum, as we add more solar and wind we can continue to reduce coal year after year.
But, if we add a demand from EV charging, some of the coal that would otherwise be reduced will have to continue in order to meet that demand. The EV charging demand is directly responsible for that coal useage and that leads to the 4.08 metric tons of CO2 resulting from an EV annually.
If you don't agree with the premise or the logic then you would have no reason to examine references And we'll just drop it
But if you agree you can do your own calculations;
1. eia Electric Power Monthly, Net Generation by Energy Source: Total (All Sectors) 2012-October 2022

www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01

2. eia U.S. Energy Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Energy Consumption:Electric Power Sector, December 14, 2022www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec11_9.pdf

From those two can compute metric tons of CO2/kwhr for coal at .001012
3. eia Annual Energy Outlook 2022. page 15
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2022_ReleasePresentation.pdf
Best case for renewables per eia.

Any other references I have merely relate to the digressions that have come up in this thread; not to the basic issue per above..

Renewable energy is too expensive

michael sweet at 08:12 AM on 8 January, 2023

Max Green,

This argument against renewables is very old. It was originally raised around 2005. Mark Jacobson and his team at Stanford did a detailed Peer-Reviewed analysis that showed that all the materials for a compeltely renewable energy system were available except for rare earth metals needed for the wind turbines. Since then, wind turbines have been developed that do not use rare earth elements in their turbines. In addition, the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels have become much more efficient that Jacobson estimated so that even less metal will be used. I note that large amounts of metal are now being used to drill for fossil fuels.

Reading your popuilar magazine article I see that the Simon Michaux reference is just to a seminar he presented, not even a conference poster. Seminars are sim[ply his opinion of things he has no experience in, unreviewed by anyone. He states that a lot of materials are needed. For one thing he calculates that:

"Globally, 15,635,478 Hornsdale-type stations will need to be built across the planet and connected to the power grid system just to meet a 4-week buffer system"

Jacobson et al 2022 in an extermely detailed, peer reviewed analysis, finds that only 4-8 hours of buffer system are required. Other energy researchers find similar results as Jacobson. Why should I pay attention to an unreviewed talk to graduate students by someone who has no experience with the topic and that calculates 150 times more storage than the peer reviewed literature?

If you look at all the materials needed for a total renewable energy system in the future there are issues with some materials. If you do the same calculation for a fossil system there are some materials that will run out. If you demand 100 times the required materials for the renewable system than are actually needed than it makes the renewable system look bad.

Simon Michaux is simply full of BS.

Renewable energy is too expensive

Max Green at 10:30 AM on 7 January, 2023

Hi guys,

I love your work here. I've been reading some really positive plans for renewables - and then came across this. Does anyone have a peer-reviewed response to Prof Simon Michaux? He is an Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland - with a PhD in mining engineering. Dr. Michaux's long-term work is on societal transformation toward a circular economy. Does the world have enough metal to replace oil? According to him - not even close.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/23/is-there-enough-metal-to-replace-oil/

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

Rob Honeycutt at 10:15 AM on 7 January, 2023

Doug @35... "One report last year listed 26 coal plants either closing early(21) or switching to gas(5)."

Cite that report, please.

"In their best case for renewables eia projects this growth in renewables can allow us to meet a flat demand with no added natural gas plants through 2050 and beyond."

Projections for renewables growth have been notoriously bad. Don't forget that renewables are now scaling exponentially.

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

Doug Cannon at 05:55 AM on 7 January, 2023

Regarding the idea that coal plant closures will be based on scheduled end of life retirements, that is not true. One report last year listed 26 coal plants either closing early(21) or switching to gas(5). The impetus is due to regulation and its associated cost, not necessarily CO2 regulation. The other reason for reduction in coal is the fracking revolution. To date the economics of gas over coal has been the major reason we can reduce coal.
But the other important reason is the addition of renewables which will continue to grow. In their best case for renewables eia projects this growth in renewables can allow us to meet a flat demand with no added natural gas plants through 2050 and beyond. Additionally, we can reduce use of coal by half and reduce annual CO2 emissions by 500 million metric tons. This has little to do with economics. It is driven by the desire to reduce CO2 emissions. It's actually costing more. The amortized cost per Mwhr for renewables is more than the reduction of the variable cost of existing coal plants. But it's worth it considering the climate change risk.
I'll repeat this one more time: Any added load during this period extends the use of coal. I suspect that if it weren't for the EV issue most people would accept this logic. If some bit coin miner wanted to add 20 terawatthours to mine coins I think most would be opposed because it would require extending coal that could otherwise be reduced. But for some reason there's an EV love affair that allows some to believe that the whole mix of electrial generation can somehow make things look better.
Sayonora.

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

Rob Honeycutt at 02:28 AM on 7 January, 2023

Doug @25... You state, "We plan to add 50 Twhrs of renewables during the year. What do we do? We cut back coal by the equivalent the of 50Twhrs of CO2. That's basically the model we've been following for years except that the addition of natural gas has allowed us to cut back coal even more."

Again here, you make erroneous assumptions. This is not "basically the model." As I stated in a previous thread, coal is phased out at end of life. The operating costs of a coal plant at the end of its useful life, after paying off all capital expenditures, is very low. Those plants continue to be used as long as the cost of fuel allows them to sell electricity competitively against other sources.

What's happening is, almost no *new* coal plants are being built. The phase out of coal is a function of scheduled facility retirements. The replacement of coal and NG is a function of investors building out renewables *instead of* coal and NG.

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

Rob Honeycutt at 02:16 AM on 7 January, 2023

Doug @29... I'm curious, why do you think the MPGe for a Tesla is 124, whereas a comparable ICEV sedan is gets about 30-35 MPG? And why do you think even a small PriusC gets only around 50 MPG.

I'm asking because everything I've read on this subject has been very clearly stating that EV's have lower carbon emissions regardless of the source of the electricity. Nothing I've read has ever stated that the better strategy to carbon emissions reductions would involve transitioning from ICE to hybrid and then later to EV's, rather than just trading straight to an EV on your next vehicle purchase.

Given the high efficiency of EV's and the fact that the grid is rapidly shifting to renewables, the simple logical thing to do is get an EV.

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

Doug Cannon at 12:34 PM on 6 January, 2023

One Planet...#21
To repeat one of your Paragraphs
“I live in Alberta, Canada. Several years ago I was looking into buying an EV. Tesla was the only EV with a decent range. I was thinking about being less harmful, not saving money. But I did not buy the Tesla. At the time, the Alberta electricity generation included a lot of coal generation. And the government intentions indicated coal might be burned until 2040. And the burning of natural gas was going to be the major replacement for coal. I did my homework and determined that the most efficient hybrid available at the time would produce far less harmful emissions than an EV powered by Alberta electricity.”
That's exactly the point. And it's what is happening in the U.S. The same logic applies in my support of hybrids.
Do a mind experiment: It's 2035 in the U.S. . We're producing electricity at the rate of 4800 terawatthours per year........1500 Twhrs from renewables at their resource constrained maximum, 1700 Twhrs from natural gas at it's optimum capacity factor of 86% and 700 Twhrs from coal The balance by nuclear, hydro, etc., essentially “base loaded”. The demand is constant. We plan to add 50 Twhrs of renewables during the year. What do we do? We cut back coal by the equivalent the of 50Twhrs of CO2. That's basically the model we've been following for years except that the addition of natural gas has allowed us to cut back coal even more. The eia
Now do another mind experiment with a twist. All factors are the same except the demand increases by 20 Twhrs due to the addition of charging for EV's. What do we do? We only cut back coal by 30 Twhrs because we need the other 20 Twhrs for EV charging. So we forego CO2 reduction by the equivalent of 20 Twhrs.
That CO2 from coal has to allocated to EV's because that is why we have to extend the use of coal.

In answer to your questions:
1. Yes. That is why I support a strategy that minimizes CO2 emissions which is the use of non plug-in hybrids in lieu of EV's until we get the electric industry cleaned up.
2. I'm not proposing that we prolong the use of fossil fuel. The reduction in the electricity sector will more than compensate for some continued useage in the transportation industry.
3. I understand it very clearly and that's why I'm willing to consider a quicker way to end fossil fuels regardless of the financial investment and ideological commitment to EV's.

Don’t get fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate

Doug Cannon at 02:46 AM on 6 January, 2023

It would be good to have an unbiased source determine whether “driving using electricity is cleaner than gasoline even with the current mix in the United States”. Data from eia supports the idea of non plug-in hybrids as being better for total CO2 emissions in the U.S.
The average modern hybrid gets 52mpg. Assuming an annual mileage of 12,500, that results in 2.22 metric tons of CO2 per year.

Growth in electricity demand by 2050 is projected to be less than 1% per year. At a best case scenario, solar and wind could represent 36% of electrical generation by then. As a result there would be no need to add any natural gas units during that period. The use of coal would be further reduced in half so that annual CO2 emisions would be reduced by a half billion metric tons. Dozens of coal plants will be retired during that period.

Solar and wind connected to the grid will be operated at the maximums of their resource-limited capacity regardless of any changes in electrical demand. In the short term (hours) natural gas units will be used for short term variations in demand but will remain fairly constant over time. In the longer term coal will be reduced as much as practical as renewables are added. Any increase in demand will simply slow the reduction of coal. So as EV demand for electricity increases, instead of reducing coal a corresponding amount, we will need some of the electricity that would otherwise be reduced.
(i.e. the added renewables, instead of replacing coal, would be needed to support EV charging)

The average usage for an EV is .2kwhr/km. A kwhr from coal produces .001012 metric tons.
Doing the math, an average EV results in 4.08 metric tons per year. Much worse than a hybrid which requires no new infrastructure for charging.

We could lie to ourselves and claim that the mix of fuels used to charge would be the actual 36/64 coal/gas split. But that doen't reflect reality. Even so, that would result in 2.48 metric tons per year.

So, at least for the next few decades, we would be better off encouraging non plug-in hybrids until the clean electricity issue is resolved. I'm not optimistic that will happen. There's a lot of money and lobbying for EV's. And fossil electricity is pretty cheap compared to gasoline in spite of the low efficiency of fossil/steam power plants.

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Rob Honeycutt at 03:30 AM on 29 December, 2022

[moved conversation from different thread]

Doug... Note when you read the the LCOE reports they use the term "resource-constrained." All sources are intermittent. Wind and solars are merely not "dispatchable" in the same manner.

Once again, use of the term "intermittent" is a canard because it doesn't fully describe the situation.

I've read estimates are that renewables (wind, water, solar, geothermal) in conjunction with about 10% penetration of storage could supply all energy needs. You don't need 50% penetration for storage with integrated grids due to the fact other renewable resources are dispatachable (water, geothermal).

You say, "...cutting the storage cost of $124.84/Mwhr in half is not enough" but I would suggest that is a baseless assertion when already peaker plants functionally perform the same task and are a critical part of the energy mix at virtually the same levelized cost factor.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Rob Honeycutt at 02:53 AM on 29 December, 2022

Doug... Note when you read the the LCOE reports they use the term "resource-constrained." All sources are intermittent. Wind and solars are merely not "dispatchable" in the same manner.

Once again, use of the term "intermittent" is a canard because it doesn't fully describe the situation.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Doug Cannon at 00:54 AM on 29 December, 2022

Rob @ 377

Intermittency of renewables is not a "canard" (unfounded rumor or story), it's an absolute fact that has to be dealt with.

re "we are not replacing existing FF facilities until the end of their useful life. Once a facility is built it will continue operation until retirement"

I totally agree. And that's all we can do until the intermittancy issue is solved. But cutting the storage cost of $124.84/Mwhr in half is not enough.

I think another strategy worth considering is to forget the battery storage approach for now. Find the optimum mix of renewables that results in an effective capacity factor of 50% (wind and solar downtimes don't totally overlap). Then build renewables up to half our electricity and use FF for the other half. It will take decades to get to that point. By then the storage cost issue may be resolved.

You're right though. This this is probably an issue for another thread.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Doug Cannon at 09:57 AM on 28 December, 2022

Rob #373, 374.

I apparently wasn't clear in my second paragraph. I'm referring to our current practice where there is always enough fossil or nuclear power available when solar or wind isn't available. This comes at no extra investment; it's sunk cost.

That scenario is the absolute best economic case for the use of renewables based on today's cost. We're eliminating the CO2 emmissions that would otherwise come from the replaced gas and it's costing us $7.61/Mwhr.

Try some other scenarios. I don't think you'll find any more favorable situation. Remember to account for the battery storage when needed.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Eclectic at 09:47 AM on 28 December, 2022

Not sure how it would enter the overall dollar calculation, but there may well be circumstances where there is value in a generation system that can give close-to-zero marginal cost (short or longer term). That would apply especially to solar installations, but slightly less so for wind.

There is that ~ and the difficulty of long-term LCOE estimations of "renewables" which are rapidly changing in technology & build costs.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Rob Honeycutt at 08:57 AM on 28 December, 2022

Doug... Yes, what you're comparing is the "up front capital costs" which all new facilities incur. The up front capital costs for FF is lower, but then you're burdened with supplying that facility with fuel for the lifetime of its existence. Whereas, the up front cost of renewables are higher but they require no fuel for their lifetime. This is exactly what LCOE is.

Investors do not base their decisions only on up front capital costs but rather on the ROI they will see over the lifetime of the project. Renewables also generally have a shorter lifespan for any given installation, but in that span of time the investor reaps the entire return faster and moves on to a new project well before they can see their full return on a dollar-for-dollar investment for a FF based facility.

This is why renewables are now scaling exponentially.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Doug Cannon at 02:04 AM on 28 December, 2022

To MA Rodger, re #369

Thanks for your input. That's about 40% less than my rough estimate of 200 million acres.

I think I can summarize the various replies to my query:

Yes, but it would be extremely difficult and we're too committed to renewables to focus elsewhere.

Signing off. Thanks to all.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Rob Honeycutt at 12:20 PM on 27 December, 2022

Doug @363... "It would take little or no up front capital investment to continue with FF."

This is also incorrect. All forms of generation have a useful lifetime and eventually need to be decommissioned and replaced. What is happening is much of the new added generation as well as replacement generation is being filled with some form of renewables. Renewables are currently scaling exponentially.

Moreover, the cost of FF sources is rising as renewables continue to fall in cost. The previous link to the EIA LCOE report this year includes the cost of grid level storage since those cost are now starting to fall below the levelized cost of peaker plants.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Rob Honeycutt at 12:09 PM on 27 December, 2022

Doug, your numbers on renewables are incorrect, I think because you're only looking at installation costs rather than levelized costs.

You can read the 2022 EIA LCOE Report here.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Doug Cannon at 08:00 AM on 27 December, 2022

RE: Rob Honeycutt 360

Here's my reference for known fossil fuel reserves

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/years-of-fossil-fuel-reserves-left

Estimates on lithium range from 20 years to 200 years. Would be interestedto know if you have some more definitive information.

Re: Rob Honeycutt 359

If we accept the original premise above, the earth is a net absorber of 17 Gigatons annually. The land having 11 Gigatons of net absorption. So more land vegetation should provide more net absorption. The .5% is the proportion (200 million acres) of total land required to absorb the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. I would be interested in a better analysis of this if you have one. That was the original question I presented.

Regarding your staement "it will cost less to transition to renewables than it would be to continue using FF's." That may be true for developing countries who have growing needs for power and no access to natural gas. But you shouldn't misunderstand staements that say renewables are cheaper than FF.

In the U.S. for example there is little need for added electrical power.

It would take little or no up front capital investment to continue with FF. Theoretically to totally replace The terrawatts of U.S. energy with solar and battery backup would require a $1.7trillion investment. That is no doubt not the way to proceed, but it's the cheapest renewable route.

Here's a link to eia 2020 cost of electric utilities.

https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2020.pdf

For large wind turbines: base cost $1265/kw plus 35.14/kw each year

For solar PV : base cost $1313/kw plus $15.25/kw each year

For combined cycle gas: base cost $958 plus $12.20/kw each year Plus $1700/Mwhr (my estimate).

It gets complicated when you have to take into account if solar and wind have a capcity factor of 25% and 35%. So as long as we continue to use renewables with fossil backup you can just amortize the cost of renewables over 30 years and compare to FF it replaces when they're operating. If you want to completely eliminate the FF backup you have to multiply the costs of renewables by 3 or 4 and add cost of battery backup.

I don't think we should argue the economics to justify renewables. We need to argue for the benefits.

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