Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Our old friend Tim Flannery, whose advice helped convince the Australian Government to squander billions of dollars on useless desalination plants, claims that renewables are a “huge economic opportunity”.
IT IS being hailed as the next big boom that has the potential to revolutionise our economy.
But unless Australia ramps up its commitment, experts warn it could pass us by.
A week before world leaders are set to meet in Paris to discuss setting agreed targets on reducing carbon emissions, the Climate Council of Australia has released a report which it says shows the world is in the midst of a dramatic energy revolution.
According to the research, clean energy investment grew 43 per cent globally, while the number of renewable energy jobs
nearly doubled to 7.7 million worldwide.
Climate Council chief councillor Tim Flannery said plummeting costs of renewables and the creation of jobs meant there was a strong economic case for scaling renewable energy that wasn’t clear in 2009.
“While in the past tackling climate change has been considered a moral imperative, it is now also a huge economic opportunity as countries make very significant commitments to growing renewable energy at the same time that the costs plummet,” Professor Flannery said.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/climate-council-report-finds-clean-energy-investment-grew-by-43-per-cent-over-six-years/news-story/2c6cef52c5de1b4527d3d0cf29342ba1
If costs are “plummeting”, why do renewables need such generous government support to prosper? Could it be that renewables are still ridiculously expensive, despite any alleged price drops?
Britain recently “reset” their energy policy, de-prioritising renewables. Many other European countries have forced renewable subsidy cuts, some of which well and truly left investors stranded.
In my opinion, recent history in the renewables sector more than demonstrates that it is pretty risky investing in a business, whose profitability is wholly dependent on the fickle whims of politicians.
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“Plummeting costs” translation: Wildly expensive, but may become economically viable, someday.
“Plummeting Costs” = “Other people’s money”
Exactly!
Scep good soul –
“Plummeting Costs” = “Other people’s money”
“Plummeting Costs” = “Shed Loads of Other people’s money”
All clarified.
Auto
“Plummeting Costs” = “Shed Loads of Other people’s money”
—————-
Taken at gunpoint from you, by the government and given to the well- connected.
http://sunelec.com/pv-systems/grid-tie-systems/20kw-complete-grid-tie-system.html
20 KW Grid-Tie system,
Suntech “A” Grade 280W Module -24V USA Grade
A
2 SB 10000TLUS-12 Grid-Tie Inverter – 10,000 Watts
– 208/240V-60Hz – with arc-fault protection
4 MidNite Solar 600V Surge Protector Device
(MNSPD) is a Type 1 device per UL1449 rev3.
Protection for gridtie PV combiners and inverter
input circuits.
6 PV OUTPUT – MC4 MALE & FEMALE 100FT
6 Touch Safe Fuse Holder
6 15A 600VDC Fuse
2 Midnight Solar MNPV6 Combiner box
$19,958 — cash price before any subsidies
That’s right — under $1 Watt for the entire system, not just panels — about 30- 50 cents a watt to install ($6K – $10K)
panels are as low as 48 cents per watt http://www.sunelec.com
Now all you need is 24 hour sunshine, 365 day a year, and YOU’RE A WINNER!
Cool! So for $30K, I can have a 20 kW system… I live in Ventura, CA where we have ~280 days a year of sun so perfect for solar. Of course, power is $0.15/kWh, and my consumption is around 10 kWh per day. So my daily cost is $1.50. With an investment of $30,000 I would have it paid off in about 20,000 days – about 55 years.
What a deal!
A 15A 600V/DC fuse in a “Touch Safe Fuse Holder”? WTF is a touch safe fuse holder? Fuse *BOX* maybe, but touch/short the terminals either side of that 15A 600V/DC fuse and see what happens. Too funny…simply too funny!
Hello Karl, could you add to the quote the cost of a suitable battery bank
I tried but I don’t see the price of the required batteries in that price list. My costing put them around $40,000 with an estimated lifetime of about 10 years. Include the hazardous waste disposal cost and the (always the most expensive bit) additional insurance premium for having those vats of sulphuric acid around my home, and cost have just risen beyond my means.
Even if solar panel arrays and associated converters and inverters are cost effective, they only account for a minority portion of the cost of an off-grid home solar system.
Karl’s point is valid and it’s a point I’ve made before here.
Solar prices keep decreasing and will continue to do so.
Subsides reduce the cost significantly (whether you agree with them or not).
A 20KW system gets you about 120kWh per day, while the average residence uses only about 30kWh per day. So a 5kW system is more appropriate, but still oversize assuming most people are switching to much more efficient LED lighting and appliances.
With a Grid Tied system you don’t need batteries, you use grid power at night and feed excess power into the grid during the day which helps run businesses (and keeps those Peaker Plants from running…). The goal isn’t to produce every electron you use onsite, it is to reduce the use of Grid power overall, and even save some money.
Greg, even with a smaller system at, say $10,000, and our high-priced electricity here in New England (19 cents/kWh), at our current usage of 900 kWh/month, it would take some 5 years to pay it off, assuming no grid costs. But of course the sun doesn’t shine here every day, and in the winter the days are short, and the roofs are often snow-covered. . . So maybe double the break-even time, and by then you’ve got to start replacing components, and you’ve got to factor in some maintenance (I’ve heard roof shingles can rot under solar panels), so where’s the gain? I wouldn’t mind going off-grid, but not with increased cost and hassle.
/Mr Lynn
Yes, the details vary but virtually free electricity after 5 or 10 years for 20 or so years interesting. Incentives and low cost loans help too.
Works better in sunny CA than in NH but it still works.
Costs will continue to decrease so no rush.
Don’t forget, your electricity costs will continue to rise in direct proportion to the amount of RE added to the system. This is because the reliable hot standby (provided by coal, oil, gas, nuke, hydro) must also increase.
TANSTAAFL.
Multiply by 4 to 6 to get a full day’s worth of electricity. Then add a battery pack to give 24 hours of electricity. Then add a back-up generator for days with no or reduced sun. After a while the costs mount up.
BTW are you sure the makers of the cells are not being subsidized? Solyndra ring a bell?
7.7 million additional jobs to produce how much additional energy exactly?
Why invest at a crappy ROI and take risks when you can get guaranteed results backed by the government (and be seen as “saving the planet” to boot)?
What guarantee? The Greek experience was particularly painful for investors, when the Greek government slashed renewable tariffs, they made it retroactive.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/greece-brings-new-retroactive-measures-cuts-fit-by-30_100014491/#axzz3sUGDO2Rd
Spain slashed subsidies and because their courts said they couldn’t do it retrospectively, they simply introduced new taxes on the wind/solar installations to claw back the subsidies. Same thing at the end of the day but politically more savy.
If costs are plummeting, there is no need for subsidies. When renewables are available 24/7 reliably, and cheaper than coal and gas, who would not use them? When will we reach this promised land?
Only when the arguments are not expressed in absolutes. Ever heard of on-demand gas fired-CC turbines supporting low bidder renewable projects? It’s okay because the political advocates of renewable energy don’t get it either with their demonstration projects and cozy deals with the high cost players.
Why is it that the government, and particularly the WT Suppliers/Operators, never publish the total Wind Farm equivalent base load system’s costs, i.e. including:
1. the additional costs of the necessary GT standby units
2. the significant additional costs for GT’s running as standby’s to the WT’s at varying outputs and way off base load GT operational efficiencies,
3. the extensive additional and enhanced Power Distribution costs incurred connecting WT remote locations to the areas of actual Power Demand
This then gives the true cost of using renewables compared to existing base load PS’s such as GT’s and CFPS’s. What the WT Suppliers are still saying regarding their costs compared to fossil fuel plants and other base load systems is gross mis-selling and fraudulent. One can only hope that, sometime soon, the vulture compensation lawyers will realise there is a massive market out their of soon-to-be despaired and disgruntled buyers and investors in renewables, almost on a par with the banks’ PSI debacle.
That is, of course, if the Government took the sane decision to stop all Power Station subsidies, special tax breaks and guaranteed minimum prices.
The number of standby units specifically assigned to standby is None. No units have to be running as standby. There has to be capacity in the system, but that capacity is not a unit running on standby, it is a number of units adjusting from a lower output to a higher output.
An overgeneralization. Perhaps where you are, the installations are remote from the demand. Here in the Central US the conventional plants are located near the Cities, near the concentration of the load. They supply the rural areas and there are associated transmission costs transmitting that power out to the rural areas. The wind turbines are located in rural areas. The power they generate is fed into the same grid to be transmitted back to the cities, except that it is consumed in the rural areas before it gets back to the load center. Since the wind generated power is generated closer to the demand that consumes it: transmission loss is less. The transmission line and system would have to be there whether or not there is a wind turbine so its construction costs are irrelevant.
Dead wrong!
The transmission lines HAVE TO BE built over unneeded and extreme terrain – where there is NO other reason for lines nor distribution of that capacity! – and then they HAVE TO BE over-sized to account for the few hours per year that the wind turbines are actually producing rated power (about 3-6 percent). The rest of the time, when they produce an average of 18-23 percent capacity factor, these line sit UNUSED and are a waste of time, resources, energy, and money to build!
Further, the EXTREME cycles and number of startup and shutdowns are tearing the guts out of the gas turbines and steam turbines: These units are cracking pressure vessels, exhausts, supply pipes, and valves and casings due to the extreme wear and heat loads as they heat up and cool several times per day. Left to run, a turbine goes 7 years between major outages, and then they do NOT need rewelding and new cases and new exhaust manifolds.
Cycling as they run to “follow” the wind turbines and solar plants, means they crack open in less than two years, and all the pipes, valves, and blades are worn off and the coatings and seals destroyed. Result? More costs to repair, longer repair periods at more frequent intervals. Less power, more money.
Just what you want, right?
This study of the operating costs to the Western US electrical system induced by wind and solar:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/58798.pdf
places the cost of wear and tear on conventional plants due to cycling at $0.14 to $0.17 per MWh of electricity produced by wind and solar, This does not sound like the results of “tearing the guts out of the gas turbines and steam turbines:”
The cost above compare with a fuel cost savings of $28 /MWh generated.
Correct that: the range of cost is $0.14 to $0.67 per MWh
The maintenance of aircraft is very conservative. Parts are replaced when they are
TIMEXed. They aren’t allowed to get anywhere close to the breaking point. Dying because of an aircraft mechanical failure is one of the few things I don’t worry about.
Re jet engine life: that cycle life has to be planned for and (expensively) designed into the engine and is tracked with on board computers for maintenance purposes. I am guessing that the cycle life of gas turbines for electric generation had not planned on the cycles caused by renewable backup requirements. In addition, without actual experience, it would be difficult to design around estimated requirements. The life could be increased, once requirements are known, through addition of improved turbine blade and other materials, and more rugged sealing designs, but only at greater cost, which is just another cost not taken into account by “renewables”.
CB
+ a lot.
I, too, have a lot of confidence in airlines’ maintenance.
Flying – human error – may happen.
But Airlines are [to my regret] well ahead of shipping companies.
We are striving to learn, but because shipping is a low-entry-cost industry.
Airlines have a significant quality/security ‘hump’ to get over before you can offer even ‘Flights Round the Bay’.
Auto
Planning Engineer and did those calculations for a specific grid, Texas Ercot. Posted over at Judith Curry’s some months ago. Correctly calculated, CCGT costs about $52/MwH, wind about $126. So still over twice as expensive after decades of US subsidies.
Why is it that the government, and particularly the WT Suppliers/Operators, never publish the total Wind Farm equivalent base load system’s costs
Because
a) They are not engineers or good managers and don’t understand such things; nor are their political masters interested in the facts.
b) The sole purpose of these schemes is to stuff public money into the pockets of political cronies.
Who in the right mind would deliberately force up the price of energy? no one! Those doing this are doing it because they profit from it.
Cassandra, these are non-calculable items. They are indirect incurred by customers and competitors. It often includes effects far away from the original source.
You can’t compare fuel savings solely to additional wear and tear from cycling. It’s an inappropriate comparison, and I would have serious doubts about any financial analyst of mine that tried to do so. You must build up the total case to make the comparison, your comparison is ignorant at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
Second, if you are going to assert the plants are not on standby, then your fuel savings number is flawed. Benefits cases when comparing an operating/existing system must be done at the margin. You are using an average efficiency curve for generation when calculating the cost, as opposed to the marginal efficiency curve, which is closer to $16-20/MWh. Put into terms most consumers think about, that would be $0.016-0.020/kWh.
Renewable Energy: just run the numbers.
Here are real numbers from Europe, provided by Renewable Energy sources. Overall in capital costs almost 30 times more expensive and in Germany with its Energiewende a comparative capacity factor of ~13%.
For analysis of Renewable Energy performance and capacity factors quoted by Renewable Energy industry sources across Europe and see:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/european-renewable-energy-costs-and-performance-2014/
These capital and running cost comparisons strip out all the positive profitability effects of government regulation and subsidies that are being applied to Renewable Energy, those being the only things that still make Renewables a viable business proposition.
Accounting for the capacity factors, (the actual electrical output as compared to the Nameplate capacity of European Renewable installations is about 18% overall), as they are reported by the Renewable Industry, and combined with comparative costings from the US government Energy Information Administration, the overall capital cost of all European Renewable Energy installations (Solar and Wind Power) averages out at about €29billion / Gigawatt.
This amounts to at least 29 times the cost of a conventional gas-fired installation at about €1billion / Gigawatt.
That overall capital value accounting for the capacity factor applicable to Renewables at €29billion / Gigawatt is derived from the combination of:
Onshore Windpower ~€14.2 billion/GW
Offshore Windpower ~€41.4 billion/GW
On Grid Solar Power ~€48.5 billion/GW
According to Renewable Energy supporting sources by 2014 European Union countries had invested approximately €1 trillion, €1,000,000,000,000, in large scale Renewable Energy installations. This may well be an underestimate.
This expenditure has provided a nameplate electrical generating capacity of about 216 Gigawatts, nominally about ~22% of the total European generation needs of some 1000 Gigawatts.
But the actual measured output by 2014 reported by the Renewable Energy Industry sources has been equivalent to 38 Gigawatts or ~3.8% of Europe’s electricity requirement.
Accordingly the whole 1000 Gigawatt fleet of European electricity generation installations could have been replaced with dispatchable, lower capital cost Gas-fired installations for the €1trillion of capital costs already expended on Renewable Energy in Europe.
However Renewable Energy production is dependent on the seasons, local weather conditions and the rotation of the earth, day and night. The Renewable Energy contribution to the electricity supply grid is inevitably erratic, intermittent and non-dispatchable, (not necessarily available when needed). Renewable Energy is therefore much less useful than dispatchable sources of electricity, which can be engaged whenever necessary to match demand and maintain grid stability.
So that 3.8% Renewable Energy contribution to the grid is often not available when needed and obversely its mandatory use and feed-in obligations can cause major grid disruption if the Renewable Energy contribution is suddenly over abundant.
The Renewable Energy industry could not exist without the Government mandated subsidies and preferential tariffs on which it depends. Therefore it never be a truly viable business proposition
Viewed from the point of view of the engineering viability of a nation’s electrical grid, Renewable Energy would never be part of the generating mix without its Government mandate and Government market interference.
The burden of these additional Renewable costs is both imposed on consumers via the increase in their utility bills and the cost hugely damages the viability of European industries.
So the Green thinking especially in the UK in its enthusiasm to save the world from an indefinable but probably minimal threat in the distant future, will destroy Western civilisation long before the world fails from excessive overheating from CO2 emissions.
references:
EurObservER-Wind-Energy-Barometer-2015-EN-2.pdf
http://www.eurobserv-er.org/wind-energy-barometer-2015/
EurObservER-Photovoltaic-Barometer-2015-EN.pdf
http://www.eurobserv-er.org/photovoltaic-barometer-2015/
Cost comparisons are have been clearly made by the US EIA
US EIA electricity_generation.pdf 2015 Table 1
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com
November 25, 2015 at 12:31 pm
“number of startup and shutdowns are tearing the guts out of the gas turbines”
…
Keep that thought in mind the next time you are boarding an airplane powered by a gas turbine engine.
The airplane guys handle that by engine refurbishment ever 5K or 10K hours. Cursory checks of aircraft condition (no panels removed) every takeoff. Maintenance checks (panels removed) every 1,000 hours. In other words a LOT of maintenance activity. And the engines are designed for that service.
At least some of the current GTs are not designed for load following. If they have to load follow they break down sooner. And turbines with adjunct steam turbines like steady loads. Everything is more efficient then. So variable grid inputs lowers grid efficiency. Who could have seen that coming?
Once we have found the proverbial Pixie and ground him to dust.
Already has in many places. Where I live electricity rates are tiered and I pay between $0.12 and $0.35/kWh for mine (the more I use the higher rate I’m charged.) Lifetime cost of solar is around $0.12 per kWh and continuing to go down.
You probably missed:
“When renewables are available 24/7 reliably”
You are saying that the grid provides reliability. It does, until too much unreliables (mostly wind and solar) are added by mandates.
Yes, but we’re not there yet.
Besides, there is plenty of opportunity for smart appliance load shifting or if you really want Tesla style local storage.
The grid will adapt. There will always be a need for back generation, just as there is a need for Peaker plants today.
Renewables don’t have to provide all power, but every kilowatt they generate is a kilowatt not produced by other means.
So the takeaway is that we need never discuss this again. Its an economic energy source and we are all to face falling electrical costs from now on and into the foreseeable future.
The Paris conference need never be held the government can stop worrying about CO2 because it all over.
We will return to the falling cost of resource that has propelled the people of planet earth to the standard of living we all love, our children are saved.
And to cut of the next major “world disaster” with the help of cheap electricity and limitless saline water, the sea, we can make limitless fresh water. “A flock with a rock” solution not just “two birds with one stone”.
lets all sit in our deck chairs and watch this BS story unfold.
The standard saying in NZ is “Yeh right”.
Large scale solar is competitive today but it will go unnoticed as long as both sides over generalize the sector and even include it with wind. Such mistakes in the policy debate are still common in many countries, but the cost leaders will proceed where possible. But at some point such over generalized noise making will be silenced with results. The question is how much public money will be wasted on poor decisions in the absence of a closer look.
Yup large scale solar, in the form of plant life, is indeed competitive today.
We have no alternative.
Photovoltaic cells, not so much.
What use after dark?
Up here it is dark till 9am and sun down at 4pm, with low cloud for days, and it is not even solstice yet.
Yet my government is promoting solar.
Answer: Standby gas plants. In case you have not noticed, global LNG prices are in decline after China’s economy slowed and global supply ramped up. It took time on the supply side because LNG facilities are so expensive for the big ones and NG is limited to regional markets without them. As for large scale solar, it just takes some due diligence to figure it out.
http://investors.sunpower.com/events.cfm
http://investor.firstsolar.com/
So build the gas plants and forget the mostly useless solar.
Unfortunately no one wants to build gas stations since the market has become hopelessly by the subsidies given to renewables.
Energy companies have to buy renewable energy (wind and solar0 when available and pay these providers the agreed high strike rate. The net result of this is that a gas powered generator can only sell its output for about 75% of the time. However, like any business, the profit is not made on the first 75% of sales but usually on the last 10 to 15% of sales.
This means that unless s subsidy is given to the operator to build the gas station and/or unless he is allowed to sell the output when it is needed 9ie., for about 75% of the time) at a high rate to balance out the fact that he is not selling energy for 25% of the time, the gas powered station is not viable.
In the UK we have not built a gas powered generating station for about 5 years, and the government has put out tenders for the building and commissioning of about 6 or so such stations, but no one is responding. No one wants to build a gas powered station, and that is entirely due to the twisted nature the market created by subsidies being paid for wind, solar and nuclear, and the high strike price which is being paid for energy supplied by these means, and the fact that energy companies are mandated to take renewable energy in preference to fossil fuel generated energy when renewable energy is available.
No renewable will ever be competitive with fossil fuel energy since renewable energy is not despatchable and requires backup thereby meaning that one has to pay for two sets of plant not one. As regards solar pvr, whilst the price of panels has come down, the panel is only a small part of the over all installation cost,
RG, no it is not when correctly calculated, even using the low low prices of 2015. See guest post Solar grid parity over at Climate Etc for all the details. You forgot (a) insolation varies with latitude and (b) night.
Distributed home solar IS competitive — even without subsidy.
A 20KW grid-tie system costs $20K plus $6-10K to install for a total of $26,000 – $30,000 without any subsidy
http://sunelec.com/pv-systems/grid-tie-systems/20kw-complete-grid-tie-system.html
For Dallas TX, said system will produce 30.3 MWh per year — with a 25 year UL rating
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ calculates solar insolation based on actual records
The AVERAGE cost of electricity in DFW is 12.5 cents per KWh not counting taxes etc
http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/blsap/APUA31672610
— so the system pays for itself in 8 years without subsidy, not counting any rate hikes, nor the normal interest deduction for any home improvement
Karl, you shouldn’t be using the retail price of electricity in your calculations for ROI. That’s a huge subsidy that will have to go away at some point – utilities just can’t afford it and many places that had it in the past are reducing or eliminating it. Use the wholesale cost of electricity. Depending on your area, it doubles to triples your payback time.
Karl -are you sure it is a price without subsidy? I tried to order it; can not be done online; only through a sales engineer.
Karl, are those panels damaging hail proof? I was in Dallas when many cars, houses and planes were damaged by hail. Seems a not infrequent occurrence in Texas.
@ur momisugly Curious — that is the price from sunelec — any subsidies are actually TAX Credits from the State or Federal Govt. – which makes it cheaper
@ur momisugly Billy — Homeowners insurance will cover it — it is par of your home — BTW an equity line of credit means you get to deduct the interest
@ur momisugly Arsten The retail price is what you pay — it is the ONLY accurate way to determine time to payback
Indeed , “renewables” have proven to be a magnificent “investment opportunity” for the politically well connected to use the power of government to rob the poor.
Ontario, Spain,Britain,USA the song remains the same.
The results are uniform, utility customers are forced to pay extra costs and fees imposed by our kleptocrats upon the power providers.
Some of these Utilities have tried to “buy in” to these orchestrated theft schemes, hoping to protect their shareholders.
As every business person knows, businesses pay no taxes.
If a business fails to pass these costs on to their customers, then that business soon disappears.
The Utility customer has no choice, they are trapped in a crony capitalism monopoly.
Of course the law of unintended consequences does kick in, at current oil prices , installing your own diesel genset(Ignoring legislation forbidding same) is rapidly becoming competitive with the jacked up price per kWatt/h.
Even a modest battery bank, inverters and a 7.5 -10 kWatt genet are practical for most.
Most battery users get a very quick education of the power required to perform a proper charge cycle.
Wind and solar just don’t cut it.
The lesson with respect to the cost of government controlled electricity should be obvious.
If you want a shoddy product, unreliable service and shortages..
Just let bureaucrats run it.
Look at the national grid, you may feel the need to buy a generator for your home.
Renewable energy is a giant cash grab, always has been. When the company goes bankrupt (ala Solyndra) the company executives walk away with their millions. Nice work if you can get it…personal profit, public risk.
The reason large utilities don’t just go with all CC gas plants is the long planning horizons involved. Over a 25 to 35 year planning period gas prices could add risk to installed capacity and rates. Some diversification is needed for both base load and peaking power assets. This is similar to diversification in a large investment portfolio.
That is not the reason at all… At least not in the US where the long term price is expected to be very stable, and total grid demand is flat to falling. Current power construction decisions are about replacement case economics.
When considering replacement case, the fuel costs are such a small part of total power costs that you are just better off maintaining your inefficient, old system than you are replacing it with a brand new CC gas plant or solar for that matter.
Cash drives business decisions. In the case of new plants, your cost savings have to overcome the fact that the old plant already exists. Too many people forget this when when making the comparison or talk about how fast the total US power portfolio can roll over to renewables (short of government mandate.)
Spain had a massive drive towards renewables, particularly solar, and now once taxes are taken into account it has the 2nd or 3rd most expensive electricity in Europe. A disaster for the ordinary citizen.
They also have a desalination plant about 1/2 mile from where I am typing this. In the nine years we have had a house here it has never been needed. It proudly displays the EU logo;ring of 28 yellow stars on a blue background the symbol for waste and incompetence
Andrew: –
“ring of 28 yellow stars on a blue background the symbol for waste and incompetence”
“ring of 28 yellow stars on a blue background the symbol for graft, waste and incompetence”
I trust you are happy with my minor rewording.
Auto
PS – is the twelve star version the true graft symbol??
Speaking of desalination plants that aren’t needed. The $1-billion desalination plant that is set to go online next month in Carlsbad, CA also isn’t needed. While California is in a drought, the service area for the new plant has a water surplus.
While the California Governor has a mandatory 25% water reduction in effect, the Mayor of Carlsbad has said “we have more water than we can use” and that is before the plant comes online. What a sad twist of irony that the plant would get built in the one part of the state where is isn’t needed.
It’s all going swimmingly well for renewables in Spain:
Abengoa, the Spanish renewables company, announced the start of insolvency proceedings on Wednesday, sending shares in Spanish banks tumbling on concerns that the country’s lenders may be left with heavy losses. A possible default would likely count as the largest bankruptcy in Spanish history.
http://www.thegwpf.com/stranded-assets-renewables-group-faces-largest-bankruptcy-in-spanish-history/
Richard Verney at 11:06
I agree with your comments but don’t quite understand what you mean by: “No renewable will ever be competitive with fossil fuel energy since renewable energy is not despatchable…”. What does despatchable mean in this context?
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but I understand “despatchable” to mean, available when you want it.
That is the way I understood it also.
Available on demand ??
Correct. Dispatchable means available on demand. Unless you add a significant amount of chemical storage, renewables are not available on demand.
The investors are now howling in the UK. Feed in rates have been slashed and the new energy secretary has said renewables operators must pay for the supply problems they impose. She also called for large scale investment in gas power stations
Yes, all at our expense. And the EPA is strangely proud that renewables create more jobs per unit w/o considering exactly what that means. More jobs/unit = higher costs/unit. https://twitter.com/4TimesAYear/status/669434590688358400
Clean Energy Investment growth of 43%, over the last six years just means that there are more suckers born every minute. While the index on each major exchange has grown at double digit rates over the last six years the 3 largest EFT’s for “ecologically sound investments” have been double digit negatives. What it suggests is that enough people believe this is the “next big thing” to be willing to keep money flowing into it. Of course a lot of people thought the the … Internet, Enron, Mortgage backed Securities, … (your shame investment here), was the next big thing
one company that has done very well is Vestas. The share has doubled over the past year or so.
Bre-X Minerals Ltd.
Bre-X Minerals the biggest mining scandal of all time. At least they didn’t have their hand out for subsidies. 😉
An old geologist warned me that it had to be a scam and he was right. It should have been obvious to many people and yet nobody cried a warning until it was too late. It’s like CAGW. Anybody with any sense knows it’s crap but the-powers-that-be have drunk the Kool Aid.
Why do I keep hearing Barrie Harrop in the background?
tinnitus,
from reading too many clueless and abusive harropeon comments.
It seems to me the only thing “renewable” about renewables is way they keep making new excuses to keep financing them and expanding them with revenue from tax payers despite their demonstrated failures as sound financial investments. If in fact they were promising direct funding from the treasury would not be necessary.
“Renewable” refers to the renewing of government money each year.
“Renewable” means that no matter how many times economics kills it, ‘gubment funds raise it from the dead. Think “Zombie Plants” that eat your tax and ratepayer dollars.
not at all, all the major components of your system will need to be renewed, some more than once, to maintain any sort of efficiency over the claimed 25 year life span.of the equipment.
Despite all the hoopla and the countless billions spent, renewables supply a whopping 0.4 percent of the world’s energy production at present. That means that 99.6 percent still comes from conventional non-renewables, a figure that is even larger than the 97 percent scientific concensus on climate change.
I refuse to recycle all that crap that most sheeple thoughtlessly put out in blue bins every couple of weeks where I live. It’s bullshit. Instead of burying our rubbish we’re burying money. Of course in return for this massive waste of money it creates Green jobs. Whoopee.
https://youtu.be/SC3CZBDz7Wg
I think someone mentioned this but, wouldn’t it make more sense to throw paper in the landfill to sequester the Carbon? Rather than hauling it away(diesel) and using chemicals and power to turn it back into paper?
If the whole idea is to remove CO2 from that atmosphere, planting more trees and burying the waste makes more sense.
I recently read an article indicating that a stack of 100 year old newspapers, books, etc, recovered from a land fill that was being re-graded for reuse were still in good enough condition to read after drying out. Seems like a fairly good and inexpensive method to sequester carbon.
As CO2 is plant food and is greening our planet, any thought toward sequestering carbon is patently stupid. CO2 or any gas in the atmosphere at any concentration cannot warm the climate in any detectable way. We need all the CO2 we can get as we are heading into a solar minimum if not the glaciation; i.e., we need the food.
I read here http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/10/are-we-recycling-too-much-of-ourtrash/ that aluminium and paper are worth recycling, other stuff not so much. I should add by ‘recycling’ I mean in the modern sense of reprocessing as opposed to the ‘old fashioned’ method – reusing things like glass jars over and over until you break them 😉
I noticed when recycling was originally introduced in my council area it was promoted as a cost benefit to the council, with recyclables adding to the bottom line as they were sold for profit – this turned out a bit of a fudge as it seems the council was actually making a profit by charging other councils who did not have recycling facilities to process their waste. Now, when they all have their own rubbish processing plants, I notice my council budget lists recycling services as a cost – of around $700 per household per year.
Another way to interpret this or any ‘cost’ is wasted energy expended over and above the service or product provided. So, instead of saving resources, it seems recycling is wasting a huge amount of money, fuel, labor and time .. (can I say morons? I really want to say morons..)
At my house we separate trash into “burnable” and “unburnable”.
I too refuse. We have plastic/metal/glass and a paper bin, plus kitchen scraps are supposed to go in a green bin. I say just throw all combustibles in an incinerator
In my neck of the woods, more than 95% of the recycling trucks (that you pay extra to participate in) head directly to the dump. There is simply not enough demand for most recyclable materials to expand the recycling operations to handle the load of recyclables people put out.
Don’t worry, it’s only time until we mine our dumps for all of the metals and valuable materials we throw away!
Fair enough. Then eliminate the tax subsidies, govt. demonstration projects, rooftop solar, wind projects lacking adequate transmission lines, etc. etc. Do it at the end of 2016 so no projects under development and already financed are impacted. Then let’s see what happens. I’ll bet the low cost producers continue to expand without all the policy noise making and without the other 80 percent of the sector that was never going to be cost competitive. The winners are there and the private finance is ready to go also. Let’s do it. These industry leaders would be turning out more rated capacity after a few years anyway. The subsidy bottom feeders will be forgotten and so will the arguments for keeping them.
Economist Bastiat would advise us to consider all the ramifications of any green project using the coercive power of the state. I would point out that if you keep government out of it entirely, then the investment money will flow to the best use and we will always have plenty of inexpensive power.
Or, in other words, if the state has to steal tax dollars to fund the green projects — they will be a boondoggle.
I get lots of spam like that Flannery flim flam. Invest now in C R A P, its set to go up…
Yeah, right.
And all of those reservoirs are forever empty, and more desalinators are needed, and invest now in Flannery witless wisdoms.
hmm and that hotrock plant in inland aus that flimflam got shitloads of funding for
that failed abjectly?
costing taxpayers
curious no one remebers HE was the mouth pushing it bigtime
and had shares etc…
“BRITAIN’S green energy barons are getting huge taxpayer subsidies to install diesel generators — exactly the kind of polluting energy source their wind and solar farms are meant to replace. ”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/go-green-get-diesel/
It’s all about the money
It is all about the money for the green energy barons. It is all about keeping the grid secure otherwise. With what seems to be cold months ahead in GB with fluctuating efficiency’s from wind and solar, it seems there has been too many eggs placed in the renewable basket and the diesels are the quickest fix. This late in the game where else are you to generate enough to secure the grid during cold calm cloudy days?
Diesel generators are more somewhat less expensive the what they are backup up, but hugely expensive compared to coals, gas, nuclear and hydro. Hydro the one renewable that pay and the one greens call evil. Greens are simply math inhibited people used by robber barons who can do the math, and figure how to get the consumer money into their pockets with the least amount of work and effort. God one cannot fix stupid.
Eric said,
“In my opinion, recent history in the renewables sector more than demonstrates that it is pretty risky investing in a business, whose profitability is wholly dependent on the fickle whims of politicians.”
That’s pretty close to how my investment broker put it when I asked him to assure me that I was not unknowingly investing in them. He said that’s all in a very high risk/earnings profile which I am not into.
It also means that the politicians who dictate the subsidies are ‘insiders’ and can get themselves and their friends safely in and out of the pinwheel and mirror debacle, before it collapses on the heels of the disintegrating CO2 guilt meme.
Yes
Eric, a great headline, thank you. Much more attractive than a bank robbery.
Here’s am in depth analysis from the World Energy Council.
From which we can learn that, for example, offshore wind energy costs (LCOE) rose over the four years 2009 – 2013.
Now, this is not a skeptical publication by any means.
And what this tells me, is that if correct, then hurling money at offshore wind has remarkably made it MORE expensive as company plunder the limitless resource that exists in government coffers.
This, whilst the progressive line is consistently that subsidies will “prime the pump” and bring about a fall in costs. Maybe efficiency has risen and costs have fallen, but if so then the saving is not being passed on.
Obviously Solar PV costs have fallen, but the fall in costs per watt was already occurring prior to government subsidies. AND similar tech such as LED lighting has also followed the same curve without any significant govt. role.
Anyway, the best summary of cost analysis that I have so far encountered and worth a look:
https://www.worldenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/WEC_J1143_CostofTECHNOLOGIES_021013_WEB_Final.pdf
Excellent. COP 21 can be cancelled and no further meetings are needed on the topic.
second
Nice to be among the Marge Simpsons of the world here at WUWT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail
BTW, even the liberal cheerleaders here in Canada aren’t buying the Liberal government’s non-announcement:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/11/25/canadian-climate-change-love-in-produced-less-than-meets-the-eye-walkom.html
Who is that skinny guy standing next to Jr. With the glasses and big phony smile?
Geeze, why did you make me look ?? That is one nasty looking piece of #@ur momisugly$%^
Why dont governments challenge these renewable estimates but shutting of all subsidies. Its not difficult. Cut them and wait for the screams.
The people who receive the subsidies are, as John Robertson pointed out, hand-in-glove with the governments. If the subsides get shut off, the government in question will get a lot of stick from the politically well-connected. They will use their media power publicly, and other pressures privately.
Plus academia, who would express their concern about the potential withdrawal of “free money” by creating a huge swathe of new “peer reviewed” bullcrap in order to convince govt. to reinstate the bonanza.
At least in the US, when the government decides to adopt a certain technology that becomes the standard for the next decade-plus. In some case they may keep the same validated technology for 20+ years.
If the technology is truly racing ahead, the absolute last thing we should want governments to do is to buy into tech that will be obsolete before it’s fully adopted, then will be the institutionalized technology for another decade while they consider whether or how to replace it.
The government may think it has a limitless credit card, but it isn’t nimble and doesn’t adapt very well to changing technology.
The responsible and wise thing to do would be to let the technology race forward, and then when it’s mature to decide whether it makes sense for government to buy into it.
In 2006 he was nuclear spruiker (“only nuclear power can save us”), in 2007 it was a definite ‘no’ to nuclear but geothermal was “potentially have enough embedded energy in them to run the Australian economy for the best part of a century” in which he was allegedly an investor (the company shares collapsed), in 2008 biochar “may represent the single most important initiative for humanity’s environmental future” then ‘clean coal’.
Flannery’s endorsement is usually the kiss of death.
Is Flannery available for birthdays and other animations?
Up subsidies to Fossil Fuels!!!…$5 trillion is a starvation diet for people of their appetite
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-fuel-subsidies-cost-5-trillion-annually-and-worsen-pollution/
Socialist ecoloon IMF crap echoed by socialist ecoloon SciAm. Boring, predictable, and predictably boring.
Does intelligent life exist in either ecoloon socialist bodies (IMF, UN…) and the echo-chamber medias? Should ESA launch probes? Will we ever know?
Well, as PJ O’Rourke says, if you want to chart where riots are going to break out, just look were the IMF and the World Bank were 6 months ago.
“just look were the IMF and the World Bank were 6 months ago.”
Such correlation is the weakest level of evidence.
Although I can’t be bothered to dig into IMF crap, I could manage to read the cover:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15105.pdf
But then it seems that SciAm disagrees with IMF about the status IMF working papers:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-fuel-subsidies-cost-5-trillion-annually-and-worsen-pollution/
So which one is it? It this crap officially IMF’s opinion?
I get the idea that we will have a version of the “don’t call yourself a scientific Nobel laureate just because a group you played a very minor role in won a Nobel Peace Prize” clarification in 3…2…1…
@CaligulaJones
I have zero idea what you are trying to say.
Just to be clear – that made up figure of $5 trillion includes such fantasy as a precise figure for the cost imposed by the “global warming” caused by fossil fuels.
With no clear and precise attribution, then this is pure nonsense.
AND – not paying a hidden (and some would say, unreal) externality IS NOT A SUBSIDY.
These fools need to look up what subsidy means.
There is much more that could be said but in short – it is deeply moronic and intentionally deceptive.
“Externality” can’t be computed and isn’t even well defined, well no alternate scenario is described.
To define (not compute) fossil fuel “externalities” you’d have to imagine a fossil free society, other things (which ones?) being equal.
Nonsense at its finest.
Most “all other things equal” are pure nonsense, the variables are NOT independent.
Precisely s-t.
Let’s imagine that a similar “study” was conducted to show that the food industry was in receipt of “subsidies”.
Then back in the 1980’s when it was believed that fat was causing heart disease, then the externality of additional heart disease would be held to be a “subsidy” for producers of fatty meat.
Nowadays it would be believed to be a “subsidy” for sugar.
So, whilst playing this fast and loose with the facts and definitions you can basically make up any figure that you like and call it a “subsidy”.
Only the most gullible village idiot would fall for this sort of imbecilic crap.
‘you can basically make up any figure that you like and call it a “subsidy”.’
Zactly.
“Since we are not charging you $5T for carbon tax, which we could, it is a $5T subsidy.”
$7T works equally well.
Village Idiot giving the oil companies a tax break is not a subsidy. It is not a subsidy when you are allowed to keep your own money. It is a subsidy when the government gives you taxpayers money. Like they do for renewable power sources.
You are correct, but recall that the collectivist Village Idiot thinks that all money and property belongs to the state — hence all the big oil company’s revenue already belongs to the state. The state and its minions (like the village idiot) are a gang of thieves writ large.
I agree 100 % ….you’re the village idiot !!!!
I expect that the titular “village idiot” was intended to be ironic.
Now that he/she is revealed, in reality, to be the village idiot, then any intended irony is itself quite ironic!!
See my post above. That IMF figure includes a totally absurd calculation of the cost of “global warming” caused by fossil fuels.
Apparently, fossil fuels have no positive externality – i.e. they do nothing of benefit to anyone.
So we were all happier in the stone age.
A level of stupid that is barely worthy of reasoned discussion.
Ah yes, the man who brought us desal plants which cost the Australian public billions to build, millions each day in operating commitments regardless of output, yet sit idle because, much to Flannery’s shame, Australian dams are full. Flannery’s own renewables venture likewise went bust, also at major expense to the Australian public. Yet this environmental oracle continues the failed sermon, oblivious to reality, beckoned by the Australian media: “Oh tell us more, Tim…”
Any idea, FD, whether Tim Flannery is incompetent, or just lies?
No no, he is a competent liar proven in fact.
Show me a renewable that can stand the test of the open market without subsidies, and you will find a viable investment. Still looking from these shoes with no success. Just like ethanol, probematic and wasteful.
Distributed home solar IS competitive — even without subsidy.
A 20KW grid-tie system costs $20K plus $6-10K to install for a total of $26,000 – $30,000 without any subsidy
http://sunelec.com/pv-systems/grid-tie-systems/20kw-complete-grid-tie-system.html
For Dallas TX, said system will produce 30.3 MWh per year — with a 25 year UL rating
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ calculates solar insolation based on actual records
The AVERAGE cost of electricity in DFW is 12.5 cents per KWh not counting taxes etc
http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/blsap/APUA31672610
— so the system pays for itself in 8 years without subsidy, not counting any rate hikes, nor the normal interest deduction for any home improvement
Didn’t we see the same post from Karl earlier? What’s up Karl? You in on the taxpayer subsidies?
How about a total cost analysis with rare earth mining and waste disposal, decrease in efficiency, power used in production, and don’t forget the aluminum, etc.
Karl because the distributed solar is not despatchable the power generated by the solar is worse than useless. It’s very presence on the grid reduces the efficiency of the system and it’s erratic output leads to grid instability. A total waste of time and money.
If you are calculating your 12.5 cents per KWH as your recovered price for electricity generated in excess of your immediate consumption rate at the time of generation, then your calculation falls apart. Without subsidy, the price for that solar power would be much, much less, as you would only recover the spot price for wholesale generation at that exact time. That price could be even negative, meaning you would pay the power company to unload your system power when it is not needed.
In Ontario we are over supplied with electricity. Our provincial government has built a lot of wind generators and their agreement with the wind companies requires them to purchase the wind power whether it is needed or not. This means that when the wind is blowing we have to buy power at somewhere near $.55 per KWh and pay Quebec to take our excess power. My province spent 1.3 billion dollars on this stupidity last year and since they are still building more wind generators the waste will be worse next year. The only good news is that they cannot connect any more wind generators as they have exceeded the capacity of the grid network so it may be a while before the new generators go on-line.
@ur momisugly Matt grid tie is dispatchable — what are you talking about ? — if you produce more than you use at any instant — that current flows to the grid —
its useful to each homeowner — distributed power is inherently more stable than the Centralized Grid system today– and less susceptible to attack or blackout —
@ur momisugly Leonard The prices I quoted are without ANY SUBSIDY — subsidies only come in after installation — in the form of TAX credits from the State, Federal, or local Government.
@ur momisugly John you are incorrect– the 12.5 cents is the retail cost to buy normal residential electricity in DALLAS TX — the system produces 30,000 KWH per year — about 6000 Kwh more than the average home — meaning you have no electric bill which would normally be about $250-300 a month — I am not including any premiums for power sold back to the grid, or Renewable Energy Credits
Karl the fact that the solar installations randomly throw excess power to the grid or not in a sporadic fashion as random clouds block the sun is what makes the grid unstable. That is not in any way dispatchable power.
“distributed power is inherently more stable than the Centralized Grid system today– and less susceptible to attack or blackout”
Please entertain us about why you think so.