Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
News hot off the presses, the madness spreads …
UN calls for doubling renewable energy by 2030
(AFP) – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON — UN chief Ban Ki-moon made a call to double global consumption of renewable energy over the next two decades in order to ensure sustainable economic development.
“It’s possible if we show political leadership,” Ban said. … “We have to be very austere in using energy… We have to completely change our behavior, at home, at the office.”
Figure 1. US energy use, 2008. Click on image for larger view. SOURCE: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
Double our consumption of renewable energy by 2030 … what’s not to like?
Well, the first thing not to like is that renewable energy is intermittent. That means that if we add a million kilowatts of renewable energy generation, we also have to add a million kilowatts of conventional generators.
Second thing not to like is that renewable energy is expensive, typically around three times as expensive as fossil fuel. These first two things conspire to push the cost of power up, way up. Prices of electricity in California are double the prices in neighboring states because of this push for “renewables”.
More to the point, however, is the ludicrous size of what the Chief plans to do. Bear in mind that, as in California, the CO2 alarmists don’t see large-scale hydropower as “renewable” … don’t ask me why, I don’t understand it, but it’s supposed to be teh eeevil regarding CO2 … and as a result, few large hydro plants are under construction anywhere. So they’re not talking about doubling hydropower, that would be a crime in their world.
So the real reason not to like this plan is that we only get a trivial amount of energy from renewables. In the US, we get a tenth of one percent of our energy from solar, half a percent from wind, and a third of a percent from geothermal. Finally, we get 3.9% of our energy from biomass, mostly in industries that generate said biomass as a waste product. Total? A whacking great 4.8% of our energy comes from renewables.
If we double that over the next 18 years, we’ll increase the solar share to a resounding two tenths of a percent … and wind energy will go up to 1% …
Gosh, if we continue at that rate, with solar energy increasing by 0.09% every 18 years, solar will provide ten percent of the US energy by … let’s see, divide by 2, carry the 1 … well, by the year 4012.
10% solar energy by 4012 … that’s some goal there, Chief.
My main problem with the Moon Unit and his bizarro plans is that they are based on the idea that we need to decrease energy use by increasing the price of energy. They are doing that in Britain already, it’s called “fuel poverty”, and it causes old folks to shiver in the winter because they can’t afford to heat their houses. The fact that the Chief is advocating more expensive energy and thinks that reduced energy use is a path to “economic development” is just plain sick.
The opposite is true. We need to increase energy use, and to do that we need less expensive energy, particularly for the poor. Inexpensive energy is the best friend that the poor ever had. The UN’s Chief Moon-ki wants to increase energy prices. That increases prices for all products and services, because from food to clothing to medicine, everything contains energy. The Chief pretends to be a friend to the poor, but his actions do nothing but shackle the poor to a lifetime of energy poverty.
w.
PS—There are a some countries and societies (e.g. the Solomon Islands) that use 50% or more renewable energy, in the form of burning wood, sticks, twigs, and cattle dung for cooking and heating. This leads to indoor and outdoor pollution, lung disease, and eye problems, particularly affecting women. Having been in a number of those countries, I can assure you that the poor people living there would like nothing more than to get OFF of renewable energy … and Mr. Ki-moon is being willfully and criminally blind if he does not know that.
tinman says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:06 am
Thanks, tinman. Actually, “rejected energy” is a common term in the context of heat engines, it means the energy that is not used (“rejected”) by the heat engine.
Setting that aside, you are right that increases in efficiency are easier to achieve than new energy sources.
w.
Renewables are unsustainable
“Renewable” energy subsidies may sustain the jobs of lobbyists, activists, politicians, bureaucrats and politically connected companies. But they will kill millions of other people’s jobs.
http://www.cfact.org/a/1810/Unsustainable-cow-manure
“CO2 alarmists don’t see large-scale hydropower as “renewable” … don’t ask me why, I don’t understand it,”
That’s because they are not just CO2 alarmists, they are extreme environmentalists. Hydro = dams, dams = bad, therefore hydro = bad
tinman says:—— More than two-thirds of electricity generated is lost in transmission.
JK——————The major loss is in the thermal efficiency of the power plant (around 33%), not the transmission system. The are ways to increase efficience but they drive up the capital cost, so the usual practice is to calculate how much money to spend on efficiency to minimize total cost at an expected fuel price.
tinman says:——Let’s put the effort in greater efficiency ther rather than misguided and uninformed expansion of solar and other “renewables”.
JK——————Lets study that to see which would give the most bang for the buck.
Thanks
JK
Philip Bradley says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:28 am
I doubt if it is a “substantial proportion”. Most of the landfill-produced methane is used to generate electricity. Electricity forms some 10% of the biomass use.
Next, you say:
An interesting question. The answer usually given is that the biofuels take carbon from the air when they grow, and they return it to the air when they’re burnt. As a result, there’s no long-term change in the atmospheric CO2 level from burning them.
w.
PS—upon further research, I find this from the EIA:
So my estimate (10% for landfill methane) was quite close.
Philip Bradley, I believe that the largest biomass use for electricity generation is bagasse from sugar cane processing. Sugar mills need a lot of steam and it makes economical sense to put in a high pressure boiler, pass the steam through a steam turbine to generate power and use the lower pressure steam pass-out in the process. Do not know the situation in all the US states but in some countries governments have given incentatives such as accelerated depreciation to encourage older sugar mills to invest and put in new technology. Pulp & paper mills are in a similar situation. The lignin from wood pulping is burnt to raise steam. While it is possible to make some products from lignins the market is small and there would be lots of horrible sticky waste if it was not burnt. Plants producing wood product such as chipboard, Masonite, Formica etc do use woodwaste to produce steam. In Europe I understand that sorted garbage is regarded as biomass is burnt in incinerators which produce electricity (particularly Germany) (By the way in Europe tyres and various wastes are called recycables and are exempt from carbon dioxide emissions when bunrt in cement kilns- there are a few cement plants that produce electricity from steam in waste heat boilers. This is often added to biomass electricity production)
I am sure in Thailand, and some other countries rice husks are used for power production in rice mills. I would imagine that cotton waste is used in some of the southern US states at Cotton Gins.
Power production especially as part of process steam production is an economical decision to weigh up capital costs, operating costs and seasonal availability. Questions of local rural employment may help cause some governments to provide economic incentatives but as you say Philip B justification of biofuels is a bad idea for any other reason.particularly when CO2 emission is invoked.
James Bull says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:01 am
Maybe the power companies supplying the UN buildings should cut the power and the back up to show what will be the future with renewable s (don’t like that description) when it’s dark and the wind ain’t blowing.
It would be simpler just to ‘economize’ by powering down all the elevators and escalators in the UN building.
So Barks at Moon advocates doubling the amount of waste to be generated over the next two decades in order to save the planet?
But such sentiment is surpassed easily by those who wish to seem to be green. Like Australia’s QANTAS which massages the fantasies of renewable fuels from e.g. waste vegetable oils becoming a significant fuel source. (My take.)
There are several reasons to question the validity of the reasoning of Ban-Ki-moon. I will only say some words about REEs (Rare Earth Elements).
Electric motors need much REEs. A wind turbine contains about 100 kg neodymium!
The demand of REEs increased from 125,000 ton in 2008 to 137,000 ton in 2011. But especially prices have grown to unknown levels. While the market volume of raw materials in 2008 amounted to 2.4 billion euro, in 2011 it rose even to 27 billion dollar.
With the current consumption, REEs will be exhausted within 30 to 40 years!
This information can be found in the Flemish newspaper “De Tijd”, April 19, 2012 (Belgium).
One should also consider that the mining and processing of REEs has an enormous impact on the environment. The use of wind turbines seems to look as a green solution but the processing of REEs in wind turbines is very labour-intensive. The Chinese Society of Rare Earths estimates at the completion of refining one ton of rare elements, approximately 75 cubic meters of acidic waste water and about one ton of radioactive waste residue are produced. (Justin Paul, Gwenette Campbell, Investigating Rare Earth Element Mine Development in EPA Region 8 and Potential Environmental Impacts, August 15, 2011) The radioactive waste consists mainly of uranium and thorium.
I made a webpage on this subject : http://users.skynet.be/fc298377/EN_REE.htm
It seems obvious to me why they don’t consider hydroelectric renewable. The US has a significant amount of hydroelectric. That would be like giving the enemy an unfair advantage. We already use more renewables than most other nations ever could. It would also go against the wishes of other green activists who consider dams threats to endangered species. I suspect you knew that though.
In my previous comment one should read: “While the market volume of raw materials in 2008 amounted to 2.4 billion euro, in 2011 it rose even to 27 billion euro.” (Excuse me.)
The Swedish Royal Academy of Science today (April 22) published a forceful rejection of wind power in one of the Swedish National newspapers Svenska Dagbladet. They called wind power “expensive” and “useless” since Swedish energy production is already virtually fossil-free.
The EIA has landfill biomass at 11% of biomass, although that number includes biofuels. Excluding biofuels, which I assumed to be a separate category, landfill biomass is about 20% of the total biomass energy.
http://www.eia.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=biomass_home-basics-k.cfm
I’ve just noticed you have referenced the same source.
Don’t know why we let our old folks suffer in the cold. They don’t need power to heat their homes in winter. What they need is a couple of able bodied men to shovel some 255k snow into the old folks lounge rooms. The ‘heat’ from the 255k will be backradiated by the CO2 in their lounge room, increasing the temperature to a nice cardigan level of 288k just like the greenhouse hypothesis says should happen.
The math…240Wm2 from the lounge room floor + 140Wm2 back radiated from the CO2 in the room =390Wm2 = 288k.
Bill Tuttle says:
April 21, 2012 at 11:20 pm
Dollars to doughnut holes he doesn’t believe the pronoun “we” includes the pronoun “me”…
Why, of course he does’t. But he has created a United Nations Environment Programme Issue Management Group on Sustainability Management, isn’t that more than one could reasonably expect? If nothing else, the name alone is priceless…
What do the term “Rejected Energy” and “Energy Services” mean in the context of the illustration?
When will they start saying:
“… generates enough electricity to power one electric aluminum smelter”
rather than saying
“… generates enough electricity to power ten thousand homes”?
If I’m not mistaken, all major cultures in the past could only be ‘major’ because there was a surplus of energy. A poor hungry population is not capable to build a pyramid and spent more than 20 years to do so. If it was like this for the last 4000 years what has changed that today people think you can do it without a cheap surplus of energy.Energy poverty always brings unrest and revolutions. Maybe that’s what they want to happen.
I always wonder with this sort of discussion, how cellulose ethanol is classified. Is it considered to be renewable energy? If so, then I think the inclusion of the Poet/DSM plant now under construction is warranted. Admittedly, 20 million gallons a year is not much, but if the plant is economically viable, and it is being built entirley with private, not government, money, then 16 billion gallons a year is a disctinct possibility by 2020.
bill young says:
[April 22, 2012 at 1:51 am That’s because they are not just CO2 alarmists, they are extreme environmentalists. Hydro = dams, dams = bad, therefore hydro = bad]
Q. If an animal builds a dam for its own benefit is that natural?
A. If the animal is a beaver then it is natural, if the animal is a human then it is not natural.
Q. If an animal digs a watering hole its own benefit is that natural?
A. If the animal is an elephant then it is natural, if the animal is a human then it is not natural.
Q. If an animal kills another creature to feed itself and its group is that natural?
A. If the animal is a lion then it is natural, if the animal is a human then it is not natural.
Q. If an animal builds a trap in the wild to capture and kill another creature is that natural?
A. If the animal is a trap door spider then it is natural, if the animal is a human then it is not natural?
I think you see the pattern.
cementafriend says:
April 22, 2012 at 2:07 am
Philip Bradley, I believe that the largest biomass use for electricity generation is bagasse from sugar cane processing.
I’m not against biomass where it uses genuine waste products and makes economic sense. The problem is that introduce subsidies and you get peverse (bad) unintended consequences. I lived in SE Asia for many years where vast tracts of tropical forest have been cut down to grow palm oil, much of which goes into biofuels. The reality is that somewhere like the USA introduces a biofuel mandate and as a result hundreds of sq kms of tropical forest is cut down.
The more learn about re-newables, the more I think they’re a crap source of energy. In fact the more I learn about energy sources, the more I think traditional hydrocarbons are the best! All energy production “damages” the environment. You have to break something, burn something, it’s physics again, you have to transform something, so once it’s transformed it’s no-longer what it was before and that’s good or bad according to your point of view (“good” and “bad” are value judgements) … as far as I can see so called re-newables are EXTREMELY damaging to the environment, probably more so than trad hydroCs, yet they yield orders of magnitude less energy(and are hugely more expensive). Also the bad side effects of HCs it seems are actually quite easily countered, whereas the bad effects of RNs are nigh on impossible to mitigate. If fact the more I learn about this subject, the more I think, that if you wanted to invent a fantastic cheap energy source, you would invent …. hydrocarbons …
The only reason we would have to completely change our behavior, at home, and at the office.is if they want the percentage of consumption of renewables to go up with respect to others. It doesn’t mean a real increase in consumption of renewable electicity. As long as the consumption of others goes down due to conservation efforts, then they apparently will be happy. — John M Reynolds
Excellent, as usual, Willis. Those of us in the electricity industry are regularly pummeled and depicted as knuckle dragging apes on the renewables issue. That’s what happens in a debate with adolescents who have zero accountability. In truth, I work with a cadre of very bright engineers who take the challenge of delivering reliable and affordable energy ~99.9% of the time on an “on demand” basis very seriously.
Activists are unconstrained by the laws of physics and policy makers are all too quick to curry their favor for votes. Thus, the complexity of rule making that has intertwined itself on the energy infrastructure has pushed our energy systems to the brink.
With the EPA’s recent announcement that no new Coal fired power plants can be built without CCS (a technology that will not be commercialized for years), and activism still saying no to all things nuke, it means that new base load generation will all come from natural gas.
Anyone want to guess what happens next?…
I doubt the rapid rises in electricity rates can be blamed on renewable energy. If you look at average electricity rates in the USA the poor states have the lower rates and the rich states have the higher rates, despite that some poor states are investing proportionally more into renewable energy – probably on the gullible idea of job growth. California has high electricity rates because it is a rich state.
What I think has been happening is the politicians are allowing people to think that green energy has a price and that price is what they see in their electricity bills when in fact politicians are removing the subsidy on electricity because they need the money elsewhere.
Mr. Eschenbach: Why don’t you just send a letter to the UN and especially to Mr. Ki-Moon to tell him what you just wrote here? Enlighten him and the UN.
Would be nice to inform him properly than just complaining here. Mr. Ki-Moon probably doesn’t know of this website and therefore won’t be informed sufficiently on the details he is propagating.