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.
Just don’t press her on how the banking system was formed, or how ‘fractional reserve’ banking operates since you appreciate ‘common sense and fact-based logic’; the lucidity is more than likely temporary, but we can wish for more.
.
chemman: You couldn’t accomplish what you want with just PV panels. They will help out during the day but at night, when it is the coldest, they wouldn’t do a thing. Your grid tied electricity would be doing most of the work for heating. The same would hold true for A/C during the summer months. You might get more payback for that than heating..
First, A/C is a lot more expensive than heating, and I do not have to do at night at all, as I have cool, windy nights. If the house is 78F or so at sundown, the interior will cool after midnight, even if the daytime high exceeded 100F. Second, I let my house cool to 52F at night in the winter, and warm it only to 62F in the daytime, and that can be done with sunlight and insulation, and little electricity from the grid at night. Third, A/C use is proportional to insolation, so the intermittency of sunshine is not a problem. Rarely I would need to use electricity at night after cloudy days in winter.
But as I wrote, chemman, it depends where the person is living. This also works near Phoenix and Tuscon, and in Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles. Sacramento and Bakersfield, as I understand it, do not as reliably have cool and windy nights as I do, and may need to draw more electricity at night for A/C. The calculations are much different in St. Louis, Mo, and Pittsburgh, PA.
Washington State isn’t that wet. Seattle gets less annual rainfall than Dallas. And East of the Cascades is a large amount of desert.
The Useless Nitwits (UN) is the most corrupt group of people on this marble – this just proves it again.
Can you be more specific on how the ‘benchmarks’ were set for this conclusion?
Are we talking ‘heat pumps’ with resistive auxiliary heating or straight ‘resistive heating’ for wintertime heating for instance?
A quick eyeball for this last year shows my bill about equal for peak winter vs peak summer for a residence in the DFW (TX) area and I have straight ‘resistive’ heating (vs a ‘heat pump’).
Total expense (summer vs winter) I would have to do some maths on the consumption figures month by month.
.
Matthew R Marler says:
April 22, 2012 at 11:08 am
(replying to an earlier statement)
“That means that if we add a million kilowatts of renewable energy generation, we also have to add a million kilowatts of conventional generators.”
In the US and other developed nations, the backup power generators are already in place. Adding renewables will extend their lifespan, without requiring new backup power.
Dead wrong. Just as you are dead wrong to assume YOUR unique situation in California w/r to heating/cooling YOUR house is applicable to the rest of the country/rest of the world.
I make a good bit of money each year re-welding cracks in commercial power plant turbines and exhausts that have occurred as “green energy” (windmills primarily) stop and start irregularly and unpredictably. The rapid heatup (and subsequent cooldown) as unplanned and uncontrollable electricity comes online and offline KILLS conventional energy turbines. Their metals and high-alloy exhaust cannot handle rapid the forced heatup on startup and rapid cooldown on shutdown as other sources shut on and off.
Planned changes? The normal day-to-day up and down cycle of the power grid loads? Sure. Give their operators time to heat the 1 and 3 inch thick steel and Hastalloy and the units may last a long time. Give a nuke the time to respond – or even a conventional coal-powered unit the time – and they can last a long time. Steady state predictable runs of 10 to 20 years are easy. Shutdown every 2-3 years for maintenance. easy.
But a “peaking unit”? Cracks through the steel and exhausts in 8 months. Because of YOUR utopia of socialist dreams.
And YOUR dreams of the death of millions (billions ?) due to a lack of energy.
What do really want? More power for everyone at affordable rates? Or more power to the CA state legislature?
Matthew R Marler says:
April 22, 2012 at 3:01 pm
Thanks, Matthew. That’s exactly what I meant. Suppose I have generation capacity to generate 1,000 megawatts. Then everyone buys air conditioners, so my daytime electricity demand doubles, to 2,000 megawatts. I put in solar panels to match to the daytime demand … and you claim that the backup generators are already in place.
But if the sun doesn’t shine, I need 2,000 megawatts, and I only have generation capacity for 1,000 megawatts. So where are these generators that you say are already in place?
w.
Matthew R Marler says:
April 22, 2012 at 3:01 pm
Two things. First, with all of those examples, it’s my choice, I spend my money on what I think is a good idea. But you want to take my money by force, and use it for something that you think is a good idea. So your examples are not parallel to the current question at all, they are a totally different situation.
Second, in your examples, all that happens is a delayed benefit. Money I pay to fly now also pays for future airplanes, and the market regulates that.
But we’ve been waiting for your cockamamie solar and wind schemes to pay off in the future for thirty years now … and it’s been an unending sinkhole, PV and wind are still sucking up the subsidies at a rate of knots.
So I fear your examples have nothing to do with the topic under discussion.
w.
Matthew R Marler says:
April 22, 2012 at 3:01 pm
Cite?
Cite?
Cite?
You have totally ignored the most important question … how much of this expansion was supported by the taxpayer? My guess is that you will never answer that question …
Because if you subsidize anything, people will flock to it … but all that means is that you are PAYING PEOPLE TO SUPPORT YOUR PATHETIC UNWORKABLE GREEN FANTASIES. You can’t use that as evidence of anything other than that people will indeed do what you pay them to do.
Me, I’m sick and tired of folks like you quoting “facts” like those as if they meant anything, and meanwhile spending my money to advance your Pollyanna schemes. When are you guys going to have the balls to stop the subsidies?
w.
Matthew R Marler says:
April 22, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Both of those got initial subsidies for a short time, and then went to market.
After thirty years of subsidies, PV is still not ready for the market.
When is the little light bulb over your head going to light up? When are you going to wake up? Surely thirty years of subsidies would be sufficient if it were actually going to work …
w.
fight it on moral grounds, willis. it’s wrong and that’s all there is to that.
they are morlocks. they’ll tell you anyting to get you to lunch. if you negotiate with them you only delay the dining hour – and they’ll be snacking while you’re wisecracking. debate means you get eaten later. there’s only one relationship an eloi can have with a morlock. social intercourse is not the description of it.
Willis writes “I say again, DO YOUR HOMEWORK. You are spouting nonsense, it doesn’t do your reputation any good.”
I have done my homework. I refer to
http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/03/poets-project-liberty-corn-ethanol-plant-ready-closeup/
Quote “Last September DOE awarded a loan guarantee of $105 million for Project Liberty but even if the Republican candidates felt like making an issue out of the loan, it is now a moot point.
On January 23 POET announced that it will decline the new DOE funding, since it has found an alternative source of financing in the form of a joint venture with Royal DSM, the Dutch materials sciences giant.”
Note, this is dated 14 March 2012. The quotes you made are, I suspect, all out of date since POET teamed up with DSM, which has very deep. pockets indeed.
I am perfectly prepared to wait until the end of 2014 to see if this project is commercially successful. Would you care for a wager as to whether POET/DSM produces cellulose ethanol at a profit in 2014?
As to you comment that all the corn stover needs to be returned to the soil, I dont believe that this is true. However, my knowledge is by no means complete. Only a small fraction of the corn stover is used to produce cellulose ethanol. The rest is returned to the soil. IIRC, POET only intends to use the corn hobs that are not used in producing food ethanol. And I dont think that these get returned to the soli now. On this latter point, my knowledge is by no means complete, but my impression is that the farmers who supply POET are more than satisfied with the arrangement which has been worked out. Do you know for certain that the farmers who supply POET are dissatisfied with the arrangement, because not enough corn stover is being returned to the soli? If so, I would be grateful for a reference.
Jeff Alberts says:
April 22, 2012 at 5:08 pm
Say what? Washington has some of the rainiest areas in the US, and they are located in mountains in the west half of the state. If you are looking for a place to put in hydropower, if you choose Texas over Washington you’re gonna lose big.
w.
Willis Eschenbach: First, with all of those examples, it’s my choice, … . So your examples are not parallel to the current question at all, they are a totally different situation.
Really? Drug research? Radar Research? Computer Research? ARPANET? Nuclear power? MASER and LASER research? Cyclotrons and synchrotrons? Medical isotopes? CAT-scans and MRI? Voice recognition systems? Carbon nanotubes and advanced ceramics? Atomic force microscopes? You volunteered your money for all of those?
Second, in your examples, all that happens is a delayed benefit. Money I pay to fly now also pays for future airplanes, and the market regulates that.
PV power research will pay for itself in less time than jet engines ever did. The rate of investment over the last 30 years was very slight compared to the rate of current deployment of 24 GW generating capacity per year. The money that you pay now for flight does not cover the cost of the air traffic control system, and every airport at which you land and take off is government subsidized. OK, maybe not “every” — here and there is a little privately owned airfield, but all the hubs and the other major metropolitan airports are tax subsidized. As are the roads you drive on: only the main highways are paid for out of the gasoline tax.
A question: you noted that the California government does not recognize large scale hydro-electric power as “renewable”. Do you support tax-paid large scale hydro-electric power and tax- paid large scale irrigation projects? The costs of building the California water project, the Intra-Coastal Waterway, the Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam were never “paid off” — is your overall evaluation that those were mistakes? Some people do regard them as mistakes, and I was wondering whether you do. Same with TVA and the Panama Canal (indeed, the Panama Canal was subsidized the entire time that the US ran it — fees never covered the operating costs.) To me, development of PV power is in that class of investment that “pays off” but whose direct costs are never literally “paid off” by users paying back the costs to the government or investors.
But we’ve been waiting for your cockamamie solar and wind schemes to pay off in the future for thirty years now … and it’s been an unending sinkhole, PV and wind are still sucking up the subsidies at a rate of knots.
This argument seems to be that because they have not yet been commercially viable they won’t ever be. In general, that is not a universally applicable principle. Sometimes investments pay off, and sometimes they do not. Looking at PV panels globally over the last 2 years, the case that investment in PV panels will never pay off is very poor.
Here is a source for some growth rates: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/04/13/distributed-solar-pv-to-increase-18-p-a-to-2015-growing-pains-notwithstanding/
This source is a “booster” site, but the original is Pike research. that’s for “distributed” solar, which excludes things like the 600 MW plant that I linked to earlier.
Here is a source for the US only: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/03/15/us-solar-facts-charts/
You can also follow the hot links.
The government subsidies are not always easy to find out. They seem to be between 0% and 30% of installed costs. Some are credits rather than subsidies: to some people that difference matters, to others not so much. Some subsidies are for production, and others are for purchase: again, some people stress the differences, and others stress the similarities. Here is an example for which I have not been able to find the size of the subsidy, if any. http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20111203/PC04/312039926.
That included the news that American Airlines filed for bankruptcy. Irrelevant, except that it compares to the smaller bankruptcy of Solyndra (a huge mistake of the Obama administration, but not as big a deal as the American Airlines bankruptcy.)
I seem to have lost my references for the claims of 24GW installed in 2011 and 17MW installed in 2010. So until I find them again, maybe they were not close to accurate. We’ll come back to this topic again next year.
Here is a claim that 27.7 GW (peak) solar power was installed in 2011, 2/3 of that in Europe. and a claim that the costs have fallen from 6million euros/MW in 2008 to 2million euros/MW in 2011. They report as well that the cost in India is 1.3million euros/MW.
Willis Eschenbach: After thirty years of subsidies, PV is still not ready for the market.
For air travel, the subsidies have been in place for 100 years, and much larger total amounts of money. Travel generally: I doubt that you can buy a product for which the transportation costs have not been subsidized (did you buy a tomato that was carried for a time on a tax-supported local road?) This does not make subsidies justifiable, but the subsidies for solar are small in comparison to the other subsidies, and in comparison to the potential benefits, some of which are being realized now.
Ah, nuts! Here is the link:
http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Intersolar_Europe_2012_Spotlights_Large_Scale_Photovoltaics_999.html
Here is a brief note on solar power in India: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/01/03/india-solar-market-could-hit-33-4-gw-by-2022/
It includes a link to the claim that solar is cost-competitive with electricity from diesel generators. Note that, in much of rural India, fossil fuels are more intermittent than sunshine, due to lots of factors, including a poor distribution network and labor problems in the coal mines.
Interesting conversation here. The Git went and looked at the electrickery bills that Mrs Git pays and was astounded. Our annual costs have more than doubled over the last 10 years even though our consumption has declined! So, the Git went and looked at one of the websites that allows calculation of cost of PV versus savings and was even more astounded: almost 50% assuming the array lasts 10 years (the length of warranty).
So, the Git asks, if everyone purchased a PV array for this level of cost saving, where does the profit to maintain the system come from? Mainland purchasers don’t just earn credits for excess generation, but actually get paid for it. So who’s paying these people? Surely not the business selling electricity. It can only be people who are too poor to afford a PV array.
Saving a thousand bucks a year is significant when you are retired and not terribly wealthy. On the other hand, the Git finds the idea of being part of a system screwing the poor morally repugnant. And he wonders how long such a screwed-up system can endure.
Willis: “Setting that aside, you are right that increases in efficiency are easier to achieve than new energy sources.”
Wrong. Increases in energy efficiency increase the demand for new energy sources. Increases in efficiency mean that we can do more, produce more, move more. Any increase in efficiency has always been accompanied by a strong growth in total energy demand.
Energy efficiency is a very good thing to do because it drives up productivity. It NEVER reduces total consumption. The only way to reduce absolute energy consumption is to INCREASE energy inefficiency. We know what that looks like. It’s a pre-industrial economy and technology.
The main point here however is the question of rejected heat. There is virtually nothing that can be done about this. At some point, heat becomes too low grade to be useful and hence is rejected as incapable of doing useful work. However, there can be things done to reduce just how much has to be rejected. For example, in electricity generation, all thermal generation is done by boiling water. Thus a third of the energy is lost just in the boiling and condensing of water.
The secret to a large part of this is if a better means can be discovered of extracting electricity from atomic fission without going through a thermal cycle. This would be a development of vastly greater importance than anything conceivable in renewable technologies.
With fossil fuels, there’s no real choice. The only useful way to harness fossil fuels is by combustion. But with nuclear, there are distinct possibilities of direct production from fission.
Like it or not, given the inevitable failure of fossil fuels to meet future energy demand for reasons of energy density, the future will be nuclear. It’s the only fuel that exists in sufficient quantity to replace fossil fuel kWh given the available supply and technologies to manufacture fissile material.
Robert Marler, we’ve been over these silly arguments about solar many times before. Solar is not economic now and never will be. It’s limited by the solar output of the sun. At 300 W/sq/m, only 13 per cent of which can be converted into electrons, it’s effectively useless. It also fails massively the energy density requirement.
Matthew R Marler says:
This argument seems to be that because they have not yet been commercially viable they won’t ever be. In general, that is not a universally applicable principle. Sometimes investments pay off, and sometimes they do not. Looking at PV panels globally over the last 2 years, the case that investment in PV panels will never pay off is very poor.
Something that was not commercially viable for 30 years will not magically become one in the next 2 years. Add to that requirements for watt-for-watt match by backup power, and it does not seems like PV or wind will ever be profitable.
As far as your other examples – none of them are applicable her. Some of subsidies are needed for strategic reasons. Radar research and internet are offshoots of military research. There are no good alternative to air transportation, and it is absolutely needed in modern society. Same goes for roads and railroads. Original sort term investment notwithstanding, many of them could be made profitable without government “help”.
Drug research should not be subsidized by government, and so is the score of other examples you had mentioned. The fact that it is doesn’t prove your point, it underscore the necessity of getting government out of the business of deciding who will win and who will loose in business world.
There are number of alternatives to PV and wind, all of them could be profitable without any government subsidies (nuclear and hydro, for starters) and spending our tax money on clearly unworkable “alternative” energy sources like PV is simply wrong.
Matthew R. Marler,
It is a very common misconception that a great deal of drug research is funded by the federal government. An article in JAMA suggested that as much as 30% is funded by monies confiscated from the taxpayer. However, it is important to keep in mind that JAMA is the Huffinton Post of medical literature. To get a number as high as 30% thay have to count all the nonsense generated by the CDC, the NIH and the EPA as “drug research”. The NIH does indeed conduct some drug research but it pales in comparison to the private sector where MOST drugs are developed. They also count basic research at the university level as “drug research.” For instance, if a university research center identifies and characterizes a specific receptor they publish their work. A private drug company may come along and then undertake the long, tedious and expensive process of testing compounds for activity on that receptor and eventually develop a drug to bring to market. Check out the story of the angiotensin receptor antagonists. Merck developed the first one without any government funding.
The other examples you cite are predominately feats of engineering. With PV panels you run into a wall known as physics. More to the point Willis was making. AIDS/HIV activists have been screaming for a “cure” for the last 30 years. Untold billions have been spent on research. We still have to “cure.” We have antiretroviral agents that can attenuate the disease and perhaps prevent the progression of HIV infection into full blown AIDS. We might even be close to an effective vaccine. But there is no “cure” despite the fortune spent on research. This should come as no surprise. We have NEVER “cured” a viral infection. We can prevent them with vaccines (e.g. influenza), we can develop drugs which attenuate the severity of symptoms and shorten the duration of the disease, but we can’t “cure” a viral infection. Medical science has been working on this for a hundred years. Maybe it will be possible someday…but I seriously doubt it will be any time soon.
Politicians cannot legislate magical new technology into being. You can’t just dump billions and billions of dollars of R&D money into solving an intractable problem in physics, chemistry or biology and expect results. Batteries are a good example. Again, researchers run into the physical limitations of physics and chemistry. Both wind power and PV are very old technologies and we’ve been playing with (and subsidizing) them for 30 years and stubbornly remain inadequate and largely ineffective to meet our demands. I seriously doubt there is much more than can be done with wind power. Solar power might prove promising in the future, but let the private sector fund it and stop wasting the taxpayers’ money chasing after what is currently impossible.
I think some perspective is needed here. You do not replace something that works well with something inferior. For instance, a round wheel works well on a car. Replacing it with a square wheel is rather retarded.
For modern power grids, adding wind and solar power sources is just like doing that very thing.
Solar and wind are both inferior sources of power since they are both intermittent and can not be counted on when power is needed. This is in direct contrast to other sources of power. Look at history and how wind turbines were phased out in the 1930’s and 1940’s as the modern power grid expanded in the US. They were inferior because a modern power grid using fossil fuels was far superior to wind turbines with a battery system. Wind turbines with batteries were also vastly more expensive. Just like today you might recognize…and also notice that the cheaper and superior source of power won. Who would have thought?
Well I can tell you that there may be applications for solar and wind power in the future, but not in conjection with a modern power grid. If you find a power grid that is isolated for instance and has constant wind, perhaps a wind system might make sense (IE Antarctica with specially made turbines.) Or perhaps solar with batteries for a miltary camp that needs to have power for an indefinite time and can not carry that much fuel.
There are applications for this technology, but not connected to a modern power grid, that is just plain stupid to even suggest it.
If you are worried about CO2, might I suggest hydro or nuclear power?
IF you are worried about sustainability, well you are just being plain weird and I can enlighten you on why this is just plain stupid if you want.
I fully support research and development for alternative energy because you never lose by putting money into pure R&D, but subsidies for inferior sources of power is not something I support. As Willis + others have noted, we have subisidized solar and wind for over 30 years since the late 70’s when Carter started this nonsense in the US. What has this gotten us?
30 years of subsidies and people like this still telling us that the technology is new when we have used wind power for over 80 years and solar for almost 40 years. Please, lie to someone else.
Energy efficiency is a very good thing to do because it drives up productivity. It NEVER reduces total consumption. The only way to reduce absolute energy consumption is to INCREASE energy inefficiency. We know what that looks like. It’s a pre-industrial economy and technology.
You are confusing output consumption (by consumers) with input consumption (by the manufacturing process).
Otherwise, all so called subsidies related to military technologies are irrelevant to the discussion. Those subsidies are to aid national defence. The fact they may flow into things like commercial aircraft and reduce their cost is an incidental consequence. This is not their purpose.
I agree with Willis that solar power fed into the grid makes no economic sense, nor will it in the foreseeable future. In practice it is a tax on the poor especially, who spend proportionately more on energy than the better off.
Gail Combs says:
April 22, 2012 at 8:02 am
Actually it is Son of a Syphillitic Camel per Grandad.
“Your mother was a donkey, your father was a camel, and you are their ugliest child.” An old Iraqi insult, I was told (by an old Iraqi, of course)…
benfrommo says:
April 22, 2012 at 10:12 pm
30 years of subsidies and people like this still telling us that the technology is new when we have used wind power for over 80 years and solar for almost 40 years. Please, lie to someone else.
And we subsidized biofuels — specifically ethanol — for 30 years in an effort to make it cost-effective and figure out ways to keep it from rotting the gaskets in our engines. So far, the closest they’ve come to a solution for either problem is to use more-expensive gaskets…