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.
Robert of Ottawa says:
April 22, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Enviromentalists [sic] want humans to stop interfering the “natural environment”. The greatest effect on the environment by man is caused by agriculture. Are there enviros who want to shut down farming?
I know one who insists “Big Agro” needs to be broken up and the land distributed to hippies who will then be inspired to farm organically. But then, she also thinks that Ghandi is still alive…
You can talk Willis if you don’t live in the EU. If you were here you would be enforced to take part in this eco-nonsense.
Phil Bradley, it’s you who seems confused. Willis’s original comment referred to output consumption and that efficiency could reduce the absolute need for new power sources. Such a statement is simply wrong.
The rest of your comment I agree with entirely.
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.
One of the nice but unintended consequences of the massive subsidies in the developed world is that solar has become affordable for off-grid power in places like India. No one is arguing solar doesn’t have a role off-grid. It has had for quite a while. Here in Western Australia, microwave relay stations in remote areas have been solar powered for at least 20 years. Although with the consequence that after 4 or 5 cloudy days the phone services drops out.
In your comment you seem to be implying coal powered generators are used at the village level in India, which is nonsense.
Willis, Last night I replied in haste before I went to bed. I now suggest it is you who needs to do the homework. The $105 million was negotiated in Nov 2011, and cancelled early in 2012. The other grants amount to, I estimate, around $20 million. Will this money be waste?.
Poet/DSM are putting up, with private money of around $250 million, a first production plant for cellulose ethanol. This is at the same place as an existing POET food ethanol plant. It is expected to produce 25 million gallons of ethanol per year. IF, and I agree it is a big IF, successful, POET/DSM plan to build a further 26 plants at all other POET locations. I estimate the total capital to be around $5 billion, with a production of around 700 million gallons of ethanol per year. Again a big if, but if this is successful, the forecast is that by 2020, about $100 billion will be spent on capital, producing 16 billion gallons of ethanol per year, worth around $125 million per day. With oil around $100 per barrel, this must be the equivalent of around 1 million barrels per day; oil the US will not need to import from places like Canada.
When you look at these numbers, and assuming they turn out to be correct, are you really suggesting that $20 million in seed money was wasted? If so, I suggest you take another look.
When the UN move their headquarters to Bourke western NSW Australia, & conduct all their business by video conferencing, I will listen to their call for me to reduce my life style. Meanwhile they can go jump, & no that was not high enough.
Here is a reasonable source for energy news:http://www.energy-daily.com/
Philip Bradley: No one is arguing solar doesn’t have a role off-grid.
I think that if you read the comments, you will find claims that solar has no role anywhere at the present time.
Philip Bradley: I agree with Willis that solar power fed into the grid makes no economic sense, nor will it in the foreseeable future.
My calculations show that roof-mounted solar power fed into the grid makes economic sense now for some purposes in some locations. But you have to do the calculations separately for each purpose and each location. I mentioned roof-mounted PV for A/C. As more and more utilities begin to bill for electricity usage according to time of day of the usage, roof-mounted PV panels will become commercially viable for more people who choose to use electricity during the daytime.
Dr. Dave: 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.
Probably more than 30% of primary research into mechanisms of biological processes is federally funded. Much less than 30% of total pharmaceutical research is federally funded. All the pharmaceutical companies depend heavily on federally funded research for their lead compounds.
Dr Dave: Both wind power and PV are very old technologies
Sun and wind are old, but the technologies of today are new and improving annually.
Udar and others with similar comments: Something that was not commercially viable for 30 years will not magically become one in the next 2 years.
I hate to repeat myself too often but: (1) magic is not involved; (2) solar is commercially viable in some niches now; (3) I will not accept that as a general principle until everyone here objects as strenuously to the continuous longstanding government subsidies of roads and airline terminals; (4) with the commercial viability of solar expanding, “the next 2 years” is not the appropriate time frame.
Lastly, everyone acknowledges that wind and solar are intermittent. In most parts of the world (including Western Europe), so are fossil fuels intermittent, especially gas. In the us, sufficiently cold weather results in power outages each year, though not in every place every year. Furthermore, the price of fossil fuels can be expected to fluctuate more in future than the price of the solar and wind technologies: price fluctuations increase the “intermittency” of fossil fuels in the place where the people can not keep up with the prices; over the long term, fossil fuel prices will almost certainly rise (as they have been rising), whereas the renewable alternatives’ prices will almost certainly decline (as they have been declining.)
We’ll pick this up again next year. I expect that at least 30GW of new solar facilities will be installed in 2012, and the net reduction in price per kwh will decrease by at least 20%. And California, home state to Willis Eschenbach and me, will continue to do things badly, a point pretty irrelevant to the overall discussion, but prominent in our thoughts.
“Fuel poverty … it causes old folks to shiver in the winter because they can’t afford to heat their houses.”
They only shiver for a little while. And then they stop.
For the fun of it, the IBM Air Battery Project: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smart_grid/article/battery500.html
Just for fun, the Git took a close look at what going solar means in the local context. We consumed some 6,288 kWHr of electrickery over 364 days in 2011. Due to our benign climate, it varies by only 10% between quarters. The main consumers of electrickery are the fridge, freezer, computers, workshop tools and lights. This amount of energy cost us near enough to $2,000 one third of that being a fixed supply charge.
The cost of a 3.2kW system including installation is less than $8,000 and the supplier claims that this will reduce our cost by slightly more than $1,000 per annum at current electrickery prices. IOW the system will pay for itself in less than 7.5 years even if prices do not rise. The anticipated lifespan of the inverter is 15 yrs and the panels is 20 yrs.
Let’s say the panels and inverter both need replacing at 15 yrs, then the return on the $8,000 capital investment will be ~$7,500 assuming unchanged energy cost. Given it is the government’s stated intention to increase energy costs, this seems to be a most excellent investment. It’s certainly much more favourable than the same exercise conducted four or five years ago.
Note that the criteria for selecting this system were based on quality of product and service ahead of price and as short a time as possible to break even.
NoAstronomer said @ur momisugly April 23, 2012 at 8:22 am
The Git remembers this from the UK in the 60s.
Hmm, not so sure Willis. Most of the fuel is consumed by only 1/7th of the global population. Don’t we want the other 6/7th’s of the global population to share in our well-being? If so then I fear digging energy out of the ground may not be a long-term solution for us all.
Gentlemen,
You have no perspective. When there seemed there would be an interregnum or period between inexaustible clean energy and todays methods based on fossil fuels, experiments of alls sorts with abandoned methods were resurrected and tried, like intermittent wind and solar. But is it clear why they were abandoned before, and nothing done since has measurably improved the situation and prospects for these technologies.
The day of inexhaustible clean energy is getting closer. The last combined Fusion scientific experiment and first engineering exercise, to build a prototypical Fusion power plant is more than half finished, in Cadarache. Even so ITERitself is saying that we can begin to design ITER’s succesor in 2017. ITER won’t add power to the grid as it is still experiemental, but it could, and if it did, it would equal all the net power produced by wind and solar, actually available today,but with a similar poor availability.
Meanwhile passive fission is now finally acceptable as an interim solution. The Nuclear Renaisssance is now happening everywhere, including the US. The advanced and walk-away passive LWRs, as redesigned, are now what they should have ben 30 years ago, but unfortunately were not. They can safely be used for the several decades to safely transition to the ultimate Fusion based energy economy.
Even as others have been seduced to stupidly propose thorium pie-in-the-sky or other possible fission answers, that can’t possibly be certified for construction for use before their Fusion replacements are available in 2030 or so. If such were actually available to build by then, no one wouldactually purchase them.
At the same time the dawdling Peak Oil scribblings by a fellow who was a really discussing a lack of availbility of sour reffinery capacity, and the shrinkage of sweet crude, was allowed to seem a lack of all fossil, sweet or sour, and used to scare the bejesus out of everyone The supposedly impossible sour refinery capacity problems, were solved 5 years ago. The refinery capacity to handle the sour crudes available has been met, so Peak Oil Refinery Capacity has disappeared as a problem.
New fossil sources are opening up that will provide the use of fossil for Millenia, and longer when used for its true purposes for phaemeceutical, feedstocks, and polymers. We need but a decade or two to have the ultimate replacement for it use as a energy source for other than air and spacecraft.
Pleasantly we have discovered that were it needed, western civilization could survive with out fossil resources for Ground Transport, the one so-called impossible to replace need, with only a little more tinkering and improvemnt of PHEVs. So the ground transport substitute has been found.
2030 may be unduly pessimistic. Have a look at LPPhysics.com . Its project is on track to begin providing plans and licenses to all comers by about 2017 for manufacture of very small 5MW generators, waste- and radiation-free. Direct current output, no steam turbine required. All at about 1/10 the cost of coal generation.
Stas Peterson: Meanwhile passive fission is now finally acceptable as an interim solution. The Nuclear Renaisssance is now happening everywhere, including the US. The advanced and walk-away passive LWRs, as redesigned, are now what they should have ben 30 years ago, but unfortunately were not. They can safely be used for the several decades to safely transition to the ultimate Fusion based energy economy.
And there are combined fusion-fission plants under construction.
The Pompous Git: Just for fun, the Git took a close look at what going solar means in the local context. … It’s certainly much more favourable than the same exercise conducted four or five years ago.
I hope that you have saved your calculations for next year’s discussion.
last on this topic: http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Walkers_World_The_energy_race_999.html
Some statistics, and “crossover day” in Australia last year.
Don’t “believe” — stay tuned for all news in the upcoming years.
Matthew R Marler said @ur momisugly April 24, 2012 at 9:26 am
I knocked up a spreadsheet to compare quotes on different systems including the result of investing the money at the bank. The ROI on investing in solar appears to be similar to purchasing rental property, and well ahead of bank interest. Capital gains are not taxed here though the Greens want it introduced. Of course purchasing a rental property requires an investment an order of magnitude greater than a grid feed PV system. Investing at the bank is always a loser since after tax, the interest is less than inflation.
What will be interesting is looking at the statistics garnered from the system the Git purchases thanks to the wonders of bluetooth. The sums change at 30 June this year when the government subsidy decreases and again at 30 June 2013 when it ceases.
The Pompous Git said @ur momisugly April 24, 2012 at 1:17 pm
that he intended to purchase a solar PV system based on estimates provided by a vendor of such things. Before he spends his money, the Git tends to obtain independent advice. In this instance, the vendor appears to be claiming the PV array will generate 138% of its capability assuming zero cloud cover. Applying a realistic estimate to energy generated implies a time to payback of ~18 years, only two years short of the warranted lifespan of the panels. Sadly, it’s a bust.
The Pompous Git says:
April 25, 2012 at 2:28 pm
I’m shocked and surprised …
w.