From the IEEE Spectrum Journal: A Skeptic Looks at Alternative Energy
It takes several lifetimes to put a new energy system into place, and wishful thinking can’t speed things along
By Vaclav Smil
In June 2004 the editor of an energy journal called to ask me to comment on a just-announced plan to build the world’s largest photovoltaic electric generating plant. Where would it be, I asked—Arizona? Spain? North Africa? No, it was to be spread among three locations in rural Bavaria, southeast of Nuremberg.
I said there must be some mistake. I grew up not far from that place, just across the border with the Czech Republic, and I will never forget those seemingly endless days of summer spent inside while it rained incessantly. Bavaria is like Seattle in the United States or Sichuan province in China. You don’t want to put a solar plant in Bavaria, but that is exactly where the Germans put it. The plant, with a peak output of 10 megawatts, went into operation in June 2005.
It happened for the best reason there is in politics: money. Welcome to the world of new renewable energies, where the subsidies rule—and consumers pay.
Without these subsidies, renewable energy plants other than hydroelectric and geothermal ones can’t yet compete with conventional generators. There are several reasons, starting with relatively low capacity factors—the most electricity a plant can actually produce divided by what it would produce if it could be run full time. The capacity factor of a typical nuclear power plant is more than 90 percent; for a coal-fired generating plant it’s about 65 to 70 percent. A photovoltaic installation can get close to 20 percent—in sunny Spain—and a wind turbine, well placed on dry land, from 25 to 30 percent. Put it offshore and it may even reach 40 percent. To convert to either of the latter two technologies, you must also figure in the need to string entirely new transmission lines to places where sun and wind abound, as well as the need to manage a more variable system load, due to the intermittent nature of the power.
All of these complications are well known, and all of them have been too lightly dismissed by alternative energy backers and the media. Most egregious of all is the boosters’ failure to recognize the time it takes to convert to any new source of energy, no matter how compelling the arguments for it may be.
An example is the 2008 plan promoted by former vice president Al Gore, which called for replacing all fossil-fueled generation in the United States in just a decade. Another is Google’s plan, announced in 2008 and abandoned in 2011, which envisaged cutting out coal generation by 2030. Trumping them all was a 2009 article in Scientific American by Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University, and Mark Delucchi, a researcher in transportation studies at the University of California, Davis. They proposed converting the energy economy of the entire world to renewable sources by 2030.
History and a consideration of the technical requirements show that the problem is much greater than these advocates have supposed.
Read the entire article here.
h/t to WUWT reader “the1pag”
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In terms of alternative energy, I believe it was here on WUWT that I saw both an analysis of the “net” energy costs (after subtracting energy costs of building/maintaining/rebuilding) of wind turbines. as compared to those of other sources. Also think it was here that I may have seen a figure on the numbers of birds chopped up by them.
Anyone know of any particular pointers that have that information handy? I’m a bit suspicious about the bird thing because the argument just seems a bit too “convenient” (i.e. the environmental wind turbines engaged in unenvironmental bird destruction) . Plus, while a wind turbine isn’t exactly something that birds would have “evolved” to deal with it seems a bit unlikely that birds wouldn’t be able to avoid a steadily moving object while flying.
– MJM
Very interesting. Thank you. It confirms a few things I’ve been dabbling with myself. Especially the ration between China’s and India’s growth compared to how quickly and efficiently we’d manage to “phase out” conventional power production, which, as I’ve been maintaining for a while now, can’t be phased out as simple as our so called leaders claim. Flip a switch, wave the magic wand, that’s how things are today and, pardon my French, it’s beginning to piss me off. Doesn’t anyone think anymore?
This reminds me of the idea a few Eurocrats had a few years ago: Let’s build a huge solar park in North Africa. Every engineer I know literally facepalmed. I kid you not. They really slapped themselves on the forehead with their palms. The engineering issues for such an idea are astronomical, and that’s not even delving into the geopolitical problems connected to such, yes, nonsense. Apart from that, how insane does one have to be to think that putting power production on a foreign continent and countries is smart?
I have done solar applications in the early 1980’s because we were in remote areas with no transmissions feeds and solar was the right application. A friend of mine start using solar with my encourage 10-12 years ago for remote oil and water applications with the same success. Bringing transmission lines even back then cost at least $ 100k per mile. Solar is stil intermittant and if you use storage the batteries of a use life of 3-4 years. Over the life of the panels that is 7-8 new battery system per panel application. Real costs have to calculated for the life of the system. It is kinda like nukes, who pays for the million years of waste storage? All costs have to be calculated into system costs. That then gives you the REAL cost per kWh. Something the greenies do NOT do.
Nine women can’t make a baby in one month.
The most hypocritical aspect of renewable-energy advocacy is that all their costs, whether for materials, components, or installation, are based on petroleum energy. Talk about subsidies!
Imagine how even more economically ruinous renewable energy would be if it’s entire energy input had to be provided by other renewable sources, rather than petroleum. By the way, since hydroelectric is not counted as renewable it can’t be counted here, only wind and solar and biofuel.
Michael, you must remember two things that are important about windmills: they’re usually sited on top of hills to catch the best winds – the very same winds that birds will catch in order to use their updrafts to gain altitude (usually circling the turbine itself as that’s where the best updrafts occur); and the tips of those blades are moving at a very high speed an, almost always at 90 degrees to the path the bird is taking around the turbine. They aren’t adapted to something coming straight up or down at them at well over 100 mph, which is what tends to happen when the bird flies through the path of the turbine blades. It’s good to be sceptical but, at the same time, a little common sense will tell you that those windmills are more than capable of all that bird death.
Incidentally there are plenty of videos of birds being hit by wind turbines. Too many to just be feak accidents.
(my bold emphasis)
One can only hope that future generations will be smarter, but the signs aren’t good.
Anyone thought of capturing a Derecho? Batteries not included of course.
http://www.universetoday.com/96157/powerful-derecho-storms-as-seen-from-space/
@ur momisugly Steve P
Do you have a source for the 54% of R&D going to nuclear? It seems way too high.
Most birds migrate at night.
I love Gomez’s comment. It is so typical of the CAGW touchy feely type of thinking.
So we (Australia & the USA) are supposed to commit economic suicide while shipping low cost coal to China. With no other buyers the coal is going to be a real bargain too. Of course China has such a great history on caring for the environment SEE: Toxic Rivers
I am puzzled. Surely Vaclav Smil’s analysis is off the mark a fair bit. He seems to suggest that we must worry about increases of atmospheric CO2 that will drive up global temperatures due to anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
However, Vaclav Smil completely ignores that only 3.5 percent of CO2 emissions are man-made, and that the remaining 96.5 percent of emissions are from natural sources.
That makes any discussion of reducing atmospheric levels of CO2 (or even limiting them) through energy production from alternative sources look more than a bit ludicrous, doesn’t it?
It seems to me that Vaclav Smil got suckered by a strawman-argument.
The naive idealism is why scientists shouldn’t, in a Wellsian world, rule it. Friction in any theoretical system is zero, and if it isn’t zero today, then with advances in technology, it will be. Real soon.
Communism’s failure to deal with human nature should be the only lesson necessary to understand the difference between our real natures, our real world of gains and losses, and those worlds dreamt of in the minds of philosophers, anarchists, libertarians and the socially concerned (while covers the various types of the eco-green). Clearly this lesson, learnt at the cost of huge sorrow, tears and literal blood, has not been enough. Perhaps it is a lesson that every second generation needs to learn anew, in its own way.
“Raising awareness” is not just a weak act, it is a cruel one. Say there is a problem, a deep problem, but propose only a magical solution, accepting no responsibility for the harm delusional programmes bring: this is a mean way of seeking to improve the common lot. A problem identified does not need the exact solution identified at the same time, but the direction and a short-term fix should be supplied. Yelling “Fire!” without first identifying the exits is an exercise in self-indulgent grandiosity.
The renewable concept is admirable. If it can be effected without shutting down the general living that goes with life. The eco-green are all about life, not living. The subsistence farmer on his eco-sustainable farm has life enough to provide a place to squat for his offspring, but what would he say about his “living” conditions? If the condition of the non-1st world were so wonderful, why are not the Gores and Suzukis selling of their Ferraris and moving to Livingoffthelandstan?
The eco-green revolution is a child’s answer to his personal guilt.
Observation 1: I fly between San Francisco and Burbank often for business. There are acres and acres of flat roof top in Southern California and the sun does shine a lot there. If solar is compelling, why don’t the owners of these (mostly commercial) buildings put up solar panels and start putting electricity into the grid? I am suspecting that the economics does not work.
Observation 2: If solar is viable and sensible, why don’t we hear more about the countries along the equator adopting the technology en masse? They get the most sun I imagine. Just an unpublicized fact or these countries don’t see the economics working for them either?
D. J. Hawkins asked at
July 6, 2012 at 5:10 pm
The number was given in the article by Vaclav Smil, which you can read in full at the link given above.
Do you have a source for what seems?
Find a true believer and you can make them cry by just explaining that even at 100% efficiency (which is impossible) there is just SO MUCH energy falling on a square meter of the Earth and the amount you can really collect in a day even if the weather is perfect just won’t cut it. Then start taking away for weather, clouds, aging of components and dropping efficiencies…. you can watch the tears form as they realize you can’t manufacture miracles and unicorns and rainbows in the REAL WORLD….
I genuinely love this science site, but the energy posts leave a lot to be desired. The capacity factors listed are nowhere near reality unless you are talking about Russia and Japan where they have been known to operate nuclear reactors with half the building blown apart! These erroneous numbers make the rest of the post suspect. Sorry.
–sorry Mods; I didn’t want to misquote Mr. Hawkins–
D. J. Hawkins asked at
July 6, 2012 at 5:10 pm
Do you have a source for the 54% of R&D going to nuclear? It seems way too high.
The number was given in the article by Vaclav Smil, which you can read in full at the link given above.
Do you have a source for what seems?
He doesn’t mention hydro-electric, the only feasible ‘renewable’ energy source for base load power that doesn’t suffer the cost/feasibility issues he describes. HydroE has the added benefit that it can be used to ‘store’ wind and solar power to meet peak demand.
Not only are China, India and Brazil building coal fired plants, they are building hydro-electric projects as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Major_projects_under_construction
The article noted:
The nuclear industry has grown on the back of direct and enormous R&D support. In the United States it received almost 54 percent of all federal research funds between 1948 and 2007.
My first thought was that, this was a process of a bureaucracy picking a winner and jamming it down our collective throats. If the pressurized water reactor was forced to compete with LFTR, it would not have survived and proliferated like it did. We would all be better off for it.
D. J. Hawkins says:
July 6, 2012 at 5:10 pm
@ur momisugly Steve P
Do you have a source for the 54% of R&D going to nuclear? It seems way too high.
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A lot of that was Defense budget – the Manhattan project et al. but I agree it seems a bit high.
“Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University, and Mark Delucchi, a researcher in transportation studies at the University of California, Davis”.
There is the root of the problem. Power systems are designed by electrical engineers. Civil engineers don’t know a lot of about power systems other than a couple “EE for non-EEs” courses, and “researchers in transportation studies” know nothing about power systems.
Electrical Engineers tend to have a higher regard for mechanical engineers than civil engineers because, after all, “Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets.”
Found some useful information on R & D:
http://www.issues.org/22.3/realnumbers.html
http://www.misi-net.com/publications/NEI-1011.pdf
The number 54% (see the MISI.net publication) is high – the number is 48% and about 35% of that is breeder reactors. If you toss out the breeders and other reactors types which were just drawing board exercises – that number gets considerably smaller.
The bottom line – building a prototype reactor is hard and expensive – building a new solar cell is easy and cheap and requires much less R & D funding.
Resourceguy says:
July 6, 2012 at 5:53 pm
I genuinely love this science site, but the energy posts leave a lot to be desired…..
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It was an article in IEEE Spectrum magazine.
If you have better information I am sure Anthony would be happy to publish your submitted article: SEE Submit Story in the header or click on the link. Getting good material from his experts in the “audience” is how this blog has become such a great resource. As you noted we often get feed mushroom growing material in the “professionally published” magazines and other media outlets
Let’s compare all the wind energy in the world to the Three Gorge Dam in China.
In 2010 the IEA writes the world produced 328 billion kWhrs.
That’s 328 million MWhrs, which is 328,000,000 MWhrs.
Divide by 8760 hrs in a year to result = 37,443 MW’s.
That’s like 15, 2400 MW Nuclear Plants going 24/7.
The Three Gorge Dam in China produces 22,000 MW’s.
So, all the wind energy in the world in 2010 is about 1.5 Three Gorge Damns
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=2&pid=37&aid=12&cid=regions&syid=2005&eyid=2010&unit=BKWH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_hydroelectric_power_stations
But that does not include the fact, that the wind doesn’t blow when we need it. In most locations it blows more at night than during the day. Most locations also produce more energy in the spring and fall, when we need it less. In fact many nuclear plants shut down during the spring or fall for maintenance. Also, it does not include the firming and lost energy from the nat gas or coal plants that must constantly vary their output to match the constantly varying output of the wind.
http://www.eirgrid.com/operations/systemperformancedata/windgeneration/
(scroll back through previous 24 hrs)
Then consider the environmental damage. To achieve those 37,443 of wind output in 2010 using 1.5 MW turbines operating at average output of 25% you would need, the world had about 100,000 wind turbines. The amount of ridge line, farmland, and shoreline occupied by those 100,000 is enormous, even compared to the destruction caused by 1.5 Three Gorge Dams.