Guest essay by Bjørn Lomborg
Globally, renewables have been *declining* for the last two centuries, and have remained stuck at about 13% for the past 40 years.
People expect them to rise dramatically to 30% by 2035 — the honest answer is that they’re likely to rise a meagre 1.5 percentage points to 14.5%
Actually, the UK set its record for wind power in 1804, when its share reached 2.5% – almost three times its level today!
As Al Gore’s climate adviser, Jim Hansen, put it bluntly:
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and [the] Tooth Fairy.”
We need to get real on renewables. Only if green energy becomes much cheaper — and that requires lots of green R&D — will a renewables transition be possible.
Data for graph: “A brief history of energy” by Roger Fouquet, International Handbook of the Economics of Energy 2009; Warde, Energy consumption in England and Wales, 1560-2000; http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Energy-Production-Statistics#tspQvChart, and EIA data (DOI: 10.1787/enestats-data-en)
Read my new oped on the topic from Project Syndicate:
The Pompous Git says at August 14, 2013 at 9:59 pm
My objection to your statement (and from a different angle, also Janice Moore’s objection) was to the idea of design by bacteria.
That photosynthesis can be performed by bacteria is not questioned.
But that bacteria designed man is wrong.
Sorry about that. You worded things very badly.
M Courtney said @ur momisugly August 15, 2013 at 1:22 am
It’s rather odd that I cannot find the word “design” in my original response. Perhaps you can point out where I did. My eyesight is not what it was…
That renewables cannot meet the energy demands of a modern society is seen has a ‘opportunity ‘ by those that oppose the modern society in the first place . The greens push this idea , while attack other sources of energy generation, because they know it does not work. Therefore , can only lead to want they want in the first place , massive energy shortages.
Lil Fella from OZ says:
August 14, 2013 at 4:41 pm
///////////////////////////////
All resources that are in present existence are free. It is only the price of extraction and conversion to something of more use that is not free.
Coal and oil are both free. It is there in the ground ready for us to harvest just as wind is in the sky and available to harvest.
In the case of coal, it costs money to dig out of the ground, transport it to the power station where it is burnt to generate electricity. But the resource itself is free. The cost of generation is not, although it is far cheaper than generation from wind.
Of course, obtaining power from wind costs money. Wind is free but getting energy from it is not. The costs associated with the manufacture of turbines and errecting of windfarms is expensive and then they produce energy inefficiently (usually about 22% to 28% of nameplate capacity) and they are intermittent, variable and unreliable which means balancing the grid is difficult and expensive and in the end does not reduce CO2 emissions (the back up gas generators not working at optimum efficiency and here in the UK standby diesel generators produce as much CO2 as would otherwise be saved by the wind turbines such that in overall terms there is no saving in CO2 emissions).
Hopefully people will soon see the renewables for what they are, namely an expensive folly; inefficient and not reducing CO2 emissions.
Eve says:
August 14, 2013 at 5:58 pm
GlynnMhor, tell that to the UK. Everyone is changing to wood pellets. They are even changing their coal electrical plants to wood pellets and buying the wood from the US. Yes, wood smoke causes pollution as Greece is finding out. People there cannot hang their wash on the line anymore. It dries black.
When people are extremely cold and hungry and the ‘ruling elite’ has seen fit to remove all sources of energy for warmth and cooking, the people will NOT go looking for clever low emissions wood stoves and wood pellets, they will burn anything that will burn and eat anything that they can catch and cook. This is not an idle academic argument, the UK is shutting down power generation at a rate that even the power company CEOs are saying will lead to power outs for UK in winter. The EPA in the US is doing precisely the same thing and will create precisely the same effect for the US with severe impact on those states where survival depends on energy. It would appear Germany may have at last understood the problem but they too may be too late. The Malthusian greens and their eager politician supporters are on a roll that will not end prettily.
@ur momisugly richard verney
That’s almost true. Sadly, the miners of coal, hewers of wood, carriers of water etc are taxed for their efforts to improve our lot. I seem to recall a post on this very website in the last few days where it is alleged that Spain is imposing a consumption tax on sunlight!
@ur momisugly Ian W
The Git has memories of seeing his first corpse back in the UK in the 1960s. She was a midwife riding her bike on her way to deliver a baby in Nuneaton. There were several old age pensioners on the Git’s paper round who had put bricks in their fireplaces to reduce the amount of fuel needed to keep a fire burning. Frozen to death by the intense cold. It wasn’t pretty then, and it’s not pretty now.
And inverting that graph will show you the relative index of life improvement during the course of weaning ourselves off of renewables.
” Pathway says:
August 14, 2013 at 4:33 pm
The reason renewable don’t work is Energy Density.”
Sums up the whole problem in one simple correct sentence.
Biofuels are crippled by thermodynamics. If they alone were to be used to provide the energy needed to transform low energy-density carbohydrates into high energy-density liquid hydrocarbons there would be essentially zero energy gain. Instead they depend 100% on fossil fuel at every single step in the process- Fertilizers, mechanized farming, fermentation, distillation, refining and transportation. Without this “fossil fuel crutch”, biofuels become the equivalent of an impossible “green” perpetual motion machine. Government policies that subsidize biofuels to meet hypothetical “targets” are actually driving further deforestation & harming world food production. The end result is that they actually rob the world’s poor to reward the rich.
Roger Sowell says:
August 14, 2013 at 7:00 pm
Renewable percentage of the total mix depends on the location, available resources, and policies.
California generated 29.2 percent of its electricity in 2010 by non-nuclear and non-fossil fuel sources, including hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, solar, and biogas.
Electricity (2010)
In-State Generation
Source
Natural Gas 53.4%
Nuclear 15.7%
Large Hydro 14.6%
Coal. 1.7%
Renewable 14.6%
Chris has answered your post above.
chris y says:
August 14, 2013 at 10:46 pm
Lomborg is discussing total primary energy supply, not just electricity supply. As of 2011, California gets around 6% of its primary energy from renewable sources.
Clean, green CA is a renewable energy embarrassment, at less than half of the global average of 13%.
It is even worse then what Chris said.
Whilst your statistics is true for electricity generation, it is not acknowledging the problems the so called renewable create.
Allowing a source to “inject” current whenever it can produce creates bigger net fluctuation than it would be without it. This decreases the efficiency of the other energy sources that need to be available and compensate.
As you can see natural gas is a high component in the table. How much is it through efficient plants that extract 60% and more energy and how much through “backup” for the so called renewable with only 40% output?
Is this “success” not also a reason why many industries are forced to leave California?
“Green” energy is polluting more – see biofuels, see pellets and wood burning, see energy savings lamps (CFLs) and their disposal and so on. Why? .
Does it has something to do with people refusing to acknowledge the problems that these industries cause and forcing their implementation by all means?
Clive Best says:
August 15, 2013 at 3:34 am
Biofuels are crippled by thermodynamics. If they alone were to be used to provide the energy needed to transform low energy-density carbohydrates into high energy-density liquid hydrocarbons there would be essentially zero energy gain. Instead they depend 100% on fossil fuel at every single step in the process- Fertilizers, mechanized farming, fermentation, distillation, refining and transportation. Without this “fossil fuel crutch”, biofuels become the equivalent of an impossible “green” perpetual motion machine. Government policies that subsidize biofuels to meet hypothetical “targets” are actually driving further deforestation & harming world food production. The end result is that they actually rob the world’s poor to reward the rich.
Success then, as that is the intended end result.
Wind alone is generating 5.6% of the required UK load at this moment
Load 38.64GW
Wind 2.17GW
NOTE this does not include unmetered output which is about another 50%
real time data here:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
(rollover dials for more info)
Last sunday wind generated 2.5GW the requirement was for 30GW (8.3%)
Your UK Figures are wrong.
It would also be interesting to see where your renewable figure of 2.7% for 1804 the linked “shift project data portal” shows 5000TWh coal mainly and renewables less than 3TWH hydro mainly (0.05%)
Finally wind is now generating 2.43 GW which is 1/6th as much as coal
@sergeiMK.
On wednesday wind was generating 0.3GW which is 1% of UK summer needs or 0.5% of UK winter needs(60GW). The trouble is that it is varying all the time making it near impossible to balance the national grid without losses in gas efficiency.
Note the flutter of excitment in the graph (though still declining) between 1900 and the late 40s. The very first solar panels were invented by Charles Fritts in 1883. They were improved upon with the use of silicon in 1941 by Russel Ohl. Compare the progress with automobiles, airplanes and space flight of this wondrous technology.
Lars P says:
August 15, 2013 at 3:40 am
“Roger Sowell says:
August 14, 2013 at 7:00 pm
Renewable percentage of the total mix depends on the location, available resources, and policies. California generated 29.2 percent of its electricity in 2010 by non-nuclear and non-fossil fuel sources, including hydroelectric … ”
Good catch Lars, let’s take away the green’s abominated dwindling hydroelectric power and what have we got in the “Greenest state in the land of the free” (its Kentucky in the song but…).
http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/davycrockettlyrics.html
Why, acceptable renewables is 14.6% of electrical power IN CALIFORNIA!
Sowell uses the shallow “hide the decline” method to cheat and obfuscate often used by those he admires. “Communications” (the misappropriated word of sneaks) are the key, still not aware that he is in awesomely sharper company than he thinks exists in the world. Com’on Rodge, think outside of the California box you are in.
Lars P says: August 15, 2013 at 3:40 am
Allowing a source to “inject” current whenever it can produce creates bigger net fluctuation than it would be without it. This decreases the efficiency of the other energy sources that need to be available and compensate.
————————-
Wind power flucuates slowly. If a turbine fails then you lose at most 8MW from the grid.
Lose a coal or nuclear turbine and 500+MW disappears instantly from the grid. The grid has to keep more than the maximum loss in instant readiness:
Short term and instantaneous load and generation response mechanisms
The national grid is organized, and power stations distributed, in such a way as to cope with sudden, unforeseen and dramatic changes in either load or generation. It is designed to cope with the simultaneous or nearly simultaneous failure of 2 × 660 MW sets
Spinning Reserve National Grid pays to keep a number of large power station generators partly loaded.
Pumped Storage Pumped storage as in Dinorwig Power Station is also used in addition to spinning reserve to keep the system in balance.
Frequency Service For large perturbations, which can exceed the capability of spinning reserve, NG (National Grid plc) who operate the national grid and control the operations of power stations (but does not own them) has a number of partners who are known as NG Frequency Service, National Grid Reserve Service or reserve service participants. These are large power users such as steel works, cold stores, etc. who are happy to enter into a contract to be paid to be automatically disconnected from power supplies whenever grid frequency starts to fall.
Standing Reserve Operating closely with NG Frequency Response is the National Grid Reserve Service now called STOR or Short Term Operating Reserve.[9] NG Standing Reserve participants are small diesel engine owners, and Open Cycle gas turbine generator owners, who are paid to start up and connect to the grid within 20 minutes from the time Frequency Response customers are called to disconnect. These participants must be reliable and able to stay on and run for an hour or so, with a repetition rate of 20 hours.
National Grid has about 500 MW of diesel generators on contract, and 150 MW of gas turbines with about 2,000 MW of disconnect-able load.[9]
Sources of intermittency on the UK National Grid The largest source of intermittency on the UK National Grid is the power stations; in fact, the single largest source is Sizewell B nuclear power station. Whenever Sizewell B is operating the entire 1.3 GW output is liable to stop at any time without warning. Its capacity is 2.16% of the national grid maximum demand, making it the single largest power source and therefore the largest source of intermittency. Despite this issue, NG readily copes with it using the methods outlined above including the use of diesel engines. An industry-wide rate of unplanned scrams (shutdowns) of 0.6 per 7000 hours critical means that such a shut-down without warning is expected to happen about once every year and a half.[11] However, no matter how low the rate of unplanned scrams, this is largely irrelevant – what matters is the fact that it can and does happen, and measures have to be in place to deal with it.
What brought the grid down in 2008:
Reports of May 2008 outage
National grid http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/E19B4740-C056-4795-A567-91725ECF799B/32165/PublicFrequencyDeviationReport.pdf
sergeiMK:
I am replying to both your posts at August 15, 2013 at 4:47 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/14/lomborg-renewables-are-stuck-although-green-hopes-keep-rising/#comment-1390682
and August 15, 2013 at 4:58 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/14/lomborg-renewables-are-stuck-although-green-hopes-keep-rising/#comment-1390688
Your data on how much windpower is supplied to the UK grid at a specific time and your response to Lars P miss the point; viz.
Windpower provides no electricity of use to an electricity grid supply at any time.
Windfarms operate intermittently: they only provide electricity when the wind is strong enough and not too strong. Thermal power stations are needed to provide ALL the required electricity when the windfarms are not operating.
And when windfarms do operate then the electricity they produce forces thermal power stations to operate at reduced output. This – as Lars P said – reduces their efficiency. And the reduction in efficiency of thermal power stations INCREASES their fuel requirement (the effect is similar to driving a car at 5mph in fifth gear: it can be done but it uses a lot of fuel).
David Tolley (when Head of Networks and Ancillary Services, Innogy (a subsidiary of the German energy consortium RWE which operates windfarms in the UK) has said of windfarms in the UK
(NETA is the New Electricity Trading Arrangements of the UK’s deregulated energy market).
Windfarms are environmentally damaging, polluting, bird swatters that only produce electricity some of the time and provide no electricity which is useful to an electricity grid supply at any time. But they add large cost to electricity supply.
Their adoption and use is supported by subsidies and enforced by legislation.
The subsidies of windfarms and the legal enforcement of the use of windfarms should be removed.
Richard
@Janice Moore
@Ric Werme
The blood vessels are in front of your retina so that you freak out[1] when trying to climb trees in the dark. Bacteria knew this would be bad for your survival and designed accordingly.
[1] You can see them pulsating. Ick.
For the record, fairly agnostic.
I think solar is great, I get most of my energy to my house from solar heat collectors and a smaller PV installment (1,1 kW). A tile stove supplements heating in december and january. A small pack of batteries evens out generation/consumtion patterns. Of the 30 000 kWh I use, I expect to buy 4000 next year. Installation cost have been 15000 USD approx. Allow 20 years write of and I get more than 100 000 USD back on my investment of 15000 USD over 20 years (assuming the rate of 23 cents per kWh).
Solar is and should be a local affair – where the use is close to the source and offsets grid usage at better than grid parity price. Solar can liberate a family from the grip of energy companies and politicians alike. What is not to like?
The only way that renewables work is if it is installed at the point of consumption with battery storage capacity and energy efficient technolgy.
The problem with the current renewable push is they are trying to make it applicable to the “grid”, and it just can’t work that way. We will never be able to sustain the grid with renewable energy. Thus, as I said above, the best hope is to install renewable at the point of service and hopefully decrease the demand on the grid.
Janice Moore says:
August 14, 2013 at 9:49 pm
Thank you for your kind words Janice!
From a practical point of view, green energy is a day-dream. The paltry amounts of green energy produced now rely upon costly subsidies which benefit large, rent-seeking corporations and well-connected political donors.
But if you try to discuss how the laws of nature — chemistry, physics, geography — and economics are the primary barriers preventing green energy adoption, the response is invariably something along the lines of “Don’t you want cleaner [air, water, etc]?”
You can’t have a discussion with somebody who thinks that way. It’s an emotional, unreasoned argument.
sergeiMK says:
August 15, 2013 at 4:58 am
Wind power flucuates slowly.
On what planet Sergei?
Richars S Courtney answered your post above:
richardscourtney says:
August 15, 2013 at 5:38 am
In addition to Richard’s post have a look at the power generated from 7000 thousands of wind turbines combined. Weather is consistent over high areas and the energy generated varies with the cube of wind velocity.
http://www.windenergy-the-truth.com/een.html
You are talking about a single turbine failure, but that is irrelevant – the fluctuation come from thousands of turbines combined.
Take a look at the data for the UK between December and March this year. click here for graph
Even in winter there are unpredictable periods of zero output from wind. Balancing the grid is a nightmare if net wind capacity increases much further.
Curt Lampkin says:
Renewables will not be useful until we find a way to store the energy, otherwise we’ll always need a fossil fuel plant to step in when the wind stops or the sun is behind clouds or at night.
Which means they are more use for applications such as illuminated road signs than attempting replace regular AC generation. When it comes to any form of power grid things get more complex the more generators are involved.
Without energy storage renewables just increase energy costs double triple or more.
The only current technology capable of a sensible amount of energy storage is pumped hydro. Maybe wind driven mechanical pumps sending water to the upper reservoir would be useful.
gbaikie says:
August 14, 2013 at 10:17 pm
“But best path toward is developing markets in space. This will lower costs to get into space. And if costs are lower a lot, then we can harvest solar energy in space.Solar power in space is constant source of energy and has much higher energy density than anywhere on Earth.”
Indeed. The key to the future is obtaining the energy we need from somewhere other than the limited supplies available on this particular rock (3rd from the sun). The amount of materials and energy available in the rest of the solar system dwarfs our meager supplies here.
>>Hydro is a renewable resource. Are dams with hydroelectric power included as a renewable source in the graph? I know it’s not considered to be green.<<
Hydro is the major player in the renewable numbers (over 60%). Wind is small at about 2% and solar is almost nonexistent.