Guest essay by Eric Worrall
If current generation renewables are a viable replacement for fossil fuels, why are so many greens calling for lavishly funded “Grand Challenge” projects and “Apollo Projects” to make them work?
Renewables need a grand-challenge strategy
Launch a global clean-energy initiative to set priorities that galvanize researchers to deliver breakthroughs, write Alan Bernstein and colleagues.
Public spending on research into renewable energy is too low to meet even the modest targets set at the Paris climate talks last December, let alone decarbonize the world economy. It stands at about US$6.5 billion a year, or less than 2% of total public research and development (R&D) spending, according to data from the International Energy Agency.
…
In 2005, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington — with the Wellcome Trust in London, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Foundation for the US National Institutes of Health — targeted issues surrounding neglected diseases, which affect most of the world’s population (H. Varmus et al. Science 302, 398–399; 2003). Fourteen priority topics included developing a genetic strategy to incapacitate insects that transmit agents of disease, such as the mosquito vectors of yellow fever, dengue and Zika virus (D. A. Joubert et al. PLoS Pathog. 12, e1005434; 2016).
“Scalability, affordability, uptake and dissemination need to be addressed.”
Renewable energy calls for a broadly similar approach. It is a difficult, urgent global problem that has been neglected in terms of public research and investment. It requires big thinking, multidisciplinary approaches and supportive policies to compete with existing systems. And it is tightly coupled to other global challenges, such as food and water security, poverty and health.
…
Read more: http://www.nature.com/news/renewables-need-a-grand-challenge-strategy-1.20717
Back in September last year, WUWT reported on prominent British Green David Attenborough’s call for an “Apollo Project” to make renewable energy viable.
In 2014, a Google Corporation engineering team concluded there is no way with current technology to make renewables a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
Naturally these voices of discord are creating a backlash – in December 2015, Naomi Oreskes accused James Hansen of being a “Denier”, for suggesting that renewables by themselves weren’t up to the job of decarbonising the global economy.
The utter uselessness of current generation renewables is becoming increasingly difficult to deny. As the renewable driven instability which caused the South Australian State Wide Blackout demonstrated, any serious attempt to add more than a token renewable presence to the grid invites catastrophe.
The AEMO, the government body tasked with oversight of the Australian electricity grid, predicted back in August that renewables would increase the risk of blackouts.
Given the calls for major research efforts from committed greens, it seems reasonable to conclude that there are serious outstanding problems. How can politicians not be aware of these problems? Perhaps the main motivation for continuing to support renewables has become the immense embarrassment abandoning the effort would create, for the politicians who facilitated this colossal waste of taxpayer’s money.
Those same politicians may be tempted to support a renewable “Apollo Project”, to try to salvage some value out of the mess they created. But there is close to zero probability of a meaningful near term breakthrough. All such grand research efforts will achieve in any reasonable timeframe is the squandering of yet more taxpayer’s money on the renewables pipe dream.
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Desperate and frantic last-stitch effort to put clothes on the naked emperor
Whilst here in the colonies three states are planning to spend $40 + billion on achieving the green goal of 50% renewables .
We will never know what the opportunity cost is for all this. The things we could have achieved with the billions spent and talent wasted on these projects, and now they want to ramp it up.
Oh, the boondoggle aka Grand Challenge will go on for some time yet.
More research grants, prototypes, assistance with commercialisation, roll-outs to existing grids for such things as:
– Wind power modifier systems which cause asynchronous generators to appear/act as though synchronous to grids. (The SA experience, as AEMO sagely noted way back when, is that plenty of synchronous generation is a requirement for grid frequency stability. Out-of-frequency events will cause islanding and load-shedding for preservation.).
– solar PV power central monitoring (at present, solar grid-tied PV is largely or even completely opaque to/uncontrollable by grid network operators)
– SCADA and greatly enhanced control algorithms to enable numerous, small, distributed, intermittent and out-of-phase power sources to be properly integrated into grids that were designed and built for few large-scale synchronous generation sources.
In short, Send Munny. Lots. Now.
After the South Australia blackout the UK Guardian newspaper jumped in immediately with a verbose denial of any blame for wind power:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/29/south-australia-blackout-explained-renewables-not-to-blame
Have they had the integrity to retract this false information? Unlikely.
I think the greatest mistake the environmental movement ever made was to align themselves with the anti-nuclear movement. Nuke is green. It is as green as the human race is ever going to get.
Funny you should say that because deep down I reckon the SA Gummint knows these unreliables are a complete crock and there’s only one answer if they reject nature’s carbon battery in the ground-
http://nuclear.yoursay.sa.gov.au/
Well I suppose that will teach Bjorn Lomborg a lesson that it does not pay to get ahead of the pack as many a free thinker has found to their cost throughout history.
For some time Mr Lomborg ( who has been dubbed a “denier’ even though he accepts the arguments for AGW ) has argued that we should first be spending money on research and development into making renewables more cost competitive with coal and gas-before rushing into investing in them.
For his pains he has been abused with the tag “denier” and for good measure ostracized by the “free thinking” academics of Australian universities because he would not accept that wind and solar were perfect just as they are at present.
Now the International Energy Agency plus Google Engineering and others are joining in with Lomborg in arguing for more research into renewables !
Its the ultimate irony that James Hansen who started all this climate alarmism is also now under attack with the universal epithet “denier” by Naomi Oreskes because he dared challenge the orthodoxy that the sanctified renewables wind and solar can adequately replace carbon-based and other energy forms ie nuclear and hydro.
I am intrigued by the way that many of the left latch onto given technologies (which after all are only a means to an end) and make them into an end in itself, with other alternative technologies being cast as the work of the devil ( eg Nuclear or Hydro). Curious mind sets of a quasi -religious cast- which makes them impervious to reason or even adverse experience eg the SA blackout’
Chris Uhlmann of Australia’s ABC made a good point when he said that if the Greens and their fellow travellers can’t accept that there are problems with integrating intermittent and unstable wind power into existing electricity grids, and are not prepared to agree to seeking solutions,( which may be lower proportions of such renewables) that the public, who are not prepared to accept frequent blackouts and or skyrocketing power charges, will lose patience with climate change and the Greens etc will have lost the argument.
But given that in Australia the Greens have already successfully blocked an Emissions Trading Scheme proposed by former PM Kevin Rudd (which one might have thought was in their espoused interests, I suppose we may expect more such stupidity from them by their continuing to defend and demand more wind power in our electricity grids.
And an Iowa utility is building a wind farm which will supply 85% of its customers energy needs. And Chile and Bahrain have signed GW solar installations which will provide energy at below 3 cents per kwh. For reference, NG fired plants in the US, with some of the cheapest natural gas prices in the world, provide US power at 4.6 cents per kwh. King coal is at 5.4 cents per kwh. The entire coal industry in the US just went bankrupt over the last 18 months. Petroleum producers will likewise go bankrupt over the next 20 years. It is just the obvious progression of technology. What happens when solar in Nevada can provide energy at 1.5 cents per kwh? Carbon based energy sources roll over and die.
“It is just the obvious progression of technology.”
Rubbish! If the Govt mandates the grid takes all the unreliable energy first and/or subsidizes the capital cost of wind turbines and solar then that’s what we get in the short/medium term. The only question being what will we get in the long run when such legislative fiat has deliberately closed the last reliable generator, bearing in mind that South Australia needed a certain amount of thermal power up and running before the grid could handle adding in the unreliables.
So we know now 100% unreliables cannot restart the grid, the only question remaining is, at what level can Govts bankrupt thermal power down to before the grid cannot be restarted, period. In SA the Govt is trying to find out the answer for all your benefit. That’s very big of them BUT…
Yeah right. Just look at the kilowatt hour costs. In another three years solar will deliver electricity an one half of the cost of NG and one third of the cost of coal. You do realize this is all market driven don’t you?
What are you smoking and can I have some?
You have a lot of trouble with reading comprehension NorEastern?
85% of customer energy needs? A completely meaningless number without context. Cost is not stated, land required is not stated, loss of local land value is not stated, ad infinitum …
Chile and Bahrain… blah blah blah. More useless claims. Come back and tell us the true cost per Kwh when they’re fully constructed and actually functioning, if ever.
The entire coal industry went bankrupt because many of their customer were legislated out of business and many of their mines were also legislated out of business.
If the market was not gutted by the government and was still allowed to be free market where the cheapest most efficient power could be sold, those coal businesses would be prospering!
Without Despot Obama and his corrupt EPA to force the oil industry into bankruptcy, there is zero chance of oil companies going bankrupt.
Solar in Nevada will never provide power that cheaply. Nor are the solar farms operating all that healthy and Ivanpah is a massive bird fryer and apparently a desert tortoise killer too.
Next time, sNortEastern, instead of just celebrating the news bytes and titles; try reading deeply into what is actually going on!
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/development/2016/08/27/iowa-utilities-board-approves-huge-wind-energy-project/89488034/
You are resorting to just fact less denial of science. GLWT. Coal is dead. Just bury that king deep. Solar at 3 cents per kwh just kicks every other energy source in the a**. And in five years with the price of solar at 1.5 cents per kwh what other electrical generating source will be competitive? Certainly not coal and NG.
You are resorting to just fact less denial of science. GLWT. Coal is dead. Just bury that king deep. Solar at 3 cents per kwh just kicks every other energy source in the a**. And in five years with the price of solar at 1.5 cents per kwh what other electrical generating source will be competitive? Certainly not coal and NG.
It’s 3 cents when the sun is shinning and not counting all the things you have to do in order to cover for it when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
You are also neglecting the fact that most of the installation cost was subsidized.
NorEastern:
Go up a bit and re-read
tobyglyn
October 6, 2016 at 5:21 pm
One of so many failures.
Go read about how Ontario energy prices are putting companies out of business and putting retirement homes on the verge of bankruptcy and forcing people to choose between electricity and food.
Renewable are fine. When used appropriately. Like for charging a car battery or an electric fence, running a remote sign or charging a computer in the bush – all of which I do. Run a house in the winter in northern climes – not so much. Say Propane. We need oilcos to survive. Carbon based life forms will roll over and die without Carbon based energy sources.
PS – how do you think all those solar panels and wind turbines get manufactured and delivered and what do you suppose they are made of? Can you say petro-chemicals?
Ah well, Ignorance is bliss – with apologies – as you probably already know all this. How old did you say you were?
Here’s the solar FIT scheme details for South Australia where I get paid 44c/kwhr plus another 6.8c from my retailer or 50.8c total when the most I pay for peak power from the grid is 33.8c and off peak (overnight hot water) is only 14c retail
http://www.sa.gov.au/topics/water-energy-and-environment/energy-bills/solar-rebates-and-payments#minimumretailerpayment
and if you look at those various Group 1-5 payments(expand ‘Solar feed-in scheme’ heading) then you can see how they’ve had to slowly wind back the largesse over the years until the max you get nowadays is only 6.8c and if you want USD then multiply those prices by 0.76 currently, although they are exclusive of GST so we actually pay another 10% GST on that plus network charge.
Yes my largesse is 50.8c /kwhr right through to June 30, 2028, all paid for by any lacking neighbours. That’s socialism for you where some are more equal than others as you know from that old dead white guy with the beard who knows what’s best for us all apparently. Well in any case that’s how his disciples interpret him so who am I to argue under the circumstances?
The engineers in Iowa have figured out a way to keep the wind blowing 24/7? Yee haw.
Coal went bankrupt?????
Are you totally delusional, or are you just paid to make a fool of yourself?
I guess I just got banned from WUWT. Remarkable how an actual scientist with a PhD in CS and a masters in statistics could be banned from a site that purports itself as being “scientific”.
No, you didn’t get “banned” your posts just go held for moderation. It happens due to certain word combinations. Your comments are approved. Please don’t jump to conclusions.
Have just perfected a perpetual motion 500 giggle watt generator that uses nothing more than Co2 as fuel , please send munney and lots of it .
Today in Australia, federal and state energy ministers have met and agreed to appoint an independent panel to be chaired by chief scientist Alan Finkel to review the National Electricity Market. The panels is to provide a blueprint for energy security across the grid. Sadly, Finkel has been an advocate for renewables in the past so we may just get more white washing of the deteriorating situations.
The state governments are still determined to meet their ridiculous, not to mention completely unnecessary, renewable energy targets so unless this panel gets real and produces a report that properly shows how incapable and costly renewables really are, then more blackouts are on the way.
http://www.afr.com/news/politics/coag-energy-ministers-meet-after-sa-wakeup-call-20161006-grwp9q
The good thing for the rest of Australia is the huge lead that South Australia has in transitioning to renewables. Their grid will black out several more times before any other state grid reaches the danger point. This is especially likely if Victoria forge ahead on the stupid path dictated by the current Marxist government and the brown coal power plants start to close (sorry Hazelwood – you served us faithfully for 2 generations are now you’re out). If there is a reduction in capacity of the Victorian grid, then it’s bye-bye to the crutch that’s been propping up South Australia since May when the Northern coal plant was closed.
Yeah caught that and they were always going to push it off to a review and naturally fan boy Finkel was chosen to hand pick some more renewable flunkies, but no prizes for guessing Premier Jaywalk is still pressing for his pet windmills to have more interconnection to Hunter Valley black-
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/josh-frydenberg-promises-power-review-after-sa-blackout/news-story/9aeb2faa7e2501d614d810a4e3624c6f
No good brown nosing to Victoria for more thermal with Andrews in charge and roll on the summer heat wave, peak aircon load to stress test their Frankenstein monster.
If they wanted a real review the AEMO were best placed to give it, but the trouble with these Quangos is they know where the paychecks are coming from so they’re naturally gutless when it comes to reports without fear or favour and you have to read between their fluffy lines to glean the truth.
And that moron Tom Koutsantonis stated today he wants an “energy intensity scheme” between electricity generators – ie a carbon cap and trade scheme
Total TOSSER
Online already! Listen to the stupidity and denial.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/tom-koutsantonis-speaks-to-the-business/7914500
Sorry, that should have been “emissions intensity scheme”
Here’s Federal Energy and Environment Minister, Josh Frydenberg after the COAG meeting. Some sense about energy security but still carrying on about CO2 emissions, climate change and renewables.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/josh-frydenberg-speaks-to-elysse/7914538
We’re going to need those extra blackouts to drive reality home unless Finkel starts acting as an engineer rather than a starry eyed science nered and his panel stick to the facts in the report.
why the grand project?
well renewables work and the rate of uptake of them is increasing…
but this is about ensuring there’s enough renewables soon enough to forestall the projected temp rise and hold it to a 1.5 or at worst 2 degree limit.
you should note that there are many advances – in solar PV efficiency, solar film for office block windows, larger wind turbines, floating wind turbines, tidal turbines, battery storage, other storage methods (a whole heap of those!) – already under test…
Renewable energy sources all have their place, but base load for a nationwide electricity system is not one of them.
Solar is great for small scale or local installations. Many small remote villages in Africa and Asia are installing solar for lighting and small devices because it is way too expensive to lay copper over long distances to server a few dwellings.
Wind is OK for applications where slow and intermittent does not matter. Perfect for gradually pumping water out of a drainage ditch into a canal or water from a well into a reservoir or water tower.
Hydro is great for load balancing as it is so quick to switch on and off, but there are simply not enough high mountains and lakes with sufficient rainfall to guarantee base load.
Wave power has yet to prove itself, and probably a bit like wind power – it simply does not produce enough power for the infrastructure and capital needed to deploy it.
Tidal power is promising but usually has huge negative local environmental effects.
That leaves fossil fuels and nuclear. Regardless of your views on CAGW, nuclear is about the only long term electricity generating option.
Forget all about technology improving the efficiency of solar. Take my 2100W roof system the day of the SA blackout and on that overcast wet day it was putting our 55W at midday and just before the blackout around 4pm the inverter readout showed it had shut down completely for the day. Currently such solar generators are around 16-17% efficient at turning the sun’s energy into electricity. Now imagine my 2100W system was 100% efficient- abracadabra- your physical nirvana has been reached Griff, so what do I have? An installed capacity around 6 times what I have now ie 12600W and I would get 330W on that same midday and then zero again at perhaps 4.15 or 4.30pm. Now do you get it Griff? You’ve defied the laws of physics with 100% efficiency and all you’ve ended up with is SIX TIMES THE DAMN VARIABILITY stoopids, just the same as if you made those damn windmills 100% efficient at catching the wind’s energy.
Battery technology??? I’d remind you we’re still using essentially the same lead acid battery technology in our cars that dear old Henry was plonking in the Model T. Have you for one minute considered why that is Griff? Duh!
Good grief, these green-dream technologists seem an unimaginative lot! The problem of renewable power instability and the need for grid-power storage to buffer that instability arise only because the system is designed to feed the power from renewables directly into the grid. Why don’t they simply use the renewables output to manufacture a convenient type of chemical fuel which can then be burned in conventional power stations instead?
I’m always floored when supposedly intelligent people throw around the phrase “decarbonize the world economy” as if it’s a perfectly rational thing and without being called out on it.
The concept is completely absurd.