Guest essay by Eric Worrall
One of the great myths promoted by renewables proponents is that government subsidies are not the enablers of renewables, they are simply accelerating a transition which would occur anyway, even without taxpayer help.
Trump: Ugly for world, ugly for climate, ugly for clean energy
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Nevertheless, it doesn’t look good. And on any conventional assessment, it is a disaster on many levels – particularly for the efforts to address climate change and for the clean energy industry in the US.
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The energy transition to cheaper and cleaner energy is happening, regardless. Trump can slow down the pace in the US, but it will accelerate elsewhere, leaving the US at a significant disadvantage; although it should be noted that US renewable investments are driven to a large extent by state-based targets.
HSBC has noted that Trump’s policies put at risk the decarbonisation and clean energy uptake seen during President Obama’s time in office, with potential to slow both the US energy system transition and domestic measures to mitigate climate change.
But at the same time Trump has no control over the solar market, which is heading towards 2c/kWh, and he has no influence over battery storage, which is heading to below 400/kWh and to its major inflexion point.
This is a crucial point. Wind and solar and their enabling technologies are getting cheaper with or without the Americans, and the fossil industry will be disrupted.
Read more: http://reneweconomy.com.au/trump-ugly-for-world-ugly-for-climate-ugly-for-clean-energy-37088/
President elect Trump has named his core goal as “energy independence”. He has no problem with renewables, he just wants to remove political impediments to other forms of energy.
From the Trump campaign website;
Energy Independence
The Trump Administration will make America energy independent. Our energy policies will make full use of our domestic energy sources, including traditional and renewable energy sources. America will unleash an energy revolution that will transform us into a net energy exporter, leading to the creation of millions of new jobs, while protecting the country’s most valuable resources – our clean air, clean water, and natural habitats. America is sitting on a treasure trove of untapped energy. In fact, America possesses more combined coal, oil, and natural gas resources than any other nation on Earth. These resources represent trillions of dollars in economic output and countless American jobs, particularly for the poorest Americans.
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Read more: https://www.greatagain.gov/policy/energy-independence.html
Suggesting skeptics don’t like the idea of renewables is nonsense. I and I suspect many other skeptics would love to give a big one finger salute to the local electrical utility company. There are plenty of American Trump supporters who would love to give a big one finger salute to OPEC. But there is a huge gulf between liking the idea of renewables, and believing they are practical.
The problem is lots of household conveniences – in my case 4 x 8Kw air conditioners, several large electric fans and (occasionally) electric heating, my salt water pool, 2 fridges (one for the BBQ area) and a big upright freezer, a large washing machine and a large clothes drier – all rely on the supply of electricity on a scale I could never hope to produce using a few rooftop solar panels.
In my opinion, people who think renewables are currently a viable general replacement for fossil fuels are math challenged. I’m not alone in thinking there are unsolved problems – leading greens such as David Attenborough and Bill Gates have called for “Apollo Projects” and “energy miracles” to make renewables a viable energy option.
But in a free market economy, you don’t have to accept my opinion, you can make your own choices.
If renewables are the genuinely better solution, if they are a disruptive technology which will sweep fossil fuels into the dustbin of history, they don’t need any government help.
President-elect Trump is committed to giving renewables a chance. He certainly has no plans to ban or restrict renewables, but as he made very clear in his policy statement, he just doesn’t see any reason to bankrupt coal miners.
The history of the rise of disruptive technologies is clear. Smart phones, vacuum cleaners, automobiles, home computers, microwave ovens, the one thing they have in common is in most cases nobody subsidised them. A genuine disruptive technology doesn’t need subsidies, or political hostility towards competing technologies. The advantages sell themselves.
The US energy-independent? Technically feasible, imho. But at what a price?
A deregulated energy market w/o subsidies at competitive prices will do.
US is natural gas and electricity independent already. Issue is petroleum, and that depends on how and what you count. Issues include NGL, refinery gain, and exported refined products.
Ristvan, i think the transportation infrastructure is a bigger issue. A large enough disruption ( however that happens, from terrorism to solar flares to equipment failure that within a day would be be way more destructive. And if that would happen during a cold snap no matter where , the USA, UK or mainland Europe it may well be devastating. We have still not been told the effects of the August 2003 blackout (other than people dying from heat), if that would happen in January it would be a human disaster.
How much is being invested by the government to make compressors, motors, and pumps more efficient?
Hopefully zero. The companies manufacturing them have sufficient competitive incentive provided the cost benefit is net positive. Not worth doing if it isn’t.
Yes ristvan, Energy Recovery Inc. has been developing energy efficient compressors and pumps. Schlumberger has bought the license for the devices, so they must have some viability for commercial development. No need for government investment or subsidy.
Agree tinyco2 , I don’t have any problem with unreliables but it should be able to survive on its own merits ( no subsidies ) .
With the Hazelwood coal plant closing here in Victoria the commissar wants to replace it with unreliables and much like south Australia we will now be at risk of islanding .
I only realised last night that our power in the north east of the state comes from NSW not Victoria.
I live on a boat and run 4 x 250 W solar panels on the roof feeding a bank of 6 x 2 volt forklift truck cells in series to give 12 volts total and a capacity of 740 amp hours. This is a massive set up for a boat. In the summer these do provide for all my electrical needs and can run lots of stuff during sunny days but in the evening we’re talking about a few led lights, a small fridge/freezer and tv or stereo. In winter I need additional battery charging from main engine or generator. Heating and hot water come from a combination of solid fuel burning stove, lpg combi boiler and engine calorifier.
It’s fun to see how well you can do off-grid but even with my ultra-frugal requirements and relatively large solar capacity it still falls well short of the mark. From my practical experience perspective, anyone thinking intermittents are ever going to be a base load solution for an industrialised nation is simply farting into the wind.
“In winter I need additional battery charging from main engine or generator.”
I have fun by laughing at people talk about solar panels but rely on an engine to meet their needs. Apparently the purpose of solar panels is to tell people how well the they work when you do not need very much power.
We have lived on our sail boat and are currently living in a motorhome. Being frugal with electricity when off grid using batteries is important. I side from the cost, I find the size of solar panels contrary to a life style of small living areas in a natural setting.
All those greenies who believe they can save the planet should go off grid and see how they survive. What I want is for them to stop imposing higher costs on me and the economy by driving up electricity costs.
I fully second that. Living, like I did in a caravan/camper for R&R comes to a grinding halt if you are off-grid. Almost no communications, except battery-powered gadgets are fun for a while, but just that. The LPG/LNG driven internet is nowhere to be seen. So affordable energy, electric energy, w/o subsidies yet easily available, becomes indispensable. Taxation is ok, but why do they tax energy higher than medicine or food?
I have a roof, covered with 24 solar panels of 265 Wp each. In total, about 30 sq m. Todays harvest: 1.25 kWh. Do the math. When I calculate with the actual kWh price, I earned 6.56 Eurocents. But wait, there is more! The tax, transport and other costs are waived: I did not have to pay 18 cents of those. Total gain: not even 25 Eurocent. The installation did cost more than 10 kEuro. Even with this massive tax deduction, I will have to hope that the installation will last more than 10 years before the breakeven. It is a silly world.
I’m having a hard time understanding your analysis. What does all this work out to over a year? You have ~6.3kW nameplate generation capacity and only got 1.25 kWh net or gross? What’s your energy budget over a year? Is it just you? Appliances? Making money or losing? What does your net kWh come out to be averaged over a year?
I started looking at the large solar farms and came upon this article about the PV electricity production. This caught my eye.
“Toxic waste from semiconductor manufacturing, including cadmium, arsenic and toxic solvents require special disposal techniques but all too often they are flushed down the toilet, dumped in a convenient river or a remote landfill; and yes I’ve “ been there, done that”.
A PV solar panel is not “pollution free”, just the opposite, it carries with it a very large carbon footprint and a trio of toxic emissions unique unto itself. A solar panel is a product manufactured by energy rich fossil fuels and lots of them, and that manufacturing process creates additional bad guys unique unto itself. Quote from Ozzie Zehner new book “Green Illusions”: “Not only are solar cells an overpriced tool for reducing CO2 emissions, but their manufacturing process is also one of the largest emitters of hexafluoroethane, nitrogen trifluoride, and sulfur hexafluoride, chemicals used for cleaning plasma production equipment, these three gruesome greenhouse gases make CO2 seem harmless. As a greenhouse gas, hexafluoroethane is twelve thousand times more potent than CO2, is 100 percent manufactured by humans, and survives ten thousand years once released into the atmosphere. Nitrogen trifluoride is seventeen thousand times more virulent than CO2, and sulfur hexafluoride, the most treacherous greenhouse gas, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is twenty-five thousand times more threatening. The solar photovoltaic industry is one of the leading and fastest growing emitters of these gases, which are now measurably accumulating within the earth’s atmosphere, recent studies on nitrogen trifluoride reports that atmospheric concentrations of the gas have been rising an alarming 11 percent per year.”
http://www.gosolarcaliforniainformation.com/
Doesn’t sound like they make any kind of sense. Long article.
Not anywhere with proper enforcement of pollution regulation they aren’t.
and every component used in solar panels is also used in making computers, TVs other electronics.
china has no useful pollution enforcement across any area of industry, that’s the problem, not what it is making.
“Griff November 13, 2016 at 2:59 am
china has no useful pollution enforcement across any area of industry, that’s the problem,…”
Wonder why mfg industry is going there?
Some renewables do work and the cost continues to plummet. But the major problem is getting through the dense thicket of bad policy choices and programs by Obama and formidable lobbying group for the noncompetitive renewable factions. Renewing the ITC in its current form rewarded the uncompetitive and politically connected. Such policy outcomes are so predictable that a corrupt robot could do it with the right training.
Well said.
EPA Job #1:
CO2 is NOT a pollutant.
“they don’t need any government help”
The generators, mostly coal-fired, which supply your power were built by the Government of Queensland.
A totally illogical (and petty) insinuation, and you know it.
Not quite true there Nick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electricity_supply_in_Queensland
“Not quite true there Nick.”
So which currently used Queensland electricity generator was built by some outfit other than a Government agency?
\“”
“Nick Stokes November 12, 2016 at 1:38 pm
“they don’t need any government help”
The generators, mostly coal-fired, which supply your power were built by the Government of Queensland.”
I have worked for many Govn’t agencies in Australia and not one of them has building contractors on their payroll.
Suggesting skeptics don’t like the idea of renewables is nonsense….
Eric, I think you missed a nuance here…
They are specifically talking about Trump, not his supporters
…they don’t want to make it sound like 1/2 the people in this country
A scientist colleague (high energy physics) went for all solar heating, in the UK. And took out the gas boiler. After two winters with no heating, his wife left him. And took 75% of his assets.
There is no accounting for stupid.
R
LOL
Odd. You’d think two winters with no heat would bring them closer together.
Rafellis I agree truly dopey
The sunniest site in the UK is at Bognor Regis on the southwest coast which gets 1800 sunshine hours a year at a latitude of about
52 north which is relevant because that determines the angle of the sun to the panels which at that latitude is quite oblique for most of the year
And that is the sunniest site so most of UK gets much less with many sites say in the north receiving around only 1200 sunshine hours pa
How are you going to garner enough electric power from such a limited source as a stand alone system ? Maybe ok as a supplementary power source although the economics would be doubtful but not as a standalone system.
So getting rid of supplementary heating such as gas in those circumstances was truly dumb
Ralf
Who needs assets when you’re walking on sunshine?
Did he throw the solar panels at her?
The ONE renewable that does work is Hydro.
But the Greens will not allow us to build any more of them. The World Bank as well has cut-off all Hydro project funding to the third world because they have turned into the Climate Change Only Bank. (just go to their website and its only about Carbon emissions and solar power – it’s so weird).
Yet the Greens are happy to COUNT Hydro in their renewable numbers.
There is really only so much nonsense that a person can put up with.
The greens have no power over what we do or do not do. WE have the power and have chosen Trump as our emissary.
Funny thing is, the biggest barrier to renewables is environmentalists. If you want to build a lot of solar, you need to build it in a different time zone from where you’re going to use it.
This requires interstate transmission lines – ideally, intercontinental transmission lines. They’re cheap, and easy to build. Orders of magnitude better than storage. Only problem is, they are very difficult and expensive to permit because of local opposition, usually by environmentalists.
Solar power plants provide the most expensive electricity. That electricity is also of poor quality in the sense that the output varies, predictably on the day/night cycle and also randomly with clouds and storms. Solar and wind also increase indirectly the cost of electricity from traditional power plants for they have to be kept manned idling just in case their output drops. Solar is expensive because those plants employ 100 times more people per unit of electricity delivered to the grid than heat plants. Count about $100,000 per employee for salary and benefits = $13 million extra.
Left out of that statement “the solar market, which is heading towards 2c/kWh,” is the rest of the story –
“There are several factors that allow these low bids. One is the low cost of finance in the UAE, and the low cost of labour. The other factor is the anticipated surplus in solar module production expected next year, and which is tipped to bring the price of modules down by as much as 50 per cent in the next 18 months.”
from –
“How The Jaw-Dropping Fall In Solar Prices Will Change Energy Markets”
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/23/jaw-dropping-fall-solar-prices-will-change-energy-markets/
Things often become cheaper when there is an oversupply.
Or a reduced demand.
Retired from an Electric Utility, which allows me to use the company cafeteria. Recently went there for lunch and saw on of the dispatchers. Asked him about the $0.05 – $0.10 per kWh sales price I see the American Wind Energy Association: AWEA bragging about. His response was that that number is based upon the contract sold at auction. Tew wind farms must sell the electricity and the utilities in states with a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) MUST by the stuff. However the number quoted is based upon the best case prediction of the amount of electricity they are predicting to deliver. And like bread in a bakery outlet, the utility does not want it, but must buy it. THere are now enough windfarms that the price is going down because there is more than the utilities have to “Contract” for to meet the state RPS requirements. It is not going down in price because they are making money on the electricity – they only make money on the low interest loans, tax write offs, and the subsidies. Yet every one keeps bragging about the low price and AWEA provides the “True Lies” propaganda about how cheap wind energy is. .
The energy technological revolution is coming, but in the form of molten salt nuclear reactors, which can confidently predict levelized costs below 2 cent per kWhr. No other power technology can match those numbers. The (questionably) cheapest renewable scenario proudly claims costs more than three times that amount, for power that is uncontrollable and of low value. We will never run out of fuel (nuclear wastes, uranium or Thorium) for molten salt reactors. Never. And the cost of those fuels is insignificant – essentially they cost nothing.
The Russians just put an 800 MW fast breeder reactor into commercial service. It makes more fuel than it burns. That’s my idea of a renewable resource. http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/800-mw-fast-neutron-russian-breeder.html
I love the idea of renewables.
Its the reality that sucks 🙁
Amen.
“The energy transition to cheaper and cleaner energy”
Cheaper?
Eric’s got 32 kW of Air-conditioning?
Big place!
No, hot climate. 2 br, living room + office.
On planet Venus???
Missus was born in a cold country 😉
Hmmm will uk or France be first to suffer electricity cuts this winter? Will the cuts be caused by renewable failure or nuclear failure?
“France could face winter power cuts, hit by nuclear dependence, Channel News Asia,
09 Nov 2016 PARIS: France could impose power cuts this winter due to an electricity shortage, an unprecedented step in the wealthy nation which would expose the vulnerabilities of its dependence on nuclear power.
The warning was issued on Tuesday by grid operator RTE, which said power supply had been hit by the closure of around a third of the country’s ageing nuclear reactors for safety checks. The country’s regulator has ordered a review of the strength of crucial steel components after the discovery of manufacturing irregularities.”
the fault is in the steel supplied for the pressure vessels containing too much carbon. Manufactured in Japan and France initially discovered in the vessel in the new Flammanville . nuclear reactor which has caused yet more delays to its completion.
Britain and other European countries now supplying power to france to make up for their offline generators- UK:
One assumes the cross channel supply of power will cease when uk requires all its own power
Very unusual for France to be net importing electricity. For decades they have been big exporters. Countries like Germany and UK have relied on this at times. There could be trouble ahead.
Wind and solar will disappear after removal of subsidies as fast as cockroaches disappear from a cleaned and disinfected kitchen.
But cockroaches will come back and you have to call the exterminator again. At last they don’t ask for subsidies or grants.
“I suspect many other skeptics would love to give a big one finger salute to the local electrical utility company.”
Yes, but my local electric company is currently requesting a big rate hike on their customers with solar. They used to promote solar to look green. But now that large numbers of their customers have taken their advice and put solar on their roofs, they have become concerned for their future. They now want to charge a large hook-up fee and higher rates for customers with solar who need to remain on the grid as backup for cloudy days. It would make their rates similar to Nevada’s and end up charging some solar customers even more than the average customer. That will put a damper on new solar installations until batteries are cheap enough to allow homes to go completely off the grid.
It remains to be seen if the electric company will get everything they’re requesting. It has been my experience that utilities figure out how much of a rate hike they want. Then they double it before putting in their request. The state commission ends of cutting their request in half and then brags about holding the line on rate requests. Everyone is happy in the end, including the utility who gets everything they really expected in the first place. And most customers feel relief that they were spared a much bigger rate hike. They rarely have any idea that they just got played.
The Electric Utility costs do not go down when a home or many homes install a PV solar system. They still have the same number of employees operating the same number of power plants. They are maintaining the same number of poles and transformers and the same number of miles of wire. And since they are required by federal regulations to have a 10% “spinning” reserve (meaning the plant is actually running and burning fuel) over the predicted highest demand for that day. As a result, they are burning almost as much fuel as if the solar panels were not there. Then, many states make the utility pay the homeowner the same price for the electricity that they place on the grid as the utility would charge them. Or in other words, they actually lose money for each additional home that adds a solar panel on their roof.
The customer is actually being played by the Envirowhacos that are selling the Unreliables as the way to reduce CO2. The only way that CO2 will be reduced in your and/or your children’s lifetime is to convert all electricity generation to Nuclear Power and then convert all transportation to Electric power.
The term is fixed cost.
Don’t you just love the hubris of the author of that document when he says “the US will be left at a disadvantage if they slow down the transition to renewables”.
How can you be disadvantaged if, right now, you drop huge taxpayer subsidies for renewables, allowing cheaper forms of power generation, such as coal & gas, to compete without discrimination in the marketplace?
“4 x 8Kw A/C”
Is that for real? You make Al Gore look like an energy miser. That’s 133A, most of a typical 200A service!