By Steve Goreham
Earlier this month, the Trump Administration announced a decision to apply a 30 percent tariff on imported solar cells and panels. The Solar Industries Association denounced the measure, projecting job losses and cancellation of solar investments. But the solar tariff discussion hides a larger renewable energy issue. Global investment in renewables has stalled in the US, in Europe, and in many markets across the world.
Since the 1990s, sustainable advocates have called for investment in wind, solar, and biofuel energy as the solution to global warming, pollution, and feared resource depletion. National, state, and provincial governments responded, promoting green energy with feed-in tariffs, renewable portfolio standards laws, renewable grid priority, and other subsidies and mandates. Carbon trading markets and carbon taxes were enacted to impose costs on hydrocarbon fuels to favor renewable energy.
These efforts resulted in a rapid rise in renewable deployments across the world. From 2004 to 2011, global renewable energy investment grew at a 26.7 percent compounded annual rate. By the end of 2012, more than 200,000 wind turbines were operating worldwide. Germany alone boasted more than one million solar rooftop installations.
But since 2011, investment in renewables has stalled. From 2011 to 2017, global green energy investment grew at only 0.7 percent per year—essentially flat. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 2017 investment in renewables grew only 1 percent in the US, but was down 16 percent in Japan, down 20 percent in India, down 26 percent in Germany, and down 56 percent in the United Kingdom. Investment in China was up 26 percent, supporting a meagre 3 percent global renewable investment growth in 2017.
European nations have the highest per person renewable investment in the world and extensive experience with renewables. Europe invested over $100 billion each year in renewable energy in 2010 and 2011. But last year Europe’s renewable investment was only $57.4 billion, down 50 percent from the record years of 2010‒2011.
So why is renewable investment faltering? One answer is that renewable projects are heavily dependent upon subsidies, and subsidies are being cut. The combination of rising electricity prices and budget-busting subsidy bills is forcing nations to cut back.
Europe invested $850 billion dollars in renewables from 2000 to 2014 and continues to pay a huge ongoing price. Residential electricity prices climbed to three times the US price in Spain and four times the US price in Denmark and Germany. German consumers pay an EEG levy in their electric bills, amounting to €25 billion a year to subsidize renewable energy. Environment minister Peter Altmaier estimates that cumulative renewable subsidies paid by German consumers will total an astonishing one trillion euros by 2040.
Over the last five years, subsidies or mandates have been cut in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Retroactive cuts to feed-in tariffs were made in Bulgaria, Greece, and Spain. Germany cut feed-in tariff subsidies by 75 percent and levied grid fees on residential solar owners. In 2015, the UK government suspended all new subsidies for onshore wind farms and reduced subsidies for residential solar installations, causing a steep fall in investment in both 2016 and 2017.
US subsidy cuts are also in process. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 began a phased reduction of the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) from 2016‒2019. If not extended again, the PTC subsidy will expire after 2019. The Act also reduced investment tax credits for wind and solar.
Some claim that renewable energy can power modern society. A 2017 paper by Mark Jacobsen and others at Stanford University, calls for 100 percent renewables by 2050, with wind and solar providing 95 percent of the energy. But this wishful thinking is not supported by the trends.
Since 1965, global energy consumption more than tripled to 13.3 billion tons of oil equivalent, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. In 2016, wind and solar provided about two percent of the total. Each year the world consumes an additional United Kingdom worth of energy. Wind and solar sources are unable to supply even the annual growth in world demand, let alone replace our traditional energy sources.
Renewable energy investment has stagnated, buried by rising energy prices and unaffordable subsidies. The world is being forced to return to sensible energy policies based on cost, performance, and real environmental benefit.
Originally published in The Daily Caller. Steve Goreham is a speaker on the environment, business, and public policy and author of the new book Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.
Squaw Valley / Alpine Meadows ski complex (Tahoe) claims they will be “100% renewable” by December 2018. Because Tesla. Yet today they rely on 75% natural gas.
http://squawalpine.com/explore/blog/olympic-valley-microgrid
Global Investment in Renewable Energy Has Stalled
That’s why they’ve started to raid the pension plans. Like Canada’s CPP.
Spot on Rob!
Superannuation and pension funds are the left’s new target.
Executive positions Worldwide in funds and investor/managers are going to the left.
Soon their ‘respectable’ criminal activities will be in full swing stealing our money.
Their donations to political parties will ensure protection from investigation and prosecution.
On another subject TODAY the UN is convening its 9th “World Urban Forum” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
A seemingly noble UN initiative; however, their plan is to ‘tax’ ratepayers of the first World via local city councils paying ‘membership’ and ‘project’ fees to the UN body.
Redistribution of your wealth will be achieved when your city signs up.
It gets the UN around Federal and State Governments directly to your money.
MSM has completely missed this criminal scheme.
Here’s their lovely website http://wuf9.org/
Left’s money target list:
Superannuation/pension payers – WIP.
Rate payers – WIP.
Energy payers – well underway.
The other issues no one thinks much about is the “gold mine” dilemma.
Say you are going to build the first gold mine. Where would you build it? Obviously where the gold is! But not just that, you would look at a variety of other factors (availability of power, and miners, and supplies). The land status (can’t build it underwater, or on someone else’s property.). So the location of the first mine represents a balance of these economic forces.
Where do you site the second mine? Well, at a slightly worse location than the first. And the forth and fifth? The one thousandth? At some point the new gold mines are no longer economic – you can’t make it work with the poor grade ore, and crappy location. Now we might open up a few new locations by improving mining efficiency. Say the cost of gold goes up, while fuel costs go down. but really you start to bump along the bottom.
Solar and wind are the same. Really they are just mining the sun and wind at any location. And, economically, they work the same way. The first locations for wind farms are where is makes the most economic sense – where there is the best resource, close to power lines, private land, etc. Each subsequent installation is slightly worse. And just like a gold mine, worse locations can be compensated for by improving “mining efficiency” for wind and solar – better solar panels and windmills, faster permitting, faster construction.
But at some point, you reach a phase where the remaining locations are marginal, where there are too many regulatory hurdles, where costs are too high. You installation rate, your gold rush, is over. Now you just bump along the bottom of the market.
And just like gold mining, bumping along the bottom of the market doesn’t mean there is no more gold in the ground. Just that it is no longer economic to extract.
That is what has always bugged me about fanciful estimates for renewable power – they are measuring the total size of the resources, NOT the economic viability of extracting those resources. For example, wind and solar resources 500 miles south of Hawaii are completely uneconomic and will likely never be tapped.
What we need are realistic estimates of what resources could be economically tapped.
Except, you know, they do take that into account. But that would require reading the actual studies rather rather than rant about them.
Oh and reference: I like the free e-book ‘renewable energy without the hot air’.
If you think these numbers are bad, wait until the break/fix of the devices enters the fray. Electronics failure and battery replacement will be a particularly obscene expense for some. But finally, no dough from the USA Pillsbury dough-boy will really deep-six the industry. Europe cannot support the “demand” costs alone and China is to cheap and could really give a care about anyone else. We are witnessing the death throes of a giant whale of economic excess in direct conflict with the science and plain logic. When this baby beaches the stench will be incredible… by stench I am talking about the blame game…. the accusations… the recriminations…. all of the flack from the left over whose fault it was that the GREEN MACHINE failed to reach S2. (sorry about the mixed metaphors)
I can’t wait.
Adding up all of that “investment”, I come up with about $3.4 trillion. Assuming the EU cost of a nuclear plant of $5,500 per kW, that would have allowed us to add 600 GW of reliable capacity to the grid. How much solar or wind capacity was added?
“A 2017 paper by Mark Jacobsen and others at Stanford University, calls for 100 percent renewables by 2050, with wind and solar providing 95 percent of the energy.”
I invite Stanford University to lead by example. Show us how it’s done.
I notice that every press release/BBC news item about new wind farms etc in the UK just gives the CAPACITY…
Or, even more misleading, ‘COULD power x-thousand homes’…
This is a trick used by virtually all renewable energy companies and as you say, especially when a new project is announced. All generators connected to the National Grid supply energy to ALL the homes in the UK. That is the nature of the beast. It is the cumulative output from all those generators that “powers” all the homes in a real sense. The use of the word “power” implies that those houses could be taken off-grid and still have enough energy, whereas the figures these people use were taken from the DECC number for the average energy use per household. Try this:- find the wind farm/solar farm/etc total output for the year in MWhr and divide by 8760 (24hrsx365) to get the continuous maximum MWs. Then divide THAT by the number of lucky households. The end figure is usually between 0.4 and 1 kilowatt. How can that be deemd to “power” a house? Most kettles use 2 or 3kws. The current RegenSW report (www.regensw.co.uk/renewable-energy-progress-reports) reckons England generates 54,962 GWh of renewable energy, enough to power 14.5 million homes. By my reckoning that is 0.43kw or 432watts per home.
Interesting statistics for the WUWT crowd to consider:
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/07/new-us-renewable-energy-capacity-beats-natural-gas-fourth-year-running-renewables-now-account-20/
Many of you commenting here favoring renewables are just dreamers. It’s obvious you don’t have the data to back your hasty statements. More power to dreaming, but renewables are almost dead because reality is about to set in. Once the subsidies expire renewables will melt away, save those few that embrace reality, hydropower, geothermal, wood waste. Renewables have a place when no other options are available. The big mistake I see in dreamers writing about renewables is they conveniently ignore the dispatchability, unreliability, inefficiency, lifetimes of facilities, very high cost, peaking capacity, need for full-time backup for a second full-time power source, and intermittency of renewables. Few reliable sources on overall costs are also available which further camouflages their real costs. The EIA cost studies are useless. The other problems with wind turbines are very serious and almost never addressed are the health concerns, the need for setback to nearest residence, threat to property values, bird deaths, thuggery employed by wind providers and inattention of legislators who pass renewable mandates that deliver peril upon residents who must live with wind turbines. Life-shattering problems in Europe, Australila, U.S., UK and Ontario are well addressed at epaw.org, aweo.org, ontariowindresistance.org and stopthesethings.com. Wind turbines near homes are destroying peoples lives.
Here in Washington, data on the 46 wind farms (hundreds and hundreds of turbines) shows that they are still–produce no power–for 50 or 60 days in the first six months of the year. In 2015 the “no power” days in the first four months were 36.8 days which include a 2-week period of high-pressure weather conditions when no turbine turned at all. On the best day, the 46 farms produced power at 99% of capacity for 25 minutes. For 25 days in January 2014 all of the 46 wind farms didn’t turn a rotor. The data is available at bonneville power administration to verify. These problems go conveniently unnoticed because of the full time backup by hydropower.
Two of most serious problems with wind and solar never addressed are the resources needed to build them and the area required. To serve all power needs for the US from wind turbines would require condemning an area twice the size of Texas just for wind turbines. People cannot live near them due to severe health consequences from infrasound. The second severe problem is the resources needed. Steel and aggregate needed for foundations is 2,115 times and 696 times larger resp. than the world production of steel and aggregate in 2015. The need for copper, steel for turbines and neodymium for magnets in rotors is 3280 times 61,000 times larger than the world production in 2015 of these materials. And then there is coking coal, iron ore, bentonite and the resources to build the ships and mines and bunker fuel to make this all happen.
Today, renewables in the world have not exceeded 0.3% of world’s energy demands according to IEA. At the same time we could provide the power needed in the US with 7200 supercritical coal plants, with lifetimes 3 times that of wind turbines that could be built in an area smaller than Manhattan. Renewables is in effect, a dream beyond reality.