At this rate, it’s going to take nearly 400 years to transform the energy system
Here are the real reasons we’re not building clean energy anywhere near fast enough.
by James Temple, MIT Technology review
Fifteen years ago, Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution, calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear power plant’s worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Recently, he did a quick calculation to see how we’re doing.
Not well. Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 ˚C, as the 2003 Science paper by Caldeira and his colleagues found, we are adding around 151 megawatts. That’s only enough to power roughly 125,000 homes.
At that rate, substantially transforming the energy system would take, not the next three decades, but nearly the next four centuries. In the meantime, temperatures would soar, melting ice caps, sinking cities, and unleashing devastating heat waves around the globe (see “The year climate change began to spin out of control”).
Caldeira stresses that other factors are likely to significantly shorten that time frame (in particular, electrifying heat production, which accounts for a more than half of global energy consumption, will significantly alter demand). But he says it’s clear we’re overhauling the energy system about an order of magnitude too slowly, underscoring a point that few truly appreciate: It’s not that we aren’t building clean energy fast enough to address the challenge of climate change. It’s that—even after decades of warnings, policy debates, and clean-energy campaigns—the world has barely even begun to confront the problem.
The UN’s climate change body asserts that the world needs to cut as much as 70 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions by midcentury to have any chance of avoiding 2 ˚C of warming. But carbon pollution has continued to rise, ticking up 2 percent last year.
So what’s the holdup?
Beyond the vexing combination of economic, political, and technical challenges is the basic problem of overwhelming scale. There is a massive amount that needs to be built, which will suck up an immense quantity of manpower, money, and materials.
For starters, global energy consumption is likely to soar by around 30 percent in the next few decades as developing economies expand. (China alone needs to add the equivalent of the entire US power sector by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.) To cut emissions fast enough and keep up with growth, the world will need to develop 10 to 30 terawatts of clean-energy capacity by 2050. On the high end that would mean constructing the equivalent of around 30,000 nuclear power plants—or producing and installing 120 billion 250-watt solar panels.
| What we should be doing* | What we’re actually doing† | |
|---|---|---|
| Megawatts per day | 1,100 | 151 |
| Megawatts per year | 401,500 | 55,115 |
| Megawatts in fifty years | 20,075,000 | 2,755,750 |
| Years to add 20 Terrawatts | 50 | 363 |
| Sources: Carnegie Institution, Science, BP | *If we had started at this rate in 2000 | †Actual average rate of carbon-free added per day from 2006-2015 |
There’s simply little financial incentive for the energy industry to build at that scale and speed while it has tens of trillions of dollars of sunk costs in the existing system.
“If you pay a billion dollars for a gigawatt of coal, you’re not going to be happy if you have to retire it in 10 years,” says Steven Davis, an associate professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine.
It’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to see how any of that will change until there are strong enough government policies or big enough technology breakthroughs to override the economics.
The study also notes that the United States adds roughly 10 gigawatts of new energy generation capacity per year. That includes all types, natural gas as well as solar and wind. But even at that rate, it would take more than 100 years to rebuild the existing electricity grid, to say nothing of the far larger one required in the decades to come.
“Is it possible to accelerate by a factor of 20?” he asks. “Yeah, but I don’t think people understand what that is, in terms of steel and glass and cement.”
…
Read the entire report, well worth your time: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610457/at-this-rate-its-going-to-take-nearly-400-years-to-transform-the-energy-system/
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I take the claims/projections with salt, a lot of salt. Here’s my justification in the form of a question… Can anyone tell me what the experts in energy production predicted for our sources and uses in “four centuries” from 1618 A.D.?
Well, they do get partial credit for the prediction of wood (pellet) burning. They just didn’t know that it would entail clear cutting forests in the New World to satisfy fickle policy mandates and side dealing to do it that way. They did miss the Gaia religion thing though.
How does pellet burning not create CO2?
Science
What about similar prediction/projection from 1918?
Or, indeed, 1968 (which is within the lifetime of some few reading/commenting here.)
Auto, convinced that projections are a waste of electrons – and predictions a waste of paper, even if recycled!
It is amazing how these climateers can go on and on about “solutions” to a non-problem, which will cost $trillions and destroy economies, making peoples lives miserable, and lowering living standards world-wide. Nothing they say matches reality. They reside in a totaly different world, of their own making.
The problem is different: we are running out of fossil fuels. Therefore all these emissions projections, the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and temperature increases they use in reams of useless studies have to be changed. This global warming problem will be solved by the market: we will gave to find replacements whether we like it or not.
No we aren’t.
Markw, please support with geophysical data your assertion. I wrote three ebooks with lots (thousands) of verifiable footnotes saying (in part, since all three ebooks had larger themes) you are just wrong. So Data supporting your belief assertion? I mean geological, petrophysicsl data. You know, source rock TOC by basin region (hint, it varies from basin rim to basin center), overlying conventional reservoir depletion (hint, in 2008 IEA surveyed the ~800 fields comprising >2/3 of all global oil production to calculate the global annual decline curve), creming curves for yet to be discovered (hint, my own published estimate is almost exactly the same as that from USGS), probit transform functions for coal (hint, check out Caltech prof Rutledge) , that sort of peer reviewed literature. DO NOT bring Gold’s abiogenic oil hypothesis unless you wish to demonstrate how ignorant you are. Fernando is a retired practicing hydrocarbon geophysicist. Knows whereof he speaks. You?
We will never run out of fossil fuels. Repeat We will never run out of fossil fuels. The peak oil philosophy is laughable.
There are over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil in the ground that are proven reserves. There are over 6000 trillion (6 quadrillion) cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves and if the price hadnt dropped so much lately we would have found much more . There is enough proven coal reserves to meet 153 years of coal production. Sure there are finite limits but fossil fuel exploration always seems to find more if the price is right. Anybody worrying about running out of fossil fuels really is only worrying about the price. If the price would ever rise too high and exploration couldn’t keep up then alternative fuels wouldn’t have to be subsidized any more. Then supply and demand would finally rule the energy market. As it is the energy market is out of whack because of subsidies and stupid carbon taxes. We will never run out of uranium for nuclear power and even if we did we should instead use the non radioactive isotopes to produce nuclear energy like we should have done 65 years ago instead of the radioactive mess problem that we ended up with.
we will never ‘run out’ of fossil fuel.
It will simply get so expensive in comparison to something else we wont bother to extract it.
Just as coal has in the original industrial nation, the UK.
Alan Tomalty, I’d like to go over some simple figures with you guys. What I’m going to do is a bit like a cartoon with geometric figures, but in general the cartoon works “ok”.
If we assume crude oil and condensate production increases to 90 million barrels of oil per day (today the figure is around 82 million), using an exponential decline factor = 0,05 (what some of you like to call 5%), eventually the rate drops to 1 million barrels of oil per day. The equations we have derived tells us the area under the curve is 650 billion barrels (that’s billion as defined in the USA).
If we take 10 years to get to 90 million BOPD the are under the curve is 313 billion barrels of oil per day.
I happen to be an expert on Venezuela’s heavy oil reserves, which were booked by pdvsa about 10 years ago using an irregular method. I’m not going to go into details, but it’s reasonable to say approximately 200 billion barrels of the estimated reserves do not exist. They can be considered technical resources we could produce at extremely high prices. And these prices are so high it’s doubtful most of humanity can afford them. Furthermore, to get that oil we would need a very, very long time.
Thus far we have 650+313+200=1163 billion barrels. So if we assume your figure is right, we got 1500 minus 1163 = 337 billion barrels. Now lets assume world production to 90 million barrels of oil per day in 2028 (as per the asumption used to estimate the 313 billion). That 90 million per day is 32.9 billion per year. And this means we have 10 years to increase to 90, can hold a plateau at 90 for 10 years, and thereafter decline at 5 % gradually for decades.
You can assume that instead of 90 we increase to 100, add 500 billion to your 1.5 trillion, and any way you work the numbers the clonclusion is the same. In a few decades we will not be able to meet market demand unless prices explode through the roof. And most poor nations simply won’t be able to afford it.
But you said it yourself: the market will solve the fossil fuel “problem”. So-called “clean energy” is a fake answer to a fake problem. We don’t have to “do” anything that we wouldn’t already be doing anyway. And we shouldn’t just forget about coal either, the way the carbonastrophists want us to. We have plenty of time to find alternatives. There is no calamity, no catastrophe looming.
Assuming there is no revolutionary breakthrough in electricity production (i.e. Fusion) then if we want to get the biggest bang for your buck out of some renewable resource, then solar thermal would make the most sense. Solar thermal for hot water globally and space heating in cooler climes, makes much more sense than solar panel Photo Voltaic, if you were to install the same PV capacity to heat the same water or air with electricity. This isn’t anything new, although there is a lot of low hanging fruit to be gained by the installation of solar thermal hot water. Especially for those who are dependant on electrical heating for domestic water or space heating presently, because the cost per Kw/hr is increasing so rapidly in most jurisdictions. Domestic hot water is currently second in most residential electricity costs, so reducing that cost could be a huge market as electricity prices continue to go through the roof.
This may apply best to residential rooftop presently, especially as an alternative to roof top solar PV which can be very inefficient when placed willy nilly in a fixed location where only getting a few hours a day of quality incoming solar insolation. Thermal solar is much cheaper to install (and longer lasting) than solar PV so will be more forgiving of less than ideal siting while still giving suitable performance. Where the advantage will come from in the future is in enhanced efficient solar thermal collection, as say compared to present passive solar thermal such as a water tower/barrel we see in many third world countries now. The tropics is a great example where this can be implemented, where the bulk of the planets population also lives, but works great to higher latitudes too. Costa Rica is already starting down this path, but the present opportunities nearly everywhere are still basically untouched.
In terms of offsetting new electrical demand for domestic hot water, and space heating, this is the next field of opportunity for a cheaper solution than building out new electrical capacity to obtain the same hot water. Yes, there is some plumbing involved, but it is a one off if adding to an existing building, or if building new, can be easily incorporated into new construction. If I were were younger and looking for opportunity in renewables and starting a new business, it would be solar thermal hot water.
“If I were were younger and looking for opportunity in renewables and starting a new business, it would be solar thermal hot water.”
A few years ago in Mexico, I noticed many rural and suburban houses with black water tanks on their roofs.
Tiny things across a big population make a big difference. There are now millions of little lights with little solar cells and batteries lighting little areas in million of homes, through the magic of Home Depot and Lowes. No govt mandates required. Millions of little solar battery chargers keeping lots of boats and utility vehicles topped up. Etc. Tiny improvements, entering the market beause they are cost effective, collectively make a big difference.
These guys have some nerve. Can you imagine the great thinkers 400 years ago, say Francis Bacon and Johannes Kepler, recommending policy based on what they thought the world would be like in 2018? 400 years from now will be just as different from today as today is from 1618.
Yet another numpty who doesn’t know his power from his energy. There’s no point reading any further once you realise he doesn’t know his basic physics.
This guy is amazing – he actually believes that there is such a thing as a gigawatt of coal.
“On the high end that would mean constructing the equivalent of around 30,000 nuclear power plants—or producing and installing 120 billion 250-watt solar panels.” I’ve got news for this idiot – nameplate capacities mean nothing. Those 30,000 nuclear plants (assuming the typical gigawatt power output rating) will produce roughly 5 times more power than (the supposedly equivalent) 120 billion 250Watt solar panels.
When you don’t understand something as elementary as kilowatt versusu kilowatt hour, you should not be allowed a voice. 30,000 typical light water nuclear plants is equal to about 60,000 molten salt small modular reactors, built in factories and easily deployed almost anywhere (no cooling water required). It’s not that tough to produce 60,000 anythings in a large number of factories.
And molten salt reactors can produce the cheapest power. Period.
It would take 400 years to transit to “clean” energy. Why should we go in that blind alley? Because bad models say we have to?
If they will just leave the energy sector alone (i.e. no subsidies), then it will traverse to the most efficient possible solution given a set of reasonable pollution regulations. It doesn’t matter if the fuel starts to run out – the energy sector will then track to the best answer given the new reality. If solar becomes the most efficient power source given within a given set of criteria, then it will get used. Let market forces do what it does best and relax.
Meanwhile, energy use will continue to become more efficient as well. Less and less energy will be used for any given application, so that at least in advanced countries, energy use will decrease per capita over time. The prince of energy will drive this without any government interference. So as prices go up (due to scarcity) then energy use will become more efficient (because its worth the investment).
Why do so many people think you have to mandate this so that it happens right now, this instant?
The recent and frequent quote used here:
“‘Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
“If you pay a billion dollars for a gigawatt of coal, you’re not going to be happy if you have to retire it in 10 years.”
Yeah, people living in the streets and eating from dumpsters tend to have a low happiness coefficient.
The US may add 10 MW capacity who cares about capacity if the actual gain is some 1.5 MW. The US consumption has been pretty stagnant for two decades. Roughly 100 times more employees are needed in the solar industry where just one employee suffices in the fossil fuel industry for equal electricity production. There is not enough work force in the US to build, install, operate, maintain, dismantle, and dispose of those millions of W&S plants. And I am not even mentioning the storage facilities needed to cover windless evenings. Shame on the people who mix up W and Wh, name plate and actual output, the latter over the lifespan of a plant.
And carbon v carbon dioxide.
We’ll be in the next ice age by then.
“until there are strong enough government policies OR big enough technology breakthroughs to override the economics.”
There’s no “OR” to it. Unless there are “big enough technology breakthroughs to override the economics”
just go ahead and FUGEDABOUDIT! now. It ain’t gonna happen because of nothing more substantial than a bunch of silly-assed government decrees issued by by a bunch of silly-assed governments which command that “it shall be done.” Democracy may not survive but if not, neither will governments as viable institutions.
I love seeing the end-of-the-century predictions simply to assess how absurd they are, but now a 400-year prediction on our energy source? Ridiculous. First consider where we were 400 years ago and what our outlook might have been then. The year was 1618. Coal and wood was the primary source of energy. Wind was the primary source for shipping (as in sails). They had no concept of what we would be doing with energy, or where such energy might come from 400 years later. A statement now that it will take 400 years to get green energy is as ludicrous as a statement would have been then that we will run out of trees to meet home heating needs by the early 2000s. We don’t have clue what our energy needs/demands will be in 400 years let alone where such energy will come from.
Is it possible to speed it up by a factor of twenty? Yeah, I believe Stalin did it, during the thirties. Under Mao it was called the great Cultural Revolution.
And how many 10’s of millions did they kill then?
check out the rate at which de Gaulle built French nukes.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx
OK MIT guys here is your challenge: Design a system that does not produce CO2, is comparable in cost to fossil fueled plants or nukes, is reliable and works when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. Once you have that you won’t have to legislate anything. Utility companies will voluntarily switch to it. You guys are the technical geniuses right? So just do it. And if you can’t do it then don’t complain because no one else is doing it.
Now do the analysis of this implementation curve without the use of fossil fuel equipment for mining lithium and rare earths, transport of panels and windmill blades, tower construction, and over multiple replacement cycles too. Let’s not forget the metal turbine and tower fabrication on land and marine installations at sea also.
There is no doubt that at expected rates of exploitation fossil fuels will gradually become more expensive to the point where they will be unaffordable for many uses.
Renewables are already unaffordable for many. We will rapidly reach a lower limit to their cost after which costs will rapidly escalate as the optimal sites are used up.
Large-scale use of biofuels is too costly in terms of land and forest use. These are valuable resources needed for other uses for a burgeoning population.
Use of all of the above will continue to some degree for the foreseeable future but the only long-term answers are likely to be some form of nuclear power, greatly increased efficiencies, and perhaps reduced consumption forced by cost.
Making predictions is a sure way to look like a fool, but I will be long dead before I can be embarrassed by the above.
Perhaps Climate change will have killed everyone else as well, but I doubt it. I think it is more likely they will be lounging around in bikinis and shorts with a beer in their hand sporting designer sunglasses.
While James Temple’s motivation is to reduce CO2 he is happy to use nuclear power to do it.
So he is not pushing “renewables” the way many people replying seem to think. In particular see https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610366/relying-on-renewables-alone-would-significantly-raise-the-cost-of-overhauling-the-energy/
So while his motivation may be daft, his proposals make some sense for other reasons.
Lock a thousand scientists in the New Mexican desert and don’t let them free until they have invented a viable alternative power sourse. A situation not unlike a WW 2 undertaking.
Been there. Done that.
??
They developed a viable alternative BOMB!
(Although the principle it uses certainly has peaceful applications in power generation, but the CAGW crowd has cowed us into avoid it.)
Withour comment…
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/business-news-projects/risky-business-mitigating-threats-onshore-wind-projects-portfolios/
Lightning and wind turbine damage:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0309524X15624615
It’s going to take 400 years because as soon as someone comes up with a really good technological break-through, the Left immediately begins to hate it. It is darn near immediate.
Then some new theory gets developed through a UN agency about the new tech and how it will make sea level go up and will over-heat the planet and kill viruses.
Then we go backwards again. It’s at least 400 years away.
The left does not want happy people. It will put them out of business.
+10
So, if we reached the wind and solar goals right now, how would that change the climate? Would vast expanses of naturally occurring grasslands, forests, or mountains with solar panels, and vast areas of wind energy sucking turbines not change the climate? Think about that for a minute. Wind and solar energy sources would most definitely qualify as an anthropogenic climate change trigger.
Not many of these studies around today? Why?
http://news.mit.edu/2010/climate-wind-0312
Finding a nonexistent problem to spend their lives
making a career of “fixing” is the height of chutzpah.
It boggles the mind when they float this AGW stuff.
Politicians are doing what they do best, pay lip service, and do nothing. It would not take 400 years to convert, but probably 10,000 years. 400 though is when our coal reserves may run out. But, we have oil shale and ocean cathrates. So in a few 1000 years we may convert. In the meantime, political fad like climate change run on a 5 year cycle so its lasting 20 so far is just astounding.
Thorium reactors are very welcome, Norway could have the world’s third largest deposit of thorium, most of it at the Fen field. This field is just a few miles north from where I live: http://sciencenordic.com/thorium-telemark
Lowest estimate is said to be app. 60.000 metric tons, while more optimistic numbers are ten times that 🙂
“Norway could have the world’s third largest deposit of thorium”
What’s your point?