News Release 19-Nov-2019
Decarbonizing the power sector
Renewable energy offers most benefits for health and environment
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Electricity supply is one of the biggest CO2 emitters globally. To keep global warming well below 2°C, several paths lead to zero emissions in the energy sector, and each has its potential environmental impacts – such as air and water pollution, land-use or water demand. Using a first-time combination of multiple modelling systems, an international team of researchers led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has now quantified the actual benefits and downsides of three main roads to decarbonisation. They show that relying mainly on wind and solar would bring most co-benefits for the health of people and planet. Switching to carbon capture and storage in combination with fossil and biomass resources, in turn, is likely to convey significant environmental costs by devouring large areas at the cost of biodiversity, and by releasing pollutants to the environment.
“A main winner of decarbonisation is human health”
“When looking at the big picture – from the direct emissions of power installations, to the mining of minerals and fuels for their construction and operation, to the lands necessary for the energy supply infrastructure – we found that the best bet for both people and environment is to rely mainly on wind and solar power,” Gunnar Luderer explains. He is lead author and deputy chair of PIK’s research domain on transformation pathways. “A main winner of decarbonisation is human health: switching to renewables-based electricity production could cut negative health impacts by up to 80 per cent. This is mainly due to a reduction of air pollution from combusting fuels. What is more, the supply chains for wind and solar energy are much cleaner than the extraction of fossil fuels or bioenergy production.”
For their study published in Nature Communications, the authors compared three scenarios of decarbonising the power sector by 2050: One focused mainly on solar and wind power, a second relying mainly on carbon capture and storage in combination with biomass and fossils, and a third route with a mixed technology portfolio. In all scenarios, land use requirements for power production will increase in the future. By far the most land-devouring method to generate electricity is bioenergy. “Per kilowatt hour of electricity from bioenergy, you need one hundred times more land than to harvest the same amount from solar panels”, Alexander Popp, head of the land use management group at the Potsdam Institute, lays out. “Land is a finite resource on our planet. Given the growing world population with a hunger for both electricity and for food, pressures on the land and food systems will increase, too. Our analysis helps to get the magnitudes right when speaking of the at times much-hailed technology of bioenergy.”
“Shifting from a fossil resource base to a power industry that requires more land and mineral resources”
The researchers used complex simulations sketching out the possible paths of decarbonising the electricity supply (Integrated Assessment Modelling) and combined their calculations with life cycle analyses. Anders Arvesen from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) says: “In combining two pairs of analytical spectacles, we were able to look at a wide range of environmental problems, from air pollution to toxicants, from finite mineral resources needed to manufacture wind turbines to the extent of lands transformed into bioenergy plantations if relying on negative emissions. This is a promising approach also to tackle other sectors, like buildings or the transport sector.”
“Our study delivers even more very good arguments for a rapid transition towards a renewable energy production. However, we need to be aware that this essentially means shifting from a fossil resource base to a power industry that requires more land and mineral resources,” adds Luderer. “Smart choices are key to limiting the impact of these new demands on other societal objectives, such as nature conservancy, food security, or even geopolitics.”
Producing electricity in a climate-friendly brings huge benefits for our health – mainly due to a reduction of air pollution from combusting fuels.
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Article: Gunnar Luderer, Michaja Pehl, Anders Arvesen, Thomas Gibon, Benjamin L. Bodirsky, Harmen Sytze de Boer, Oliver Fricko, Mohamad Hejazi, Florian Humpenöder, Gokul Iyer, Silvana Mima, Ioanna Mouratiadou, Robert C. Pietzcker, Alexander Popp, Maarten van den Berg, Detlef van Vuuren, Edgar G. Hertwich (2019): Environmental co-benefits and adverse side-effects of alternative power sector decarbonization strategies. Nature Communications [DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13067-8]
Web link to the article: http://www.nature.com/ncomms
Previous related research: Michaja Pehl, Anders Arvesen, Florian Humpenöder, Alexander Popp, Edgar Hertwich, Gunnar Luderer (2017): Understanding Future Emissions from Low-Carbon Power Systems by Integration of Lice Cycle Assessment and Integrated Energy Modelling. Nature Energy [DOI: 10.1038/s41560-017-0032-9] (see press release here)
For further information please contact:
E-Mail: press@pik-potsdam.de
Twitter: @PIK_Climate
They show that relying mainly on wind and solar would bring most co-benefits for the health of people and planet.
I wonder how healthy it is to sit in the dark, in a cold house in winter after the wind stops blowing? I doubt they modelled that no electricity scenario impact on human health. And did they model impacts to human health when the electricity becomes so expensive that the elderly on fixed incomes can’t afford heat in the winter?
I have no doubt based on the starting assumptions they used, their results put solar and wind at the top. Sort of a predetermined conclusion. But I doubt these PIK geniuses went the Sweden route of high % nuclear power. And solar in Northern and Central Europe is about as useless and costly a power source as can be had. You gotta make some very dubious assumptions, Mark Jacobson style, to make wind and solar appear workable. Bad assumptions like a 1000 years production quantity of batteries will just magically appear, and no wind conditions at one wind farm doesn’t simultaneously occur at adjacent wind farms. And that when its all done electricity is so expensive it bankrupts the country trying to subsidize it. The result being of course electricity rationing.
There is plenty of solar in northern Germany and northern UK.
You forget that in the summer there are long, long hours of daylight and even in winter in Scotland solar provides some power… you will of course have noted that in winter northern parts are well supplied with wind.
Tell me griff, do you use solar and wind as your sole electron generation source?
Btw those are not ‘de-carbonized’, no pat on the head for you, if you use them you are very naughty and should desist forthwith, now go down to K-Mart and buy a magic wand, you’ll need it if you want a warm dinner again.
(And I’m curious what Greta’s eating … 6 or so hard-core vegans … in a small enclosed boat cabin … eating nuts and vegetables and legumes … for weeks … do the math … when you spend weeks at sea your sense of smell becomes very sensitive … not good.)
And you almost forgot that in the time when the vast majority of solar capacity additions occurred, German CO2 (2009-2015 – capacity quadrupled adding 30GW), emissions from the grid were flat according to clean energy wire.
I suspect you are a solar fan rather than a de-carbonisation fan.
Yes, Griff, but there’s not much demand for domestic summer air-conditioning anywhere in the UK, whereas there’s massive demand for winter domestic heating, especially when people are home from work after sunset. Our domestic energy demand is extremely unbalanced winter/summer and our leaders, in their wisdom, want to replace the current winter heating based on gas, which is flexible and storable, with renewable electricity, which is neither.
“The international community has agreed to limit global warming to well below 2C”
But those nuts have no clue where the climate knob is or even whether it exists in reality.
Ultimate hubris – the notions that (1) WE are suddenly in “control” of the climate and (2) that WE are responsible for any specific change that has occurred that is (a) measurable and (b) separable from natural variations, without identification of all of the natural forces acting upon the climate nor enough data of sufficient quality over a sufficient period of time to tell us much of anything but the causes of any but the “broadest brush” changes.
As a carbon-based life form which emits oxygenated carbon as a matter of function, I fundamentally oppose and reject the concept of decarbonization. There’s only one way to achieve that, and it may involve nuclear, just not in any of the ways discussed.
It seems the psychosis is strong now…..
Hey, guys, a ‘must read’ is the Global Warming Policy Foundation annual lecture by Prof David Kelly – an engineer – who shows conclusively that the decarbonisation of the UK is not possible to any timescale. One of his diagrams had a herd of unicorns filling a gap between reality and the decarbonisation future. But it’s not funny.
Bummer of a Surname in the UK, as an honest scientist…
Philosophical question: Do you suppose, in this universe, that a carbon-based life-form could evolve that is so effing stupid that it exterminates itself because it somehow comes to the conclusion that carbon is a pollutant?
Nah, just too crazy; never happen.
“A main winner of decarbonisation is human health”
What is the basis for this statement?
While it is true that the combustion of some carbon-based fuels (notably coal and heavy fuel oils) can result in emission of toxic pollutants, for power-generation purposes, advances in pollution control technology (scrubbers, baghouses, SCR for NOx removal, etc.) since the 1970’s have significantly reduced the emissions of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and particulates while power generation has increased. Natural gas is a carbon-based fuel, but produces very little air pollution that can affect human health.
The PIK’s conflating of carbon capture and storage and bio-energy into a single group masks a lot of differences. Carbon capture and storage from existing power plants basically uses 20 to 30% of the energy generated to compress CO2 and bury it underground. This doesn’t require much additional land use, but increases the amount of fuel required to generate the same amount of electricity, resulting in more rapid consumption of resources.
“Bio-energy” can include many vastly-different processes, not all of which consume a lot of land. It is true that trying to make ethanol from corn uses land that could otherwise be used for food production, and is a net energy loser.
But some “bio-energy” projects attempt to capture methane from livestock manure (mostly from pigs), and burn the methane to generate electricity. The net energy produced per acre is not very high, but the land is used for pork production anyway, so there is not much additional land use specifically for the generation of electricity. Similar projects attempt to capture methane from landfills, and they don’t consume additional land beyond what is already allocated for the landfill.
Still other projects convert animal fats and/or cooking grease to bio-diesel fuel, usually burned in trucks, not to generate electricity. The net cost of producing such fuel is currently higher than that of distilling and hydrotreating diesel fuel from crude oil, but such plants do not use much land, and the raw materials are usually waste products from slaughterhouses, butcher shops, or restaurants, which would otherwise be rotting in landfills, and emitting methane and/or CO2 to the atmosphere in the process.
By failing to distinguish the various bio-energy processes, and lumping them in with carbon capture and sequestration, the PIK analysis becomes worthless.
Three problems not addressed
1) No acknowledgement, much less solution, for the intermittency problem, No information or discussion of high capacity low cost storage of electricity when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. No acknowledgement that no viable low cost high capacity storage solution exists today.
2) No acknowledgement of the increase in energy cost. Higher energy cost means a lower standard of living in advanced economies, and increased starvation for the Third World.
3) No acknowledgement of the vulnerability of power supply from windmills and solar panels to severe weather, ie hurricanes.
I live in the SE US. Hurricanes wreak havoc on the distribution system, but the generating capability of coal, oil, gas, and nuclear facilities remain intact. A hurricane in 2050 when we are 100% wind and solar will destroy the electrical generating capability of offshore and onshore windmill farms, solar farms, and roof top solar.
Currently, power is restored within a few days or a week or two at the most. Gas is available for transportation, so grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants are quickly replenished.
In the wonderful world of 2050, power from windmills and solar farms will not be restored for months if not years. Because all transportation in this brave new world is now electric under President AOC’s edict, replenishment of goods and delivery of services stops. Grocery stores go empty and people starve, and loot, and riot. Civilization in the affected areas comes to a halt.
4) The most promising response to Climate Change not considered is adaptation. The world has gone through great changes over the centuries, and on the whole mankind has successfully adapted.
‘Electricity supply is one of the biggest CO2 emitters globally …
… A main winner of decarbonisation is human health …
… This is mainly due to a reduction of air pollution from combusting fuels’.
Notice how within a few paragraphs the article glides almost imperceptibly from CO2 emissions to air pollution, two completely separate and unrelated topics.
“Switching to carbon capture and storage in combination with fossil and biomass resources, in turn, is likely to convey significant environmental costs by devouring large areas at the cost of biodiversity, and by releasing pollutants to the environment.”
So again silly humans think they are in charge of the carbon cycle — no, fail.
If CCS were tried on a truly massive scale it would still fail!
Atmospheric CO2 levels are NOT the product of humans, it is a product of the biosphere. Attempting to reduce the atmospheric CO2 level to any significant degree would mean the partial pressure of CO2 with that of the oceans would alter causing more outgassing from the oceans (for the temperature they are at), and so nature (not humans) ensures the atmospheric CO2 level remains where it would have it and not were puny humans believe it should be.
The only way to prevent that is to massively cool the oceans so they retain more CO2 — now there’s a thought, eh?
Ask Greta pippilotta longstocking Thunberg.
https://youtu.be/PHNc6gXucfE