Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
After reading some information at Friends of Science, I got to thinking about how impossible it will be for us to do what so many people are demanding that we do. This is to go to zero CO2 emissions by 2050 by getting off of fossil fuels.
So let’s take a look at the size of the problem. People generally have little idea just how much energy we get from fossil fuels. Figure 1 shows the global annual total and fossil energy consumption from 1880 to 2019, and extensions of both trends to the year 2050. I note that my rough estimate of 2050 total annual energy consumption (241 petawatt-hrs/year) is quite close to the World Energy Council’s business-as-usual 2050 estimate of 244 PWhr/yr.
Figure 1. Primary energy consumption, 1880-2019 and extrapolation to 2050. A “petawatt-hour” is 1015 watt-hours
So if we are going to zero emissions by 2050, we will need to replace about 193 petawatt-hours (1015 watt-hours) of fossil fuel energy per year. Since there are 8,766 hours in a year, we need to build and install about 193 PWhrs/year divided by 8766 hrs/year ≈ 22 terawatts (TW, or 1012 watts) of energy generating capacity. (In passing, for all of these unit conversions let me recommend the marvelous website called “Unit Juggler“.)
Starting from today, January 25, 2021, there are 10,568 days until January 1, 2050. So we need to install, test, commission, and add to the grid about 22 TW / 10568 days ≈ adding 2.1 gigawatts (GW, or 109 watts) of generating capacity each and every day from now until 2050.
We can do that in a couple of ways. We could go all nuclear. In that case, we’d need to build, commission, and bring on-line a brand-new 2.1 GW nuclear power plant every single day from now until 2050. Easy, right? …
Don’t like nukes? Well, we could use wind power. Now, the wind doesn’t blow all the time. Typical wind “capacity factor”, the percentage of actual energy generated compared to the nameplate capacity, is about 26%.
So we’d have to build, install, commission and bring online just over 4,000 medium-sized (2-megawatt, MW = 106 watts) wind turbines every single day from now until 2050. No problemo, right? …
Wind farm densities are on the order of 20 MW installed capacity per square kilometer. That’s ten 2-megawatt turbines per square km. So we’ll need to identify 400 square km. (150 square miles) of land for new wind farms every day until 2050.
Don’t like wind? Well, we could use solar. Per the NREL, actual delivery from grid-scale solar panel installations on a 24/7/365 basis is on the order of 31.3 watts per square metre depending on location. So we’d have to cover ≈ 27 square miles (69 square kilometres) with solar panels, wire them up, test them, and connect them to the grid every single day from now until 2050. Child’s play, right? …
Of course, if we go with wind or solar, they are highly intermittent sources. So we’d still need somewhere between 50% – 90% of the total generating capacity in nuclear, for the all-too-frequent times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
Finally, an update. A well-informed commenter below says:
I think you missed something, Willis
That 22 TW is average power. But generating plants, transmission facilities, transformers, circuit interrupters, and all that stuff, must be sized for the PEAK demand.
Most distribution systems in the US have a peak to average (PtA) ratio of around 1.6 to 1.7. Except for the New England ISO which is running around 1.8. Some systems in Australia have an annual PtA ratio of around 2.3. I expect Arizona would run that high taken in isolation, which, of course, it never is.
Take 1.8 as an estimated overall PtA ratio, you need to meet a peak demand of 22 * 1.7 terawatts or 37.4 TW.
But no power system can survive with generation equal to demand. So add 15% for reserves for when parts of the system are down because of maintenance, failures, or the like. The result is, you need peak generation of 43 TW. So roughly double all of your numbers as to what needs to be built.
And guess what? He’s right. We can’t just provide for average demand. We have to provide enough power for the hottest days in the summer, and for the coldest days in the winter. So we need to double the numbers I gave above.
However, there’s another factor to consider. This is the fact that there is not as much heat loss in electric generation and electric cars. Using fossil fuels for generation and transportation is less efficient. So we won’t need to replace the full total of fossil fuels.
At present, about 60% of the fossil energy is lost as heat. However, not all of this inefficiency will disappear if we switch to an all-electric world … and some will increase. For example, overall transmission and congestion losses for the electrical grid are on the order of 15%. So if we are powering homes and industry and transportation via electricity, those losses will be greater, not less.
In addition, while electric car running efficiencies are greater than internal combustion engines, the batteries are very energy-intensive to make. And internal combustion engines use waste heat for heating the car interior, while battery cars use electricity. So the efficiency gains there will not be as great as they might seem.
Next, in some sectors there will be no reduction in losses. If the heating of a building is switched from gas to electric, there is no gain in efficiency, because the same amount of heat is still being lost through the walls and the roof.
Overall, due to increases in efficiency, we’re likely to have to replace only about half of the current fossil fuel use with electricity. So that offsets the doubling mentioned above to allow for peak consumption.
To summarize: to get the world to zero emissions by 2050, our options are to build, commission, and bring on-line either:
• One 2.1 gigawatt (GW, 109 watts) nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, OR
• 4000 two-megawatt (MW, 106 watts) wind turbines each and every day until 2050 plus a 2.1 GW nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, assuming there’s not one turbine failure for any reason, OR
• 100 square miles (250 square kilometres) of solar panels each and every day until 2050 plus a 2.1 GW nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, assuming not one of the panels fails or is destroyed by hail or wind.
I sincerely hope that everyone can see that any of those alternatives are not just impossible. They are pie-in-the-sky, flying unicorns, bull-goose looney impossible. Not possible physically. Not possible financially. Not possible politically.
Finally, the US consumes about one-sixth of the total global fossil energy. So for the US to get to zero fossil fuel by 2050, just divide all the above figures by six … and they are still flying unicorns, bull-goose looney impossible.
Math. Don’t leave home without it.
My very best wishes to everyone, stay safe in these parlous times,
w.
PS—As always, to avoid misunderstandings I request that when you comment, you quote the exact words that you are discussing so we can all be clear about who and what you are referring to.
Hard Copies: Someone said they couldn’t get this to print from WUWT. So I selected the whole document from the title to the end and copied it. I pasted it into Microsoft Word. Then I cleaned up the formatting and saved it to my Dropbox, where you can access it here.
I also saved it as a PDF file for those who don’t have Word. It’s here. However, because it’s a PDF, the links to other documents are not active.
Update re $$$: Top consulting firm McKinsey has calculated that the net-zero emissions targets set by global governments and championed by the United Nations would cost the public a staggering $275 trillion by 2050, or around $25 billion per day until 2050. Full article here.
Update re Efficiency: Several people have commented that we don’t need to replace all of the energy provided by fossil fuels, since a lot of it is lost as heat and won’t be if we go electric. My calculations indicate that the savings will be nowhere near what they claim, because for many things like home and office heating the losses are not dependent on the methods used to provide the heat. And electric systems have their own losses, such as transmission losses, which will increase if we go all-electric. Finally, solar and wind require 24/7 spinning backup to replace their generation at a moment’s notice … and at present that’s only practical with fossil fuels, and it requires the spinning backup to run at very low efficiency.
But heck, read the head post—relative efficiency of fossil vs. electric is why I divided all my numbers by 2, and it’s still flying unicorns, bull-goose looney impossible.
Technical Note: These figures are conservative because they do not include the energy required to mine, refine, and transport the necessary materials, plus provide the energy needed to actually build the reactors, wind turbines, or solar panels. This is relatively small per GW of generation for nuclear reactors but is much larger for wind and solar.
They also don’t include the fact that wind turbines have about a 20-year lifespan, so after 20 years we’ll have to double the turbine construction per day. And with solar the lifespan is about 25 years, so for the last five years, we’ll have to double the solar construction per day. And then we will have to decommission and dispose of millions of wind turbines and hundreds of thousands of square miles of solar panels …
The figures also don’t include the fact that if we go to an all-electric economy we will have to completely revamp, extend, and upgrade our existing electrical grid, including all associated equipment like transformers, power lines, circuit interrupters, and switching stations. This will require a huge investment of time, money, and energy. And this extends into the homes, as every home like mine that’s heated by gas and uses gas for water heating and cooking will need to greatly increase the electrical service to the house and install an electric furnace, stove, and water heater.
Finally, since nuclear power plants take about a decade from site selection to hookup, we don’t have until 2050 to start building them. We only have until 2040, about 2/3 of the time. So we’ll need to build ~ 50% more nuclear power plants per day to get there by 2050
So in terms of energy, these are still conservative figures.
They also don’t include the cost. The nuclear plants alone will cost on the order of US$170 trillion at current prices. And wind or solar plus nuclear will be on the order of US300 trillion, plus decommissioning and disposal costs for wind turbines and solar panels.
Finally, the cost of converting all the individual homes, businesses, and buildings around the world that use gas for heating, cooking, and water heating will be enormous. Who will pay for that?
And this doesn’t touch the cost of the land for siting the windmills and the solar panels, which will be stupendous. Here’s some information from California regarding how hard it is to find suitable land for solar power.
Land
… Another issue is the fact that such solar ‘farms’ require huge tracts of land. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been tasked with finding 24 tracts of public land of three square miles each with good solar exposure, favorable slopes, road and transmission line availability. Additionally, the land set aside for utility-scale solar farms must not disturb native wildlife or endangered species such as the desert tortoise, the desert bighorn sheep, and others. The wildlife issue has proved to be a contentious one. Projects in California have been halted due to the threat caused to endangered species resulting in a backlog of 158 commercial projects with which the BLM is currently contending.
Note that the BLM is having trouble finding a mere 75 square miles of land for solar power generation that doesn’t have too much impact on the environment, and we’re talking about building 200 square miles of new solar power per day …
So it is even more impossible … speaking of which, is it possible to be more impossible?
Because if it is possible … this is it.
Willis,
Good article, but it doesn’t give a perspective on how much investment must occur to get hydrocarbon production. The base hydrocarbon decline is 10-15% per year, and by 2050, the base production will be minimal. So, to maintain current levels of oil and gas production will take tens of thousands of development wells and numerous new field discoveries. The task is pretty daunting, but we have a successful efficient industry in place that can probably result in the higher production by 2050 if the investments are made.
So, I think it would be appropriate to compare a basket of nuclear/wind/solar/hydro/bio… development with zero oil/gas/coal investment to a scenario with oil/gas/coal investment.
Also, technology may change the future energy picture completely. The directional drilling and fracture technology has completely changed the oil and gas industry over 15 years. Who knows, fusion may provide abundant, inexpensive, reliable electricity by 2050. Ha ha ho ho hee hee, ok maybe not fusion but maybe something else.
Thanks, Rel. Not clear what you mean by the “base hydrocarbon decline” or “base production”. As Figure 1 shows, the global consumption of fossil fuels has increased every year right up to the present … where is the “decline”?
Per the BP Statistical Review of World Energy:
Oil proved reserves in 2009 were 1531.8 billion barrels. In 2019 they were 1733.9 billion bbls. That’s 50 years of production at current rates, with reserves increasing despite continued production.
Coal proved reserves in 2019 were 1,070 billion tonnes, which is 132 years worth at the current production rate. BP doesn’t have earlier coal reserves figures.
Gas reserves in 2009 were 170.5 trillion m3. In 2019 they were 198.9 trillion m3. That’s 50 years of production at current rates, with reserves increasing despite continued production.
And yes, new energy sources may come into existence … or they may not. My analysis is about what we know, not about what might possibly happen.
But if you want to get into maybe’s, consider that Japan is already experimenting with energy from methane clathrates, AKA methane hydrates, which are the world’s largest natural gas reserves … and are totally untouched.
w.
An excellent post Willis that brings much need perspective to the discussion. I’d still like to know what the plan is for fueling thousands of jumbo jets around the world every day by 2050. Or are they planning for us to have electrically powered personal transporters by then?
The Jumbo jets have been retired, now you have the Dreamliner’s flying.
How optimistic of you to think that the new green deal includes plans to have the mere plebs flying.
Only the apparatchiks and senior party officials will be accorded that privilege, you, get back to tending your mule and potato patch. The county bus will drop by every Wednesday so that you can go to town to hawk your green organic veggies. Grown from your own organic toilet.
Thank you Willis for an insightful look at the disconnect our political class has with reality and basic math.
Only legitimate nuclear reactor is molten lead salted with nuclear fuel powder. It is inherently safe, at least 10 times cheaper, can be built in months, each can produce tens of times more power, and it is safe enough to use small scale like ships and central plants.
I think that the targets are easily achievable, if adjustments are used where appropriate (flights to selected conferences can be adjusted to be net carbon absorbing, for example).
The Dems have to do this they have to save the planet by bankrupting the country, destroy the economy. https://nypost.com/2021/01/27/kerry-zero-emissions-wont-make-difference-in-climate-change/ Which already been stated before for this non crisis. They just want our money and reduce the US to a third world country after we are drained dry.
Per the calculation we need to cover all of Europe, west of the Ural river, with solar panels to supply the world with energy (~2.5m km2). Meaning no room for humans, trees or wildlife. Just a humongous silicon desert.
If you don’t have yours yet “You better hurry up and order one. Our limited supply will very soon be gone.” PS 1968 or thereabouts.
Willis,
Excellent quantitative introduction to the core of the problem. However, with your commitment to “focus,” you didn’t mention a related two-pronged problem.
For a build-out of this magnitude, it will require ramping up mining, manufacturing, transportation, and construction. All of these will require energy above what a simple extrapolation would suggest. It will also ramp up CO2 production, which is the opposite of what is trying to be accomplished!
Whether mining occurs here or overseas, the same amount of energy and CO2 production will occur. Biden has also decreed “Buy American,” so that will make it more difficult to depend on countries overseas to supply us with the necessary raw materials. In the USA, it typically takes 1 to 3 decades to go through the permitting process to open a new major mine. What is Biden going to do about that?
The trucks with 8-foot+ diameter wheels that carry the ore
allalmost exclusively run on diesel fuel. They could be electrified. However, replacing them with electric trucks will be yet another demand on resources! The old trucks will have to be scrapped, and new ones designed and built, putting a further strain on critical natural resources for batteries and motors.In the chain of events from locating, securing, and preparing a mine site, to the blasting, transportation out of the mine, crushing, screening, and specialized processes of benificiating the ore, it then has to move on to being smelted, refined, and finally fabricated. All these steps require energy that currently isn’t being consumed at the same rate. There will almost certainly be new sources of CO2, such as when carbonate ores are being smelted, and stepped up emission of CO2 for equipment that can’t be run off electricity.
Once the raw materials are produced, then new plants will either have to be built, or old ones re-fitted, to manufacture the specialized products to be produced. Another source of potential CO2, and certainly another load on the electrical grid.
Those new products, windmills, solar panels, and new trucks and chemicals, will then have to be transported from the factories to the installation sites, by the newly manufactured, battery-powered trucks. (Big-rigs that have yet to be designed.)
With the mental capacity of someone who couldn’t even teach teachers, I don’t think that Biden has a clue about the immensity of what he is proposing, and how complicated such a transition is, nor the financial impact on the economy and the standard of living of people in the interim.
Even as we contemplate putting the country on a ‘war-time’ footing to revolutionize our energy supply, a proposed copper mine in Arizona is running into opposition because it is on Indian reservation land. Maybe in thirty years this mine will finally start producing.
It was never about climate or the environment. It has always been about destroying Western economies to leave people desperate to be ‘saved’ by socialism.
John “Lurch” Kerry sez oil and gas workers “can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/john-kerry-oil-gas-workers-lose-jobs-bidens-war-energy-go-make-solar-panels-video/
Kerry is still an idiot, nothing has changed.
Meanwhile Quid Pro Joe is already backtracking away from the fracking ban, sort of.
And….what do we use to produce the hundred’s of thousand products made from oil.
@Willis – we don’t need those nuclear plants, battery storage will save us!
We only have to build one equivalent of the old World Trade Center every 42 or 43 days, in which we install 420,000 Powerwall2 units per day, at a cost of $3.15 trillion dollars (per day, units only, not including wiring, “gateways,” and illegal labor).
Simple!
The solution is obvious – they’re going to ration how much energy we’re allowed to use… or start pruning the population. Either way, freedom and individual liberty are a thing of the past, “unaffordable luxuries that must be eliminated if we’re to survive”. Evil by any other name…
Embrace the power of ‘AND’….
Elite obsession about overpopulation and environmental footprints has been an open book since the Ehrlich’s ‘Population Bomb’ and the Club of Rome’s ‘Limits to Growth’.
Aggressive efforts to limit population growth have failed ( in the Elite’s minds ).
You choke off energy and you choke off population.
The New Feudalism will be access to energy and access to digital services, which will define who is a New Aristocrat and who survives in Neo-Serfdom.
Others have mentioned this analogy and it seems to best suit. The future trajectory will very much look like the world of ‘The Hunger Games’.
Willis,
You ignore the most obvious path they will likely go down – just ration the amount of energy all the common people use (you know, not the elite Hollywood actors or D.C. politicians, just all the rest).
You also ignore the mandates for impossible things like only electric vehicles by 2035 which might put a tiny strain on the electric grid.
So no matter how ridiculous you make their goals seem, they are actually even more ridiculous than that.
Maybe that’s why the great reset is popular?
” vehicles will be electric” means you will not have vehicle.
‘for the all-too-frequent times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.’
Well they aren’t actually all that frequent in very many parts of the world…
Those parts of the world where there is sufficient sun or sufficient wind a majority of the time can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Thanks, griff. The sun doesn’t shine half the time.
And the reason that the capacity factor for wind turbines sited in the windiest spots is only 35% or so is … yep, you guessed it. 65% of the time the wind isn’t strong enough for the turbines to generate anywhere near nameplate capacity. Wind turbines require a wind of 7.5 – 9 mph (12-14 kmph) to even start generating.
Next, winds are generally weaker at night, when solar output is zero. See here for a discussion of the reasons
Net result? Times “when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing” are indeed all too frequent.
Finally, note that these results are in the most favorable areas for wind turbines. But we’re talking about 3,000 2MW units per day. From here, wind turbines require about 3/4 of an acre per megawatt. Over the period from now to 2050, we’d need about 75,000 square mi (190,000 square km) to house all the turbines … so we will use up the good wind sites very quickly.
Best regards,
w.
PS—In passing, for all of these unit conversions let me recommend the marvelous website called “Unit Juggler“.
Griff, right now Germany is in exactly the situation you say rarely happens:
More here.
w.
Seriously Griff, this is the best you can do? How about disputing Willis’s figures with your own calculations?
Rockwa, just as you are, Griff is perfectly free to question, challenge, or expound upon relevant topics of his choice. That’s what he questioned … so that’s what I answered. Please let it go.
w.
Unfortunately Willis, you and others with pretty obvious credentials let Griff and his ilk get off way too lightly. That is partly why the alarmists are smashing the debate. If you think you can play fair and win, you are dreaming.
Thanks, Rockwa. I answered Griff directly and with plenty of facts and links. Do I think I can “play fair and win”?
Perhaps not … but I’m quite clear that if I don’t play fair I lose. And if I engage in personal abuse, when all Griff did was make a claim, I definitely lose.
w.
This does not change the general conclusion, but …
This figure is low by a factor of 10 to 20 and maybe more.
The article said:
” … Per the NREL, actual delivery from grid-scale solar panel installations on a 24/7/365 basis is on the order of 8.3 watts per square metre depending on location …”
I calculated the figure based on my own rules of thumb and got a result of 83 W/m^2/hr 8764 hours of the year. That happened to be exactly 10 x the quoted figure (the exact coincidence is a coincidence 🙂 ). I used 2 kWh/m^2/day which is the daily winter mean in my city (Auckland NZ) and lower than places where you build LARGE solar farms. Our annual mean is about 4 kWh/m^2/day so 20 x the quoted figure.
Note the proposed Australian solar farm intended to send power over 8000 km to Singapore.
North Africa to London or Moscow is closer. Negev Desert to London is closer.
This proposed system is 10 GW – you’d only need to build one and lay an 8000 km cable every 5 days 🙂 ! – or one a month to power the US. (!)
Using the NREL data from their report at https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf
and using their 3.5 acres/ GWh/year average rate gives about 28 W/m^2/hr 365/24 (E&OE)
ie 3.5 x the cited rate and rather lower than my rate. [Other interpretations no doubt can be applied].
Russell
Russell, my calculations look like this:
1 GWh/year / (8766 hrs/yr) =
114,077 watts continuous per 3.4 acres =
33,552 watts continuous / acre
1 acre = 4046.9 m2
33,552 watts/acre / (4046.9 m2 / acre) = 8.3 watts/m2
If there’s an error in that, please let me know.
w.
Weather Dependent Renewables Productivity: what do the numbers mean?
Productivity, (or Capacity factor), is the percentage ratio of actual power output to the Nameplate rating of a power generator. The percentages below are the 2019 measured productivity percentages of Weather Dependent Renewable technologies in the UK. In comparison with the productivity percentages used in this post these UK / European measured values are a great deal less optimistic.
Conventional generation technologies are available 24/7 and are dispatchable according to demand except for periods of routine maintenance.
UK productivity percentages: Renewable Energy Foundation data
· Onshore Wind 24.0%
· Offshore Wind 31.4%
· Solar PV on grid 10.2%
· UK Combined Renewables 21.7%
· Conventional generation 90%
What do the productivity numbers mean? Think about electricity generation as an ordinary business. It provides a product which should be of consistent high quality and which is vital to all the other businesses of the Nation.
· but on average more than half of the labour force only turn up on 1 day in 5: the day they choose to arrive is unpredictable.
· quite often, even if they do turn up, they walk out when they feel like it in the middle of the shift.
· but the unions insist that if they do turn up, they have to be employed, laying off the guys that do work full-time and cutting the pay of those full-time guys.
· and worse than that, almost a quarter of the work force only turn up 1 day in 10.
· and those ones usually arrive on days when they are not likely to be needed but they still have to be paid in full.
· anyway, they always go home by the evening, the time of peak demand, and they don’t like working much at all in the winter when they might be needed.
· these workers get tired quickly and retire and need replacement a third of the way through a normal working lifetime.
· the unions also insist that they are payed about 10 times as much as the ordinary productive workers. Quite often they are paid not to work at all.
· and when these guys do arrive, they cause difficulties with quality assurance, severe industrial disruption and they, at a whim, can suddenly close down production altogether. If they do manage that there is major economic damage across the Nation.
· when there is a real breakdown, these guys can’t help to reinstate the service.
But apart from the personal professional pride and the responsibility as managers to providing a good quality of service, in the end the extra costs don’t really matter, either the Government, (or rather the Taxpayer), picks up the tab or the extra costs are just passed the costs on the customers: the customers don’t have any real choice because there is a virtual monopoly for the supply of the product.
This is the scale of business problems faced by power supply managers that the decision to opt for trying to collect dilute and irregularly intermittent energy from the environment and calling it “Renewable”. These problems can only get worse as the policy makers insist that more and more Weather Dependent Renewables are used in the power industry.
An excellent way to undermine Western economies is to render their power generation unreliable and expensive. That objective of Green thinking is progressively being achieved by government policy throughout the Western world.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/uk-eu28-renewables-productivity/
“I sincerely hope that everyone can see that any of those alternatives are not just impossible. They are pie-in-the-sky, flying unicorns, bull-goose looney impossible”.
Well, it is possible if we want to make the world look like the darkest of the 3rd world countries, which would solve another problem – over population since those of us in the developed countries are basically fat, dumb, and happy – and have no idea how to survive in an energy-free world – which is where we would end up.
Great article btw, matches what Pielke Jr. wrote.
Great post, thanks Willis.
I can’t find the World Energy Organisation on Google. Do you have a link please?
My bad, it’s the World Energy Council. I’ll fix the head post.
w.
Thanks Willis
It isn’t a real goal. As only a few have stated the green new deal is about changing the world economic system. This is the idea that we should be debating. We have taken the bait and are investigating and talking about something they know is only a decoy.
Climate Change is all B.S.
What are you worried about? All we need to do is science harder and we’ll be fine!
Thank you for clearly stating what I’ve been trying to tell my Lefty friends for years about their carbon free energy production fantasies. If you enjoy the fruits of living in a high energy culture you need high energy plants to provide the power.
They don’t get it.