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,
Very telling message to make a global point on the electrification of the globe without hydrocarbons. Could you do something similar for the US as Mr Biden although interested in global affairs, has made a call to arms to electrify the US more or less by 2035? What would need to be done here following a similar format in your post?
As I mentioned in the head post, just divide all the numbers by 6 to get the relevant figures for the US.
w.
One comment on your logic. If we could move off fossil fuels, the bulk energy demand should fall somewhat due to the thermodynamic inefficiencies in the fossil fuel usage chain as compared to an electrified chain – IF the electrical sourcing is also very efficient.
For example, a gasoline powered car gets valuable work out of perhaps 35% of the fuel energy consumed. An electric car gets a much better number, so if the electrical source is highly fuel efficient, the total energy demand falls for the same work being done. On the other hand, if the electricity is produced from fossil fuels via say combined cycle power plants, it is only 50% efficient, times the efficiency of the electricity system and car, and you end up not far from the same place.
Displacing natural gas from home heating is even worse, because a modern furnace is >90% efficient. There is little room for entropy avoidance left, so almost no power source is “green enough” to actually make the energy demand lower.
The problem with your analysis is that it leaves out much more than it includes.
Yes, comparing plug to wheel of an electric vs fuel cap to wheel on a car does make the electric look more efficient.
The problem that you are ignoring is the problem of generating the electricity in the first place. Since we are comparing to fossil fuels, we’ll use a fossil fuel power plant. The best of them might get 60% efficient, most don’t get near that much. I’ll use 50% as an average.
Of the electric energy that’s generated, on average 10% of it will be lost due to resistance in the lines and conversion inefficiencies whenever the voltage levels are kicked up or down.
The next problem is getting that energy into and then out of the battery. You lose another 20% there.
When all the factors are considered, electrics would be lucky to be as efficient as an ICE vehicle.
If you can only use from 80% to 20% of the battery capacity in order to make it last then you’ve already lost 40% of the possible capacity of the battery. So be careful of the efficiency of electric cars. In addition high and low temperatures severely discount the energy available from the battery, an additional hit to its efficiency.
Assuming half the 22 TW comes from coal-fired power plants (from the graph it looks like about half the capacity exists) then we need ~1 GW per day additional capacity, which is 2 typical power plants. This doesn’t sound all that much better.
Clearly, we need a plan to meet the energy needs of future generations and it should be sustainable.
I notice nobody talks about the fact that all living things including humans, exhale CO2 every second they are alive ! It may not add up to much but worth letting everyone know they are adding to the problem they think is SO TOXIC !!!!
Storage of energy is essential with solar and wind, nuclear cannot be throttled quickly to adjust so it is only useful for base load unless some output is stored.
Various storage schemes are about, for whatever source of energy. Including weights lifted by a tower crane, water reservoir uphill of course, batteries as the US military planned to install at a base in HI, bladders in Lake Ontario, ….
Hydro-electric generation of course comes from huge water reservoirs, relatively rapid response.
But today much of the power above base load comes from thermal plants of varying speed, natural gas fueled turbines are good – slower response ones have heat recovery steam turbine system, fast recovery ones no heat recovery so less efficient. In Alberta, NG fueled generation is being placed closer to point of use than traditional thermal plants. (Drive west of Edmonton on H16 toward Jasper and you may find a lake with a power plant on the side opposite a park, there’s coal in the area. And good coal southwest of Calgary, with much export via rail to a port near Vancouver BC.)
Nothing new about wind and batteries of course, I lived in a house that had a windmill and big glass batteries. Powered lights and refrigerator, but heating was by wood heaters and stove which also provided hot water. I don’t remember how washing machine was powered – likely 2-cycle motor running on gasoline, drying of clothes was on outdoor lines. (The wind energy system was 32 vdc, IIRC.) Owner of the house paid for it by working in the oil patch. The area was fairly windy.
A crazy situation a few years ago was that the monopoly electric utility of the BC government was buying coal-generated power from AB during times when it was cheap, keeping water in its dams, then selling electricity from its dams at high price at other times.
So eco-minded people in BC did not realize they were using electricity generated from coal.
Problem popped up later of being snared in big lawsuit in California where it sold electricity to.
I like the debunking calcs here:
https://achemistinlangley.net/2018/11/27/revisiting-100-wind-water-and-sunlight-for-canada-an-ill-advised-approach-to-fight-climate-change/
Wonderful, bloody wonderful! I’ve spent varying portions of every day since December 28th 2020, trying to accurately calculate the ‘green’ energy requirement so that it’s ‘GO’ on January 1st 2050!
I must admit, the research took me for ever, it’s become an obsession, it’s driving me absolutely crazy, and then, I find it all on one page, already done and probably more accurate than mine would have been! AArrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!
But, thank you!
Thanks Willis. What you have done is show that we really do need to be transitioning to renewable energy today because fossil fuels will run out eventually and it’ll take many decades to transition so we can’t wait until the last minute.
We can’t wait until they decline and market forces push towards renewables either. It will be much too late by then.
What we need to do is transition for the right reasons and not place emphasis on reducing fossil fuel use because of climate concerns and crazy schemes like carbon capture and storage but rather place emphasis on renewables where their use make sense.
We have literally hundreds of years of fossil fuels left. There is NO reason to move from them to intermittent, unreliable, expensive renewables that destroy stability.
Where is it that “renewables make sense”? In California, PGE buys fossil fuel electricity for 4.5¢ per kWh and pays 12.2¢ per kWh for solar and wind … which means they can’t even keep the lights on, and time-of-use pricing is as much as 80¢ per kWh to the consumer.
Does that makes sense to you? Renewables don’t make sense anywhere.
When fossil fuels do run out in a hundred years or so, long before they do fossil prices will increase, and the market will take care of it without the intervention of subsidies and do-gooders …
w.
Lets say you’re right and fossil fuels do last another hundred years then to transition by then requires your deployment calculation in time x 3. So in other words about two 2.1GW Nuclear power station every week or so. Is that happening?
Similarly you can factor in the solar deployment to a quite high deployment rate even with x3 time.
Secondly re: “When fossil fuels do run out in a hundred years or so, long before they do fossil prices will increase, and the market will take care of it without the intervention of subsidies and do-gooders”
When the cost of fossil fuels increases, those increases flow on to everything downstream because energy underlies everything we do. For those reasons, I dont think renewable energy sources can ever be cheaper than fossil fuel equivalents on a cost/energy basis while the fossil fuels are necessary in their construction. In fact in time, it’ll be worse.
agree let the market and mr.
greedy capitalist take care of the issue.
we will move toward electric more in the future.
i hope nuclear because that is what makes sense.
and use the extra nuke power to make hydrogen.
use the hydrogen as the battery and then sell any extra hydrogen for fuel cell use.
just let the market take care of things.
nuclear is the way to go if just remove politics and environmentalist from the equation.
France runs 70% nuclear and has been for 30-50 years, never hear about it because environmentalist do not want to talk about what works and what makes sense.
So in total:
10,950 nuclear power plants OR
32,850,000 wind turbines OR
1,051,200 acres of Earth covered in solar panels
Hey just look around at everything that is made from oil and figure that into the equation! No clothing. No cars. No TVs, And the list goes on forever! I harken back to some movie: Stupid is as Stupid does.
I think you missed something, Willis.
>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.
That 22 TW is an 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 around 2.3. I expect Arizona would run that high taken in isolation, which, of course, it never is.
Take 1.7 as an estimated overall PtA ratio, you need to meet a peak demand of 22 * 1.7 terrawatts or 37.4 TW.
But no power system can survive with generation equal to demand. so add 15% for reserves. So you need peak generation of 43 TW. So roughly double all the rest of your numbers as to what needs to be built.
15% is a bit high for reserves. Most ISOs plan for 6% to 10%. CalISO, for example, wants 3% spinning reserves plus another 3% in rapid start reserve. This, however, doesn’t include additional long-start reserves that would be called into service when a generating plant is down for an extended period or for scheduled maintenance.
True, pls. My main reason for not including the question of peak energy was that I like to keep my claims fully defensible. If I get too near the exact number someone will challenge me for being too high, and claim that if I’m 2% over the whole thing is wrong, wrong, wrong …
So I decided to just use the average.
I didn’t include the fact that nuclear doesn’t like to be ramped up and down so we’d need some currently unavailable fast-response non-fossil generating capability …
I also didn’t include the energy needed to build the plants, or the energy to rebuild the grid, or the need to replace worn-out wind turbines and solar panels, for the same reason.
Defensibility.
My best regards to you, thanks for the more accurate information.
w.
pls, upon reflection I’ve updated my head post to reflect the undeniable fact that I’d only calculated average power, but we need peak power. I’d have given you credit in the head post, but you’re posting anonymously … it’s one of the problems with not signing your own name to your work. You can’t get credit for your good ideas.
My thanks to you,
w.
The generation IV molten salt reactors in the licensing phase right now in several countries can easily load follow.
Thanks, Greg, always more to learn, good to know. More info here.
w.
There are civilizations in the Amazon jungle, Borneo and other areas that have their fossil fuel consumption under control.
Are they to be the model for we the people?
And all this impossibility to do nothing since CO2 is not the problem, possibly not even a problem. The removal of SO2 to stop acid rain has resulted in previously reflected solar energy to stream in for decades with eventual warming effects. Money to be spent on these stupid ‘stop CO2’ efforts should be redirected towards finding a proper solution to warming. NASA suggested injecting SO2 into the atmosphere, but that idea flopped because of acid rain; however, their suggesting such an action is tacit admission that removal of SO2 is the basic cause of warming.
The size of the problem of storing enough electricity for a week:
<I>http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
Excerpts:
Running a 2 TW electrified country for 7 days requires 336 billion kWh of storage.
A 12 V battery rated at 200 A-h (amp-hours) of charge capacity stores 2400 W-h (watt-hours: just multiply voltage and charge capacity), or 2.4 kWh. Large lead-acid batteries occupy a volume of 0.013 cubic meters (13 liters) per kWh of storage, weigh 25 kg/kWh (55 lb/kWh), and contain about 15 kg of lead per kWh of storage.
Putting the pieces together, our national battery occupies a volume of 4.4 billion cubic meters, equivalent to a cube 1.6 km (one mile) on a side.
This battery would demand 5 trillion kg (5 Billion Tons) of lead.
A USGS report from 2011 reports 80 million tons (Mt) [0.08 Billion tons] of lead in known reserves worldwide, with 7 Mt [0.007 Billion Tons] in the U.S.
A note in the report indicates … the estimated (undiscovered) lead resources of the world at 1.5 billion tons. [ only 30% of what the US alone would need] </I>
This was posted in a comment in a 2013 WUWT post from Willis:
<b>Getting Energy from the Energy Store</b>
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/29/getting-energy-from-the-energy-store/
If it’s a lead-acid battery just how much acid would be required and how would you handle leaks. If it’s a lithium ion battery, how much lithium? And how hot would it get during charging and discharging?
what i still can not believe is how much left wing environmentalist LOVE lithium batteries and solar panels both of which are terrible poison for the environment. millions of tons of this toxic trash will end up in land fills.
i am a right wing conservative and believe in what works and makes sense and is good for the environment. i actually do what i can and what makes sense to conserve. my idiot left wing friends and some family do some of the most dumb and wasteful stuff, talk talk talk talk no action.
and then drive there huge SUV 600 miles every weekend to what ever protest is going on. i tell them stay home and you will save the environment,
and while youre at tell al gore to stay home and save 900,000 gallons of jet fuel.
What this should clarify for all of us is that the intent of the global warming & anti-carbon fuel malarkey is to destroy our current energy and economic infrastructure. The stated goals are absolutely impossible, but along the way, they CAN more effectively steal and distribute wealth and grind humanity’s face into the mud.
Willis, thanks for the interesting article. With respect to your added comment about the figures not including energy required to replace gas for space and water heating in homes, I think you may be double counting as the main figures you quote are for TOTAL PRIMARY energy consumption which would include energy consumption of these uses. Of course there would be additional costs for home owners to replace their gas appliances but this may not be all that much extra as many of these appliances would need to be renewed in any event due to wear and tear or obsolescence.
Peter, thanks for the thought. I’d say I’m not double-counting. If anything I’m under-counting. The extension of current use is an extension of the current “business as usual” scenario.
But “business as usual” doesn’t include the costs in time, energy, and money for putting in bigger transformers, power lines, power panels, 240V lines to new 240V stoves, electric furnaces, and water heaters.
I converted my own house, which I built, to a duplex a few years ago so my daughter and her family could live with us. I’d have to scrap two water heaters, two stoves, and two gas furnaces and replace them with electric. To do that I’d have to rewire the whole house and increase the amperage of our electric service.
And that doesn’t include the fact that electric stoves etc. are LESS efficient than gas for heating.
One way you burn the gas and use ~ 100% of the heat.
The other way you burn the gas to make electricity. With best-case combined cycle gas power plants you just threw away 40+% of the energy, leaving 60%. Of that about 12% gets lost in transmission, leaving only about half the energy you get if you just burned the gas to make your dinner.
Like I said … I’m under-counting.
Thanks for the interesting question,
w.
I wish people would stop referring to hydrocarbons as ‘fossile fuels.’ It’s impossible to get fuel from a fossile.