Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen — 28 November 2023
My piece a few days ago emphasized the fact that in the contest between renewables and fossil fuels used to make electricity around the world, and their emissions, there were only a three countries whose contribution really mattered: China, India, USA and maybe a few others to a lesser degree. All the other 185 or so nations make almost literally no difference regardless of what they do: go full renewable or go full fossil fuel.
The question was raised, from the charts provided by Ember (used in the NY Times) by a reader:
“China having a higher share of renewables each year, while also having a massive growth in overall electricity consumption. … What does this tell us about the type and amount of capacity they add each year?”
and some discussion followed as to whether China was increasing coal faster than renewables or vice-versa.
One reader offered this chart in evidence:
Of course, the chart is in percentages, and does show, on that basis, that the percentage of renewables has increase 10% while fossils fuels have dropped by 15%.
But, what about COAL? The “dirtiest” of all fossil fuels?
84% of the increase in coal consumption, worldwide, is the result of additional coal-fired power plants in China alone. The only other significant contributor is Spain. There are certainly a lot of very small contributors making up the remainder of the increase, which amounts to about 34 TWh in total.
Increased use of coal to make electricity is not a one-year thing. It means additional coal powered power plants being operated and they will continue to use that increased amount of coal into the future, unless the plants are converted to some other fuel such as natural gas, or shut down altogether, in the future.
Just to round out the set, another reader properly points outs that electrical generation is a small piece of the energy pie, and that Primary Energy is the much larger usage of fuels.
“One might also consider that electricity generation is only about a quarter to a third of global primary energy consumption.”
As for Primary Power consumption, China still leads the pack:
The above is an annual change graph. The world is using more and more electricity. And more and more primary power.
What is the source of that primary energy?:
What’s the problem? Oh, you can’t see the percentage that is renewable? The percentage that is nuclear? That’s the point!
If the IPCC world wishes to reduce fossil fuels use, it is the primary energy sector they must concentrate on.
And if that is the case, what is to replace all those fossil fuels in primary energy arena? I certainly don’t know. Any suggestions?
So, if the IPCC is to rein in fossil fuel consumption in just the electrical sector, China and India (and in the future, Africa as a whole) must agree to not only stop building more coal-fired plants, but must begin to close or re-power the existing coal-fired plants. If China does so, it will adversely affect the economy of Australia which supplies some of that coal.
But switching to electric cars, heat pumps, solar-panels-on-the rooftop/batteries-in-the-garage, induction stoves and all ONLY affects the electrical sector – it does not even touch upon the primary energy problem – the majority of energy use in the world today.
As always, don’t ask me, I don’t know. I do have opinions:
1. “All of the above” is the correct answer for energy sources for the electrical sector, and, yes, that means massively increasing nuclear everywhere. Solar and wind are great where they make sense geographically and economically and where they can be intelligently added to existing, improved and expanding electrical grids.
2. Serious research needs to be done to find what makes sense in the overall primary power sector. We need cement, we need steel, we need aluminum, we need plastics, we need micro-chips, we need petroleum distillates and by-products. The production of these essentials requires power and not everything can be done with electricity.
3. A note to all you really smart guys and gals out there:
This is your challenge. Even without the Climate Crazies’ viewpoint, fossil fuels are just too valuable (and limited in quantity) to simply burn for their energy content. We need new sources of power (nuclear and fusion might do, eventually) and more so do we need new technologies to make the things we need without wasting the fossil fuels available to us.
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Author’s Comment:
Really, I have no idea what to do about primary energy and how to replace the fossil fuels that supply the vast majority of it.
The world is open to suggestions. Someone might listen to a good idea.
There are several good books on this topic — for the deep deep details, try Dr. Lars Schernikau and Prof. Willam Hayden Smith’s, “The Unpopular Truth about Electricity and the Future of Energy”.
I’d like to read a free-ranging discussion in the Comments.
Thanks for reading.
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The term “fossil fuel” is similar to saying ancient Carbon-based fuel. It is true such are valuable for other purposes than their energy content. When those other purposes out bid the value of the energy content, there will be a transition.
There is no lack of Carbon so the transition will involve developing the means to use it. Nuclear (maybe fusion) will have to do this — is there any other energy source?
Just pondering. Fossil fuel energy is a subset of “chemical energy,” where the enthalpy is derived by oxidation (from air). That chemical energy itself was derived from the sun (a natural fusion reactor) via the reverse, largely through biochemical processes.
The unicorn fart people are not technically correct at all when they use the term “carbon” to really mean carbon dioxide or to mean hydrocarbons in the ground. A point is that the carbon, to be useful for energy, needs to be in a reduced chemical state, like that in hydrocarbons.
There’s a lot of reduced metal inside the earth but we haven’t figured out how to take advantage of it for energy. Another energy from earth is geothermal energy, which is largely from nuclear decay and perhaps some tidal induced friction.
Anyway, your question is a good one that should be considered.
Scissor ==> Yes, Google is patting itself on the back for helping to fund the FERVO geothermal site in Nevada, producing a whopping 3.5 MW of power. That’s three point five. Geothermal is great — I love the idea,and we have suitable technologies to take advantage of it. Think the Hawaiian Islands getting 100% of its electricity from GeoThermal.
BUT, that does not handle primary energy.
John ==> Other energy source? The Sun offers heat and light and the Earth’s core offers “heat energy”. Matter of any type offers the potential to fission or fuse — with a big big maybe if we knew how the universe worked.
Otherwise, at our current level of technology, no other sources.
Primary energy will be supplied by really large hamster wheels turned by dozens of us serfs (formerly known as the middle class). Of course, the really big and strong individuals will be selected for palanquin duty to ferry the elites from their personal jets (no more commercial airlines as all their jets will be seized and redistributed to the worthy climate scaremongers) to their armoured limousines.
I’m waiting for an AI image of all that.
This reminds me of a story I read years ago about a woman in Indonesia (possibly?) who was given a pedal powered pump to pump water around her rice paddies. It took 6 hours for her to pedal enough to pump the necessary water. Previously, she had used a gasoline powered pump, for about an hour, and had spent the rest of her time at a job that paid far more than the cost of the gas. With the pedal pump, she had no job and no money, and spent way more time on pedaling. All of this was courtesy of a climate related NGO, possibly the World Bank. So your scenario is not that far off.
starzmom ==> Good story. Today, she would get a solar panel that would pump water on sunny days. Not a bad solution — but if she had to have water on cloudy days, she’d need the gasoline powered pump for backup.
Seems like we need more of -every kind- of energy; ff are wonderful (even coal…). Nuclear sounds like a very good idea; it may by necessity come into favor with time.
Stuart ==> Nuclear is needed, but the SMR companies are folding one after another through lack of government development funds to push them over the top of the development-to-market hump.
A real lack of foresight shame.
IF all subsidies and tax and regulation based obstructions were removed from all “energy” production means, the market would soon decide what the best path is.
I would guess coal would make a massive resurgence. Then, with time, nuclear would come in.
Natural Gas would still be high on the list, but solar and wind would soon disappear form all the primary energy graphs.
BTW, why is electricity not just called electricity instead of “primary energy”? Just to make unreliable generation show bigger than reality? Call it electricity and total to include transportation and other vehicular fuels, etc. ALWAYS put them side by side in graphs to show what little solar and wind actually provide to total “energy”.
X-Energy has a contract from DoE to develop micro-SMR for mobile power plants at small or remote bases. 3-5 Mw per module.
James ==> The tractor-trailer sized SMR? Isn’t something like that used to power nuclear submarines and aircraft-carriers?
Who would have thought something like that might be available in a proven off-the-shelf model??
The international economies, especially China, India and the USA need to stop pretending that wind and solar can power a modern society and by 2030 end all tax credits and other incentives for wind and solar and transfer those perks to accelerating fast neutron thorium fuel and small-scale modular reactor commercialization. We will remain heavily dependent on oil, gas, and coal until at least 2080, because it will take that long to widely deploy the nuclear reactors. A high level of deployment will not be before 2080 and most likely not before 2090. Step one will be ending all tax credits and other incentives for wind and solar and transferring those perks to nuclear. We need to start doing in 2030 what we should have done no later than 1980. Doing the wrong thing, in the wrong way at the wrong time for 50 years has consequences.
Agreed on the need to get into nuclear fuels, and adding in thorium 233 (actually Th with neutron bombardment, making U233) is the answer to power in risky areas, as 233 does not make weapons grade daughters. Here’s the problem: when I started a uranium exploration company in 2006 we were hoping for U3O8 (yellowcake) to go above $20/lb. I was stunned at how much uranium mineralization was available to mine and mill, and in stable settings. Now the price of yellowcake is above $80/lb, in spite of the abundance. This is a clear indication of activists interference and regulatory adversity. Imagine regulatory attack against Net Zero! Birds and whales and ultrasounds, oh my!
Ron, I am constantly amazed by the degree to which the Light Water Breeder Reactor experiment of the1970’s is ignored in the recent literature about sustainable power production. LWBR was very successful making about 1.3% more U233 fuel from thorium than it consumed. If one really wants unlimited electricity production from a sustainable zero-emission technology that can continue thousands of years into the future, LWBR fits the bill. It was a water-cooled and moderated reactor just like the thousands of PWR and BWR reactors built and operated in recent times, the coolant is not flammable (sodium coolant), is not unknowably corrosive (liquid salt coolant) and not a homogeneous reactor (fuel mixed with coolant) that has hideous and perhaps unsolvable radiation control problems. All of the information concerning LWBR is unclassified even though it was designed, built, operated and completely decommissioned by a Navy office and is available to anybody who looks. Any idea why it is so thoroughly ignored?
It seems the public (and greens) are unaware of the significant difference between heavy water reactors (CANDU) And light water reactors (Fukushima et al). When push comes to shove there is only the mental image of a Chernobyl reactor, with cover, in mind. The fundamental difference between the high concentration light water fuel and 5% natural uranium escapes the casual observer.
This is amazing. I heard the main reason the USA doesn’t use the CANDU approach is they would have to pay royalties to Canada to use it. Also, it doesn’t make bomb material which was important to the military. Yet another reason is that is doesn’t cost as much to prepare the fuel and deal with the remnants. The US chose the most spectacularly expensive route to maximise costs and long term care requirements – nice work if you can get it – and hope to retain all those $$ contracts indefinitely.
France did the same with their concentrate fuel and high construction costs. It is not as if industry is free from bias in this. There is a lot more money in the high grade refuse from concentrated uranium than there is in spent U233 and thorium. In the latter case something like 300 years storage.
Ontario is building a (US-designed) Generation IV reactor at Darlington right now. It will have liquid fuel and can be refueled while it is running. They turned down the local design from Hamilton. Shame.
Consider for a moment the cost over-runs, the years preparing fuel and storage required for light water reactors. It is in the financial interest of the construction companies to maximize costs and pass that along to the consumer. After cost over-runs they will be permitted to charge more, whatever the quote. There is nothing like a (military or) nuclear sinecure.
Ron and Denis ==> The history of nuclear development is filled with such mysterious interference and outright intentional dead-ending.
I too feel the governments really need to get their fingers out and get rolling — they MUST know that wind and solar are not going to save the energy sector over the next 100 years.
Dennis ==> I like your analysis and timeline. Commercialization has been allowed to fail for SMR in the last few months, many of the most promising efforts being allowed to fold up.
Kip. agree, a national tragedy that NuScale didn’t receive the necessary support from Biden to get their first project off the ground. We are so screwed. China is building 40 nuclear power plants, and we are pretending wind and solar can power a modern society. This is not going to end well.
To your point, here is a James Hansen quote:
“Can renewable energies provide all of society’s energy needs in the foreseeable future? It is conceivable in a few places, such as New Zealand and Norway. But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”
JH thinks we must do nuclear. At least he is reality based on the energy aspect of the “climate change” madness.
With at least a hundred lightning bolts striking ground (and many more over the sea) every second there is a lot of energy waiting to be harnessed or harvested. Taming and storing this energy has been dreamt about as a source for human use for a long time but not in sufficient detail to capture imagination and investment.
Perhaps a day will come when a Dr Frankenstein actually performs a truly big energy step forward for mankind. And perhaps the energy storage ideas this good lady and her team have designed really will make our worries about sources of power a nightmare we once had back in the 21C when science became a train wreck and we narrowly missed a truly devastating world war before a political revolution got us back on the right track with responsible leaders and not charlatan mouthpieces.
Infinity really should mean anything is possible …
Agreed that coal oil and gas are too valuable as feedstocks to be burning as we do.
The only visible alternative to even part of it, the electricity part, is nuclear.
michel ==> Yes, nuclear for the electrical sector in the long run. (or medium, if the governments would quit throwing money away on “renewables”).
Geothermal for areas suitable (Nevada, Iceland, Hawaii….) as long as they recycle the water needed and don’t lose too much.
Lass ==> Ah, the dreams of the dreamers. There are ways to take advantage of that electrical charge difference between the atmosphere and the Earth. So far, none of them practical — but, Keep Thinking!
Story Tip
From today’s Telegraph
A group called Climate Genocide Act Now, which is linked to Extinction Rebellion, is planning legal action against this newspaper for what it calls misleading and inadequate coverage of climate change. It wants the case heard, believe it or not, in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and says it has a professional legal opinion noting that policies causing climate change can be prosecuted as crimes against humanity.
This includes questioning the cost of getting to net zero, challenging the timetable for introducing electric cars and reporting on the difficulties of installing heat pumps. The failure to connect weather events like the recent Storm Ciaran to the broader narrative of climate change is another point of criticism, as are adverts encouraging people to take a foreign holiday.
“We’re planning to get a dossier of evidence covering six months, and submit a case to the International Criminal Court to say that this is evidence of incitement of crimes against humanity. We think we’ve got a chance of getting there,” the group’s leader said. At least it will be good work for the lawyers.
Coming shortly to a web site near you…. Hope Anthony fancies a trip to Den Haag. And Paul Homewood also.
as are adverts encouraging people to take a foreign holiday.
Does that, by any chance, include anything which encourages attendance at COP28? Or is it a case of some flights good, some flights bad?
michel and Campsie ==> Yes, I hope the include the IPCC for holding so many COPs in person instead of by remote video conference. That certainly qualifies as a Crime Against Humanity.
The major reason why China is investing in so called renewables is to be a tech leader so that they can be market leader internationally and hence sabotage the energy systems of the west”!
Tusten02 ==> China makes things — almost everything — that is their super-power. They can and do make solar panels and need to sell them. Marketing them is part of their national strategy. China is jamming them into its own grid like mad.
Your first chart, share of electricity generation, is typical of the bad faith arguments of the climate lobby.
First the argument is that the thing driving the climate is CO2 emissions, the gross tonnage. This then confronts the lobby with the fact that China is increasing its emissions as fast as max economic growth requires and has no intention of reducing. Has no intention even of allowing COP gatherings to endorse freezing or reducing.
The lobby then resorts to a number of special pleadings to be able to try and excuse China, and this is the latest one.
The others have been:
— China’s per capita emissions are lower. Blown up when China’s reached EU levels
— China’s historical emissions are lower than the West’s. Irrelevant, its the future CO2 tonnage that counts.
[This was the classic ‘only fair’ argument: its only fair China should be encouraged to destroy human civilization on earth, because history. Whereas the UK and US and Europe should atone for their sins in starting the industrial revolution by going to Net Zero, because they are not China.]
— China is only emitting to export. Irrelevant, its the CO2 tonnage that counts.
— China is installing a lot of wind and solar. Irrelevant, its the CO2 tonnage that counts.
Now we get to another twist on the last. At the same time as China increases its total emissions enough to supposedly wipe out human civilization on earth, its raising the percentage of power that it generates from wind and solar. Of course, the fact that its raising the percentage is no excuse as long as the total generated from coal and gas continues to rise, and thus total emissions rise. And this is what they are doing. The first six months of this year they approved more coal generating capacity than the total generating capacity of the UK, Germany or France. They are growing their emissions as fast as it takes to achieve their growth goals.
They do not believe any of it.
But that’s all right as long as they install more wind. The China astroturfers will find some contorted reason why their total rises in emissions somehow don’t count, despite claiming to believe, in other contexts, that emissions tonnage is what dooms humanity.
Look forward to more and more intellectual contortions, because the real aim is just to accuse the West and excuse China. Its very hard to see that the aim is to reduce global emissions since they perpetually excuse the biggest and fastest growing emitters from having to do anything like that.
“— China is only emitting to export. “
Exporting to countries that no longer have an effective manufacturing bass…
… mostly because they have followed ant-CO2 virtue-seeking and have destroyed their own electricity supply cost and stability.!
CO2 emissions have NOT been decreased one tiny bit, just transferred to China and India, at the expense of western civilisation and society.
bass -> base !!!
bnice ==> Gentle now, we all mistype, over and over.
michel ==> ONLY China, USA,and INDIA count on emissions in the electrical sector as this essay shows. I believe this is also true for Overall Primary Energy.
If these three don’t cave to the Climate Crazies (which is my prediction), then the rest is a big Nothing Done.
It seems China’s leadership knows that men and women are different, and that nothing is gained by deliberately ruining the economy. If they had learnt this earlier, Mao’s holocaust might even have taken more to the grave.
This is not to be flippant, or cheap. A problem so serious it is (in my opinion) our species’ greatest threat is that Western people cannot grow up; they believe their lives are somehow unfair if they are criticised or denied pleasure seeking. They are the ‘lost boys’ in Pinocchio, who like them, face a terrible end. Proof of this comes from Greta Thunberg, who, at thirteen was a world leader, something that only children themselves could have thought happiness.
We do indeed have to think about our lifestyle, which might well consider a self-imposed austerity which is as far as possible away from the cruel fantasies of today’s Goon Squad.
The west needs to go back to treating all energy sources on a level playing field. Overall, this would cut electricity prices, improve grid stability, and cut all government subsidies to zero. This would in turn cut inflation and get national economies back on track. Then the west needs to work on all the ways of not burning fossil fuels, so that those can last a lot longer and be used for feedstock rather than energy. The only technologically viable alternative so far is nuclear fission, and tbat can only replace some of fossil fuels’ energy uses. It’s still worth doing.
Now, what is China’s strategy? I submit that it is as follows: 1. Use all fossil fuels and energy sources optimally. (So far, that’s the same as my suggestions for the west, but after that they diverge …). 2. Use the greater strength that this gives China to gather all possible fossil fuels and energy sources for China and deny them to the west. Priority goes to the Chinese military not the Chinese people. The more this can be done, the stronger China gets and the weaker the west gets. 3. As western countries weaken, take them over one by one. For a long time, in all cases this won’t need military action, just political and economic strangulation. 4. When the power disparity is large enough, military action can be used to take over all other countries. 5. In all taken-over countries, the population can be enslaved to work purely for China’s benefit, and all their resource usage can be directed to this sole aim. Note that the general population of China can increasingly be treated in the same way. Eventually, there will be a single world government – not the one envisaged by the western political left, just the CCP.
Have I missed anything?
Mike ==> Terrific novel material. May be right in the long term.
I assume the first chart, of fuel-type, is based on data from by highly regulated Chinese power producers and the second chart, of coal consumption, has some input from exporters of coal to China.
The charts are contradictory.
R Taylor ==> The charts, which are always based on data from somewhere and that data can certainly be both biased and just plain wrong, are what we have to look at.
They are not necessarily contradictory, as the first is a chart of %s, and the second is of annual increase of terrawatt-hours from coal consumption.
They have added a lot of renewable and a lot of coal — more renewable than coal by %, but still,a HUGE amount of coal.
Kip,
comparing capacity of renewables against coal is very misleading, coal can give 100% on capacity when demand occurs, wind can only give as much as the wind is blowing and averages only about 30% of capacity on average It is variable whether on or offshore. Solar is worse. So divide wind capacity by three for a better appreciation of what is installed.
For me, one of the tragedies of the climate scare hoax is that it obscures and hides debate, research, and discussion of important questions, some of which are raised in this article – in particular, the matter of fossil fuels having uses other than burning for energy and that if the actual supply of fossil fuels is limited, we should think about saving them for such uses.
Another important question seldom discussed is only peripherally raised by the article: the long term matter of compound growth in total energy use. Even at 2% a year, total energy doubles in 50 years and goes up by a factor of 7 in a century and a factor of 52 in two centuries. It’s hard to envision how this can happen. And obviously, it cannot continue forever as the numbers become larger than the total energy in the solar system.
erlroddw ==> Total energy use over the long term is the basis for my challenge to the Really Smart People.
Don’t make the mistake that the Club of Rome made, extending a trendline (or exponential growth) out too far into the future. If that principle was true, the world would be covered by rabbits (or mice, or hamsters — whatever).
84% of the increase in coal consumption, worldwide, is the result of additional coal-fired power plants in China alone. The only other significant contributor is Spain.
Spain creating more additional coal-fired power plants than India?
Campsie ==> Yes, those Spaniards are hard at it trying to keep the lights on…silly people.
The data comes from Our World in Data but originally from the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy.
“1. “All of the above” is the correct answer for energy sources for the electrical sector, and, yes, that means massively increasing nuclear everywhere. Solar and wind are great where they make sense geographically and economically and where they can be intelligently added to existing, improved and expanding electrical grids.”
I partly disagree with using the “all of the above” line. Intermittent solar and wind for system supply (as opposed to private use, which is fine) can only increase the overall cost through overbuilding and through the parasitic effect on the reliable sources. This results in degraded capacity utilization of materials such as copper, steel, concrete, etc. system-wide.
Massively push nuclear? Yes. Both for electricity and future process heat.
Keep drilling and digging for gas, oil, coal? Yes, and use them wisely..
David ==> There are a lot of opinions on intermittency of sources. Yours is one, which I think is valid, but i don’t think it pushes wind and solar out of the mix.
Kip,
not just that but wind and solar meet none of the technical criteria for stable and reliable grid supply, they are third rate.
What is “primary energy?”
What is primary energy?
It’s what I put in my car’s gas tank to get to work and back every day, it’s what the airlines put in their airplanes, it’s what the farmers put in their tractors to grow the food we eat, it’s what the railroads put in their locomotives to pull their trains, it’s what the drivers of eighteen wheelers put in their trucks to pull their trailers, it’s what cargo ships use to deliver all manner of stuff hither and yon around the planet.
As things stand today, liquid carbon fuels are both the high-density energy resource and a very safe and convenient high-density energy carrier for most of the world’s transportation and mobile energy needs.
If nuclear power could be made cheap enough and plentiful enough, could we use it in conjunction with renewable sources of carbon feedstock — organic matter from plant crops, CO2 from burning coal, or even CO2 taken directly from the air and possibly from the oceans — could we use these carbon sources to produce an infinite supply of synthetic carbon fuels which are plentiful enough and cheap enough to support the same modes of mobile transportation that we use today?
It’s an especially good point you make regarding cheap energy leading to virtually an infinite supply of synthetic carbon fuels.
We don’t need to leave carbon in the ground for future generations. We need to develop cheap energy sources for us and them.
Great. Someone (Beta B) finally articulated what I implied in the first or top comment.
“… use these carbon sources to produce an infinite supply of synthetic carbon . . .”
Next word should be molecules.
Send your grandchildren to chemistry classes.
Here’s a good page from EIA.gov, which describes primary energy and definitions around it: https://www.eia.gov/tools/glossary/index.php?id=Primary%20energy
With regard to primary energy production, that site gives the following:
There is virtually no primary or net energy generation without hydrocarbon inputs.
Scissor: “There is virtually no primary or net energy generation without hydrocarbon inputs.”
Strictly for purposes of discussion, let’s assume nuclear power can eventually be made cheap enough and plentiful enough so that we can use it in conjunction with renewable sources of carbon feedstock — organic matter from plant crops, CO2 from burning coal, or even CO2 taken directly from the air and possibly from the oceans — to produce an infinite supply of synthetic carbon fuels.
Under this rather ambitious assumption, we might envision a world where the atmospheric concentration of CO2 stabilizes at perhaps 550 ppm and we use recovered CO2 from various sources as a feedstock for producing energy dense liquid hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline and diesel.
If the CO2 capture and conversion processes could be made cheap enough, the carbon atoms loaded into a synthetic hydrocarbon acting as a mobile carrier for energy originally produced in a nuclear reactor might find themselves being recycled two or more times inside the world’s carbon management global infrastructure in the course of a millennia.
Beata ==> An interesting idea. Yes, with more-or-less infinite power, we could create carbonaceous fuels to run our cars.
Bob ==> I threw in a link on Primary Energy in the essay.
We all know what electrical energy is — it is all the electricity that comes through the wires to our homes and factories.
Primary energy includes that electrical energy, and all the other energy a country consumes.
In my local area, there are massively huge cement plants – they make cement that is used to build buildings, homes, roads, bridges. It take a great deal of energy to make cement. That energy does not come through the wires, in comes through large underground pipes of natural gas.
The primary energy used in that plant far exceeds the electrical energy used in the cities and towns in this area by many times.
The chart of Direct Primary Energy Consumption, on which nuclear and renewables are invisible as they are so much smaller than the fossil fuels, shows the Primary Energy problem. Nuclear and renewables (which include hydroelectric) only make electricity — and cannot easily bee seen in that chart.
I understand primary energy to be the original source. So wind and natural gas for example are primary, electricity is not.
The first thing you must do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging! There is simply not enough wealth in the world to squander it as we are doing now. Large scale solar farms are useless above and below the 45th parallels and in cloudy regions. Wind turbines are useless where there are many windless days in a row. Both technologies are useless without efficient energy storage. ‘Green hydrogen’ won’t be available until Green Energy production exceeds energy usage. We must stop squandering mankind’s limited wealth on building these.
Second, Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming ain’t. There is simply no immediate crisis. So, stop wasting limited wealth on ineffective short-term fixes for dealing with it. This is particularly true for the fixes that will never work.
There is a crisis coming some generations down the road. It’s the end of fossil fuels and the end of the present interglacial warm period. If we simply take the wealth wasted on ‘Climate Change’ and spend some of it wisely on efficiently accommodating these real problems, then real ‘science’ will deal with them in time. Projects such as modular dispatchable nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, efficient energy storage, fertilizer synthesis without oil would be good starts. These need to have decades or century long time scales, not monthly, or even annual times.
Tom ==> Well said…like well stated opinions.
The dominance of fossil fuels as a source of primary energy was pointed out by the IEA in their ‘Energy Technologies Perspectives 2033’
“The world still relies on fossil fuels for its energy supply. The growth in clean energy supply since 2000 has been dwarfed by that of oil, gas and coal , especially in emerging and developing economies”
Oil is the single largest source of primary energy (29%) followed by coal (26%), natural gas (23%), nuclear (5%), solar and wind (2%), hydro (2%)”
Thus fossil fuels still provide 78% of primary energy.
In it’s recent ‘World Energy Outlook 2023’ the IEA brought forward peak oil from the mid 2030s to 2030 itself. This set the MSM alight! Few noticed what else the IEA said
“Oil demand for petrochemicals, aviation and shipping continues to increase through to 2050”
“This does not offset the decline elsewhere….so oil demand peaks by 2030 but the decline is slow all the way to 2050”
“Both over investment and under investment in fossil fuels carry risks for secure and affordable energy transitions”
Dave ==> I recall some energy experts saying that the IEA was taking a big chance with that statement. Am I right on that?
Seems to me they got the headlines they wanted by bringing ‘peak oil’ forward from the mid 30s to 2030 perhaps with COP 28 in mind. However the document itself does not stress peak oil and says the decline will be slow to 2050.
Moreover I do not see how things could have changed that much from the document published only a few months earlier stressing the dominance of the growth of fossil fuels compared to ‘clean energy’ especially in emerging and developing economies.
Typo. Energy Technology Perspectives 2023!
Story Tip
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/internal-docs-show-biden-admin-waived-taxpayer-safeguards-boost-offshore-wind-project
Biden is waiving the requirement that developers post bonds that ensure that offshore developers will clean up their sites when they are de-commissioned.
You are of course assuming that the data out of China is worth the electrons it was carried on.
MarkW ==> The various Energy Agencies have been doing this for many years — they use a lot of input to make those various charts and graphs. Naturally, like all data, it can be biased, corrupted, faked, etc. But with many many groups digging into the details, something like coal imports, power plant construction, etc can be fairly reliable.
I wouldn’t bet on any one numerical value being absolutely correct.
The Biden administration has been holding secret negotiations with environmental groups over the fate of hydroelectric dams on the Snake River. They have agreed to destroy 4 of the dams.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/court-filings-reveal-secret-agreement-between-biden-admin-eco-groups-seeking-tear-down-key-power-source
So much for using hydro as a backup to wind and solar.
I live in the middle of nowhere in the southeastern corner of Washington State. The proposed breaching of the four Snake River dams in Washington State has been a topic of exceptional concern in this region for thirty-five years.
In 1998, the Army Corps of Engineers did a full environmental impact statement covering the breaching proposals for the four Washington State dams. Studies done by the National Marine Fisheries Service in support of the 1998 EIS concluded that 48 years would pass after the four dams had been fully breached before the salmon runs on the Snake River would be restored to pre-dam levels.
The cost estimate in 1998 for breaching the four Snake River dams in Washington State was roughly 9 billion dollars. The cost in 2023 would be more like 25 to 30 billion dollars — money which must be authorized by Congress.
The Snake River flows into the Columbia River. Even before Grand Coulee Dam was built on the Columbia River in the 1930’s, salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin had declined to roughly one-third or less of what they had been in the 1850’s. The construction of Grand Coulee Dam reduced the salmon population still further. This happened well before the four Snake River Dams had been constructed.
No one is proposing that Grand Coulee Dam be removed. Or that any of the other major dams on the Columbia River be removed. No one is proposing that the Snake River dams in Idaho be removed, even though the Idaho dams flooded significant portions of the Snake River salmon spawning grounds.
For three decades prior to 2021, the federal government was completely transparent in how it was handling the Snake River dam controversy. What we are seeing from the Biden Administration in 2023 is a level of dishonesty and duplicity regarding environmental issues which goes well beyond anything ever seen in this country.
I yet have to be convinced that “fossil fuels” are ‘limited’. The Earth is large, and we have just begun to explore vast regions of it. In addition, exploration companies continue to discover new sources. The scientists should continue to focus on more efficient applications of f.f., and, if developed, the ‘powers that be’ should be made to keep their greedy hands off.
Watching the various “peak oil” claims over 50 years has made me quite cynical about such things. Every time they claimed to be running out of oil, what they really meant was that they needed more money to to drill a little deeper, go to more remote regions with worse weather to drill (e.g., Texas, then Saudi Arabia, then the North Slope), or develop better technology (from better drill bits to electronic monitoring systems for the wells to angle drilling and fracking, and I’m sure also dozens of piecemeal improvements that I could not see the significance of, but that made it cost less to drill deeper.) They were running out of oil in the 1920’s, and Hughes Machine Tool invented the roller drill bit – and suddenly they could drill deeper and there was lots of oil. They were running out of oil in the 1970’s but with higher prices giving more money for exploration and drilling, there was lots of oil in the 1980’s – and then technology slashed the cost so deeply that gasoline prices dropped to lower than 1973 compared to the inflation on everything else. And this cycle has repeated at least twice since then.
So whenever anyone tells me we’re running out of something, I remember that “proven reserves” means “expected to be profitable to extract with no change in price or technology.” When it gets scarce enough to drive the price up, they’ll dig deeper, figure out a better way to dig, or go looking more widely, and soon there’s no shortage.
It may be just me, but I am fed up with “all the people out there in the World” being fed nonsense on both renewables and CO2, usually by some mechanism of providing graphs with zero useful (or accurate) content. Today we see our King and PM at a conference, in a very hot Country, basking in vastly energy intensive air conditioning, having travelled there in Government funded Jets! In Dubai this comes largely from oil, no surprise there. Both of them are into heavy duty “virtue signalling” at home, being carried out by the population having very expensive energy, due to wind, which is providing about 6% today, of a total load of 42GW, almost at the maximum generation capability (including renewables at this wind level). A failure today of any significant size will result in power cuts via “smartmeter”, or if the wind becomes a bit lower, both Open Circuit gas turbines and Coal being maxed out, and even more power cuts. In other words the UK is running very close to collapse of the Grid. What did the BBC say this morning? Britain has had the hottest year ever! It did not have a red or yellow warning for electricity, ask people to reduce consumption where possible (not many can), so snow is much worse than electricity failure? Dystropian doesn’t come anywhere near a description of Britain. We are heading for renewables disaster! We will be carbon free by 2050, is the claim, to be so needs 20 times the wind generation at present and is not technically feasable, because given the right (wrong) weather we need 1000 times as much. Storage is not feasable at scale. What will happen next? The gas infrastructure will be removed by Green dictat! If so hundreds of thousands will die and everyone will be bankrupt.