Why “free” energy isn’t free once you need it on demand
Dr. Lars Schernikau: Energy Economist, Commodity Trader, Author (recent book “The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the Future of Energy”)
Continue reading the full blog here: The problem with the “Primary Energy Fallacy”
Why this discussion matters
When we flip on a light switch, we rarely ask where that electricity actually comes from. Sunlight, wind, coal, gas, and uranium all exist in nature for free, but turning any of them into usable electricity that arrives every second of the year at the right voltage, frequency and phase is a demanding process… a service delivered to the consumer.
This is where the idea of primary energy comes in. And it’s also where a popular argument, the Primary Energy Fallacy, fails to hold up.
What primary energy actually is
Primary energy is the raw energy pulled straight from nature: coal, gas, oil, uranium, flowing water, sunlight, wind.
Electricity is secondary energy. It only exists after a long chain of processing, conversion, and delivery. Today electricity accounts for roughly 40% of global primary energy use, despite the small fraction visibly attributed to wind and solar.
Yes, wind and solar “generate” electricity directly, but what matters here is that electricity for our grids (unlike using a DC low voltage powerbank to charge a phone) has value only, and I repeat ONLY, if it can be delivered as a service that means 24/7/365, on demand, with the “correct” voltage, frequency, phase, and current. Thermal power plants inherently provide these qualities. Wind turbines and solar panels do not. For the critics, I repeat that I am speaking of electricity usable for our grids, as for any truly off-grid application you have the freedom to do as you see fit, and I am not too concerned as it is largely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things.
The Primary Energy Fallacy, in brief
The fallacy rests on two claims:
- Stated Primary Energy Fallacy 1: “The conversion of gas and coal to power results in a loss of around 60%. This means that one unit of primary energy from wind or solar, replaces two units of that of gas/coal”
- Stated Primary Energy Fallacy 2: “The conversion losses during end use in internal combustions engines ICE are also high. Electric motors are much more efficient. Most car engines ‘lose’ 70% of fuel energy, which means that one final energy unit of electricity replaces three units of gasoline/diesel”
The misunderstanding occurs in the belief that wind and solar generate electricity without any losses (a secondary or tertiary form of energy) while coal, gas, uranium may have a high energy content but have “thermal losses” ~60-70% during processing. This Primary Energy fallacy argument is used for power generation and also for internal combustion engine vehicles (ICE) in a slightly adjusted form.
At system level, which is the only level that matters when generating electricity usable for our grids, wind and solar unfortunately deliver less net usable energy per unit of primary energy invested than coal, gas, or nuclear.
“Free” resources are not free to use
Energy agencies often report wind and solar as nearly 100% efficient because they don’t include the massive upstream work required to make that electricity usable.
For example from the recent Energy Institute Report:
- Wind + solar: ~4,655 TWh of primary energy becomes ~4,623 TWh of electricity reported as nearly lossless.
- Nuclear: ~8,500 TWh of primary energy becomes ~2,800 TWh of electricity losses included.
The problem is a simple one…Wind and solar hide their losses in their supply chain and in the “ancillary systems” required to make them “useful” for our grids, such as
- 1) A vast overbuild of wind and solar to overcome the low natural capacity factor, resulting in low net load factor, as well as the intermittency and unpredictability challenges and to charge any storage
- 2) Short duration energy storage, in the form of batteries, to overcome short duration fluctuations and to balance the grid
- 3) Long duration energy storage, envisioned in the form of hydrogen, to overcome days and weeks of insufficient combined wind and solar generation
- 4) Backup thermal power stations on standby when needed, in Germany 12-20GW of gas is required by 2030, in the future this backup is supposed to run on hydrogen
- 5) A vastly more complex and larger transmission network and integration infrastructure also for “conditioning” wind and solar power
Mining, refining, manufacturing, storage systems, grid expansion, balancing systems, and short operational lifetimes to make wind and solar useful all require enormous primary energy inputs. These do not appear in the statistics.
A coal or gas plant has clear thermal losses, but it operates 30–60 years from one site. Wind and solar require continuous rebuilding and vast supporting infrastructure.
Why wind and solar require so much system support
Three physical challenges shape wind and solar output:
- Energy density, (b) Intermittency, (c) Operational Lifetime
To compensate, five major ancillary systems are required as laid out above, 1) overbuild, 2) short duration energy storage, 3) long duration energy storage, 4) backup power stations, and 5) transmission and network integration infrastructure
All five systems must be built, maintained, replaced, and powered. Their energy and material footprint is substantial and mostly absent from primary energy reporting.
Replacing one coal, gas, or nuclear plant essentially requires building five separate wind-solar-storage-grid subsystems, each with its own lifetime and cost.
How much usable energy do we really get?
A few real-world contrasts:
Solar
- Natural capacity factor: 10% in Germany; 20–25% in sunnier regions.
- Lifetime: often 12–15 years in utility practice, not 25–30.
- Overbuild requirement for long storage: in extreme cases hundreds of times existing capacity.
- Manufacturing: heavily fossil-fuel-driven.
Wind
- Natural capacity factor: ~22% global average; good sites ~35%.
- Power density: 1–2 MW per square kilometer.
- Lifetime: 10–20 years; offshore tends toward the lower end.
- Also requires fossil-powered mining and manufacturing.
Coal or Gas
- Natural Capacity factor: 98+%, limited only by demand and lower utilization.
- Lifetime: 30–60 years.
- One plant replaces the full stack of wind/solar + ancillary systems.
- Fuel must be continuously supplied, but infrastructure lasts.
Across their full lifetimes and full systems, solar and wind return far less energy for the energy invested.
Why the fallacy persists
Because wind and solar don’t show their upstream energy requirements in national statistics, they appear cleaner, simpler, and cheaper than they truly are. Policy discussions often rely on LCOE (levelized cost of electricity), which ignores system impacts, rather than FCOE (full cost of electricity), which includes the infrastructure and reliability costs that actually matter to a country.
Primary energy accounting also assumes nearly 100% system efficiency for incoming solar radiation, which obscures the resource and energy intensity needed to collect, convert, store, and condition that energy into usable power.
So what is the real takeaway?
- Every energy system demands energy, materials, money, and time before delivering useful electricity.
- Wind and solar are not “free” once you add the storage, grid upgrades, conditioning systems, and frequent rebuilds.
- Their intermittency forces the construction of far more physical infrastructure than most people realize.
- Coal, gas, and nuclear have clear conversion losses but deliver more net usable energy per unit of system investment.
- At system level, wind and solar are less primary-energy efficient, not more.
- There’s no such thing as a free kilowatt-hour…not from coal, gas, uranium, sunlight, nor wind. Nature gives us resources; turning them into dependable electricity is always costly.
- The Primary Energy Fallacy overlooks this reality, and that’s why it misleads the debate about our energy future.
Continue reading the full blog here: The problem with the “Primary Energy Fallacy”
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Water is free too. It falls from the sky. How much do you pay for a bottle of free water?
But I digress. If people want things like electricity or heat, they have to decide how much they want, and the price they are prepared to pay for these “free” things. Coal is free, oil is free, sunlight is free and so is wind. Even electrons and copper are free!
So what’s the problem? Just look at clothing – wool is free, cotton and flax are free, so is animal hide. Spectacles? Made from free sand and free sodium and calcium carbonate.
Nothing is really free, but everything is, in one way or another. There is not much point in demanding that someone supply you with something that costs the supplier more than you pay – in one way or another.
Most politicians, journalists, and even most people, are ignorant and gullible. We deserve what we get – we might as well get used to it, or make our own arrangements.
Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek put it as there are no natural resources. There are raw resources, but they require time and effort to become usable resources.
Air is about as close as you can get to a free raw resource, but pollution-free air is not.
Air and Sun are only “Free Fuel” because no-one has figured a way to charge for them.
.
Harvesting Energy from them is …
Damned Expensive
Mineral Intensive
Acreage Extensive
They are…
Short Lived
Nonresilient
Extremely Fragile
Not resistant to foul weather
.
Wind can’t produce energy if the winds are outside of 9-55mph (either direction)
.
Solar can’t produce energy between 4pm and 8am and can only produce anywhere near nameplate from 10am until 2 pm. Solar production also fall off at higher latitudes and falls to near zero during winter.
Natural resources. I do not object to the philosophical point of view.
However, resources are raw materials.
Process silicon into wafers, the wafers are resources for semiconductor manufacturing.
The semiconductors are resources for computers, cell phones, etc.
Natural resources are raw materials found in nature.
Once extracted and from the first processing stage, they are no longer natural but still remain as raw materials.
Cotton isn’t necessarily free. It must be…
Planted
Tended
Harvested
Transported
Processed
Spun
Loomed
Just to become usable
Just to become usable
Like other “free” stuff. Good to see you understand about solar, wind, and hydro “free energy”.
That’s the way of the Socialist, Marxist, Communist.
Delete...any information that is counter to their point of view.
Obscure…The actual Inconvenient truth that they Wish didn’t exist.
Misdirect…their followers with nonexistent issues that “Must be Corrected”
Identify…false villains in their opposition
Namecall…the opposition to keep them vilified
Activism…is a requirement to maintain belief in “The Cause”
Trials…file suit against the opposition and keep them in court to eliminate opposition
Exterminate…the former government “For the People”
DOMINATE the opposition to eliminate capitalism.
Illiberal also fits.
Illiterate as well
Waaaaay too complicated for the average alarmist to understand. Dead simple obvious to everyone else.
I keep the argument to capex.
The capex needs to be amortized over the life of the generation.
Wind capex looks cheap until you make it a 60 year lifetime discussion.
For wind, 3X right off the bat due to limited lifetime.
Another 1x for additional cabling and power conditioning.
Backup – I always ask the alarmist if they would like to use batteries for the math. Yes?
OK, Backup, 100X.
Wait, no, what? But I read about all these grid scale batteries…
No, those are for frequency control, part of the power conditioning. Would you like to use something else until batteries become cheaper. You would? What?
Pumped storage? OK, 5X for pumped storage IF you have somewhere local that is suitable and environmentalists who don’t sue your project into the dirt and you’ll lose 1/3 of the energy round trip…
Methanol? Hydrogen? OK so we need to build a whole new infrastructure to generate and store the fuel, plus more windfarms to run that infrastructure and a whole new generator, so another 5X for that. Oh actually more because the round trip has about 50% losses so double that. We’re at what now? 19X? Hey, I have a better idea.
Another conventional plant. 1X.
You can argue the multiples, which I always burden the alarmist with doing. Make them come up with the costs, with sources, so its their numbers.
Capex is the largest part of the cost of electricity, the fuel and the opex are minor.
Nice discussion of the basics despite the electricity at 40% of primary energy misstatement.
According to IEA and Energy Institute data, electricity accounts for about 20% of global final energy consumption and roughly 19–24% of primary energy depending on the methodologies.
Oil & oil refined products would dominate global F.E.C.
“depending on the methodologies”
Roger that.
The whole article, whilst well intended, starts with a fallacious sentence. ‘When we flip on the light switch where does the electricity come from?’ This is quite wrong since electricity is not energy. The sentence should read ‘… the energy come from’
The references to voltage, phase, frequency etc are simply technical characteristics of the system we use to transfer energy from A to B. Electric vehicles are not ‘electric’ they are battery. The energy used is stored as chemical energy in the battery, in the same way as an ICE vehicle stores energy in the fuel tank.
This, and the constant reference to GW instead of GWh for battery energy storage shows just how little the politicians understand about energy.
It just proves the whole climate crisis is a politically inspired hoax.
I appreciate the language precision you are espousing.
The difference between common/social context derived definitions (which are fluid) and scientific definitions (which are precise) is a major challenge when discussing energy, climate, or just about anything technical.
I advocate that those raising questions and concerns do not use the Climate Hypocrite’s lexicon as it only boosts their credibility.
I disagree with the “fallacious sentence” comment. Electricity is converted to energy by the device plugged in.
We are debating semantics, of course.
Electricity, in precise scientific terms, is the flow of electrons only. A = C/s
What is present at the light switch is voltage V.
Until the light switch is toggled, there is no current, no power.
When the switch is toggled on, what is consumed is energy W-s (or J). Energy is power times use time.
W = V x A is power
J = V x A x t (seconds) is energy.
So what has happened is an oversimplification of something so people can be spoon fed without a requirement to think.
Just like “CO2 is the control knob.”
Just like “carbon emissions” – CO2 is only 30% carbon and it is a molecule, not an element.
People being told what to think, not trained how to think. Biggest problem of all.
The only reference to GW that I found in the writeup was in reference to:
“Backup thermal power stations on standby when needed, in Germany 12-20GW of gas is required by 2030, in the future this backup is supposed to run on hydrogen”
Given this is a gas thermal power station, the voltage and frequency are established and assuming a constant flow of fuel gas, adding “-Hr” to the “GW” does not augment the point. Given your points about energy, GW is proper as it is a Power Generator. Of course the power is transferred to the load as electricity. Again, semantics.
However, you are spot on about batteries.
GW or MW or whatever rating for batteries is the instantaneous power output of V x A and is meaningless. If you need 100 A at 1 Vdc, that is 100 W. If you have a battery (or cell) that can provide 20 A at 5 V, it is 100 W also, but it will not work.
I was, 50 years ago (for 20 years), a national electrochemical energy SME. We used A-Hr at V with a max current spec (example: 6 A-Hr and 4 volts, 2 A).
An engineer needs the actual specifications (output voltage, output current and capacity in A-hr). Note: none of those specs are static/flat/fixed in stone. It is, after all, chemistry.
Marketing has won and engineering suffers. W-Hr has become the dominant expression, which by itself is useless. Add to it, the ignorance of dropping the “-Hr” and here we are.
However, bigger is better or at least more impressive, so the 8(W) is better than the 6(A-Hr).
Which do you prefer? 8 for $100 or 6 for $100. You get the idea.
We are, fundamentally, in total agreement.
While I agree it is a politically driven hoax, I see that it is augmented by marketing techniques use by those with their hands out begging for subsidies, grants, etc.
LCOE? No.
We used to use TCO (total cost of ownership).
In current times, the realism push is for FCOE (full cost of electricity), which is roughly the same as TCO.
Exactly!
What he said!!!
This is pretty well put, and it’s an argument that I have pointed out for about 20 years now.
The “primary energy fallacy” rests on what I’ve called an “efficiency fetish” — e.g., claims that “you get 33% of the energy as electricity from burning coal, but you get 100% of the energy from wind or solar.”
Who cares?
The only things that matter are (1) is the energy available and (2) can it be used. Throwing away some energy (or even most of the energy) due to the fundamental physics of thermodynamics doesn’t really matter if you don’t have access to the energy in the first place.
Except one does not get 100% of the sun or the wind.
The solar energy input to a SV device versus the energy output is, what, 25% at best?
Have to compare apples to apples.
Your points in your summary are the real gist of the matter. Spot on.
The presentation is very good but omits one detail.
Inverters do not convert DC to AC at 100% efficiency.
Inverters have a lifetime that degrades the more they are used.
As an aside:
Batteries have a lifetime that degrades the more they are used and the chemical reactions are strongly dependent on temperature. Cold reduces capacity significantly. Heating and cooling systems to keep the batteries in their spec operational range use energy.
Batteries also have a self discharge phenomenon that reduces the charge available over time.
Very nice Dr. Schernikau. There is only one thing that we need to consider, let’s have a little thought experiment. We have a happy little community that must provide for itself no outside help. The community must build their own power generation their choices are fossil fuel/nuclear or wind/solar. The power goes into a complex that provides the community everything it needs. Is the community going to choose a system that provides sufficient, constant power or a system that provides power when the sun shines or the wind blows? The answer is obvious fossil fuel/nuclear win hands down, it isn’t even a contest.
“4) Backup thermal power stations on standby when needed, in Germany 12-20GW of gas is required by 2030, in the future this backup is supposed to run on hydrogen”
Tiny, tiny wee problem with this German plan.
Using renewable powered hydrogen production to produce hydrogen as fuel for thermal power plant is extraordinarily inefficient and will never happen (except in some exceptional niche special circumstance).
To operate a single 60MW gas turbine in so-called “green” hydrogen, would required 1GW (1,000MW) installed wind turbine capacity, plus Long Duration Energy Storage to buffer for periods on intermittency, H2 generation plant and storage. The inefficiencies/energy losses at each stage, including Wind capacity total about 94%.
Then account for the energy costs of mining,manufacturing, transporting, constructing and operating the system. If anyone were to do an honest energy and material balance it would show that the system would be a net consumer of energy, not producer.