For all the enthusiasm about renewables, there are glaring weaknesses being overlooked, writes Todd Royal, an independent strategic consultant, researcher and author based in southern California. According to Royal, for renewable energy to truly break through numerous obstacles such as costs, back-up generation power, storage, and – above all – grid modernization will need to be solved. Article courtesy of OilPrice.com.
Bloomberg is now reporting that solar energy is cheaper than coal, and could become the lowest form of energy within a decade. Economies of scale are causing solar to drop from an average of $1.14 a watt all the way to 0.73 cents per watt by 2025.
Several agencies, from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab to the International Energy Agency, all confirm this rapid decline in costs. Capacity for solar is doubling, causing the supply chain to be lower for bank loan premiums and manufacturing capacity in the solar energy space. Now with Tesla’s gigafactory opening the cost of batteries is also expected to drop for electric vehicles and home battery systems.
China also plans to invest over $360 billion on renewable energy and fuels to help decrease the smog issues the country is currently experiencing. Unsafe, coal-fired power plants are currently suffocating the country’s air supply.
Hydroelectric and nuclear are similar, because they are two clean sources of energy with the potential for large social and environmental impacts
We could be entering a new era in energy, and an era renewable investors and environmental advocates have been touting this century.
Unfortunately, there are glaring weaknesses being overlooked. For renewables to truly breakthrough into a low-cost, scalable energy along the lines of coal, oil, and natural gas numerous obstacles such as costs, back-up generation power, storage, and grid modernization will need to be solved.
Economies of scale
Yes, costs are technically going down for solar and wind, but can that truly be translated onto a larger scale? While costs for manufacturing and kilowatts per hour are dropping, the final costs when it comes to large-scale renewables are more nuanced. For this reason, despite the need for clean fuel in both emerging and developed economies, renewable market share remains well below that of conventional forms of energy.
The BP Statistical Review of Global Energy in 2015 showed renewables provided only 2.4 percent of total worldwide energy needs, hydroelectric power generated 6.8 percent and nuclear came in at 4.4 percent. Moreover, no matter how much renewables are touted as a replacement for fossil fuels, and even with positive economies of scale, it is unlikely that they will overtake coal, oil and natural gas in the near future.
Batteries have not caught up to enhance storage for renewables, and they aren’t productive enough for entire cities, countries, and nations
While hydroelectric is not impacted by the intermittency issues of wind and solar, the process of damming water for electric use can run into serious environmental issues. Hydroelectric is actually the most reliable renewable, but it still has tremendous issues. Once natural waterways are diverted for energy, whole towns, valleys and mountain ranges can be significantly impacted. In this way, hydroelectric and nuclear are similar, because they are two clean sources of energy with the potential for large social and environmental impacts.
If the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing then solar and wind become difficult to use without fossil fuels – particularly natural gas and coal-fired power plants – backing them up. Batteries have not caught up to enhance storage for renewables, and they aren’t productive enough for entire cities, countries, and nations.
Resistance
When looking at the total cost of renewables versus coal, natural gas, and oil there really isn’t a comparison in the near-term because wind and solar can only generate intermittent electricity, while nuclear and hydroelectric energy face significant social and environmental resistance. Fossil fuels can be run without backup supplies, and factoring in those expenses – even with renewable technology having achieved significant cost reductions – fossil fuels are the most economical, scalable choice. Total costs, or levelized costs, still make renewable energy underproductive as a wide-scale fuel for developed, emerging and third world countries.
While mature economies such as Germany and California have trialed large-scale renewables successfully, these successes weren’t achieved without fossil fuels backing them up. The Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2017 to 2050 has renewables at only 18-26 percent penetration by 2050. Electric vehicles currently have 1 percent of the market and are projected to have only gained 6 percent by 2040.
Renewable energy has incredible potential but, until power grids are modernized, they will lag behind fossil fuels
Energy storage and grid modernization are separate issues, yet linked together in many ways. How energy is stored from fluctuating renewable sources (wind and solar) is important for accommodating, “multiple grid services, including spinning reserve and renewables integration.” To improve the problem of intermittent generation for resources such as wind and solar the EIA recommends that companies: “Examine the potential for transmission (grid) enhancements to mitigate regional effects of high levels of wind and solar generation while developing higher resolution time-of-day and seasonal value and operational impact of wind.”
Further, the EIA sees utility rate structure for different levels of photovoltaic solar generation being needed to control costs for consumers and industry when using renewable energy. What the EIA is saying is that renewables fluctuate in power generation based upon different weather patterns, which causes the grid to fluctuate. These upward grid spikes are then passed on in higher electricity costs to utility customers. It is one of the reasons California has some of the highest energy costs in the United States due to its heavy reliance on renewable energy.
Grid modernization
The most important component in the entire process of renewables overtaking fossil fuels for a cleaner future is grid modernization. According to T. Boone Pickens, “the electrical grid of the future will have to be built” for renewable energy to overcome the above-mentioned hurdles.
Let’s not pit renewables against fossil fuels, but look to incorporate the different energy sources into what’s best for the U.S. and the world community
Renewable energy has incredible potential but, until power grids are modernized, they will lag behind fossil fuels. The current electric grids can’t handle millions of electric vehicles and fluctuating, spiked energy from wind and solar nor does it have the ability to be flexible the way a natural gas power plant is at this time. The best power plants for energy efficiency and lowering carbon emissions while keeping costs reasonable are natural gas plants. Natural gas-fired power plants are the biggest reason coal is losing market share in the United States.
Most individuals want renewables to work on a large-scale basis to provide cleaner air, water and an overall healthier environment. But instead of renewables like electric vehicles taking on a fad-like quality without the technology having caught up to the hype, energy policy makers need to look at the facts, and not the emotions. Let’s not pit renewables against fossil fuels, but look to incorporate the different energy sources into what’s best for the U.S. and the world community.
Editor’s Note
This article was first published by Oilprice.com and is republished here with permission.
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Hans says
The author cites BP to state that 2.4% of total energy consumption came from renewable resources. It should however be noted that this is for primary energy and there is a big difference in how primary energy is defined for fossil fuels and for renewables. For thermal power plants the energy content of the fuel is counted as primary energy , for wind and solar the electricity output. Since fossil fuels are mostly converted to electricity with an efficiency around 50% wind and solar replace twice as much primary energy.
Replaced primary energy or final energy are thus much more useful metrics to see how far renewables have come.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says
Hans, you didn’t mention another point: any fossil fuel (or dam or nuclear) plant which is build for X MW, delivers X MW 24/7 at over 90% of the time of its useful life, except for the (peak and maintenances) backups which are only needed part (~10%) of the time.
If you build a wind mill of nameplate 4 MW on land that gives average 1 MW over a year with extremely variable output over extremely variable periods, completely independent of demand. If you build it of-shore it gets over 40%, but hardly better in variability.
If you place solar panels, you may expect 100% of nameplate capacity a few hours on a sunny summer day, then less and less until zero at dark and much less in winter (10%) than in summer. The only advantage over wind is that it is better predictable and less variable from hour to hour and its main output in summer is during peak hours, be it zero in winter as the main peak hour is after sunset…
Thus “replaced primary energy or final energy” aren’t better as metric, as the (near) 100% backup for wind currently is composed of bad yield (30%) fast gasturbines or for both a (near) 100% backup anyway which extra output should be subtracted from the intermittent sources. Also any form of gigantic storage for the huge oversupply you need to deal with periods of low wind/sun, each has its own power-to-storage-to-power conversion factor. E.g. hydrogen currently ~50%…
bob11 says
Well, you should know that the alleged need for ‘(near) 100 % backup’ is pure legend.
The truth is, aggregated wind power provides nearly as much guaranteed capacity as nuke (i.e. for the same price you build 1 GW of nuke or ~5 GW of wind, and these provide a fairly similar guaranteed capacity as long as wind is aggregated over a very large area).
Wind and solar have become the two best options to generate electricity, by far, and all the lies of the world won’t change that.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says
bob11,
Unfortunately that is not true, wind can go down in half of Europe to near zero output as was the case for recent weeks under a high pressure system mid winter with extreme cold and very little sunlight to help (~10% of summer output and peak hours after sunset…).
For a few months in 2015 the dynamic range was 5-55% of installed wind capacity:
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/swufgsNORMALstack.png
For whole Europe that may get somewhat better, but as the above countries are spanning near all of northwest to southwest of Europe, there is little hope that it will get any better with Eastern Europe added.
There are some figures for 2012 for whole Europe: http://www.sauvonsleclimat.org/images/articles/pdf_files/etudes/131120_Flocard_FoisonnementEolienTexte.pdf
about 8% of the time you are below 10% of installed capacity for whole Europe, see Fig. 5.
Thus anyway, you need at least 95% storage or backup, even if it is only for a few hours per year, 90% backup for a few hundred hours a year, etc…
Besides that, delivering some peak 200 GW from one side of Europe to the other side is not a light problem…
Helmut Frik says
Batterys or backup power generation are only two options, the best option is using huge and stron grids reducing variability of output of wind and solar ever further the bigger the grid gets- alog with smoothing out demand.
For the rest – cost comparisons are usually made by ct/kWh and not on €/kWp, since the nameplate capacity also tells nothing about fuel and operating costs.
Otherwise a diesel or OCGT would be the best systems- low cost per nameplate capacity, fast ramping up and down and able to deliver capacity factors of 0,9 and higher.
Peter Farley says
Batteries and storage vs long grids is a complicated question. At the current costs of batteries and storage for example it is almost certainly better in Australia to spend $2-3b on storage and $1b on minor grid re-inforcement than $3-4 on a long grid.
Batteries are more efficient than long AC grids.
DC grids are more efficient but provide little short term frequency support. DC lines seem to take orders of magnitude longer time to repair than AC lines in the event of an outage.
Pumped hydro is less efficient than any of them but far cheaper
As I said it is complicated
Hans says
Ferdinand,
Just to get possible misunderstandings out of the way I hope that you agree with me that final energy is the actually delivered useful energy so the direct effect of capacity factors are already worked into that.
Now about the indirect effects. You seems to be saying that the energy cost of back-up for renewables is of the same order as the energy loss in power plants, so these issues cancel out. Do you got any serious back-up for this claim, or is this just wild hand waving?
The reality is that there are many ways to reduce the amount of back-up needed, both in terms of capacity and energy:
-Combining wind power, PV, CSP, existing flexible hydro, and pumped storage.
-Improving transmission grids to combine renewable sources from regions with different weather .
– Demand management/ flexible pricing. For many applications it does not matter that much exactly when something happens as long as it happens within some timeframe.
-Overbuilding: wind and solar rarely produce power at their nameplate capacity, throwing away some power during some short peak supply, especially with the continuing price drop of wind turbines and pv installations is not a big deal. it will hardly influence the capacity factor. In the long run the market will come up to utilize these free kWhs.
– In areas like the south of the US actually reduce the need for peak power plants.
Finally, the science of predicting wind and solar power is improving all the time. Predicted power shortfalls can be handled by more efficient means
By the way: your numbers for the capacity factors of wind power seem to be somewhat on the low side.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says
Hans,
Based on realistic figures, wind (and sun) can be down to less than 50% of average yearly power delivery Europe wide for about 10% of a year, see Fig. 7 in the above link from “sauvons le climat” and at the other side 10% of the time more than 50% above average production.
By connecting whole Europe, one has decreased the peaks and increased the lulls. That is an advantage compared to smaller areas.
Despite that, there still is a huge backup/storage necessary for in terms of real production: 90% for a few hours a year, 50% for 10% of the time and less and less for 55% of the time for wind. Worse for solar, where almost all production is on summer days and winter is only 10% of summer production. According to the European Union of Physical Engineers, about 600 times the current European (pumped/hydro) capacity…
Thus even if the average wind (and solar) production is sufficient for whole Europe, you need an enormous storage to move the overproduction in ~45% of the time over a year to the underproduction in ~55% of time over a year. Or with less installed average wind/solar production, more other means of production and backup.
Of course, a huge part is produced/used on relative short time spans. The winter-summer difference still is around 20% of total power use, that is what you at minimum need to store at least half a year…
As said before, the current fast backup is by fast ramping gas turbines and/or the spinning reserve of powering plants. Some 10% is needed if you work with conventional plants and solar only. 100% spinning reserve for momentary wind load is needed or you are too late if the wind is falling down in 10-15 minutes, which it can do country wide.
Of course that gets less with interconnections (as Germany does with its neighbors) and especially if you have hydro (as Denmark uses from Sweden and Norway). But that is the same for conventional plants…
Predicting wind power seems to me rather difficult, if you look at the wind power production in Fig. 2 and 3 of the above link…
Helmut Frik says
Yes, with only a part of europe it can drop to 50% of average production for 10% of the year. When adding all of europe this percentage rises, and it rises again when the neighboring areas(at them most already running synchronus with the reuropean grid) are included in the calculation.
When you include all areas from which grind connections allow in principle to transfer power to e.g. germany, the curves would be much more flat again.
But I am not sure if all people are aware how far grids span already, if non synchrounus connections are also included into the consideration.
LEts see who finds the answer from which of these countries
a) no power transfer is possible today
b) no power transfer is possible if power lines under construction / planning come into service:
– iceland
– Morocco
– Tureky
– Vietnam
– Ethiopia
– South Africa
– China
– USA
(And it is known that the ammount of power which can be transfered is not sufficient for balancing yet. It is to get the scope right how far grids actually span today)
Ferdinand Engelbeen says
Helmut, even if a larger grid levels off the differences, still there are a few hundred hours per year that Europe as a whole has very little power from wind and less than 10% from solar in most of the winter. That needs either 90% backup or a gigantic storage.
Of course one can go farther and farther, the Chinese are already expanding their UHVDC network westward… So that they can export their cheap superfluous coal power?
Even today, have a look at https://electricitymap.tmrow.co/
Almost all West European countries have less than 20% wind power from full capacity, from Denmark to Spain and from France to Greece. Only Ireland, Finland are full steam and a few others are in between.
Most countries today have their own internal 100% power production for their own needs. Most have interconnections to their neighbors for maybe 50% for in case of huge failures. The problem then is a European wide network that is capable of transporting the needs of all countries from overproduction to underproduction. From Scandinavia/Ireland to Spain via countries that all need 50% (or more) for their own use. Thus your transport system must have a capacity of at least half the total peak capacity of whole Europe via maximum 3-5 countries… Not undoable, but if you know that currently Germany has a lot of work to bring its own off-shore wind capacity from the North Sea to the industry in mid-Germany…
Helmut Frik says
OK, lets assume together that trading power over the Borders of europe is forbidden, to make discussions with numbers more easy.
Less tahn 10% in whole europe is very very unlikely. I referenced the graph before. The zero line at 8760 of 8760 hours of a average year is met at about 15% of nameplate capacity. Which means, if 30% of nameplate capacisty is expected as average supply, (The rest for raw material and base chemical production, dynamic loads of other kinds etc) , this means about 50% of the power must come from elsewhere at these times.
At 95% of time the gap is less than 10% of nameplate capacirty or 30% of needs, at 75% of time it’s zero.
To fill that gap you have Photovoltaics for the first place, because most of these hours with low wind production are in summer during dailight, with lots of solar power .
But there are hours with lower wind power production during winter.
For this there are >200GW of Turbine capacity of hydropower to fill the gaps, many of them with storage, combined storage capacity (>150.000 GWh existing, useable storage capacity available in Europe) to throw in that gap. It would most likely be reasonable to add some turbine capacity at many storages, which costs around 400-500€/kWp, and lasts for many decades.
Second possible source is biomass – there is already 50 TWh of biomass in germany alone, which is more than enough to fill the gaps for german demand if the generation capacity is high enough. There are also about 100TWh thermal used for building heating which could be used e.g. with minor changes in previous coal power plants as well, if the buildings for which this waste wood is used for heating get a better insulation and e.g. heatpumps for heating. As Backup there are about 20 GW grid connected diesel generators (As emergency power), they just need a trigger to get running, and some contract to pay the costs. They could be extended at costs of 150-200€/kWp according our experience from tendering, and secure additional facilities, at little costs for the grid backup function (sharing costs between emergency power for a local installation – for which a huge surplus of kWp is needed to make it a reliable emergency power in island operation, and emergency power for the whole grid, where load peaks are smoothed out, and the generator can run at full oad)
The later are only for unforseable situations, so are not used in normal years.
The price gap between _new_ conventional power generation and wind/solar power generation (also new) is widening, with the conventional power on the expensive side, leaving room to finance the grid expansions, which are not that expensive – the programm to add 23 new UHVDC-Connections with 8-12 GW per line and legths per line up to 3284km costs 89 billion Dollar. That’s not peanuts, but the whole generation system costs trillions in Europe. And power lines last much longer than power stations, so its mainly a one time investment. Operating a 400kV 3GW overhead power line costs just twice the price of operating a 400V power line which powers a house per km length.
Problem in germany is the red tape when building new lines.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says
Helmut,
Graph 7 in the link is for the average production, not the nameplate capacity. In the last weeks it has been extremely calm in most of Europe with a high pressure system over large parts. Average wind production less than 20% of yearly average for days in a row. Solar is peanuts in winter.
Even if you want to distribute overproduction from one side of Europe to the other side, it is worse than I thought: the European Union has now a target to reach 10% interconnection capacity between all EU countries:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:a5bfdc21-bdd7-11e4-bbe1-01aa75ed71a1.0003.01/DOC_1&format=PDF
While you need at least 50% of whole Europe’s momentary demand to pass from one side of Europe to the the other side…
Whole Europe needs some 1200 GW peak power. With wind producing not more than 200 GW power mid-winter and zero solar at peak hour, your other means like hydro capacity are by far not sufficient to keep things alive…
Just discovered an interesting simulation of the European grid in 2020 and 2025:
https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/SDC%20documents/MAF/MAF_2016_FINAL_REPORT.pdf
Not fully read yet, but very interesting.
Also very optimistic for the near future RES supply: in Belgium at this moment 2 GW installed wind capacity and 3 GW solar (real production at near midnight 0.16 GW wind, 0 solar), or about 33% of installed capacity. In 2020, that is within 3 years, up to over 50%? Wow…
Last but not least, solar and wind cheaper than conventional? If you forget the feed-in-tarrifs (=heavy subsidies), all the investments in extra interconnections, the extra backup or storage if you increase intermittent sources…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says
In addition, a brand new study of the Max Planck Institut about the German situation if you want to go 100% renewable and have most of the time full supply (but still need 89% backup system for a x hours a year…):
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-01/s-1re012517.php
In that case, an average 325 GW wind and PV power are required to meet the 100% renewable energy target. But that is in average, not what is momentary and/or seasonally needed…
Current peak power use in Germany is ~80 GW. Conventional and wind+sun vave ~90 GW installed capacity, and additional ~13 GW non-intermittent (on-demand) hydro and biomass
Thus to get the average need from wind + sun, you need to expand them over 3.5 times + backup and/or storage and/or a many fold of the current interconnections…
Helmut Frik says
It is completely irrelevant if the reqired Nameplate capacity for wind or solar is higher than for nuclear or coal, since its also cheaper calculated in LCOE. The Price per Energy delivered is relevant. So you’re destroying a strawman here.
If power exchange is forbidden over borders than the result is that you need a lot of storage with according power. thats of academic not of practical interest. If you forbid exchange of uranium over borders you need 100% backup for nuclear power stations all the time. Same level of information – thats irrelevant for practice.
Only correct point: interconnnectors over borders must get multiple capacity of today. Correct. Neither a technical nor a financial problem.
https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/assembly/2015/october/151001_AS_slides_TOP_08_e-HW2050.pdf
Hans says
The EIA scenario is implied to be a realistic prediction of the future of renewables, in reality both EIA and IEA have always underestimated renewables. [1] The EIA scenario can thus at best be seen as a lower limit
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/30/greenpeace-aces-installed-renewable-forecasts-surprised/
Peter Farley says
In fact primary energy is an even worse indicator than Hans says. In fact about 10% of all energy produced is used in fossil fuel extraction, processing and distribution.
Further overall conversion efficiency in power generation accounting for spinning reserves, part load operation, old plants etc is a little over 30%. so in fact 75% of fossil fuels used in power generation are wasted
Ferdinand Engelbeen says
Peter,
The “pre-combustion” energy used for power production includes mining/extraction, refining, transport, construction, etc. is about 7% of the production energy. That is about the same for all forms of energy: gas, oil, coal, nuclear, water, wind and solar…
Further, classic plants use little/no energy if they aren’t “on steam” and spinning reserve in general is not more than 10% for classic plants (0% if you have sufficient hydropower) for in case the largest production unit shuts down unexpectedly.
For wind you need 100% of the momentary output as spinning reserve, mostly fast gas turbines (again except if you have sufficient hydro). And for all intermittent energy sources you need 100% backup (slower for solar) and/or enormous storage with its own back-and-forth losses…
Even for nuclear, the efficiency is only 30% of the primary energy, but that is a non-item, as that has very little effect on the costs, as the costs of the “fuel” is the smallest part of the overall costs and its availability and lack of CO2 emissions are not a problem too…
Peter Farley says
I don’t think we disagree too much more the way we have expressed the numbers
1. Given the increase in tar sands and fracking and the increasing energy cost of offshore gas I suspect your 7% is climbing, maybe not to 10% but close.
2. Even if spinning reserves are only 10% of capacity and using about 15% of their rated fuel a total of 1.5% that detracts from the nominal efficiency which is around 30-50% depending on the technology.
3.Then all power station efficiencies are quoted at or near rated performance, it doesn’t include part load efficiency, ramp up/ramp down inefficiencies or age related degradation so the overall fleet average is probably around 30% or less x .985 (spinning reserves) x.93 (your figure) then about 27% at the terminals x 90% transmission efficiency (Better in some countries much worse in others). net result about 25% of the primary energy gets to the customer
Helmut Frik says
You have to differntiate sopinning reserve, primary reserve, minte/secondary reserve, longer time backup.
– spinning reserver: needed in case of a power line failure or a trip of a power plant.
So usually this is only needed for large generatores, like coal gas, nuclear. Wind only if big farms have one power connection only. And a residual amount is needed for power line failures which might split a grid. So its not needed in heavily meshed grids with significant transmission reserves: Required reserves _drop_ in germany with higher renewables penetration. Hydropower which is not already switched on (spinning) does not help anything at this point
– primary reserve: Also manily needed for trips of big power plants. It is needed in the first seconds after spinning reserve kept a grid alive. Hydropower is still too slow for this, “curtailed” coal, gas and nuclear plant, being already hot but not using the maximum possilble output with current pressure can suply this, curtailed solar and wind can supply this even faster, when getting the right comands.
– Minute reserve: this is the domain of hydropower, and of emergency diesel engines. Both can sit idle without power consumption for long times and can be switched on within a minute or so, as the name says. Power stations running in partial mode can provide this too, limited by their ramp rates. (Usually, in a bigger grid, power plants are either running at full load or are switched off. If there are 700GW production in the eurpean grid available, and the demand is 350 GW, there are not all 700 GW running at half output, but almost 350 GW are running full throttle, while almost 350 GW are switched off. Minute reserve mainly compensate prediction errors in load , and to a smaller degree in production.
backup reserves: that’s what is needed for wind and solar if there are no strong grid connections over a large area available. Start up times of several hours are no problem here.
It is always interesting how wind is brought in context with spinning reserves, as if a trillion ton of moving air could stop within a fraction of a second.
Faisal Adfari says
The longer delay in securing 100% clean (renewable) energy worldwide the more serious impacts will be on econo-socio- environmental conditions of the world community , let alone security matters. Technology, finance, policies are all available to effect the long awaited transformation. Action needed today, rather than tomorrow.
Anna Carter says
Didn’t see a mention of geothermal, which is also baseload and doesn’t require storage backup (has its heat and hot water stored in a natural underground reservoir — or in man-made ones, hopefully, in near future). Already cost-competitive with coal. Can already do some ramping and can be designed to be flexible (that costs more). Most importantly, everyone needs to stop thinking of the current model of using renewables as a supplement to fossil fuels, with fossil fuels and nuclear providing baseload. Should be the reverse. Accomodate ALL possible renewables. Natural gas should be used to back up renewables, since it is touted as being so flexible. There is no such thing as clean coal period. Retrain people dependent on coal for jobs at something more healthy. And every building should be topped with solar panels. I agree that the grid needs to be upgraded to accomodate all the solar. All actions that prolong reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear add heavy burdens on future generations — warmer planet requires more energy to cool humans in the summer. Nuclear waste is a terrible economic and health burden. We don’t have the right to impose these very long term burdens on the planet (thousands of years) for our own convenience during our short tenure here. We were left clean air and clean water. We can figure out how to leave the same when we are gone. This is so obvious I’m embarrassed that it has to be said. Shameful.
David Sanderson says
No mention of geothermal by the the UK’s National Grid CEO because other than ground source heat pumps using low grade heat, the UK doesn’t have economically exploitable geothermal resources like say Iceland does.
Renewables are not baseload plant because of the intermittancy issue – when there is no sun or no wind there is no power. Solar utilisation in the northern hemisphere is around 10%, whereas baseload power stations are >90%.
Nuclear waste is not a ‘terrible economic and health burden’ for new build nuclear at all. You are conflating the issue of waste from the 1960s which mainly came from weapons production with waste from civil nuclear power. All new nuclear stations are more efficient than previous designs producing less spent fuel over their lifetime which needn’t be reprocessed but instead safely stored underground. The cost of this is very manageable, and importantly Governments now insist new nuclear stations carry 100% of the cost of dealing with their spent fuel arisings.