India is the world’s third largest electricity market and as a fast-growing economy can, according to the IEA, lead the recovery of global energy demand out of the pandemic for the coming decade. Kashish Shah at IEEFA runs through solar’s prospects in India, which hopes to build 450GW of renewable energy by 2030. Solar is getting cheaper. A 2GW auction in June delivered India’s lowest-yet renewable energy tariff at US$31/MWh. That figure could … [Read more...]
5 charts show the rapid fall in costs of renewable energy
Plenty in the energy sector already know about the impressive declines in renewable energy costs since 2010, particularly solar (down 82%), concentrated solar (47%), onshore (39%) and offshore wind (29%). For those of you putting together presentations to people whose buy-in you need - citizens, public officials, investors, customers, etc. - these graphics should come in useful. It looks like a tipping point is being reached, says Douglas Broom … [Read more...]
Rooftop Solar: economies of scale can challenge the centralised grid
One of our recent articles explained how rooftop solar PV is more expensive that a centralised supply, and that the transmission and distribution cost savings of the rooftop system, on their own, do not make up for this cost difference. Here, Javier LĂłpez Prol at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz, responds to those challenges. First, the economies of scale of distributed rooftop solar are yet to be realised. … [Read more...]
Rural America needs investment, jobs. $82bn/yr of Wind and Solar can deliver it
The build out of wind and solar in the U.S. – to rise from 165GW today to over 500GW in 2035 – will overwhelmingly happen in the open spaces of rural America, explains Kevin Brehm at RMI. It should result in a major boost to stagnating communities. The $82bn/year of clean energy investment will take second spot to the current three big rural spends: highways ($90bn), water utilities ($57bn) and mass transit ($45bn). By 2030 rural clean energy … [Read more...]
Green or Blue Hydrogen: cost analysis uncovers which is best for the Hydrogen Economy
Blue hydrogen is created from fossil sources, where the carbon emissions are captured and stored. Green hydrogen is made from non-fossil sources and favoured by policy makers who are wary of keeping the fossil economy going, even with CCS. As more regions commit to hydrogen, finding the right cost-optimal mix is crucial to its success. Schalk Cloete summarises his paper that models the whole system based on Germany. Integrating hydrogen will … [Read more...]
Chinese energy institutes present new net-zero scenarios for 2050
It was just one sentence, in September, from China’s President Xi Jinping: “We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.” Already, leading Chinese energy institutes have presented two scenarios that lay out what needs to be done to meet that goal. Writing for Carbon Brief, Lauri Myllyvirta reviews the plans. Both aim for over 85% of all energy and more than 90% of electricity coming from non-fossil … [Read more...]
Battery innovation must drive the 50-fold increase in storage capacity needed by 2040
The IEA has set the storage sector a challenge. It says the world will need 10,000 GW-hours of batteries and other forms of energy storage by 2040, a 50-fold increase on today. The good news is that a joint study by the European Patent Office and the IEA reveals electricity storage patenting activity has grown 14% a year over the past decade. Here the IEA summarises the findings of its comprehensive report. It explains that Japan and Korea lead, … [Read more...]
Analysis shows Wind and Solar costs will continue to fall dramatically throughout the 2020s
Michael Taylor at IRENA has summarised its latest studies that show how the cost of renewables are set to continue declining dramatically through to 2030. We all know how those costs declined in the last ten years. Going forward, the weighted average cost of electricity in the G20 countries from offshore wind could fall by almost 50% by 2030 from 2019 levels, onshore wind by around 45%, utility-scale solar PV by up to 55% and concentrated solar … [Read more...]
WEO 2020 means updated price predictions to 2040: Oil, Gas, Coal, Renewables, Power
The combined effect of the global lockdown, more ambitious climate policies and the rise of renewables will have a significant effect on European power prices up to 2040, as well as the sales revenues of renewable energies. Carlos Perez-Linkenheil at Energy Brainpool uses their Power2Sim model to look at the data in the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook 2020 and make quantitative forecasts. The pandemic has caused structural distortions to the … [Read more...]
The IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2020 at a glance
This month the IEA published its annual flagship World Energy Outlook (WEO). Simon Göss at Energy Brainpool picks out his highlights. This year’s WEO has four scenarios, two of them new: an updated “Stated Policies Scenario” (STEPS: what governments have promised), the new “Delayed Recovery Scenario” (DRS: due to Covid), an updated “Sustainable Development Scenario” (SDS: what’s needed to meet the Paris targets), and the new “Net Zero Emissions … [Read more...]
Europe has enough Gas infrastructure. Why build more?
In early November a first vote is expected in the European Parliament on the Recovery & Resilience Facility’s €672.5bn budget. Esther Bollendorff at CAN Europe runs through the arguments against providing any funding for new gas infrastructure. She presents evidence to show that the EU is already oversupplied with gas import capacity, and all new fossil gas transmission projects have been rejected by the market since 2017. Solar and wind … [Read more...]
ELCC: how to measure grid stability as renewables are added
We cannot just swap 24/7 fossil fuel power plants for intermittent renewables. To prevent electricity shortfalls the capacity of a solar or wind plant must exceed that of the fossil fuel plant it replaces. But by how much? That’s the question that the Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC) metric is designed to answer. It’s not a new concept, but is now becoming very important. Mark Specht at the Union of Concerned Scientists explains the … [Read more...]
World Energy Outlook 2020: IEA responds to some difficult questions
The IEA has issued an FAQ to try to answer some persistent questions and criticisms about their annual World Energy Outlooks (WEO). How come the growth of solar and wind have been consistently underestimated? When is “peak oil” going to happen? Will the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C this century? Is it realistic? Why has a “Net Zero Emissions by 2050” (NZE2050) pathway been added this year? Do … [Read more...]
Why promote Rooftop Solar when the Grid is so much cheaper?
Is rooftop solar in the U.S. getting more support than it deserves? One main argument from its advocates is that it will cut grid transmission and distribution costs that total hundreds of millions. Severin Borenstein at the Energy Institute at Haas crunches some numbers to try to uncover the true “avoided costs”. He shows that any savings won’t come even close to making up for the higher cost of rooftop electricity. It’s no match for the grid’s … [Read more...]
Will Germany’s “EEG” energy law amendments make renewable targets harder to meet?
Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act (Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz/EEG), now 20 years old, is under discussion as a new amendment is supposed to come into force on January 1st 2021. Simon Göss at Energy Brainpool takes a detailed look at the highlights, including the new and higher targets, the financial role of municipalities, clean electricity subsidies, and solar and wind tender volumes. He explains there has been serious criticism of the … [Read more...]
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