In 2018, 80% of India’s total energy lending went to renewables. Coal got the rest, a major fall compared to 2017. No wonder, given coal plants have been running at below 60% utilisation for two years with the operators suffering huge losses. Renewables are now undercutting coal and getting cheaper. And shortages in water – needed for plant cooling – just add to their woes. Vibhuti Garg at IEEFA catalogues the problems, then describes the … [Read more...]
Women facing barriers in the renewables workforce
Gender discrimination always matters. It should matter even more to the new green economy. Justice aside, barriers against half the workforce limit your talent pool. For a sector where "business as usual" guarantees failure we need to ensure the fairest selection processes from the widest possible pool as new jobs are created every day. But today’s energy sector has a bigger role to play. Energy is now arguably the 21st century’s “sector of … [Read more...]
Wind farms for cyclone zones: new standards and designs
Wind turbine designs and standards have been developed with today’s major markets in mind, Europe and North America. However, the bulk of future markets are expected to be in geographic areas where the meteorological and environmental conditions are much more extreme. Think cyclones, heavy rain and lightning. IRENA estimates that Asia will lead in onshore wind installations with over half of the total global capacity installed (>2,600 GW) by … [Read more...]
An independent Global Energy Forecast to 2050 (part 2 of 5): wind and solar
Schalk Cloete is creating his own 5-part independent Global Energy Forecast to 2050, to compare with the next IEA World Energy Outlook, due in November. Many of his assumptions are different from the big institutions, not least that technology-neutrality will be widely adopted as the best policy, as carbon budgets are exhausted around 2030. There are other big differences too. He starts with wind and solar, two technologies that the IEA and … [Read more...]
2018 investment in renewables 12% down on 2017
At $272.9bn, 2018 investment in renewables capacity was 12% down on the previous year. Despite this, renewables’ investment was three times the total for coal and gas-fired generation capacity combined in 2018. Over the last decade, $2.6tn was invested in renewables (half going to solar), quadrupling capacity to 1,650GW. Consequently, renewables’ share of electricity generation reached 12.9%, up from 11.6% in 2017. This avoided an estimated 2bn … [Read more...]
An independent Global Energy Forecast to 2050, to compare with the IEA’s WEO 2019
Schalk Cloete is creating his own Global Energy Forecast to 2050. He wants to see how his own independent analysis will match up with the next IEA World Energy Outlook, due in November. And so do we. Rich with data, his major predictions include a global policy shift from technology-forcing to technology-neutrality shortly before 2030, driven by growing worldwide acceptance of the severity of climate change. The exhaustion of the 1.5°C and, … [Read more...]
Wind power predictions doubled by factoring in far-future design improvements
Existing studies estimate all Europe’s potential total maximum annual generation from wind is between 16 and 21 petawatt hours (PWh), already over five times Europe’s existing electricity total from all sources (3.6PWh). A new study doubles that figure to 34.3PWh. The study claims to improve on the accuracy of two factors used in making these predictions, explains Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief. Firstly, it uses what it believes are realistic … [Read more...]
Cheaper than coal: IRENA’s comprehensive report on cost declines, all renewables categories
The International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) latest report Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2018 details the global weighted-average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for all commercially available renewable technologies. It states that renewables are already the lowest-cost source of new power generation in many parts of the world today. By as soon as 2020, onshore wind and solar PV will join hydropower in consistently offering a … [Read more...]
Wind Farm “wake steering”: small re-alignments of turbines can increase output by 40%
The wake from one wind turbine makes the turbines behind it less efficient. It’s similar to the way a speedboat is slowed by the choppy water caused by the boat in front. Vincent Xia reports on how scientists at Stanford University have been testing ways of fine-tuning the alignment of turbine arrays to reduce turbulence and increase output. The biggest wins (a 47% increase) are at low wind speeds, when turbines can otherwise stop altogether. At … [Read more...]
Kenya, Bangladesh: Environmental rulings stall coal plans. So should the economics
The construction of two coal-fired power plants has been stalled in Kenya by the Kenyan courts and in Bangladesh by UNESCO, both for environmental reasons. It’s an opportunity for the two countries to also recognise the purely commercial reasons to go for renewables, says Simon Nicholas of IEEFA. While most of Asia has been powering ahead with renewables, Bangladesh has been lagging behind. But a continued rollout of renewable energy will quickly … [Read more...]
Time for tech-neutral incentives if renewables growth won’t stop climate change?
In 2018 energy use grew 2.9% and emissions 2%. That means renewables are not keeping up with energy’s growth: it will need a four-fold increase in wind and solar’s growth to do so, says Schalk Cloete. There’s more: to cut global CO2 emissions by the 3% per year we need to meet the Paris goals wind and solar growth rates must increase by over an order of magnitude. He reviews the evidence and concludes that current technology-forcing policies – … [Read more...]
BP Review of 2018: record CO2, energy use as gas outstrips wind & solar
Energy use grew at 2.9% in 2018, the largest rise since 2010. It’s what happens when economies grow. But gas, oil and coal's contribution to that growth saw global CO2 emissions rise by 2% in 2018, the largest year-on-year increase in seven years. Wind and solar growth, driven by China though slowing in the US, EU, and India, achieved its second fastest rate on record - but still lagged behind gas additions. These are not the trends we need to … [Read more...]
Overbuild solar: it’s getting so cheap curtailment won’t matter
Avoiding curtailment made sense when solar generation was extremely expensive: don’t build solar beyond what you can store. However, that means solar must always wait for storage costs to decline and capacity grow. But with solar prices plummeting it can make economic sense to overbuild it, say Richard Perez, University at Albany, and Karl Rabago, Pace University. Oversized solar will deliver more energy in low light and reduce the need for … [Read more...]
U.S. Coal: firms go bankrupt as share of generation halves over 10 years
In the U.S. coal’s market share for power generation has halved in 10 years to 24%, from close to 50% in 2008. That year a record 1,172m tons was produced. But a combination of the rapid drop in solar and wind costs, continued competition from cheap gas, and ageing coal plants (most were built between 1965 and 1985) means that steep decline is set to continue, say Seth Feaster and Karl Cates of IEEFA U.S.. It’s why Cloud Peak Energy, the … [Read more...]
Solar intermittency: upbeat “annual” carbon reduction estimates miss the “hourly” reality
There is a maximum speed at which solar capacity can expand. You know you’ve passed it when insufficient storage means solar curtailment, or selling the daytime excess means curtailment of other clean energy generators. As solar grows, so too will this problem. Vincent Xia, at the Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University, reports on a new Stanford study which says emissions predictions are not taking this into account, thus … [Read more...]
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