New report says "hidden costs" of renewables are low

[Chris Broome]

Hi All,

The following blog from the "Energy and climate intelligence unit" describes how the costs of balancing the grid to accommodate renewables generation may be much less than previously thought. Significantly, it draws attention to how the Government probably has got evidence to this effect but has not published it , due to its conclusions not matching the Government's  policy aims:-

http://eciu.net/blog/2016/whatever-happened-to-the-hidden-costs-of-renewables

Regards

Chris

[Brian Davey]

Here with go again. As I've probably said before - writing about the difficulties of the transition to a renewables based society can seem like betrayal when people think that the job is selling renewables rather than honestly appraising them.  I often feel that Chris is a salesman for renewables. 

A very good attempt at what I would consider a balanced view can be found in the recent book by Richard Heinberg and David Fridley of the Post Carbon Institute called "Our Renewable Future".  It appeared only a few weeks ago. The whole book is available for free on the website of the Post Carbon Institute. You can find it here http://ourrenewablefuture.org/introduction/  - This is also a good YouTube introduction to the book with an interesting discussion after....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcdBO6RCDrA

Now of course both the book and the Lecture are for a US audience but I still think they are very useful because they are describing the transition in another industrial society. As you would expect a lot of the book is about energy storage and this is their summary of the issues:

"The bottom line for energy storage: many options exist, and research is likely to expand their number and improve them. But each of the categories of options is subject to limits and costs, even assuming substantial technical improvements. Given different criteria (energy density, carbon emissions, cost), some storage options offer advantages over others. However, current electricity storage is only a tiny percentage of the amount that will likely be required in an all-renewable energy future—we need to build a lot of storage. And supplying large amounts of storage will add significantly to the financial, materials, energy, and carbon cost of systems.[25] A real-world example: California’s Energy Storage law AB2514 directs utilities to install 1.3 GW of storage capacity by 2020. Total installed generation capacity today is 78 GW, of which 12.26 is renewable (excluding large hydro). The law says storage must be economically feasible, but utilities have so far balked at implementing it" (chapter 3 ).

One of the things of the youtube lecture and also the book is that it not only writes about renewables and storage it starts with the huge number of things that energy is used for - for each of these there has to be an appropriate energy carrier. If your fields are ploughed by horses then your energy carrier is hay. If by a tractor then it might be diesel and conceivably electricity. Now the point is that there is a huge task transforming the economy at both ends - not only converting coal or gas fired power stations to solar or wind farms but all those things currently burning fossil fuels (eg transport fuels or home heating) to electricity (electric vehicles and heat pumps). There are are also quite a few processes for which there are as yet no easy or obvious renewable based energy carriers to power the requisite processes - as it turns out that means that a a renewables based economy that manufactures renewable equipment using renewable energy will be difficult to achieve. There are options but they will be expensive and will not be easy to engineer. 

"The industrial processes that are used to manufacture renewable energy sources (wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, flat plate collectors, and solar concentrators) need high temperatures, as do factories that make electric trains, electric cars, computers, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and batteries or their components. The production of glass uses temperatures up to 1575°C; the recycling of aluminum needs 660°C; the recycling of steel occurs at 1520°C; the production of aluminum from mined ores needs 2000°C; the firing of ceramics occurs at 1000°C to 1400°C; and the manufacturing of silicon microchips and solar cells uses heat at 1900°C.[3] Relatively little process heat currently comes from electricity, as Figure 5.2 shows."

So yes, a society and economy based on renewables is the only way. Nuclear and gas are diversions - but for goodness sake let's lay off the hype.

Brian Davey

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[Chris Church]

Hi

To suggest that moving to a clean energy economy won’t work because of issues such as intermittency is getting to sound like a stuck record.  To accuse Chris B of being a salesman for renewables is an interesting value judgement – he is - like me – an advocate for sure. If we stand accused of looking to move things forward rather than dwelling on how difficult it might be then I’m proud to plead guilty.

 

The whole focus of the new Aurora Energy Research report, which is the basis for the excellent (and must-read) blog by Richard Black of the ECIU which Chris links to, is an analysis of how far tackling intermittency / variability and related issues makes renewable energy more expensive. Aurora are a very respectable consultancy, whose experts include Prof. Dieter Helm, hardly a starry-eyed deep greeny.

 

It concludes very clearly that the extra costs of storage to tackle variability are small and certainly not a reason for inaction or panic. A key conclusion is that by 2030 a high level of storage in the energy system causes the cost of variability to become a benefit as we develop an energy system where production and consumption are better matched. A useful summary is here:

http://www.solar-trade.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/AuroraAnalysisExplainedFINAL-2.pdf

 

You can choose to disbelieve this (it’s on a Solar Trade website!). Or you can recognise just how fast the costs of storing energy and electricity are falling as new methods come on stream and get on board.  Of course no-one has all the answers but the more we try new approaches, the faster we find the best ways forward (‘agile’ management).

Richard Black is quite right -  “a contender for the most important UK energy story of the year”.

 

 

 

From: climatea...@googlegroups.com [mailto:climatea...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brian Davey
Sent: 11 October 2016 18:56
To: Chris Broome <chris1...@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: Climate Forum <climatea...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Climate Forum: 1931] New report says "hidden costs" of renewables are low

 

Here with go again. As I've probably said before - writing about the difficulties of the transition to a renewables based society can seem like betrayal when people think that the job is selling renewables rather than honestly appraising them.  I often feel that Chris is a salesman for renewables. 

 

A very good attempt at what I would consider a balanced view can be found in the recent book by Richard Heinberg and David Fridley of the Post Carbon Institute called "Our Renewable Future".  It appeared only a few weeks ago. The whole book is available for free on the website of the Post Carbon Institute. You can find it here http://ourrenewablefuture.org/introduction/  - This is also a good YouTube introduction to the book with an interesting discussion after....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcdBO6RCDrA

 

Now of course both the book and the Lecture are for a US audience but I still think they are very useful because they are describing the transition in another industrial society. As you would expect a lot of the book is about energy storage and this is their summary of the issues:

"The bottom line for energy storage: many options exist, and research is likely to expand their number and improve them. But each of the categories of options is subject to limits and costs, even assuming substantial technical improvements. Given different criteria (energy density, carbon emissions, cost), some storage options offer advantages over others. However, current electricity storage is only a tiny percentage of the amount that will likely be required in an all-renewable energy future—we need to build a lot of storage. And supplying large amounts of storage will add significantly to the financial, materials, energy, and carbon cost of systems.[25] A real-world example: California’s Energy Storage law AB2514 directs utilities to install 1.3 GW of storage capacity by 2020. Total installed generation capacity today is 78 GW, of which 12.26 is renewable (excluding large hydro). The law says storage must be economically feasible, but utilities have so far balked at implementing it" (chapter 3 ).

 

One of the things of the youtube lecture and also the book is that it not only writes about renewables and storage it starts with the huge number of things that energy is used for - for each of these there has to be an appropriate energy carrier. If your fields are ploughed by horses then your energy carrier is hay. If by a tractor then it might be diesel and conceivably electricity. Now the point is that there is a huge task transforming the economy at both ends - not only converting coal or gas fired power stations to solar or wind farms but all those things currently burning fossil fuels (eg transport fuels or home heating) to electricity (electric vehicles and heat pumps). There are are also quite a few processes for which there are as yet no easy or obvious renewable based energy carriers to power the requisite processes - as it turns out that means that a a renewables based economy that manufactures renewable equipment using renewable energy will be difficult to achieve. There are options but they will be expensive and will not be easy to engineer. 

"The industrial processes that are used to manufacture renewable energy sources (wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, flat plate collectors, and solar concentrators) need high temperatures, as do factories that make electric trains, electric cars, computers, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and batteries or their components. The production of glass uses temperatures up to 1575°C; the recycling of aluminum needs 660°C; the recycling of steel occurs at 1520°C; the production of aluminum from mined ores needs 2000°C; the firing of ceramics occurs at 1000°C to 1400°C; and the manufacturing of silicon microchips and solar cells uses heat at 1900°C.[3] Relatively little process heat currently comes from electricity, as Figure 5.2 shows."

 

So yes, a society and economy based on renewables is the only way. Nuclear and gas are diversions - but for goodness sake let's lay off the hype.

 

Brian Davey

 

 

 

 

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 3:35 PM, 'Chris Broome' via Climate Forum <climatea...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi All,

 

The following blog from the "Energy and climate intelligence unit" describes how the costs of balancing the grid to accommodate renewables generation may be much less than previously thought. Significantly, it draws attention to how the Government probably has got evidence to this effect but has not published it , due to its conclusions not matching the Government's  policy aims:-

 

http://eciu.net/blog/2016/whatever-happened-to-the-hidden-costs-of-renewables

 

Regards

Chris

 

 

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[Brian Davey]

I did not say that it would not work. I  agree with Ugo Bardi who, in a review of Heinberg and Fridley's book argues that the transition to a wholely renewable economy is possible but will not be easy. That said there is no other option but to go down that path.

What that means, more specifically, is that the main stress should be put energy saving and the transition to low energy lifestyles - so that the transition is to an economy that uses much smaller amounts of energy. This is even more needed because the energy costs of the transition will be considerable (the energy used in creating the new infrastructures to generate electricity and the equipment that will use energy differently has to be made available somehow).  An absolutely central point here is whether renewables will enable humanity to transition to a green growth economy. I don't believe that at all - especially when one notes that according to ecological footprint analysis humanity is already using the resources for 1.6 planets and the UK the footprint for 5 planets.

That statistic alone says that continued growth is not consistent with any kind of sustainability. Climate policy and policy for renewables has to be consistent with degrowth and movement to a one planet footprint. 

Further to that the triumphalism about the falling cost of renewables has to take on board that their (money) cost have fallen not only because of going down learning curves and economies of scale (in China) but because China produces them with cheap coal, with fossil fuels. As I said there are huge technical difficulties of production of generating equipment and storage equipment using renewable energy and costs will not be as cheap - and there are all the additional costs of switching the final appliances to work with electricity.

Fact is that over the last few years the global economy has moved into a period of stagnation. Rising extraction costs of fossil fuels AND the rising costs of renewables together with the rising costs of buffering their intermittency have been partly dealt with by more and more debt. Yet this debt is unrepayable so the energy sector as well as the economy in general is stuck in a period of deflation. The appropriate policy for this is not only to cancel debts but to help people save energy and thus living and business expenses - and certainly to get state support for programmes that would support renewables but recognising some of the costs and difficulties.

Brian Davey    

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[Edward Hill]

Saral Sarkar is also sceptical whether renewable energy is viable:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-10-13/saving-the-planet-american-style-a-critical-review-and-some-thoughts-and-ideas

And he explains why population control is the best starting point, and should be started before every other measure:

“One of the goals in Bill McKibben’s Victory Plan is to stop and reverse world population growth. This ought to be the first point where the transition should begin. For, as Paul Ehrlich wrote to point out its utmost importance, “Whatever be your cause, it is a lost cause unless we control population growth.” All problems that Nature has with us, as well as all problems of our own human society get aggravated as population grows. There are also two advantages of beginning at this point: It is easy to persuade the powers that be to do something in this regard. And it is easy to persuade people in the lower income groups that their living conditions would immediately improve if they limit the number of their offspring to two. Also, here there would be the least resistance from the ruling classes and the imperialist nations. So here we could achieve our first successes.”

Edward Hill, Greenwich

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