> In the US, renewables are expected to see fifty times as much net capacity added in the next three years as nuclear and fossil fuels combined.
> This particular item was widely commented on in the media, as SDC releases often are. But the issue everyone covered was the fact that renewables accounted for 100% of installations in April [1]. It seems nearly nobody noticed the paragraph above.
> I was stunned by the idea that renewables would outpace fossil fuels plus nuclear by a factor of 50 over the next three years. In fact, I double-checked the data at FERC. It is true, as you can see for yourself in the Energy Infrastructure Update for April 2020 [2].
> Another thing, however, is that the news from the real world suggests that coal, in particular, is declining faster than FERC, or anyone else, could have expected. Every week, I seem to see two or three announcements of coal-burning power plants being closed ahead of schedule. These are retirements that FERC has not yet taken into account.
Because solar and wind actually get built and generate power without a decade of planning, construction, and egregious cost overruns. Subsidize what works and is cost effective (solar and wind need no further subsidies to beat fossil and nuclear generation costs).
Renewables are fusion at a distance. No waste storage (solar panels can be recycled, wind turbine composites are feedstock for cement kilns or insulation pellets), no expensive or dangerous failure modes (caveat being a turbine failure on a wind turbine, which is usually remote and the damage is minimal), just cheap, clean power you can install almost anywhere. No need to throw shade on what’s going to mitigate climate change.
No offense to Texas (regarding your “Texas Public Policy Institute” citation), but they are actively fighting utility scale battery storage by Tesla because it’s going to further damage natural gas generator profits (already ailing from enormous wind output in the state, with ERCOT having no substantial interconnectors to other regional grids). A whole lot if entrenched interests who aren’t going to go quietly into the night.
The overruns happen due to red tape and the overall loss of the heavy industry capability/capacity brought on - and these are the specific problems federal subsidies are supposed to tackle.
Deaths per TWH for solar and wind have proven much higher than nuclear and that's before including their dependence on natural gas which is higher still.
Utility scale batteries are so far still for peak shaving which is wonderful because the simple cycle plants they displace are super efficient, but won't be replacing combined cycle in our lifetimes. IIRC the issue in texas was due the the way they've separated generation vs distribution responsibilities for their market model but it's been a while since I've taken a close look.
> The overruns happen due to red tape and the overall loss of the heavy industry capability/capacity brought on - and these are the specific problems federal subsidies are supposed to tackle.
This might have mattered a decade or two ago, but that time has passed. Solar and wind have enormous momentum behind them, and they will only continue to scale up faster. [1] [2]
> Deaths per TWH for solar and wind have proven much higher than nuclear and that's before including their dependence on natural gas which is higher still.
Modern renewables are roughly as safe as nuclear [3].
> Utility scale batteries are so far still for peak shaving which is wonderful because the simple cycle plants they displace are super efficient, but won't be replacing combined cycle in our lifetimes.
Enormous amounts of battery manufacturing capacity is coming online for EV production [4]. Elon said on Tesla's last earnings call that demand for batteries for utility scale storage is tremendous and they can't keep up with demand [5]. I'll take the other side of that bet: overbuilt renewables, hydro, HVDC transmission across long distances, and battery storage will be enough to deprecate natural gas from the grid. South Australia's grid operator is already nervously preparing for distributed renewables generating so much power, there will be times where there is no net demand on the grid ("But it’s the latest “first” that is putting the wind up the state government and the market operator: Within one to three years, they say, South Australia could become the first gigawatt scale grid in the world where the growing amount of rooftop solar effectively eliminates grid demand."). [6]
Your analysis wrt deaths completely ignores intermittency. Overbuilding is a good solution esp when combined with battery or pumped storage but note that that would also necessarily increase material costs and human costs vs nuclear and geothermal. The momentum for both is good but again until we get that be 3-4 orders of magnitude improvement in scale required to do without gas. Until then having a mixed portfolio with greater emphasis on nuclear and geothermal will be a better option.
HVDC grids are also great but IMO less often considered are the risks of relying on continental grids so much such as the increased susceptibility to brittle failure at a system level and vulnerability as a soft target to economic terrorism/hybrid war.
Again, blindly extrapolating from immediate is not helpful. The same logic caused half of HN to claim that datacenters wouldn't use HDD/Tape anymore because SSDs would be so much cheaper than everything else because moore's. And that's before considering Elon's egregious track record and obvious conflict of interest.
I am not an expert, but simply an enthusiast. The Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley just released a report that arrives at a similar conclusion.
> The United States can deliver 90 percent clean, carbon-free electricity nationwide by 2035, dependably, at no extra cost to consumer bills and without the need for new fossil fuel plants, according to a study released today from the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. The study also finds that without robust policy reforms, most of the potential to reduce emissions and increase jobs would not be realized. 2035 Report: Plummeting Solar, Wind, and Battery Costs Can Accelerate Our Clean Energy Future is the first study of its kind to show how recent cost declines for solar, wind, and battery storage allow the U.S. to dramatically reduce generation and emissions from existing fossil power plants, while retiring coal and reducing gas generation by 70 percent.
Perhaps should look at a wider date range than 2010-2019 in order to determine patterns and magnitude. Perhaps should also consider totals that are net of environmental costs.
The US also gets a larger share of its energy from oil relative to coal. With the shale boom, oils become cheaper and more reliable in the US and burns more cleanly than coal.
Oil is used for heating in a lot of homes in the northeastern US. I believe it's essentially the same as diesel, but I think I recall reading that it's dyed because it's taxed differently and you're not supposed to use it in your vehicle.
Natural gas heat is popular, but not everywhere is connected.
Among those renewables are “biomass” which is just burning trees. If we burned all the trees in the country it would only be enough fuel for a year. This is replacing one awful fuel source with another. Wind and solar rely heavily on fossil fuel infrastructure or directly—-solar panels are made with coal and mined quartz. And it has to be replaced ever few years. It’s looking more and more like nuclear is the only real option but that is another terrifying option because companies are greedy and will mismanage it and we can’t afford nuclear disasters.
I agree that using biomass is a pretty shady metric unless there is strong side by side evidence that the mass is growing back at the same rate of consumption. Unlikely in the case of trees.
I'm also a proponent of nuclear after my thermodynamics professor sat my class down and explained why solar is a dirty process to get up and running and biomass is not sustainable.
I think the potential is in advancement of nuclear power plant tech. The US is working with pretty old 20th century technology and there isn't much movement in the space that I know of probably due to fear.
You are talking about solar panel manufacturing being an energy-intensive process. It is true that over 50% of the global production of solar panels happens in China, and most of the electricity used in the manufacture of those panels comes from burning coal. But there is no reason in principle why solar panel manufacturing could not be powered by electricity produced by non-fossil fuel based power sources (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal etc).
China is going to move away from fossil fuels for electricity generation over time. Slower than it should, but it is going to do it. And just because China controls so much of that industry right now is no guarantee that it will continue to do so into the future.
Not just that, you have to melt coal with quartz to produce the silicon for the solar panels. The entire process relies on fossil fuels. The energy and environmental ROI is probably actually negative/worse than just using the fossil fuels themselves.
It’s an illusion that renewables are replacing fossil fuels. The amount or renewables isn’t even replacing the amount of energy that demand is growing by, so we rely more and more on fossil fuels even as more “renewables” are trotted out as a distraction. This is just a sham death cult because people can’t accept reality. Conservatives have religion and liberals have technology they hope will save them. We are a species in denial.
Your cited link does not seem to support your assertion that you must "melt coal with quartz". I do not believe that's correct.
The general idea you are referring to is the "life cycle greenhouse gas emissions" for an energy technology. This is a well studied field.
Information from the IPCC and the DOE seems to indicate that photovoltaics and wind have something like 20 times lower green house gas emissions than coal plants over the entire life cycle. [1][2]
And since the manufacture of PV and wind accounts for a majority of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the lifecycle, the emissions will improve for this tech as the blend of energy used to power the manufacturing becomes "greener".
If you think that renewables "aren't even replacing the amount of energy demand is growing by", then you should advocate for additional construction of renewable energy rather than suggesting that they are a dirty technology—since the science we have suggests they are not.
> In order to produce a single (1) metric ton (MT) of silicon metal, raw material inputs of 2.8 MT quartz, 1.4 MT coal, and 2.4 MT wood chips are required and represent a 6.6:1 ratio of process inputs to outputs.
Converting silicon dioxide to elemental silicon is usually done by reacting with carbon, which produces carbon dioxide as a waste gas. However, in principle, the carbon dioxide could be captured and even recycled back into carbon to reuse in the initial reaction. I don’t think this is being done yet (at least not on a commercial scale), but there is no reason in principle why we couldn’t develop such a technology and combine it with nuclear/renewable power sources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption due to silicon refining to zero.
Yes, but today we’re using coal to produce solar panels. Why even bother with such a fantasy hypothetical? Why not just go all the way to cold fusion if we’re just making stuff up that isn’t being done currently? This is what I meant about the left having a fantasy that one day technology will save us. We just cannot accept reality.
> Yes, but today we’re using coal to produce solar panels. Why even bother with such a fantasy hypothetical? Why not just go all the way to cold fusion if we’re just making stuff up that isn’t being done currently?
One obvious difference – the technology to capture waste CO2 gas is clearly feasible in principle. We already have lots of research into capturing and reusing CO2 (such as from coal-fired power stations) [1], and we already have known industrial processes which use CO2 as input [2]. So, the issue here is really (a) more R&D to finesse the technology, (b) its application to silicon refining specifically (other CO2 emissions sources are more significant and hence receive more focus) (c) getting the economics right. (On the last point, emissions trading schemes may help.) By contrast, most of the physics community doesn't believe cold fusion is a real phenomena, and the small minority who think it is can't explain how it works. You are comparing a technology whose physics and chemistry is well understood, and which basically just needs productisation, with a technology where there is disagreement on whether physics even allows it to exist.
[3] seems a particularly interesting approach - conversion of CO2 gas to graphite. The graphite in turn could potentially be reused in the silicon refining (which needs a carbon source, not coal/coke/wood specifically). Most current methods of procesing CO2 turn it into chemicals such as methanol (CO2 + hydrogen gas), urea (CO2 + ammonia), etc, which while useful, I'm not sure you could actually reuse those chemicals in silicon refining
> This is what I meant about the left having a fantasy that one day technology will save us
I'm not sure it is really "the left having a fantasy". I know plenty of right-leaning people with solar panels on their roofs. (I even know global warming sceptics with solar panels on their roof.)
The fantasy is that you think that because carbon capture it's feasible in principle that someday our unsustainable way of life that currently relies on fossil fuels will somehow miraculously be converted to 100% clean energy. It just isn't happening--as much as I want it to. People are in denial.
Uh, I don't think that "our unsustainable way of life that currently relies on fossil fuels will somehow miraculously be converted to 100% clean energy".
I think fossil fuel use is going to decline over time. That's already happening in a lot of countries. It's going to be a gradual process, and I think eventually it is going to happen everywhere, but some parts of the world (e.g. Europe, US) are going to be ahead of others (e.g. China, India)
Is there such a thing as "100% clean energy"? I don't know if there ever will be such a thing, but so what. If you look at tonnes of CO2 emitted per a kilowatt-hour, over the life of a generator, then a solar farm is going to beat a coal power station, even when you include the CO2 emissions from the construction and the manufacturing of the equipment. Sure, the solar farm won't be "100% clean" (zero lifetime emissions), but it doesn't need to be, it just needs to be significantly better than the coal power station.
In some countries, coal power stations are being replaced by natural gas power stations. Natural gas obviously isn't 100% clean – it still emits CO2 and other pollutants. But it is a lot cleaner than coal. It emits less greenhouse gases for the same amount of power generated. We shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the better.
Biomass as an energy source is limited by net primary productivity. Humans already appropriate a large portion of this (~20%), and total fossil fuel consumption would roughly double this (inexact numbers, it's been a while since I've looked at this).
Factoring in typical assumptions of population and economic growth, and the picture darkens further.
We simply don't have available biomass to power the present economy, let alone one with more people of net higher average wealth. There are reasons humans switched from renewable to nonrenewable energy resources. Unfortunately the practice is unsustainable on several fronts.
It seems good as long as your local economy is actually given a chance to retool and not become a ghost town.
You have people on the coasts buying up cheap housing from rural people. You have megacorps essentially squatting on what could be productive land for the communities. And then you have poor people who can't afford to take a couple of years to go get educated in another discipline. Not to mention lack of access to credit to retool their economy by forming new businesses.
My gut feeling is that natural gas plants can make a profit by filling in for unmet demands created by renewables intermittency. You can make money by letting out contracts to provide standby capacity. That situation may last decades.
Coal plants though don't spin up fast enough to do that and are low margin as a result.
Yes the high carbon footprint means they are at risk of becoming uneconomic due to higher carbon taxes. Or forced to shut down due to outright regulatory action. Either likely to happen as the powers that be[1] get more and more spooked by climate change.
[1] Consider world wide only a minority of leaders have any particular personal interest in coal, oil, or gas.
33 comments
[ 1242 ms ] story [ 2208 ms ] thread> In the US, renewables are expected to see fifty times as much net capacity added in the next three years as nuclear and fossil fuels combined.
> This particular item was widely commented on in the media, as SDC releases often are. But the issue everyone covered was the fact that renewables accounted for 100% of installations in April [1]. It seems nearly nobody noticed the paragraph above.
> I was stunned by the idea that renewables would outpace fossil fuels plus nuclear by a factor of 50 over the next three years. In fact, I double-checked the data at FERC. It is true, as you can see for yourself in the Energy Infrastructure Update for April 2020 [2].
> Another thing, however, is that the news from the real world suggests that coal, in particular, is declining faster than FERC, or anyone else, could have expected. Every week, I seem to see two or three announcements of coal-burning power plants being closed ahead of schedule. These are retirements that FERC has not yet taken into account.
https://files.texaspolicy.com/uploads/2020/04/23135621/Benne...
Renewables are fusion at a distance. No waste storage (solar panels can be recycled, wind turbine composites are feedstock for cement kilns or insulation pellets), no expensive or dangerous failure modes (caveat being a turbine failure on a wind turbine, which is usually remote and the damage is minimal), just cheap, clean power you can install almost anywhere. No need to throw shade on what’s going to mitigate climate change.
No offense to Texas (regarding your “Texas Public Policy Institute” citation), but they are actively fighting utility scale battery storage by Tesla because it’s going to further damage natural gas generator profits (already ailing from enormous wind output in the state, with ERCOT having no substantial interconnectors to other regional grids). A whole lot if entrenched interests who aren’t going to go quietly into the night.
Deaths per TWH for solar and wind have proven much higher than nuclear and that's before including their dependence on natural gas which is higher still.
Utility scale batteries are so far still for peak shaving which is wonderful because the simple cycle plants they displace are super efficient, but won't be replacing combined cycle in our lifetimes. IIRC the issue in texas was due the the way they've separated generation vs distribution responsibilities for their market model but it's been a while since I've taken a close look.
This might have mattered a decade or two ago, but that time has passed. Solar and wind have enormous momentum behind them, and they will only continue to scale up faster. [1] [2]
> Deaths per TWH for solar and wind have proven much higher than nuclear and that's before including their dependence on natural gas which is higher still.
Modern renewables are roughly as safe as nuclear [3].
> Utility scale batteries are so far still for peak shaving which is wonderful because the simple cycle plants they displace are super efficient, but won't be replacing combined cycle in our lifetimes.
Enormous amounts of battery manufacturing capacity is coming online for EV production [4]. Elon said on Tesla's last earnings call that demand for batteries for utility scale storage is tremendous and they can't keep up with demand [5]. I'll take the other side of that bet: overbuilt renewables, hydro, HVDC transmission across long distances, and battery storage will be enough to deprecate natural gas from the grid. South Australia's grid operator is already nervously preparing for distributed renewables generating so much power, there will be times where there is no net demand on the grid ("But it’s the latest “first” that is putting the wind up the state government and the market operator: Within one to three years, they say, South Australia could become the first gigawatt scale grid in the world where the growing amount of rooftop solar effectively eliminates grid demand."). [6]
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy
[2] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/6/18/1868159...
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#modern-r...
[4] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...
[5] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/tremendous-demand-for-stati...
[6] https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-the-first-big-gr...
HVDC grids are also great but IMO less often considered are the risks of relying on continental grids so much such as the increased susceptibility to brittle failure at a system level and vulnerability as a soft target to economic terrorism/hybrid war.
Again, blindly extrapolating from immediate is not helpful. The same logic caused half of HN to claim that datacenters wouldn't use HDD/Tape anymore because SSDs would be so much cheaper than everything else because moore's. And that's before considering Elon's egregious track record and obvious conflict of interest.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707
https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-...
> The United States can deliver 90 percent clean, carbon-free electricity nationwide by 2035, dependably, at no extra cost to consumer bills and without the need for new fossil fuel plants, according to a study released today from the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. The study also finds that without robust policy reforms, most of the potential to reduce emissions and increase jobs would not be realized. 2035 Report: Plummeting Solar, Wind, and Battery Costs Can Accelerate Our Clean Energy Future is the first study of its kind to show how recent cost declines for solar, wind, and battery storage allow the U.S. to dramatically reduce generation and emissions from existing fossil power plants, while retiring coal and reducing gas generation by 70 percent.
I love that line. What a wonderful way to put it.
It's perhaps a meme in the renewables industry? It needs to spread far and wide.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
Natural gas heat is popular, but not everywhere is connected.
I'm also a proponent of nuclear after my thermodynamics professor sat my class down and explained why solar is a dirty process to get up and running and biomass is not sustainable.
I think the potential is in advancement of nuclear power plant tech. The US is working with pretty old 20th century technology and there isn't much movement in the space that I know of probably due to fear.
You are talking about solar panel manufacturing being an energy-intensive process. It is true that over 50% of the global production of solar panels happens in China, and most of the electricity used in the manufacture of those panels comes from burning coal. But there is no reason in principle why solar panel manufacturing could not be powered by electricity produced by non-fossil fuel based power sources (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal etc).
China is going to move away from fossil fuels for electricity generation over time. Slower than it should, but it is going to do it. And just because China controls so much of that industry right now is no guarantee that it will continue to do so into the future.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt...
It’s an illusion that renewables are replacing fossil fuels. The amount or renewables isn’t even replacing the amount of energy that demand is growing by, so we rely more and more on fossil fuels even as more “renewables” are trotted out as a distraction. This is just a sham death cult because people can’t accept reality. Conservatives have religion and liberals have technology they hope will save them. We are a species in denial.
The general idea you are referring to is the "life cycle greenhouse gas emissions" for an energy technology. This is a well studied field.
Information from the IPCC and the DOE seems to indicate that photovoltaics and wind have something like 20 times lower green house gas emissions than coal plants over the entire life cycle. [1][2]
And since the manufacture of PV and wind accounts for a majority of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the lifecycle, the emissions will improve for this tech as the blend of energy used to power the manufacturing becomes "greener".
If you think that renewables "aren't even replacing the amount of energy demand is growing by", then you should advocate for additional construction of renewable energy rather than suggesting that they are a dirty technology—since the science we have suggests they are not.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emis... [2] https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/life-cycle-assessment.html
>silicon metal is made from the reaction of silica and carbon materials like coke, coal and wood chips
https://www.workoutmilano.it/gold2/6774-silicon-metal-quartz...
> In order to produce a single (1) metric ton (MT) of silicon metal, raw material inputs of 2.8 MT quartz, 1.4 MT coal, and 2.4 MT wood chips are required and represent a 6.6:1 ratio of process inputs to outputs.
http://guntherportfolio.com/2010/03/making-silicon-metal-for...
One obvious difference – the technology to capture waste CO2 gas is clearly feasible in principle. We already have lots of research into capturing and reusing CO2 (such as from coal-fired power stations) [1], and we already have known industrial processes which use CO2 as input [2]. So, the issue here is really (a) more R&D to finesse the technology, (b) its application to silicon refining specifically (other CO2 emissions sources are more significant and hence receive more focus) (c) getting the economics right. (On the last point, emissions trading schemes may help.) By contrast, most of the physics community doesn't believe cold fusion is a real phenomena, and the small minority who think it is can't explain how it works. You are comparing a technology whose physics and chemistry is well understood, and which basically just needs productisation, with a technology where there is disagreement on whether physics even allows it to exist.
[3] seems a particularly interesting approach - conversion of CO2 gas to graphite. The graphite in turn could potentially be reused in the silicon refining (which needs a carbon source, not coal/coke/wood specifically). Most current methods of procesing CO2 turn it into chemicals such as methanol (CO2 + hydrogen gas), urea (CO2 + ammonia), etc, which while useful, I'm not sure you could actually reuse those chemicals in silicon refining
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
[2] e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol#From_synthesis_gas
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08824-8
> This is what I meant about the left having a fantasy that one day technology will save us
I'm not sure it is really "the left having a fantasy". I know plenty of right-leaning people with solar panels on their roofs. (I even know global warming sceptics with solar panels on their roof.)
I think fossil fuel use is going to decline over time. That's already happening in a lot of countries. It's going to be a gradual process, and I think eventually it is going to happen everywhere, but some parts of the world (e.g. Europe, US) are going to be ahead of others (e.g. China, India)
Is there such a thing as "100% clean energy"? I don't know if there ever will be such a thing, but so what. If you look at tonnes of CO2 emitted per a kilowatt-hour, over the life of a generator, then a solar farm is going to beat a coal power station, even when you include the CO2 emissions from the construction and the manufacturing of the equipment. Sure, the solar farm won't be "100% clean" (zero lifetime emissions), but it doesn't need to be, it just needs to be significantly better than the coal power station.
In some countries, coal power stations are being replaced by natural gas power stations. Natural gas obviously isn't 100% clean – it still emits CO2 and other pollutants. But it is a lot cleaner than coal. It emits less greenhouse gases for the same amount of power generated. We shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the better.
Factoring in typical assumptions of population and economic growth, and the picture darkens further.
We simply don't have available biomass to power the present economy, let alone one with more people of net higher average wealth. There are reasons humans switched from renewable to nonrenewable energy resources. Unfortunately the practice is unsustainable on several fronts.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2cvap7/the_int...
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153031/
http://agroinnovations.com/blog/2007/04/27/the-photosyntheti...
https://web.archive.org/web/20120810132407/https://environme...
I especially recommend Jeff Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003):
https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1....
You have people on the coasts buying up cheap housing from rural people. You have megacorps essentially squatting on what could be productive land for the communities. And then you have poor people who can't afford to take a couple of years to go get educated in another discipline. Not to mention lack of access to credit to retool their economy by forming new businesses.
Coal plants though don't spin up fast enough to do that and are low margin as a result.
[1] Consider world wide only a minority of leaders have any particular personal interest in coal, oil, or gas.