Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumIs a High Renewables Future Really Possible?
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Skeptics often point to a number of familiar criticisms: that high penetrations of renewables are not possible; that such a future requires major technological innovation; that it requires unreasonable amounts of energy storage to balance variable wind and solar; that it requires massive build-out of transmission infrastructure, biomass generation capacity, large-scale hydro, or all of the above; that it requires major investment that simply isnt there; that it is uncompetitively costly (at least without large subsidies); that variable renewables will undermine the reliability of grid power.
Couple such skepticism with IEAs recent report noting that renewables have yet to make a serious dent in the carbon intensity of the global energy systemon which fossil fuels seem to have a strangle holdand itd be easy to side with the skeptics, but they are wrong.
Renewables track record shows that they continue to outpace skeptics expectations. People thought that maybe renewables would get to two percent. When they did that, people said maybe five percent. Then 10 percent, says Hutch Hutchinson, managing director at RMI. Renewables have been fighting and scratching the entire way. Now, theres good analytical evidence that with some creativity and customary levels of reinvestment in our energy system, we can get to a high renewables future.
Eric Martinot, author of REN21s Renewables Global Futures Report 2013, said something strikingly similar during a recent visit to RMIs offices. He noted that the World Bank and others typically have a view of renewables thats either behind the times by a decade (their image of 2013 is what renewables actually looked like in 2003) or low by a factor of ten (they think theres much less renewable capacity than there really is).
But if we look to a growing body of consensus among energy futures studies and to an increasing number of examples from around the world today, well see that a high renewables future is both possible and capable of coming soon. Indeed, in some places its already here....
Continues: http://blog.rmi.org/blog_05_22_2013_is_a_high_renewables_energy_really_possible_part_one
High Renewables are a Reality Today
The futures studies (referenced in yesterdays post) are not a guarantee of what will happen. Theyre various visions of what could happen. But increasingly, these possible futures are shifting from the hypothetical to the real. Around the world, economies are shifting to ones grounded in high penetrations of renewables.
In one sense, this isnt news. Historically, there has been no shortage of countries powered mostlyeven entirelyby renewables. But these countries, ranging from Norway and Sweden to Paraguay and Venezuela, have depended on large amounts of hydro. Yet were now seeing examples of high renewables powered by wind and solar, too.
In Denmark, the Danish Energy Agency set a bold goal for the countrys power to be 100 percent renewable by 2050, including generating 50 percent of electricity from wind by 2020. The country is well on its way to realizing that vision. In 2011, renewables accounted for more than 40 percent of Denmarks domestic electricity production; wind power accounted for 28 percent of electricity generation. Then last year, wind crossed the 30 percent threshold. This year an offshore wind farm is expected to add another 400 MW to the countrys already installed 4.2 GW of wind capacity. Earlier this year in March, wind generated nearly 4 GW of power for the grid, just 800 MW shy of the entire countrys electricity needs. Later that same month, wind output exceeded nationwide demand, even if only for a short period.
Theres been similar success on a much larger scale in Spain, where installed wind capacity is five times that of Denmark. On a day in April 2012, wind supplied 61 percent of Spains electricity demand.
Momentary high-percentage outputs from variable renewables and Denmarks ramp-up of renewableswith winds longer-term contributions to the grid therehave been more than commendable. In Portugal, meanwhile, were seeing equally impressive numbers of renewables sustained contributions of power to the grid. For a few hours toward the end of 2011, renewables supplied 100 percent of Portugals electricity. But over the first quarter of this yearthree full months of 2013renewables supplied an impressive 70 percent of that countrys power. Hydro accounted for 37 percent of electricity; wind ranked second with 27 percent of generation....
Continues: http://blog.rmi.org/blog_05_23_2013_is_a_high_renewables_energy_really_possible_part_two
Recommended reading:
While the examples of Japan, China, and India show the promise of rapidly emerging energy economies built on efficiency and renewables, Germanythe worlds number four economy and Europes number onehas lately provided an impressive model of what a well-organized industrial society can achieve. To be sure, its not yet the world champion among countries with limited hydroelectricity: Denmark passed 40% renewable electricity in 2011 en route to a target of 100% by 2050, and Portugal, albeit with more hydropower, raised its renewable electricity fraction from 17% to 45% just during 200510 (while the U.S., though backed by a legacy of big hydro, crawled from 9% to 10%), reaching 70% in the rainy and windy first quarter of 2013. But these economies are not industrial giants like Germany, which remains the best disproof of claims that highly industrialized countries, let alone cold and cloudy ones, can do little with renewables.
Germany has doubled the renewable share of its total electricity consumption in the past six years to 23% in 2012...
http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_04_17_germanys_renewables_revolution
eLab: The Value of Distributed Energy Resources (Video)
March 15, 2013
The U.S. is at the cusp of transformative change in the electricity system, and the only thing limiting us may be our imagination. Uncertainties about how to navigate that transformation remain, and eLab is hard at work answering the questions many organizations in the sector are trying to address, including:
What is the value of distributed energy resources? How can we build pricing mechanisms based on accurate signals and reflections of the market, and integrate power from thousands of different locationswhile keeping the lights on?
FERCs regulatory responsibility is to ensure that rates are adjusted and reasonable and not under-discriminatory, explains Mason Emnett, deputy policy director at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Its important that weve got the rules right, so that customers are paying the appropriate rates and that resources are seeing the appropriate signals. eLab is an exciting collection of stakeholders and perspectives in that conversation.
Watch now, and learn:
How to build a cleaner, more resilient electricity future with new types of technologywhile successfully managing it in real time
Why eLab is exactly the right set of resources to help inform and accelerate aggregations of distributed resources interfacing with the grid
How eLab is enabling candid conversations with key stakeholders about price transparency and the real cost of renewables
What do you think it will take to change our electricity system to one that is cleaner, more reliable, and customer friendly?
http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_03_15_eLab_Value_of_Distributed_Energy_Resources
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)There are so many examples proving that the answer is a resounding "Yes!", that it's almost crazy that the question needs to be asked.
Yet it does because there's so much institutional resistance to renewables and so much ignorance, that it has to be raised again and again.
Not only is it possible, and not really that hard to realize, it is necessary for our long-term survival.
dumbcat
(2,120 posts)by Levi? If so, what did you think about it? I am about half way through and find him credible.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)I just looked Levi up, however and read two interviews with him.
Frankly, I think he is trying to straddle the middle and sell books by appearing "reasonable" at the expense of the change that the physics behind climate science demand we make. He is trying to make the case that expanded oil and gas production are not harmful to the environment because it will not reduce the global price. In the first place, I question the validity of that conclusion. Not reducing prices isn't the same as having no effect on prices, and any downward pressure on fossil fuel prices is (in consideration of the over-riding urgency of the climate crisis) counterproductive to the transition to a carbon free economy.
Equating the science behind the efforts of the environmental community with the profit-driven goals of the oil lobby is, frankly, a repellent position.
NickB79
(19,236 posts)When they are not interchangeable. For example:
Globally, over a third of the globe's power is generated through the burning of oil for transport, not in the generation of electricity. That has to be taken into consideration when discussing a high-renewables future as well, and I didn't see it addressed in any of your links.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)A) 100% of power from renewables.
B) 50% of electricity from wind.
Electricity is a well recognized subset of A).
They do, in fact, aim for 100% renewable power by 2050.
NickB79
(19,236 posts)That IS an ambitious plan.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)It means when other energy carriers can't be substituted, they will switch to biofuels.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)http://www.ens.dk/files/dokumenter/publikationer/downloads/accelerating_green_energy_towards_2020.pdf
Thought you might like to know more.
NNadir
(33,517 posts)...they could shut up and they wouldn't need to do a half a century of soothsaying.
I mean, if after all these years of telling us what they could do, wouldn't it have been time, maybe ten or twenty years ago, to have just done it?
I mean, it's 2013, the concentration of carbon dioxide is rising at the fastest rate ever observed, and we still need to hear more soothsaying?
Amory Lovins - RMI's chief soothsayer - was clueless in 1976 - when he said that the United States would have 18 quads (approx. 18 exajoules) of solar energy by 2000, clueless when he said nuclear was dying in 1980 (It now produces 4X as much energy as it did then) and he's clueless now.
Well, not exactly clueless.
He does make a lot of money greenwashing "Suncor," the people who run the tar sands operation in Canada. And he does a great job of it too. I mean if you log on to Suncor's website, you'd think they're in the environmental services business.
Come to think of it, that's probably why he pushes the renewables fantasy so hard. It makes life safer for all the dangerous fossil fuel companies, Shell, Chevron, Suncor...who pay his bills so he can keep inhabiting that McMansion up in Snowmass.
It is sad how his old pal Jeff Skilling of Enron fame can't get out of prison to catch up on old times, but I'm sure that a quick drive down to Aspen and a few runs down Aspen mountain followed by a breakfast/brunch at Little Nell's assuages his pain.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)NNadir
(33,517 posts)Suncor is a tar sands company. I don't know anyone, zero people on the left, who thinks that Suncor has a positive energy idea.
Your OP comes from RMI.org, the fossil fuel front run by Amory Lovins.
How can I say that Amory Lovins is a fossil fuel front?
Because on his website, he lists the companies for which he "consults," i.e, the companies that pay his bills.
Mr. Lovinss clients have also included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, HP Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, CLSA, ConocoPhillips, Corning, Dow, EDS, Equitable, Ford, GM, HP, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Petrobras, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Suncor, Texas Instruments, UBS, Unilever, Westinghouse, Xerox, major developers, and over 100 energy utilities. His public-sector clients have included OECD, UN, RFF, the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments, 13 states, Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments. He has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal (twice), Fortune, Harvard, The New Yorker, and The Economist. His latest book, with 60 RMI coauthors, is Reinventing Fire (2011).
http://www.rmi.org/Amory+B.+Lovins
As a (predictably) self declared "expert" on what is and what is not right wing, which part of Anglo Amerian, BP, Chevron, Petrobras, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Sun Oil, Suncor (never mind "Major Developers" don't you understand?
It is pretty right wing to 1) spout dogma in the face of reality, and 2) assume that you speak for everyone 3) to not give a rat's ass about the fact that the atmosphere is degrading from climate change at the fastest rate ever, and 4) to latch irreversibly on to 50 year old ideas that have been proved time and time again to not work.
Have a nice evening.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)He has been sounding the alarm and working towards a carbon free economy since at least 1976 and his work with those companies in the area of energy efficiency is second to none in the world. It has yielded massive reductions in both energy consumption and consequent carbon reductions. There is a reason all those governments look to his team for insight and analysis.
What have you done? Still running around putting more miles on your Ford Excursion?
NNadir
(33,517 posts)...many times.
There are comic books that are written better, but since his bull is responsible for so much of this disaster, I can't say I find him funny.
The fact that I'm familiar with his lame writings is also why I am able to identify his sources of income so readily.
This may come as a surprise to someone who doesn't give a fuck about the climate, but the rate of increase in dangerous fossil fuel waste accumulations is the highest ever. February 2013 and March 2013 showed the highest February to February and March to March single year increases ever observed.
So I guess the piddling nonsense handed out by the Suncor tar sands consultant didn't work very well, did it?
Or are you here to tell us that everything is fine?
From my perspective, anyone who believes the high school term paper unreferenced claptrap put out by that snake oil, whoops I mean, tar sands oil salesman is clueless about the environment.
But in the case of present company, I already knew that.
By the way, turning away from snake oil salesmen who sell worthless dreams to delusional dogmatists, did you by any chance see the latest publication by Jim Hansen, the world respected climate expert?
You didn't?
Why am I not surprised?
Here's a link: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197 (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 48894895)
The publication is in Environ. Sci. Tech, and Nature reports it to be one of the most widely read papers by the scientific community in the last several months.
The title is: "Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power."
Hansen has calculated that historical nuclear power saved about 1.8 million lives, and prevented about two years worth of carbon dioxide from being dumped.
The corollary to his fine paper is that dumb people who hate nuclear energy because it's over their scientifically illiterate heads actually kill people.
This year, according to the World Health Organization, 3.3 million people will die from air pollution, half of them under the age of 5, and the majority dying because of exposure to so called "renewable" biomass burning.
As for what I've done, I've done what I can, but I lost. Fear and ignorance have won the day.
Give a kiss to Amory for me.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)It's a simplistic analysis that doesn't take into account the amount of support nuclear provides to the economics that make coal profitable. There are no coal plants that have been shut down by nuclear plants - none. There are, however, a long list of utilities around the world that have built a couple of nuclear plants as part of their plans for growing energy demand on the way to building more coal plants. Every single nuclear plant under construction in the US now is part of a longer term plan by the utilities to also invest heavily in building more coal plants.
Renewables, however, undercut the economics of both coal and nuclear - making both unprofitable to operate or build.
Nuclear and coal are two sides of the same economic coin for the utilities.
NNadir
(33,517 posts)Your rote response - given that you can't name a single fracking operation or gas plant or coal plant saved by your wind and solar fantasies, that consumed hundreds of billions of euros, hundreds of billions of dollars and trillions of yen and yuan and sixty years of soothsaying and wishful thinking - is an unreferenced repetition of the same pablum, and also demonstrates that you are unfamiliar with the contents of the paper, which is unsurprising.
I suppose we should value the opinions of a blogger who produces no references (except to Amory Lovins, who also writes garbage for social science journals that contain no references) over one of the world's most respected climate scientists.
In my opinion - and I've read the paper (along with tens of thousands of others) and have long familiarity with the 35 references therein is that there isn't on this planet one anti-nuke who has even a remote familiarity with the scientific literature.
Oh wait, there's Mark V. Jacobson. He's familiar with the literature and often cites it albeit in a way that's not too bright. One of the most amusing papers I've read in recent years what the paper by Nobel Laureate Burton Richter slapping down his claim that Fukushima proved that everyone in California was going to die from Diablo Canyon.
It was a fun read for a scientist, who has learned to despise anti-nuke fear and ignorance, and the death and destruction such fear and ignorance destroys.
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/ee/c2ee22658h
Have a nice evening.
cprise
(8,445 posts)But he is also a novice at energy advocacy. Do you wanna take bets as to how long his run as a nuclear advocate will last?
kristopher
(29,798 posts)I guess that means you are also in favor of carbon capture. After all that is 'the solution' as envisioned by a "top British climate scientist". According to your standards, that means he must be correct. After deriding spending on both renewables and nuclear the good professor has this to say;
By PROFESSOR MYLES ALLEN
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Fortunately, there is a solution. It is perfectly possible to burn fossil carbon and not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: you have to filter it out of the flue gases, pressurise it, and re-inject, or sequester, it back underground.
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331057/Why-I-think-wasting-billions-global-warming-British-climate-scientist.html#ixzz2VGYl0wjw
Now as to your half assed insinuations that you have inside knowledge, let's remove the firewall that you depend on in trying to create your illusion.
Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident John E. Ten Hoevea and Mark Z. Jacobson*b
Received 23rd April 2012, Accepted 26th June 2012
DOI: 10.1039/c2ee22019a
This study quantifies worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident on 11 March 2011. Effects are quantified with a 3-D global atmospheric model driven by emission estimates and evaluated against daily worldwide Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) measurements and observed deposition rates. Inhalation exposure, ground-level external exposure, and atmospheric external exposure pathways of radioactive iodine-131, cesium-137, and cesium-134 released from Fukushima are accounted for using a linear no-threshold (LNT) model of human exposure. Exposure due to ingestion of contaminated food and water is estimated by extrapolation. We estimate an additional 130 (151100) cancer-related mortalities and 180 (241800) cancer-related morbidities incorporating uncertainties associated with the exposuredose and doseresponse models used in the study. We also discuss the LNT models uncertainty at low doses. Sensitivities to emission rates, gas to particulate I-131 partitioning, and the mandatory evacuation radius around the plant are also explored, and may increase upper bound mortalities and morbidities in the ranges above to 1300 and 2500, respectively. Radiation exposure to workers at the plant is projected to result in 2 to 12 morbidities. An additional $600 mortalities have been reported due to non-radiological causes such as mandatory evacuations. Lastly, a hypothetical accident at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, USA with identical emissions to Fukushima was studied to analyze the influence of location and seasonality on the impact of a nuclear accident. This hypothetical accident may cause $25% more mortalities than Fukushima despite California having one fourth the local population density due to differing meteorological conditions.
Full paper can be downloaded with this link (free): http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/TenHoeveEES12.pdf
The simplistic (again) reply be Burton Richter:
Burton Richter*
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/FukushimaCommentary.pdf
And the Ten Hoeve, Jacobson response to Richter:
Reply to the Opinion on Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident by B. Richter, Energy Environ. Sci., 2012, 5, DOI:10.1039/ c2ee22658h
http://www.johntenhoeve.com/publications/TenHoeveEES2012Reply.pdf
I'll copy a small portion of this response to highlight why I use the word "simplistic" in referring to both the Hansen paper and Richter's effort:
It is a beautiful day.