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Page added on December 14, 2015
The Future Belongs to Renewables
Historically, the transition from one energy system to another, as from wood to coal or coal to oil, has proven an enormously complicated process, requiring decades to complete. In similar fashion, it will undoubtedly be many years before renewable forms of energy — wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and others still in development — replace fossil fuels as the world’s leading energy providers. Nonetheless, 2015 can be viewed as the year in which the epochal transition from one set of fuels to another took off, with renewables making such significant strides that, for the first time in centuries, the beginning of the end of the Fossil Fuel Era has come into sight.
This shift will take place no matter how well or poorly the deal just achieved at the U.N. climate summit in Paris is carried out. Although a robust commitment by participating nations to curb future carbon emissions will certainly help speed the transition, the necessary preconditions — political will, investment capital, and technological momentum — are already in place to drive the renewable revolution forward. Lending a hand to this transformation will be a sharp and continuing reduction in the cost of renewable energy, making it increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), between now and 2040 global investments in renewable power capacity will total $7 trillion, accounting for 60% of all power plant investment.
Fossil fuels will not, of course, disappear during this period. Too much existing infrastructure — refineries, distribution networks, transportation systems, power plants, and the like — are dependent on oil, coal, and natural gas, which means, unfortunately, that these fuels will continue to play a prominent role for decades. But the primary thrust of new policies, new investment, and new technology will be in the advancement of renewables.
Breakthrough Initiatives
Two events on the periphery of the Paris climate summit were especially noteworthy in terms of the renewable revolution: the announcement of an International Solar Alliance by India and France, and the launching of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition by Bill Gates of Microsoft, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and a host of other billionaires.
As described by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the International Solar Alliance is meant to mobilize private and public funds for the development and installation of affordable solar systems on a global scale, especially in developing countries. “We intend making joint efforts through innovative policies, projects, programs, capacity-building measures, and financial instruments to mobilize more than 1,000 billion U.S. dollars of investments that are needed by 2030 for the massive deployment of affordable solar energy,” Modi and French President François Hollande indicated in a joint statement on November 30th.
According to its sponsors, the aim of this program is to pool financing from both public and private sources in order to bring down the costs of solar systems even further and speed their utilization, especially in poor tropical countries. “The vast majority of humans are blessed with sunlight throughout the year,” Modi explained. “We want to bring solar energy into their lives.”
To get the alliance off the ground, the Indian government will commit some $30 billion for the establishment of the alliance’s headquarters in New Delhi. Modi has also pledged to increase solar power generation in India by 2,500% over the next seven years, expanding output from 4 to 100 gigawatts — thereby creating a vast new market for solar technology and devices. “This day is the sunrise of new hope, not just for clean energy, but for villages and homes still in darkness,” he said in Paris, adding that the solar alliance would create “unlimited economic opportunities” for green energy entrepreneurs.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition, reportedly the brainchild of Bill Gates, will seek to channel private and public funds into the development of advanced green-energy technologies to speed the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. “Technology will help solve our energy issues,” the project’s website states. “Scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs can invent and scale the innovative technologies that will limit the impact of climate change while providing affordable and reliable energy to everyone.”
As Gates imagines it, the new venture will seek to bundle funds from wealthy investors in order to move innovative energy breakthroughs from the laboratory — where they often languish — to full-scale development and production. “Experience indicates that even the most promising ideas face daunting commercialization challenges and a nearly impassable Valley of Death between promising concept and viable product,” the project notes. “This collective failure can be addressed, in part, by a dramatically scaled-up public research pipeline, linked to a different kind of private investor with a long-term commitment to new technologies who is willing to put truly patient flexible risk capital to work.”
Joining Gates and Bezos in this venture are a host of super-rich investors, including Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, the Chinese internet giant; Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chairman of Facebook; George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management; and Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of India’s giant Tata Sons conglomerate. While seeking to speed the progress of green technology, these investors also see a huge potential for future profits in this field and, as the venture claims, “will certainly be motivated partly by the possibility of making big returns over the long-term, but also by the criticality of an energy transition.”
While vast in their ambitions, these two schemes are not without their critics. Some environmentalists worry, for example, that Modi’s enthusiasm for the International Solar Alliance might actually be a public relations device aimed at deflecting criticism from his plans for increasing India’s reliance on coal to generate electricity. A report by Climate Action Tracker, an environmental watchdog group, noted, for instance, that “the absolute growth in [India’s] coal-powered electric generating capacity would be significantly larger than the absolute increase in renewable/non-fossil generation capacity” in that country between 2013 and 2030. “Ultimately, this would lead to a greater lock-in of carbon-intensive power infrastructure in India than appears necessary.”
The Gates initiative has come under criticism for favoring still-experimental “breakthrough” technologies over further improvements in here-and-now devices such as solar panels and wind turbines. For example, Joe Romm, a climate expert and former acting assistant secretary of energy, recently wrote at the website Climate Progress that “Gates has generally downplayed the amazing advances we’ve had in the keystone clean technologies,” such as wind and solar, while “investing in new nuclear power, geo-engineering technologies, and off-the-wall stuff.”
Despite such criticisms, the far-reaching implications and symbolic importance of these initiatives shouldn’t be dismissed. By funneling billions — and in the end undoubtedly trillions — of dollars into the development and deployment of green technologies, these politicians and plutocrats are ensuring that the shift from fossil fuels to renewables will gain further momentum with each passing year until it becomes unstoppable.
The Developing World Goes Green
In another sign of this epochal shift, ever more countries in the developing world — including some oil-producing ones — are embracing renewables as their preferred energy sources. According to the IEA, the newly industrialized countries, spearheaded by China and India, will spend $2.7 trillion on renewable-based power plants between 2015 and 2040, far more than the older industrialized nations.
This embrace of renewables by the developing world is especially significant given the way the major oil and gas companies — led by ExxonMobil and BP — have long argued that cheap fossil fuels provide these countries with the smoothest path to rapid economic development. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson has even claimed that there is a “humanitarian imperative” to providing the developing world with cheap fossil fuels in order to save “millions and millions of lives.”
In accordance with this self-serving rhetoric, Exxon, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and other energy giants have been madly expanding their oil and gas distribution networks in Asia, Africa, and other developing areas.
Increasingly, however, the targets of this push are rejecting fossil fuels in favor of renewables. Morocco, for example, has pledged to obtain 42% of its electricity from renewables by 2020, far more than planned by the members of the European Union. Later this month, the country will commence operations at the Ouarzazate solar thermal plant, a mammoth facility capable of supplying electricity to one million homes by relying on an array of revolving parabolic mirrors covering some 6,000 acres. These will concentrate the power of sunlight and use it to produce steam for electricity-generating turbines.
Elsewhere in Africa, authorities in Rwanda have commissioned a vast solar array at Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, about 40 miles east of Kigali, the capital. Consisting of 28,360 computer-controlled solar panels, the array can generate 8.5 megawatts of electricity, or about 6% of Rwanda’s capacity. Spread over an undulating hill, the panels are laid out in the shape of the African continent and are meant to be symbolic of solar energy’s importance to that energy-starved continent. “We have plenty of sun,” said Twaha Twagirimana, the plant supervisor. “Some are living in remote areas where there is no energy. Solar will be the way forward for African countries.”
Even more significant, a number of major oil-producing countries have begun championing renewables, too. On November 28th, for example, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, vice president and ruler of Dubai, launched the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, which aims to make the emirate a global center of green energy. According to present plans, 25% of Dubai’s energy will come from clean energy sources by 2030 and 75% by 2050. As part of this drive, solar panels will be made mandatory for all rooftops by 2030. “Our goal is to become the city with the smallest carbon footprint in the world by 2050,” Sheikh Mohammed said when announcing the initiative.
As part of its green energy drive, Dubai is constructing the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, intended to be the world’s largest solar facility. When completed, around 2030, the giant complex will produce some 5,000 megawatts of energy — about eight times as much as the Ouarzazate solar plant.
Long-Term Prospects
Evidence that an accelerating shift to renewables is already underway can also be found in recent studies of the global energy industry, most notably in the IEA’s just-released annual assessment of industry trends, World Energy Outlook 2015. “There are unmistakable signs that the much needed global energy transition is under way,” the report noted, with “60 cents of every dollar invested in new power plants to 2040 [to be] spent on renewable energy technologies.”
The growing importance of renewables, the IEA noted, is especially evident in the case of electricity generation. As more countries follow the growth patterns seen in China and South Korea, electricity is expected to provide an ever-increasing share of world energy requirements. Global electricity use, the report says, will grow by 46% between 2013 and 2040; all other forms of energy use, by only 24%. As a result, the share of total world energy provided by electricity will rise from 38% to 42%.
This shift is significant because renewables will provide a greater share of the energy used to generate electricity. Whereas they contributed only 12% of energy to power generation in 2013, the IEA reports, they are expected to supply 24% in 2040; meanwhile, the shares provided by coal and natural gas will grow by far smaller percentages, and that by oil will actually shrink. While coal and gas are still likely to dominate the power sector in 2040, the trend lines suggest that they will lose ever more ground to renewables as time goes on.
Contributing to the growing reliance on renewables, the IEA finds, is a continuing drop in the cost of deploying these technologies. Once considered pricey compared to fossil fuels, renewables are beginning to win out on cost alone. In 2014, the agency noted, “about three-quarters of global renewables-based [power] generation was competitive with electricity from other types of power plants without subsidies,” with large hydropower facilities contributing much of this share.
Certainly, renewables continue to benefit from subsidies of various sorts. In 2014, the IEA reports, governments provided some $112 billion to underwrite renewable power generation. While this may seem like a significant amount, it is only about a quarter of the $490 billion in subsidies governments offered globally to the fossil fuel industry. If those outsized subsidies were eliminated and a price imposed on the consumption of carbon, as proposed in many of the schemes to be introduced in the wake of the Paris climate summit, renewables would become instantly competitive without subsidies.
Go Green Young Man and Young Woman
All this is not to say that the world will be a green-energy paradise in 2030 or 2040. Far from it. Barring the unexpected, fossil fuels will continue to rule in many areas, especially transportation, and the resulting carbon emissions will continue to warm the planet disastrously. By then, however, most new investment in the energy field will, at least, be devoted to renewables and in most places globally there will be rules and regulations aimed at facilitating their installation.
As a college professor, I often think about such developments in terms of my students. When they ask me for career advice these days, I urge them to gear their studies toward some field likely to prosper in exactly this future environment: renewable energy systems, green architecture and city planning, alternative transportation and industrial systems, sustainable development, and environmental law, among others. And more and more of my students are, in fact, choosing such paths.
Likewise, if I were a future venture capitalist, I would follow the lead of Gates, Bezos, and the other tycoons in the Breakthrough Energy Coalition by seeking out the most innovative work in the green energy field. It offers as close as you can get to a guarantee against failure. As the consumption of renewable energy explodes, the incentives for power and money-saving technical breakthroughs are only going to grow and the rate of discovery is sure to rise as well, undoubtedly offering enormous payback possibilities for those getting a piece of the action early.
Finally, if I were an aspiring politician, whether in this country or elsewhere, I would be spinning plans for my city, state, or nation to take the lead in the green energy revolution. Once the transition from fossil fuels to renewables gains more momentum, leadership in the development and deployment of green technologies will become a far more popular position, which means it will increase your electability. This proposition is already beginning to be tested. For example, the Labor Party candidate for mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is now leading the way by building his campaign around a promise to set that city on course to be 100% powered by renewables by 2050.
You’re still going to hear a lot about fossil fuels — and for good reason — but make no mistake about it: the future belongs to renewables. Of course, Big Energy, the giant utilities, and the lobbyists and politicians in their pay, including just about the complete climate-change-denying Republican Party, will do everything in their (not insignificant) power to perpetuate the Fossil Fuel Era. In the process, they will cause immeasurable harm to the planet and to us all. They will win some battles. In the process, they will also be committing some of the great crimes of history. But the war they are fighting is a losing one. Inevitably, ever more people — especially the most dynamic and creative of the young — will be hitching their futures to the coming of a genuinely green civilization, ensuring its ultimate triumph.
Michael Klare
35 Comments on "The Future Belongs to Renewables"
GregT on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 11:12 am
The future belongs to cyanobacteria. AKA slime.
twocats on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 12:16 pm
“investing in new nuclear power, geo-engineering technologies, and off-the-wall stuff.”
So thats part of the Gates’ plan. Oy vey. Not that we don’t need research but I lived down the hill from Lawrence Livermore Berkeley and had friends in the research area. Yeast is big. Nuclear is big. I guess slime is big. Greg do you think Slime will be a major energy contributor or were you being facetious?
“Modi has also pledged to increase solar power generation in India by 2,500% over the next seven years, expanding output from 4 to 100 gigawatts”
The India/France alliance seems pretty promising. From what I can tell, total solar capacity in the US was about 27 GW in 2014 (utility and distributed combined), so adding 13 GW a year for 7 years seems like a good idea. Though the line about the kickoff being 30 billion spent on the HQ was not a good way to start.
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_01_a
I guess we could look at how many Terawatts are derived from oil per year and see if we think it will match depletion. I know the Gregor McDonald who used to be kind of a doomer has become much more positive… since he started a subscription newsletter.
There’s also the stats I’ve seen that carbon emissions from solar panel manufacturing has actually exceeded all carbon savings from those panels for every year going back to 2002. I.e., we have yet to spare the climate a single CO2 molecule from solar.
Surf on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 3:03 pm
“There’s also the stats I’ve seen that carbon emissions from solar panel manufacturing has actually exceeded all carbon savings from those panels for every year going back to 2002.”
According to the following link to a NREL docutment the energy payback time for solar is less than 4 years. Meaning pannels produced in 2004 have already payed back at least 2 times the enegy that was needed to make them.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
Apneaman on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 3:25 pm
Surf, how long until the toxic mess from manufacturing goes away? Also, how much of a waste stream would be generated if solar was scaled up? Currently it’s a little over 1% of global electrical generation. What would the toxic waste stream look like at 20 or 40%?
Here is but one example.
The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust
Hidden in an unknown corner of Inner Mongolia is a toxic, nightmarish lake created by our thirst for smartphones, consumer gadgets and green tech, discovers Tim Maughan.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth
twocats on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 4:10 pm
Yep, I’ve seen that stat before, thank you Surf. There is this slight twist:
Energy Cannibalism
Solar PV electricity remains less carbon-intensive than conventional grid electricity, even when solar cells are manufactured in China and installed in countries with relatively low solar insolation. This seems to suggest that solar PV remains a good choice no matter where the panels are produced or installed. However, if we take into account the growth of the industry, the energy and carbon balance can quickly turn negative. That’s because at high growth rates, the energy and CO2 savings made by the cumulative installed capacity of solar PV systems can be cancelled out by the energy use and CO2 emissions from the production of new installed capacity.
taken from this article reposted:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-05-11/how-sustainable-is-pv-solar-power
I guess I’m just highlighting that even as we growth our way into renewables we will be losing ground on the climate front, at least initially. I think the figure I saw was that if the solar industry grows more than 25% in a given year then its manufacturing emissions outpace savings, but I’m not exactly sure.
Dredd on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 4:50 pm
“The Future Belongs to Renewables”
The fingerprints of the future are being found all around us (SLC Fingerprints R Us).
Who left them is the question not asked.
Davy on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 5:42 pm
Solar PV is important with or without a large energy return. The problem today is like so many technologies and that is application. Just imagine solar in its most extreme form of efficiency and effectiveness. You can, picture a poor child in India studying calculus by a solar power light.
The key to all this happiness we call the status quo is proper lifestyle. Since that is non negotiable at least when it is an option then we are going to see waste, misapplication, and the situation of using more because of Jevon’s paradox.
It is not the technology although some are bad. It is not the environment because we don’t belong in all places. It comes down to us. We are the problem. Our decisions create our problems. We can’t blame nature because that is like the foot blaming the toes.
In the end humans are likely a dead end of evolution. Knowledge is a dead end if this is so. That preaching doesn’t mean shit with survival right here right now. The horse is out of the stable.
We are going to muddle through a bottleneck with good or bad decisions. How bad or how well we want to muddle through that bottleneck becomes the question. In this respect let’s try to make some wise choices. Wise choices can not be made in denial. Luck may intervene who knows but imagine luck intervening with good choices over bad.
We are at a critical moment in human history. Wise choices will amplify and leverage further wise choices. Poor choices may kill us.
Harquebus on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 6:40 pm
This why China can produce solar PV cheaply.
“workers from the nearby Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Company had been dumping this industrial waste in fields around their village every day for nine months. The liquid, silicon tetrachloride, was the byproduct of polysilicon production and it is a highly toxic substance. When exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride turns into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas, which can make people dizzy and cause breathing difficulties.”
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31478-china-s-communist-capitalist-ecological-apocalypse
GregT on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 7:35 pm
“Greg do you think Slime will be a major energy contributor or were you being facetious?”
All of those solar panels are somewhat redundant, without an industrial base to manufacture all of the stuff that we use that electricity for. Would you not agree?
In other words; Not only do we need to continue to use fossil fuels in the manufacturing and distribution process of solar panels, we also need to continue to use fossil fuels in the maintenance and upgrades to the electric grid, as well as in the manufacture and distribution of all of the stuff that we use that electricity for. Considering the fact that CO2 is accumulative in the environment, and we have already in all likelihood triggered a runaway greenhouse event, adding even more CO2 into the environment is a very stupid idea.
Therefore, the future belongs to cyanobacteria. AKA slime. Because we aren’t going to stop fucking up our planet until it is far beyond too late.
makati1 on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 8:21 pm
This fantasy sure brought out the techie dreamers. Not 1 in 100 understand total systems, or want to. Blinders are common in today’s world. The need to believe to alleviate the pain of reality is getting desperate.
ALL ‘renewables’, outside of sunshine on plants to produce consumable energy in the form of food or firewood, is a sad joke. ALL require excess energy to exist. NONE will ever be more than a small percentage of the energy mix. Extenders, if anything, but not long enough to make a difference. The 1700s lifestyle, or earlier, is a likely future for those who survive the next 10 or so years. Maybe much earlier.
A solar panel begins in several mines, not on the store shelf. It takes thousands of people along the chain to get there. Hundreds of machines, and a lot of hydrocarbon energy. Ditto for wind, wave or any other exotic idea. They ALL start as minerals in the mines and require similar processes along the way. All have limited useful lives of less than 20 years. By then, there will be no replacements or maintenance parts. End of story.
penury on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 8:48 pm
Makati I was going to say what you said, but you said it much better than I could have.
Ted Wilson on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 9:16 pm
Back in year 2001, US leadership argued that China and other developing countries should also reduce carbon.
At that time renewable energy was so expensive that everyone thought that it will take many decades for it to become cheaper.
Now China is the World #2 in Solar Power and World #1 in Wind energy.
Meanwhile India has started International Solar Alliance to promote solar power in every country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
In other front, China has raced ahead to become #1 in selling Electric vehicles.
rockman on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 9:26 pm
Interesting concept. But there may be an error in one assumption: affordability despite absolute necessity. The quickest way to explain this is use a concrete and very recent analogy: as many cornies have touted: We are saved: the “new” hz drilling and frac’ng technologies have saved us because the have provided us “SHALES!!!”.
Unfortunately it looks like we are in the process of learning this fallacy of logic: the prices needed for that new savior, “SHALES!!!” doesn’t seem to delivering a solution…not for what it was costing to develop the “SHALES!!!”. We seem to be learning that as the COST of energy get high enough the savior, “SHALES!!!”, despite the undeniable necessity, is not sustainable.
It’s great that one can slap together some panels and charge your cell or maybe power your entire house. But to what degree (and more important at what TOTAL cost) can the alts replace enough fossil fuels to maintain just the bare minimum to sustain the current “energy adequate” let along help the “energy poor”?
If you couldn’t followed those convolutions try it this way: if the economies could afford to sustain shale energy can we assume we can afford to sustain a SIGNIFICANT amount of alt energy?
Yes: easy to say “Yes we can!”. Now prove it with some realistic and financially valid models. And I’ll set a low initial bar: Replace just 25% of the Btu’s currently generate by fossil fuels. I’ll even grant some wild ass guesses for some of the costs. And remember we’re talking about the WORLD…not just the gluttonous USA.
And yes: feel free to use all the corn you want. But you also have to count the resultant starvation into your model.
rockman on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 9:47 pm
Ted – “Now China is the World #2 in Solar Power and World #1 in Wind energy.” Very good. And how much has China REDUCED its fossil fuel consumption as a result? Latest number suggest while its RATE OF GROWTH in fossil fuel consumption it is still consuming more than ever before. And that’s with those high alt rankings. Their alts might have reduced the need for some of the ADDITIONAL future energy requirements from ff…BUT has it replaced any of the existing demand?
As I’ve pointed out about Texas wind power: if we were a country we would tie for #4 in THE WORLD. And not only have we not replaced any fossil fuels as a result but are actually consuming a tad more. We are still THE COAL CONSUMING STATE by a very wide margin. Our huge alt build out has been a SUPPLIMENT for fossil fuels…not a replacement.
Here would be a more interesting stat IMHO then the ranking by the added alt Btu’s: how much previous ff Btu’s have been replaced by the alts. IOW what country has replaced the most fossil fuels by building out their alts? Does anyone know? IOW Texas has as much wind alt energy as the #2 and #3 states combined. But haven’t reduced our ff consumption by 1 Btu as a result of wind power.
twocats on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 9:59 pm
not gonna happen, but this is BP’s # and they’re just rat commie latte sipping bastards so you can’t trust it:
http://euanmearns.com/global-energy-trends-bp-statistical-review-2014/
GregT on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 10:26 pm
“In other front, China has raced ahead to become #1 in selling Electric vehicles.”
American consumers purchased more passenger vehicles than their Chinese counterparts for a second straight month.
Total light vehicles sales in the U.S. reached 1.58 million units in August, more than the 1.42 million units recorded in China.
Monthly sales of autos in the U.S. exceeded those in China in July for the first time since August 2009.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20150910/RETAIL/150919994/u.s.-tops-china-in-auto-sales-for-last-two-months
BobInget on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 10:32 pm
12/14/2015 09:10 am ET | Updated 14 hours ago
Jean-Pierre Pieuchot via Getty Images
A town council in North Carolina rejected plans to rezone land for a solar farm after residents voiced fears it would cause cancer, stop plants from growing and suck up all the energy from the sun.
Two citizens reportedly made the allegations at a Woodland Town Council meeting in Northampton County, northeastern North Carolina, on Wednesday.
Bobby Mann said the farm would “suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland,” the Roanoke-Chowan Herald-News reports.
Retired science teacher Jane Mann feared the proposed solar ranch could hinder photosynthesis — the process of converting light energy from the sun into chemical energy for fuel — in the area and stop plants from growing.
MIKE HARRINGTON VIA GETTY IMAGES
She added that no one could tell her solar panels didn’t cause cancer.
Other residents feared the effect it would have on the price of their homes.
Councilors were voting on whether to redefine agriculturally designated land off U.S. Highway 258 for manufacturing.
Strata Solar Company representative Brent Niemann told the meeting the only sunlight used would be that which fell on the panels directly. “The panels don’t draw additional sunlight,” he said.
He told councilors that the farm would have no effect on property prices and promised that no toxic substances would be kept on site.
But Woodland Town Council turned down the proposal, effectively stopping the company from building the planned renewable energy ranch. The council later voted to put a moratorium on future solar farms in the area, the Herald-News reports.
Solar Power World Online ranks North Carolina fourth in the U.S. for installed solar power capacity, with 161 companies employing 3,100 people in the industry.
dooma on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 10:56 pm
Nobody talks about BASE LOAD power. This is the energy that powers everything from industry to the air conditioners that cool the massive shopping centres.
As I have mentioned before, an aluminium smelter uses the equivalent power of approximately 170,000 homes. And that is just one industry. I worked in a coal-fired station that had one entire 500MW unit DEDICATED to running such a smelter.
If we are going to accept renewables as the replacement, humans have to drastically change the way they live. The infrastructure for solar, wind etc. may have become slightly cheaper but they cannot compete with $5 a tonne coal. And the sheer volume we will need is mind boggling. Also it is important to note that China is a major player in rare-earth metals game and has mentioned before that it might stop selling them to the world soon.
Renewables are the answer if we all live in solar-powered calculators. But as a viable alternative to fossil fuels-they simply cannot replace base load power.
Don’t get me wrong, I have seen first-hand the amount of pollution a coal-fired power station spews out into the atmosphere and I wish that they could be phased-out but the unfortunate truth is that the keep society functioning as we are used to..
GregT on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 11:20 pm
“If we are going to accept renewables as the replacement, humans have to drastically change the way they live.”
Us humans are going to have to drastically change the way we live regardless. Alternate electric power generation or not. And there are no such thing as renewables.
Davy on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 5:00 am
Systematically by nation or globally alt energy is not adequate on multiple fronts. As Rock said its systematic affordability as a transition energy source is not there. The “predicament Shales” show us how energy sources lack scale. We can afford alts in certain applications. There are sweet spots that make sense. There are applications that are niche applications where they are the best application.
We should be using alts in conjunction to fossil fuels for example in areas where we need to heat. Enhanced recovery with solar thermal seems a winner. Short’s regional oil production and refining strategy with solar or wind sounds exciting. Cogeneration is a great possibility. I will also mention using the sun or wind directly as heat sources or mechanical energy is always the best application. Sails for transport or solar for heating water. I think we should be using solar thermal to heat homes or complexes in connected heat utilities.
The biggest point to why alts are not a solution is cost of the change out and the opportunity cost of ending fossil fuel use. We have a huge build out of fossil fuel assets. This change out is beyond the scale of time and affordability. You can’t walk away from fossil fuels at the same time you build out a new system with alts. Fossil fuels themselves have a huge cost of extraction and maintenance. This is a predicament of an energy trap. We can’t transition now because of opportunity cost and direct costs.
We have the catch 22 of climate change. We cannot support 7Bil people without fossil fuels. Billions of people die if we stop or even lower fossil fuels to save what is left of our stable climate. I might add if anything is left. If you study our board Ape Man and his climate posts you come to the conclusion that abrupt and dangerous climate change is a likely given.
We then have the whole issue dooma brings up with base load and that issue points to lifestyle. I said in a previous post that application is the key. We are the problem. Our system which is non-negotiable is the problem. I say non-negotiable is the problem but only on the surface. We could change our system through different attitudes and lifestyles to lengthen our status quo system of complexity and energy intensity. Bellow this facade is a system that is unsustainable in “ANY” form.
Human civilization at the level we are at, with the populations we are at is simply not possible per the physics of our earth system. The only place for man longer term in the sense of normal species existence is in small bands of semi-nomadic people with a civilization with complexity an order of magnitude lower. Our energy intensity and complexity do not fit our earth system. This points to a population rebalance and possibly a bottleneck.
We just don’t know what kind of collapse process is ahead. Do we have a long emergency of a livable degree and duration of rebalance or a short strong wipe-out? Base load (lifestyles) of our complex civilization can be modified much lower. This is especially true with food and transport. I know grid is a very low aspect of transport but we could lower transport needs by changing lifestyles that lower base load demand. Localize food, end poor leisure lifestyles, stop living in high energy locations are short examples. End consumerism and begin an age of only producing what is needed in quantities that are needed with quality that lasts.
None of this matter with population so large. Yet, all of this is possible in a sense of having a chance at a “transition of survival” not “transition of status quo”. Any of these changes to baseload lifestyle of modern man will end the status quo. Our system cannot be degrowth without economic bifurcation. This bifurcation is nothing more than decay. Decay of supply and demand of all those requirements of modern civilization produced with economies of scale will reduce complexity and population. Do the math. Abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational will creep in to end what we have and initiate crisis that forces rebalance of consumption and population.
It is conceivable this can be done with some luck. We can fall from a level and land at another that is by today’s standards vastly different world but something. This “WILL” happen because we will be forced into it by limits of growth and systematic decay. We have a window of descent for a smaller amount of pain and suffering with a better landing at stability.
Wise choices now will be leveraged up one hundred times when the status quo is no longer. When society can no longer produce things like water purifiers or lighting systems having these applications properly applied in a collapsing world is absolutely valuable. An immensely expensive football stadium has little value post collapse.
We can’t have what we have now with alts. Base load lifestyles will and must change. There are ways of doing some of this but mostly we have suffering ahead. Climate is likely destabilized. We may be able to delay this or reduce the worst. We surely can lower some population exposure to the worst of a destabilized climate. Complex energy intensive civilization is at the end of the road. Population and consumption will rebalance per physics of the earth system. We have some strategies to adapt. There are some tactics to delay. The war with nature will be lost but maybe a peace with nature can be found.
rockman on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 8:00 am
Davy – I got to thinking: my request was too grand in scale. How about someone trying to make an estimate for replacing 25% of California’s energy consumption (including transportation) with alts: what would that cost? The already have some of the best alt stats/policies in the country.
I’m surprised that some alt cornie didn’t come up with the “if we just spent $X of the amount we spend on fossil fuels we could have Y Btu’s of alt energy”. The obvious problem is that the economies can’t quickly give up a lot of fossil fuels and redirect that capex to the alts. For some period of time both dynamics have to be feed a huge amount of capital.
Very old cliché but still true: you can’t keep your cake and eat it at the same time: you can’t do both…pick one. Everything I perceive going on in the alt world is really just very small nibbles around the edges of the world’s energy cake. Same is true for controlling GHG emissions IMHO.
Practicalmaina on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 10:04 am
I think that many areas would be fine only consuming 25% of the power they currently use. Think about california, you have unsustainable agriculture pumping way more water than needed, drip irrigation is a game changer and should be implemented pretty much everywhere immediately, a huge indoor marijuana industry running high intensity lights and ridiculous acs all over the state. Hollywood Mcmansions for all the hacks, Bruce Jenner needed a talented surgery team for days of work to distract the world from him plowing into a prius with his suv trailer and dune buggy, killing the other driver, this while kids and veterans are all waiting for plastic surgery that is much more needed. Server banks so people can play dumb games on there phones, oil and manufacturing industry that is extremely energy intensive and could be shrunk but we need to keep business as usual. We need to keep the former governorator, one of the largest champions for solar in this country rolling in a 9 thousand pound hummer. IMHO just updating all air conditioners and refrigerators in cali would represent huge savings, as well as a huge undertaking. I have read some interesting websites about how the first refrigerators were as efficient as what we have now because power was so expensive, thick insulation and no defrost cycle, and they did not put condensing coils under the device where it will just reheat the fridge. That is disgusting that here we are 75 years later just getting back to kind of efficient. I understand we need manufacturing but you would think the people who put a man on the moon over 4 decades ago would be able to smelt metal using exclusively the sun on a large scale in the country’s massive south-western deserts.
rockman on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 10:44 am
P – “I think that many areas would be fine only consuming 25% of the power they currently use.” Perhaps but not likely IMHO. But that’s a moot point because that isn’t what I’m asking: how much would it cost for CA to REPLACE 25% of it current energy now supplied by fossil fuels by expanding alts?
But you do have a point about increasing conservation as a more affordable approach IMHO to reducing SOME ff consumption. But on the downside: reduce CA ff consumption to 25% how many hundreds of thousands would lose their better paying jobs? No one is going to pay most of those folks what they were making now for by hoeing a field by hand.
Davy on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 11:08 am
Practicalmaina where are you from? I am from the Ozarks of Missouri. I always like knowing where others are from.
Practicalmaina on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 11:20 am
Rockman, very true. But in this fantasy world where we have gotten people to consume a 1/4 of what they currently do there would need to be so much organization and mobilization to reach the 25% renewable goal that there would need to be many many employed to do so. If cali was utilizing all of its vast renewable resources, being a massive state, you would need people who were formerly working offshore oil operations to hook up offshore wind. You would need engineers to run the solar smelting plants, maybe hire some low skilled people to scare birds away from the focal point :). (I’ve heard of some airports hiring falconers to keep geese outta the way of the turbines) You would need to retrofit millions of houses with more attic insulation, better acs, silicon valley would probably have a hand in the new cutting edge refrigerator design that we currently need. And permaculture! I feel like most ceo’s in this nation would be more useful hoeing a field, not that they would be very good at it. Theres not the same money in it as grossly overpaid cali executives but with the price of organic food, if you have a small parcel of land i could see making my income or very close to it (low for cali but good enough for Maine) just by intensive permaculture.I do not see diminished economic activity as the major sticking point for preventing these changes. Its more about people who see whats going on such as members of this site, not being able to get significant numbers of people doing anything, I will admit, a huge portion of my generation would rather just play video games.
Practicalmaina on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 11:28 am
Davy I am from South western Maine, between the edge of the white mountains and Sebago lake. But i just moved to central Maine for a short stint and am probably going to head further North for cheap land when I get ready to be a full time farmer. I love south western portion but being close to the eastern corridor property isn’t very cheap. There is a lot of area up north where you can get property for a song and theres a good chance it will have some running water on it. Small hydropower seems like the perfect solution to me, (2 cheap for the grid and any substantial battery system, unless Tesla really does a number.)
Davy on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 11:56 am
Practical, I have heard good things about Maine for preppers, good luck.
Practicalmaina on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 12:16 pm
Thanks man, same to you. As long as not to many people figure it out and climate change does not quickly make the ticks worst for deer and moose than it is great for prepping. I wonder to what extent people would spill out of the city’s on the east coast, if food instability happened. So many people in the area to the south of here but there is much more farmland in places like Mass or New Jersey than i would expect. I have family who lives in mass, about 30 minutes outside of Boston and they have a neighbor who is constantly harvesting game from the area, mostly deer, but every couple spring there will be hundreds of rabbits in there local park. Blows my mind a little bit.
kanon on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 3:36 pm
ROCKMAN: “Davy – I got to thinking: my request was too grand in scale. How about someone trying to make an estimate for replacing 25% of California’s energy consumption (including transportation) with alts: what would that cost? The already have some of the best alt stats/policies in the country.”
You should think also of what culd be called systems change. Replace one mega highway interchange with expanded public transportation, for example. While out imaginations are limited, I think we can see that alt energy implies different ways of doing things. Switching from ICE motor vehicle transportation would make a huge difference in energy consumption, IMHO. Just because the current status quo cannot be saved with alt energy is no reason to give up hope.
Davy on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 5:14 pm
Kannon, If we are real and turn our backs on denial we can properly utilize the best of our current technology before it is too late. What is happening is we are fully committed to the status quo. Evan the greenies are committed to status quo just an alternative view of the status quo. Our hope needs to be for less pain and suffering when the status quo is no more. We have misplaced hope and that is our problem.
dooma on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 6:42 pm
kanon, how I wish it was true that we should not give up hope on renewables, they are just another false and misleading saviour to our current predicament.
Just as “clean coal” and “carbon capture” are. These pie in the sky options only take the focus away from preparing for the crash that is coming.
We should have started the transition at the very least, one to two decades ago. It is too late now.
And there is not a single politician in either your or my country that has the balls to bring in lifestyle-changing legislation. As it would be political suicide. Unfortunately politics has turned into a game of maintaining the status quo-at all costs. Not about making important decisions that my upset the electorate.
Apneaman on Wed, 16th Dec 2015 4:42 pm
I think the future will belong to microorganisms.
More extreme weather is causing more blackouts; some US utilities unprepared and underfunded
UPGRADES ARE COSTLY, BUT SO ARE OUTAGES
“Hundreds of companies own and manage the equipment that makes up the U.S. power grid. They range from large investor-owned companies like New York’s Consolidated Edison to small municipal utilities and cooperatives like Coast Electric, and each faces a unique set of challenges.
When Hurricane Irene hit the Northeast in 2011, it marked the first time in the history of Con Ed that more than 200,000 customers lost power from a storm. Superstorm Sandy struck just 14 months later, quickly followed by a devastating Nor’easter, leaving 1.1 million customers in the dark.
“It was clear to us that weather patterns were changing fundamentally. Severe weather events were becoming more frequent and devastating,” Allan Drury, a Con Ed spokesman, said in an email.”
http://staugustine.com/news/national-news/2015-12-16/more-extreme-weather-causing-more-blackouts-some-us-utilities#.VnHcur-7T6N
GregT on Wed, 16th Dec 2015 5:14 pm
Earth in the Future
Module 7: Ocean Acidification, Red Tides, and Monster Jellyfish
Cyanobacteria and CyanoHABs
Finally, HABs are not always produced by dinoflagellates and diatoms. Cyanobacteria, or blue green algae, another group of single-celled organism, but one that is prokaryotic rather than eukaryotic, is also known to produce extremely potent toxins that can cause illness in fish, birds and mammals including humans.
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/691
The future belongs to cyanobacteria. AKA slime.
GregT on Wed, 16th Dec 2015 5:22 pm
Mass Extinctions And ‘Rise Of Slime’ Predicted For Oceans
Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world’s oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080813144405.htm
PracticalMaina on Thu, 17th Dec 2015 11:20 am
Apneaman, all the more reason to pursue your own energy options. I think the grid is pretty much screwed, but look at how much power you really need. We could all light homes, to some extent, with LEDs, charge a laptop or cell phones for communication on what? a small 80 watt panel tied to a 12v systems, simplicity. Given you need water supply and refrigeration, cooking ect, space conditioning. But these all have lower tech solutions that have been practiced by humans for a very long time. (Refrigeration in a humid environment would probably be pretty difficult with no advanced tech.)