Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Some big numbers from Germany for the 22nd April.

Renewables hit record 77 percent of German power on Easter Monday

Martyn1981

RE is hitting a tipping point in the US, out generating coal in April, and suggestions it could be beating coal more months, and on an annual basis in a few years time.

US renewables production outstrips coal for first time ever

Martyn1981

Article looking at the necessary action for the UK to meet 2050 targets. I'm not sure these look particularly hard nor painful. Most of them seem to simply be choosing a greener option that now, or very soon will be of a similar cost or cheaper than the current option. So cost competitive RE leccy, or a BEV with similar TCO (total cost of ownership) when fuel and maintenance savings are taken into account.

If 'the change' isn't hard nor scary, then critics, Luddites, dotards and laggards will have trouble arguing against it .... but they will try, I'm sure.

‘Do it now’: UK must set zero-carbon target for 2050, say official advisers

What zero emissions in 2050 would mean for the UK

The Committee on Climate Change says cutting greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 is necessary, affordable and desirable. Here are some of the actions needed to make that happen:

• Petrol and diesel cars banned from sale ideally by 2030 and 2035 at the latest.

• Quadrupling clean electricity production from wind, solar and perhaps nuclear, plus batteries to store it and connections to Europe to share the load.

• Connection of new homes to the gas grid ending in 2025, with boilers using clean hydrogen or replaced by electric powered heat pumps. Plus, all homes and appliances being highly efficient.

• Beef, lamb and dairy consumption falling by 20%, though this is far lower than other studies recommend and a bigger shift to plant-based diets would make meeting the zero target easier.

• A fifth of all farmland – 15% of the UK – being converted to tree planting and growing biofuel crops and restoration of peat bogs. This is vital to take CO2 out of the air to balance unavoidable emissions from cattle and planes.

• 1.5bn new trees will be needed, meaning more than 150 football pitches a day of new forests from now to 2050.

• Flying would not be banned, but the number of flights will depend on how much airlines can cut emissions with electric planes or biofuels.

Similar article, and again nothing particularly scary:

‘This report will change your life’: what zero emissions means for UK

JKenH

Interesting article suggesting moving to zero emissions can be a positive benefit to the UK economy.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/05/02/three-cheers-climate-committee-no-cost-zero-emissions/

silverwhistle

I've just read on my phone quite the most biaised article I've seen for some time from the US magazine Forbes arguing against RE from somebody who is "NY Times Environmental Champion", or some such.



No direct advocacy of any alternative, although natural gas is seen as an alternative and coal gets some positive mentions. No mention of the issues with !!!!!!, particularly in view of recent well publicised issues, although Kenyan wind turbines and bird deaths get a mention. At the same time criticises Germany both for its RE policy and for digging up coal with no mention of why they have needed to, at least in the short term.



Ah, here we are, found it on my PC, take the bones out of this:



https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the-reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-meant-to/#506736a8ea2b

Martyn1981

silverwhistle wrote: »

Ah, here we are, found it on my PC, take the bones out of this:

I suspect this is one of those diversionary tactics. Get us to discuss/debate German emissions and a cherry picked wind farm in Kenya. Once we go down that rabbit hole we are no longer debating the wins elsewhere.

I think Forbes could do much better than this.

Anyways, off the top of my head, I'd suggest for Germany:
1. Their emissions have been flat despite a large growth in their economy.
2. Flat, despite their nuclear fleet running down, and RE picking up all the slack.
3. Flat, despite their exports increasing significantly.

So, 1 is impressive, but hides a reduction in real terms. 2 is also impressive but hides the underlying reductions that will impact FF generation too. And 3 hides an actual reduction in emissions, but for political reasons, legislation, and a very strong mining influence in Parliament is a pain in the backside, which when it finally gives, will bring strong reductions - but the rest of Europe will lose that cheap (and dirty) excess.

As for the premise that RE can't do it all - well, it looks like it can, the UK has shifted ~30% leccy gen to RE in 10yrs, and wind and PV are now a fraction of the price, going subsidy free, and still getting better and cheaper, and leccy or bio-energy solutions seem possible now for transport, space heating and industrial gas needs.

I think this article is about 5yrs too late, as it's arguing against the possibility of something that's actually starting to happen.

silverwhistle

Quite! As I said, he's ignored an awful lot of the relevant background. How he was ever a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" I hate to think.



Forbes is an business magazine I believe. Have they not noticed where the smart money is investing? Desperate stuff really.

silverwhistle

More evidence of the declining role of coal: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/08/britain-passes-1-week-without-coal-power-for-first-time-since-1882

To quote the article:

Fintan Slye, the director of National Grid ESO, said he believed Britain’s electricity system could be run with zero carbon as soon as 2025.

GreatApe

silverwhistle wrote: »

More evidence of the declining role of coal: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/08/britain-passes-1-week-without-coal-power-for-first-time-since-1882

To quote the article:

One of the big main benefits of the UK coal fleet is that it allowed switching of gas and coal and arguably that kept the gas monopolies more honest than they otherwise might have been

Not long ago, just the UK could swing its gas consumption down by as much as 50GWt by just firing up the coal fleet to displace the gas fleet.

Still the UK retains the ability to swing down its gas consumption by 20GWt by ramping up existing coal plants but once they are all closed in a few years the UK will lose its ability to reduce gas consumption.

This provided safeguards to malfunctions, accidents on pipelines or even terrorists damaging pipelines or the Russians or norway ramping down production just enough to manipulate prices higher

This is less of a problem now thanks mostly to shale gas and the big USA ramp up in LNG exports but I still do wonder if its not expensive to keep these coal plants in a mothballed state it might be worth keeping them just for this backup of security of supply

Might sound negative keeping 10GW of coal plants on mothball but trust me just one single day of the grid going down would be a bigger economic and human tragedy than a year of burning coal

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I suspect this is one of those diversionary tactics. Get us to discuss/debate German emissions and a cherry picked wind farm in Kenya. Once we go down that rabbit hole we are no longer debating the wins elsewhere.

I think Forbes could do much better than this.

Anyways, off the top of my head, I'd suggest for Germany:
1. Their emissions have been flat despite a large growth in their economy.
2. Flat, despite their nuclear fleet running down, and RE picking up all the slack.
3. Flat, despite their exports increasing significantly.

So, 1 is impressive, but hides a reduction in real terms. 2 is also impressive but hides the underlying reductions that will impact FF generation too. And 3 hides an actual reduction in emissions, but for political reasons, legislation, and a very strong mining influence in Parliament is a pain in the backside, which when it finally gives, will bring strong reductions - but the rest of Europe will lose that cheap (and dirty) excess.

As for the premise that RE can't do it all - well, it looks like it can, the UK has shifted ~30% leccy gen to RE in 10yrs, and wind and PV are now a fraction of the price, going subsidy free, and still getting better and cheaper, and leccy or bio-energy solutions seem possible now for transport, space heating and industrial gas needs.

I think this article is about 5yrs too late, as it's arguing against the possibility of something that's actually starting to happen.

The arguments are not that wind and solar (but esp wind) can not produce significant amounts of energy. The arguments have always been that it is not economic vs using existing fossil fuel power stations and that the task becomes more difficult the more you deploy

This is why the idea of exponential growth of PV & Wind failed both in Germany and now globally (with last year solar + pv install rate flat vs the year before)

Will wind and PV displace fossil fuel usage in Europe yes it will but it will be slow and it will be costly (look at the two huge multi billion ££ HVDC lines the national grid had to build from scotland to england just because of wind power needed much more transmission infrastructure than the old central plants as evidence that we did not need those HVDC lines for decades before wind)

Electricity usage is also going to have to boom in the period 2035-2050 as transport and heating is electrified on mass so much so that electricity usage will probably be 2-3 x what it is today. So it is not just the case of deploy wind farms for £50/MWh it is the case of having to deploy wind farms for £50/MWh and upgrade the grid massively and build lots and lots more HVDC lines both nationally and to other countries and also very likely have to build out a fleet of 100GW of CCGTs to back it all up of which they will probably have to be idle 95% of the time which means you spend £100 billion (or whatever) on backup infra-suture to only use it a few hours a year

Is all this impossible? No
Just like you could in theory go totally off grid in a typical house with just 4KWp of solar PV and a 500KWh battery pack. So yes it is 'possible' but how many people have the £200,000 to spend on such a system that might last just 25 years and cost close to £11,000 per year (depreciation and interest) when they can just keep using the current system and pay £400 a year

Now its not that big a difference to do it nationally mostly thanks to not having to be pure solar but a combination of wind solar nuclear and interconnectors and biomass and backup gas but still its going to be slow and expensive