Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Big milestone for German RE generation in Q1, and a small mention of a lignite powerstation closing down. [I assume the difference between generation and consumption reflects net exports.]

Renewables smash German Q1 records

Renewables covered just over half of Germany’s gross power consumption in the first quarter of 2020, an “all-time high”, according to the Federal Association of Energy and Water Management (BDEW).
The 52% figure, compared with 44.4% in the same period in 2019, was due to “record winds in February, followed by an unusually sunny March”.

Germany generated nearly 158 billion kilowatt-hours of gross power in the first quarter of 2020, down almost 7% from the same period last year.
Consumption stood at 148 billion kWh, compared with 151 billion kWh in the first quarter of 2019, BDEW and ZSW found.
Solar, wind and other renewable sources collectively produced around 77 billion kWh of electricity, compared with 67.1 billion kWh in the same period in 2019.
Onshore wind accounted for nearly 43 billion kWh, offshore wind produced 9 billion kWh. Biomass supplied 11 billion kWh and solar 7 billion kWh.
The 1400MW Philippsburg 2 nuclear power station was disconnected from the grid and lignite-fired power stations with a collective capacity 760MW were taken offline in late 2019.

michaels

Not news but fascinating (to me)

Martyn1981

It's always been one of my favourite graphics for helping to visualise how much less RE we need to produce, to replace all of the FF energy that is mined/extracted. The gross FF figure is staggering, yet we achieved it, so 'only' having to meet the net energy figure is a simpler task, but one that the FF advocates would have us believe is impossible ...... hmm, irony!

Martyn1981

Perhaps one of the good problems going forward?

GWEC study warns of offshore wind ‘skills gap’

Emerging offshore wind markets will need over 77,000 trained workers by 2024 to support growth targets, a new Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) report has found.
‘Powering the Future: Global Offshore Wind Workforce Outlook 2020-2024’ provides “qualitative analysis” of the workforce training needs to deliver 31GW of forecast installations in North America, China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea.

EVandPV

Must be blowing a hoolie up north today.  

Martyn1981

Large reduction in US oil production, and also spending going forward. Looking more and more like Russia/Saudi Arabia are trying to break US/Canadian unconventional oil production to help bolster future prices and income.

US shale industry expected to shrink sharply as oil price falls

The US shale industry is expected to shrink by more than 2m barrels a day following a collapse in global oil prices which has forced oil producers to shut down their fracking rigs.

Rystad Energy expects the US shale industry to shrink by 2.1m barrels a day, or 2% of global supplies, compared with forecasts for the industry before the coronavirus outbreak.

Many smaller oil producers also began shutting their wells earlier this month as excess oil supplies threatened to overwhelm storage facilities. The glut of oil has led to negative oil prices in some inland areas of the US because the cost of transporting oil to refineries or ports is higher than the market price per barrel.

Martyn1981

Little and large.

Welsh tidal secures triple boost

Tidal energy developers Sabella, Magallanes and HydroQuest plan to deploy their technologies at the Morlais project off the coast of Anglesey in North Wales.

US passes 100GW wind milestone

The US now has more than 100GW of wind installed after it connected some 9.1GW of new projects to the grid last year.

Total US capacity now stands at 105GW, with 2019 additions representing 39 percent of all utility scale power additions to the grid nationally.

The figures, published in an annual report by US wind association AWEA, show wind is the largest provider of renewable energy in the country, supplying over seven percent of the nation’s electricity last year.

Martyn1981

Long wait, but should be a fascinating result, as on-shore wind and solar get to fight for CfD funding at last, and off-shore wind has gotten so much cheaper in the last auctions.

Pot 1 technologies set to take centre stage in competitive CfD auction

The next Contracts for Difference (CfD) round is set to be fiercely competitive as solar is allowed to compete for the first time in years.

Due to take place in 2021, Pot 1 technologies such as solar and onshore wind could make up nearly half of the competitors in Allocation Round 4 (AR4), according to analytics company Cornwall Insight.

The company’s Renewables Tracker found that there was 13GW of projects likely to compete, based on eligibility and when planning permission was submitted. Of these, 5.5GW are Pot 1 technologies.

The rest will consist of 6GW of offshore wind and ~1.0GW of Pot 2 technologies, of which a significant proportion will be Remote Island Wind (RIW).

Exiled_Tyke

Coastalwatch said:

Covid-19 daily bulletin: Renewables squeezing out fossil fuels as energy demand plunges

U.S.-owned analyst Wood Mackenzie today reported declines in European gas and coal generation have been driven by the recent grid connection of renewable plants in combination with Covid-19 dampening energy demand. High volumes of solar power generated in Germany over the weekend squeezed the business case for fossil fuels even further, WoodMac reported in its weekly Covid-19 round-up, although a recovery in the energy price did restore margins for gas plants in Germany, Italy and Spain this week.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-daily-bulletin-renewables-squeezing-out-fossil-fuels-as-energy-demand-plunges/

And in addition another curve appears to be being flattened:   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52331534

If any amount of these changes are not reversed post COVID-19 then the case for RE will only get stronger and dependency on storage looks like reducing (slightly) which is all good news. 

Coastalwatch

Having read Rachel Maddows book Blowout and the mess that Oil and Gas industries generate I was still surprised by the scale of the problems resulting in the USA and Canada. The article below lays bare what mess has been created and how little effort or finance has been set aside for it's eventual clean up. All I can add is thank goodness Fracking never got a hold over here!

A Tale Of Two Cleanups: Oil Sands Vs Mining

Over the past few months, I’ve had a set of conversations with entrepreneurs, academics, and engineers engaged in new technical solutions for cleaning up the tailing ponds that follow on from oil sands petroleum extraction and hard mineral mining. There are some key insights I’ve gained from this that will shape cleanup of the mess the petroleum industry leaves behind as it dwindles.

The fading of the industry is something I’ve assessed and published on regularly. Most recently, it was the fiscal implications of a stock market subject to the fragile and volatile commodity prices of oil and gas. Much of the recent loss of the Dow Jones Index was from that sector, a trend which started in roughly 2015, and is just exacerbated by the pandemic. The industry is rife with debt and bloated executive compensation packages, which combined with the projected reductions in future demand is leading major global banks to pull financing and seize assets, not giving fossil fuel companies the opportunity to shift assets around under cover of bankruptcy.

The particulars of Alberta’s cleanup mess was an other subject of assessment. As I wrote at the beginning of the year, the industry’s cleanup liabilities are close to a quarter of a trillion dollars in that province alone, and they’ve set aside less than 10% of that, something mirrored more than not globally. Canada’s ‘ethical oil’ doesn’t look that ethical in light of the toxic mess it will leave behind. As I said then, the cleanup would end up being a Canadian federally funded ongoing project, like Superfund sites in the US. And it’s coming to pass.

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/04/15/a-tale-of-two-cleanups-oil-sands-vs-mining/?utm_source=CleanTechnica+News+(2020)&utm_campaign=ec1843a7e0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_01_29_12_34_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b9b83ee7eb-ec1843a7e0-332776605