The Alternative Green Energy Thread

joefizz

Pile_o_stone said:

Looks like this was a combination of underinvestment in their energy network -

Ive mentioned this before on here but this is one of, if not the biggest issue going forward. The years of underinvestment in infrastructure. I did a tour of central parts of the US last year with one of the primary focusses being the aging infrastructure (bridges, roads, electricity, gas etc) as well as new tech and AI. At times in parts of the US it was like being in a third world country with reliance on infrastructure built in the 50s and 60s and at the limit of its serviceable life. Of course the US systems are set up this way with private companies milking as much as possible out of it with the Chapter 11 fallback. We are seeing the same thing starting here where leveraged companies will go bust leaving ultimately the taxpayer to pick up the tab.

Its why when they talk about the new green deals they really mean new infrastructure deals but with green tech at the forefront.

Everyone talks a good game with RE and I'll disagree with the future plans for wind etc because the plans for the next 7-14 years are out there if you know where to look but in a lot of cases its not the building of offshore wind but what to do with it when it gets ashore and feeds into the older, aging networks. Thats going to take the government and ultimately taxpayers to churn up the printing presses and inevitably that upgrading and by its nature, reliability will cost and cost dearly (either in direct costs of electricity or increased/new taxes).

In the last couple of weeks the overhead lines supplying my local substation have been replaced with beefed up underground lines as well as work at the substation to increase capability of two way transfer (so that any new solar installations dont just feed the houses around them but further up the grid).  This wasnt done as a 'green' investment per se but as an end of serviceable life upgrade using whats readily available now. Its piecemeal but with the new led lighting in the area, its being upgraded very slowly as older things wear out.

Thats been my argument for EVs/hydrogen cars for years, extend the serviceable life of everything already made and only then upgrade.

We will start to see the effects of infrastructure investment (in the EU and US soon, maybe in the UK too at some point) but it is going to cost us.

Pile_o_stone

DiggerUK said:

I would happily abandon my support for fossil fuels if nuclear could be accepted, I would even stay quiet with my opposition to solar and wind, I just want reliable supplies of electricity...

I'll inform the Prime Minister, I think he was having sleepless nights about how to square the circle of the world needing to move to renewable energy sources and your support for fossil fuels. I'm glad we seem to have a solution and the whole country, nay world, can now move on.

JKenH

Tesla Battery Day Will Be Critical For Energy Division As Well As For Vehicles

Summary

New battery developments will be critical to increase competitive advantage in the energy storage business.

New battery production volume will be critical to enable Tesla to meet increasing demand.

Utilities and residential businesses continue to show great promise for Tesla.

Electrical generation likely to become a new driver for Tesla's energy storage battery business and for the company's growth as a whole.

Tesla's Autobidder system and technical lead give it substantial arbitrage revenue opportunities in electrical generation and energy storage.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4373962-tesla-battery-day-will-be-critical-for-energy-division-well-for-vehicles

Pile_o_stone

Interesting article I just stumbled across. The article is over 3 years old but still relevent as I'd imagine nothing will have been done in that time with these polluters:

"Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says

A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change

The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change, according to the report.

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks."

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

JKenH

Pile_o_stone said:

Interesting article I just stumbled across. The article is over 3 years old but still relevent as I'd imagine nothing will have been done in that time with these polluters:

"Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says

A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change

The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change, according to the report.

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks."

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

Probably a bit out of date now. Quoting 3 year old emissions statistics is not a good look unless one wants to restart an argument that has died a death. We can all do our bit though to stop buying the products that keep the oil companies in business -that is if we are really bothered. If not we can just carry on enjoying our centrally heated homes and driving our fossil cars and hope the oil companies will see the light, say to hell with keeping the lights on, let’s just stop production now.

You doubt that much has changed but I think you will find, once you get up to date with the Guardian, that BP and Shell have taken onboard the need to reduce emissions and have even joined in powering the EV revolution.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/16/shell-unveils-plans-to-become-net-zero-carbon-company-by-2050?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Perhaps, as the matter is raised in the article, you can explain to me how divesting fossil fuel investments works to cut world CO2 emissions, please. It makes sense for a pension fund or individual investor to reduce their exposure to stranded assets. It may force the likes of BP and Shell to change policy and cut back on extraction, but the slack is likely to be taken up by the larger entities that are state owned and less environmentally aware (Gasprom, National Iranian Oil Co, Aramco etc) so could be counterproductive.

Anyway thanks for keeping us up to date.

JKenH

It’s a lovely September day and coal is currently providing 6.4% (2.3 GW) of our generation and wind is in the Doldrums. 

Security of supply is going to be an issue soon. Even at 2030 levels of wind generation it would be insufficient to fill the gap. We need to move the RE focus away from new turbines and solar farms and focus on storage if we are going to make any progress. To maintain today’s generation without coal and gas we would need 20 x our current wind generation capacity. We currently have the capacity to produce up to 17 GW when conditions are favourable or in the region of half our electricity needs on a typical day. If we increase wind by a factor of 20 we will at times only be using 10% of capacity.  Is it economic to use wind turbines at that level of utilisation? How does the cost then compare to gas or storage?

Drax in their Electric Insights report predict we will need 30GW (sic) of storage by 2030.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/report-2019-q3/detail/how-much-energy-storage-will-we-need?start=2020-09-15&_k=jau8uo

 In the last 12 hours we have used 220GWH from gas and generated 10GWH each by wind and solar. If we are assuming we will have doubled our wind and solar generation by 2030 we will have had another 20GWH of VRE available but we still need to make up 200GWH of gas generation from storage or some other source. Let’s assume that by midnight last night our storage capacity was full (30GWH) we would have had a shortfall by noon of 170GWH. (The reality is of course that last night there was little wind and after sundown whatever was in storage would have been used up.) Imports have provided less than coal in case anyone thinks they are the answer. What if we get several days in a row like this?

While I would love to get to 95% RE generation I just don’t see how we are going to do it with the assumptions currently in place. Everyone looks at totals and averages of RE generation but ignores the lows and the big gaps they cause that we just won’t be able to fill. We need massive investment in storage.

Pile_o_stone

JKenH said:

Probably a bit out of date now. Quoting 3 year old emissions statistics is not a good look unless one wants to restart an argument that has died a death. We can all do our bit though to stop buying the products that keep the oil companies in business -that is if we are really bothered. If not we can just carry on enjoying our centrally heated homes and driving our fossil cars and hope the oil companies will see the light, say to hell with keeping the lights on, let’s just stop production now.

You doubt that much has changed but I think you will find, once you get up to date with the Guardian, that BP and Shell have taken onboard the need to reduce emissions and have even joined in powering the EV revolution.

Yes, I'm sure that everything has changed in the last three years. *rolls eyes*.

The point of posting this was that so much of the emissions are created by so few companies. Instead of the public wearing hairshirts (as you seem to be suggesting), maybe we need to look at the big polluters and get them to change their ways? 

As you've said - the fossil fuel companies are making changes, so it obviously can be done. Perhaps they could do more and do it faster? Or do you think they should they just carry on as they were?

JKenH

Pile_o_stone said:

JKenH said:

 In the last 12 hours we have used 220GW of gas and generated 10GWH each by wind and solar. 

I don't understand your usage of different units of measurement here. I'm not sure how you can do an accurate comparison when you compare GW against GWH?

My mistake should be 220GWH. Thank you, I’ll correct it.

JKenH

Pile_o_stone said:

JKenH said:

Probably a bit out of date now. Quoting 3 year old emissions statistics is not a good look unless one wants to restart an argument that has died a death. We can all do our bit though to stop buying the products that keep the oil companies in business -that is if we are really bothered. If not we can just carry on enjoying our centrally heated homes and driving our fossil cars and hope the oil companies will see the light, say to hell with keeping the lights on, let’s just stop production now.

You doubt that much has changed but I think you will find, once you get up to date with the Guardian, that BP and Shell have taken onboard the need to reduce emissions and have even joined in powering the EV revolution.

Yes, I'm sure that everything has changed in the last three years. *rolls eyes*.

The point of posting this was that so much of the emissions are created by so few companies. Instead of the public wearing hairshirts (as you seem to be suggesting), maybe we need to look at the big polluters and get them to change their ways? 

As you've said - the fossil fuel companies are making changes, so it obviously can be done. Perhaps they could do more and do it faster? Or do you think they should they just carry on as they were?

It was not made clear in the Guardian article that Scope 1 emissions released by the coal, oil and gas companies as part of extraction/refining etc only account for about 10% of the Scope 3 emissions from the use of their products or in the case of BP 5%. The ‘public’ are therefore responsible for 90% of the emissions attributed to fossil fuels so we can do something about it if we try as can the Carbon Majors. If we cut our consumption by 10% it will achieve the same result as the Carbon Majors reducing their Scope1 emissions to zero. If they were able to achieve zero emissions during production it would only reduce total emissions from fossil fuels by 10%. Only we, the public, can get rid of the remaining 90%.

I am not pretending that the companies listed are whiter than white but you have kindly provided the information to demonstrate that we, the general public, must also assume some responsibility ourselves. We can’t enjoy the benefits of modern civilisation without acknowledging the cost of those choices we have made.

I am not suggesting we all wear hair shirts but we each have the choice to do so if we feel that strongly about it. I have the utmost respect for those that do make that choice but less so for those who moan about capitalism and accept no responsibility for their own actions.  I like all of us on here have played my part in contributing to CO2 emissions as throughout most of my life I have enjoyed being warm in winter, having had cooked food to eat, electric light to read by, pumped water to my home, television to watch and the convenience of either public or private transport to get me around. I also have had the protection of our armed forces and the emergency services and NHS none of which would have been possible had it not been for the role played by the supposedly evil fossil fuel companies. 

BTW are you going to explain how divestment helps?

ABrass

Yes it is economic to overbuild wind and solar, there's loads of reports saying it's still cheaper than alternatives.

We're currently expecting to triple our current wind capacity by 2030, that's probably a low estimate. The CF is likely to be higher as well as newer ones are higher performing.

Storage solutions like Hydrogen answer these worries quite easily. When wind is low you burn green hydrogen, when the wind is full tilt, and more than is needed for current use, you use the surplus energy to split green hydrogen. When the wind is mediocre then you stop producing hydrogen and send the power to the grid instead.