Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

sendler2112 · Dec 18, 2018

What framework could we develope for a carbon tax which would begin to put a real market price on it. Ideally it would be applied to coal, oil, and gas, right where it comes out of the ground. And must be implemented equally throughout the world so that no one area is at an economic disadvantage. Who whould collect it? Who would disperse it? The resulting increase in prices of all goods and services wouldn't have to crush the lower wealth groups if the money was used progressively to help them.

cricketo · Dec 18, 2018

sendler2112 said:
What framework could we develope for a carbon tax which would begin to put a real market price on it. Ideally it would be applied to coal, oil, and gas, right where it comes out of the ground. And must be implemented equally throughout the world so that no one area is at an economic disadvantage. Who whould collect it? Who would disperse it? The resulting increase in prices of all goods and services wouldn't have to crush the lower wealth groups if the money was used progressively to help them.

There is a different approach. You can make renewables and EVs more lucrative through variety of ways, and make the market take care of it. Kind of like War on Drugs.

Hillhater · Dec 18, 2018

billvon said:
Here's the catastrophic scenario. .......

That could all happen bill......
.....dispite every effort the world makes to eliminate Anthopogenic emmissions to zero.
Just imagine if your bet on AGW theory is wrong, and all the climate change effects,..CO2, temperature, etc etc...are actually resulting from some other "natural" effect, and are unaffected by the enormous waste of resources and money etc ??

cricketo · Dec 18, 2018

Hillhater said:
That could all happen bill......
.....dispite every effort the world makes to eliminate Anthopogenic emmissions to zero.
Just imagine if your bet on AGW theory is wrong, and all the climate change effects,..CO2, temperature, etc etc...are actually resulting from some other "natural" effect, and are unaffected by the enormous waste of resources and money etc ??

Imagine your savings for retirement is just a waste of money. You won't live to spend it . Just spend it all now.

Punx0r · Dec 19, 2018

neptronix said:
But we're still clueless about weather. It's acceptable for the best meteorologist to be >25% off, which is almost as bad as the track record of your typical stock trader's predictions!

Weather and climate are two distinct things but often confused. It's one reason why you need to look at climatic trends on a longer scale (decades) to avoid the effects of variation in the weather. Weather (like the stock market) is an example of a chaotic system: small changes in input are magnified greatly to produce outcomes that become increasingly hard to predict as the timescale is lengthened.

By comparison the climate, made up of various natural cycles is relatively stable (it has to be for life to flourish) and easier to predict.

Punx0r · Dec 19, 2018

sendler2112 said:
What framework could we develope for a carbon tax which would begin to put a real market price on it.

This is something that many people think needs to happen and hopefully it will come out of the Paris agreement. The largest carbon pricing scheme so far is probably the EU one. It's not without it's problems but might serve as a starting point.

The UK has just announced new laws to make manufacturers responsible for 100% of the cost of recycling product packaging. It's a baby step, but it's a spirit of forcing corporations to be responsible for the waste they generate. On that basis, forced responsibility for CO2 "waste" is only a few steps away, in principle.

billvon · Dec 19, 2018

Hillhater said:
billvon said:

Here's the catastrophic scenario. .......

Click to expand...

That could all happen bill......
.....dispite every effort the world makes to eliminate Anthopogenic emmissions to zero.

Here's the alternative scenario.

We make reducing CO2 a national priority. Construction of alternative energy sources accelerates. That means more solar and wind (of course) but also repowering of hydro plants, new geothermal, more nuclear and retrofits of combined cycle gas plants to allow more rapid startup. US CO2 emissions go way down - but worldwide they still rise, just at a slower rate.

In terms of transportation, electrification of highways (catenary power for trucks) and rail lines is begun. Existing EV development continues. Alternate liquid fuels for aviation (and some road vehicles) are developed, including methane. At first it is sourced from natural gas; eventually it comes from methane digesters.

Cement plants are converted to solar thermal. Heating is provided by cogeneration in cities; cooling is done by increasingly efficient compressor and absorption based systems that have thermal storage to take advantage of the "peakier" power coming from renewables.

Then that technology starts getting exported to other countries.

Economically this is a mixed bag. The US loses jobs in the oil and coal industry and exports less oil. The US gains jobs in the above new technologies and exports more infrastructure (at least until China figures out how to copy it.)

The result is that CO2 starts to level out in ~20 years, and starts decreasing in ~50. We still see a several-degree-C rise in temperatures. However, the actions that we take to mitigate it (seawalls, emergency water supplies, new food sources) are now stopgap; we know conditions will improve with time. We manage to avoid the worst positive feedback effects (albedo, clathrate releases.)

Which of the two scenarios is the most likely? Neither one. We will almost certainly do something in between those two extremes. If we're capable of planning for the future, then we'll be closer to the latter than to the former.

Just imagine if your bet on AGW theory is wrong, and all the climate change effects,..CO2, temperature, etc etc...are actually resulting from some other "natural" effect, and are unaffected by the enormous waste of resources and money etc ??

I'll bet on science over propaganda any day.

sendler2112 · Dec 19, 2018

billvon said:
Economically this is a mixed bag. The US loses jobs in the oil and coal industry and exports less oil. The US gains jobs in the above new technologies and exports more infrastructure (at least until China figures out how to copy it.)

All of this transition needs to happen in a coordinated world wide effort to remain fair. It could be accomplished at huge expense and any one country that attempts it unilaterally will be at a huge disadvantage in the current world market. And on top of this all OECD countries will have to contribute to help developing nations away from destructive exploitation of short term resources and help them install modern efficient infrastructure.
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No one country can afford to transition alone.
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New social aspects would be much more effective than 100's of trillions in new hardware. We cannot simply build our way out of this jam.

billvon · Dec 19, 2018

sendler2112 said:
New social aspects would be much more effective than 100's of trillions in new hardware. We cannot simply build our way out of this jam.

Nor can we 'lifestyle' our way out of it. It will take a combination of both.

All of this transition needs to happen in a coordinated world wide effort to remain fair.

I agree - it won't be fair. It never is. It wasn't fair to the horse industry when cars replaced them, and roads weren't fair to the canals when they were replaced. It would be great if we could get worldwide cooperation on this. But every time we try, the HH's of the world declare that cooperation is like Hitler, Lenin and Mussolini all rolled into one - and that will keep us from getting very much worldwide cooperation.

Renewables are succeeding now in small part because of government efforts, but in much larger part because they are so cheap. The market is now driving their adoption, worldwide. Fortunately or unfortunately that trend will continue.

Hanssing · Dec 22, 2018

France Will Save Billions By Investing in Renewables Instead of Nukes

The development of the so-called EPR nuclear reactors “wouldn’t be competitive for the French power system from an economical standpoint,” the Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maitrise de l’Energie --or Ademe-- said in a statement. The report assumes that the reactors would produce electricity at a cost of 70 euros per megawatt-hour, while the cost of wind and solar power would fall much lower.

https://www.renewableenergyworld.co...investing-in-renewables-instead-of-nukes.html

However!: Germany's Green Transition Has Hit a Brick Wall

More people are finally beginning to realize that supplying the world with sufficient, stable energy solely from sun and wind power will be impossible.

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/germanys-green-transition-has-hit-a-brick-wall

Punx0r · Dec 22, 2018

Save yourself time and don't read anything from the Heartland Institute

cricketo · Dec 22, 2018

Punx0r said:
Save yourself time and don't read anything from the Heartland Institute

:lol:

sendler2112 · Dec 22, 2018

Punx0r said:
Save yourself time and don't read anything from the Heartland Institute

Did I write this article? :wink: Finally a report that knows the difference between total electricity and total energy. All true I am afraid.
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https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/germanys-green-transition-has-hit-a-brick-wall
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"The dream of supplying Germany with mainly green energy from sunshine and wind turns out to be nothing but a fading illusion. Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world."
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cricketo · Dec 22, 2018

sendler2112 said:
Did I write this article? :wink: Finally a report that knows the difference between total electricity and total energy. All true I am afraid.

All it takes is a glance at Wikipedia...

The Institute advocates for hydraulic fracturing (aka "fracking"), a well-stimulation technique in which rock is fractured by pressurized liquids,[105] publishing essays in support of fracking in various national newspapers,[106][107][108][109] On March 20, 2015, Heartland's science director defended hydraulic fracturing on the Your World With Neil Cavuto program on Fox News.[110][111]

Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Institute, including $736,500 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[82][116] Greenpeace reported that Heartland received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobil.[53] In 2008, ExxonMobil said that it would stop funding to groups skeptical of climate warming, including Heartland.[116][117][118][not in citation given] Joseph Bast, president of the Institute, argued that ExxonMobil was simply distancing itself from Heartland out of concern for its public image.[116]

The Institute opposes the scientific consensus on climate change,[40] claims that the amount of climate change is not catastrophic, claims that climate change might be beneficial,[41][42] and that the economic costs of trying to mitigate climate change exceed the benefits.[9] According to The New York Times, Heartland is "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism."[43] The Institute has been a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group dedicated to denying climate change science, since 1997.[44]

And so on...

sendler2112 · Dec 23, 2018

cricketo said:
All it takes is a glance at Wikipedia...

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https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/germanys-green-transition-has-hit-a-brick-wall
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I had never read this source before so I didn't have your predjudice and don't know what they have published in the past. The facts as stated in this article are all generally true and were much less biased and intentionally misleading than some of the op-eds I read in other green tech magazines. Reliability has not been newsworthy as a big issue in Germany so I would challenge them for some data to back that up but it is well known in South Australia as they also mentioned. Other than that statement the rest is acceptable
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From the article: Please show us where they are incorrect.
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"Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world."
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"Germany has not reduced CO2 emissions over the last ten years. However, during the same period, its electricity prices have risen dramatically, significantly impacting factories, employment and poor families."
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"In practice, this means Germany can never shut down the conventional power plants, as planned. These power plants must be ready and able to meet the total power requirements at any time; without them, a stable network frequency is unobtainable. The same is true for French, Austrian and Polish power plants."
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"To fulfill the German target of getting 60% of their total energy consumption from renewables by 2050, they must multiply the current power production from solar and wind by a factor of 15. They must also expand their output from conventional power plants by an equal amount, to balance and backup the intermittent renewable energy."
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"Perhaps more important, the amount of land, concrete, steel, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, hydrocarbon-based composites and other raw materials required to do this is astronomical. None of those materials is renewable, and none can be extracted, processed and manufactured into wind, solar or fossil power plants without fossil fuels."
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"Multiplying today's wind power capacity by a factor 10 or 15 means a 200 meter high (650 foot tall) turbine must be installed every 1.5 km (every mile) across the entire country, within cities, on land, on mountains and in water.
In reality, it is virtually impossible to increase production by a factor of 15, as promised by the plans."
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This last item illustrates the concept of the huge scale of modern total energy consumption that very few people ever contemplate.

Punx0r · Dec 23, 2018

Germany abandoned nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. So I'll think you'll fund that is the reason for why CO2 emissions haven't fallen as expected (assuming this claim is true), nothing to do with RE.

It also puts paid to the claim that no conventional power plants hav been able to be closed.

Claiming steel and copper aren't renewable is bizarre. Both are well known to be widely recycled.

Aspects of wind turbine manufacture use fossil fuels? Shocking in a world dominated by fossil fuel infrastructure.

There were lots of kinda plausible-sounding claims of how smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. They came from the very same mouth pieces.

cricketo · Dec 23, 2018

sendler2112 said:
I had never read this source before so I didn't have your predjudice

You're quick to judge others. I haven't heard of that source until another poster questioned it, so I checked on wikipedia.

"Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world."

Intentionally misleading statement, kind of like mixing suicides into US gun violence stats. We're either talking electricity, or energy as a whole, but in a different context.

"Germany has not reduced CO2 emissions over the last ten years. However, during the same period, its electricity prices have risen dramatically, significantly impacting factories, employment and poor families."

Besides the claim itself, note how emotional manipulation is being added. Here is the actual emissions chart. Germany is working a long term plan, and so far they're successful.

20180326_uba_german_greenhousegasemissions1990_2017_0.png

"In practice, this means Germany can never shut down the conventional power plants, as planned. These power plants must be ready and able to meet the total power requirements at any time; without them, a stable network frequency is unobtainable. The same is true for French, Austrian and Polish power plants."

That's my favorite type of rhetoric. "SpaceX won't be able to reuse their rockets, and even if they could, it will be prohibitively expensive."

"To fulfill the German target of getting 60% of their total energy consumption from renewables by 2050, they must multiply the current power production from solar and wind by a factor of 15. They must also expand their output from conventional power plants by an equal amount, to balance and backup the intermittent renewable energy."

Perhaps I am missing something, but from poking around the web it seems like Germany is actually intending to reduce emissions. Renewables are a component, but not a standalone target. And again, it doesn't seem like they're far off :

"Among economic sectors, the power sector’s emissions reduction will be the largest “by far,” according to the report. Second comes industry, followed by private households and services. The transport sector is lagging behind, and will only achieve “minor emissions reductions” at best, warns the report.

Transport is the only sector in Germany that has not made any progress in reducing emissions at all since 1990, the reference year for emissions. Due to the slow roll-out of low-emission vehicles, the sector is highly unlikely to catch up quickly."

"Perhaps more important, the amount of land, concrete, steel, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, hydrocarbon-based composites and other raw materials required to do this is astronomical. None of those materials is renewable, and none can be extracted, processed and manufactured into wind, solar or fossil power plants without fossil fuels."

Well, that's just the LOL territory.

sendler2112 · Dec 23, 2018

sendler2112 said:
"Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world."

cricketo said:
Intentionally misleading statement, kind of like mixing suicides into US gun violence stats. We're either talking electricity, or energy as a whole, but in a different context.
Well, that's just the LOL territory.

How is that in any way misleading??? Total energy, which is mainly from fossil fuel, is what we need to reduce and replace before oil starts to slip away in a couple decades. They are just stating simple facts. Germany only gets 5% of it's energy from wind and solar combined as per the article. Which is a generous round up. Most charts I see have solar and wind at more like 3.5% of energy. And less than half as much as they get from biomass.
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And their customers pay the highest electric rates in the region despite (because of?) getting 27% of electricity from wind and solar.
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Everything else in the article was accurate as well except the statement about reliability which is generally good. This is all imortant to understand. Just replacing current electricity with rebuildables only gets us 1/5 of the way to getting off of fossil fuels. It is calculated that we can cut energy use in half with a complete retrofit of all fossil fueled machines and processes and heat to electric. Which means Germany would be at 10% of that value when and if we ever are able to do all of that.
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fig10-germany-energy-mix-energy-sources-share-primary-energy-consumption-2016.png

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cricketo · Dec 23, 2018

sendler2112 said:
How is that in any way misleading??? Total energy, which is mainly from fossil fuel, is what we need to reduce and replace before oil starts to slip away in a couple decades.

I believe your "total energy" includes transportation and other non-electricity specific things like central heating and industrial processes where fossil fuels are currently used. Without changing those things first to switch to electricity for their energy needs, it doesn't matter what is happening on the electricity generation side. That's exactly what German government has acknowledged - transportation, for example, is significantly behind (read EVs).

But whatever, I'm just here to play

sendler2112 · Dec 23, 2018

cricketo said:
But whatever, I'm just here to play

Well, if you decide to get serious there is much to learn. Start with the Hagens lecture.
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https://youtu.be/YUSpsT6Oqrg
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Hanssing · Dec 23, 2018

sendler2112 said:
Everything else in the article was accurate as well except the statement about reliability which is generally good. This is all imortant to understand. Just replacing current electricity with rebuildables only gets us 1/5 of the way to getting off of fossil fuels. It is calculated that we can cut energy use in half with a complete retrofit of all fossil fueled machines and processes and heat to electric. Which means Germany would be at 10% of that value when and if we ever are able to do all of that.

Looking at your chart, then the oil-use of 33% has to be managed.
All the rest goes to heating and electrcity-generation, right?
Coal, lignite, Gas = Electricity and heat in CombinedPowerPlants

I know the last percantages are impossible, and the scale is mindboggling, but 2/3rds are up for grabs, with renewable electricity + storage (DC-links + displaced hydro usage in norway and the alps).

sendler2112 said:

Punx0r · Dec 24, 2018

sendler2112 said:
Total energy, which is mainly from fossil fuel, is what we need to reduce and replace before oil starts to slip away in a couple decades. They are just stating simple facts. Germany only gets 5% of it's energy from wind and solar combined

If your concern is ending reliance on oil because you fear it's going to run out, why are you artificially restricting it's replacement to just two technologies: wind and solar? Geothermal, biomass, hydro, tidal, nuclear, gas and coal/lignite are all non-oil fuels. Using figures from the chart you posted:

Germany's current total energy sources:

Wind & solar: 3.4%
Renewable: 12.6%
Non-fossil: 21.2%
Non-oil: 66.5%

So rather than "ZOMG! Even if every square metre of land is covered in wind turbines and solar panels it won't be anywhere near enough to prevent societal collapse in 20 years when oil runs out!" it's more like "Oil use can be totally eliminated by replacing 33.5% of energy with other sources".

Considering most of that oil use is from transportation, and a massive shift to electric vehicles is coming within the next decade, due to large inherent efficiency gains that energy figure could be slashed to 1/2 or 1/3 (depending on the mix of transportation types and their potential for ready electrification). So that "oil" fraction that needs replacing could actually be more like 20, 15, even 10% of total. I.e. a doubling of current renewables.

"Peak oil is coming! Swap your house for canned food and guns and run for the hills!"

sendler2112 · Dec 24, 2018

Punx0r said:
If your concern is ending reliance on oil because you fear it's going to run out, why are you artificially restricting it's replacement to just two technologies: wind and solar? Geothermal, biomass, hydro, tidal, nuclear, gas and coal/lignite are all non-oil fuels. Using figures from the chart you posted:

Germany's current total energy sources:

Wind & solar: 3.4%
Renewable: 12.6%
Non-fossil: 21.2%
Non-oil: 66.5%

So rather than "ZOMG! Even if every square metre of land is covered in wind turbines and solar panels it won't be anywhere near enough to prevent societal collapse in 20 years when oil runs out!" it's more like "Oil use can be totally eliminated by replacing 33.5% of energy with other sources".

Transportation is only half of oil. Hydro is tapped out already in many places. Environmentalists are foolishly clammoring to tear down the dams that we have. Tidal does not have much prospect to help. Geothermal electric also seems to have very little happening due to technical unfeasability in most places. And biofuel has very poor ER/EI other than cutting wood for home heat. "renewable" energy in Germany is half from firewood.
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Germany has been trying as hard as it can without destroying it's cometitive economy and has only managed 4% from wind and solar. And is still near 0 on EV's. Not to mention electrifying heavy transport and agriculture which doesn't scale well to the limited energy density of batteries even with an efficiency increase of 2:1. Their use of coal is not going down because they don't have much natural gas.
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There will be a big reduction to societal surplus (profits and wages) when oil gets expensive. EV's will help stretch what we have left but there is still too much economic growth needed right now to feed the world debt. 3 billion people cannot all have 2kg cars even if they are electric. We can perhaps double peak cheap oil from 20 to 40 years remaining. Then what? we will be stuck with whatever mining and agriculture equipment that we can build batteries or cords for and run off of solar and wind as much as we have built with the oil that remained. And it will be nowhere the scale of even half of the 90,000,000 barrels per day we are now gifted with.

Punx0r said:

"Peak oil is coming! Swap your house for canned food and guns and run for the hills!"

Click to expand...

Teach your children to be resilient and self reliant. Some of my professors consider having a child today as premeditated child abuse. Swap all of your paper money and digits for hard assets of land with water to grow all of your (their) own food, fiber, and wood fuel. Learn once again the old ways of farming and livestock. Form intentional regenerative communities to build social capital with one another. Maintain and reform the current economic system as long as we can but be ready with plan B when resource depletion forces oscillations of collapse.

Click to expand...

Hillhater · Dec 24, 2018

Seasons greetings to ALL ES members,
...no matter what you beliefs or convictions.
Wishing you all a healthy 2019.
HH.

sendler2112 · Dec 28, 2018

Richard Heinberg's latest essay:
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Civilizations do roughly the same thing. In their early days, complex societies are populated with generalist pioneers (people who do lots of things reasonably well) living in an environment with abundant resources ready to be exploited. These people develop tools to enable them to exploit their resources more effectively. Division of labor and trade with increasingly distant regions also aids in more thorough resource exploitation. Trading and administrative centers, i.e., cities, appear and grow. Money is increasingly used to facilitate trade, while debt enables a transfer of consumption from the future to the present. Specialists in violence, armed with improved weaponry, conquer surrounding peoples.

Complexity (more kinds of tools, more social classes, more specialization) solves problems and enables accumulation of wealth, leading to a conservation phase during which an empire is built and great achievements are made in the arts and sciences. However, as time goes on, the costs of complexity accumulate and the resilience of the society declines. Tax burdens become unbearable, natural resources become depleted, environments become polluted, and conquered peoples become restless. At its height, each civilization appears stable and invincible. Yet it is just at this moment of triumph that it is vulnerable to external enemies and internal discord. Debt can no longer be repaid. Conquered peoples revolt. A natural disaster breaks open the façade of stability and control.
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https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-12-17/the-big-picture/
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Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

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