RENEWABLE BUILD-OUT: The IPCC foresees a massive build-out of renewable energy, such as wind and solar, along with continued use of biomass for cooking and limited building of new nuclear power plants.
Image: The White House Blog: Innovations
UNITED NATIONS -- The world's leading climate change research organization issued a report yesterday that has renewable energy boosters cheering, as it foresees substantial growth in alternative energy sources over the next 40 years.
But the conclusions reached by that report's authors are colored with multiple caveats and uncertainties not captured by initial media coverage. And what the group chooses to identify as "renewable energy" incorporates one controversial practice while leaving others out.
Namely, the coalition of climate scientists includes traditional wood-burning in poor households' cookstoves as an example of renewable energy, though many experts say this is one of the leading causes of deforestation in the world. The IPCC also chose to ignore nuclear energy in its latest assessment, potentially raising the ire of industry supporters who have in the past celebrated nuclear for emitting no greenhouse gases.
At the close of a gathering of government representatives in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its first-ever detailed analysis of alternative energy technologies and their potential role in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
The "Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation" by the IPCC's Working Group III is 1,000 pages of detailed analysis of how renewable energy usage can expand to 2050, summed up in a heavily distributed 26-page "Summary for Policymakers," a draft of which was leaked to the press early.
Among the IPCC's biggest findings mentioned is its estimate that renewable energy could provide nearly 80 percent of the globe's power by 2050, if fully supported by governments eager to maximize its potential.
That conclusion took many by surprise -- most other comprehensive assessments offered by the energy industry itself conclude that alternative sources will contribute a much lower percentage of the world's power over the coming decades. But the 80 percent contribution estimated by the IPCC represents the most optimistic outcome, one that report authors say is one that's far from certain or 100 percent accurate.
What happens to the forests?
The IPCC is careful to note that this estimate is at the very highest end of a range of scenarios that could play out. Of more than 100 alternative future scenarios, the IPCC narrowed these down to four primary ones, each dependent on how quickly renewable energy technologies and advance and how robustly government policies support their deployment.
Still, the average of all IPCC projections shows renewables supplanting fossil fuels at a faster clip than previously thought.
"More than half of the scenarios show a contribution from RE [renewable energy] in excess of a 17 percent share of primary energy supply in 2030, rising to more than 27 percent in 2050," the IPCC says in the report summary. "The scenarios with the highest RE shares reach approximately 43 percent in 2030 and 77 percent in 2050."
Alternative energy supporters the world over were quick to hail the findings.
In the United States, the American Wind Energy Association, National Hydropower Association, Geothermal Energy Association and Biomass Power Association issued a joint release celebrating the results. They declared that the report shows the heralded IPCC agrees with what they've been saying all along, that "with the right policies to support growth, renewable power sources could dominate the world's energy supply by 2050."
But one complicating factor potentially cancels out much of the optimism espoused yesterday.
The IPCC reaches its estimates by counting among renewable energy sources "traditional biomass" -- the widespread practice in the developing world of scavenging wood for producing charcoal or to burn directly for home heating and cooking.
See what we're tweeting about
22 Comments
Add CommentAnother a distributed wind/solar study based on the canard that this combo can replace baseload, this is an electrical engineering study done by rank amateurs. Including deadly polluting biomass and excluding nukes. BIAS!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike all such studies it misses the gamblers ruin factor when rare large area no wind month long cloudy conditions sets in. Bonneville with extensive wind resources all through Washington and Oregon lost all wind for two weeks one winter. Europe lost all wind for a week last month in its cold snap. Wind tables show regular week long stretches of no or very low wind on the entire Atlantic coast. The US southwest desert has seen weeks of cloudy weather. Another volcanic explosion the size of the Tambora (Indonesia) volcanic explosion would virtually shutdown wind and solar power generation for 2-3 years.
Currently we use 100% name plant coverage with low efficiency gas plant to cover for the unreliability of wind/solar producing just as many GHG's as if we just saved a ton of money and put in high efficiency gas instead.
Lets say we add a month of the cheapest long term green storage available to replace the gas.
That cost adds $140 a watt to the already incredibly high cost of solar/wind. These studies are always done by unqualified hacks that have no expertise in electrical power engineering the main discipline required in such a study. No Professional Engineer would put his name up against this claptrap - they could lose their license for malpractice.
This cost would have a typical US household spending $60K per annum on energy alone.
There was a similar study in Australia that concluded that wind/solar/biomass could power Australia by 2020.
The report was debunked totally by some Australian power engineers. It was found to be impossibly expensive, utterly impractical, and an orders of magnitude more costly than nuclear with costs reaching as high as $1.20 a kwh.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
Those same Australian engineers were just published in a the peer reviewed prestigious journal Energy proving solar CSP unworkable in Australia.
http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/47728/nuclear-least-cost-lowcarbon-baseload-power-source
Energy is a prestigious engineering journal that none of the principals in ZCA team have any hope of ever publishing in. These same engineers who did the ZCA critique achieved that publishing distinction by showing that paper the the CSP that predominates in the ZCA plan is far more costly than any other zero carbon tech especially nuclear.
Wind and solar are simply not ready for prime time. Of course- Obama is going to shovel money in that direction because his backers have invested heavily in win and solar power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe two technologies that ARE ready NOW for rapid expansion are geothermal energy and thorium based reactors. Geothermal energy is 100% renewable and works just fine. Thorium beats Uranium based reactors badly in safety, clean operations and with very little waste.
SO- why aren't we building them?
As a teacher, one way I think about discourse is that I might help people come to a point where they can look back and say "I didn't write anything stupid because I knew something about science." Had people in the 1950s known how stupid their arguments against civil rights were, they might not have chosen to be on the wrong side of history.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOutdated arguments against renewables are just as in vogue, at least among trolls, as outdated arguments against civil rights in the 1950s. What is the point of making disparaging comments? Are blogtrolls hopeful that someone will read them and be swayed? Why acquire people who don't understand numbers on their side?
1-10% production = virtual shutdown. 90-95% production = significant impact.
"Another volcanic explosion the size of the Tambora (Indonesia) volcanic explosion would virtually shutdown wind and solar power generation for 2-3 years." Virtually? Really, not much. Did Tambora shut down sailing in 1815-1816; did trees stop growing because of unavailable sunlight? No, there was significant agricultural impact, but "virtual shutdown," as opposed to the more truthful ~10% impact, sounds like the conclusion of someone who is biased. Pot, meet kettle.
Incredibly high cost of solar/wind? The EROE of solar is roughly 700%. How can that be considered costly? <sarcasm>OH NOES, THERE'S A RARE VOLCANIC FOG, CUTTING OUR EROE DOWN TO 600%!</sarcasm> It's only *relatively* costly if there's a endless, easy supply of coal that doesn't kill people. Not happening. Some wind is so lucrative it pays back quickly even without purchase and production subsidies, much more quickly than nuclear, which has astronomical subsidies. Terrorists can't affect distributed solar—Bam, there's a huge savings right there. I guess anyone would overlook these truths if they were biased enough to want to overlook.
Hi JS! How are you? Everything OK?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you knew anything about the size and scale of the equities in the energy sector, you'd know that people who are wealthy enough to invest, and most retirement funds, whether they back Obama or not, are much more heavily invested in traditional energy industries than wind and solar. There simply aren't that many shares in the latter to spread around.
Take teachers, who certainly swing D, and who mostly are not very wealthy, but wealthy enough to have a small retirement fund. The majority of their funds are in huge companies that invest in the broad market, with billions in oil, and only tens of millions in renewables. So, according to you, we teachers are "heavily invested in wind and solar," when our wind and solar investments are only 1% of our oil investments?
Did you take that math class I recommended last year?
Of course renewables can power the earth. Ultimately, they are the only thing that can.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat renewables won't do is both replace current non-renewable energy and grow our energy to support economic growth.
An article in New Scientist suggests that scientists are finally starting to examine the impacts of diverting the energy in natural energy systems for our use:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028063.300-wind-and-wave-farms-could-affect-earths-energy-balance.html?full=true&print=true
Solar isn't mentioned there but research needs to be done in that also. We should never assume that anything we do will have no impacts.
Reading more about 1816, I see that it really was a tough year, probably more than 10% damage to agricultural economy, but still quite short of a "shutdown," and I've seen no evidence yet of any effect on winds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt only takes a marginal decrease in food production or energy production to cause deep economic distress, because the prices are determined by marginal movements in supply and demand against implacable inelasticities in either. Economically, coal seems quite predictable, but oil very much not so. Wind and PV will compete against coal, so will have a tough time, but will continue their exponential growth that non-renewables can't maintain. Because it takes less resources to produce PV than the PV returns, and that ratio just gets better and better, there's no stopping it.
Considering variability of the natural supply of wind and solar—Not only is there pumped storage here in NY to help with the spikes, but even coal plant engineers are finding that they can adjust the height of the flame under boilers and get quick reaction times to efficiently turn down their plants when PV or wind is available, something a lot of readers of Sci Am know nothing about, not reading coal plant operators magazines.
Exponential growth in anything, including renewable energy, can't be maintained, InquiringConstructivist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we have the ability to do something right now to help all of the world. We have had the technology for over 50 years to decrease Green House Gasses. And save limited fossil fuels. Please feel free to read the report. I am not an engineer, nor a scientist. Just a concerned citizen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShell Oil Company achieves 376.59 mpg in test car at Wood River Laboratory
http://www.tgdaily.com/trendwatch-features/40023-shell-oil-company-achieves-37659-mpg-in-test-car-at-wood-river-laboratory
Posted on Nov 4th 2008 by Rick C. Hodgin
Indianapolis (IN) - Using fully stock production gasoline engine powered vehicles, with engine modifications limited only to changes in fuel mixture and ignition timing, Shell Oil Company served host to an open competition in automobile efficiency. The fruit of their forum was sweet indeed as a two-door, full-sized production car was able to drive off with the prize by achieving 376.59 miles in normal driving conditions using a single gallon of fuel. A more heavily modified vehicle was able to achieve over 1140 miles on a single gallon of fuel. Results like these are truly astounding and beg the question: Are we really getting all we can in efficiency from auto makers?
Need we say any more?!?!
So as a teacher, you are imparting misinformation. Before you do any further indoctrination, perhaps you might explain to your pupils the practical effects of the Carnot cycle & how it affects the efficiency of any heat engine. Then you might teach them about thermal losses in a heat storage system & how it relates to the temperature being stored. How about friction losses from pumping or generation systems. The efficiency losses suffered by PV systems at higher temperatures such as occur in a desert. The effects of dust on the efficiency of PV systems. The area & cost of land required to power say a small town of 5000 people for 24-7 power supply. What other current or future use the solar installation will exclude. The construction & operating cost of back up systems. You might even point them to a genuinely successful installation, anywhere in the world that has actually performed as advertised by the people who promoted. Ask them who carries the costs when systems do not perform. The political & engineering people who promoted the scheme or the tax payers?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is huge scope for you to teach them science & leave the pixie dust to the drama teachers. Perhaps you are one.
You & your fellow teachers are very fortunate that you do not have anything to do with your retirement funds. The alternative energy investments will go the way of the Dutch Tulip crash. Similar reasons too. Check out the fate of the Australian company, Geodynamics.
Can renewables power our curent and future needs, including baseload? Absolutely. Even if we ignore all nuclear options, space solar power alone can absolutely do this. So can LFTR reactors, tidal and ocean curents, perhaps polywell, if it works. Several advanced fission reactors show great promise as short term stop gaps. Strong hybrids can quarter our fuel needs across huge sections of our transport infrastructure. (But for pity's sake leave aircraft alone. Long distance they're the most fuel efficient form of transport we have!) There is however a 'but' coming. These realistic concepts include words liek space, fusion, nuclear, and hybrid. Words like that causes problems...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) National power is a complicated ENGINEERNG issue. Unfortunately most people's eyes glaze over when you try and discuss the actual practicalities of any engineering issue, because they are very complicated and most people lack the education to understand them. Often they fall back on science, which is bad (because the level best answer a scientist can give on an engineering issue is a very insubstantial 'yes theoretically') or idology, which is worse, for the usual obvious reasons.
2) For this reason alt-energy that can realisticly do the job (like SSP) are ignored by both those who provide research funding, and magazines like Scientific America. On the rare ocasions it is mentioned, the precurser technologies are almost never explained, and thus the reader is left with the view they are unrealistic.
3) People rarely discuss global solutions. You americans love New York, right? You also like making lots of money and hording your technology via ITAR, right? Well tough. Pick one or the other, because you can't have both. Global warming is a global issue, and requires global deployment of solutions. If americans build (for arguement) some kind of magic-bullet power plant, then they need to give it away at cost or lower than cost to everyone who can run it (including China and Iran) or you lose your costal cites. Even if it puts you in a strategically bad position (which it will) you need to do it anyway, because the alternative is a much worse strategic position. This is not a popular idea.
The real question is not can renewables do the job, but whether we're willing to pay for them, in money to effectively replace our entire energy infrastructure, in time to actually do the necessary reading to understand them properly, and in the effort needed to promote practical solutions to our goverment and fellow citizens - even when they don't want to hear it.
James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space, will probably not be pleased with the admission that, “The IPCC also chose to ignore nuclear energy in its latest assessment…”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=temperature-tantrum-james-hansen-sp-2011-05-09&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20110509
Of course exponential growth cannot be maintained forever in a finite space, sofistek, but forever is not necessary, nor even implied in my writing, only exponential growth until solar/wind/hydro become what coal/nuclear/hydro are today in electricity generation, a finite time away. Any new population can experience exponential growth for a time, even to the point of crowding out other populations. Is there anything I wrote to imply that solar power would exponentially grow to infinity? If cookies were free, would you eat an infinite amount? If gas was free, would you drive forever?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarlyle group, have you never seen a PV carport. Do you not own a car? Have you ever been to San Diego? Have you ever driven to a store, parked in an asphalt parking lot, gone into the store, and come back to a super-heated interior? How much more enjoyable would that shopping trip have been had you returned to a car shaded by a PV array? Since you are against PV from the start, all you can see is the down side, so you close your eyes/mind not only to the possibilities of PV, but the practical, existing uses that don't fit your desire to deride. The roof of my house goes to 140F in the summer. If it had PV on it, it would go to 110F, max. Exactly how is it wasting land that could be used for other things to put it on top of my roof? Can you put a coal plant on your roof? No, but I do admit you can put a natural gas co-gen in your basement, people are doing it in Massachusetts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe savings in AC costs by using PV as shade can outstrip the extra cost of the lower voltage due to the smaller bandgap in warmer silicon, especially in tree-less places like central Arizona. EROE is high in New York. It's super high in southern states, but electricity is still absurdly cheap there people buy more PV here, showing that it's the competition from coal that determines the fate of PV, not its benefits or costs.
Back up systems? For wind, which is less predictable than solar, 4 tenths of a cent per kWh estimated by power engineers. Did you know that coal power plant operators already know how to efficiently ramp up and down quickly by moving the flame up and down under the boiler? Probably didn't, because you do not read coal plant operator magazines, you just pulled worst-case-scenario data from some anti-hippie cave.
How do you know I'm not your old physics teacher?
There are tens of thousands of PV installations in California alone that are operating just as advertised. It's a mature industry, but you present it as snake oil. I'm sorry I keep referring to "you," but your reply seemed a bit too ad hominem. If, besides the truth that some are in it for the political gain, as is the case with any good project or boondoggle, any of your writing were convincing, I would have been convinced. I have changed my mind about many a thing, but it's taken a more respectable argument to do it.
All teaching is cultural indoctrination, it's unavoidable. You have gone out and selected cultures that don't offend your anti-solar bent, so of course you have no idea of the numerous counterexamples to each of your claims. I have 10 characters remaining, or ...
You're right, Unbeliever, I spoke with a power company exec who explained that a power plant is seen as a money machine. This explains why power companies are perfectly happy with promoting ways for us to buy less power from them. They would rather have our dollars without having to send us back so much power, so they are interested in raising rates but lowering production. So much so that they will give me a cash rebate if I put in more efficient appliances, knowing that if they do it enough they can avoid capital (and to some extent fuel) expenditures of a larger scale.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHear hear, ANTIcarrot, I like your focus on how complex and engineering-centric the considerations need be. May I add that what traditional energy companies understand better than most is that largely economics drive social change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany things can drive social change. Such driving forces are not limited to economic ones. Technology, government, philosophy, and philanthropy can all do the same - as can many others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis change has to happen, and the driving force in this case almost certainly needs to be regulatory. In the same way taxes for fire stations are regulatory. In both cases (fire and AGM) once the urgent economic need appears, it's too late to take action.
Governments have to do two things:
1) Set hard deadlines, hard limits, and hard fines for non complience.
2) Spend substantial money (including tax breaks) on a diverse portfolio of alternative energy technology, with an emphasis on greener technology, and close-to-market technology. Basic research should not be discouraged, but organisations that deliberately persue dead end technologies to avoid disruption to their manufacturing infrastructure should be punished.
3) Idealy, they should start walking the dog, and stop letting the dog walk them. They should be leading, not being dragging along. That means telling Joe and Jane Public that this needs to be done, even if it's painful in the short term, rather than pampering to his and her transient interests.
Renewable energy can easly supply all our energy needs so as long as we repeal the laws of thermodynamics, physics and economics. No problemo for the politicians.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...laws of thermodynamics, physics and economics." The kind of statement that people will laugh at in 100, 1000, and 10000 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd some people, including this physics teacher and worker at a diversified (renewable and non-renewable) energy corporation, will laugh today, too. The people who think about the world 100, 1000, and 10000 years from now.
I found the trolls' manifesto, so relevant, everything they say is here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://coalcares.org/cleanenergy.html
Use the Canadian Invention of Gravity Control for power generation. It is based on the technology of the Flying Saucer, discovered and patented. These spheres underneath are the Propulsion Units. They can lift a 10 or 100 or 1000 ton vehicle off the ground with an an-ordinate small amount of power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA PU can also be used to lift a 1000 ton weight in a silo 300 feet. Then it can release the weight, that can be used to generate thousands of kilowatts at the lowest price possible. It will work anywhere we have gravity, even in big Cruise Ships and Aircraft Carriers.
A Power Station would have two silos, working alternately and can be built in a few months for a fraction of any other system for a given amount.
Power at 1 cent per Kilowatt or less is feasible.
Look at< One Terminal Capacitor Joseph...>
Renewables can easily provide 100% of our power needs if we reduce population by a few billion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI spent seven years in the solar industry constructing everything from tracking solar cookers with heat pipe heat transfer to stationary cooking plate to absorption cycle refrigeration to hot water systems to tracking parabolic trough concentrating collectors powering steam engines to tracking parabolic dish concentrating collectors driving Stirling engines, heating swimming pools, root heating systems in nurseries, tracking flat plate & concentrating PV arrays & that is not all.Solar has its place but in the total scheme of things it will always be minor & in most circumstances prohibitively expensive. Solar hot water is about the only exception except in remote areas. Now who is ignorant. You claim to be a teacher. If that is the case it is no wonder so many people are ignorant about the physics involved in so called renewable energy. Give us a quick demonstration of your knowledge in thermodynamics. What is the Carnot Cycle? How does an absorption cycle refrigerator work?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps you taught ennui post 21?