Misinformation Campaigns on Renewable Energy, Climate Change
A reader writes in:
Hi, Craig – I’ve been reading your blog for a while now. Thanks for what you’re doing. Also enjoyed your book, “Is Renewable Really Doable?” My question is this: how to counter the alarmist articles out there about the unreliability of renewable (because intermittent) energy? In researching this I’ve run across a couple of articles that the naysayers are just eating up whole. Example: last September in the Telegraph. And there are others, as I’m sure you know.
The argument goes like this – because wind and solar are variable, the backup power plants that run on coal or natural gas have to cycle on and off, which is much less efficient than if they just ran all the time as usual. The resulting inefficiency causes greater GHG emissions that just about offset any gains from the wind and solar. Every time I run across this, I’m suspicious. Grain of truth, but distortion? I’m reminded of the Koch brothers’ misinformation campaign about climate change. It’s just more foot-dragging, IMHO.
You mention Dr. Peter Lilienthal in your book, so I checked out HOMER Energy, which is one of probably dozens of companies dealing with this. It’s complex, I can see that. Capital versus operating costs, flexible versus inflexible systems. . . .
Have you written about this? Any suggestions where else to look? Many thanks!
Yes, I’ve written about this, but your email provides yet another opportunity.
First, a clarification. Gas is used to address peak demands, but coal isn’t; coal-fired power plants run 24 hours a day (though the newer ones can be tamped back to some degree at night).
I’m afraid disinformation is a sad fact of life. It’s the reason that groups like the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) have set up “myth-busting” information sources for people who have a sense they’re being lied to, and wish to get at the truth; a good example of this is EnergyFactCheck.org.
I believe that eventually, after a great deal more of the truth has come out, the energy industry will come to be regarded the same way we currently view the tobacco industry (and Lance Armstrong), but that’s a long way down the road. For now, they continue to pour massive lakes of money into public relations campaigns to convince us all that fossil fuels are safe and wholesome, that they support our national interests, that they power our economy and make our lives worth living. By extension, they imply that global climate change is a hoax, and that we should similarly ignore the other effects of our addiction to oil, coal, and gas: lung disease, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, terrorism, etc.) And yes, all this includes a more-or-less constant assault on renewable energy.
As to your other point, there is a huge overall ecological benefit to what the renewable energy industry is accomplishing on a day-to-day basis; information to the contrary is rubbish. Yet there are complications that can be taken out of context and deliberately distorted. For example, there is more than a grain of truth to the idea that integrating massive amounts of intermittent resources (wind and solar) into the grid-mix is problematic. Having said that, in the U.S., we’re at about 4% wind and less than 1% solar; i.e., we’re a long way from the time that this point has any real legitimacy. Eventually, however, to get our grid-mix up to and beyond the levels contemplated by some of our more aggressive RPSs (Renewable Portfolio Standards), we’ll need solutions that will include back-up power generation and/or energy storage.
The real question is this: do the people actually care about any of this? Again, speaking of the U.S., will voters insist that our leaders create a responsible energy policy? It sure hasn’t happened so far; we recently went through three presidential debates and the concept didn’t surface once. But personally, I see a swelling of the ranks of people who look at the rising temperatures (and sea-levels) and say, “We really do need to address this. The way we’re living our lives on this planet is simply wrong.”
I guess we’ll see. I’ll continue to do my part, and you strike me as a person who is quite involved yourself. Thank you. “Onward and upward,” as my mother likes to say.
The advocates for renewable energy are mostly stuck in a rut. First, they assume that energy=electricity and since there is presently no way of storing electricity on a large scale that means that they are stuck with the intermittentcy problem. Second, they assume that the solutions are Solar PV and Wind power, based on the naive assumption that the controlling factor is the projected cost per kW of capacity.
If you instead look at what forms of energy are actually used you will discover that heat and motive power are often more important than electricity. Heat can be stored on a large scale at a very modest cost so storage solves the intermittency problem but you need to start with different energy sources, such as the heat that we presently extract from our buildings and dump into the atmosphere and heat (and cold) extracted from the atmosphere.
The global need for power will drastically increase as poor countries work to lift their people out of poverty. The lowest estimate I have seen is that electricity output will have to be at least doubled on a global basis, but it may have to increase by four or more times, and that doesn’t even include the transportation sector. So, to reduce global warming and ocean acidification to an acceptable level, probably AT LEAST 80% of the electricity generated will have to be CO2 free on a global basis.
The amount of renewable power produced here in the U.S. is insufficient to create serious grid instability problems. But if the percentage of renewables, which are intermittent, were increased to 80% or more, we would have very serious problems with power reliability and currently there are no acceptable solutions. The only solution that is now available would be to use fossil fuel generating plants for back-up which would mean that there would have to be two basically different generating systems, i.e., renewable and fossil fuel. Maintaining two systems would be exceedingly expensive, especially considering that using fossil-fueled plants in spinning-reserve mode would shorten the life of the equipment and reduce their fuel efficiency. Moreover, with current technology, maintaining power reliability with renewables would probably require running the fossil-fueled systems so often that 80% CO2-free generation would not be obtainable.
Nuclear systems are capable of solving the problem, but we must move away from our pressurized water reactors for three reasons:
1) Because they are inherently dangerous, they require multiple layers of safety systems to make them acceptably safe and that greatly adds to costs, and
2) Because they use the nuclear fuel very inefficiently (after extracting less than 1% of the available energy from the nuclear fuel, the rest is discarded as waste), there is a serious waste problem, and
3) Because they are thermally inefficient they require water cooling which is a serious problem in some areas.
To move away from our pressurized water reactors will required considerable research and development, but there are better nuclear power alternatives which could be implemented after more R & D work has been done. Therefore, instead if eschewing nuclear power, we should be encouraging the R & D work necessary to implement a better nuclear power technology. If we in the U.S. don’t do it, other countries will and we will end up paying for the nuclear technology they develop. Moreover, if we get to work and coöperate with other countries in developing a better nuclear technology, it can be implemented much more quickly to the benefit of everyone.
Given the current very low level of intermittent power sources on the US electrical grids, there is presently little reason to be concerned about grid instability except in a few special cases such as Hawaii.
Why? Because across most states in the USA such power sources disappear into the “noise” of variable demand with the current levels of balancing power mostly adequate to meet current needs. Existing systems already cope with minute by minute and hour by hour demand changes which are only partially predictable.
Going forward, there will be a need to look at a number of options for integrating renewables on a larger scale.
1. Load shifting – As an example, presently, if you wish to cool a building, usual practice is to cool in real time using most power at the hottest part of the day.
There are other possible strategies such as cooling a tank of slush ice overnight when power demand is low and using this stored cooling to manage building temperature through the day. (Ideally whilst simultaneously heating a tank of hot water off the hot side of the heat pump) That way, only a few fans and circulating pumps are needed when cooling is supplied. With this kind of technology, it is possible to move a substantial proportion of electricity demand to times more convenient to the grid, and to throttle power use up and down balancing the grid. Use of these systems together with fast acting hydro should be able to manage a great deal of short term variation – giving time to start up any remaining fossil based peaking power rather than running it as spinning reserve.
Other similar loads also exist such as district heating, large building heat pump heating, water distribution in the supply system, refrigerated warehouses, preparation of medical oxygen and other gasses, and some industrial processes which can preferentially be carried out off peak.
2. Improved prediction of supply and demand – better prediction algorithms for demand as well as PV / Wind yield specific weather prediction reduces the complication of integrating these systems. Knowing more accurately the supply and demand allows more efficient scheduling of spinning reserve.
3. Better grid integration – Many US states have relatively poor interconnections with their neighbours limiting the degree to which power can be shared and moved across state borders. Improved integration across the USA, Canada, and Mexico will be a necessary step in integrating very large scale intermittant renewable power sources.
4. Geographical dispersion – with a more integrated grid and wide distribution of solar and wind power across the whole of North America – avoiding very large concentrations in specific areas, total intermittant power yield will become more stable and predictable within narrower error bands. Dispersion will mean that there will always be sunny areas somewhere within the region during daylight hours and the wind will always be blowing in some areas 24/7.
5. Other sources of energy storage – pumped storage, and changes to the way hydro power is managed can add a large amount of storage allowing a big increase in the amount of power which can be adjusted on a moment by moment basis. Compressed air energy storage, hydrogen and ammonia (for use as fuel) production, large scale batteries etc. can also play a part.
So as you can see there are plenty of ways to integrate increasing levels of renewable power without increasing the level of fossil fuel based spinning reserve, and we are a long way from using all available options.
As Gary has observed you can use diurnal thermal storage to flatten the daily power load. That works for both cooling in the summer and heating in the winter and it benefits both the grid and the user, who will have an extra source of heat or cold when it is needed.
However, that still leaves a large seasonal fluctuation in the energy demands for heating and cooling. By applying the same principle of storing heat until the time comes when it is needed you can not just flatten the power demand, you can make a giant step towards eliminating the energy consumption altogether. The technology for seasonal storage is well established but it is being ignored, not just by the “ultra-conservative” power industry but also by the equally reactionary renewable energy industry. You do not need either fossil fuels or intermittent wind/solar-PV energy if heating and cooling are achieved by shuttling heat back and forth between a building and a ground heat store.
The potential for reducing GHG emissions by using seasonal storage is much larger than what could be achieved by trying to use intermittent energy sources in real time to replace fossil fuels. By eliminating the need for most of the energy such systems are also inherently cheaper to use so they can quickly repay the capital cost of building the heat stores.
Thanks Ron,
As you so rightly point out, inter-seasonal thermal storage is also possible,and increasingly used in European countries with district heating networks. (The same could apply to district cooling).
Cost effectiveness and efficiency improve with scale – so that these systems are best suited to district heating and large buildings / complexes of buildings like major hospitals, government buildings, universities, and large office blocks.
Here in Canada seasonal storage is currently being applied to a variety of applications ranging from a single home (e.g. my own design for a house in Kingston, ON), a university complex (UOIT in Oshawa), a block of houses (in Okotoks, AB) and a substantial chunk of a city (the Enwave system in Toronto).
The concept is viable for all of these applications but is most cost effective if it is deployed for a group of buildings as explained in the “City Block” design described in http://sustainability-journal.ca .
The title of the thread is “Misinformation …” I herewith provide another example of misinformation, this time from the book “Carbon-free and Nuclear-free…” by Arjun Makhijani. I quote from the first whole paragraph on page 184 of the book:
“Half a century of efforts to commercialize thorium breeders – reactors that make fissile uranium-233 out of non-fissile thorium-232 – have not yielded a single commercial machine.”
The fact is that there has NOT been “half a century of efforts to commercialize thorium breeders.” The impetus to develop the lithium fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) was to use nuclear power to power air force bombers. Soon after that project was killed, development of the LFTR was also killed. Thus, LFTR technology had no military value. However, a prototype LFTR was successfully tested for several years and showed considerable promise. It would eliminate the most troubling problems associated with our current nuclear technology. The author’s total misrepresentation of the LFTR casts doubt on the accuracy of other material in his book.
Moreover, additional information on the Internet indicates that either the author does not understand basic LFTR technology or that he is intentionally misrepresenting it. His objections to it would be valid only if thorium were used to fuel a pressurized water reactor with fuel rods similar to those used in our present uranium reactors but would not apply to LFTR technology since the LFTR does not use fuel rods; it uses a liquid fuel, i.e., thorium tetrafluoride.
One expects a certain number of mistakes in books, posts, and publications. But the mistakes of Mr. Arjun Makhijani regarding the use of thorium for nuclear power go well beyond tolerable mistakes. They cast doubt on either the thoroughness of his research or his committment to objectivity.
For more information on LFTR technology, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
It is too soon to say for certain that the LFTR is the way to go, but enough work has been done to make it clear that considerable R & D work should be done since it may be the way to go.