How Much Renewable Energy Does the World Really Need?
Here’s an article whose author is attempting to show that the goal of 100% renewables is closer than we think. At the risk of stating the obvious, I jotted down a few notes I wish to share:
• We’re a very long way from replacing coal using market-driven forces in places like West Virginia and the rest of the “coal-country” in America. The world is not running out of coal (unfortunately). In certain parts of the U.S., you don’t even have to dig for it; you have to be careful not to trip over it when you walk through places like Wyoming. If we can’t stop burning coal for other (i.e., moral) reasons, it’s going to be around for at least a few decades, as the cost of wind and solar coupled with energy storage solutions slowly falls and the two graphs finally cross. Other parts of the world (like Beijing, pictured to the left) have their own tragic stories to tell about the effluent of their coal-fired power plants.
• There are many places in the world where renewable energy is already the deal of the century, due, again, to purely economic factors. Did you know that Brazilian businesses pay $2.00 per kilowatt-hour for on-peak power? If you can’t find a way to replace that with renewables, I don’t know what to tell you. Putting this into perspective with the paragraph above, what they’re paying is roughly 50 times the cost of producing a kWh of electricity from coal in the U.S.
• Also, let’s think about the island nations that ship in diesel to generate electricity at outrageous expense – both financially and ecologically. Let me clarify my use of the term “ecologically.” Obviously, there is enormous environmental damage associated with shipping the dirtiest kind of diesel (“bunker fuel” as it’s called) thousands of miles, burning it in 50-year-old power plants, and then dumping the resultant toxins directly into the atmosphere — but that’s not my point. Rather, my point is that there are economic aspects to this practice as well, as prospective tourists to these enchanting islands and their dollars that would serve to drive these local economies no longer want to travel to places that have plumes of brown/gray smoke billowing into the air, coating the objects and people below with a thin but obvious film of diesel particulate. People are funny like that nowadays.
Another point in closing: the world’s energy supply doesn’t need to be 100% renewable. We just need to establish and maintain a steady course in that direction. This is something that is eminently doable. We simply need to care.
Craig: I think THIS is the way to go. First, install all the renewable energy you can with the capital you have, because you don´t need to pay for fuel (which always tends to cost more) so you save on fuel; then you keep on invensting in renewable energy, until one day, you produce more energy than you need and start exporting it! What is the problem with the fossil guys? It´s just about the cash that comes in and fills their pockets. WE will still need fossil fuels for transportation, and also to produce plastics and similar necessities, but at least we will avoid buying fuel for electricity generation. When we finaly are able to store electricty cheaply and in large enough quantities, then, we will be able to free ourselves of liquid fuels. (save us from Hydrogen or Methanol, which might appear earlier than we think).
I think this is the right approach to shift to renewable energy. But the rate of change will depend upon the political will generated by collective conciousness of the society in a democratic set up.
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Craig,
You are very right. Although I work and introduce different Renewable Energy technologies and Cleantech to China, I, however, come from Victoria in Australia, and from where I come from, we have enough coal to last the next 800 years, not decades !! 8 centuries in fact. These are “Dirty coal” and dripping wet. From what I hear when discussing with the departmental people, we need to burn something like: for example: 1 tonne of dry coal, to generate electricity & heat to dry 2 tonnes of wet coal. There are research in clean coal technology as well, and it is something like this, so I hear, and I stand to be corrected. They intend to export the cleaner coal to China to be mixed 50/50 with the dirty coal so that when the exhaust comes out, the exhaust is 50% cleaner, WOW..ha! ha! .what an equation! My other Solar Energy Technology client tells me “Ken, there is no such thing as ‘Clean coal’ ” The scientist in the coal industry said, there is a big plus, for exporting coal to China, it has elevated more than 500 million out of poverty, and to him, that is a BIG PLUS. mmmmmm…. I am still exhaustively forging ahead with renewables ….. as China is really really serious in achieving their targets by 2020.
PS: Ed Mimmo: I would be interested in your technology.
Please contact me at edmimmo@hotmail.comm I found a way to save China Billions,every year on the water transfer project till 2050.( canals to Beijing and Gobi dessert ) My system is 24/7 Green Energy, and distills 300,000 gallons of seawater a day ,can be on any coastline,it is real.At 10% maintenance cost,almost free energy and free clean water . I need a partner to protect it. Join me and change the world! Ed,
The german environmental minister recently announced that the cost of germany becoming 100% renewable by the middle of this century was probably a trillion euro. What he didn’t say is that keeping the present fossil system going will be billing at approximately 7.5 trillion within the same timespan. Unfortunately, economical calculations beyond 2 years ROI are not en vogue at the moment.
Since Germany has committed itself to migrating away from nuclear power, it has increased its importation of nuclearly generated power from France and increased its burning of lignite, which is an especially dirty type of coal. Thus, Germany has not set an example that demonstrates the merits of eschewing nuclear power.
Also, power from uranium IS renewable; it can be extracted from sea water thereby providing a practically limitless supply. But we should phase out our pressurized water reactors and instead implement a better and safer nuclear technology that uses less than 1% as much nuclear fuel and generates less than 1% as much waste. That can be done.
Hi Frank!
Good point! What governments and their representatives SAY and what they DO are commonly two completely different kettle of fish. I am not commenting the way the germans overreact to nuclear explosions on the other end of the world or whom they sell electricity to an whom they buy it from short term.
The question was: “How much renewables does the world really need” and the answer to this is quite simple. None at all short term and 100% long term. At the moment it is “better” for existing economies to use their already paid off energy conversion systems to achieve maximum profit. Long term, any usable form of physically stored energy which is not regenerated at the rate of its consumption will eventually “run out” and therefore will generate less to no profit at some stage in the future.
The only subject of decision making in this case is: when is the right time to start the transition. And this is precisely, where the western world is devided into two schools of thought. On the one hand is the group that rightly states that the present systems have given us all this wealth, a fridge full of carbohydrates and a mercedes. These people enjoy life today and they don’t give a monkeys left t….cle about what happens tomorrow. The other group feels somehwat uneasy with the thougt that the history books of the 22nd century onwards might refer to the 20th and the 21st century as the time in human history, where most of the riches of this planet where over-exploited and lots of radiating rubbish was buried in various places for future generations to sort out.
Bloomberg reported 5/30/2011: “France, which relies on nuclear plants for about three-quarters of its power needs, exported a net 509 gigawatt hours to Germany last month compared with net imports of 618 gigawatts during the same month last year.”
However, Spiegel Online International reports that the share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent of the national total in 2000 to about 25 percent in the first half of 2012.
According to official figures, some 370,000 people in Germany were employed in the renewable energy sector in 2010, especially in small and medium sized companies. This is an increase of around 8 percent compared to 2009 (around 339,500 jobs), and well over twice the number of jobs in 2004 (160,500). About two-thirds of these jobs are attributed to Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act.
The country is still on track to produce 80% of its electricity from renewable (non-earthbound-nuclear) sources by 2050.
In any case, Germany’s importation of electricity from France is likely to be quite temporary, while their migration to renewables is permanent.
Hi Craig, Your closing paragraph says it all. “We simply need to care”.
Reg Wessels
Earth Corporation
Earth is Everyone’s Business
Hi Craig
Really ,you raised an issue which is related to the benefit of different palyer in the energy . Mr Roland divided in two big group , he has right , but you can add the energy producers , companies and countries who depend on the extreme easy income , and they are not willing in reality to put in stream
Renewable energy . And they can do depending on .a decision to invest in generating the renewable . And invest in the scientific reasershe to exploit the coal ,oil , in high advanced tech. To extract the essential raw materials ,instead to use them in burning , it is possible only when the value of raw material extracted is more benefitalble compared with burning , and that necessity lower renewable energy production cost.
That is why I am interesting in the ED MIMMO invention
My email is edmimmo@hotmail.com we could talk about some,not public information,
Best regards,
Ed,
First step is to fix countries like China! We are such hypocrites in US. We penalize ourselves while we trade with countires that don’t even come close to our standaeds.
Alternative energy is not all that it is made out to be.
Read, Green Illusions, The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner
We have to use the tools we have, but have not yet used. One tool is the rural electric cooperative boards across the USA. These boards are generally made up of local 1%ers who have no interest in serving the best interests of our envirement unless it is a photo/ promo op. If the collective power of these small utility networks were tweaked to allow the owners to purchase, install, trade, and market renewable energy it would I believe take on a positive life of its own. Greg