What Actually Happens As We Move Away From Coal as an Energy Source?
Everyone on Earth who knows anything about our environment challenges would like to see the elimination of coal-fired power plants at the maximum feasible rate. Yet few (myself included) have a rock-solid understanding of the implications of moving off coal. If you aspire to such an understanding, this is an article that you’re sure to enjoy.
Reblogged this on duanetilden.
Reblogged this on johnsmall9.
Craig,
I don’t claim to have a perfect understanding of how the future will unfold as we shift away from coal (and make no mistake we ARE shifting away from coal), but any report claiming that we’ll be massively increasing natural gas imports is beyond folly and well in to the nutjob with a sandwich board category.
My take is this: In 2012 we increased wind energy penetration at large at a rate of ~1%/year (to ~4% total). That rate is unsustainable, and we had to back off dramatically because no viable solution for handling variable excess energy (WindFuels) has been invested in and deployed… so 2013 will likely see ~0.5% increased penetration, and 2014 will see less expansion than that… But ever-strengthening RPS mandates will force the penetration higher by at least 0.5%/year on average through 2023. By 2023, WindFuels should be commercialized and deployable, in which case wind power can expand at a much faster pace – perhaps as fast as 1%/year thenceforth.
Solar is skyrocketing, but it’s still such a small player that it’s insignificant overall (2012 saw 0.1% total penetration, 2013 will see 0.2%, and 2014 will likely see ~0.32-0.35%…), but the growth in solar market must soon reach a natural plateau, and will probably only see a maximum of 0.2% increased penetration/year as long as coal is legal and gas is cheap… but that expansion will likely continue well passed 2040.
The American Nuclear fleet is dying off, based on wrongheaded environmental activism, which means that over the next 20 years the current 19% of our electricity derived from nuclear power will likely drop to less than 10%, so if I’m right we’ll be losing roughly the same amount of nuclear power as we gain from wind power over the coming two decades. after that, there may be a gradual resurgence, but the rate is unclear, because by 2030 the cost of Uranium will be significant, so the new reactors – will be new LFTR’s, and that development timeline is highly uncertain.
Geothermal power has had a rough time (currently at ~0.4% penetration), but I feel like its time is coming. It’s current ~0.025%/year growth should expand to ~0.1% growth by the end of the decade. Gas/oil fracking wells are “stimulated” in much the same way as enhanced geothermal wells, so the technology improvements in the gas and oil sector should serve to reduce costs of geothermal energy. The problem is the value of drilling rigs has increased with the hyper-inflation of liquid fuels over the past decade, and that has kept geothermal on the sidelines. They will begin to feel the technology improvements as more rigs are built out and the horizontal drilling industry matures. I’m suspecting we’ll see growth of 0.1%/year by 2020, and perhaps growth as fast as 0.2%/year by 2030.
Biomass (currently ~1.4% penetration) is never going to move appreciably. Liquid fuels are too valuable, and better enzimes are being developed to turn waste biomass in to liquid fuels. That should keep pace with expansion of biomass at large being sold to energy concerns. I’m expecting 0%/year change.
Hydropower is the biggest renewable option today at 6.8%, but it will lose that crown to wind very quickly. The major movement in hydropower is dam uprating, rather than dam upgrading. The potential energy of any dam is based on the height of the dam and volume of water flowing through the turbines, So you hear about “upgrading” dams for “more power” quite often, but mostly that’s poorly informed journalism at best… there’s no additional MWh to be had from such “upgrades”, just higher peak power potential and greater variability – so as to accommodate more variable wind and solar. In order to get more actual energy from hydropower (so as to increase its penetration of our total electric generation), you have to build new dams or raise the level of existing dams. The latter is cost prohibitive, and the former requires a sacrifice of land – often very pretty land in valleys along swiftly-flowing rivers… Hydropower will likely remain somewhere south of 7% penetration for the rest of my lifetime.
This leaves Natural Gas, and perhaps nuclear power after ~20 years or so if we can get out of our own way…
According to my very generic and broad guesses above: we will see the following by 2040:
Wind: 26%
Nuclear: 14-20%
Hydropower: 6.5%
Solar: 5.5%
Geothermal: 2.6%
Biomass: 1.4%
Natural gas: 38-44%
Coal: 0% (hopefully).
Our current natural gas penetration is 27.5%. Last year, because of a single warmer-than-average winter we increased our NG penetration to ~30.5% and cut WAY back on our NG production just to avoid a storage overcapacity situation. In 2012, the electric power portion of our NG consumption was 35%. During an average year that portion is only ~30%. So in order to accommodate a 42% electric power penetration in 2040 (assuming 0.5%/year increase in electricity demand) our total natural gas production would have to increase by a total of ~3 Tcf/year over the next 27 years.
That total production has increased by nearly 4 Tcf/year since the fracking revolution started, even though we are using 1/4 the number of drilling rigs to drill specifically for gas. We won’t need to import more natural gas in order to accommodate an additional expansion of 3 Tcf over the next 3 decades.
I didn’t read any further than the first paragraph of the linked report… He said one danger of having no coal would be an increase in imports of NG… and I started laughing too hard to get through the rest of it.
Do you mind providing your take on OTEC? Ocean current? Tidal? Wave? Thanks.
Craig,
I don’t know what is planned for OTEC… but I don’t see how it can move the needle. There just isn’t very much thermal gradient in the ocean to work with… so I don’t see how any infrastructure can be built that would be cost effective. With gradients on that scale, the actual volume/flow of the system would have to be tremendous in order to produce any real energy… so I would imagine that infrastructure costs would be such that the ROI of such a system would never pay itself back. But because of my overall lack of enthusiasm for OTEC, I haven’t read much about any particular technology that seeks to exploit it… so someone might get creative and surprise me… I just don’t expect it.
Ocean current is a sci-fi/fantasy idea that is nothing short of shear malarkey. While the ocean currents have so much energy that they could easily provide world-scale generation if they were harnessed… any idea that might set about trying to harness them would be absurdly costly. You’re talking about fixed installations on the seabed 1000ft deep, under constant salt-water attack, attempting to harness energy from a very dilute (low energy density) flow… It’s unthinkable. It boils down to dive teams, underwater welding, and underwater electrician work being too costly to consider for dilute resources. I’ll stand by that – this will never be viable.
Tidal is interesting, because it’s actually pretty cheap: giant turbines are slowly pushed one way as the tide rolls in, then pushed the other way as the tide rolls out. It works, it’s not fancy… and it’s not that expensive. The problem is it takes lbeachfront land – which traditionally is the most expensive real-estate in the world – and turns it into something industrial, with a view of blocky cement. Tidal advocates have stated that you can move the generators further out and no-one will see them when fully submerged… but now your’re working underwater again, and I’m not convinced you’ll save money over just buying up the coastline and paving it under. I don’t expect this to move the needle. There may be a few dozen facilities worldwide by 2040, but there won’t be 0.1% penetration.
Wave is very interesting. The fact that the buoys can be placed well out of sight of land is a major advantage. Wave power is cheaper than wind, for the first year, and it’s baseload. But the uncertainty about longevity has kept it from really taking off. You have a lot of working parts subjected to round-the-clock saltwater attack, and the buoys are on the surface, which means the system can be effected by weather… A good storm might easily rip an entire buoy field apart and scatter the bouys… and the risk of something like that is such that people are pretty skiddish. I imagine we’ll see some buoy fields generating energy… but I don’t know whether this will be in the range of tidal, or biomass, or in the range of solar by 2040. I suspect that since off-shore wind is a proven and hence “safe” investment, that most of the offshore action will be wind… but I’ll acknowledge that wave could surprise us and take off if they can somehow convince the world that the buoy fields will continue to produce energy without maintenance for >20 years.
And BTW, I was delighted to see that someone who saw one of my videos on WindFuels (2.5 years ago!) appears to have both the interest and the ability to get behind this is a major way. Needless to say, I hope it works out.
We do as well, and thank you very much for keeping us out there.
I actually think wave energy is a good idea and I have some ideas about how it could be made with very few moving parts, Possibly as few as one moving part and a spring and I have thought about how to get rid of the spring. I have no idea who I would propose this to that wouldn’t just run off with it though and I haven’t had a chance to experiment even on a small scale on my own. I just have some ideas, some experience with the ocean and bouys and some knowledge of electronics. I think it is being made more complicated than it needs to be.