The Path to Clean Energy
The migration to renewables is best understood as a three-phase process:
First, we have the task of replacing coal in the grid mix, which is happening with great effectiveness in our world today. The cost of PV, wind, other renewable resources, storage, smart-grid, efficiency, etc., all continue to plummet. Advanced nuclear holds great promise as well. Yes, China and India still look scary with respect to coal consumption, but the developed world will soon have replaced coal for themselves, and these solutions will then make their way into the developing world. We all understand the importance of this last concept here; a solution that doesn’t include China and India isn’t a solution at all.
Second, we have electric transportation for cars and light-duty trucks (as well as a host of new, smaller vehicles to fill niche markets, like package delivery and urban commuting), all of which is happening over the next 10 – 20 years, and will effectively replace oil over that fairly short period of time.
Third, we have everything else: air travel, cargo ships, Class 8 trucks–the other energy applications that are not included in the above. This will take a longer period of time, the length of which is hard to predict: perhaps 50 years.
Anyone who’s not optimistic about this and the speed with which it’s progressing is either disingenuous, or is simply not paying attention. 196 countries just got together and said they want to make a concerted effort to migrate away from fossil fuels at the maximum practical rate. Think of how incredibly unlikely that would have been just a few short years ago.
Here’s another way to look at it. It was only a few years ago that the people of the world a) basically trusted the oil companies to be the energy providers of the future, and b) held significant doubt about the legitimacy of the science behind climate change. As we move into 2016, we see something marvelous: Almost all that credulity has disappeared. Outside of a few Republicans in the U.S. Congress and perhaps some religious extremists, essentially every literate person understands that humankind faces a very serious challenge, yet possesses the technology to address it immediately and cost-effectively. All this has happened in the blink of an eye relative to the evolution of human civilization.
We needn’t fret, but we mustn’t rest on our laurels, i.e., bask in the glow of our recent achievements. The oil companies, the most powerful group in the history of human society, are not going to go away. They own the U.S. Congress, and, though they were taken by surprise by the recent flourish of activity in the clean energy space, are not going to give up their efforts to keep the world addicted to dirty energy.
Our most interesting and important days lie ahead of us.
The Carbon War Room along with the Rocky Mountain Institute are beginning to make strides in cargo ships and over the road trucks. I see more and more trucks with aerodynamic panels between the wheels and behind the rear doors to reduce drag.
Lets make sure those electric vehicles are powered with renewables not coal!
Change is coming, and faster than many people realise – with developing nations likely to leapfrog directly to cleaner energy sources.
China’s target for solar + wind by 2020 is an enormous 450 GW, India 175 GW by 2022, and Nigeria has just today announced a target for 13 GW of off grid solar (Nigeria currently has only 10.4 GW of total capacity of which only 6.05 GW is currently available) – no time frame given.
http://www.leadership.ng/news/486692/fg-targets-13000mw-solar-electricity-amina-mohammed
Particle accelerator is the answer for the future because we gain an unheard of amount of energy that could supply the planet with its energy needs,renewable energy’s are good but for the overall power needs won’t be enough for the future.so more money for research wjould be needed. The next energy race is on as we type because other countrys have there own accelerator.
In 20 years or so, literally 1% of the land will be covered by PV. Anything past that will probably be too much and would pose environmental issues. BULK storage will probably not compete with the global power line network, since HVDC is more efficient and would bring solar generated electrons from “to many rooftops” on another hemisphere to where it’s really needed in winter.
So, the best way to power the planet without fossil fuels is by use of advanced machine automation exponentially building solar coverage connected like the world wide web.
If war like issues confront us, we’ll probably have to build nuclear at sea (like offshore wind turbines) for “instant, easy” power requirements (yep, i believe in nuclear powered aircraft carriers). Still, the advance of the compounded growth of PV will eventually out power even lots of nuclear.
I want to add that solar is like a virus that attaches itself to people – the more we automate, the more solar, until total mass, Just like all the other devices.
Nuclear can’t see exponential growth because it’s to big to be an everyday device.
Same will probably apply to fusion (unless built at a very small scale).
Could you expand on “to where it’s really needed in winter.”?
Do you mean that the power is really needed in winter because of the increased need for heating, or because PV output is reduced in winter?
Considerable power is used for heating, usually by fossil fuels, and we want to stop using fossil fuels. If we had CO2-free electricity, we could use electricity instead of fossil fuels for heating. However, it makes little sense to generate electricity at the less than 16% efficiency of PV panels and use that electricity for heating. Surely, considering that solar panels to heat water have efficiencies > 50% it would make more sense to use the sun for heating rather than using the sun to generate electricity then use the electricity for heating yet there has been only very limited push for solar heating.
Your proposal to have a world wide grid doesn’t consider the political problems. If the entire world were at peace and there were no conflicting interests, then, at least in theory, a world wide grid might be practical. However, wars and conflicting interests would jeopardize the integrity of the world wide grid.
Many who support renewable power systems assert that one of its advantages is that it eliminates the need for a large grid because power can be generated locally. They see a large grid as reducing reliability.
Even now, within the U.S., it is often very difficult to get approval for a new power line, whether it is AC or DC. Environmental organizations can delay such lines by years. HVDC is more efficient than HVAC with very long lines but the losses in conversion make HVDC less efficient than HVAC for shorter lines.
I continue to believe that to reduce CO2 emissions to acceptable levels, most of the power will have to come from nuclear reactors and that we should have a crash program to develop better nuclear technologies to eliminate the problems associated with out pressurized water reactors.
The increased efficiencies of solar thermal might not compete with the increasing eff of solid state. To many moving parts and rusty plumbing. Eventually, PV should be down to just a few dollars per square meter.
Yes, solar’s not enough for the wintertime unless shipped from afar. So what would be more efficient, shipping bulk batteries or the line loss from 10,000 miles away?
A global (or trans continental) power grid might be the ONLY way to get places like Russia to go green. If I could afford an electric car, I still couldn’t charge it at night with solar unless by such long lines.
To me, that is more reliable than dodging the local weather.
As for nuclear, I only fear the human element. We can control it but not 100% of the time. I’d say ditch the reprocessing ideas and store the wastes in subduction zones? Not sure, but on ships, there’s no issue of meltdown. We can’t have nuclear if we can’t be 100% sure about security, thus my new intent to ditch the LFTR idea. We don’t want all the other countries going nuclear because of the security uncertainty – and it requires most all the other countries to go green to do any good.
Large buildings are going solar. Windows and surfaces have existing tech to be used as PV thus not requiring additional land. In addition “smart-city” systems are under intense development, we are a little late but the world was created to take quite a bit of abuse before going belly up. It may cost us, not only money…. but with the help of Heaven I believe we will come out of this nose dive. We must pull together in our personal lives and try to influence as many people as possible in local gov’t- mayors, hospitals, schools. We can all make connections. We all have one life to live, one vote to vote, one voice to influence- and as you said Craig- Caul va a ser mi influencia? Is the question to keep in mind.
Unfortunatly its more than “a few republicans” All of the Presidential candidates call it a hoax.
Yes, but that’s because they all need to appeal to the far right at this point. What’s really going on there includes this: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/10/30/3717778/gop-green-working-group/
Keep up the good work! Sounds like there is hope.
Solar should get so cheap to actually be the global solution – even cheaper than anything with a turbine. The biggest obstacle would be political opposition to the necessary intercontinental (and global?) power lines.
Keep up the good work! Sounds like there is hope.
Solar should get so cheap to actually be the global solution – even cheaper than anything with a turbine. The biggest obstacle would seem to be political opposition to the necessary intercontinental (and global?) power lines after solar gets so much cheaper.
Craig,
May I say how much I applaud your optimism and commitment to improving the environment.
While I share your broader objectives, I don’t share your time scale or sense of moral and political crusade.
The dynamics of generating energy to replace the current energy supply are an enormous logistical undertaking. Simplistic moral and ideological political considerations are not really helpful when it comes to assessing economic, technical and logistical impediments..
So far, (with the exception of Hydro) renewable energy has proved either environmentally disastrous, or economically challenged.
The reason why fossil fuel energy remains dominant, isn’t due to some evil plot by secret cabals of hidden capitalists, but due to it’s ability to deliver reliable, economic, convenient, usable energy on demand. Because of this fact, the entire world has become reliant on fossil fuels to provide power for at least 90% of the world’s power supply.
Historically, this has resulted in Fossil fuel and oil in particular, becoming the most important commodity in the economic dynamic of civilization. The oil industry is so entwined in the economic life of developed nations that disengagement must be a long and difficult process.
Over enthusiasm and zealous hyperbole leads to massive and expensive white elephants, as is evidenced by the 40 year environmental and economic disaster of US corn ethanol production.
Both Wind and Solar industries have displayed promising technology, but considering the massive investment both public and private the results are extremely disappointing, and without substantial taxpayer/user subsidies, the technology just isn’t economic (or at best marginal and small scale.
This isn’t to say that there will not be dramatic improvements in technologies, just “when” is harder to predict. Certainly a ten or twenty year time frame would appear wildly optimistic.
The recent talkfest in Paris, was an absolute triumph ! Well, a triumph for political and diplomatic expediency. Paris produced a series of agreements, which allowed everyone to claim a “win”, and allowed the participants sufficient “wriggle” room to make the entire process meaningless.
National governments have sensed that the ” green boom’ has reached it’s zenith in public concern and will decrease as an issue over the next decade as economic issues occupy more of the voters concern.
The US is a nation in considerable economic difficulty. The national debt will soon be twenty-trillion dollars ! The only reason the US economy hasn’t suffered a major collapse, is the good fortune of a domestic energy boom. If the US chooses to waste this opportunity to pay down debt, recapitalize it’s industrial base, and implement social reforms and restructure infrastructure, the opportunity will disappear and the US is bound for a long period of decline.
Spending vast sums of borrowed money, importing cheap solar panels from the Peoples Republic of China, to create short term employment in the installation industry, is extreme folly.
This is the problem with idealistically creating industries based around flawed technology, that remain dependent on taxpayer subsidies.
Craig, Many thanks for an excellent summary of the situation, which I do agree with. The work continues! However I have to agree with the comments above about biofuels in particular. I do not agree that Solar PV will fail. The cost reductions in the US in particular suggest that even Shell believe that has a big important future. Wind energy should be generated offshore, however the costs are still way too high and in UK and Germany where I work these industries are utterly subsidy dependent now and for the coming years. We shall need a big step-change towards floating wind units more closely spaced in large numbers in deeper water far from shore (no more “NIMBY” problems). These will likely be floating vertical Axis Turbines [VAWT] rather than the large heavy three bladed horizontal versions [HAWT], which are basically onshore turbines on single piles or truss towers in up to 50 m of water. Too costly and like an evolutionary crawl in reverse only with little of the evolution.
I presented on the current offshore situation a couple of months ago where there is an example of offshore VAWTs. Until that big switch happens, with lightweight composite materials, taut tethering at sea and carbon fibre high speed curved Darrieus blades, marine wind energy will not see the cost reductions which will allow it to truly compete with fossil fuels, nuclear and all the rest:
http://www.academia.edu/19268286/Offshore_Wind_Energy_-_Floating_VAWT_2015
http://www.academia.edu/16313197/Seabed_Anchoring_for_Floating_Wind_Turbines
The next best things are going to come along pretty quickly as the Energy Transition moves forward, but this future energy mix is unlikely to include those foul, dirty old fashioned methods such as open cast coal, tar sands, tight oil and full uncontrolled gas fracking. They will likely include:
a) Increasingly effective and cheaper Solar PV.
b) Better and more effective wind energy conversion, including floaters offshore.
c) Floating Tidal and Wave Energy Converters.
d) Carbon Capture and Storage [CCS] schemes.
e) Zero carbon footprint combined cycle natural gas.
f) “Dry” cryogenic natural gas “fracking” – with zero sand/water use.
g) Hydroelectric power including pumped storage.
h) Geothermal energy.
j) Nuclear fusion; TIME magazine this week: http://time.com/4082939/inside-the-quest-for-fusion-clean-energys-holy-grail/
Chris Golightly
Dr.C.R. Golightly, BSc, MSc, PhD, MICE, FGS.
Geotechnical and Engineering Geology Consultant
Rue Marc Brison 10G, 1300 Limal, Belgium
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e-mail: chris.golightly@hotmail.com
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“You Pay for a Site Investigation – Whether You do One or Not”– Cole et al, 1991.
“Ignore The Geology at Your Peril” – Prof. John Burland, Imperial College.
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http://www.windplatform.eu/structure/working-group-4-offshore/
Wow. I love those presentations on offshore wind. Very informative. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
@ Chris Golightly,
Thank you for your excellent observations, and interesting insight into your research.
I don’t believe it’s a matter of Solar “failing” as such, but without a radical storage solution solar technology remains uneconomic, except in certain niche situations. The essential problem with Solar and Wind energy is problem of incompatibility with the needs of an industrial society that expects reliable power on demand.
Solar and Wind must also compete with newer Nuclear Technologies being developed, such as the Japanese development of serialized “mini” generators using Thorium instead of Uranium. The economics of such plants are becoming very competitive, and may dramatically reduce transmission losses and infrastructure costs.
I absolutely agree with your prediction that open cast coal, tar sands, tight oil and full uncontrolled gas fracking, will be discontinued. These resources are only marginally economic at best and advanced technology is rapidly rendering such practices obsolete.
My problem is with overly idealistic and optimistic advocates preaching an energy revolution occurring in a time frame of only 10 to 20 years. Such claims are usually based on a fuzzy mix of leftist ideology and a hatred of the oil industry, mixed with an hysterical misunderstanding of climate change.
Taxpayer funding has created uneconomic new industries, requiring vast amounts of public expenditure and achieving very little practical result. The only accomplishment of these industries, is attracting ideological/political support for more taxpayer funding
In the meantime, more humble, yet more effective technologies are ignored or neglected.
The most important factor in any energy future is to maintain a strong and growing global economy. Valuable research, such as the projects you are working on, are dependent on development funding. That funding can only be provided by societies producing economic surplus, not continually funded by increasingly unsustainable debt.
The industry that produces the most surplus in the western world is the oil industry.
Taxpayer funding must be carefully monitored and provide tangible results, not sustain unproductive industries for ideological or political reasons.
Part of the problem for the Solar industry is that much of the vaulted reduction in initial cost is not a result of improved technology, but the domination of the market by cheap product from the PRC. The problems with quality are only beginning to surface. A review of 80,000 installations in Europe by the German solar monitoring firm Meteocontrol found 80 percent were under-performing. Testing of six manufacturers’ solar panels at two Spanish power plants by Enertis Solar in 2010 found defect rates as high as 34.5 percent, despite this alarming statistic, a 2015 survey discovered the detected defect rate had jumped to over 60% !
Reports from the US indicate a defect rate of more than 30%, although that figure may be understated as most panel owners are unaware that their panels are under-performing, or not reported because the Solar company has disappeared. (the failure rate among Solar businesses has been high).
The economic modelling for Solar relies on a life of a 30 year minimum for solar panels, and 97% performance rate. If these defect figures are correct, then once again the taxpayer has been the victim of another inadequately monitored waste of public money.
Utilities from Spain to Nevada are cutting the rates paid for Solar power. The results of reducing or removing these incentives inevitably leads to a collapse of the industry. (Spain’s largest solar company, Abengoa, just declared bankruptcy ).
There is also indication that the price of panels is beginning to rise as EU anti-dumping regulations are hitting Chinese manufacturers. pvXchange, a solar market consultancy based in Bremen, Germany reported a rise of rise 6% in the second half of 2015.
It’s my observation that the transition to a low carbon economy will be by slow evolution, not dramatic revolution.
Intercontinental powerlines should connect solar and wind. I believe solar to continue its decline in costs due to the nature of slowly declining subsidy and thus increasing demand and competition in the meantime. I don’t really think wind could be made as cheap as solar once it is fully mature, being solid state with no moving parts and made by future machine automation that will far exceed the efficiency of today’s automation.
As for connections, the Chinese are already building HVDC. I’m sure we could too.
A global distribution of distributed sources might eventually be the cheapest way to go. In the meantime, NG cuts half the emissions as coal.
I don’t want to disagree with nuclear, except my only concerns are security and errant humans. I know we can deal with the wastes probably easier than the extra security concerns regarding reprocessing. Build it on ships just as the military? The extra line costs should be cheaper than the liability (or fear) costs of building new nuclear on land.
Eventually, global solar should be “everywhere” and will be able to power its own exponential growth since even its EROEI is improving.
To me, the continued lessening of solar subsidy is worth far more than just taking a chance on business as usual (and oil wars, pollution, excess co2, etc). To make it work without major bulk storage will require some long distance powerlines so as to bring the overall capacity factor up substantially.
Batteries will become solid state too, probably not enough for any real bulk storage, but at least enough to transition from gasoline.
@ fireofenergy
HVDC power transmission is one of those technologies that tries to make inefficient or difficult power generation viable. Very few of it’s adherents, (including the EU ) have seen the size and scale of the installations required to transmit the scale of power required.
Again the cost and maintenance of the systems is enormous, and the transmission losses are significant. The idea of bringing power from remote, awkwardly placed generating sources to industrial population centres , converting to AC and redistributing to localized grids, then to remote grids, is very daunting.
HVDC is a solution to a problem created by ideology, not practicality. If the only sustainable energy available was Solar, Wind, Hydro, Geo-thermal, then such massive transmission infrastructure would be not only feasible, but essential.
However, research by Japanese, US, German and Swiss scientist and engineers has revealed that it’s possible to build “mini” Thorium nuclear power generation in the middle of high usage locations, completely omitting the need for massive transmission infrastructure, and losses.
The estimated cost of these reactors would be a fraction of an adequate HVDC distribution infrastructure and far less vulnerable to disruption from natural disasters, terrorism etc.
Small thorium power generating technology doesn’t have the same risk, pollution or human error as Uranium Reactors, nor need the same levels of technology. The size of a typical Japanese Thorium power plant capable of powering a city of 500,000, would be about the size of a small two storied house, and could be located underground, in the centre of a city street. The amortized capital costs are minuscule, in comparison to output. Many major cities have old disused and often forgotten subway, or disused underground coal gas infrastructure even war time bunkers and tunnel systems, that could be used to house “mini ” thorium power generation.
The total annual waste from such a plant wouldn’t fill a shoe box, and has a half life of less than 400 years.
The planet has vast qualities of thorium, certainly enough for many centuries. (Thorium mining is one of the less pollutant types of mining activity.)
It’s not that other alternative source of energy are so bad, it’s just that Thorium ticks all the boxes except for the fear and prejudice deeply ingrained in several generations about a totally different technology using Uranium.
The problem for the US, is that by continuing to waste vast sums of borrowed money on technologies, that will be obsolete before making any significant contribution, the US economy won’t be able to afford superior technology. The US is no longer the giant super power economy generating vast surpluses. The policies pursued by short-sighted administrations, frightened of electoral backlash and media sensationalism, will render the US noncompetitive, and crippled both economically and socially.
That’s not a good prospect. The world needs a positive, energized and innovative USA.
I agree with the idea about nuclear except i do have a fear of dishonest people in other countries siphoning highly enriched from the continuous chemical extraction for extremist causes (and money). But you did not say “LFTR”. So, I hope it’s possible to really denature the fuel. I’d rather deal with the long term wastes, since it would still be less than that from the conventional cycle, and is such a small amount anyways.
As long as it’s easier to build a weapons program from the ground up, then that’s the type of reactor to mass produce!
Just a few months ago I was saying the same thing about how something the size of a house could power a city. I guess I’m kinda giving up since it’s not being developed. Hopefully, a good reactor design will be developed that proves that there is no way to meltdown (and harder than from the ground up for weapons program).
I like how you put HVDC in perspective. Thanks.