Solar PV Has a Remarkable Characteristic: It’s Actually Happening
Over the years, we’ve had many hundreds of comments from people who claim that solar and wind can’t scale to replace fossil fuels. This is amusing, since all these people need to do to disconfirm their beliefs is open their window and look around.
Here’s an article describing how a major power utility company in Texas and New Mexico (El Paso Electric) has “eliminated coal generation from its portfolio to concentrate on utility-scale solar and a community solar program.”
You can do all the thinking and calculating you want. Or, better, you can simply look.
Of course solar and wind can replace fossil fuels to a limited extent, but I know of no place in the world where they have replaced fossil fuels 100% which is what is required. Replacing fossil fuels 40%, 60%, or even 80%, is insufficient.
Of course a utility can eliminate coal from its portfolio. That’s easy; all it has to do is import power from elsewhere where it may be generated with coal which is exactly what the subject utility has admitted it is doing.
Notice this sentence in the article:
“The utility continues to utilize energy from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona, gas plants and solar.”
So, that utility has not even claimed to eliminate power not generated by wind and solar. It has simply pointed out that IT owns nothing but wind and solar systems and it acknowledges that doing so requires that it buy power from other utilities.
Craig the article title reads:
“Texas utility goes coal-free with solar focus”
It lacks honesty, is misleading by obvious omission, and a deliberate play on words meant to misinform ordinary people!
It should have read:
“Texas utility goes coal-free with solar PV, natural gas, and nuclear energy focus”
Six extra words that bring clarity and accuracy into play.
From there the article can flesh out what messages it wants to get across, such as the percentages of each of the energy mix providers for interested readers.
Solyndra were masters of the disingenuous and misleading “word-smithed” headlines, which cost American taxpayers billions.
What could have been a very interesting and informative read for people, has now been overshadowed by this obvious sleight of hand by some unknown author’s contempt for the readers.
For heaven’s sake Craig, I recommend you be more forthright and demanding of your forum contributors please – the future energy debate globally is actually serious business worldwide, it is not a game and should not be allowed to be “word-smithed” by spin doctors into irrelevance. After all, we are dealing with educated American citizens in the energy debate – not blindfolded sheep.
Lawrence Coomber
You’re entitled to your viewpoint, but your belief that there’s an effort to deceive readers is very peculiar, not to mention unfounded. Yes, solar PV won’t be the only source of energy in that region of the country, but no one’s claiming that.
As far as your low opinion of my journalistic integrity is concerned, again, you can believe anything you want; I can only point that it’s one shared by very few people.
Craig,
I don’t think Lawrence is questioning your integrity.
I’m sure he appreciate your role as an opinion writer and advocate is very different from that of a reporter who should be more impartial.
All enthusiastic supporters of any new technology or social change are challenged with remaining objective when commenting. Without an element of objectivity it’s difficult to decipher the authors information from mere propaganda.
As usual, Frank is accurate in his critique of the article you cited. Such articles are written to support an industry with a great many virtues, but also inadequacies.
Enthusiastic press releases are designed to keep the reader focused on the merits of the technology, and disguise inadequacies. Articles like these are little more than advertisements.
Criticizing Wind and Solar is difficult because we all want this technology to work and provide a real solution to the adverse environmental effects of fossil fuels. We hope that such articles will increase support for clean technologies.
Regrettably, the opposite maybe be true. The torrent of propaganda from the renewable fuels industry allied with naive advocates and loud “true believers” may be counter-productive.
Wind and Solar technologies will prove relatively minor contributors to the generating capacities needed by an increasingly industrialized world.
On any objective analysis, these technologies are inadequate requiring permanent taxpayer/consumer funded support couple with regulatory and reporting distortions.
The problem in assessing the value of these technologies is hampered by our desire to want them to work. Any critical analysis presented that contains negative information, will be met with an outburst of vociferous denial from supporters and vested interests.
Justifications range from unrealistic optimistic future projections, to “externalties” and rants about the Koch brothers. The level of enthusiastic support makes it very difficult to accept that these technologies may have been elevated beyond their capacity by our desire for a panacea.
That’s the tragedy of such technologies ! They almost work, they should work, but frustratingly they never quite make it.
It’s not that Wind and Solar are useless, indeed they will always have a useful role, but the danger lies in the promotion of such technology at the expense of less fashionable, but more beneficial technologies.
Like Lawrence, I’m not questioning your integrity or commitment, just your objectivity when assessing information supporting issues close to your heart.
Craig I have recently enjoyed this series of articles by Joe Romm which starts with this one provocatively titled “Almost Everything You Know About Climate Change Solutions Is Outdated:” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/10/3776465/everything-you-know-climate-change-solutions-outdated/
He makes points that we don’t need breakthrough technology, that deployment alone will make renewable energy cheap enough for a 100% carbon solution and that this has been demonstrated for 139 countries http://www.ecowatch.com/mark-jacobson-barriers-to-100-clean-energy-are-social-and-political-no-1882122292.html and finally that nuclear power can only be a minor solution due to deployment rates and an seemingly negative learning curve (costs going up as times and deployment progresses.)
“After all, we are dealing with educated American citizens in the energy debate – not blindfolded sheep.”
Sadly no. If that statement were true we would be much farther along and not still be having to fight an uphill battle.
@ Brian
If a football team felt like that before the game Brian – they are defeated already.
Never talk the team down Brian even if what you say may be half true.
Instead, mobilise the coaching staff to turn it around, strengthen and empower the under-performers, change an entrenched defeatest culture, and rediscover personal and team spirit and pride. It actually works, and you know this is true.
Lawrence Coomber
Clearly you are working with a more altruistic and educated “team” than I am. And don’t think for a moment that I am not trying my heart out here and I am certainly not stopping any time soon. Here they want to move in the opposite direction. They want to increase coal production, increase fracking, block solar and wind power. The reality is what it is.
Regarding the linked-to article, another approach just occurred to me.
Suppose that Marsovia Power and Light gets 40% of its power from coal and 60% from a combination of wind and solar. They want very much to get all the power they produce from wind and solar, so they sell their coal plants to Unclean Power and Light then assert that they are environmentally responsible since they own only renewable sources of power. What they downplay is that they import power from Unclean Power and Light which means that they are less environmentally responsible than the image they try to project.
That is approximately what the El Paso power company is doing.
Except for countries which have huge amounts of hydro power or geothermal power available, I know of no country in the entire world that gets 100% of its power from renewables. Considering how hard Deutschland and Holland have tried to get 100% of their power from renewables and failed, I very much doubt that it is possible unless nuclear power is considered to be renewable. And, as global demand for power increases by about four times as poor countries strive to lift their people out of poverty, we will have to get practically all of our power from non-CO2 generating sources. That includes power for lighting, heating, cooling, cooking, transportation, sea water desalination (which must greatly increase), and manufacturing.
Frank I would like to throw this into the mix please.
The largest contributor to both global greenhouse gases and pollution is the internal combustion engine (gasoline from oil) and we all acknowledge that.
Therefore by reducing the need for gasoline, which is axiomatic with the global electric vehicle uptake revolution now underway, we should witness a very rapid reversal of the upward trends in greenhouse emissions according to my thinking. And this is a must do thing – failure is not an option on this subject.
But wait – have I missed something in all this?
I put this basic hypothesis to a small group of young high school students (age 13 – 14) last week by email and tasked them to research the contemporaneous literature publicly available to determine some rough figures relating to global daily consumption of oil [particularly for gasoline for cars] plus the energy related science of gasoline, to work up a few numbers on this topic.
Besides the simple statement above, I gave them only one other pieces of information that they should drill down on carefully as they work through their Excel formulas:
1. What I refer to as the “Energy Equation” or more properly termed “The first law of thermodynamics”, which broadly states that: “energy can be transformed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed”.
And I also asked them to answer a couple of specific questions in their findings including:
A. What challenges if any will the immutable “First Law of Thermodynamics” present to our scientists/physicists/engineers/policy makers, in preparing for a world full of EV’s and in particular what will be the net global increase required (roughly) in Gigawatt Hours GWh to meet the increased global demand for EV battery charging?;
B. What type of power generation sources do they recommend would be commercially viable to deploy to meet that additional demand within the critical future global energy imperative concept being: “abundant and low cost clean energy for all people”?
Let’s see what these fresh young minds come up with.
Lawrence Coomber
Hi Lawrence,
Sorry to disillusion you, but the largest single source of all pollution, including automobiles and allowing for GW/CC emissions is not automotive but maritime transport.
A single large container vessel can emit the equivalent pollution of 50 million motor vehicles ! There are approximately 1 billion motor vehicles on the planet, but 100,000 vessels of this category.
(not hard to do the math ! )
The reason for the imbalance is the continued use of Marine grade 5 and 6 fuel oil, commonly known as bunker oil. The toxicity of this form of pollution is far more injurious to health and the environment. The scale of this pollution is only now being revealed.
It’s tragic to listen to rabid rants emanating from extreme environmental advocates and activists, and never hear this problem mentioned ! Mention the Koch brothers and you will receive a flood of responses. Mention shipping pollution, the most dangerous and pervasive source of pollution, and you get silence !
Now what’s really peculiar, is this is the one form of pollution where the technology exists, and is even economic, to end this toxic pollution. It’s also quite politically feasible. The majority of world sea lanes and major ports are controlled by Western democracies.
If just eleven of the nations agreed not to admit ships rigged for bunker oil, this pollution would disappear within a decade.
But not a single “green” politician is interested….
@ Marcopolo,
I knew that pollution from marine vessels was a serious problem, but I’m not sure of the extent of it. Does the pollution from marine vessel drift to occupied areas, or is it somehow degraded before it has a chance to affect people?
Of course the CO2 emitted by marine vessels is also serious. When shopping, one finds all sorts of things imported from China and elsewhere that could be made locally. I even bought a steel step-stool and steel garden stakes which were made in China and imported here to the U.S. Somehow that seems unreasonable. Surely the need for shipping would be reduced if such merchandise were made in the countries which are now importing it. That, PLUS discouraging the use of dirty fuel, would make a difference.
As you say, it seems strange, even bizarre, that this problem is so rarely mentioned that few people are aware of it.
As Lawrence says, internal combustion engines used for land vehicles is also a problem. What the ultimate solution for that is I don’t know. It may be that electric vehicles will turn out to be the major portion of the solution, especially if range limitations can be adequately reduced. Or, if we get plentiful and economical power, it may be that many vehicles could be run on an artificial fuel that is CO2 neutral.
I don’t know how greatly air travel contributes to CO2 emissions and air pollution. High speed electric rail transportation could reduce the demand for air travel and airplanes could be run on a CO2 neutral artificial fuel.
We will also need to deal with the phobia against nuclear power and expand nuclear power; I see no alternative to that for most large prosperous countries.
Hi Frank,
Thank you for your reply.
I have been writing about bunker oil pollution for 15 years, without much effect.
From time to time, articles appear in major news outlets, equally without effect. Several environmental organizations exist to combat the problem. Their protests are valiant, but ineffective.
To their great credit the major Danish (and one German) shipping lines are making positive investments to eliminate or at least mitigate the problem.
80% of all research funding has come from 4 major oil companies, principally Shell and Chevron, but also Exxon and BP . Without their support, this problem would never have been identified.
The ISO has been very cunning in it’s responses and has so far been highly successful in removing the issue from the public eye. The worst heath effects are felt in the UK, yet only a few articles are to be found in the pages of the Daily Mail, Times, and Telegraph.
The champion of the green left media, the Guardian, and it’s sister paper the Observer have been surprisingly coy.
It’s estimated that more than 200,000 known cases of death by bunker oil emissions occur each year. Millions more annually contract cancer from bunker oil carcinogens. Recent research indicates this is only the tip of an iceberg.
The problem of bunker oil emissions is they don’t degrade as you would expect. The most devastating particles have an incredibly long toxic life, drifting in the bio-sphere for months while traveling thousand of miles before settling, often as rain or snow. In the ocean, these particles are carried by currents etc around the globe.
Bunker oil has other harmful oceanic effects which are only recently the subject of research. Because carcinogenic toxins take years to manifest, they’ve remained unnoticed in fish and marine life. It wasn’t until Chevron financed a study of long lived sea creatures a causal link was proposed between bunker oil pollution and cancerous tumors in the food chain.
That research led to conjecture of human cancers caused by undetected particulate matter in sea food. The research is ongoing.
The link between reduction of kelp and plankton caused by bunker oil emissions is well established, but also largely ignored. Oceans are the planet’s largest carbon sink, damaging the ability of the oceans ability to absorb carbon is the equivalent of denuding rain-forests, yet the level of protest is sadly absent.
Bunker oil is not even economic anymore. Computerized logistics, scheduling, technology, have reduced the economic advantage of very cheap, but cumbersome fuel. It could be phased out with very little economic consequence.
I agree wholeheartedly the most effective method of reducing GW/CC emissions is by encouraging rapidly advancing nuclear generation. Only nuclear has the ability to lift countless millions out of poverty, and sustain industrial development.
http://www.transportenvironment.org/press/shipping-emissions-17-global-co2-making-it-elephant-climate-negotiations-room
How little has changed in the 7 years since Fred wrote the following Daily Mail article:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html
MARCOPOLO,
That contained very good information.
If bunker oil were completely phased out, what would happen to it? Could it be converted to something else which is useful and not damaging? Would it have to be disposed of somehow?
Hi Frank,
Bunker Oil is largely a hang over from the old days or oil refining technology. At that time it was a cheap waste product.
Modern refining technology can turn this product into useful and profitable products. The remaining waste is used for road surfacing etc.
There just is no justification for the continued use of bunker oil, but then there’s no real pressure from environmentalists to end the use of the product.
Thanks for that info Marcopolo I didn’t know of that statistic. I must admit though now I reflect back to 1968 when I served on an aircraft carrier and spent 12 – 16 hours a day as the aft engine room artificer and occasionally did the odd watch “punching FFO sprayers” on the steam boilers. FFO is Furnace Fuel Oil and I am not sure if that equates to “bunker oil” but it seemed like a very light crude to me and we never experienced much rubbish coming out of the stack.
My father was an engineer on the merchant ship Northern Star in 1934 and it was a coal burner. Everyone on board had a healthy layer of grime and soot over themselves permanently he used to remind me.
Seems we not have come that far in the marine world from what you have said.
Lawrence Coomber
Hi Lawrence,
Thank you for your reply.
Did you serve on HMAS Melbourne, or the old “Vung Tau Ferry”, HMAS Sydney ?
Marine Grade No 6 fuel, is a very heavy toxic fuel commonly known as bunker oil. Navy Special Fuel Oil (NSFO)is usually one,or more, grades lighter. HMAS Melbourne ran on lighter (and more expensive)fuel grade using principally No 2 and 4 grade fuel oil (Furnace fuel) depending on the climate.
Basically, Number 6 bunker oil is what’s when the lighter, and more valuable, grades have been removed. The residual is added with crude waste and even waste products such as used motor oils, and oil too thick or sulfurous for economic refining .
Like all residual fuel oils,Bunker oil has very high initial viscosity. This requires considerable engineering solutions for storage, pumping, and burning. (No. 6 oil must, in fact, be stored at around 100 °F, then heated to 150–250 °F (66–121 °C) before it can be easily pumped, while in cooler temperatures it congeals into a tarry semisolid.
Nasty stuff !
Unfortunately, when burned it doesn’t give off black smoke as you would think. To the human eye the particles are difficult to detect among the fairly colourless vapour, which in maritime conditions becomes carried rapidly up into the atmosphere.
In the advent of a spill or fuel release in rivers or oceans, unlike natural crude or lighter grades only about 5-8% evaporates, the rest sinks to the bottom or forms tar balls, which act like highly toxic little mines travel along the bottom of the ocean killing everything in their path.
Of all man made pollution, bunk oil is the hardest to clean up.
Just the normal emissions from the vessels exhaust has a devastating effect on the oceans ability to act as a carbon sink trap. We know Bunker oil emissions kill at least 200,000 people a year in the Northern hemisphere, although that number could be ten times greater.
Although we have measured some of the carcinogenic effect on the food chain, the extent is now only just being studied thanks to the funding and resources of Shell and Chevron Oil.
Oh, yeah there has been some action the ISO, UN and EU, did agree that ships shouldn’t use bunker oil in ports. (I’m sure the wind respects national borders!).
Bunker Oil carcinogens have been monitored in soil, plants and animals in place as far from the ocean as Nebraska Iowa, and the Caucasus in the Russian Federation.
Like I say, nasty stuff, but when questioned ‘Green Party’ Senator Di Natale and Adam Bandt didn’t consider the issue of any environmental importance. ( a government funded “hybrid social enterprise focused on promoting social inclusion, food provenance ( vegan) and animal welfare was of far more pressing concern!).
As I type if just one of 40 large ships a day passing through the great barrier reef collided and ripped open it’s bunker oil tanks, the resultant destruction from the pollution would destroy the majority of the reef for ever.
Oh well,…..
BTW I sailed in May 1967 on HMAS Sydney to Vietnam. HMAS Sydney ferried 2 RAR and a company of NZ on that occasion.
I recall a enthusiastic young naval officer explaining all about the newly issued Australian White Ensign, of which he was very proud. He also explained to me all about the different types of teeth in man eating shark breeds, which he obviously thought would add to the interest of the occasion, if I knew exactly what sort of shark was eating me!
Cheers….
Marcopolo,
Thank you for your post on what should be done with bunker oil.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Diesel engines would run better on lighter oils than bunker, and perhaps last longer as well.
Some years ago, I walked past where the Queen Elizabeth II was docked in Lautoka, Fiji. There was thick black smoke emanating from the ship, probably from a generator running on bunker oil. No doubt they have to run a generator when docked if shore power is not available, but it was an obvious source of pollution even though the volume was not great.
Back decades ago, I had a summer job at a hardboard factory. One of my duties was to use a long dip stick to measure the level of fuel oil in a huge tank. The oil was kept hot at all times else it would not flow. It may have been the equivalent of bunker oil. Whether such low grade oil is still used for steam boilers I don’t know.