Thursday, November 30, 2017

California 50% renewables by 2020

Source: EIA


A report released Monday from the California Public Utilities Commission shows that the state will get half of its electricity from renewable energy sources, including wind and solar, very soon—by 2020, to be exact, a full decade ahead of schedule.

In late 2015, Governor Jerry Brown signed landmark legislation regulating the state’s energy sources—setting a 2030 deadline to get half of the state’s electricity from renewables. What he didn’t expect was that last year, each of the state’s three largest utility companies would exceed the intermediate goal of achieving 25 percent renewable energy by 2016. California’s largest utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), alone sourced nearly 33 percent of its electricity demand from renewable sources, including solar, wind, and geothermal energy.


[Read more here]

California is the world's sixth largest economy.  If California can achieve 50% renewables, any country can.

Drowning at sea

The justification given for imprisoning refugees trying to reach Australia in horrible detention centres in Papua New Guinea is that it stops those same refugees from drowning at sea.  The supporters of this policy insist it's got nothing to do with racism or bigotry, it's about a deep and abiding concern for the suffering of refugees who arrive by boat into Australia's waters.

The cartoonist First Dog on the Moon produced a telling cartoon about this, which you can see here.

In the comments, commenter AndiGuar eviscerated the arguments put forward by the Government (and the Opposition) in favour of this horrible policy:

The drowning at sea argument is patently ridiculous, and has never been anything but a peg to hang a xenophobic / bigoted / racist hat on, while maintaining the pretence of claiming the moral high ground.

There are many ways of pointing out the hypocrisy & illogicality of it, for example:

* 1600 Australians drowned within our own territory in the same period that 1200 foreigners drowned mostly in international waters. Why do we throw $5,000,000,000 at the foreign drownings while our surf lifesaving clubs struggle to stay afloat?

* The annual cost of the supposed anti-drowning campaign could instead provide annual antimalarials for five hundred million people. If saving lives is our goal, then why ignore half a billion people to save an average of 200 a year? (the 1200 figure was over six years)

* In the same time that 1200 drowned, around 200,000 Aussies died from alcohol or tobacco. Once again, we have to ask why the 1200 are so precious that we need to lock people up to save others, when we don't lock up people who drink or smoke? (or drive cars, or hangglide, or scuba dive, or snow ski, or surf, or any number of other legal activities that carry an associated risk. There is absolutely no precedent in our system that makes it OK to lock survivors up as a deterrent for others against doing something risky but legal.

There is no sense whatsoever in the supposed "won't somebody please think of the drownings?" rationale for our detention centre regime.

And this can be easily proven: considering that it has already cost about $2,500,000 per person on Manus or Nauru, if you ask people why we couldn't have just bought them a plane ticket in the first place, the answer is always:

"BUT THEN MORE WILL COME!!!"

Which is what they are really worried about. Not the drownings.

Just so.

Renewables highest ever in India

A few days ago, I posted that India's coal demand is likely to peak soon

In Q3 renewables reached a new high in absolute and percentage terms:

Souirce: CleanTechnica

The numbers do not include large-scale hydro, which makes up another 10% of electricity generation.  Although the percentage from renewables is rising, it's rising slowly, by about a percentage point per year.  This is better than it sounds, because electricity demand is rising by 5.8% per annum. A rising percentage of a total which is itself rising fast, is an achievement. 

Source: CleanTechnica
In the first 3 quarters of this year. 75% of new generation capacity was carbon-free, 25% thermal.  Since capacity factors for each generation type are different, this doesn't necessarily mean that 75% of new generation output was from carbon-free sources. I estimate (based on usual capacity factors) that 65% of new output came from renewables/nuclear/big hydro.  (But I might be understating it as some coal power stations were closed.)  So still impressive.

However, we need to move to the position where 100% of new generating capacity is carbon-free.  I think India will get there over the next 5 years.  At that point, emissions from electricity generation will have peaked. 

Friday, November 24, 2017

Exponential growth in Chinese solar

Air pollution in China


I still encounter people who insist that China is doing nothing about its emissions, and that therefore we also should do nothing.  Never mind that renewables are now cheaper than coal, and reduce air pollution, so it would do us good to make the switch, even without taking CO2 emissions into account.  In fact, China isn't just switching its electricity generation system to renewables, it's also forcing a transformation to EVs in transport too.  Since China is responsible for 1/3rd of world CO2 emissions, that's excellent news, which removes any possible excuse for us, in the rest of the world, not to do the same.

From Bloomberg:

China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, is poised to install a record amount of solar-power capacity this year, prompting researchers to boost forecasts as much as 80 percent.

About 54 gigawatts will be put in place this year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said Monday, raising a forecast of more than 30 gigawatts made in July. That amount of additional capacity would likely surpass all the solar energy generated in Japan in 2017.

“The amount of rooftop solar plants and projects aimed at easing poverty were more than expected and developers rushed to build some ground-mounted solar projects before they have been allocated subsidies,” said Yvonne Liu, a BNEF analyst in Beijing.

The growth of the market has benefited top panel producers, including JinkoSolar Holding Co. and Trina Solar Ltd. China installed 43 gigawatts of solar power in the first nine months of 2017, already above the 34.5 gigawatts for all of last year.

China has been the world’s biggest solar market since 2013. It surpassed Germany as the country with the most installed photovoltaic power capacity two years ago.

[Read more here]

P.S.  The rise in just solar new capacity in China, just this year, is equal to the size of Australia's total generation capacity from all sources.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Record number very worried about climate change

Source


From EcoWatch.

Seven in ten Americans (71 percent) think global warming is happening, an increase of eight percentage points since March 2015. Only about one in eight Americans (13 percent) think global warming is not happening. Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not by more than five to one. 


Americans are also becoming certain global warming is happening—47 percent are "extremely" or "very" sure it is happening, an increase of 10 percentage points since March 2015. By contrast, far fewer—seven percent—are "extremely" or "very sure" global warming is not happening.

Over half of Americans (54 percent) understand that global warming is mostly human-caused. By contrast, one in three (33 percent) say it is due mostly to natural changes in the environment.

Only about one in seven Americans (15 percent) understand that nearly all climate scientists (more than 90 percent) are convinced that human-caused global warming is happening.

More than six in ten Americans (63 percent) say they are at least "somewhat worried" about global warming. About one in five (22 percent) are "very worried" about it—the highest levels since our surveys began, and twice the proportion that were "very worried" in March 2015.

Two in three Americans feel "interested" in global warming (67 percent), and more than half feel "disgusted" (55 percent) or "helpless" (52 percent). Fewer than half feel "hopeful" (44 percent).

Nearly two in three Americans (64 percent) think global warming is affecting weather in the U.S., and one in three think weather is being affected "a lot" (33 percent), an increase of eight percentage points since May 2017.

A majority of Americans think global warming made several extreme events in 2017 worse, including the heat waves in California (55 percent) and Arizona (51 percent), hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (54 percent), and wildfires in the western U.S. (52 percent).

More than three in four Americans (78 percent) are interested in learning about how global warming is or is not affecting extreme weather events.

More than four in ten Americans (44 percent) say they have personally experienced the effects of global warming, an increase of 13 percentage points since March 2015.

Four in ten Americans (42 percent) think people in the U.S. are being harmed by global warming "right now." The proportion that believes people are being harmed "right now" has increased by 10 percentage points since March 2015.

Half of Americans think they (50 percent) or their family (54 percent) will be harmed by global warming. Even more think global warming will harm people in the U.S. (67 percent), the world's poor or people in developing countries (both 71 percent), future generations of people (75 percent) or plant and animal species (75 percent).

Most Americans think global warming will have future impacts, causing more melting glaciers (67 percent), severe heat waves (64 percent), droughts and water shortages (63 percent), floods (61 percent), and other impacts over the next 20 years.

Two in three Americans (67 percent) say the issue of global warming is either "extremely" (12 percent), "very" (19 percent), or "somewhat" (37 percent) important to them personally, while one in three (33 percent) say it is either "not too" (19 percent) or "not at all" (14 percent) important personally. The proportion that say it is personally important has increased by 11 percentage points since March 2015.

Nearly four in ten Americans (38 percent) say they discuss global warming with family and friends "often" or "occasionally," an increase of 12 percentage points since March 2015. However, more say they "rarely" or "never" discuss it (62 percent). Additionally, half of Americans (51 percent) say they hear about global warming in the media at least once a month, and one in four (25 percent) say they hear people they know talk about global warming at least once a month.

More than half of Americans (54 percent) say they have thought "a lot" (22 percent) or "some" (32 percent) about global warming. Fewer say they have thought about global warming just "a little" (32 percent) or "not at all" (14 percent).

Few Americans are confident that humans will reduce global warming. Nearly half (48 percent) say humans could reduce global warming, but it's unclear at this point whether we will do what is necessary, and one in four (25 percent) say we won't reduce global warming because people are unwilling to change their behavior. Only five percent say humans can and will successfully reduce global warming.

[Read more here]

What is striking is just how convinced Americans are that climate change is happening and how pessimistic they are that anything will be done about it.  People have forgotten their collective power.  You have the vote, people.  You can write to newspapers.  You can re-tweet articles about global warming.  You can write to your Congressman/woman or Senator.  It's up to us.

Indian coal demand to peak soon

Source: IEEFA




An analysis from IEEFA:

 New research by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis sees India within a decade of peak thermal coal demand.

In a report published today—“India’s Electricity Sector Transformation: Momentum Is Building; Peak Coal in Sight”—the institute projects a significant increase in renewable energy generation across India, a trend that will be pushed by sharply falling prices and major efficiency gains over the next 10 years.

Tim Buckley, lead author of the report and IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies, Australasia, said that—as a result—Indian demand for imported coal will most likely decline, undercutting what U.S. and Australian exporters had hoped would be a long-term growth market.

“IEEFA forecasts that India’s thermal coal use is likely to peak not more than 10 percent above current levels, a far lower peak than most other analysts are forecasting,” Buckley said. “India’s target to all but cease thermal coal imports by the end of this decade is now the logical economic outcome.”

The conclusion is in stark contrast to the International Energy Agency’s forecasts, which have Indian coal use doubling by 2040.

“IEEFA would challenge IEA’s coal-centric view of the world as entirely out of touch with energy developments in India under Prime Minister Modi,” Buckley said. “While IEEFA acknowledges that our forecasts are non-consensus, we believe strongly in them and note that we were ahead of the pack in predicting a similar transition in China.”

“India’s national decarbonisation policy is in line with global trends, which have seen renewable energy infrastructure investment running at two to three times the level of new fossil fuel capacity investment since 2011,” Buckley said. “India is on track to catalyze US$200-300 billion of new investment in renewable energy infrastructure over the coming decade, and IEEFA expects global capital inflows will play an increasingly important role.”

[read more here]

Dunno about you, but the forecast rise after 2018/2019 looks so small as to be scarcely visible on the chart.  And it is very likely that after the mid 2020s that the operating cost of coal will exceed the total cost of renewables, so although new coal power stations will continue to be used, old ones will start to be closed.  So in fact coal demand may peak much sooner than 10 years.

Monday, November 20, 2017

Investment in renewables doubles

This chart from BNEF shows how even though nominal investment in renewables has been flat over the last 6 years, in real (volume) terms, it's actually doubled, because price declines have been so rapid.

Source: BNEF

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Trump a christian?


EU grew 53% & cut emissions 23%

Change in real GDP, GHG emissions and GHG emission intensity in the EU, 1990-2016


Between 1990 and 2016 the European Union has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 23% while at the same time growing its economy by 53%, proving again that environmental action need not negatively affect the financial bottom line.

The European Commission published its annual climate action progress report this week, Two years after Paris — Progress towards meeting the EU’s climate commitments, which highlighted the EU’s ability to increase economic growth while at the same time decreasing emissions — so much so that it remains on track to meet its 20% by 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target.

On a large scale, the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 23% while the economy grew by 53%. On a shorter scale, the EU economy grew by 1.9% in 2016 while greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 0.7%.

[Read more here; note that this is for all emissions in the whole economy, not just for electricity generation]

This is a remarkable achievement.  But it's not enough.

The world needs to get to zero emissions, or as close as we can, by 2050.  In the EU, the average decline in CO2 emissions since 1990 is about 1% a year.  To cut emissions by 90%  by 2050 from here, emissions need to fall by 7% per annum.  And each year that we delay means the annual rate of decline needs to be larger.  The costs of renewable electricity and transport are likely to drive a switch away from fossil fuels, and this switch is likely to accelerate exponentially as costs decline, so we may well achieve significant annual percentage declines by the mid 2020s.  All the same, the target is too low.  It was a brave goal when renewables were expensive--and all kudos to Europe for doing something despite that--but now renewables are cheaper than coal, it's simply not fast enough.

Tesla's "semi" truck -- and a new roadster

On Friday, Elon Musk presented Tesla's new semi truck:

  • 20% cheaper than diesel
  • faster (smooth underside, greater power, greater acceleration, sustained uphill speeds)
  • recharged in half an hour, using a new network of Tesla megachargers, powered entirely by the sun, with guaranteed fixed price of  7 cents/kWh. 
  • 1 million mile breakdown guarantee
  • unbreakable windscreen.
  • will stop automatically if driver has medical emergency
  • has 500 mile range (twice the distance of the average semi trip distance)
  • recharges in half an hour.
  • starts shipping in 2019 (but we must allow for Elon time)
As for the new roadster .... wow!

Have a look at the short version of the presentation, below.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

3.4 degrees by 2100


Source :NOAA

By approaching 2100, a world set for 3.4˚C will, on present trends, probably be the reality confronting our descendants – slightly less warm than looked likely a year ago, analysts think. That’s the good news, you could say.

But the bad news is twofold. First, this improvement in planetary prospects will still leave the global temperature increase more than twice as high as the internationally agreed target of 1.5˚C. And secondly, it depends largely on the efforts of just two countries – China and India.

They have made significant progress in tackling climate change in the last twelve months. In contrast, a report by the analysts, from the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), says that not only US climate policy has been rolled back under President Trump. Most individual governments’ climate commitments are going in the wrong direction.

The CAT report says the world will – on present trends – still reach 2100 a long way above the 1.5˚C target for the Earth’s maximum tolerable temperature rise, which was endorsed in the Paris Agreement.

[Read more here]

These guys have done the thorough analysis, so I won't argue with their depressing conclusions.  But I will explain how I come to a lower number.

World temperatures are rising by 0.2 degrees C every decade, on average.  So if that rate continues, then by 2100, 8 decades from now, the increase will be 1.6 degrees C added to what we already have experienced (+1.5 C according to Berkeley Earth).  That gives 3.1 degrees, implying that these analysts expect the decadal increase to rise slightly, which would be perfectly consistent with ongoing rises in atmospheric CO2.  (However, BEST's calculation of the increase in global temperatures is higher than other bodies because they go farther back, and the article doesn't say whether they're using BEST or other calculations to estimate how much temps have risen since pre-industrialisation.  But since the 1970s, global temperatures have risen about 1 degree C)

I come to a more optimistic (but still not very happy) forecast based on estimated timetables for the transition of electricity generation to renewables and the electrification of transport. At some point in the mid 2020s, existing coal power stations will start being closed because renewables plus storage will start getting or will already be cheaper than the operating costs of coal power stations.  That shift will prolly take (let's be conservative) 20 years.  This will reduce global CO2 emissions by 30%.  With transport, EVs and PHEVs will likely reach 100% of total car sales by the late 2020s.  It will take another 20 years for the global car fleet to be 100% electric. 

So by 2050 annual emissions could have fallen 60%.  This isn't enough to stop the level of CO2 in the air from rising.  For that to stabilise, we need to cut emissions to below the annual amount which is withdrawn from the atmosphere by natural processes, ignoring any man-made efforts to sequester carbon dioxide safely out of the atmosphere (carbon capture and storage, or CCS), or by at least 80%.  Forest clearing and burning contributes 10%, cement 5-6%, iron and steel 4-5%, air travel 3%.  We could stop destroying forests and even start reforestation--which some scientists estimate might itself move us one quarter of the way needed to limit the temperature rise to 1.5%  Stopping forest clearing and burning will by itself take emission reductions to 70%, starting a global program of reforestation will get us even closer.  Green concrete will help, as will steel production processes which use more renewable energy, but we will prolly need to have (and pay for) CCS for cement and steel.  Air travel will be partially electric or will use fuel created via the Sabatier process.

To sum up, I see net CO2 emissions falling by 80%+ by 2050.  Until 2050, temperatures will keep on rising by 0.2 degrees C per decade, or another 0.6 C.  But after that, as atmospheric CO2 peaks, the decadal  temperature increase will slow.  And none of this will be happening in a vacuum.  As temperatures rise and droughts, floods and storms worsen, the political pressure will increase. Within countries, politicians in the pay of fossil fuel interests will lose office.  Between countries, slow movers will be pressured to up their games.  I don't think we'll see 3.4 C.  But we will almost certainly see 1.8 C (from the 1970s) by 2100.  That will be bad enough: pray we don't see 3.4 C.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Wind, solar & gas cheapest

From Lazard's latest LCOE estimates.  To maintain comparability, Lazard hasn't changed the cost of capital used in these calculations.  But if you were to use the interest rates that are currently available for industrial scale wind and solar plants they would be even cheaper, but gas would only be a little cheaper because so much of its cost is fuel.  Note: these are the unsubsidised costs, but the hidden costs of coal, gas and nuclear are not included.

Since 2008, the cost of solar has dropped by 72%, wind by 48%.  Gas is cheaper too, as fracking has grown,  but whereas gas was the cheapest in 2009, now it's clearly wind and solar.  Gas produces half the CO2 emissions of coal per MW.  But methane is 86 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide over 20 years, and 34 times as potent over 100 years, and fracking causes serious environmental damage.  My guess is that while wind and solar will continue to gain market share, gas's share will peak as soon as battery costs fall far enough, which may only be 5 years away.


Tuesday, November 14, 2017

CO2 emissions up 2% in 2017

In this piece, I forecast that world CO2 emissions would rise a little in 2017, and that this would be the peak, with small falls in 2018 and 2019 and accelerating falls thereafter:

There may be a modest spike in global coal demand this year as China force feeds economic activity because of the 19th National Congress  (they do it every time) but growth will taper off in 2018 onwards.

So 2017 will prolly be the peak for CO2 emissions (up a little on 2016), with small falls in 2018 and 2019, but accelerating declines thereafter.

Using only partial data, the Global Carbon Project estimates that emissions rose about 2% this year.

Source


The chart shows different possible pathways to limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees C.  The longer we take to start reducing emissions, the faster they'll have to fall to reach zero in time prevent a rise of more than 2 degrees C.

Is such a sharp rate of decline from 2020 onward plausible?  Possibly.

The costs of renewables continue to decline.  In the US, whole-cost renewables are cheaper than new coal, and in some locations cheaper than the operating cost of existing coal.  In China, wind and solar are close to the total cost of new coal.  By 2019, new wind will beat new coal, by 2020,  new solar will beat new coal.  And that's without taking account of the indirect costs of air pollution imposed by coal.  In Japan, solar will beat new coal by 2023, in India solar already beats new coal, though BNEF predicts the crossover in 2020.  (Source: BNEF)

That's a tipping point.  It means no new coal power stations will be built after 2020 or so.  In fact, since everybody is aware that renewables are falling in cost, it means that any coal power stations started now will be financially unviable when they are completed in 5 or 6 or 7 years time, because by then the whole-cost of renewables will be less than the running cost of coal.  No rational person will build new coal power stations.  By the mid 2020s, demand for coal for power stations will be falling by 10% per annum (Coal for iron & steel will still be used, but even there, alternative technologies will likely be cutting demand)  Since burning coal is responsible for 40% of total CO2 emissions, this suggests that emissions will be falling by 3% per annum just from that.

China has mandated that 10% of new car sales in 2019 will be EVs or plug-in hybrids.  And that percentage will rise each year after 2019.  Because of the structure of the mandate, an effective 4% of sales will be EVs/PHEVs in 2019, and 15-20% by 2025.  This rise will likely be mirrored in most car markets because of the rapid decline in the cost of EVs.  So by 2025, oil demand will also be falling 2% per annum, and that rate of decline will only accelerate.  By 2030, oil demand (for petrol and diesel) will be falling by 10% per annum.  This will reduce total emissions by another 3% per annum.

Meanwhile, the world will go on warming.  And politicians everywhere will be introducing or raising carbon taxes, forcing ICEVs off the roads, urging and compelling remaining carbon-emitting sectors such as iron & steel, cement, air travel and sea transport to de-carbonise.

So yes, I think after 2020, the decline in carbon emissions will accelerate and we will reach zero emissions (or as close as) by 2050.

See also:

Have CO2 emissions already peaked?
Global CO2 emissions could be peaking
The 4% club




Air pollution causes 10.7 million kidney disease cases a year.

Mexico City smog, 1986


From CleanTechnica:

Exposure to particulate matter air pollution is responsible for more than 10.7 million cases of the development of chronic kidney disease per year, according to a new study led by Benjamin Bowe, MPH, of Clinical Epidemiology Center at the VA Saint Louis Health Care System. 
This new work builds on earlier work by Bowe and fellow researchers that found an association between exposure to elevated levels of fine particulate air pollution and the risk of developing chronic kidney disease.

There was a time when the deaths caused by air pollution could be (and were) shrugged off.  It was part of progress.  The internal combustion engine (ICE) raised living standards, and from the perspective of society as a whole, despite air pollution, it was better than going back to the horse and cart and the bicycle.  Bad luck if you died years before you ought to.  You were just collateral damage.

But that dilemma no longer exists.  We can switch our transport system to 100% electric, so that we stop noxious emissions and still keep advanced transport options.

So when are governments going to ban the petrol(gasoline)/diesel car?  A few have piously folded their hands, and said 2035 or 2040.  This is far too far away.  Believe me, if terrorists were causing this number of kidney disease cases, let alone the heart disease, lung disease and Alzheimer's air pollution causes, things would be done to stop it.  But with air pollution we just shake our heads and tisk, tisk.

A reasonable timetable would be to ban pure ICEV sales by 2022 or 2023.  That gives car manufacturers 5 years to retool their production lines.  It's a simple process to convert an ICE car design to a plug-in hybrid.  This is old technology now.  Even a 30 mile (50 km) pure electric range would halve emissions, because that's greater than the length of most one way commutes.   As battery costs fall, that range could be stepped up without cost increases.

By 2032, most cars on the road would be pure electric or hybrid-electric.  By then pure EVs will be cheaper  than plug-in hybrids (PHEVs).  And there will be a widespread charger network.  That would be a good date to ban the sales of PHEVs too.

But getting a timetable like this one adopted depends on us.  We must stop accepting that death and illness from air pollution are inevitable.  We must press our useless politicians to make this transition happen.  Now.

Monday, November 13, 2017

Washington tells no lies


Another major US utility embraces renewables

Source


When Charles Patton joined American Electric Power in 2000, around 90 percent of the company’s electricity production came from coal. Since then, AEP’s executive vice president of external affairs says things have changed dramatically.

“I will confess, there was a time I wouldn’t have publicly stated — although in the last few years I have publicly stated that I was wrong — that you would be able to [interconnect] renewables to the extent that we’ve been able to,” said Patton, speaking Tuesday at Greentech Media’s inaugural Power & Renewables Summit in Austin, Texas. “If you were a utility guy…that wasn’t something you necessarily believed was possible to the degree it is today.”

AEP isn’t traditionally thought of as the most environmentally friendly utility, but that reputation is changing — marking arguably one of the most significant endorsements of clean energy technologies to date.

In 2005, coal made up 70 percent of AEP’s generation capacity — which is how the utility measures its electricity mix today. Since then, coal’s share of capacity has dropped to 47 percent. At the same time, AEP’s natural gas capacity increased from 19 percent in 2005 to 27 percent today, and renewables entered the scene in a meaningful way, growing from 4 percent in 2005 to 13 percent today.

Renewable energy is now slated to make up the vast majority of AEP’s planned generation additions over the next decade. In AEP’s third-quarter 2017 earnings report, the utility said it plans to add another 8,360 megawatts of wind and solar through 2030 across its regulated and deregulated businesses — and that doesn’t even include the 2,000-megawatt Wind Catcher project, which could become the largest wind project in North America.

“To think a utility that was at one time the largest coal-burning utility in the Western hemisphere, that that’s where our focus is,” Patton said, remarking on AEP’s strong embrace of clean energy.

“We don’t even have gas on the horizon; it’s all wind and solar.”

[Read more here]

Wind, solar and gas--that is going to be the typical generation mix for US utilities.  And in time, gas will be replaced with batteries.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Tipping point: wind massively cheaper than coal

Xcel Energy is a US utility that powers 3.3 million electricity customers across 8 western and mid-western states.  It has just upped its target for renewable energy from 35% in 2030 to 60%. Why?

Renewable energy, wind power in the Midwest specifically, is the cheapest source of electricity available today. Fowke reported that it’s cheaper to build new wind turbines than to simply operate even the lowest-cost of Xcel’s existing coal power plants. Yes, you read that right.

And utilities and grid managers are continually getting better at integrating intermittent renewable energy into the electric system. Whereas 15 or 20 years ago, it may have seemed nearly impossible to integrate 10% wind and solar, Xcel no longer blinks an eye at 60% renewables.

[read more here]

There is a modest subsidy for wind, the Production Tax Credit, which is $1.84/MWh for the first 10 years of a wind farm's life.  Compared with a pre-subsidy lifetime cost of $30/MWh, the cost of wind is reduced to 29/MWh.

In Australia we are close to this point, where the cost of renewables is less than the running cost of coal.  Over the next 5 years, everywhere in the world, this will be true in more and more places.  There will be a very rapid drop in coal demand as coal power stations are shuttered.  Because it will take time to roll out wind and solar farms, it won't happen overnight.  But after all, if it's cheaper to build new renewables than dig up, ship and burn coal, why on earth would we keep on doing it?

Next time a denialist tells you that switching to renewables will cause a catastrophic decline in economic output and living standards, point out to them that actually it's the opposite: countries which foolishly cling to coal will be disadvantaged.

Source

Friday, November 10, 2017

So busy abusing gays, he forgot to be racist

Another classic Cathy Wilcox.


Airpocalypse in India




[Read more here]

Seriously, people.  Does anybody seriously think that India is going to go on burning coal, driving petrol cars and burning rubbish?  When solar is cheaper than coal, and EVs will very soon be cheaper than ICEVs?  Airpocalypse is going to lead to coalpocalypse and the bursting of the carbon bubble.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Trump and trust


Wind and solar complementary

In my previous post I calculated the costs of wind and solar with various kinds of storage or "firming" added.  In practice, though, wind and solar are complementary, day-by-day and over the seasons: there is more wind when solar is reduced.  So the amounts of storage I included will be more than is needed, and will provide substantial redundancy.

These charts come from a presentation by Ramez Naam in South Africa. Because they are screendumps from the video, they're not as clear as I'd like.

The first chart shows renewables output in California on an average day.  Note how wind is strong during the night and solar during the day, just like it is in Queensland.  Typically, demand peaks during the day and into the evening, so storage would only be needed from 5 pm to say 10 pm.  5 hours, compared with the 10 to 12 hours I calculated.



In Germany, there's more wind in winter, compensating for less sunlight.  It's not perfect compensation: the total for wind and solar still fluctuates from month to month, so some storage, probably power-to-gas will be needed.  An alternative is HVDC (high voltage DC) lines to Denmark and the North Sea (windier) and Italy (sunnier) to cover any shortfalls.  To provide redundancy (i.e., over capacity) prolly both should be used.




Even with the substantial storage I added in to the costs of renewables, they are still cheaper than coal.  And with diversified supply, both by type and geographically, even less storage may be needed than the 10 to 12 hours I used.  This means the costs of renewables are even lower, and their advantage over coal greater.   Over the next 5 years, the only thing stopping the rapid transition of coal-based grids to renewables will be vested interests, not economics nor technology.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Renewables cheaper than operating costs of coal

This is the eleventh edition of Lazard's calculation of LCOEs (levelised cost of electricity, a method used to calculate comparative costs for different energy generation sources).  You can read the news release here and the full report here.

I've selected some of the key technologies and put them in the chart below.  The green bars represent the range of costs for renewables, the red bars fossil fuels and nuclear.  The grey line represents the average (the mid point) of the ranges.  This is for the USA (except for CSP, which I'll explain in a minute), and assumes an 8% cost of borrowing and a 10% cost of capital.  If the cost of borrowing was lower, the slope would be steeper.  Low borrowing costs favour renewables because most of the costs are upfront, whereas the costs of fossil fuel generators are more skewed into the future.  The ranges depend upon location (wind is better in some places, for example), whether connections to the grid or long-distance power lines need to be built, etc.  Also, these are unsubsidised costings.




Wind is (by a whisker) still the cheapest.  Over the next couple of years, solar will take its place.  Solar costs are falling faster than wind.  Baseload gas, in the US is almost as cheap (this is less true in other countries).  Small wonder that the US grid is moving towards a mixture of renewables and gas.  Peaking gas however is very expensive, because you have to pay interest and depreciation and maintenance charges even if you only use it a few hours a day.  The next bar (from the left) shows wind plus the cost of peaking gas, assuming wind is 75% of the mix and peaking gas 25%.

Since there is no CSP project currently under construction in the USA, I have used data from the Copiapó concentrated solar power plant in Chile (US$63/MWh) with the higher value representing the cost at higher latitudes (45 degrees.)  However, since this is a PPA (effectively the same thing as the LCOE) with an agency of the Chilean government, the interest  rate that Solar Reserve could borrow at would have been lower than Lazard's assumptions, which would have reduced the PPA.  I have not used the PPA for the new Solar Reserve plant in South Australia which is lower than $63/MWh ($56/MWh), because there may be planned arbitrage profits reducing the costings.  The point is that CSP with 12 hours of storage costs pretty much the same wind with gas "firming".  And CSP produces no CO2 emissions, nor any "fugitive emissions" of methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas.

Solar with 10 hours of storage comes in at the top end of the CSP band.  I've calculated storage using Musk's tweet that the cost of the big battery in South Australia was US$50 million. That gives a cost per MWh delivered of US$107.  Battery costs are likely to halve over the next 3 years. That will move the cost of solar with 10 hours storage to the bottom end of the CSP band, though CSP will prolly keep on falling in cost too.

Power-to-gas may be necessary for high latitudes where wind is the main renewable power source, but could potentially not blow for a day or a week (the longest wind-free spell in Denmark was 7 days).  I've assumed that it might be needed for 10 weeks of the year; that the CO2 for the creation of synthetic natural gas (methane) comes from the escape flues of gas burners; that 50% of the energy is lost during electrolysis; and that the peaking gas otherwise costs the same.  I discussed seasonal storage and power-to-gas here.

The remaining bands are for coal and nuclear.

Lazard says:

As LCOE values for alternative energy technologies continue to decline, in some scenarios the full-lifecycle costs of building and operating renewables-based projects have dropped below the operating costs alone of conventional generation technologies such as coal or nuclear. This is expected to lead to ongoing and significant deployment of alternative energy capacity.

Of course, that excludes the cost of "firming"/storage, but even if you add those costs in, as I have done, renewables are cheaper than baseload (except for gas, and then, only in the USA.)

Denialists persist in telling anyone who'll listen that renewables will "break the economy", "are much more expensive than fossil fuels" etc.  This is false.  Even with generous provisions for different kinds of storage, it is crystal clear that renewables are cheaper than coal. 

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

The costs of Spacex's BFR

Since writing my two pieces on SpaceX's BFR (SpaceX, Mars, and genius and A ticket with SpaceX for $2000) I've done some more research and have come up with different cost estimates.  Obviously only SpaceX has accurate costings, and they're not telling us, but some enthusiasts at The Space Review have made convincing though contradictory guesses.

There were two articles which were germane: Estimating the cost of BFR (by Sam Dinkin) and SpaceX prepares to eat its young  (by Dick Eagleson, with insightful comments by Eagleson & "TheRadicalModerate") You have to dig through nearly 370 comments in the latter article to get to the estimates, but I dug.  I might still have missed stuff, though.

So here are the three estimates of costs:



I'd be the first to say that these "data" are very rough and ready.  And the calculations are complicated by the many uses that the BFR and the BFS will be put to.  The BFR will be used a lot as the booster for cargo launches of SpaceX's Starlink global internet satellite network, as well as for launching customer satellites.  On the other hand, the BFS will have far fewer uses (space tourism, servicing the ISS, setting up the moon base) until point-to-point spaceflights start.  Because the trip between Mars and Earth is only feasible for a couple of months every two years, if the BFS is used exclusively on the Mars/Earth run it will be used only for 12 round trips, because in 24 years it will assuredly be obsolete.  But note that even with these restrictions, it's still much cheaper than SpaceX's Falcon 9 launches.  So Musk's idea of using the BFR as a "workhorse" for all its operations makes economic sense.  And the cargo version of the upper stage (the BFCS?) will have a lower capital cost than the BFS and will be much more frequently used--it'll be much cheaper than the estimates in the table. 

Is Musk right that the BFR and BFS could actually be used for 1000 launches as opposed to more conservative estimates of 100?  This is key: if the capital cost of the BFR can be spread over many launches, its cost per launch will be very low.  I'm inclined to believe he's done his homework, so probably yes.  But even if it's only used for 100 flights, the cost/kg to LEO only rises to $59, and the cost/kg to Mars to $178.  Even limited re-usability drastically cuts the cost of space.

Will there be enough money to build the BFR and BFS from SpaceX's own funds?  Profit per launch is perhaps $45 million ($60 mill fee less $15 mill costs).  SpaceX will be doing 30 launches next year.  Some will be on re-used Falcon 9s, and will be sold for less.  But assuming an average profit per launch of $30 million, that will cover the construction costs of three BFRs and BFSs each by the end of 2018, even using Dinkin's costings.  And, once they start using them for regular launches of satellites and for missions to the ISS, their profit per launch will go up.

Before SpaceX came along it cost $22,000 per kg to lift an object or a person into LEO (low earth orbit)   If the BFR & BFS work, assuming a 75% SpaceX profit margin, Musk will have cut the cost of launching 1 kg to orbit by 200 times. 

-----

P.S.:  How much will media organisations pay to send someone on the first colonist ships to Mars?  A broadcast of the first steps by mankind on Mars will likely have the largest global audience ever.  Will that be a way to cover costs? 

Another US mass shooting

A cartoon by Brendan Loper of The New Yorker



The mixed economy

Dallas Freeway, early 1950s


After the war, in the UK, western Europe, Australia, Canada, and even in the USA (though less so) there was a political and economic consensus that a mixed economy was the way forward.  This meant an economy where some of the means of production (for example, natural monopolies such as the electrical grid or railways) was owned by the government, but the rest remained in private hands.  It also meant government intervention in the labour market and in industry.  It was recognised that free markets work well only where there is substantial competition.  In fiscal policy, it was the universal consensus that governments should increase spending and raise their deficits to keep economic growth going when there was a recession.  (They were also supposed to reduce deficits and spending when growth picked up again, but they often didn't.)  This fiscal philosophy was called Keynesian economics after the economist who advocated it, John Maynard Keynes, who studied the Great Depression in depth to see what could be done to avoid future depressions. Keynes demonstrated that slashing government spending to repay loans only worsened the deficit because it caused the economy to contract, which in turn reduced tax revenue.

At the end of previous wars, economic growth would collapse, as war spending stopped and government debts were repaid.  After the second world war, it was widely expected that this would happen again, especially as economies had only recovered from the Great Depression because of government spending on defence.  The allies came out of the war with government debt to GDP ratios of +-200%. But, with the understanding derived from Keynes's analysis, instead of trying to repay these debts by spending cuts and tax increases, they instead aimed to improve that ratio by increasing GDP. World growth boomed. Governments expanded the electricity grid, using borrowed money. They built social housing and schools and motorways. All with borrowed money. Despite all this borrowing, the ratios of debt to GDP fell steadily. Unemployment remained low, living standards rose, inequality diminished. Hundreds of millions of poor people shared in the prosperity that sustained growth brought, and growth was higher because they shared.  The Keynesian mixed economy worked.

At the end of this era there were problems, especially with rising inflation, and the philosophy of neo-liberalism gained popularity. And in the beginning it seemed to be a solution. But as governments shrank, privatisation expanded, and controls over the private sector (especially the finance sector) were eliminated, not only did inequality start to soar but the system itself became more unstable. Recessions became deeper, and recoveries from those recessions slower, culminating in the GFC (global financial crisis), from which the world has only just started to recover, 9 years later.  Since the GFC, trend growth in developed countries has been lower than before the GFC.  Unemployment has fallen only slowly.  Inequality has become stratospheric.

I think the public dimly senses that neo-liberalism isn't working, but doesn't know why. They vote for Trump/Brexit/AfD/One Neuron because the pollies promise that they "will do something". But politicians have no idea what to do either.

What can we do? For a start, we can start funding infrastructure using borrowed money.  Remember that it was a Republican president, Eisenhower, who built the US interstate highway network with borrowed money funded by a tax on petrol.  It added at least 1% per annum to the growth rate of GDP.  What could we do now?  High-speed rail, urban rail and trams; housing for the poorest; replace coal power stations with wind and solar; new schools and hospitals; a fibre optic broadband network; .... As Eisenhower's interstate highways showed, infrastructure spending adds to demand and employment at the same time as it raises the growth capacity of the economy.

We should start a move towards a UBI (universal basic income, or social wage) to increase the incentive to work and to make it possible for the unemployed to get some work, even part-time work, without impoverishing them.  We could make sure companies and the very wealthy pay their share of tax to fund the things that a civilised society needs, things which can't fairly be funded by private enterprise: hospitals, roads, police, schools and universities.

The Right describe this as "far left" and "radical". It seems to me it's centrist and not very different to what we enjoyed for 30 years after the war, when unemployment was low, inequality was low, and growth was high. And I think ordinary people will enthusiastically embrace these changes.

See also:

Neo-liberalism
What would Keynes do?
The basic income

Monday, November 6, 2017

2017 prolly second hottest year ever

2016 was the hottest year ever measured.  It was  an El Niño year, as 1998 was.  But this time round global temperatures haven't fallen as they did in 1999.

Source: RealClimate.org

Note how the denialists got to say that (before the most recent jump) global temperatures hadn't risen for 16 years.  They chose 1998, an El Niño year, as the starting point.  Naturally, if you chose a high point as your start, then the rise over the next few years is low.  But if you take that El Niño year and compare it with the most recent El Niño year (2016) temperatures have risen by 0.4 degrees C.  That's 0.22 deg C per decade.   To my eye, the upward trend in this chart has clearly accelerated.  The folks at RealClimate would say that I don't have enough evidence, and they'd be right.  Yet policy makers have to deal with credible and likely risks.  They can't wait another 20 years to be sure that the trend has accelerated.  Anyway, it was bad enough before--0.17 deg C increase per decade.  We need to start rolling out renewables now.  As fast as we can.  Or faster.

[Read more here]

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Plunging renewables costs

(Chart from Simon Holmes à Court )

Note: the 2018, 2019 & 2020 numbers are not forecasts, they're the date at which the projects will be commissioned.  

Lazard calculates the cost of new coal in the USA at $60 to $143/MWh, and gas combined cycle at $48 to $78/MWh.  Tesla's Powerpack costs $107/MWh, which compares with Lazard's pricing for gas peaking plants of $165 to $217/MWh.  So 12 hours of storage plus the cost of wind or solar would be around $90/MWh, cheaper than peaking power gas and about the same as coal.  Only gas combined cycle running as baseload is cheaper, and only in the USA.  (These costs will differ for other countries.  PPAs and the LCOEs depend on interest rates.  Countries with high interest rates will see fossil fuel electricity as relatively cheaper than countries with low interest rates because the present value of future costs (fuel) is reduced in the calcs by higher interest rates.)

There is no reason why the declining trend in the costs of wind and solar projects will end.

The headwinds faced by coal are obvious. 



Saturday, November 4, 2017

Toyota's EV forecasts

From Drive.com.au:

Toyota has given the combustion engine a stay of execution beyond the middle of the century.

Speaking to media during a presentation after the 2017 Tokyo motor show, the Japanese car maker's head of research and development, Kiyotake Ise, outlined the company's future powertrain plans, saying Toyota will hedge its bets across a wide variety of alternative fuel solutions including regular hybrids, plug-in hybrids, fuel cell vehicles and fully-electric cars.

However, in spite of major countries like the UK, France, India and China setting targets to ban the sale of cars with combustion engines between 2030 and 2040 and plenty of analysts predicting the death of petrol engines within the next decade, Ise projected the majority of vehicles sold by Toyota, one of the world's largest car makers, in 2050 will still have a petrol-powered engine, albeit with some form of electric assistance.

[Read more here]

The chart Ise showed was more equivocal:

Source
(ICE=Internal combustion engine
HV=hybrid vehicle
PHV=plug-in hybrid vehicle
FCV=fuel cell vehicle
EV=electric vehicle.)

After 2040 Toyota predicts that there will be no ICEVs (petrol/diesel engine cars) sold.  Optimistically, they still have hybrid sales, which for the inventor of the hybrid car is kinda loyal, but I suspect there will be no plain hybrid sales, for the simple reasons (a) that governments will insist on lower total emissions, which means at least some electric; and (b) batteries will be so cheap that giving a hybrid car 50 k's of range will cost so little extra you might as well do it.  Even now, with batteries costing US$250/kWh, an extra 50 kms of electric-only range would cost just $2000.  By 2030 it will likely cost just $200. 

I suspect that PHEV sales will be strong until 2030 or so, when battery costs drop enough to make pure EVs very attractive and fast charge networks have been rolled out.  Before that, range anxiety and cost will make PHEVs more attractive than EVs.  After that PHEVs will stop selling. 

Toyota's faith in hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles is baffling.  The chemical bond between the hydrogen and the oxygen atom in water is very strong.  It requires a lot of energy to break water up into oxygen and hydrogen.  Tesla says its batteries are 90% efficient.  Converting water to hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis and burning the hydrogen in a fuel cell is less than 50% efficient, and that's before you count the energy cost of compressing the H2 for transport and transporting it.  Then there's the financial cost of setting up a new hydrogen supply network.  (See this informative piece about the whole process here)  Then there is already an electricity grid which chargers can be connected to.  OK, you can make hydrogen from fossil fuels, but what's the point?   With seasonal storage, the high cost of electrolysis is offset by the need to only use it for a small part of the year.  There's no such reduction with FCVs.  I think FCVs are a dead end.  Except for specialised niche markets, there won't be any in 2030. 

Which leaves EVs.  Toyota has been dead against EVs, preferring FCVs.  But EVs are already far cheaper than FCVs.  By 2030 EVs will be huge sellers, limited only by range anxiety.  Toyota will have to get on board or lose market share, which given that Toyota invented the hybrid car would be very sad.

The interesting overall picture from Toyota though is this: in 20 years, all new cars sold will be partially or completely electric, and by 2030 50% will be.  That's probably too conservative.  The same S-curve Toyota shows will apply, only it will be a lot steeper than their official forecasts.


Friday, November 3, 2017

US EV/PHEV sales down in October

(Base data from Inside EVs.)



If you inspect the underlying data, the fall is entirely due to Tesla.  Not only is Model 3 production growing too slowly, but Models S and X production is down sharply, presumably because resources were taken away from Models S and X to ease the bottlenecks in Model 3.  Model S production was down from nearly 5000 in September to just over 1000 in October, and Model X  from 3000 to 850. 

In response to a question from a Morgan Stanley analyst – “How hot is it in hell right now? Is it getting hotter, or less hot?” – Musk put it this way…

“Let’s say level nine is the worst, ok? We were on level nine. We’re now on level eight. And I think we’re close to exiting level eight.

“I feel really pretty optimistic right now. If you talked to me three weeks ago, I would have been quite pessimistic, and I was, sort of, quite down in the dumps.

“It’s pretty obvious what we need to do, it’s just a matter of working to get there. We’re working seven days a week to do it.

“We’re on it; we’ve got it covered; it’s just going to take three months longer than we expected.”

[Read more here]






Thursday, November 2, 2017

Bag of lies


World EV sales rise again

(As always the source of basic data for EV/PHEV sales is InsideEVs.com, with my seasonal adjustments and trend estimates)

Unadjusted global sales of PVs/PHEVs was a record 123,000 in September, by far the highest ever.  However, seasonally adjusted, sales for September were 108,000--though this too was the highest ever.  In the chart immediately below, the seasonally adjusted data are in red, the smoothed seasonally adjusted data are in blue.  Notice how the slope of the line is increasing: sales of EVs/PHEVs are acceleratingThey've risen 5 fold in less than 4 years.



As a percentage of global car sales, EV sales are also rising fast.  The green line shows the seasonally adjusted data as a percentage of world car sales, using my estimate of world car sales for 2017.  The blue line shows the smoothed time series.  My estimate for total world car sales in 2017 is likely to be revised down, which will increase the percentage of EVs in the total ( I only have annual data for world car sales up to 2016 thus far.)  Note how at the beginning of 2014, EV/PHEV sales as a percentage of the total were just 0.4%.  In September, this year they reached 1.9% and it's easy to forecast that they will exceed 2% (prolly 2.2%) by end 2017.


World EV sales are growing by 50+% year on year.  That means they more than double every 2 years, and will be up 7.5 fold in 5 years, with EVs/PHEVs making up at least 15% of new car sales globally if that growth rate continues.  As I've said before, I think that's conservative.  By 2022, cars with a plug will make up 20% or more of global car sales.  By 2030, it could be close to 80%.