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Percentage of total global primary energy demand provided by wind and solar was 1.1 percent

Renewables Losing Traction



Renewables Losing TractionAfter nearly two decades of strong annual growth, renewables around the world added as much capacity in 2018 as they did in 2017 (about 180 GW), an unexpected flattening of growth trends that raises concerns about meeting long-term climate goals. It was the first time since 2001 that capacity failed to increase year on year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).1
The agency said that the world needs to add about 300 GW of renewable energy each year through 2030 in order to meet the targets laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement. In 2011, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the country was turning away from nuclear energy in favor of a renewable future. Since then, however, progress has been limited. Berlin has wasted billions of euros and resistance is mounting. 2 The vision of the fantastic new world of renewables future was born eight years ago, on March 11, 2011, the day an earthquake triggered tsunami damaged the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. The disaster led Chancellor Angela Merkel and her cabinet to resolve to phase out nuclear power in Germany. It was an historic event and an historic decision. But the sweeping idea has become bogged down in the details of German reality. The so-called Energiewende, the shift away from nuclear in favor of renewables, the greatest political project undertaken since Germany's reunification, is facing failure. In the eight years since Fukushima, none of Germany's leaders in Berlin have fully thrown themselves into the project, not the least the Chancellor. Lawmakers have introduced laws, decrees and guidelines, but there is nobody to coordinate the Energiewende, much less speed it up. An all of them are terrified of resistance from the voters, whenever a wind turbines needs to be erected or a new high voltage transmission line needs to be laid out. Surveys document the transformation of this grand idea into an even grander frustration. Despite being hugely accepting initially, Germans now see it as being too expensive, too chaotic and too unfair. Germany's Federal Court of Auditors say the cost has been at lest 160 billion euros in the last five years. 2 In December 2015, Merkel signed the Paris Agreement on climate change, in which Germany pledged to do its part to slow global warming. More than three years have passed and almost nothing has been done.

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Over the last decade, journalists have held up Germany's renewables energy transition Energiewende, as an environmental model for the world. "Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset," thanks to the Energiewende, wrote a New York Times reporter in 2014. (3) With Germany as inspiration, the United Nations and World Bank poured billions into renewables like wind, solar, and hydro in developing nations like Kenya. But then, last year, Germany was forced to acknowledge that it had to delay its phase-out of coal, and would not meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction commitments. It announced plans to bulldoze an ancient church and forest in order to get at the coal underneath it. Germany didn't just fall short of its climate targets. Its emissions have flat-lined since 2009. Now comes a major article in the country's largest newsweekly magazine, Der Spiegel, titled, "A Botched Job in Germany." The magazine's cover shows broken wind turbines and incomplete electrical transmission towers against a dark silhouette of Berlin. 3 "The Energiewende--the biggest political project since reunifiction--threatens to fail," Wrote Der Spiegel's Frank Dohmen and colleagues in their 5,700 word investigative story. Over the past five years alone, the Energiewende has cost Germany $36 billion annually, and opposition to renewables is growing in the German Countryside. 3

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Twenty year subsidies granted to wind, solar and biogas since 2000 will start coming to an end next year. All of which raises a question: if renewables can't cheaply power Germany, one of the richest and most technologically advanced countries in the world, how could a developing nation like Kenya ever expect to allow it to leapfrog fossil fuels? Michael Shellenberger adds, "No amount of marketing could change the poor physics of resource intensive and land intensive renewables. Solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear plants, and wind farms take 700 times more land than natural gas wells, to produce the same mount of energy." 3

Elsewhere

Two decades ago, governments and utilities around the world began offering above-market rates and contracts to fuel the rise of clean energy, helping wind and solar become some of the cheapest power sources. Now, these pacts are under attack. 4 The rate of renewable energy installations in the EU in 2018 was less than half the maximum level achieved in 2010. Both onshore wind power and solar PV are demising rapidly. 5 In Canada, Ontario Premier Doug Ford killed hundreds of contracts for planned wind and solar farms. Spain pulled back subsidies, yanking the rug from projects already up and running. And in the US, bankrupt California power giant PG&E Corp. could soon move to renegotiate costly power deals signed when prices were three times as expensive as they are now. California is still paying for costly clean power contracts signed a decade ago. 4


Electricity Price Increases

The Institute for Energy Research and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy reported on an evaluation of the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for new and existing generation resources. Average LCOEs from existing coal ($41), conventional combustion gas ($36), nuclear ($33), and hydro ($38) resources were less than half the cost of new wind resources ($90) or new PV solar resources ($88.7) with imposed costs included. 6 Even minimal increases (1-4%) in wind/solar raise electricity prices 11-17%. Reducing CO2 emissions costs $130 to $460 per ton report researchers from the University of Chicago. 7 Outside of these higher prices, renewable energy mandates (REMs) impose other costs. Since wind and solar are so intermittent (having respective capacity factors of just 34.6 and 25.7 percent) and must be backed up by conventional sources of electricity generation, most estimates 'do not account for the additional cost necessary to supply electricity when they are not operating.' The findings of this study are not surprising and have been mirrored elsewhere. States with these mandates had electricity prices 26 percent higher than those without. The 29 states with renewable energy mandates (plus the District of Columbia) had average retail electricity prices of 11.93 cents per kilowatt hour. On the other hand, the 21 states without renewable mandates had average retail electricity prices of only 9.38 cents per kilowatt hour. 8 Record high spot wholesale electricity prices were set in Victoria and South Australia, and nearly everywhere else as well.9

Green New Deal and California's SB 100

The Green New Deal (GND) and California's SB 100 are both draconian and completely unrealistic pipe dreams that politically mandate 100% renewable electricity for the US and California respectively reports Larry Hamlin. 10 A new 117 page study from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has determined that these politically contrived schemes of 100% renewable energy are self defeating because of the inherent unreliability of renewables which results in significant GHG emissions occurring from the unavoidable need for backup dispatchable and reliable fossil generation. This backup fossil generation is required to provide grid stability functions including frequency, voltage and synchronization control, daily system load ramping and to prevent power shortages and blackouts. 11 The AEI study found that the amount of fossil backup generation required for a 100% GND renewable generation scenario for the US would result in GHG emissions the equivalent of 35% of the emissions levels that occurred from all US power generation in the year 2017. The AEI summary concludes the following regarding the impracticality of trying to operate a reliable and stable 100% renewable energy system: "Because of the need for conventional backup generation to avoid blackouts in a 100 percent renewable system and because those backup units would have to be cycled up and down depending on wind and sunlight conditions, one ironic effect would be GHG emissions from natural gas-fired backup generation 22 percent higher than those resulting in 2017 from all natural gas-fired power generation. And those backup emissions would be over 35 percent of the emissions from all power generation in 2017." One last question- how much do wind and solar energy provide worldwide? The International Energy Agency reported in November 2018 that the percentage of total global primary energy demand provided by wind and solar was 1.1 percent. 12

References

  1. Nick Cunningham, IEA: renewables growth is stalling," mining.com, May 8, 2019
  2. Frank Dohmen et al., "German failure on the road to a renewable future," spiegel.de, May 13, 2019
  3. Michael Shellenberger, "The reason renewables can't power modern civilization is because they were never meant to," forbes.com, May 6, 2019
  4. David R. Baker and Brain Eckhouse, "Around the world, buyer's remorse sets in for costly clean power," Bloomberg, April 24, 2019
  5. Ed Hoskins, "Europe's dramatic decline of renewable energy uptake," thegwpf.com, May 8, 2019
  6. Erin Amsberry, "Study finds wind and solar 2 to 3 times more expensive than existing generation resources," instituteforenergyresearch.org, June 3, 2019
  7. Michael Greenstone et al., "Do renewable portfolio standards deliver?", Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, Working Paper No. 2019-62, April 2019
  8. Tim Benson, "Researchers say renewable energy mandates cause large electricity price increases," wattsupwiththat.com, May 2, 2019
  9. Joanne Nova, "More renewables, more record prices," joannenova.com, May 10, 2019
  10. Larry Hamlin, "Inherent unreliable renewables dictate GND '100% renewable electricity' mandate yields unavoidable GHG emissions," wattsupwiththat.com, May 31, 2019
  11. Benjamin Zycher, "The new Green Deal,"American Enterprise Institute, 2019
  12. Peter Foster, "Another report reluctantly admits that 'green' energy is a disastrous fop," business.financialpost.com, November 22, 2018

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Jack Dini -- Bio and Archives

Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology.  He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.


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