IEA projects 75% of primary energy will still be from fossil fuels in 2050

8/15/2023

This blog has tracked IEA primary energy projections for over ten years. Comparing the 2021 projections for 2050 to the 2012 projections for 2050 shows an overall 2050 primary energy total as about the same as 2012 and 2020, projections, but the weights have shifted in favor of renewables. The graph shows renewables at about 25% of total primary energy in 2050 with about an overall increase in capacity of about 4X over 2020. Converting QBtu to TW years, that's about 8TW average generation or about 30 TW nameplate capacity for wind, solar, hydro and biomass. As a point of reference the current US electricity generation name plate capacity is about 1.2 TW

The big takeaway is that roughly 75% of primary energy is still from fossil fuels which because of economic growth are still pumping out more CO2 every year out to 2050. Somehow climate optimists have persuaded themselves that CO2 emissions can be eliminated by 2050. The scale of renewables growth projected is large but realistic. This analysis does not factor in the additional generation from storage or the additional costs for grid enhancement. The report highlights that the doubling of energy consumption between now and 2050 is all from economic growth of the developing world so most of this new renewable energy is going to be deployed by them.

There is a fantasy of renewables being cheaper than fossil fuels which is demonstrably false when all costs are counted. The developing world has consistently favored economic growth over climate change and large parts of the developed world are skeptical. None of this bodes well for increased deployment of renewables.

If the fantasy that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels was true there might be a chance that renewables could be deployed at a higher rate than these projections. Stratosolar holds out the possibility of renewables cheaper than fossil fuels that could be rapidly deployed by 2050. There is no other likely alternative.

The reality of climate change is becoming increasingly obvious every year. We may have already crossed several tipping points where we cannot go back and more severe tipping points are on the horizon.

By Edmund Kelly

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Why wind and solar will not work

6/9/2023

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There is an increasing awareness of the impracticality of 100% renewable energy from wind and solar that is driven by real data and analysis. While this perspective is still seen as politically incorrect this awareness is increasingly pragmatic and not driven from an ideological political perspective. There is still plenty of climate change denial and fossil fuel rationalization around but common sense reasoning is slowly growing.

This podcast from Soeren Hansen, a Danish scientist makes the case in depth using lots of data. It's not completely unbiased but the data it presents is real, comprehensive and undeniable. .

Soeren Hansen: Why wind and solar will not work | Tom Nelson Pod #110

In this blog I have made the same case now for many years in support of why Stratosolar is a viable energy solution that solves the problems illustrated in this presentation. The increased capacity factor and the lack of long duration intermittency illustrated by the German dunkelflauten transform Stratosolar into the cheapest and most scalable source of electricity.

By Edmund Kelly

This is the pdf file with the slides referenced from the podcast above.

6d7b2546-03e8-47c9-a5a1-a7b612a14e53.pdf
File Size:	4783 kb
File Type:	pdf

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Why the clean energy transition is failing and how Stratosolar can make it work.

4/30/2023

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The world is slowly adopting a clean energy strategy based around Solar PV, wind, battery energy storage and High Voltage transmission. However the adoption rate is slow, particularly in the US and developing countries and the unfortunate truth is that with current trends, fossil fuels are likely to remain dominant to 2050 and significant for the rest of the century out to 2100.

The fundamental constraints are complexity and cost. While various academic studies show that a clean energy solution is probably technically feasible, the details of particular solutions and how they might be implemented do not exist. They also rely on scaling technologies and solving organizational and political problems that are worsening, not improving.

Implicit in all clean energy plans is the assumption that costs will reduce as scale increases. This has so far proven true for the cost of PV panels and wind turbines which has fueled this optimism. However, as we have pointed out, the costs of integrating solar and wind into existing grids are high, and the evidence already is that the price of electricity to consumers has risen substantially in large economies that have invested in clean energy like Germany, England and California. The reality is that wind and solar already increase the price of electricity with relatively low market penetration.

No economy has yet installed sufficient capacity of intermittent renewables to where further growth requires energy storage. This highlights the fact that as intermittent renewables market share increases new additional costs are added that further increase the cost of electricity in a nonlinear fashion.

There are four stages to replacing fossil fuel generation with intermittent wind and solar, each of which adds substantial additional cost.

Adding solar and wind to existing grids and using fossil fuel generation as backup. This stage lasts until about 20% to 30% of average generating capacity is achieved. At this point adding capacity mostly leads to generation curtailment.
At this stage daily storage of about 10 hours needs to be added for any additional generation. Fossil fuel generation is still needed for backup for long duration intermittency. The storage at leasts doubles the cost of added generation. This stage lasts until about 80% of generation is from wind, solar and storage, when long duration intermittency becomes the limiting factor to growth.
To progress beyond 80% things get fuzzy. The available technology is long distance high voltage transmission to get power from a geography far enough away not to be affected by the long duration intermittency. This adds the cost of storage, transmission and the excess capacity needed along with the control infrastructure to make everything work. This stage gets incrementally more expensive for each percentage of growth in renewable generation.
Synthetic fuels generated from electricity are necessary for various market segments in transportation and industry. The price of these fuels will be based on expensive electricity and so will be many times the price of fossil fuels. At this stage, it may prove more effective to burn fossil fuels with CCS.

The bottom line is that the price of clean electricity is going to be maybe three to five times the cost of today's (and tomorrows) electricity from fossil fuels. This price is what ensures that the transition from fossil fuels will be slow. Whatever promises are made by politicians don’t matter in the face of economic reality.

The Stratosolar PV solution with gravity energy storage generates electricity for less than the cost of today's PV electricity generation (note cost not price) and can be plugged directly into today's grid and directly displace fossil fuels, thus reducing the price of electricity, not increasing it as is happening with today's wind and solar. With Stratosolar price will reduce with scale, not increase as with today’s wind and solar.

By Edmund Kelly

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UK data on the real price of intermittent renewable electricity

2/23/2023

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It has become common for mainstream media to assert that solar and wind are the cheapest source of electricity. However if we examine the price of electricity to consumers of electricity in markets where solar and wind have become a significant source of electricity we find that the price of electricity has risen significantly in them all. Price is what matters.

Using the narrow definition of the cost of electricity generation, commonly called the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) , wind and solar are cheap and can compete with fossil fuels in some markets. However LCOE just measures the cost of electricity where it is attached to the grid. The cost of transmission and distribution and managing a reliable electricity supply has to be added to get the consumers price of electricity. It is false advertising to consumers to focus on LCOE.

In two previous blog posts that cover the case for Germany, California and the US as a whole I discussed a simple explanation based on ample public data on electricity generation and electricity capacity. This enables a simple calculation of overall capacity factor. In capital intensive industries like electricity supply, the lower the capacity factor, the higher the price needed to fund the capital expense.

Recently, the United Kingdom has also become a major economy that has a substantial percentage of its electricity generated from renewables, mainly wind and biofuels. Calculating the capacity factor for the UK from public data adds to the evidence of the previous three cases relating reduced capacity factor to higher electricity prices.

The graphs above show historical UK generation in TWh and Capacity in GW. Using the data for the year 2000, the capacity factor was 54%. For 2020 capacity factor was 34%.. The 2020 price was 125% of the 2010 price set to 100% and the 2000 price was 58% relative to 2000. The graph below shows the UK data of price against capacity factor. As capacity factor falls, prices rise. Falling capacity factor explains higher prices, the same as for Germany, California and the US as a whole.

Projecting this trend forward, as more intermittent renewables are added, capacity factor will continue to fall and price will continue to rise as shown in the graph above. As wind and solar get to be a larger percentage of generation, curtailment will set in. To fix this will mean adding storage, which will also add capacity, reduce capacity factor and drive prices even higher. The UK’s experience with wind volatility would say they will always have a need for backup power. From their experience, wind can disappear for long periods and wind generation can drop more than 20 GW in less than a day. There is also significant annual and seasonal variation, much like hydro power variation with droughts in California.

The electricity price could easily double from current levels which would be around five times the price of electricity from fossil fuel generation. The UK, Germany and the US may be able to afford this, but the developing world won't.

The biggest strategic problem with high electricity prices is how it raises the price of anything that uses significant amounts of electricity. Clean industrial processes for manufacturing commodities like steel, aluminum, copper and other metals will be uneconomic along with manufacturing clean synthetic fuels and processes like desalination. All of these are essential parts of a clean energy transition.

Cheap clean electricity is the essential base component of a clean energy transition. This is where Stratosolar comes in. Electricity for less than that generated using fossil fuels.

By Edmund Kelly

http://www.stratosolar.com/blog/projecting-the-rising-cost-of-electricity-to-consumers-from-increased-generation-from-intermittent-wind-and-solar

http://www.stratosolar.com/blog/the-true-cost-of-intermittent-renewable-energy

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1032260/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2021.pdf

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COP27 and Greenwashing

11/26/2022

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Greenwashing is a term I was unfamiliar with until recently.

Greenwashing: disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.

The COP gatherings every year along with IPCC reports on progress in climate change are the main political mechanisms to influence government policies. While the term “greenwashing” seems to be used to describe corporations making empty promises in order to look good, the term could equally apply to governments as a whole who make promises without real commitments to create the illusion of progress when there is none.

The COP conferences highlight the conflict between economic growth and climate action, particularly in the developing world. Even if the developed world could eliminate all their emissions, growth in the developing world means that emissions would continue to rise. The current wind and solar favorites in the developed world are too expensive for the developing world which is why emissions are still growing.

So COP conferences exist because of the concerns of environmentalists, but highlight the economic problems of the preferred solutions of environmentalists that make these solutions politically un-viable. Nevertheless these are still the politically correct solutions.

https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/high-level_expert_group_n7b.pdf

By Edmund Kelly

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How (not) to run a modern society on solar and wind power

10/7/2022

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This article is a comprehensive discussion of the problems with building an electricity grid based on 100% renewable wind and solar energy. The article is fact and evidence based. The authors make the case that the various approaches that could be used to make wind and solar generation compatible with today's electricity on demand grid are impractical and will ultimately fail. This makes a welcome change from the status quo, 100% renewables, media based mantra, based on wildly optimistic and unrealistic assumptions.

The authors argue that instead of trying to make wind and solar a reliable on demand generator of electricity, we should instead adapt to using electricity when it is available. As a point of comparison they point out that Europe between 1500 and 1800 made extensive use of wind energy for sailing ships and windmills, and water energy for water wheels. In that world, energy was consumed when it was available and energy use was adapted to this reality.

I concur with the analysis of the insurmountable problems of making intermittent generation an on demand resource, but I expect that adaptation of society to intermittent power would cost at least as much economic pain as mitigating intermittency. However it would work and help mitigate climate change in a sustainable way.

In contrast, Stratosolar generation eliminates or solves these intermittency problems and generates electricity compatible with today’s electricity on demand grid without the need for expensive and unrealistic transmission and storage or painful societal change to adapt to unpredictable energy supply.

By Edmund Kelly

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The clean energy "cure" only worsens the climate "disease"

7/18/2022

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This very comprehensive article takes a realistic view of our current failing attempts to tackle climate change by reducing CO2 emissions with intermittent wind and solar. The article ends with the following summary.

"In summary, keep the priority squarely on the economic upliftment of 6 billion (and counting) developing world citizens, demand no climate change mitigation action other than the establishment of gradually rising CO2 pricing around the world, and shift all targeted technology support to RD&D of new solutions and the subsequent establishment of global value chains and scale.”

I definitely agree with the targeted technology support to RD&D of new solutions. However, policies to implement carbon taxes and providing direct RD&D support have been pushed for decades without making any significant headway towards acceptance. Our experience with Stratosolar can speak directly to the lack of imagination and the inadequacy of current RD&D funding for innovative solutions.

By Edmund Kelly

https://medium.com/a-balanced-transition/climate-action-when-the-cure-becomes-worse-than-the-disease-7912e8ca51d1

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The need for speed in tackling the 1.5 degree C goal

6/18/2022

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This article admits the obvious fact that the odds of limiting the rise in global average temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius are slim to none. Despite this the official party line from politicians and scientists still focuses on this goal as if it were achievable. Similarly, the politically correct scientific and political view is that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy. These two views are inconsistent in that if wind and solar were really cheaper than fossil fuels in delivering electricity, their adoption rate should be much higher than it is which would in turn make the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius more achievable.

As the article points out, admitting we are failing might raise the sense of urgency and spur more vigorous action. However this is unlikely. Politicians are most likely very aware how unattainable the 1.5 degree Celsius goal is. They are also aware of the political and financial constraints and at the same time want it to seem like they are accomplishing something useful.

All that politics can do is adjust the landscape for market forces to provide the solutions. This applies as much to centrally planned China as free market democracies. Until there are technical solutions that truly provide cheaper clean energy with sustainable resources and no political roadblocks, governments are already doing what fits within today’s political constraints.

Stratosolar is a technical solution that can make solar energy a realistic, cheaper, sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. It's a one stop packaged solution with no external dependencies beyond regulatory site approvals. Because of the large scale of plants, relatively few sites need to be approved, about 100 for the US and 1000 worldwide. The small number of sites and the low environmental impact should enable very rapid deployment.

The climate problem is urgent but hoping that politicians will mandate drastic measures with severe economic consequences is naïve and foolish. Only when there is a viable alternative can politics act. This should have been the lesson learned from acid rain and ozone depletion where politics could act because viable solutions existed.

Stratosolar is a potentially viable solution that enables political action to succeed.

By Edmund Kelly

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433903-000-admitting-we-may-fail-to-hit-1-5c-can-help-us-tackle-climate-change/

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America’s clean energy is stuck.

5/31/2022

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According to this recent article in the Economist, the US clean energy investment in solar and wind generation is set to decline by at least 10% in 2022 over 2021. Despite a democrat administration and a congress that are theoretically very pro clean energy and want to supposedly invest heavily, the net effect of the administration's actions on tariffs and sanctions on China is to reduce investment while simultaneously congress cannot pass any new investment support. This not only sets back progress on achieving green energy goals, it also reduces employment by several hundred thousand jobs, severely damaging the democrat pro labor image.

The US is already a relatively low investor in clean energy, especially considering the size of its economy. Fossil fuel interests are dominant and the partisan divide ensures there is no consensus. The economist article explains the current decline is due more to internal politics within democrats than rising costs and supply chain constraints.

The politically correct consensus on solving climate change by reducing CO2 focuses on government action. There has been government action for several decades and it has achieved some limited success. However progress stalled almost a decade ago and the simplest explanation is that we have reached the limit of what government action alone can achieve.

Historically energy transitions only occur when there are significant benefits of the transition over the past status quo. The evidence is that the real cost of current wind and solar are too high for market forces to lead the transition and we have reached the political limit of government action.

Stratosolar eliminates the need to solve the intermittency problem with solar and also reduces the cost of generation by a factor of three. Overall this means that it is a dispatchable direct replacement for natural gas at a lower cost. This can be a basis for a successful energy transition in a relatively short time frame. As with current solar, the learning curve is still operating and costs can continue to fall, further accelerating the clean energy transition.

By Edmund Kelly

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BNEF latest update on clean energy investment to end of 2021 and some future scenarios to meet climate goals.

4/19/2022

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Bloomberg has broadened its focus beyond investment in renewable energy generation (shown above in yellow) to include investment in other clean energy sectors including electrified transport. As can be seen, electrified transport investment is growing fast and will soon surpass electricity generation investment.

In previous blog posts we have observed that the investment in renewable energy generation has been pretty static at around $300B/year for the last decade. This graph shows a continuation of this trend. There is a slight upward trend but it's at about the underlying rate of inflation so there is no real investment growth in renewable energy generation. As we have previously asserted, this rate of investment in renewables generation is far below what is needed to achieve climate change goals.

In the graph below, Bloomberg has quantified the increase in investment out to 2030 that is needed to meet climate change goals by 2050 for three scenarios. The green scenario is a renewable energy only solution. The gray scenario envisages carbon capture and storage (CCS) reducing the need for renewable generation. The red scenario is heavily dependent on nuclear power. The yearly investment in generation as shown has to increase approximately tenfold to decarbonize the energy sector in a timely manner.
While renewable energy generation investment has stalled, given the announced plans from almost all major auto manufacturers and the competitive threat from Tesla, the projected increased investment in electrified transport is probably achievable. The most probable scenario is the green scenario, given the negative political sentiment surrounding nuclear and CCS. However a 10X growth in investment for renewables generation is hard to see happening given current circumstances where fossil fuels are resurgent and renewables are stalled.

The data clearly shows that renewable energy investment is stalled. There are many technical and political headwinds that explain this stagnation. Stratosolar is a path that can overcome these headwinds and help achieve the green scenario with much lower investment due to its higher capacity factor and lack of a long term intermittency problem.

By Edmund Kelly

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<<Previous

IEA projects 75% of primary energy will still be from fossil fuels in 2050

Why wind and solar will not work

Why the clean energy transition is failing and how Stratosolar can make it work.

UK data on the real price of intermittent renewable electricity

COP27 and Greenwashing

How (not) to run a modern society on solar and wind power

The clean energy "cure" only worsens the climate "disease"

The need for speed in tackling the 1.5 degree C goal

America’s clean energy is stuck.

BNEF latest update on clean energy investment to end of 2021 and some future scenarios to meet climate goals.

Ed Kelly

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