Renewables roll-out needs price guarantees
– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –
Power generation from renewable sources such as wind turbines, solar cells and biomass plays a small but important part in satisfying total electricity demand around the world, and is growing at an exponential rate thanks to generous public subsidies and government support.
Renewable sources have increased their share of worldwide generation from just 0.4 percent in 1980 and 1.1 percent to 2.3 percent in 2006. In its “World Energy Outlook 2008″, The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects their share will double to 4.9 percent by 2015, and then almost double again to 8.7 percent by 2030. Click here for PDF.
Policymakers are relying heavily on renewable generation to meet projected growth in the electricity demand over the next 20 years while limiting growth in the emission of greenhouse gases.
Unlike reserves of oil and gas, which may be exhausted within the next 70 years, renewables will remain a source of power indefinitely. Much the same could be said of coal, but renewables do not contribute to increased carbon dioxin concentrations in the atmosphere.
But with renewable sources still costing more per kilowatt hour than conventional power from nuclear or fossil fuel plants burning gas and coal, renewables have not yet reached “grid parity” with other power producers and are struggling to penetrate the power market.
Market penetration depends on subsidies, price support and quota schemes mandating power suppliers buy a minimum share of their electricity from renewable. But widespread variations between countries and even within them suggest uptake is sensitive to the form in which support is offered. In particular, guaranteed prices for renewable producers have been more effective than quota systems in encouraging widespread development of wind and solar power.
Renewables to spark U.S. grid revolution
Growing power consumption and the U.S. administration’s plan to rely more heavily on renewable generation sources will increase the demand on America’s already overloaded electricity grid and require major investment in transmission and distribution networks.
Upgrading power transmission and distribution systems is likely to cost as much as installing new generating capacity over the next 20 years.
While Congress provided an extra $4.5 billion of funding for grid improvements in the recent fiscal stimulus, federal loan guarantees and other support, far more investment will be needed if the administration’s targets for renewable generation are to be realized.
In its “Annual Energy Outlook 2009″ (AEO2009), the Energy Information Administration projects consumption will increase by 1,000 billion kilowatt hours (26 percent) between 2007 and 2030. The United States will need to install 259 gigawatts (GW) of new generating capacity to replace aging generators taken out of service (30 GW) and meet increased demand on the system (229 GW).
A report prepared for the Edison Foundation by consultants Brattle Group last year put the capital cost of capacity installation at between $500 billion and $1 trillion (depending on how much of the total is met by cheap sources such as coal and gas and how much by expensive sources such as nuclear, wind and solar). Click here for PDF.
AEO2009 projects that most of the added generating capacity will be from conventional sources such as natural gas (53 percent), coal (18 percent) and nuclear (5 percent). But a substantial proportion will come from renewables (22 percent), raising the share of renewable power in total generation from 8 percent in 2007 (much of it from hydro dams) to as much as 13 percent in 2030.
The biggest additional contribution will come from the combustion of biomass waste products left over from increased production of ethanol to meet the federal government’s ambitious targets. The other major contribution will come from wind. Solar is likely to make a marginal contribution in the timeframe owing to high cost.
One thing that will help us meet the goals presented is to conserve where possible. If you’re not using as much electricity to begin with you won’t need as much infrastructure. In my own apartment I did knock down the electrical usage by one seventh, and we’re a family of five. If the government further encouraged conservation they could lower the cost to be invested by a similar amount.
In my case, why I started on the route to conservation to the extent I have is saving myself money. It pays off big time. Our budget isn’t as stretched as it would have been otherwise. More savings have also been realized by turning down the thermostat, installing LED nitelights and other technologies. Saving money on the utilities has allowed me to further invest in even more items that save money, like NiMH batteries.
A small note on ‘renewable’ resources: while the sources of energy are clearly renewable, the materials used in the current methods of recovery are not. Quite frankly, those materials are extremely rare and in VERY short supply as a finite component in the Earth’ crust. Simply closing one’s eyes and hoping that solar and wind power will save the day if only people jumped on the bandwagon is ludicrous because it simply is not possible to build nearly enough solar panels/wind turbines to harness enough energy to meet even 5% of our current needs. And what’s more, these panels/engines don’t last forever – quite the contrary. Average life of a solar panel = 8 years; average life of a wind turbine = 11 years. And, as an added bonus, with all the rare earth’s going to create these renewable harvesters, none is left over to build the batteries in hybrid vehicles or TV screens (and computer screens for that matter.)
It’s great that people are becoming more environmentally aware, and it’s certainly true that using coal to produce electricity takes a horrific toll on the planet, but renewables in their current and next generation form are not the answer. I think people really need to wake up to next generation nuclear generation, with reactors that eat what’s now considered waste and produce only fractional amounts of short-lived waste. And to the opponents of uranium mining , it should also be noted that one coal plant spews more nuclear dust out from the ash waste than all the uranium mines in America combined on a year/year basis. Just something to think about…