Less than one week ago,
I revealed my April goal was
doubling the number of articles,
posting new articles every
Monday, Thursday and Saturday,
before noon (EST) ... and not
being online the other four days
of the week.
So much for that goal:
-- I'm posting three new "Monday"
articles today, Sunday afternoon,
and I won't be online tomorrow ( Monday ).
and I won't be online tomorrow ( Monday ).
I promised myself to start work on my
May - June 2019 ECONOMIC LOGIC
newsletter on Monday, and I'm
going to do that.
I hope to be online Tuesday,
with more articles here.
Otherwise, I'll be back here
Thursday and Saturday.
In January 2005, when I retired,
I celebrated several things:
-- No more meetings
-- No more suits and ties, and
-- No more schedules
Also no more monthly paychecks !
The Article Starts Here:
This is mainly an overview of
U.S. electricity generation,
in the past two decades.
( 1997 through 2018 )
Data are from annual reports
of the Department of Energy.
Various units in DOE tables
are converted to one unit,
the watt (W), usually using
its billion multiple, the gigawatt (GW).
The Department
of Energy lists
six energy sources
as renewables:
(1) Wind,
(2) Solar,
(3) Hydro,
(4) Wood,
(5) Waste, and
(6) Geothermal.
Solar represents the
combined output
of photovoltaic (PV)
and concentrated-solar
(CSP) power plants.
The abbreviation "W&S" in this article,
will stand for "wind and solar energy"
Lots of growth in the W&S chart, top left,
but almost no growth in the other chart, showing hydro, wood, waste and geothermal energy.
Wind and Solar Generation
The 39 GW combined output
in 2018 represents 8% of the
US electricity consumption,
of 476 GW.
Wind has been adding about +3 GW
each year recently, and solar +2 GW
per year.
Recent growth has been linear.
That suggests wind would reach 300 GW,
and solar 200 GW, in a century, which
might supply close to 100% of electricity needs,
except for this issue:
-- Widespread adoption of electric vehicles,
would cause a HUGE increase of the demand
for electric power.
W&S electricity is already expensive:
A 1970s nuclear plant operates at 2.4 $/W,
( the dollars are adjusted for inflation,
and the wattage reflects actual power
delivered over four decades, for the
Millstone Nuclear Power Plant, in CT, USA )
In comparison, an off-shore wind farm
averaged 21.0 $/W over two decades,
at about ten times higher cost,
all conditions the same.
( Vindeby Offshore Wind Farm – in Denmark )
The nuclear plant
will still be running
in its fifth decade.
The offshore wind turbines
would need to be dismantled
after about two decades,
due to the corrosive effect
of salt water.
This ten times higher cost
of wind energy production
of electricity, versus nuclear,
would need large government
subsidies to be affordable.
The projections are based on
raw DOE numbers.
It seems very unlikely that we
would be able to achieve
100% renewable energy to power
our society in ten years, or ever.
A huge number of new W&S plants
would be needed, with each replaced
or refurbished, up to four or five times
a century.
The W&S industry claims employment
is slightly more than the natural gas
industry, at about 250,000 jobs.
The relative productivity
per employee is:
7.5 kW for solar;
32 kW for wind;
1,300 kW for fossil fuels
2,000 kW for nuclear.
Based on those numbers,
the US work-force would be
insufficient to manufacture,
operate, maintain, tear down,
dispose of, and erect, all the
W&S plants that would be needed
every 20 to 25 years.
All of us would have to work
for the W&S industry !
Other Renewable Energy Sources
No growth in the past two decades,
and not much energy supplied,
except for hydropower.
Hydro output is lower today
than it was two decades ago,
Wood, waste and geothermal
provide only 9.1 GW combined.
Hydro provided 33 GW in 2018
Too few sites are available
for new dams, and some could not
be built at those sites, because of
environmental concerns.
The retrofitting of old dams, that do not
supply electric power, by adding new electric
generators, would be a very poor return
on the investment.
Wood and waste are renewable energy
sources, but both emit CO2, and “real”
pollutants too.
Hydro and geothermal are "clean", but
they only yielded 33 + 6 = 39 GW, in 2018.
To achieve the 100% clean energy goal,
W&S would have to produce an additional
( 476 - 39 = 437 ) GW right now.
And even more electricity would be needed
in the future, for population growth, and the
increased use of electric vehicles.
Electric cars could easily consume
another 110 GW, increasing the total
to 547 GW.
Feasibility of 100% Renewables
About $3 trillion has been spent
on the renewable energy effort
since 2004, and the figure has
now stabilized, at about $300 billion
per year, for each of the past six years.
W&S output accounts for 8%
of electricity production, but only
1% of total U.S. energy consumption.
The manufacture, maintenance and disposal
of more W&S plants, all consume electricity,
and also fossil fuels.
There's also fossil fuel consumption
for backup electric power,
during no-wind and no-sun periods.
Because 100% battery backup would
extremely expensive, even if feasible --
multiplying the already high cost of W&S
by 10x to 20x.
100% renewables is not even close
to being feasible.
We currently have no idea
how to maintain an electric grid
with 25% W&S, without having
up to 100% of W&S capacity
backed up by idling, ready-to-go
natural gas fueled power plants.
natural gas fueled power plants.
Yet individual U.S. states
continue to commit their citizens
to higher taxes, and higher
electricity prices, to reach goals of
20, 50, 100 percent of energy
to be derived from clean, renewable
sources ... in 10, 20, 30 years.”
But they consistently
do not met their goals !