Praise the EU's gas replacement plan: Part 2

The first part of my praise for the EU’s plan for the complete replacement of Russian natural gas focused on more natural gas, LNG and pipeline gas from other suppliers. Now let’s look at the non-gas parts of the plan, which as a whole, to recall, sees the replacement of 155 billion cu m of Russian pipeline gas as detailed in an article published in late March in Die Welt. So, today we’ll talk about wind, solar, and biogas.

4. 22.5 billion cu m from wind and solar

That wind and solar are part of the gas replacement plan is hardly a surprise. The same is true of the size of the EU’s ambition: Commissioner Breton’s plan sees as much as 10 billion cu m of Russian gas annually replaced with wind power capacity and another 12.5 billion cu m replaced with new solar power capacity. And this, according to him, could happen by the end of this year.

Solar farms, I’ve heard, are quick to build. I’m not so sure about wind parks, but let’s say wind turbines are as quick to erect as photovoltaic panels are to install on their frames. Let’s assume all European states will tweak their permitting process to facilitate construction as quickly as possible. Let’s assume there are already enough turbines manufactured for this sharp increase in installations.

And let’s assume all the land necessary for these additional megawatts of capacity is readily available. Unfortunately, the article does not mention how many megawatts of wind and solar capacity would need to be installed in the next ten months to replace 22.5 billion cu m of Russian gas. But there are places that tell us how much energy can be generated from any energy source.

According to one online calculator, one cubic meter of natural gas can generate 10.55 kilowatt-hours of electricity. A thousand cubic meters of gas could then generate 10.55 MWh. For context, average household consumption in the EU varies from 1.7 MWh in Romania to 9 MWh in Sweden, with the EU average oat 3.7 MWh. Romania has a population of a little less than 20 million. Sweden’s population is a little lover 10 million. And these are not nearly the biggest economies or most populous countries in the EU.

One megawatt of solar capacity, on the other hand, can generate up to 2.146 GWh of electricity per year under perfect conditions. That’s quite respectable until you remember the “perfect conditions” part. The above calculation is based on an average capacity factor of 24.5%, which would fall perhaps significantly when conditions are less than perfect, which, alas, happens often in temperate-climate, four-season Europe, which is short on year-round-sunshine deserts unlike the U.S.

For wind turbines, the figures vary widely based on average wind speeds and types of turbines. For the smallest turbine on the above-linked list, for instance, with a capacity of 100 kW, the output varies from 220 to 413 MWh. For the biggest one, with a capacity of 3.5 MW, the output range is between 7.388 GWh and 13.986 GWh. Europe will probably be betting on the big turbines.

To replace 22.5 billion cu m of Russian natural gas, which can be converted to, unless I’m gravely mistaken, tens of billions of megawatt-hours of electricity, the EU will need to build a massive amount of wind and solar capacity and then more on top of it to make up for those sunless and windless days that are part of European life during any given year. It might also want to consider building some energy storage, too, otherwise even surplus generation capacity might not do the trick of replacing those cubic meters of, as one Baltic government official called it, “toxic” Russian gas.

5. 3.5 billion cu m from biogas

On to biogas. Europe is already the largest regional producer of biogas and plans to considerably boost its current output. In fact, under the REPowerEU plan released earlier this year, the EU is eyeing a tenfold increase in its biogas production by 2030, from about 3 billion cu m today to 35 billion cu m in 2030. But 2030 is too far. For the end of this year, the European Commission eyes a twofold-plus increase in biogas production, with new biogas plants seen producing 3.5 billion cu m.

Now, as someone who is quite partial to waste minimisation I genuinely welcome the effort to turn more waste into energy. What I wonder is how much this sharp increase in biogas production will cost and whether it will not create a shortage in readily available waste.

It seems that biogas plants are quite easy to build, seeing as their numbers doubled in just two years. Of the total, which stood at 729 in 2020, the most are located in Germany. This should mean that Europe’s largest economy is generating quite a lot of energy from waste.

However, it turns out that biogas only accounts for 1% of Germany’s energy consumption, even though, according to the head of the local biogas federation, "We could immediately increase our production by 20 per cent, and replace 5 per cent of Russian gas, if some regulatory barriers were lifted tomorrow."

Given Germany’s particularly heavy dependence on Russian gas and other fossil fuels the above quote begs the question why it hasn’t already made things easier for biogas producers in order to become less dependent on imported gas. All I needed to answer this question was do some quick research.

It revealed that, like wind and solar, biogas production is weather-dependent for the optimal temperature at which bacteria break biomass into methane. Besides, biogas production is unsuitable for densely populated areas such as cities because waste matter of the proper variety is scarce there. And, last but not least, I’m not the only one wondering about the sufficient availability of feedstocks. This may possibly answer the question about why Germany’s hasn’t shaken off the Russian gas cuffs yet with local biomethane.

The total share of wind, solar, and biogas in Breton’s Russian gas replacement plan is 26 billion cu m of natural gas. In a perfect world it would have worked exactly as planned. Since we do not live in a perfect world, the replacement of these 26 billion cu m of Russian gas will probably cost a lot more than switching to ruble payments. What’s more, there will be no actual guarantee of a complete replacement of the energy generated previously from these 26 billion cu m because, well, weather.

Before someone says something along the lines of “But Putin must be punished”, etc. let me paint you a picture. I have it on good authority that for men, being grabbed by the family jewels is quite a painful experience. I would therefore infer that when one is in such a situation he wouldn’t pull sharply away lest something very bad happens to the jewels. I would instead expect a more gradual, gentle, as it were, pullback. What Europe is doing right now is a pullback of the sharp variety. There is going to be a lot of pain.

End of part 2. Read part 1 here.