Global wind and solar growth on track to meet climate targets, Reuters reported this week. The news story cited a report by a climate think tank called Ember, which concluded that if current wind and solar addition trends continued and if they could be replicated globally, “the power sector would be on track for 1.5C.”
Very nice article. Much appreciated. Most of the contents arent exactly "new" to me, but its great to get some confirmation. Renewables, or Unreliables, as the they called, are a HUGE issue.
And this article doesnt even mention the "recycling" or waste managment (toxic to a degree) issues that will come up sooner or later.
Great piece. The other part of the equation that will increase costs of renewable energy rollouts is NIMBYism, related legal costs and project delays due to the vast amount of resources and land area required to produce energy. Wishful thinking remains the greatest single barrier to a workable rational clean energy policy.
If one reads the fine print next to any of the USA EIA tables of LCOE, one finds a note saying that the costs do not include firming, nor transmission. Both of which are astronomical for wind and solar.
In any analysis of factors based on cost, this fact should be strongly emphasized.
The proponents of wind/solar invariably fail to include these costs in their "analyses".
Caveat, I haven't checked the EIA tables in about 7 years, so if they have been penetrated by the NRDC, or the like, they may have removed the factually essential note.
In the UK, we have sky-high electricity prices, because the marginal generator - gas-fired - is now very expensive. As a result, windfarms are enjoying an astonishing windfall. With market prices where they are, increases in the cost of equipment are irrelevant.
The other thing to point out is that most of the LCOE figures put about are fictional. In the UK, we have actual generation figures and audited financial accounts as public data, so good estimates of LCOE can be prepared. There is no sign of rapid decline in renewables costs.
I had an interesting chat on Twitter to the guy who runs Wood MacKenzie in the US. After some friendly back and forth, I asked him where WoodMac were getting their LCOE figures from. He cut off communications at that point.
Yes, the LCOEs by tech are not immutable over time, and, yes, you have to "derate" wind and solar for the intermittence/seasonality, but that LCOE table and the line of argumentation behind it is also not nearly as even-handed as would appear (e.g., let's compare EXISTING NUCLEAR (fully amortized) to NEW OFFSHORE WIND, which is a fairly recent phenomenon). Make no mistake, renewables are in the ballpark of being useful... not an order of magnitude away as is being suggested (and the potentially more distributed nature can bring headaches, but also potentially big network advantages). There is significant upside on storage and materials that will continue to benefit wind and solar more so than HC generation. Is there really significant upside in nuclear... unless i) the smaller distributed systems are NOT susceptible to the massive cost blowouts traditional nuclear has been evidencing in the last few years or ii) fusion by luck is around the proverbial corner (not looking cheap, by the way)? Just look at the UK and RAB rates being contemplated. $20.17/MWh, you say?!? Try closer to £88+/MWh that was being floated pre-Covid, pre-Ukraine (presumably that is under threat given other major infra project cost blow-outs in the UK since then?). Show me how that $20 is not a highly cherrypicked rate. vs. TODAY's REALITY... which I though was the point of the LCOE discussion. We don't even have to start talking about negative externalities (nuke waste (you want to compare this to solar panels?!?), CO2 emissions damage... forget the 1.5C, how about now readily calculated increases in health costs?). For the record, I was very negative on the future for solar PV in the early 2000s. Putting forced Uyghur labor aside, it has surprised impressively on the upside and not necessarily requiring the crazy cocktail of particularly rare/hazardous elements as anticipated previously. And now we've got potential game changers like perovskites, sodium batteries, etc. It's unfortunate not as much $ has been put into CSP, e.g., whose operating temps and salt batteries chip away admirably at the intermittence problem... albeit in restricted geographies. But, I digress. In short, the gap between nuclear and HCs with renewables has shrunk dramatically and will continue to do so because of where the upside lies. That doesn't mean wind and solar will comprise >50% of Wh generated globally in the medium term, but the techs have a ways to go and it is economics that will determine how far. Natgas had its major tech boost following widespread power sector deregulation efforts globally in the 1990s (OCGT --> CCGT). Coal is a known quantity, and clean coal was never a realistic option. Fission reactors can perhaps be more decentralized and the Minimum Efficient Scale brought down... but, not clear how positive a development that is going to be in heavily populated areas these days.
Very nice article. Much appreciated. Most of the contents arent exactly "new" to me, but its great to get some confirmation. Renewables, or Unreliables, as the they called, are a HUGE issue.
And this article doesnt even mention the "recycling" or waste managment (toxic to a degree) issues that will come up sooner or later.
Much respect, Mrs Slav.
Irina, this is an outstanding piece that I hope gets amplified far and wide. You are doing important work.
At least they're not bolting these things onto electrolysers to further reduce their efficiency... oh, wait... https://andrewonenergy.substack.com/p/one-proton-one-electron?s=w
Great, concise piece.
"how did Europe — and the U.S., for that matter — got themselves into this?
How dare you for even asking!
Great piece. The other part of the equation that will increase costs of renewable energy rollouts is NIMBYism, related legal costs and project delays due to the vast amount of resources and land area required to produce energy. Wishful thinking remains the greatest single barrier to a workable rational clean energy policy.
If one reads the fine print next to any of the USA EIA tables of LCOE, one finds a note saying that the costs do not include firming, nor transmission. Both of which are astronomical for wind and solar.
In any analysis of factors based on cost, this fact should be strongly emphasized.
The proponents of wind/solar invariably fail to include these costs in their "analyses".
Caveat, I haven't checked the EIA tables in about 7 years, so if they have been penetrated by the NRDC, or the like, they may have removed the factually essential note.
In the UK, we have sky-high electricity prices, because the marginal generator - gas-fired - is now very expensive. As a result, windfarms are enjoying an astonishing windfall. With market prices where they are, increases in the cost of equipment are irrelevant.
The other thing to point out is that most of the LCOE figures put about are fictional. In the UK, we have actual generation figures and audited financial accounts as public data, so good estimates of LCOE can be prepared. There is no sign of rapid decline in renewables costs.
I had an interesting chat on Twitter to the guy who runs Wood MacKenzie in the US. After some friendly back and forth, I asked him where WoodMac were getting their LCOE figures from. He cut off communications at that point.
Yes, the LCOEs by tech are not immutable over time, and, yes, you have to "derate" wind and solar for the intermittence/seasonality, but that LCOE table and the line of argumentation behind it is also not nearly as even-handed as would appear (e.g., let's compare EXISTING NUCLEAR (fully amortized) to NEW OFFSHORE WIND, which is a fairly recent phenomenon). Make no mistake, renewables are in the ballpark of being useful... not an order of magnitude away as is being suggested (and the potentially more distributed nature can bring headaches, but also potentially big network advantages). There is significant upside on storage and materials that will continue to benefit wind and solar more so than HC generation. Is there really significant upside in nuclear... unless i) the smaller distributed systems are NOT susceptible to the massive cost blowouts traditional nuclear has been evidencing in the last few years or ii) fusion by luck is around the proverbial corner (not looking cheap, by the way)? Just look at the UK and RAB rates being contemplated. $20.17/MWh, you say?!? Try closer to £88+/MWh that was being floated pre-Covid, pre-Ukraine (presumably that is under threat given other major infra project cost blow-outs in the UK since then?). Show me how that $20 is not a highly cherrypicked rate. vs. TODAY's REALITY... which I though was the point of the LCOE discussion. We don't even have to start talking about negative externalities (nuke waste (you want to compare this to solar panels?!?), CO2 emissions damage... forget the 1.5C, how about now readily calculated increases in health costs?). For the record, I was very negative on the future for solar PV in the early 2000s. Putting forced Uyghur labor aside, it has surprised impressively on the upside and not necessarily requiring the crazy cocktail of particularly rare/hazardous elements as anticipated previously. And now we've got potential game changers like perovskites, sodium batteries, etc. It's unfortunate not as much $ has been put into CSP, e.g., whose operating temps and salt batteries chip away admirably at the intermittence problem... albeit in restricted geographies. But, I digress. In short, the gap between nuclear and HCs with renewables has shrunk dramatically and will continue to do so because of where the upside lies. That doesn't mean wind and solar will comprise >50% of Wh generated globally in the medium term, but the techs have a ways to go and it is economics that will determine how far. Natgas had its major tech boost following widespread power sector deregulation efforts globally in the 1990s (OCGT --> CCGT). Coal is a known quantity, and clean coal was never a realistic option. Fission reactors can perhaps be more decentralized and the Minimum Efficient Scale brought down... but, not clear how positive a development that is going to be in heavily populated areas these days.