Discussion Thread: Is the EIA forecast of 2016 energy prices realistic?

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently (April 2009) made a forward projection of estimated energy generation costs for 2016 in its Annual Energy Outlook 2009. The results are given in the table I’ve reproduced below (click on it for a larger version) — the original comes from the Next Big Future blog, here. Nuclear Green also has a post on it, with an alternative figure, here, NEI Notes here, and there is an excellent summary provided by the Institute for Energy Research, here and here. The IER are the guys who extracted this data from the AEO 2009 report and summarised it in a useful format. Make sure you read these links: they’re packed with useful analysis.

Prices are expressed in 2007 US dollar terms per megawatt hour [MWh]. To convert these figures to kilowatt hours [kWh] — more relevant to you, perhaps, because you probably use between 120 and 250 kWh per day — simply divide these figures by 10, and read as cents instead of dollars. So, for conventional coal, the table tells you the cost is projected to be 9.4 c/kWh, whilst for wind it is 14.2 c/kWh. O&E stands for “operations and maintenance”. The levelised energy cost is an economic assessment of the cost the energy-generating system including all the costs over its lifetime: initial investment, operations and maintenance, cost of fuel, cost of capital. These costs deliberately exclude state and federal subsidies, to give you the real figures. The AEO 2009 report also includes an energy demand projection through to 2030.

One might choose to dispute any of the entries given above, for a variety of sound reasons. For instance, the cost of Advanced Nuclear is based on an overnight capital cost of about $8 billion per GW installed capacity for the US, when the recent Asian experience (Japan, Korea, China) is considerably lower (between 1/2 and 1/4 this price). Likewise, the price of gas might rise considerably higher than the EIA anticipates, especially regionally, as geographically important supplies dry up in places like the US and LNG prices rise concomitantly due to export/import bottlenecks. I’ll be interested to see the debate that ensues in the comments below, especially from those who advocate cheap renewable energy.

Topics for discussion might include the following: Do you believe the EIA forecast is reasonable overall? What about for your ‘favourite’ energy source? If not, why not? What’s been left out? Have hidden costs (e.g., investor confidence, energy storage and backup, etc.) been adequately represented? Has peak oil or the ongoing effects of the global financial crisis been properly factored in?

Lovelock’s dire vision

James Lovelock, the man who is often credited with being the first ‘Earth Systems Scientist’, has written a new book on the threat and consequences of climate change, called “The Vanishing Face of Gaia“. If you are looking for a dark and dystopian vision of the future, read Lovelock’s prognostications.

In brief, his view is that we have almost certainly gone past the point of no return. That is, climate ‘tipping elements‘ have been set in motion by past and ongoing changes to the Earth’s atmosphere and other interconnected systems (oceans, land surface, cryosphere). Because of this, according to Lovelock, we cannot now avoid a mass extinction of species and a major distruption to the human enterprise — though we may be able to execute a ’sustainable retreat’ as a means of adapting to some of the challenges ahead and avoiding the very worst outcomes. As I understand it, his new book explores these ideas in some detail and evaluates the likelihood of success.

I have not yet read Lovelock’s new book (it’s now on my short-term list!), but I was certainly impressed by his previous treatise, The Revenge of Gaia, which included strong arguments for the use of nuclear power (even without describing the many benefits of Generation IV technology, epitomised by the IFR). On that topic, see also here, for an essay by Lovelock published in 2004 in The Independent: “Nuclear power is the only green solution“.

Lovelock’s views are considered by most in the scientific community to be at the extreme end of the optimism — pessimism scale, but certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility, and frankly, a near certainty if a ‘business-as-usual’ pathway of carbon emissions is kept up for another few decades. A good review of what a ‘1000 ppm’ world might look like can be found here and here. What many would dispute is whether we’re too far gone already. I personally think we still have time to avoid the worst, if we start emergency action now.

Anyway, to whet people’s appetite, below I reproduce an excellent review of the book by a friend and colleague of mine, Tim Flannery. It was published in The Monthly. Tim and I first met back in 2002 at a conference on extinctions in Japan, and have since published a few papers together. You can also click on the image of the book for another interesting perspective by Justin Ritchie.

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Goodbye to All That

James Lovelock’s “The Vanishing Face of Gaia : A Final Warning“

Review by Tim Flannery (Copehagen Climate Council)

The Monthly » June 2009, No. 46

http://www.themonthly.com.au/node/1673

James Lovelock’s latest book,The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning (Allen Lane, 192pp; $29.95), has an important message. In a few years, or a few decades at most, abrupt changes in Earth’s climate will begin, which will end up killing almost all of us and cause the extinction of almost all life on Earth. The tropics and subtropics will be rendered uninhabitable by this shift, and the few survivors will cling to favoured regions such as Britain and New Zealand. Lovelock believes there is little we can do to avert our fate, for the causes of the climatic shift are now so entrenched that they are in all likelihood irreversible. In his view the best we can hope for is personal survival in a world of warring nations or, if we are particularly unfortunate, a world ruled by warlords.

Apocalyptic visions such as this are usually the province of doomsday cults or writers of science fiction. It’s unusual to find a scientist advancing one. Yet James Lovelock’s scientific credentials are impeccable. Over a long career he’s made many discoveries of global significance, including the fact that cold and flu viruses are transmitted by physical contact rather than through the air, and that small mammals such as hamsters can be frozen solid for hours or days, then defrosted and returned to life. As a maker of scientific instruments, he is without peer. One of his instruments used to measure air pollution is still in widespread use today; indeed it made detection of the hole in the ozone layer possible. Lovelock’s reputation as one of the world’s most respected scientists was reinforced in 2006, when he received the Royal Geological Society’s Wollaston medal. It’s the highest commendation given in geology, and its previous recipients include Louis Agassiz (the discoverer of the ice age) and Charles Darwin.

The Vanishing Face of Gaia is based upon decades of work in the field for which Lovelock received the Wollaston medal. Called Earth Systems Science or Gaia Theory, it concerns Earth’s methods of self-regulation. Lovelock himself founded the discipline in the ’70s, when he first published his Gaia hypothesis, and the alarming warning issued in his latest book is based upon his almost unparalleled grasp of the subject. Among the many regulatory systems that make Earth habitable is the one by which Earth maintains its temperature. At the heart of this system is a complex series of interactions which have carbon dioxide (CO₂) at their core. In 2004, Lovelock realised that our disturbance of this system, by burning fossil fuels, had set us upon a deadly path, and every book he’s written since then has sounded a more strident warning.

Key to his latest warning is a simple computer model of a kind used by computer scientists principally to diagnose the behaviour of their larger models. Lovelock, however, used it for a different purpose:

[I] made an experiment with this model world to see what would happen if carbon dioxide were added as we are now doing to Earth. I found that as the carbon dioxide was added, at first the global temperature changed only slightly … But as the carbon dioxide abundance approached 400 ppm [parts per million] in the air, signs of instability [in the climate] appeared … Then suddenly, between 400 and 500 ppm of carbon dioxide, a small increase in heat or carbon dioxide causes a sudden 9 degree rise in temperature …

The concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere today is 390 ppm. Before we started burning fossil fuels it was 280 ppm. But that is only part of the story. There are other greenhouse gases in the air, and if we sum up their capacity to warm Earth and express that in terms of CO₂ equivalent (what is called CO₂e), we find that we stand at 430 ppm CO₂e – well into Lovelock’s danger zone. Here is the nub of Lovelock’s urgent warning.

There is one curious feature of Lovelock’s model world that bears further examination. Just before the deadly temperature spike occurs in his model world, a slight cooling – perhaps lasting only two or three years – takes place. “Do not be misled by lulls in climate change when global temperature is constant for a few years, or even, as I write here in the United Kingdom in 2008, appears to drop,” he warns, for such an event could well mark the beginning of the end. And if Lovelock is right, the beginning of the crisis is likely to come with the onset of a severe El Niño event, which spikes global temperatures. We are currently in a cool La Niña phase, but we are almost certain to experience another El Niño before 2013.

As Lovelock admits, his projections are at variance with those of most other climate scientists, not least the august Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose projections Lovelock argues do not accord “with high quality evidence from Earth obtained by scientists whose job it is to measure and observe“. In this he is right: a slew of recent scientific findings show that the key indicators of the climate system — including sea-level rise, temperature and CO₂ concentration — are tracking the IPCC’s worst-case scenario, which they considered a remote possibility. While Lovelock’s model does fit recent observations, it’s difficult to know what to make of this, for his model predicts only minor perturbations in the climate system before the arrival of the big catastrophe.

While Lovelock’s science is of the highest calibre, his views on society and what we should do about the climate crisis are worth little more than anyone else’s. He argues that wind power is next to useless, that our only hope lies in nuclear power, and that urban-green philosophies are dangerous. His vision of how humanity will respond to the climate catastrophe is just one of many. Musing on this bleak book, I realised that in Lovelock’s view our last chance to avoid catastrophe occurred during the reigns of Howard, Bush and Cheney. It was their backers — companies such as ExxonMobil and many Australian miners, who argued forcefully (and continue to argue) that they should be allowed to go on with ‘business as usual’ – who must bear the brunt of the blame. What a fate it would be to be drawn back into that hateful Bush-Howard world of conflict and avarice by a hand reaching out from the political grave.

James Lovelock is now 90 years old and looking forward to his first visit to space, courtesy of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic launcher. He hopes to see with his own eyes the thing he described as Gaia: to marvel at its spherical shape and its soon-to-be-changed greens and blues. This remarkable man is described by his peers as “completely open and honest, almost to the point of naivety“, and he certainly pulls no punches in his latest work. Most of us will discover first-hand whether his understanding of the way our Earth works is correct or not.

Why is the US ignoring the Integral Fast Reactor?

Cartoon by Nicholson from “The Australian” newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au

Here is something written by Steve Kirsch, and published recently on the Huffington Post. It is obviously highly relevant to our discussions on IFR and ETS bills in Australia, so I thought BNC readers would find it of interest. I’ll ask Steve if he wants to join in the commentary herein…

Waxman-Markey: Three Tough, Unanswered Questions

Steve Kirsch

On June 10, 1Sky sponsored a conference call with Waxman, Markey, and their staff to talk about the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) a.k.a. the Waxman-Markey bill. I had three really tough questions that weren’t addressed in the call, so I e-mailed the House staffers who spoke on the call.

I received a response which I’ve included below, but the response didn’t directly answer my questions.

So I thought it would be fun to speculate at how they might have responded if they were required to answer each question directly, without being “politically correct.”

Question #1: Jim Hansen did an analysis of the bill. He told me on June 7 that he will write something soon showing that Waxman-Markey “locks in terrible results for two decades.”

Now we all know that Hansen is a really smart guy that we wished we had listened to back in 1988 when he first testified about global warming. His prognostications have all materialized.

Since we are so late in addressing climate change, and we really cannot afford to make any mistakes this time around (our last chance), how can you be so certain that Hansen is wrong in his assessment of Waxman-Markey? Do you have an expert who is as smart as Hansen (and as right in his prognostications) who has convinced you that Hansen is wrong?

Answer #1: No, we haven’t seen Hansen’s analysis.

Question #2: Both Secretary Chu and the President of MIT point out that nuclear has to be a key part of the energy mix going forward. We can’t supply all our clean energy needs relying on just renewables.

Yet this bill has over 932 pages, and the word “nuclear” only appears twice.

That seems pretty odd considering that 70% of our CO2-free power is from nuclear. Even more odd considering we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in 30 years and it’s still 70% of our clean power!

I’m sure you all know that the energy content contained in light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel and depleted uranium exceeds all the known oil reserves in the world. It’s an energy resource that is 10 times bigger than the energy of the coal we have in the ground. And that’s just the stuff we have on hand! That’s not even counting the stuff we haven’t mined. Using fast reactors, we can run the entire planet for over 700 years on just the uranium “waste” we have on hand and for millions of years if we are willing to use the uranium that hasn’t yet been mined.

So we have this huge energy resource just lying there and we invented the fast reactor technology (known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR)) at Argonne National Laboratory 25 years ago to use it 100 times more efficiently than in an LWR with minimal waste, lower cost, and better safety than existing nuclear plants. It also solves our nuclear waste problem since it uses the existing nuclear waste for fuel. But we aren’t talking about it at all in this bill on clean energy security. It’s not even a footnote in the bill.

Secretary Chu is talking about fast reactors as a critical piece to moving forward, yet nobody in Congress in the last 15 years has brought it up and it sure isn’t anywhere in this bill. Isn’t this a bit short sighted to not even mention this in the bill? The current DOE funding for this is ridiculously inadequate.

I spoke to the former top guy in charge of civilian nuclear for DOE (Ray Hunter) and he thinks this is a travesty. He was so disgusted he sent a letter to Senator Reid and a few other Senators explaining all of this, but they all ignored his letter (Senator Mikulski’s office sent him a “thank you for writing us” response). That’s a bit odd considering this is our biggest energy resource and this guy was the top civilian nuclear guy at DOE.

Unfortunately, this bill is no different. Jim Hansen has been building a fast reactor as one of his top 5 priorities for Obama to fix global warming. I heard that Congressman McNerney was briefed on fast reactors and tried to have a hearing on it. Nothing happened and this bill has nothing on it at all.

Is there any chance we can fix that? Or at least acknowledge the reason for this stunning omission?

Answer #2: No. Congressman Markey hates nuclear and he always has. He isn’t going to let little things like “facts” and “science” change his beliefs. Even if nuclear supplied 99% of our clean energy, it still wouldn’t be called out in the bill. However, the bill doesn’t penalize utilities for constructing nuclear plants.

Question #3: One of the reasons we are in this crisis is due to our government’s lack of a long term vision and a viable strategy with respect to global warming. This seems to me not to have changed. Am I wrong?

On the call, Markey correctly pointed out that in order to control climate change, we not only have to reduce our emissions at home, but we also have to get other countries to dramatically reduce their emissions. Coal is the big problem. If we can’t virtually eliminate coal use worldwide, we are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Is there a strategy for how we are going to move other countries off of coal? Markey talked about developing and then exporting carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but such a strategy would rely on exporting a technology that doesn’t exist (at scale), that may never exist, that nobody really wants, that would raise the price of electricity to be unaffordably high, and which can only be retrofitted onto coal plants originally designed to capture CO2 of which there are none.

That’s a lot of assumptions. Is that our official core strategy to save the planet??!?!?!

Wouldn’t it make more sense to invest in commercializing the IFR fast reactor technology that we invented 25 years ago, spend lots of money to modularize and mass produce the pieces, have the US finance construction of the plants in foreign countries, and make in-country joint partnerships with the local government to build and operate the plants? Such a plan could displace existing coal plants because it would provide power at a cheaper cost. It would be the equivalent of Walmart moving into town and displacing higher priced competitors. And of course, it will also eliminate the construction of new coal plants.

The benefits to the US would be huge: a nice recurring profitable revenue stream helping our trade deficit and creation of a huge number of high paying jobs to build these plants and the parts for them and to operate them. So we make tons of money and create lots of jobs. And the benefits to the world are huge in terms of CO2 reduction. We’d also virtually eliminate the nuclear waste worldwide. And the host country gets cheaper power. Everyone wins.

Isn’t the latter a fundamentally better strategy than Markey’s “pray for CCS” strategy?

Or is there a better strategy for getting other countries to eliminate CO2 from all power generation?

Answer #3: Sure, a strategy that relies on pure economics for getting people to abandon coal is better than a strategy of relying on an uneconomic and unproven technology and the threat of economic sanctions for non-compliance. Carrots are always better than sticks. Look at our own country for example. We are having a heck of a time getting enough votes for this bill and it we’ve already watered down the renewable portfolio standards so much that they basically don’t require much change from the status quo at all. So sure, that’s a better strategy, but that’s not the strategy we are pursuing.

Look, it’s not about economics or what is in the public’s best interest for saving the planet. If you are trying to get enough votes to pass a bill in Congress, the political realities are this: We want to do the right thing for the planet and for the public. But If we don’t have a strategy that makes the coal, oil, and gas companies happy, they’ll spend lots of money on misleading ads to try to ensure that we don’t get re-elected. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Members who are afraid of that.

The official response

Here is the response to the three questions that I did receive from one of the House staff members:

Thanks for your emails. We wanted to provide some information on how the Waxman-Markey bill (ACES) provides opportunities for new nuclear power:

● Because nuclear power generates far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels, utilities will need to hold far fewer emission allowances for the nuclear plants to comply with the carbon limitations in ACES. According to EPA modeling, twice as many new nuclear plants would be built by 2025 under ACES than without the legislation.

● Under the federal Renewable Electricity Standard, electricity generated from new nuclear units is not added to a utility’s baseline electricity level. As a result, the addition of a nuclear plant would not require a utility to obtain additional renewable electricity. This ensures that the RES provides no disincentive to the construction of new nuclear units.

● ACES establishes a self-sustaining Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) within the Department of Energy to promote the domestic development and deployment of clean energy technologies. CEDA would be empowered to provide direct loans, loan guarantees, and letters of credit to support clean energy technologies that might otherwise be unable to secure financing, including nuclear power.

● ACES includes reforms to the existing Department of Energy loan guarantee program. The Department has received applications for federal loan guarantees from 21 proposed nuclear power plants, totaling $122 billion in requested assistance.

Chairman Waxman is committed to developing the strongest legislation that can pass Congress. Our staff is all working very hard to get the bill ready for the House floor next week, but if you’d like to talk about this issue or others, please let us know and we’ll be glad to talk to you during the next recess.

Memo to Stephen Fielding: It’s not the sun

‘Solar variability does not explain late-20th-century warming’, says the title of a short paper published earlier this year by Philip Duffy, Ben Santer and Tom Wigley in Physics Today. The reason I bring up the topic of the sun and climate now is that an Australian Senator, Stephen Fielding of the Family First party, has recently been concerned that the solar variability could be a cause of recent warming, as the vote for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme comes before the Upper House. Apparently, he got this information from the American Heartland Institute. Well, let me put the good Senator’s concerns to rest.

This topic was dealt with in some detail on BraveNewClimate last year, in the post ‘What if the sun got stuck?‘. There is also an excellent coverage of this issue here, here and here. As Graeme Pearman said in the ABC story linked above, it’s an old debate. Pearman:

“Senator Fielding might have just learnt about it, but in fact the science community has been aware of it for many years. The changes of output of the sun are well and truly documented. We’ve been observing this for over a hundred years. We understand that there was probably some warming earlier last century, due to changes of emissions from the sun, but no evidence that the recent warming is due to that. And therefore there’s no anticipation that that will be a major factor through this century.”

The Duffy et al. 2009 paper (download the PDF here) was written in response to an Opinion Piece published in Physics Today in March 2008, by Nicola Scafetta and Bruce West, entitled: “Is climate sensitive to solar variability?” (download here). I strongly recommend that you read the Duffy et al. paper in full (it’s only 2 information-packed pages long), but the conclusion really does say it all:

In summary, the hypothesis of Scafetta and West — that solar variability is the dominant climate influence during the late 20th century — is a non-solution to a non-problem. There is no problem because the history of global temperatures during the 20th century is adequately explained by known phenomena: greenhouse gases, volcanic eruptions, aerosols, and, yes, to a small degree, solar variability. That conventional explanation is simple, self-consistent, and relies on well established physics. The Scafetta and West hypothesis is a non-solution because it is inconsistent with a range of observations and invokes new an unproven physics. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; Scafetta and West have failed to provide it.

It’s always been amazing to me that some people go to such lengths to try to explain most of the warming over the last 150 years by reference to the sun, rather than ascribing it to an increase in greenhouse gases (GHG). Both, obviously, can change the climate; no argument there. But what about the principle of parsimony, folks? This argument distorts it to the extreme.

The sun delivers our planet almost all of its energy, and an increase in total solar irradiance (for whatever reason) of just a few percent would have a profound effect on Earth’s temperatures. Likewise, a large increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide and other GHG (methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs etc.) would, on the basis of fundamental physics, be expected to invoke a serious planetary warming event.

So, let’s look at the problem in the simplest possible terms:

1. The Earth’s temperature is rising.

2. Solar activity and GHG both force the climate system.

3. There is no trend in solar activity.

4. There is an upwards trend in greenhouse gas concentration.

Simple reasoning will point to the trending driver (GHG) over the non-trending driver (solar) being the culprit. For a solar explanation to work, you not only have to explain why a climate forcing agent would be exerting a directional effect of the climate system when it itself is NOT changing — you also have to explain how that stationary agent is also able to negate another climate forcing agent that IS changing.

Sheesh. Socrates and William of Ockham would have shaken their collective heads in disbelief…

“Spooked” by IFR on TV

Here’s something intriguing — an indication that the wider world is starting to pay some attention to the IFR. I suspect Tom Blees’ message is getting out into the popular culture further, faster than we may have suspected…

There’s a British TV show called “Spooks“, which is a spy drama. Episode 9 of this year’s season (sixth series) is about a race against time to find and deactivate a bomb planted in central London by an ex-IRA operative, and discover who is really behind the plot to kill them. It ends up involving Iran and nuclear power.

So why is this of interest to BNC readers? Well, here is the link — go forward to 47 min 42 sec:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/spooks/episodes.htm (EPISODE 9)

We have the UK Home Secretary talking:

Home Secretary UK: “Iran maintains that her nuclear programme is peaceful. We know to our cost that the reactionaries are interested in more than domestic power supply, but I’ve found a way to call their bluff. If Iran wants a peaceful nuclear programme, we’ll give it to them.”

[He spins computer screen, showing a reactor blueprint (I guess the S-PRISM!)]

Home Secretary UK: “The plans for an Integral Fast Reactor. It’s a nuclear plant. A safe nuclear plant. Bottom line: these plants cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons. Nobody has an excuse to bomb Iran, nobody has an excuse to invade Iran. Not if a nuclear programme is driven by these reactors… This plan represents our last, best hope for an enduring peace.”

This screened on ABC TV in Australia this week. About a dozen friends and relatives later emailed me to say they’d seen this. Someone’s paying attention!

And whilst I’m talking about IFR and television, some of you may not have seen this with Tom Blees that was put up on YouTube about a month ago. In a recorded in a recorded conversation at Davis Media Access / Davis Community TV in Davis, California on March 10, 2009, Tom talks to host Mark Graham for about 30 minutes on the technologies described in Prescription for the Planet.

Here are the interview links, broken up into 3 x 10 minute time slices:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uJ4NaSVLn0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J36rTD18RLA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEn4pi2Nv68

It’s a great summary of Integral Fast Reactors in an easily digestable format — so please do pass the links around.

Finally, Haydon Manning, in an essay in The Australian a few days ago, also gave P4TP a plug…

SA sets a 33% renewables by 2020 target

Today I attended a press conference at the University of Adelaide, at which Premier Mike Rann delivered a pre-state-budget announcement of support, to the tune of $800,000 pa for two years, for a new centre focused on RD&D in hot dry rock geothermal energy (HDRGE). There was also a broader target on renewable energy announced, summarised by the Government as follows:

“Premier Mike Rann today announced that this week’s State Budget will outline plans to create an even greater renewable industry in South Australia, and to increase the state’s renewable energy production target to 33 per cent by 2020. The first project to be funded from the Renewable Energy Fund will be the South Australian Centre of Excellence for Geothermal Research at the University of Adelaide, which will receive $1.6 million over two years.”

A PDF of the 2-page media release is available here. Below are snippetts describing some of the key features:

“Mr Rann, who is also Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change, and Economic Development, announced a new $20 million Renewable Energy Fund to accelerate investment in this sector…

So we’re now announcing an even tougher target of 33 per cent by 2020 which will keep us at the forefront internationally of jurisdictions supporting renewable energy…

South Australia is home to 56 per cent of the nation’s wind power, 90 per cent of its geothermal investment and nearly 30 per cent of its grid-connected domestic solar systems, by far the highest in Australia…

Recommendations on the application of remaining funds will come from the new RenewablesSA Board lead by Bruce Carter, the Chair of the Economic Development Board.”

For reference, South Australia’s current target of 20% of the state’s electricity generation sourced from renewables by 2014 looks set to be met a year early, in 2013.

This is a really interesting set of policy announcements, given the recent discussion we’ve had on this website about likely upper limits to the capacity of renewable energy to deliver substantial fractions of a modern society’s total power needs. In this context, I’d be very intrigued to hear people’s views on how realistic they think this state target is, and by what means (energy sources) it will be achieved. There is also the issue of complementarity with the national mandatory renewable energy target of 45,000 GWh of renewable energy to be generated in Australia by 2020.

Will South Australia, by adopting this target, just make the job of the other states easier? It is not clear to me, in reading the draft MRET legislation, on whether each state will itself have a quota of x-GWh per annum (Mr Rann implied this in his press conference speech, but it may have simply been an assumption on his behalf), or whether (in theory) just one state could generate the entire allocation (this was my understanding). This obviously makes a big difference, because if the latter is true, SA could simply end up carrying the load for the other states. I suspect the view of the SA state government is ‘lead and others will follow’, and I hope that’s the case, but with a target as large as 33% by 2020, I suspect there’ll be some major laggards instead…

Anyway, to set the framework for discussion, here is my brief take on what it means. Feel free to disagree…

The funds for HDRGE research are great news. This is an immature technology (the recent well blow out at a Geodynamics rig was an example of early deploment teething problems), but it is also an attractive source of clean energy because of its potential to provide ‘baseload’ power. It warrants serious further development, to sort out issues such as ability to achieve consistent rock fracturing, the  capacity for recycling water through the system without significant net losses [important for desert regions], avoiding overly rapid local cooling and mineralisation of fractured rock strata, and, like other desert renewables, getting power from generation site to point of use. Technically of course, HDRGE is not a renewable energy source, but then technically, no energy source can be considered ‘renewable’ and still abide by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It’s a source of energy dervied primarily from the natural decay of uranium in the earth’s crust and there’s plenty of it, if we can tap it economically and at sufficient scale. I suspect that the use of HDRGE will always be limited by the accessibility of the resource globally — for some places, such as South Australia, it could well be a major source of future energy. The IPCC Working Group III (chapter 4, pg 277-278) give a crisp overview of the state of play and potential development, and note that “Deeper drilling up to 8 km to reach molten rock magma resources may become cost effective in future“. An intriguing prospect — if this becomes technically and economically feasible, the sky is ultimately the limit.

And what about that bold 33% of the state’s electricity generation sourced from renewables by 2020? If realised, that would be as high as any juristiction has so far achieved, worldwide. Is this possible?

South Australia’s electricity usage, averaged over the year, is currently around 1700 MW — most of which comes from thermal gas (using steam turbines) and coal, with a rapidly increasing contribution from wind (see above). At a growth rate of 2% pa (realistic, even given increased energy efficiency, because of the growing population), demand might rise to around 2100 MW. Around 50 MW of that might come from the Port Stanvac desalination plant. Add in the Olympic Dam expansion and its estimated 570 MW additional draw, and we’re up to about 2700 MW. A third of this is 900 MW.

Let’s say 70% of this 900 MW comes from wind, 25% from solar (hot water system RECs, rooftop PV, and concentrating solar power [CSP]), and 5% from HDRGE, in 2020. Give these capacity factors of 33%, 20% and 90% respectively. That comes to a peak installed capacity of about 1900 MW wind, 1100 MW solar and 50 MW HDRGE, rising from a current (2009) level of 390 MW (wind), say 50 MW solar (mostly hot water, some PV, no CSP), and 0 MW from HDRGE. That’s 630 large (3 MW) turbines and some novel build outs of the other techs (largely CSP and HDRGE).

With its vast potential renewable energy resources, my view is that this is an achieveable regional goal for a place like SA. It is most likely to be realised if UHVDC lines can be strung out to the Eyre Peninsula (abundant wind resources) and/or the interior deserts (for CSP and HDRGE). This will require some serious government investments and a re-evaluation of current regulatory problems that causes first-mover disadvantage. It will also require that SA continues to lead the other Australian states in providing the most attractive incentives for renewables deployment. A (potentially large) caveat is that managing the relatively low quality (fluctuating and periodically pulsing) electrical inputs derived from wind will be a big challenge for the utilities, if a 33% contribution is achieved. This makes it tough to maintain a standard and constant electrical frequency and demands micromangement of spinning reserve in order to to dispatch the constant load we expect.

Is a 33% renewables by 2020 achieveable as a national Australian target? In my humble opinion, not a snowflake’s chance in hell.

SA has a relatively small electricity demand compared to the national total, an already well developed renewable energy infrastructure, and some of the best resources in the world to tap into. The other states are way behind in build out, as some of the figures in the press release indicate. But most importantly, SA can reach a 33% level with no requirement for large-scale energy storage, and potentially no further fossil fuel backup. The state is connected to the large east coast grid, powered predominantly by coal, and can draw on this abundant supply via the Murraylink interconnector when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining (being generalised here, but basically, when delivery is well below the nominal 33%). We can also sell to the east coast grid when delivery is near peak. We’ll be the Denmark of the south — with both the admirable and dubious energy connotations that this brings.

For Australia’s total electricty supply, it’s a whole ‘nuther ballgame. Enter nukes.

P4TP chapter 4 – everyone can now read Blees on IFR

For those who do not yet have the book (tsk, tsk), you can now read Chapter 4 of Prescription for the Planet, “Newclear Power”, by downloading it here. Tom Blees has generously decided to put this chapter (pg 117 — 139) on the web to allow a more rapid dissemination of the basic facts about IFR to everyone you know (family, friends, fellow environmentalists, politicians, the media) — so please do pass on the link: http://tinyurl.com/cwvn8n

I have already reviewed Chapters 4 and 5 of P4TP, here. The downloadable chapter covers the following topics:

– An introduction to the Integral Fast Reactor  (IFR) project and its experimental testbed, the EBR-II at Argonne

– Nuclear Physics 101, a primer to nuclear power generation

– Light Water Reactors and Fast Reactors: similarities and differences

– A comprehensive description of the IFR concept and its revolutionary design principles, in easy to understand terms

Be amazed, be thrilled, learn something new — read chapter 4 of P4TP and pass on the link. It’s a great way to whet people’s appetite and make them hungry for more information on this new type of nuclear power — which can be found by reading the whole book, reading this site, and going over other warehouses of info like Steve Kirsch’s IFR website.

I’m currently up to Part IV of my VI part review of P4TP. I’ve still got important topics to cover, such as the proposed programme of international oversight of IFRs, and the story of what has stalled progress to date.

In other news,  reader David Lockwood alerted me to an interesting new study by a group from MIT on global warming, to appear in Journal of Climate (published by the American Meteorological Society). There are a couple of news stories about it, here and here. The graphical ‘roulette wheel’ results of the study are shown below.

Their probabilistic analysis implies that a ‘no mitigation policy’ scenario — right hand wheel — is likely to lead to warming of about 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This estimate is somewhat higher than the range projected for the A1FI scenario from the latest IPPC report in 2007.

The new work by MIT has included improved economic modelling based on updated emissions data, more explicit handling of aerosol masking and soot-driven warming, and improved measurements of deep ocean temperature rises — the latest data suggests lower than expected transfer of heat and CO₂. There are lots more details to be found in the story written up for Science Daily. Substantial policy intervention (read ‘deep and sustained mitigation’) — left hand wheel — lowers the odds of severe warming, but it still leaves a substantial burden of adaptation for future generations.

Still, if you were in the climate casino, which wheel would you rather spin?

Al Gore’s blind spot on nuclear power

I’ve just started reading a book by William Tucker called ‘Terrestrial Energy‘. It’s really very good, and I’ll write up a full review of it here once I’ve finished it. But the reason for this post is to consider a quote from Al Gore that Tucker cites in the Preface, pages ix — x. It comes from his testimony, in March 2007, to the US Senate. Gore says the following, when asked about the possible role of nuclear power in combating global warming:

I think it’s likely to be a small part of it. I don’t think it will be a big part of the solution, Senator… I’m assuming that we will somehow find an answer to the problem of long-term storage of waste… I’m assuming that we will find an answer to the problem of errors by the operators of these reactors…  But the main problem I think is economics. The problem is these things [nuclear reactors] are expensive, they take a long time to build, and at present, they only come in one size—extra-large….

There was quite a bit more said, and you can read the entire transcript of his conversation with Senators Isakson and Alexander, here. Gore added:

So I mean, I’m not a reflexive opponent of nuclear—I just happen to think it’s only going to play a small role….

He repeated much the same line in an interview on CBS television in July 2008, and in an interview with the Guardian newspaper in March 2009, so we can safely assume that the position he states above has not changed over the last few years. For those who follow the news on energy futures, you may recall what Gore said about renewable energy in July 2008:

America must commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and other clean sources within 10 years.

So Gore foresees the need for a transformational change in energy supply in a rapid time-frame, but considers that nuclear power is likely to have little or no role in this second industrial revolution. I will leave the matter of whether 100% renewables by 2020, or indeed any other time-frame, is realistic. Suffice to say that regular readers of this blog know that I have concluded that such a target is extraordinarily implausible, from many technical, logistical and socioeconomic standpoints. So what about Al Gore’s view on nuclear power prospects — are these also being overrated by its proponents?

Tucker (pg x — xi) has the following to say in response to Gore’s cited testimony:

Saying that nuclear reactors only come in “one size — extra large” is woefully uninformed. Reactors can come in any size. Experimental reactors in laboratories and universities can generate 1 or 2 megawatts (A megawatt — MW — is the standard unit of commercial electricity, able to power about 1,000 homes.) Submarine reactors in the Nuclear Navy generate between 20 and 50 MW, and battleships run on 70 to 100 MW. When Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the Nuclear Navy, “beached” one of his submarine reactors at Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957 to produce the first commercial nuclear plant, it generated 60 MW — about 1/25th the size of today’s.

Utility reactors grew to 300 and 500 MW and beyond, with the largest now reaching 1,500 MW — what Gore calls “extra large”. This is because giant generators are the cheapest way to produce electricity. Coal plants are built to the same size, but this isn’t the only way reactors can be built. The Russians are now powering Siberian villages with 80 MW reactors floated in on barges. China and Japan are building modular reactors of 150 MW to power small communities. There isn’t any reason reactors can’t be built to the neighborhood level, combined with hydrogren production or water desalinization. If we ever colonize the moon, it will probably be with transportable nuclear reactors.

The real problem is public fear of all things nuclear. In truth, nuclear power still terrifies people. It seems unnatural and diabolic, a bastard technology conjured up by guilt-ridden scientists trying to exonerate themselves for inventing the atomic bomb. For many people — even those most concerned about global warming — nuclear remains the embodiment of evil, the symbol of all that is wrong with the modern world.

[Yet]… Nuclear energy is the source of the earth’s natural heat, the incredible furnance that heats the earth’s interior to temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, spitting out volcanoes and lava flows, floating the planet’s continents like giant barges on its molten core. The source of this energy is nuclear power, the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century. While we have always looked to the sun for our energy, the unlocking of nuclear power has left us with an alternative — terrestrial energy. There is nothing sinful or reprehensible about using this energy. In fact, it has come just in time to help us deal with what may be our twin crises — climate change and the increasing scarcity of world oil.

I would agree completely with Tucker — Al is poorly informed on this matter and I can only conclude has failed to grasp the full realities of our energy challenge.

Look at Gore’s Senate testimony again. We have the answer to the problem of long-term storage of waste. They’re called fast spectrum  and molten salt reactors, which burn up all of the actinides. We have the answer to the problems of errors by operators. It’s called ‘inherent’ or ‘passive’ safety sytems, which are reliant on the imutable laws of physics. One size, extra large? Nonsense. Reactors now come in all different sizes, and design schematics for the Integral Fast Reactor’s commercial exemplar, the S-PRISM by General Electric Hitachi, are set up in blocks containing multiple standardised, modular loops of 380 MW each (by the way, if you are at all interested in the technical aspects of the IFR, that linked paper by Allen Dubberly is a must read). Standardisation, modularity, additivity, passive safetly, on-site processing of self-protecting fuels — they’re all game-changers for the economics of the nuclear power industry (and a carbon price that puts a real environmental cost on coal would also be useful).

So I’m extremely disappointed to find that a man like Gore, who has taken so much time and effort to listen to scientists on the problem of climate change and has been in the position to receiving the top-level advice and expert briefings for decades, seems to have taken no time to try to understand developments in nuclear power, nor to listen to the world experts at his doorstep in the Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories. Why the bipolarity of effort? I don’t know, but to me, it’s Gore’s own Inconvenient Truth. Yet I’m hopeful that it is also something that can be changed, given that he (and many like him) are surely people who are willing to look at complex problems logically, are able to cast aside deep-seated preconceptions, and are willing to face up to really big, confronting challenges.