The November 2009 issue of Scientific American has a cover story by Mark Z. Jacobson (Professor, Stanford) and Mark A. Delucchi (researcher, UC Davis). It’s entitled “A path to sustainable energy by 2030” (p 58 – 65; they call it WWS: wind, water or sunlight). This popular article is supported by a technical analysis, which the authors will apparently submit to the peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy at some point (or may have already done so). Anyway, they have made both papers available for free public download here.

So what do they say? In a nutshell, their argument is that, by the year 2030:

Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels.

Big claim. Does it stack up? Short answer, no. Here I critique the 100% WWS plan (both articles).

The articles are structured around 7 parts: (1) A discussion of ‘clean energy’ technologies and some description of different plans for large-scale carbon mitigation. (2)  The amount and geographic distribution of available resources [wind, solar, wave, geothermal, hydro etc.] are evaluated, globally. (3) The number of power plants or capture devices required to harness this energy is calculated. (4) A limit analysis is undertaken, to determine whether any technologies are likely to face material resource bottlenecks that risk stymieing their large-scale deployment. (5) The question of ‘reliability’ of energy generation is discussed. (6) The projected economics of this vision are forecast. (7) The policy approaches required to turn vision into reality are reviewed.

In this post I want to concentrate on (5) and (6) — what I consider to be “The Bad”. But first, let’s look quickly at “The Good” (actually, more like the “Okay”) and then the really “Ugly” parts.

The majority content of the twin papers is focused on making the banal point that there is a huge amount of energy embodied in ‘wind, water and sunlight’ (“Plenty of Supply”), and that a wide diversity of technologies have been developed to try and harness this into useable electrical power.  No critic of large-scale renewable energy would argue any differently, and the size of these resources has been covered in detail by David Mackay. In that context, I wonder what they hope to add to the literature? There’s nothing wrong in this section, and well explained, but it’s just standard, rehashed fare.

Next comes a simple extrapolation of the total number of wind turbines, solar thermal facilities, etc. required to deliver 11.5 TWe of average power (close to my figure of 10 TWe in TCASE 3). This part is similar to that which I provided in TCASE 4 except they use a mix of contributing technologies rather than considering a hypothetical limit analysis for each technology individually. Curiously though, they never really explain (in either paper) how they came up with their scenario’s relative mix of hydro capacity, millions of wind turbines, billions of solar PV units, and thousands of large CSP plants, wave converters, and so on — except in pointing out that some resources are more abundant in deployable locations than others (see Table 2 of the tech paper). They do provide a useful discussion of possible material component bottlenecks for different techs (e.g. Nd for permanent magnets in wind turbines, Pt for hydrogen fuel cells, In/Ga etc. for solar PV), and argue how they can be plausibly overcome via recycling and substitution with cheaper/more abundant alternatives. This bit is quite good.

So what’s “The Ugly”? Well, it’s something utterly egregious and deceptive. In the Sci Amer article, the following objection is raised in order to dismiss the fission of uranium or thorium as clean energy:

Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered.

Hold on. How could this be? I’ve shown here that the “reactor construction” argument is utterly fallacious – wind has a building material footprint over 10 times larger than that of nuclear, on energy parity basis. Further, Peter Lang has shown that wind, once operating, offsets 20 times LESS carbon per unit energy than nuclear power, when a standard natural gas backup for wind is properly considered. I’ve also explained in this post that the emissions stemming from mining, milling, transport and refining of nuclear fuel is vastly overblown, and is of course irrelevant for fast spectrum and molten salt thorium reactors. So…?

Well, you have to look to the technical version of the paper to trace the source of the claim. It comes from Jacobson 2009, where he posited that  nuclear power means nuclear proliferation, nuclear proliferation leads to nuclear weapons, and this chain of events lead to nuclear war, so they calculate (?!) the carbon footprint of a nuclear war! (integrating a probability of 0 — 1 over a 30 year period). I quote:

4d. Effects of nuclear energy on nuclear war and terrorism damage

Because the production of nuclear weapons material is occurring only in countries that have developed civilian nuclear energy programs, the risk of a limited nuclear exchange between countries or the detonation of a nuclear device by terrorists has increased due to the dissemination of nuclear energy facilities worldwide. As such, it is a valid exercise to estimate the potential number of immediate deaths and carbon emissions due to the burning of buildings and infrastructure associated with the proliferation of nuclear energy facilities and the resulting proliferation of nuclear weapons. The number of deaths and carbon emissions, though, must be multiplied by a probability range of an exchange or explosion occurring to estimate the overall risk of nuclear energy proliferation. Although concern at the time of an explosion will be the deaths and not carbon emissions, policy makers today must weigh all the potential future risks of mortality and carbon emissions when comparing energy sources.

Really, need I say more? Can it really be that such wildly conjectural nonsense is acceptable as a valid scientific argument in the sustainable energy peer-reviewed literature? It seems so, which suggests to me that this academic discipline needs a swift logical kick up its intellectual rear end.

So, on to the grand renewables plan. The fulcrum upon which the whole WWS analysis pivots is the section entitled “Reliability”.  Here’s where the steam and mirrors of their WWS dream (sorry, solar thermal pun) really starts to blow off into the atmosphere and shatter on the ground.

First, the authors cite ‘downtime’ figures for each technology (i.e., the period of unscheduled maintenance, as opposed to scheduled outages). From this, they leave the uninitiated reader with the distinct impression (especially in the Sci Amer pap piece) that wind and solar PV is actually more ‘reliable’ than coal! (Who knew? We’d better tell the utilities). They also say that unscheduled downtimes for distributed WWS technologies will have less impact on grid stability than when a large centralised power plant suddenly drops out. Sorry, but I just don’t get this. If the downtime of solar PV is 2%, for instance, and you have 1.7 billion 3 kW units installed worldwide (their calculated figure), then 340,000 of them are out at any one time. That seems rather significant to me…

Next, to overcome intermittency, they claim that for an array of 13-19 wind farms, spread out over an 850 x 850 km region and hypothetically interconnected:

… about 33% of yearly-averaged wind power was calculated to be useable at the same reliability as a coal-fired power plant.

Let’s parse this. By reliability of the coal plant, I assume in this context that they mean its capacity factor (rather than unscheduled outages), which would be around 85% of peak output. Now, wind in excellent sites has a capacity factor of ~35%, so the yearly-averaged power of a hypothetical 10 GW peak wind array of 13-19 farms would be 3.5 GW. Now, following their statement, 33% of 3.5 GW — that is, 1.15 GW or ~12% of peak capacity — would be available 85% of the time. Or, to put it another way, we’d need to install 10 GW of peak wind to replace the output of 1.4 GW of coal? Is that what they are saying? Did they cost this? (hint: no, see below). Perhaps someone else can confirm or reject my interpretation of the statements on p19 of the tech paper.

Also, consider this. Say we instead installed 20 GW peak over this 850 x 850 km area. We’d still only be able to deliver 20 x 0.35 x 0.33 = 2.3 GW of baseload-equivalent power. That is, adding more and more wind doesn’t help with system reliability, as it would for coal.  I suppose the overall system reliability might get a little better as you spread your wind farm array over increasingly large geographical areas, but I suspect that this would be a case of rapidly diminishing returns. How can such a scheme be considered economic?

(Note: I’m not arguing for coal here, just using the power technologies given in their example. For me, insert nuclear instead).

Then they introduce ‘load-matching’ renewables. For instance, they present a “Clean Electricity 24/7” figure for California (see above), in which geothermal, wind, solar and hydro together provide a perfect match to an average power demand curve for CA for a given month (July in this figure). Strangely though, they neglect to mention what happens during the many imperfect, less-than-average days, when it’s cloudy and/or calm for some or most of the day and night (or strings of days/nights), or how much extra capacity is needed in winter months. How is the gap filled if either or both of wind/solar is mostly unavailable? Do the residents of CA go without electricity on those days? Err, no. Apparently, in these instances, grid operators must ‘plan ahead for a backup energy supply’. Riiiight. Where does this come from again, and how will this be costed into the WWS economic equation?

I could go on here, but won’t. This post is already getting way too long, and besides, many of these points will be topics, in and of themselves, in future TCASE posts.

As you’d have already gathered from the above, the economics of WWS is pretty strange. Here’s another example:

Power from wind turbines, for example, already costs about the same or less than it does from a new coal or natural gas plant, and in the future is expected to be the least costly of all options.

How can they justifiably say this, and yet neglect to mention that the power these these technologies produce is variable in quanity, low quality (in terms of frequency control), not dispatchable, diffuse (thereby requiring substantial interconnection), and that their projected energy prices don’t include costs of backup? In other words, in the real world, what exactly does the above quoted statement mean? Nothing meaningful that I can see.

They make a token attempt to price in storage (e.g., compressed air for solar PV, hot salts for CSP). But tellingly, they never say HOW MUCH storage they are costing in this analysis (see table 6 of tech paper), nor how much extra peak generating capacity these energy stores will require in order to be recharged, especially on low yield days (cloudy, calm, etc). Yet, this is an absolutely critical consideration for large-scale intermittent technologies, as Peter Lang has clearly demonstrated here. Without factoring in these sort of fundamental ‘details’ — and in the absence of crunching any actual numbers in regards to the total amount of storage/backup/overbuild  required to make WWS 24/365 — the whole economic and logistical foundation of the grand WWS scheme crumbles to dust. It sum, the WWS 100% renewables by 2030 vision is nothing more than an illusory fantasy. It is not a feasible, real-world energy plan.

I also see that they are happy to speculate about dramatic future price drops for solar PV and concentrating solar thermal with up to 24 hours future storage (Although even they admit it would not provide sufficient power in winter – what do we do then, I wonder? – have huge capacities of coal and gas on idle and as spinning reserve?). Well, I guess that if analysts like Jacobson and Delucchi are willing to forecast such optimistically low costs for future solar, then we can be quite comfortable doing the same for IFR and LFTR, the Gen IV nuclear. What’s good for the goose…

Finally, a quick note on the section “Policy Approaches”. I found one thing particularly amusing. They start by emphasising the critical need for feed-in tariffs (FITs), to subsidise the initial deployment of WWS technologies, because these deliver a necessary kick start towards lower future costs. It’s ironic then, that they end with a quote from Benjamin Sovacool (2009) which says:

Consumers practically ignore renewable power systems because they are not given accurate price signals about electricity consumption. Intentional market distortions (such as subsidies), and unintentional mark distortions (such as split incentives) prevent consumers from becoming fully invested in their electricity choices.

Well, excuse me, but if FITs, and WWS technologies that are priced without adequate storage/backup, are not market distortions and subsidies, then what the hell is?

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Charles Barton at Nuclear Green has two further useful critiques of the WWS papers here and here; these follow on from his earlier dissections of Jacobson, Archer’s and Sovacool’s work.

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Appendix: Further comments on WWS from Dr. Gene Preston of SCGI:

By profession I do transmission studies for wind and solar clients. My company name is TAC meaning Transmission Adequacy Consulting. I currently am doing studies all across the US.  “A path to sustainable energy by 2030″ omits the transmission system needed by 2030.  Because the wind and solar and water and geothermal projects are not in the locations of the existing power plants, new lines will be needed.

Looking at the graph on page 63, and carefully measuring scales on the graph, I estimate that there is 40,000 MW of wind and 40,000 MW of centralized solar on that graph. The reason I omitted rooftop solar is because Jacobson has its contribution to be rather small.  For example, multiplying out the numbers on page 61 you will get 5.1 TW of rooftop solar and 26.7 TW of large scale solar of 300 MW size in farms, much like wind farms.  This seems reasonable since centralized solar is twice as cost effective as rooftop solar.  Since the rooftop solar is small I will omit it from these comments.

That leaves us needing 80,000 MW of new wind solar and geothermal generation just to serve California. I think an estimate of 500 miles from wind and solar resources to major load centers is reasonable.  A 500 kV transmission line is rated at about 2000 MW max power. But you don’t want to operate it at that power level because the losses are too high and there is no reserve capacity in the line to handle the first contingency problem. Therefore I will estimate we will load the new 500 kV lines to about 1500 MW on average.

So we have 80,000 MW of renewable sources widely scattered around the Western System (WECC) with each carrying 1500 MW so that we need roughly 50 new 500 kV lines of 500 miles each, for a total length of 25,000 miles.

The article assumes there is little solar power energy storage and it also assumes the wind be blowing at night.  We know for sure that the solar power is not available at night so we are nearly totally dependent on wind for night time energy.  You are going to ask about the geothermal energy.  One geothermal project I recently worked on for determining the transmission access for looked like a good project until the geothermal energy extraction failed to work.  Recently other geothermal projects have created human induced earthquakes.  Geothermal energy seem less likely today than just a few years ago.

So we are nearly totally dependent on wind energy for the night-time CA energy as envisioned in the 100% renewables by 2030.  If we plan for those few occurrences when there is no wind in the WECC system, we must interconnect WECC with the rest of the US so CA can draw power from other wind generators that do have wind (hopefully) outside the WECC area, such as the Texas coast and east of the rocky mountains where massive wind farms can be constructed. However we will need at least 40,000 MW of lines that I estimate will average 2000 miles in length. If we used 500 kV lines, we would need about 25 of these lines bridging from WECC to the US eastern grid and ERCOT and the total length would be about 50,000 miles. By 2030 we would need 75,000 miles of new 500 kV lines just to serve California with 100% renewables. Considering that we have the period from 2010 to 2030, that means we would have to construct about 4000 miles of new 500 kV lines every year from now until 2030 for the renewables plan as outlined in this article to work.

How much do these lines cost? Probably about 2 million dollars per mile.  Also, the 500 miles is just an estimate.  If you have specific projects in mind that eliminates some of the uncertainty in estimating costs.  For example the distances might be less to wind generators.  However I suspect that opposition to the wind generators unsightliness and opposition to power lines will result in longer pats for lines zig zagging around the countryside and the wind generators being not allowed anywhere on the coast, so I understand that Mexico is the desirable place for wind.  But if you were to string out 40,000 MW of wind, I bet you would find the 500 miles was not that bad a guesstimate after all.  The first few sites might be closer to load centers, but opposition is likely to drive them farther away.  The construction time for lines is mostly how long it takes to get all the ROW and get approval to build the lines.  How many years will a line be held up in hearings?  Add one year to that number of years and you have roughly the time it takes to build a new line.  Now try to build new lines across the Rockies and see how long that will take – decades I predict, if ever.

In sum, I do not believe this is achievable at all.  Therefore the concept envisioned in the SA article is not a workable plan because the transmission problems have not been addressed.  The lines aren’t going to get built.  The wind is not going to interconnect.  The SA article plan is not even a desirable plan. The environmental impact and cost would be horrendous.  Lets get realistic.

Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy.

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UK Economist Lord Nicholas Stern is the latest in a growing list, including IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri and NASA climate scientist James Hansen calling for a global shift in dietary habits towards less meat. The CSIRO has issued a new Home Energy Saving Handbook which tells people diplomatically, but unambiguously, that if they do use the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, with its huge meat component, then use it for as brief a period as possible and switch to a high carbohydrate diet which has a much lower greenhouse footprint. The book also has a great section on the implications of suburban food growing, including a mention that this also tends to reduce meat consumption. This new CSIRO handbook is a long way short of the major public corporate apology that I called for in my recent book CSIRO Perfidy, but it’s an excellent start. All in all this CSIRO book is a great practical book about how people can significantly reduce their various footprints on the planet. It doesn’t fall into any of the all too common traps like considering the fuel consumption of a car, but ignoring the emissions generated during the building of the vehicle.

Stern’s call reduced animal product intake follows close on the release of a report on livestock and climate change from the Food Ethics Council in the UK(commisioned by World Wildlife Fund (WWF)). The press release announcing the report contains a statment which will probably raise the blood pressure of any meat producer. It says that the report:

Identifies a wide array of measures by which government might change consumption behaviour, …

The livestock industry can live with feel good statments about breeding for lower emitting cattle and the like, but changes to consumption, changes that would actually make a difference, that is anathema.

At the risk of boring people who know this stuff, let me quantify using an analogy that I hope will clarify. Consider a computer screen. I’m using a 19 inch 37 watt LCD. My TV is a little bigger and uses 58 watts. Most people know that huge plasma TVs can be more than a little bigger and use 10 times more power. Systems labelled home theatre can run to over 1500 watts … about half for the sound and half for the picture. Now, pause and think what would happen if somebody started making 7400 watt screens that were much the same size as normal screens. Imagine further that these screens caused serious and frequently life shortening health problems.

Would anybody defend such screens? Would anybody bother with a defence that better manufacturing could reduce their power usage by 25%?

The 7400:37 ratio is about the same as the ratio of greenhouse emissions between lean beef and pasta. The ratio is even higher if the short term (20 year) warming impact of methane is considered. A study hot off the press in Science into the indirect effects of methane calculates that adding these flow-on impacts lifts the warming due to methane by as much as 50%. This makes lean beef akin to a 10,000 watt screen.

Tim Flannery, in the longest chapter of his recent Now or Never essay (Quarterly Essay 31) has put forward a plan to massively increase global beef production … the direct equivalent of a plea to stock the planet with an abundance of 7400 watt computer screens. This has been criticised by both myself (see Quarterly Essay 32) and Peter Singer. Responding to Singer in the US edition of Now or Never, Flannery writes:

And in the beef sector, it’s been found that smaller breeds of cattle produce 25 percent less methane than standard breeds, and that the overall management of the herd has an enormous impact on the overall greenhouse gas balance of the business.

If he were consistent, Flannery should similarly allow that a 25% reduction in the power required for a 7400 watt screen should earn it a green energy saver badge.

In Perfidy, which is about far more than just the CSIRO’s dodgy diet, I examine the implications of Flannery’s call for more cattle in some detail. Firstly, it’s an impossible vision. But going with Flannery’s flight of fancy and assuming there is enough land to graze enough cattle so that most of the planet (leaving out a billion or so steadfastly vegetarian Indians) ate the same amount of beef as Australians (bearing in mind that more chicken is eaten than beef in Australia these days), we would add about another 98 mega tonnes to the annual global emissions of methane. If you are unfamiliar with the global methane budget, the current anthropogenic emissions are about 350 mega tonnes, so a 98 mega tonne injection of methane would be huge.

So, on the one side we have a growing international call to scale down the livestock sector, particularly cattle, but in Australia we either don’t report such calls (and you won’t find the Food Ethics Council paper on the Australian WWF website), or they get a brief mention on page 23 and we have high profile environmentalists like Flannery pushing in the opposite direction. One of the reasons I’ve always been on the fringe of environment groups and more comfortable in animal rights groups is that many greens (and Greens), like Flannery, seem to place the sanctity of the BBQ above the health of the planet. I have absolutely no idea what drives such people, they steadfastly refuse to follow where the evidence leads. Anybody who reads Peter Singer’s work will realise that for him and others in the animal rights camp, using information and logic to formulate ways to minimise suffering isn’t mere entertainment, but the final arbiter of action.

Which leads me to Kelly’s Bush.

Kelly’s bush is about 7 acres of bush land on Sydney’s wealthy North Shore. In the early 1970s it was threatened with development. Some regard the fight to save Kelly’s Bush as the birth of the modern Australian green activist movement. The fight was spear headed by the famous Green Bans imposed by the Builder’s Labourers Union, led by Jack Mundey. The bans began in the early 1970s, but the story I want to tell goes back a decade earlier to 1962. What happened in 1962? Yes, I know, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, but that’s just a book, what actually happened? What actually happened was that Bob Kleberg of King Ranch in Texas bought 50,000 acres of primary rainforest along the Tulley River in north Queensland (ironically not far from where Jack Mundey grew up) and worked out how to use 50 tonne bulldozers to fell giant rainforest trees for just $20 a cleared acre. A huge rolling steel ball with spikes is dragged between the dozers on a chain and when it hits a tree it climbs. As it mounts the tree, the dozers gain leverage and can knock down anything. By 1965, the 50,000 acres (about 20,000 hectares) was gone. By the early 1970s, I’ll wager some of that Tully beef ended up in BBQs and sandwiches at Green Ban picket lines in Sydney. Meanwhile the bulldozers where shipped to Venezuela and the now perfected methods were used there and later in Brazil in an attack on the planet’s rainforests that is on-going.

Such is the story of high profile environmentalism in Australia. The real fight to preserve biodiversity should have been fought in our supermarkets, but the big green organisations, the ones with a profile high enough to have a chance at effecting major consumer change, are too busy having BBQ fundraisers and fighting for can deposits and against plastic bags. But the deliberate focus on the trivial by many in the green movement is more generally symptomatic of what passes for ethical debate in Australia. This is particularly obvious when we consider the ethics of climate change.

Back in May, The Lancet published the results of a joint study with the University College London on the health impacts of climate change.

The study contains the following map (from a 2007 study) showing the causal responsibility of climate change compared with the likely adverse health impacts. The former were measured in giga-tonnes of carbon emitted between 1950 and 2000 while the latter were measured in mortality per million of population. The geographical area of each country in the map has been transformed so that relative areas correspond to relative causes or health impacts. The malnutrition component comes from an earlier World Health Organisation modelling study and is due to a projected increase in regional droughts.

Note that this is a per-capita measure of suffering, not an absolute measure. A map showing relative absolute suffering would make the ethical responsibility even more obvious but would possibly see some of countries which are major causes of climate change totally disappear in the map of adverse impacts.

The malnutrition impacts are considered to have already started. It is of course difficult to disentangle malnutrition due to climate change from malnutrition due to other causes but a June FAO press release shows we have climbed to over a billion undernourished people, having been hovering at about 800 million between 1990 and 2003 when the wheels started to fall off the global food machine. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is now reporting in its 2009 State of Food Insecurity report (SOFI) that the absolute number of malnourished people has been rising since the mid 1990s.

The Lancet isn’t on my list of regularly read journals, but I thought it a little wierd that I’d never heard of this report. So I did some googling to see who covered it at the time. Who did I find? The only sizable news sources which reported on the report were: Radio Australia, The ABC (online) and The Mercury. Unsurprisingly, I found no mentions in any of the major newspapers.

Taken at face value, the maps make the asymmetry of causes and impacts abundantly clear. We in the developed world are responsible for most of the pain and suffering that will be felt predominantly (but not exclusively) in the developing world.

Humans have an extraordinarily well developed sense of fairness and justice. But it isn’t just humans who have this. A sense of fairness extends, at least, to other primates. Capuchin monkeys will refuse to work for rewards where they can see other monkeys getting more rewards for the same work. Sound familiar?

The maps plus the monkey research make it entirely unsurprising that both the Chinese and the Indians are playing hard ball in the run up to the Copenhagen climate negotiations.

Wondering why the report and the maps weren’t more widely reported in Australia, I formulated a quick hypothesis: Australians don’t care much for ethical issues. But then I thought more deeply and considered NSW’s MP John Della Bosca’s recent resignation and the blanket media coverage it received. So I modified my hypothesis. Australians treat ethics as a spectator sport, rather like football. Its great to watch a bit of biffo as long as you’re not on the receiving end of the real thing. This is supported by a few tables in How Australia Compares, a nice book of selected OECD data tables selected by Rodney Tiffen and Ross Gittins. In particular Australia is down at, or near, the bottom of the OECD countries in the income of its disabled people, the rate of children living in poverty in either single mother or two parent households, the level of unemployment benefits, and a host of other measures. This book came out in 2004 and most of the tables reflect data as of the year 2000, but I doubt much has changed. The generous country I thought I grew up in has either vanished … or perhaps it never existed.

But one aspect of the above maps worries me … the attribution of malnutrition to climate change.

Brazil doubled its cereal production between 1990 and 2003 with only a 35% rise in human population, it was awash with food. During the same period the proportion of Brazil’s cereal going to feed livestock went from 44% to 57%. Asia between 1990 and 2003 experienced a surge in livestock feeding between 1990 and 1995 going from 15% of cereals to 19%. The lower rate probably reflects the Asian preference for chicken and pork over beef. In any event, this fraction persisted until at least 2003. Indonesia and China dominate the Asian picture and both had a surge in corn production during the early 1990s, with the only beneficiaries being livestock. Total Asian cereal production, imports and and livestock feed ratios moved little between 1995 and 2003, despite a rising population. But the rising use of food for feed elsewhere in the world meant reductions in food available (and possibly affordable) to meet the short fall. The result was that undernourishment increased in Asia … exactly as the UN SOFI report finds.

Australia’s grain production goes up and down like a yo-yo so its difficult to discuss food/feed ratios on a yearly basis. But the amount of grain used as feed in 1990 was about 4 million tonnes, in 1995 it was 6 million, by 2003 it was 7.6 million and by 2006/7 it had surged to 12 million. So all up, Australians eat about 2 million tonnes, feed an increasing amount to livestock which leaves a steadily shrinking volume available for export.

The spread of western meat based diets globally has been accompanied by a spread of factory farming, obesity and chronic disease together with a change in the world’s livestock distribution. Factory farming now produces the bulk of the world’s 98 million tonnes of pigmeat and factory farms are high capital operations which demand, and can pay for, a consistent feed supply chain. They can outbid the world’s poor and turn food into feed and food producers into feed producers in exactly the same way that coffee drinkers turn food growers into coffee growers. While it is perfectly reasonable for any country to have a mix of food and cash crops, its the balance that matters.

Between 1984 and 2004 the world’s cattle population fell by 25% in the developed world but increased by a similar proportion in the developing world. This means that of the world’s 1.33 billion cattle, over a billion are in the developing world. Brazil has 190 million, Sudan and Colombia have 41 and 26 million cattle respectively and all three get a mention in the SOFI report with Brazil still having 12% undernourishment in 2004-6 despite a veritable glut of food production capacity.

Globally, this conversion of food to feed to drive increasing meat consumption accounts for the increase in undernourishment without requiring much, if any, input from climate change. As the better off eat more meat, they create a livestock industry which can outbid the poor for food.

But in Australia, our red necked BBQ culture reigns supreme. It’s impacts are felt in poor countries who can no longer buy as much of our grain because is has been siphoned off to feed livestock. Our culture is felt also in rich countries who buy our beef and get bowel cancer and heart disease as a result. We will continue to focus our ethical might on the sexual peccadillos of our politicians and our environmental muscle on plastic bags.

Updated 13/10/2009, based on post comments. Bottom line: 2050 power demand will be ~10 TWe of electrical generating power — a 5-fold increase on today’s levels, requiring the construction of ~680 MWe per day from 2010 to 2050.

Before we look in detail at the various low-carbon energy technologies that may provide the means to move away from fossil fuels, it is worthwhile considering what our future energy targets are likely to be. That is, what are plausible energy demand scenarios?

In the developed world (US, Europe, Japan, Australia and so on), we’ve enjoyed a high standard of living, linked to a readily available supply of cheap energy, based mostly on fossil fuels. Indeed, it can be argued that this has encouraged energy profligacy, and we really could be more efficient in the mileage we get out of our cars, the power usage of our fridges, lights and electrical appliances, and in the design of our buildings to reduce demands for heating and cooling. There is clearly room for improvement, and sensible energy efficiency measures should be actively pursued. More on that in later posts.

In the bigger, global picture, however, there is no realistic prospect that we can use less energy in the future. There are three obvious reasons for this.

1) Most of the world’s population – collectively, the developing world – is extremely energy poor. A quarter of all humanity, some 2.5 billion people, have no access to electricity whatsoever. For those that do, their long-term aspirations for energy growth, to achieve something equating that used today by the developed world, is a powerful motivation for development. For a nation like India, with over 1 billion people, that would mean a twenty-fold increase in per capita energy use.

2) As the oil runs out, we need to replace it if we are to keep our vehicles going. Oil is both a convenient energy carrier, and an energy source (we ‘mine’ it). In the future, we’ll have to create our new energy carriers, be they chemical batteries or oil-substitutes like methanol or hydrogen. On a grand scale, that’s going to take a lot of extra electrical energy! This counts for all countries.

3) With a growing human population (which we hope will stabilise by mid-century at less than 10 billion) and the burgeoning impacts of climate change and other forms of environmental damage, there will be escalating future demands for clean water (at least in part supplied artificially, through desalination and waste water treatment), more intensive agriculture which is not based on ongoing displacement of natural landscapes like rainforests, and perhaps, direct geo-engineering to cool the planet, which might be needed if global warming proceeds at the upper end of current forecasts.

In short, the energy problem is going to get larger, not smaller, at least for the foreseeable future. To project just how much energy will be needed is a widely debated topic. I cannot possibly provide you with “the answer”, so what I shall instead do is provide “my best guess”, for situation in the year 2050 — about four decades from now. Realistic or not (that’s a judgement call), I’ll use this as a reference scenario for later TCASE posts (although I may modify it, depending on what comments I get in this thread). For definitions of power and energy, please read my energy primer (TCASE 2).

At present, the primary world energy demand is very roughly 500 exajoules (EJ). Most of that is thermal energy, with electricity generation equivalent to a mere 60 EJ. To put that in terms of power, 1 gigawatt (GW) = 0.000000001 EJ/s, so a 1 GW nuclear power station, running at 90% capacity factor, yields 0.03 EJ/year. As such, to meet today’s world electricity demand  requires 60/0.03 = 2,000 GWe — the equivalent of 1,750 of the new AP1000 reactors. Note that there is currently about 4,000 GWe of installed electrical generation capacity, but the global average capacity factor is ~50%.

Next, consider this. The 2009 human population size is 6.8 billion, so per capita primary energy use = 0.0000000735 EJ (for Australia, it is 5.77 EJ/21 million = 0.000000274 EJ per person, or 3.7 times the global average). I assume that by 2050, the global population will have stabilised at 9 billion (i.e., 1/3 larger than today).

The Energy Information Agency’s International Energy Outlook 2009 projects total world consumption of marketed energy to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030, or 1.5% per year, with the largest projected increase in energy demand coming from non-OECD economies, as expected. If this continues, by 2050 demand would have grown by 1.015^41 = 1.864 or 86.4%. (See figure on the left. Note that 1 EJ is fairly close to 1 quadrillion British thermal units [BTU], or ‘quads’ — this being the unit being expressed in the figure, which is another commonly used unit for large-scale energy. Another you may hear is a cubic mile of oil = 160 EJ.)

This gives a 2050 projected demand of 930 EJ, but given the gross uncertainties involved in any such prognostication, I’m going to happily round this to 1000 EJ, or a doubling of today’s demand. This gives 0.000000111 EJ/person. Very clearly, this assumes that the developed world still hasn’t caught up to today’s living (energy) standards of the developed world, but Australia is pretty energy profligate. By comparison the French have a per capita use in 2002 of 0.00000019 EJ per person, which is a bit closer to the global 2050 figure). Still, there’s no doubt that it’s going to be a long road to global energy equality.

In 2050, my decarbonised world must be close to 100% electrical, because human activity should be emitting very little carbon dioxide. (I count, in my ‘electrical-powered definition’, any synthetic process to manufacture fuels, and also processes like flash distillation for desalination which make use of waste heat resulting from electrical generation. There will also be some contribution of biofuels.) So, now, let’s say that by 2050 we have managed to achieve the following:

a) Transition to an all-electric society with nuclear power meeting the greater fraction of our demand;

b) Use nuclear power and renewables to create our energy carriers (e.g. batteries, hydrogen, ammonia, boron, whatever), and also use waste heat from thermal reactors for desalination; and

c) Increased technological development means that we get 30% more efficient at using energy to do work (e.g. cumulative improvements in electrical appliances, but excluding transport, see below) — that’s an 8% improvement per decade (one imagines that in reality, the biggest efficiency gains will come in the next two decades, with diminishing returns thereafter).

Now some additional calculations. Current thermal energy derived from coal = 140 EJ, oil = 190 EJ,  natural gas = 120 EJ, nuclear = 30 EJ, other (biomass, solar etc.) = 5 EJ, and then hydropower provides an additional 5 EJ of direct electrical production. To derive the expected electrical power requirement in 2050, I assume an 87% increase in energy demand, a 30% improvement due to general energy efficiency and a 75% improvement due to the switch from oil to electric vehicles. I also assume that 60% of the thermal energy from coal, nuclear and other thermal-to-electric is dispersed in producing electricity. For natural gas, I assume that 1/3 is currently used to produce electricity and 2/3 is used directly for heating, cooking etc.

On this basis, the world in 2050 would demand 700 EJ in thermal energy, which translates to 290 EJ of electrical energy (which I round up to 300 EJ). This would require 300/0.03 = 10,000 GWe of generating capacity. As you can see, under some pretty heroic assumptions, we are likely to need a 5-fold increase in electricity generating capacity by 2050. If we assume all existing power plants (fossil, nuclear and renewable) will be retired by 2050, then we have to build 10,000/(365*40) ~= 680 MWe every day for the next 40 years (2010 to 2050), to meet this challenge. (By the way, the scale of the problem doesn’t diminish if you favour renewables or ‘clean’ fossil fuels over nuclear — indeed, it gets substantially larger due to overbuilding required for technosolar and the efficiency losses involved in carbon-capture-and-storage [CCS]).

By the year 2100, we may want double this figure again — to 1,400 EJ of thermal power or 20 TWe of electricity generating capacity — which would give the global population of 7 billion (let’s assume we stablise our numbers due to improved standards of living and education levels, and then gradually decline), a per capita energy use of a little less than the French enjoy today. This would allow for global economic growth (in energy terms) over the next 91 years of a few percent per annum, and agrees fairly well with the World Energy Council’s scenario A for 2100.

Guest Post by Tom Blees. Tom is author of Prescription for the Planet – The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises. Tom is also the president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives.

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Following up on the article Barry pointed out the other day about Spain’s drastic turnabout in solar subsidization and the ripple effects it’s having on the solar industry worldwide, I thought I’d mention some similar news from Germany. I ran across an article from Die Zeit, a prominent German publication. You can find a typically rough Google translation of the article here. I did have a German friend of mine translate a few of the pertinent paragraphs to get a more accurate rendition:

The entire amount can be pretty accurately calculated. The expected installation of new solar modules [in Germany] for the year 2009 will cost the consumer at least ten billion Euros in the next 20 years. Count on an additional 1.8 billion kWh of sun energy from the outlets, which represents about 0.3% of the entire present energy consumption, which means almost nothing. Whatever was built up to 2008 will amount to even more than 30 billion Euros. That at least is what the Rheinisch-Westfaelische Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforshung calculated.

And the costs will grow rapidly. If the prognosis of the Union of the European Photovoltaic Industry proves correct, there will be so many new installations by 2013 in Germany that the cost will grow to at least 77 billion Euros, without inflation.

Here’s what Germany’s solar electric output came to in recent years (in gigawatt hours):

2006 = 2,220 GWh;     2007 = 3,500 GWh;     2008 = 4,300 GWh

According to this, the increase in 2009 comes to another 1800 GWh, bringing the 2009 total up to 6,100 GWh. Note the progression hasn’t been steady since 2006, increasing by 1300, then just 800, and now 1800, for a three-year average of 1,300 GWh. I don’t know what the prognosis of the photovoltaic industry organization above projects for increases to 2013, but let’s assume it’s even higher than this year, that it’ll be 2000 GWh more per year. So that’ll give us this probably over-generous estimate:

2009 = 6,100 GWh;     2010 = 8,100 GWh;     2011 = 10,100 GWh;     2012 = 12,100 GWh

So by 2013, Germany will have committed to spending €77 billion (that’s over $113 billion USD) for solar capacity equivalent to less than 2% of their 2006 electrical demand.

Now let’s look at the cost of nuclear power plants. Setting aside the legalistic and political quagmire that characterizes the nuclear power industry in America, we can look at the cost of the Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) that were built in Japan in the late 90’s at a cost of about $1.4 billion/GW, and the Chinese’ recent estimates for the final cost of their first two AP-1000s ($1.76 billion/GW), and come to the reasonable conclusion that Germany could build Gen III+ reactors for $2 billion/GW, especially modular units in the dozens.

At the moment, Germany’s Gen II nuclear plants have strong capacity factors, including probably the best one in the world with about a 94% CF. So let’s assume that Germany’s brand new Gen III plants could average a 90% CF. For $112 billion, they could build 56GW of new nuclear capacity, for an effective capacity at a 90% CF of about 48GW. Those plants would thus produce about 421,000 GWh annually, which is approximately 68% of Germany’s electrical needs in 2006 (I keep using 2006 figures to be consistent here because that’s the latest IEA data I can find for Germany’s energy stats). Compare that with the <2% expected from solar, and of course unlike solar, nuclear runs 24/7. Now figure in the expected lifespan of the systems: Nuclear: about 60 years. Solar PV: 20-30 years. Being generous and saying 30, that means you’ll get twice as much as the already astounding 34 times the energy that nuclear will produce compared to the same solar investment.

So Germany’s ill-considered (and, amazingly, continuing) national experiment with solar power is costing them roughly 70 times (in costs/kWh) what it would have cost them to build top-notch nuclear power plants, disregarding the intermittency problem with solar, which is no small matter. In other words, Germany could have gone France one better and gone 100% nuclear and saved a ton of Euros in the process. Instead, we have the example of environmental ideology run amok, with very real and seriously negative economic and environmental ramifications.

While I suspect that solar advocates might quibble with some of my figures above, perhaps pointing out that Germany might install even more solar panels by 2013 than I project here, but really there’s simply no comparison no matter how you massage the numbers. The statistics are there in plain sight.

So what will happen in Copenhagen come December? If the result of that conference is some cap-and-trade shell game along with solemn (and ultimately ignored) promises to cut down on CO2 emissions based on fantasies of wind and solar power, the end result will be as ineffectual as the previous conferences have been.

The people on this planet will not be satisfied with an energy-starved and desperately thirsty world. Before they settle for that they’ll yank every bit of coal and oil out of the ground and toss it on our unfortunately common (funeral?) pyre, solemn promises to the contrary be damned. Delusions about wind and solar coming to the rescue are ludicrous, especially in the face of the demographic landslide in which we find ourselves until at least mid-century.

There is only one source of energy currently available that can possibly provide an energy-rich yet environmentally benign future, including supplying the massive amounts of energy that will be required to desalinate water for literally billions of people. I fully realize that pro-nuclear people at Copenhagen will probably be about as popular as a porcupine in a condom factory, but unless these harsh realities—and their politically incorrect solution—are brought to the fore, just what effect is Copenhagen going to have? What we should be talking about there is how to ramp up nuclear power while putting in place an international regime to forestall nuclear weapons proliferation in the process.

Why do I have the sinking feeling that isn’t going to happen?

It is often claimed that small-scale renewable energy, such as solar photovoltaic panel arrays, will fill an important future energy niche by providing much-needed electricity to developing nations and other remote regions (such as the outback of Australia). That’s a seemingly reasonable argument, but how do the numbers stack up? Below, Gene Preston (SCGI member) provides some easy-to-follow calculations (currency is in US dollars/cents). The results might surprise many:

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A friend of mine at the University of Texas and I were talking about his desire to develop a presentation for educators in Africa to use in estimating energy costs. He has just 3 hours for his presentation. He wants the teachers to be able to do the economics calculations themselves. I suggested he narrow down the discussion to just a comparison of solar versus small scale nuclear. Here’s what I came up with:

Solar – Lets go low tech with fixed solar panels. The cost is $8/watt (W) and runs about 14% of the time (its capacity factor). You will need energy storage, which costs $1/W + $.4/Wh (that is, 40c per watt hour**).

Lets say that we develop a solar system to serve a 5 kW peak load with an average load of 1 kW. The daily energy demand will be 24 kWh and peak load is 5 kW. This could be a few houses or a small school with some PCs. To produce the average amount of energy needed will require 1/.14 = 7.14 kW, so lets say 8 kW just to put in a little extra energy production factor. The 8 kW will cost $8/W (for 8000 W) = $64000. The energy storage system will cost $1/W (5000) = $5000 for the electronics and switchgear plus $.4/Wh (24000) = $9600 for one day’s energy usage. I would double this and install two days of storage just to be safe, which would cost $19,200.

Therefore the cost of the 5 kW peak demand solar system is:

$64000 for the panels (only half this cost is the PV array)

$5000 for the storage system electronics

$19200 for the batteries (2 days storage)

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$88000 for the entire system. (see what I mean about this being a rich person’s energy source?)

Let’s calculate the cents per kWh energy cost. Assume a loan at 6% annual interest rate to pay for it. Assume the system has a 20 year life.

A = PW [(i)(1+i)^n] / [(1+i)^n-1] where A is the annual payment, PW is the present cost of the system, i is the interest rate of .06, and n=20 years.

Then A = (88000)(.06)(1.06)^20 / [1.06^20 - 1] = .08718 (88000) = $7672.24 annually.

The energy produced annually is 24 kWh/day (365 days/y) = 8760 kWh. The cost per kWh = 767,224 cents per year / 8760 kWh per year = 87.6 cents per kWh. (first wow — that’s expensive!)

What about if we instead generated this energy from small nuclear reactors? First, some examples/references:

The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor would have been in South Africa but there is local opposition

This is an interesting discussion of micro reactors, especially the Russian Navy’s design

This information paper from the World Nuclear Association shows the huge number of small-scale reactor technologies being considered

Here is an IEEE paper on small nuclear (2, 5, 10 and 20 MW reactors)

The objective of many of the above references is to get the nuclear power cost down to about 10 cents per kWh. Suppose we could buy into nuclear at $5000 per kW (that’s the estimated cost of the Babock & Wilcox small nuclear plant [called 'mPower'], for a 125 MWe plant). The 1 kW of nuclear power portion of the small plant would run all the time so one kW would have an average energy based on the calculations for the solar plant. All we have to do is replace the $88000 with $5000 in the previous “A =” calculation.

Therefore the small nuclear program energy cost is .08718 (5000) (100) / 8760 = 5 cents per kWh. (second wow — that’s low cost!)

However we will need some peaking power to get 5 kW peak load. We can use the battery storage system to get the peaking power. We only need 4 kW since we will have the 1 kW nuclear running all the time. Also, the energy storage need only be about 4 hours at the most at 4 kW (conservatively). The peaking power using nuclear energy is $4000 for electronics + .4 (16000) for batteries = $10,400. Note that the peaking power system costs twice as much as the base load nuclear generation. The total cost is about $15,000 and the energy cost is about 15 cents per kWh.

This small nuclear + peaking system is only about 18% the cost of the solar + storage system.

This is an example of how anyone can, fairly easily, go through the economics calculations for solar and nuclear. Such an exercise would probably an eye opener for them, and dispel the myth that solar is ‘free energy’ or even a cheap source of power. But how are they to afford any type of power plant if they do not have industries that need power and produce income for them?

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**This estimate is based on presentations given by Xtreme Power Inc.

Before getting entangled in the thorny bramble of sustainable energy options, I thought it helpful to arm you with a set of terminological secateurs. So TCASE #2 (recalling that TCASE = the Thinking Critically About Sustainable Energy series) is a brief primer and glossary on energy terms. This is not meant to be anything comprehensive, but it’s enough to get your technical feet wet and to understand some of the units and concepts that are liberally thrown around by those who are used to talking in the energy jargon. (If readers feel I have missed something important [no doubt], please feel free to add this to the comments, and I will also update this post to reflect the important suggestions.)

Anyway, first up, we need to understand the difference between power and energy. Let’s say you have a jug of water. It has some volume, which is the amount of water the jug holds. Now, let’s say you gradually tip out the water — the flow of water (the amount of water being poured per unit time) is a rate. Well, in caricature, the volume of water is like energy, and the flow of water is like power. Not a perfect analogy, but they never are…

Now, when measuring anything, you could use any manner of units. I’m going to consistently stick to SI (Système Internationale) units. If you want to translate back and forth (imperial, metric, nonsensic, etc.), look up the tables here. The basic SI unit of energy is the Joule. The basic unit of power is the Watt (W), which has units of Joules per second (J/s). So, a 60 W incandescent light globe uses up energy at a rate of 60 J/s, or 216,000 J per hour (60 x 3,600 = 216 kilojoules, kJ). Or, to express it another way, in one hour (h) that light would use up 60 Wh worth of energy, and in a day, it’d use 60 x 24 = 1,440 Wh, or 1.44 kWh. So, kWh are a unit of energy.

Energy comes in various forms, such as heat and electricity (the ones that are relevant to TCASE — there are also forms such as ionising radiation, light etc.). Heat (hereafter thermal) energy is considered lower quality than electrical energy — it’s less flexible and difficult to transport — but thermal energy is easier to store. Also, many power production methods, such as coal- or gas-fired, nuclear, geothermal and solar thermal power stations, generate thermal energy and then convert it to electrical energy, in a process that necessarily must throw away waste heat (roughly 2/3 of it) — first used in a practical way by Thomas Newcomen and later improved upon by James Watt. This is commonly done via a steam generator and condenser, although gas turbines are also used. Indeed, combined cycle gas turbines use both a gas turbine (Brayton cycle) and then use the waste heat to power a steam turbine (Rankine or Sterling cycle), which increases their conversion efficiency. Efficiency is strongly affected by the temperature differential, so if (for instance) your steam goes in really hot and then is water cooled, this will be more efficient than if your steam goes in at a lower temperature and then is air cooled. So air cooling saves water, but lowers your efficiency.

Wind turbines are connected (via gearing) to an electrical generator directly, and so avoid the need to first produce thermal energy. Solar photovoltaics also generate electricity without any thermal step, via the photoelectric effect. A hydro or tidal power device will generally use the flow of water to turn a turbine, rather than expanding steam or gas, and an ocean wave generator might pump water to shore at high pressure to turn a turbine. You get the idea.

An important thing to distinguish is the difference between conversion efficiency and capacity factor. You might, for instance, have a nuclear power station that has a conversion efficiency of 38%, but a capacity factor of 92%. What’s the difference? The conversion efficiency is (roughly) the efficiency with which thermal energy is converted into electrical energy through one or more steps. The capacity factor is the amount of energy a power station generates over a given length of time compared to the energy it might have produced if it had been running at full power for the whole period. There is a good explanation of capacity factor on Wiki.

Here, let’s take an example of wind turbines to better explain capacity factor. One of the largest wind turbines yet built is the Enercon E-126 (see picture), which produces a peak power of 6 MWe (that’s 6,000 kWe, where the “e” distinguishes this as electrical energy as opposed to “MWt” for thermal energy). This impressive structure has rotor (blade) diameter of 126 m, and a hub height of 198 m. Let’s say you stuck this on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula, where it sometimes got strong wind speeds that allowed it to generate its full rating of 6 MW. Other times, the wind would be modest, weak, or calm, at which times it would be generating at less than its peak (nameplate) power. It would also shut off it the wind got too strong in a gale. Now, let’s say you tallied up the energy this turbine had generated over the course of one year at this site, and found it to be 16,820 MWh. If the turbine had generated at full power the whole time, you would have expected it to have produced 6 x 24 x 365 = 52,560 MWh. So, in this case, it’s capacity factor for the year was 16,820/52,560 x 100/1 = 32 %.

Alternatively, let’s say an AP-1000 nuclear power station was rated at 1,154 MWe, and for 11 months it was run at this power output. Then, for one month (say December) it was offline being refueled. It would generate 1154 x 24 x (365-31) = 9,250 GWh for 11 months and for December it would generate 0 GWh. It’s capacity factor would, in this example, be 9,250/10,109 x 100/1 = 91.5 %. And so on, for all the other technologies we’ll be discussing in TCASE.

So, 1 gigawatt (GW) = 1,000 megawatts (MW) = 1,000,000 kilowatts (kW) = 1 billion Watts (W). Solar panels are usually described in terms of their peak kW power. Wind turbines are (these days) usually rated in MW. Nuclear power stations are expressed in MW or GW. Almost universally, their peak (nameplate) electrical power, rather than thermal power or average power (after accounting for capacity factor), is what is reported. So watch out when converting to energy.

Finally, recall I said a W was in units of J/s? A J is a unit of energy. But why then did I start to talk about energy in kilowatt hours (kWh) etc.? Well, this is often a convenient way to express energy (David Mackay chose to use this as his standard), as it’s easy to mentally switch back and forth between power and energy (though there is also the potential to get confused!). Also, J is too small to be of much practical value. But the megajoule (MJ) is a useful value for expressing the energy content of a litre of liquid fuel (for instance), and the petajoule (PJ) and exajoule (EJ) are sufficient for expressing the energy use of nations and civilisations. For instance, the primary energy use (thermal and electrical) of the global human enterprise in 2007 was (very approximately) 500 EJ, which is 138,890 TWh (terawatt hours) — where 1 TW = 1,000 GW. I’m sure by now you’re getting the hang of this!

I like to use EJ and TW when expressing really large energy budgets and power demands — which, incidentally, is the topic of TCASE #3.

This is the first post in what is planned to be an extended series, ‘Thinking critically about sustainable energy‘ (henceforth TCASE #). As explained in my previous blog entry, A necessary interlude, this series will look in detail at the issues confronting renewable and nuclear energy, with an aim to break down the often complex and multifaceted critiques and promotions being made about various energy generation technologies into simpler, single-issue chunks, which can be more readily pinned down and understood.

I will also profile some of the less well-developed low-carbon technologies, such as tidal, wave, microalgae, and geothermal, as well as nuclear fusion, fusion-fission hybrids, travelling wave reactors etc. and speculate on their possible future roles. I hope in this way that I’ll be able to reinforce people’s understanding of why I no longer hold renewable energy to be a primary solution — and yet, by the same yardstick of maintaining intellectual honesty, acknowledging that I’ll also keep an open mind to unconsidered possibilities and caveats that are raised by commenters (be these against nuclear energy, and/or for renewables). Indeed, I’ll also discuss critically the social and technical impediments facing nuclear power adoption and the Generation III/IV synergy.

First up, a little history of the evolution of my thought on this topic, as documented my professional research and in the archives of this blog.

My scientific training and subsequent research career has, in various ways, involved the use of ’systems models‘. My published works have been largely in the area of ecological complexity, stochastic model evaluation, palaeoecology and statistical inference. So I’ve always had strong interest in how small pieces of a puzzle can fit together to make up the big picture — including trying to: (i) understand and quantify the relative sensitivity, redundancy and irreplaceability of different components; (ii) determine the degree to which they are additive, complementary or substitutable, and (iii) assess whether synergistic interactions can result in amplifying benefits or other emergent non-linear properties. As it turns out, the assessment of such system properties is also rather important for understanding how an integrated energy supply can function effectively.

My interest in energy systems is relatively new, but now constitutes somewhat of an obsession! My first post on topic was a guest blog by Stewart Taggert: “Australia can be a clean energy superpower“. This was followed by the post “Climate ripe for transformative change” in which I said:

The decision to invest heavily – and rapidly – in renewable energies like geothermal (hot rocks), solar thermal (desert mirrors), wave and wind power, and rooftop photovoltaic systems, is a no brainer. These technologies offer the only way to achieve an ongoing, growing energy supply.

and “Thinking big and fast on renewable energy” where I extolled our great clean energy resources:

But if Australia has vision, plays its cards right, and becomes a leader in the global climate solution, we could be humming with global exports of clean energy as world-leading discoveries make exploitation of unlimited energy resources ever cheaper. Australia is incredibly well placed among developed countries to move completely to renewable energy. We have huge, unexploited solar resources in our continental interior akin to the oil fields of the Middle East in the early 20th Century.

It is particularly instructive to look at a couple of the critiques I published at the bottom of that last piece, and my ‘answer’ to them at the time. Ahhh, it’s fun to reflect on the naivety of one’s youth…

Anyway, my focus at this point was pointedly directed at carbon emissions reduction (clean energy was just a means to an end), and it was obvious to me that the logical path to achieve this was renewable sources such as solar and wind power. I was coming at this issue from a genuine concern for eliminating carbon-based energy, and was overwhelmed by a sense of frustration, because I couldn’t understand why the ‘clean energy revolution’ wasn’t happening. Surely, all we had to do was put a price on carbon, to reflect the damage fossil fuel combustion was causing to the environment, and big things would start to happen! Bottom line is, no one could look back over those early posts and imagine that I came at this issue with anything other than a firm conviction that renewable energy was the answer. Indeed, I hadn’t given much thought to nuclear power at this point, not because I was ever ideologically ’anti-nuclear’ — I had simply accepted the ‘peak uranium’ argument and not thought much more about it, as this comment I made back in Dec 2008 indicates.

Then, reality bit me, and it hurt. I remember I was sent an early version of Trainer’s thesis, and against all reason (’what nonsense is this?‘ I recall first thinking), I read the damned thing. Somewhat crestfallen, yet also morbidly fascinated, I followed up, reading ‘The Solar Fraud‘ (the only other book on this topic of renewable limits, according to Trainer’s piece) and then a bookshelf worth of other tomes on this general topic, including ‘Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air‘ and ‘Prescription for the Planet‘ (kicking off my nuclear education in earnest),  followed by various technical analyses, IPCC WG III, blogs, etc. My first post on this blog on nuclear power was on 28 Nov 2008, 3 months after it has been launched. My transformation of thought had begun in earnest, and was reinforced by the work of people such as Peter Lang. The TCASE series is the next, more logically formalised, step in this process.

As a quantitative scientist with a bent towards statistics and models, I was willing to let preconceptions go if the evidence was there that I was wrong. Although it is often misused by those who actually do the complete opposite, the famous quote from Keynes here is apt: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” — although in this instance, it wasn’t the facts that changed as much as my knowledge and understanding of them. So begins a journey with TCASE to look critically at sustainable energy, in all forms. It is written in the hope of providing a resource for others to understand the magnitude of the challenge we face in eliminating our dependence on coal, oil and gas, to signpost the blind alleys to avoid, and to arrive at a rational conclusion as to what the most likely path(s) to success might be.

Addendum: Here is an updated version of the chart profiled in this post.

Peter Lang’s ’solar realities’ paper and its associated discussion thread has generated an enormous amount of interest on BraveNewClimate (435 comments to date). Peter and I have greatly appreciated the feedback (although not always agreed with the critiques!), and this has led Peter to prepare: (a) an updated version of ‘Solar Realites’ (download the updated v2 PDF here) and (b) a response paper (download PDF here). Below I reproduce the response, and also include Peter’s sketched analysis of the scale/cost of the electricity transmission infrastructure (PDF here).

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Comparison of capital cost of nuclear and solar power

By Peter Lang (Peter is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal, and a wide range of energy end use management projects)

Introduction

This paper compares the capital cost of three electricity generation technologies based on a simple analysis. The comparison is on the basis that the technologies can supply the National Electricity Market (NEM) demand without fossil fuel back up. The NEM demand in winter 2007 was:

20 GW base load power;

33 GW peak power (at 6:30 pm); and

25 GW average power.

600 GWh energy per day (450 GWh between 3 pm and 9 am)

The three technologies compared are:

1. Nuclear power;

2. Solar photo-voltaic with energy storage; and

3. Solar thermal with energy storage

(Solar thermal technologies that can meet this demand do not exist yet. Solar thermal is still in the early stages of development and demonstration. On the technology life cycle Solar Thermal is before “Bleeding edge” – refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_lifecycle).

This paper is an extension of the paper “Solar Power Realities” . That paper provides information that is essential for understanding this paper. The estimates are ‘ball-park’ and intended to provide a ranking of the technologies rather than exact costs. The estimates should be considered as +/- 50%.

Nuclear Power

25 GW @ $4 billion /GW = $100 billion (The settled-down-cost of nuclear may be 25% to 50% of this figure if we reach consensus that we need to cut emissions from electricity to near zero as quickly as practicable.)

8 GW pumped hydro storage @ $2.5 billion /GW = $20 billion

Total capital cost = $120 billion

Australia already has about 2 GW of pumped-hydro storage so we would need an additional 6 GW to meet this requirement. If sufficient pumped hydro storage sites are not available we can use an additional 8GW of nuclear or chemical storage (e.g. Sodium Sulphur batteries). The additional 8 GW of nuclear would increase the cost by $12 billion to $132 billion (the cost of extra 8 GW nuclear less the cost of 8 GW of pumped hydro storage; i.e. $32 billion – $20 billion).

Solar Photo-Voltaic (PV)

From ‘Solar Power Realities’ :

Capital cost of PV system with 30 days of pumped-hydro storage = $2,800 billion. (In reality, we do not have sites available for even 1 day of pumped hydro storage.)

Capital cost of PV system with 5 days of Sodium Sulphur battery storage = $4,600 billion.

Solar Thermal

The system must be able to supply the power to meet demand at all times, even during long periods of overcast conditions. We must design for the worst conditions.

We’ll consider two worst case scenarios:

1. All power stations are under cloud at the same time for 3 days.

2. At all times between 9 am and 3 pm at least one power station, somewhere, has direct sunlight, but all other power stations are under cloud.

Assumptions:

The average capacity factor for all the power stations when under cloud for 3 days is 1.56 % (to be consistent with the PV analysis in “Solar Power Realities”; refer to Figure 7 and the table on page 10).

The capacity factor in midwinter, when not under cloud, is 15% (refer Figure 7 in “Solar Power Realities”).

Scenario 1 – all power stations under cloud

Energy storage required: 3 days x 450,000 MWh/d = 1,350,000 MWh

Hours of the day when energy is stored (9 am to 3 pm) = 6 hours

Average power to meet direct day-time demand = 25 GW

Average power required to store 450,000 MWh in 6 hours = 75 GW

Total power required for 6 hours (9 am to 3 pm) = 100 GW

Installed capacity required to provide 100 GW power at 1.56% capacity factor (say 6.24% capacity factor from 9 am to 3 pm) = 1,600 GW.

Total peak generating capacity required = 1,600 GW

If the average capacity factor was double, the installed capacity required would be half. So the result is highly sensitive to the average capacity factor.

Scenario 2 – at least one power station has direct sun at all times between 9 am and 3 pm

One power station provides virtually all the power. The other power stations are under cloud and have a capacity factor of just 1.56%.

Energy storage required for 1 day = 450,000 MWh

Hours of the day when energy is stored (9 am to 3 pm) = 6 hours

Average power to meet direct day-time demand = 25 GW

Average power required to store 450,000 MWh in 6 hours = 75 GW

Total power required = 100 GW.

The capacity factor in midwinter, when not under cloud, is 15% (refer Figure 7 in “Solar Power Realities”).

Installed capacity required to provide 100 GW power at 15% capacity factor (60% capacity factor from 9 am to 3 pm) = 167 GW.

But the clouds move, so all the power stations need this generating capacity.

To maximise the probability that at least one power station is in the sun we need many power stations spread over a large geographic area. If we have say 20 power stations spread across south east South Australia, Victoria, NSW and southern Queensland, we would need 3,300 GW – assuming only the power station in the sun is generating.

If we want redundancy for the power station in the sun, we’d need to double the 3,300 GW to 6,600 GW.

Of course the power stations under cloud will also contribute. Let’s say they are generating at 1.56% capacity factor. Without going through the calculations we can see the capacity required will be between the 1,600 GW calculated for Scenario 1 and the 3,300 GW calculated here. However, it is a relatively small reduction (CF 3% / 60% = 5% reduction), so I have ignored it in this simple analysis .

So, Scenario 2 requires 450,000 MWh storage and 3,300 GW generating capacity. It also requires a very much greater transmission capacity, but we’ll ignore that for now.

Costs of Solar Thermal with storage

NEEDS , 2008, “Final report on technical data, costs, and life cycle inventories of solar thermal power plants” Table 2.3, gives costs for the two most prospective solar thermal technologies. They selected the solar trough as the reference technology and did all the calculations for it. The cost for a solar trough system factored up to 18 hours storage and converted to Australian dollars is:

This would be the cost if the sun was always shining brightly on all the solar power stations. This is about five times the cost of nuclear. However, that is not all. This system may have an economic life expectancy of perhaps 30 years. So it will need to be replaced at least once during the life of a nuclear plant. So the costs should be doubled to have a fair comparison with a nuclear plant.

In order to estimate the costs for Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 we need costs for power and for energy storage as separate items. The input data and the calculations are shown in the Appendix.

The costs for the two scenarios (see Appendix for the calculations) are:

Summary of cost estimates for the options considered

The conclusion stated in the “Solar Power Realities” paper is confirmed. The Capital cost of solar power would be 20 times more than nuclear power to provide the NEM demand. Solar PV is the least cost of the solar options. The much greater investment in solar PV than in solar thermal world wide corroborates this conclusion.

Some notes on cloud cover

A quick scan of the Bureau of Meteorology satellite images revealed the following:

This link provides satelite views. A loop through the midday images for each day of June, July and August 2009, shows that much of south east South Australia, Victoria, NSW and southern Queensland were cloud covered on June 1, 2, 21 and 25 to 28. July 3 to 6, 10, 11, 14. 16, 22 to 31 also had widespread cloud cover (26th was the worst), as did August 4, 9, 10, 21, 22.. This was not a a rigorous study.

Also see the BOM Solar Radiation Browse Service for March and April 2002 (the data on this site only goes up to 14 April 2002). Notice the low solar radiation levels for 25 to 30 March and 8 to 12 April 2002 over the area we are looking at. The loop animation can be viewed here.

Some comments on Future Costs?

How much cheaper can solar power be? NEEDS figure 3.7, p31 suggests that the cost of solar thermal may be halved by 2040.

How much cheaper can nuclear be? Hanford B, the first large reactor ever made, was built in 15 months, ran for 24 years, and its power was expanded by a factor of 9 during its life. If we could do that 65 years ago, for a first of a kind technology, what could we do now by building on experience to date if we wanted to put our mind to it. Is it unreasonable to believe that, 65 years later, we could build nuclear power plants, twenty times the power of the first reactor, in 12 months, for 25% of the cost of current generation nuclear power stations?

Appendix – Cost Calculations for Solar Thermal

The unit cost rates used in the analyses below were obtained from: NEEDS, 2008, “Final report on technical data, costs, and life cycle inventories of solar thermal power plants“, p31 and Figure 3.7.

Note that, although this table includes calculations for the cost of a system with 3 and 5 days of continuous operation at full power, the technology does not exist, and current evidence is that it is impracticable. The figure is used in this comparison, but is highly optimistic.

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Capital Cost of Transmission for Renewable Energy

Following is a ‘ball park’ calculation of the cost of a trunk transmission system to support wind and solar farms spread across the continent and generating all our electricity.

The idea of distributed renewable energy generators is that at least one region will be able to meet the total average demand (25 GW) at any time. Applying the principle that ‘the wind is always blowing somewhere’ and ‘the sun will always be shining somewhere in the day time’, there will be times when all the power would be supplied by just one region – let’s call it the ‘Somewhere Region’.

The scenario to be costed is as follows:

Wind power stations are located predominantly along the southern strip of Australia from Perth to Melbourne.

Solar thermal power stations, each with their own on-site energy storage, are distributed throughout our deserts, mostly in the east-west band across the middle of the continent.

All power (25GW) must be able to be provided by any region.

We’ll base the costs on building a trunk transmission system from Perth to Sydney, with five north-south transmission lines linking from the solar thermal regions at around latitude 23 degrees. The Perth to Sydney trunk line is 4,000 km and the five north-south lines average 1000 km each. Add 1,000 km to distribute to Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane. Total line length is 10,000km. All lines must carry 25GW.

Each of the double circuit 500kV lines from Eraring Power Station to Kemps Creek can transmit 3,250MW so let’s say we would need 8 parallel lines for 25GW plus one extra as emergency spare.

The cost of the double circuit 500kV lines is about $2M/km.

For nine lines the cost would be $18M/km.

So the total cost of a transmission system to transmit from the ‘Somewhere Region’ to the demand centres is 10,000km x $18M/km = $180 billion

The trunk transmission lines might represent half the cost of the complete transmission system enhancements needed to support the renewable generators.

Just the cost of the trunk transmission lines alone ($180 billion) is more than the cost of the whole nuclear option ($120 billion).

Eraring to Kemps Creek 500kV transmission line. Each of the double circuit 500kV lines from Eraring to Kemps Creek can carry 3250MW. The 500kV lines are double circuit, 3 phase, quad Orange, i.e.2 circuits times 3 phases times 4 conductors per bundle, i.e. 24 wires per tower. Orange is ACSR, Aluminium Conductor Steel Reinforced, with 54 strands of 3.25mm dia aluminium surrounding 7 strands of 3.25mm dia steel. Roughly 1/3 of the cost of a line is in the wires, 1/3 in the steel towers and 1/3 in the easements required to run the line.

Transcript: Is Our Future Nuclear?

Broadcast: 28/08/2009

[YouTube video here],

Reporter: Mike Sexton

IAN HENSCHKE, PRESENTER: At this week’s AGM, the State Liberals voted to debate nuclear power’s potential the cut carbon emissions. But with Labor demanding debate be shut down and the Liberal leader saying the vote wasn’t binding, discussion seems doomed. But while the politicians won’t debate, others will, with some senior academics saying the future depends on nuclear power. Mike Sexton reports.

MIKE SEXTON, REPORTER: Australians are using more and more electricity, most of it created by coal generators that emit carbon. In simple terms, most scientists believe the more air conditioners in use, the hotter the planet gets.

BARRY BROOK, UNI. OF ADELAIDE: That obviously leads you to consider well, what are the possible solutions? We can look at adaption to climate change, but ultimately we’ve got to stop the process from running out of control.

MIKE SEXTON: Professor Barry Brook is director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide. He’s running his slide rule over the options Australia has for generating electricity while reducing emissions, and believes despite the abundance of wind, sunshine and hot rocks, renewable energy will not power us through the 21st Century.

BARRY BROOK: Looking hard at renewable energy, there are a lot of limitations, especially in terms of energy storage and energy back up that make it extraordinarily implausible, according to my view and that of many others, that it could supply most of our power needs in the future, which, for someone who’s really concerned about climate change impacts is a pretty disappointing conclusion.

MIKE SEXTON: Which is why Professor Brook believes the answer lies in that other abundant South Australian resource: uranium.

BARRY BROOK: We need to find a technology that has the characteristics of coal but is cheaper than coal. Nuclear power, especially fourth generation nuclear power, offers that prospect. Now if we can’t find, develop, commercialise and deploy on a large scale that sort of technology, I think we have a very slim chance of avoiding major climate change impacts.

DAVID NOONAN, AUST. CONSERVATION FOUNDATION: Nuclear is first far too slow and far too expensive. It would be the least effective option for Australia to look to in terms of addressing climate change and greenhouse gas emission issues. We are now on the path toward a renewable energy future.

MIKE SEXTON: Barry Brook isn’t alone in his view. Others such as Tim Flannery agree with him. But the opinion has opened a divide among the environmental movement comparable to the one among scientists who are climate change believers or sceptics. David Noonan from the Australian Conservation Foundation has long campaigned against nuclear power and uranium mining and believes he represents the views of most environmentalists.

Have you seen a shift in this debate?

DAVID NOONAN: No I haven’t, in the sense that there is no group environment group, state, national or international, that’s supporting nuclear power. Some individuals have expressed a view, but that’s not reflected by the environment movement.

MIKE SEXTON: Opponents of nuclear power point to the catastrophes at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl as reasons why the technology shouldn’t be used. But proponents argue those plants were so called first and second generation reactors and that new technologies make repeats unlikely.

BARRY BROOK: It’s a bit like, to take an analogy, comparing the A 380 aircraft to the Hindenburg and saying well, Hindenburg blew up in 1933, therefore aviation is an inherently unsafe technology and we shouldn’t pursue it. I mean, technologies move on; people learn from their mistakes.

MIKE SEXTON: While Australia has no plans for nuclear power, according to Australian Uranium Association, 50 other countries do, and that’s on top of the 31 countries that already have reactors.

MICHAEL ANGWIN, AUST. URANIUM ASSOC: We had some economic research done for us a year or so ago and that showed that an increase in the demand for nuclear power using some fairly conservative assumptions would increase demand for Australia’s uranium to somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes a year. And that’s three to four times what we currently export. And you put that together with the expansion of South Australia’s uranium industry and there’s a very significant opportunity there for South Australia.

MIKE SEXTON: At the moment, nuclear power station don’t just use what is mined in South Australia. Unlike coal, which is mined and used in a power plant, unprocessed uranium known as yellowcake, has to be enriched overseas, with only about three per cent of it ending up as fuel rods. Some in business believe Australia should build an enrichment plant to value add to the uranium export. But the industry itself says for a number of reasons including security that’s unlikely.

MICHAEL ANGWIN: Most of the world’s thinking these days about enrichment in fact is not to spread it round further, but to concentrate it.

MIKE SEXTON: Many planned new reactors are so-called third generation models which last longer and are more efficient. But Barry Brook says the revolution he hopes will cool the planet will come from so called fourth generation nuclear power plants, which are still a theory, as one is yet to be built.

BARRY BROOK: This is the technology of the future. And it solves a lot of other problems that are currently associated with nuclear power. One of the biggest is, we’ve generated all of this nuclear waste in the form of spent fuel that we have to manage for 100,000 years. Well the rather neat thing about the new technology, which is called generation four nuclear power is that it takes that waste and uses that as fuel.

MIKE SEXTON: Generation four reactors would also run on mined rather than enriched uranium of which there’s a global stockpile. So if they would come online, the need for yellowcake would diminish dramatically.

MICHAEL ANGWIN: At first as we have to go through generation three technology, and as far as we can see at the moment, the demand for uranium consequent upon the demand for nuclear power makes the outlook for our industry very good.

MIKE SEXTON: David Noonan believes there are security concerns about generation four reactors because they produce and use plutonium, which is also the principal ingredient in nuclear weapons.

DAVID NOONAN: These are breeder reactors; they produce plutonium and that maximises the risks of weapons and of nuclear proliferation. And we can’t be proposing to address the hazards of climate change by introducing and relying on the risks in nuclear weaponry.

MIKE SEXTON: Whether Australia ever embraces nuclear power remains to be seen, but the debate at least is generating plenty of heat.