Category — Energy Sources

Many years ago at at a DOE/NARUC conference, I took note when Christopher Flavin of the environmental Left (EL) Worldwatch Institute commented that he didn’t support solar farms (macro solar) because of their large resource and land requirement. 1

‘Wow!’ I thought. That depletes the EL supply-side strategy, leaving just industrial wind and distributed (micro-solar)–and maybe a little biomass.

I was reminded of this when I read a recent article in ClimateWire (sub. req.), by Lacey Johnson, “Boom in Solar Panels injects NIMBY Battles into Neighborhoods.”

The story begins with Barbara Katz, whose hilltop home in historic north Baltimore, amid roaming wildlife, was threatened by her neighbor’s plan to install a 600-panel solar array. Johnson reports:

“My initial reaction was, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be an eyesore,’” remembers Katz, who was confronted by a plan for more than 600 ground-based solar panels on her neighbors’ lawn. “No one would want this in their backyard. It looks like it’s an industrial park.”

Johnson continues:

It takes a good deal of work — and regulations — to keep suburban communities looking picture perfect, and arrays of shiny solar panels don’t always fit the vision homeowners have for their neighborhoods. All over the country, citizens like Katz have begun organizing to block renewable energy projects, throwing a wrench into some peoples’ plans to “go green.” [Read more →]

“The release of energy from splitting a uranium atom turns out to be 2 million times greater than breaking the carbon-hydrogen bond in coal, oil or wood. Compared to all the forms of energy ever employed by humanity, nuclear power is off the scale. Wind has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal, and coal half the density of octane. Altogether they differ by a factor of about 50. Nuclear has 2 million times the energy density of gasoline. It is hard to fathom this in light of our previous experience. Yet our energy future largely depends on grasping the significance of this differential. “

- William Tucker, excerpted from his lecture, Understanding E=MC₂

William Tucker has powerfully explained how the future of technologically advanced civilizations depends upon a sophisticated ability to convert the highest energy densities into increasingly denser power performance, and in the process compacting the time and space necessary to do productive work.

In fact, Tucker wrote an excellent book about this, Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey. In light of the excerpt from that book recently posted at Master Resource, I thought readers of this forum might find my review from two years ago (see below) of interest, particularly if they have not yet read Tucker’s book.

The Primacy of Energy Density

Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel has demonstrated that the trend in energy usage continues along a decarbonizing trajectory. Improvements in technology combined with a communal desire to live longer and more healthfully have spurred this phenomenon. Given a choice, who wants to live in a town where thousands of chimneys cast off carbon by-products like sulfuric smoke and soot? Civilization will continue decarbonizing apace, whether this aligns with climate change alarmism, or not. [Read more →]

“Without these subsidies … ‘On-grid PV,’ would be virtually non-existent. It only exists because the solar industry lobbied government officials to compel citizens to purchase this otherwise non-economic energy source.”

“Included in the list of failed solar companies is Solon of Germany whose corporate slogan was ‘Don’t Leave the Planet to the Stupid.’ Fortunately for taxpayers, it appears Solon will be leaving the planet.”

A recent Wall Street Journal article, Dark Times Fall on Solar Sector(December 27, 2011), surveyed the latest solar industry fallout, as well as overviewed the financial condition of the surviving companies.

But the article seems to mistakenly equate the fallout to viability as if better profits would mean sustainability. The industry is not viable, but this is unrelated to the recent fall-out. The industry was growing and profitable in the recent past and was equally non-viable then. The difference is that with profit-enabling government subsidies intact, many established U.S. and European manufacturers are now competing with China. And they cannot compete.

Risky Business

There is a measure of justice in this recent turn of events. The old adage “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” comes to mind. In this case, one might say, “the industry that lives by government intervention dies by government intervention.” [Read more →]

“Solar subsidies are a placebo which is giving the general public a sense of security about our energy future and is robbing the motivation of those entrepreneurs that could actually address our energy problems.”

“In the near term, perhaps our bigger concern than climate change is anthropogenic energy policy.”

In a recent Economist on-line debate, the affirmative motion “This house believes that subsidizing renewable energy is a good way to wean the world off fossil fuels” was surprisingly defeated.

In his closing remarks, the moderator softened his strident opposition to the negative case, even admitting that “subsidizing renewable energy, is wasteful and perhaps inadequate [to address
climate-change concerns].”

Beyond the Climate Debate

The debate, indeed, reopened the question whether anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcing was a serious planetary environmental concern. But such focus short-changed what I think is the more important question for the Economist. Not only are the renewable-energy subsidies (such as for solar) wasteful and potentially insufficient, they are outright diabolical if indeed there is a looming environmental crisis.

I am not evaluating whether anthropogenic global warming is real and potentially cataclysmic; I’m arguing that if there is a valid concern about the enhanced greenhouse gas effect, not only will the subsidies not solve the problem, but may very well prevent or postpone a legitimate solutions.

Grid Solar: Radically Uneconomic, Intermittent

I’ve written before about why on-grid solar power is absurdly uneconomic and has almost no hope of becoming a viable alternative to current generation technology–or even competitive with other more viable renewable technologies. I’m asking the reader to accept this position for the sake of understanding the potential implication of my claim. [Read more →]

For two researchers at Cornell University, it’s turning out to be a very tough year.

Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea released a study this past Spring that found emissions from natural gas produced from shale are worse than coal, based on the global warming potential (GWP) of methane. Since it was released, numerous institutions have weighed in and come to a fairly uniform conclusion: The Howarth/Ingraffea paper simply has too many errors to be credible.

New University of Maryland Study

Nonetheless, ideological opponents of shale gas have continued to wield the Cornell paper as a major weapon against this game changing source of energy. But a new study released by the University of Maryland, The Greenhouse Impact of Unconventional Gas for Electricity Production, suggests that Cornell’s paper has been intellectually superceded.

Among its findings:

“GHG impacts of shale gas are…only 56% that of coal” {p. 1}

“Methane has the ability to trap large amounts of infrared radiation relative to CO₂, but it also has a comparatively shorter lifetime in the atmosphere. As a result, methane’s 100 y GWP is much lower than its 20 y GWP.” {p. 5}

“Two factors lead to an overall carbon intensity advantage for gas during the combustion stage. First, gas releases more energy per unit of carbon emitted. Second, the technology used for combustion of gas is more thermodynamically efficient than that used for coal, enabling a larger amount of chemical potential energy in the fuel to be converted to electricity.” {p. 5}

“[A]rguments that shale gas is more polluting than coal are largely unjustified.” {p. 8}

Other Studies [Read more →]

” The Solyndra technology was far from innovative, much less game-changing. The DOE … failed to quantify the elasticity elasticity of production costs in a highly competitive market where solar panels are a commodity.”

“Given the many other companies with shaky financials that have received loan guarantees, I expect we’ll see more and larger epic fails like Solyndra in the coming years.”

- Robert Peltier, “Epic Fail, POWER, October 2011, p. 6.

The seasoned warnings against politically correct, market incorrect technologies for electric generation by POWER magazine editor-in-chief Robert Peltier are now being vindicated. Peltier did not anticipate the unseemly crony capitalism involved in such cases as Solyndra, but he knew that there was trouble ahead because of the technological problems of converting very dilute, intermittent energy into affordable, dispatchable power flows.

The special insight of Peltier on political solar is worth studying (full article here): [Read more →]

[Ed. note: David Bergeron is president of SunDanzer Development, Inc., a solar energy company located in Tucson. His earlier posts at MasterResource are Free-Market Solar: The Real Opportunity and Economic/Environmental Assessment of Grid-Tiered Photovoltaics: Arizona Lessons for the U.S.]

“The economic case for grid-tied PV is indeed quite hopeless, and the sooner we stop the misguided subsidies the sooner we can focus on actually addressing our legitimate energy and environmental concerns.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently published an excellent report on the projected cost of electricity generated by different technologies: coal, natural gas, nuclear, and various others, including renewables.

Levelized Cost of Energy

Their Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) calculation combines upfront cost with recurring cost to estimate the average cost of power produced by these technologies. Here is the EIA cost datafor coal, natural gas, and solar PV.

At first glance, it looks like PV could be competitive with coal or natural gas plants if the PV cost were to drop below 10 cents/kWh. But there is an important difference between PV and the traditional technologies which makes this simple cost comparison invalid.

But first, take a look at the cost of electricity from a coal plant. The total cost is projected to be 9.5 cents/kWh per the EIA study. About 6.5 cents of this is capital cost[1] and about 2.5 cents is the cost of the coal. Looking at the natural gas plant, one can see the capital cost is about 2 cents, and the fuel cost is about 4.5 cents.

Solar has no fuel cost element but significant capital investment.

Intermittency = Backup Required

But here is the rub. If you plan to power a city with PV, it is not sufficient to simply build a large PV array, because PV only produces power during the day. At night and during cloudy weather, a back-up power source is needed since there is no practical way to store the PV energy. [Read more →]

One of the reasons governments have been pushing biomass burning is the notion that it would displace fossil fuels and thereby reduce CO2 emissions. Biomass is renewable and displaces fossil fuels. But would it reduce CO2 emissions?

Fossil Fuels: Ancient Storage

In Batteries from the Carboniferous, I noted that fossil fuels are Nature’s ancient method of storing solar and photosynthetic energy in the ground. Inadvertently, fossil fuels have served as a multimillion year old storage battery, which sat in the ground because no species had learned to use it efficiently until human beings figured out how in recent centuries.

Because using it releases a number of pollutants, however, fossil fuels are a somewhat imperfect battery.  These pollutants are: particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, various hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide (the latter two if combustion is less than 100% efficient). [Note: CO2 is not in my list of pollutants. It is the stuff of life, rather than a pollutant. You, dear reader, are 18% carbon, virtually all of which originates in CO2 in the atmosphere. Don’t try to go without carbon!]

An Analogy

In order to figure out whether burning biomass rather than fossil fuels would reduce atmospheric CO2 emission, consider the following analogy. [Read more →]

[This post reproduces a front-page story in the New York Times business section that excitedly reported a breakthrough with solar energy as represented by a heady energy company named Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize--if not save--the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.]

“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.”

Allen Myerson, Solar Power, for Earthly Prices, New York Times, November 15, 1994.

The nation’s largest natural gas company is betting $150 million that it can succeed where the Government has so far failed: producing solar power at rates competitive with those of energy generated from oil, gas and coal.

The Enron Corporation plans to build a plant in the southern Nevada desert that would be the largest operation in the country making electricity directly from sunlight, producing enough to power a city of 100,000 people. It is expected to begin operating in late 1996.

Grand promises in the late 1970′s about the potential of virtually pollution-free, endlessly renewable energy sources like solar energy faded into an embarrassed hush. But several of the nation’s leading solar power experts say Enron’s optimistic goal is probably reachable.

The reason is that during the last decade, the cost of solar power generation has quietly declined by two-thirds. Far from depending on some wondrous breakthrough, the experts say, Enron can offer commercially competitive solar power by inexpensively mass-producing solar panels, and then employing thousands of them in the Nevada desert. [Read more →]