IRENA, the International Renewable Agency, has just published a study showing how the world can meet the not-to-exceed-2°C emissions goal set by the Paris Agreement. It’s not a 100% renewables study – it still includes a little oil, gas and nuclear – but it concludes, unsurprisingly, that a massive expansion of renewable energy in all sectors will be needed between now and 2050, along with major improvements in energy efficiency, to keep the Earth within its allowable carbon budget. The study provides information on the changes that will be needed to meet this goal but provides no specifics on how they are to be met. It estimates the costs of the changes at $120 trillion (~$4 trillion/year from now to 2050, or about 5% of total world GDP) but provides no specifics on where the money is to come from. It is nevertheless confident that this massive outlay will be “dwarfed by the benefits”.
The IRENA report contains 73 pages, only 10 of which (Analysis and Insights in Key Sectors, pp. 31-40) deal with the specifics of the changes that are needed to achieve IRENA’s proposed “energy transition”. But no information is provided on how these changes are to be achieved and whether they will work if they are. Simulation models, such as those used in the Jacobson, Lappeenranta and Blakers studies, are normally used to perform this task, but IRENA seems to have by-passed this step. It has simply estimated how much renewable energy and improved energy efficiency is needed to meet the 2°C emissions goal, and the costs thereof, and it presents these estimates as achievable solutions rather than targets.
IRENA considers two scenarios. The base year for both is 2015.
- The Reference Case: Continue with current and planned policies. (I think this includes individual country Paris Agreement emissions-reduction promises, but the study doesn’t make it clear whether it does or not.)
- The REmap case: Expand renewables, improve energy efficiency etc. to the level necessary to keep temperatures below the 2°C level.
I’ll discuss these scenarios briefly using Figures selected from the IRENA text.
We begin with IRENA’s Figure 1, which illustrates how its Reference Case scenario exhausts the Earth’s cumulative carbon budget in 2037, resulting in climate catastrophe, while the REmap scenario stays just below the supposed 2°C danger threshold. (IRENA uses the 2°C threshold, which is the official Paris target, and not the widely-publicized 1.5°C threshold, which isn’t. Not even IRENA can see a way of meeting 1.5°C.)
Figure 1: IRENA Figure 1
Next comes IRENA’s Figure 3, which shows how the REmap case maintains total primary energy supply (TPES) at around current levels while the Reference case results in a 40% increase. In other words, REmap’s assumed energy efficiency improvements cut the world’s 2050 energy consumption by 40% over what it would otherwise have been:
Figure 2: IRENA Figure 3
The REmap scenario envisions a doubling of electricity generation, achieved mostly by a massive expansion of wind and solar, coupled with a reduction in fossil fuel generation (Figure 3) …..
Figure 3: IRENA Figure 4: Note that the Y-scales on the first two graphics are adjusted to match (100,000 terawatt hours = 360,000 petajoules)
…. along with a 1.5 times increase in the rate of growth of energy intensity improvements, from 1.8% to 2.8% annually. When compounded this will result in a 40% overall improvement in energy efficiency by 2050 in the Remap case relative to the Reference Case (Figure 4):
Figure 4: IRENA Figure 5
Now some specifics. Figure 5 is a collage of IRENA Figures 9, 12, 13 and 15, which show breakdowns of final energy consumption in the transport, buildings, industry and electricity sectors (“final energy” is not defined). The transport, buildings and industry sectors show large increases in the percentage of renewables and greatly increased contributions from electricity by 2050 (from 1% to 28% in transport, from 7% to 48% in buildings and from 7% to 36% in industry). The bottom right Figure shows electricity generation doubling by 2050 and the generation mix that will be needed to double it, which as might be expected is mostly wind and solar. It does, however, include 4% nuclear and 10% gas:
Figure 5: IRENA Figures 9, 12, 13 and 15
IRENA’s proposed energy transition clearly won’t work without a reliable 24/365 electricity supply, so let us now look at how this is to be achieved. IRENA Figure 16, reproduced below as Figure 6, gives details of increases in installed capacity, along with accompanying artwork, for the REmap case. The percentage of renewables in the mix increases from 24% to 85% between 2015 and 2050. The remaining generation consists of 4% nuclear and 10% gas, as shown above in Figure 5:
Figure 6: IRENA Figure 16
Going through these one by one:
Hydro capacity expands by 37.5% between 2015 and 2050 and pumped hydro capacity by a factor of 2.1 (note that capacity is again give in GW, not GWh). This is optimistic but not unreasonable.
Onshore wind capacity expands by factor of 12.3. The feasibility of this is questionable. Onshore wind is already coming under attack for its visual and potential health impacts, and the scale of the additions (an annual average of 150GW, roughly twice the UK’s total installed capacity) far exceeds anything achieved to date.
Offshore wind capacity expands by a factor of 43. Enough said.
Solar PV capacity expands by a factor of 32, an average rate of 230 GW a year. The maximum annual rate achieved so far, with the assistance of generous subsidies, is 100 GW/year.
CSP (concentrated solar power) capacity expands by a factor of 127 to 633GW, roughly twice Japan’s present installed capacity. As discussed in posts here and here CSP is a borderline failed technology.
Bioenergy capacity expands by a factor of 3.2 to 384 GW. I don’t have enough information to say whether this is feasible or not.
Geothermal capacity expands by a factor of 23 to 227 GW. As discussed in this post there aren’t enough high-temperature geothermal resources in the world to support this level of expansion.
Others (marine, hybrid) expand by a factor of 2,937 to 881 GW, not far short of total installed capacity in the European Union. If two-thirds of it is tidal we are looking at approximately 2,500 Swansea-Bay-sized tidal lagoons.
Overall IRENA foresees an expansion of renewables generation capacity from 1,861 GW (excluding pumped hydro) in 2015 to 16,195 GW in 2050, an increase of a factor of 8.7. There is essentially no chance that this will happen, but we will proceed on the assumption that it will.
According to IRENA this 16,195 GW of renewable capacity generates 85% of the 41,508 TWh, or approximately 35,000 TWh, of total 2050 generation. This gives an overall capacity factor for renewables of approximately 25%, which seems reasonable.
IRENA, however, provides no information on the capacity of the nuclear and gas plants that provide the remaining 14%, or 5,800 TWh when the 1% rounding error is ignored. Assuming an 85% capacity factor for nuclear and a 45% capacity factor for gas gives approximately 250GW of nuclear capacity and approximately 1,200 GW of gas.
Adding these numbers to IRENA’s other dispatchable and potentially dispatchable sources – hydro 1,500 GW, bioenergy (optimistically) 380 GW and geothermal 230 GW – then gives a total of 3,550 GW of potentially dispatchable capacity – say 3,500 GW. This compares with 14,081, say 14,000 GW, of non-dispatchable capacity (5,445 wind, 7,122 solar, 633 CSP and 881 “other”).
The question here is whether the generation from this capacity mix will cover demand 24/365 in all parts of the world. Simulation models, such as those used in the Jacobson, Lappeenranta and Blakers studies, are normally used to perform this task, but IRENA seems to have bypassed this step altogether. It has simply estimated how much renewable energy and improved energy efficiency is needed to meet the 2°C emissions goal, and it presents these estimates as achievable solutions rather than targets. Whether they would cover global demand 24/365 is, however, questionable. Conditions will of course vary in different places, but with 41,500 TWh of annual generation the average load will be 5.4 TW – substantially more than the 3.5 TW of dispatchable generation, some of which will not be well-adapted for load following. Managing wind and solar surpluses and deficits could therefore pose a problem.
And how does IRENA propose to manage it? It devotes only two short paragraphs, neither of which tells us much, to the issue (note: VRE = Variable Renewable Energy):
Investments will be needed for storage, transmission and distribution capacity, and for flexible generation and demand-response. Between 2015 and 2050, investments in these areas would add an estimated USD 9 trillion under the REmap Case (relative to the Reference Case). This investment would allow the system to accommodate 62% VRE while ensuring an adequate, stable and reliable electricity supply.
Support investment to enable infrastructure to integrate VRE and smart technologies (including batteries, smart charging for electric vehicles, blockchain, machine learning, use of “big data”) that have the potential to optimise extensive use of renewables to generate power.
And how much storage capacity will there be? None is listed in Figure 6, but the Transport section (IRENA Figure 10) includes 12,380 GWh of EV battery storage, enough to keep the world in electricity for about two hours assuming 100% charge/discharge efficiency. According to IRENA this capacity will come from over 1 billion EVs.
sales of electric vehicles, electric buses and electric two- and three-wheelers are growing. In 2017 around 3 million electric vehicles were on the road. Under the REmap Case, the number would increase to over 1 billion by 2050.
But 12,380 GWh spread over 1 billion EVs gives an average of only 12.38 kWh/vehicle, so many of these vehicles will be two- and three-wheelers used for transportation in developing countries. Whether these vehicles can be counted on to discharge their batteries when the grid needs it is questionable. Whether owners of four-wheel EVs in developed countries can be counted on to discharge their batteries when the grid needs it questionable too.
The likely outcome is that IRENA’s 2050 generation mix will cause the lights to go out in a number of different places, maybe quite often, and for extended periods.
On now to costs and benefits. IRENA states that the cost of expanding the electricity sector is $24.6 trillion. According to my checks this estimate is in the ball-park, so I am assuming that the $120 trillion total cost to implement IRENA’s REmap scenario in all sectors is realistic (it’s broadly in line with Jacobson’s estimate of $140 trillion to convert the world to 100% renewables). However, $120 trillion amounts to an average expenditure of ~$4 trillion/year between now and 2050, over ten times the current level of renewables investment and around 5% of current world GDP.
Where is all this money to come from? I read through pages 41 to 73 of the IRENA report, which include sections entitled “Costs, investments and reduced externalities of the energy transition”, “Socio-economic benefits of the energy transition” and “How to foster the global energy transformation: Key focus areas” and was unable to come up with a concise answer. The only statements I found that provided any guidance were:
IRENA estimates that supply-side renewable energy subsidies will be required in the early stages of the energy transition
Carbon taxes, together with the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies …. can also generate significant additional revenue flows
Although it’s always possible that I missed or didn’t understand something.
The only specific cost information I was able to find, apart from the $120 trillion total cost, was this:
This report … concludes that the additional cost of energy transition (about USD 1.7 trillion annually in 2050) are dwarfed by the benefits (on average USD 6.3 trillion in the same year). If a more broad-based welfare indicator is considered, overall benefits could be much higher.
And this:
Across the world economy, GDP increases from 2018 to 2050 in both the reference and transition scenarios. However, the energy transition stimulates economic activity additional to the growth that could be expected under a business as usual approach. The cumulative gain through increased GDP from 2018 till 2050 will amount to USD 52 trillion.
What these two statements add up to in terms of absolute cost benefits is unclear. There is also no explanation of how the numbers, which were reportedly derived from Cambridge Econometrics’ E3ME global macro-econometric model, were arrived at.
To sum up, the IRENA study proposes an expansion of renewables that will never happen because of the prohibitive costs of implementing it and which would not ensure “an adequate, stable and reliable electricity supply” even if it were implemented. Ironically, however, it probably would cut emissions by enough to save the Earth from the alleged ravages of CO2-induced climate change, but by crashing the global economy, not by expanding the share of renewables.
“How to save the world from climate catastrophe”
Think about the words and the sentence. There is no Global Climate, only local/regional, so a change in some of the parts of climate will have very different influence dependent on the climate you normally live in.
It is a catching phraise, but in reality meaningless combined with “world”.
I don’t agree that there is no global climate. If you compare Venus, Earth and Mars, you can I think reasonably say that they have different climates.
Within those differences, there are variations in climate from place to place on each planet.
I always feel discomfort ever that a macroeconomic model is used to justify very long-term policies, as it is the case of this Irena report. Of course, this organisation would like to promote renewables anyway.
It would be interesting to compare it with the recent IEA World Energy Outlook with a 2040 horizon, which seems to be much more conservative. According to the following link: “None of the scenarios in the latest International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook show renewables growing fast enough to meet global climate goals.” This conclusion, representing some international political feeling, may justify this Irena pressure…
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/iea-latest-world-energy-outlook-fossil-fuels-renewables#gs.AuCkNbI
Jose: I inserted a quotation mark into your comment to make it clear where the quote from the link ends and you resume.
I think IRENA and other people who make their living by boosting renewable energy are getting a little desperate. IRENA must know that its proposals are never going to be implemented, but it has to keep the faith.
Roger, thanks I had forgot it.
Some years ago a well known consultant did a macroeconomic study showing that Spain was going to benefit of betting in PV and concentrated solar, even in an earlier phase of the experience curve and high subsidies from the electricity consumers. It would be a source of exports and of employment, compensating the high prices, but it ended with a huge tariff deficit and the government looking for solutions to solve it and using retroactive measures to reduce those subsidies (now in international arbitrage).
That period is over and now it is possible to profit of PV due to its lower LCOE, but for the investors there is a risk if they have to support it based in the technology competition in the spot market. So, state regulation and the new European market design is going to be decisive for defining the growth in wind and PV generation. Irena study is just a lobbying procedure…
High capacity factors are not compatible with load following. Thus, the assumed 45% capacity factor for the gas plants doea not make much sense. For example, in 2017 the 30 GW of installed gas capacity in Germany produced just 50 TWh.
To have a total of 5.4 TW of dispatchable capacity in this scenario, you would need 3.1 TW of gas. With an annual generation of around 4150 TWh, that gives a capacity factor of ~15% (even lower than Germany’s 19%, but probably not impossible).
They do assume expenditures of 18 trillion on “power system flexibility” (compared to 24.6 trillion on power generation), so maybe that includes the fleet of back up gas plants.
I have no idea how reliable this system would be though.
Gunter,
This source shows german gas electricity production 86.5 TWh in 2017, approx 33.5% c.f.
Lignite comes out at c.f. 79%, which makes a mockery of any claim to environmental leadership.
Forgot link
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
Ed T,
thank you for the link. I got my data from here: https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie_de.htm?year=2017
The are deviations for all types of energy sources, but the for natural gas the difference is huge. For the moment I am puzzled.
Gunter,
Looking at cleanenergywire data it odes say preliminary above generation… but 86.5 TWh revised down to 50 seems a bit extreme.
DE Statis says 86.5TWh:
https://www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/Wirtschaftsbereiche/Energie/Erzeugung/Tabellen/Bruttostromerzeugung.html
Looking at the authors Biographies via LinkedIn. Only a few of the authors could be found
most of them are German or working in Germany. The report was funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy of Germany, The Teutonic origin of the report would account for the anti nuclear bias.
a. Economist with engineering training – formerly an analyst at the International energy agency – university of Utrecht
b. An electrical engineer that had moved into renewables via a recent masters in renewable energy in Germany
c A former UK civil servant with a PHD in Physics, former head of energy innovation policy at DECC
d. A logistic specialist who moved into climate policy early in his career, again university of Utrecht masters in sustainable development
None of them appear to have worked for an Energy company of any significant part of their career. The presence of a senior DECC civil servant is particularly worrying as he probably reflects UK government policy.
It is therefore not surprising that this piece of evangelism was produced by this group of people. The assumptions made by the authors as Roger has stated are totally unrealistic which is what you would expect of advocates for a programme totally dependent on government financial generosity or regulation
Unfortunately for humanity global warming has attained the status of a messianic religion, and like all such cults is likely to cause serious harm
Utrecht isn’t in Germany.
I know that utrecht is in the Netherlands, what I meant was that the people in question were subsequently working in Germany
The report sounds like the usual pile of burning garbage.
“Bioenergy capacity expands by a factor of 3.2 to 384 GW. I don’t have enough information to say whether this is feasible or not.”
Zero chance this is feasible. When we are trying to feed 9 billion people, how many acres would you like to devote to grossly inefficient biofuel production? Certainly not 100 times more than now.
This report seems to be a lot of hot air describing “solutions” that will never be implemented, for a problem that is unlikely to occur.
Meanwhile, OT, Professor Valentina Zharkova, mathematician and solar physicist, predicts that contrary to the IPCC worst case scenario of an increase in 1.5 watts per square meter, there will actually be a decrease of 8 watts per square meter of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) to the Earth, beginning winter 2018 and possible continuing for 300+ years.
This is due to reduced solar activity of sunspots and magnetic fields.
I am not even mildly knowledgeable about this, but if Professor Zharkova is correct, we are in it over our heads.
Have you commented on this?
Thank you.
Roger — Regarding your first paragraph there are plenty predicting difficult times ahead. For example,
Some countries will have to Face 6 Climate Catastrophes at Once
Telenor
2018 Nov 20
juancole.com
As for the solar scientist, Professor Zharkova, I fear that she is very badly mistaken. There is quite a good record of Terrean geophysical variables for the entire Cenozoic Era. Such a long persistent global cold interval would certainly appear in global records. I know of none.
Mr Benson, do you think that the current Record breaking Cold Temperatures are due to “AGW”?
We are not talking about a tenth or one hundredth of a degree as in high temperature records, we are talking about -15F lower for this time of the year.
There is also Snow in the Northern Hemisphere much earlier than normal and Snow in the Southern Hemisphere later than usual.
Don’t you find it just the tiniest bit odd that the MSM and BBC in particular make no mention of these breaking records?
Yet you have the nerve to challenge a renowned Scientist over her warnings.
ps of course she is not the only Scientist who thinks the current situation suggests it getting colder not warmer.
Even the Atmosphere itself has shrunk due to top of atmosphere cooling.
A C Osborn — Here in Washington state the nighttime lows are around freezing, rarely going even 2 °C below. The fall rains are scant and, atypically, have yet to result in snow. This is in stark contrast to the fall and winter two years ago. Then there was plenty of snow but it was sufficiently warm si as to produce sheets of ice on the sidewalks.
Now that has nothing to do with Total Solar Irradiance which is normal for this stage of the solar cycle. The prediction of the professor appears to be unprecedented; exceedingly unlikely to happen given that there is no evidence for it in the past.
You are talking local to you, how about.,
Mount Washington around -19F.
New York -9F wind chill at -19F
Bangor 14F
Boston 22F
Providence 22F
Montana -17F
North Dakota -15F
Or Snow in France & Germany, or record snow in Tibet, or heavy snow in New Zealand, recordf cold in Western Australia, heavy snow in Turkey, hevy snow in Srinigar in India, record snowfall on the Mexican border with Arizona, Earliest ever snow in Houston, Siberia at -40C, early snow in Morocco.
All of that in November.
And lastly from NASA ““The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age,” wrote Dr Tony Phillips just six weeks ago, on 27 Sep 2018.
Sunspots have been absent for most of 2018 and Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding, says Phillips, editor of spaceweather.com.
Data from NASA’s TIMED satellite show that the thermosphere (the uppermost layer of air around our planet) is cooling and shrinking, literally decreasing the radius of the atmosphere.”
A C Osborn — From the Global Climate Report — October 2018, issued monthly by NCDC,
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov
October 2018 was characterized by warmer-than-average temperatures across much of the world’s land and ocean surfaces. … Of note, Asia and Europe had their third highest October temperature on record …
How about the Little Ice Age
peter9381Peter — The so-called Little Ice Age was a climate perturbation in the North Atlantic region only, not a global climate phenomenon.
Nope. The LIA has left signs of it in South America too.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180724174309.htm
Mr Benson, you need to keep up to date. There is a wealth of evidence to prove the LIA was not a phenomenon restricted to the North Atlantic.
Ehi!… i didn’t know China was on the Atlantic! 🙂
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589401922835
It was only colder in the North Atlantic region. As the paper about Brazil mentions, it was warmer in the southern hemisphere. That despite some form of solar minimum, which was the point I had thought.
Many papers claim a “Little Ice Age” but those are not contemporary with the actual Little Ice Age of the North Atlantic region. This has produced unnecessary confusion, in my opinion.
Roger,
Over the last several solar cycles, the total solar irradiance (TOA) has varied by under 2 watts/m^2, out of ~1361 w/m^2 total, for TOA variation around Earth’s surface that is <0.5 w/m^2 out of 340 w/m^2. (What geometry does Prof Zharkova assume for his 8 w/m^2?)
To obtain substantially higher surface variation in irradiance requires something else — like changing albedo by appreciably lowering the Sun's magnetic field influence at Earth, thereby increasing Earth's cosmic ray flux. Be-10 and C-14 are produced in the atmosphere by such cosmic rays, and their measurements over past time do show larger variations. But interpretations are not without controversy. Also whether significantly greater cloud cover would be produced by increasing CR flux is hypothesized but unproven.
It's really unknown what produced the LIA.
When the UK seems to be lacking a workforce with the skills to build the several million houses our wonderful government claims we need in the next 20 years one wonders where resources would appear from to make this enormous infrastructure creating project feasible.
I doubt the rest of the world is much better off for providing the skilled people of the types required and to train them up would, presumably, mean using people who have the skill – but how can they be spared?
Maybe it will all be handed over to robots run by AI with the first few years spent building the infrastructure to build the robots …
On similar lines, what would be the CO2 output of the construction work required? What sort of CO2 bubble would it generate at a time when reductions are, we are told, imperative right now?
At what point in the development cycle does the reduction based on savings from work already undertaken more than compensate for the continued emission of development?
Ignoring any other factors that may influence the end result as far as Climate is concerned;
Is it possible to reach a steadily declining “carbon” emissions output before the notional temperature target is breached?
Is it possible to reach a steadily declining “carbon” emissions output before the cost of replacement of the earliest parts of the new infrastructure comes into play and almost the complete development needs to be replaced again?
Can any of this happen without destroying the world’s economic operation well before any possible “solution” to what people think may be the problem of “climate” can get close to delivering (assuming that the initiating strategy turns out to be relevant.)?
Previous bubbles of this nature have mostly been limited, one at a time, to different countries – mostly documented as being in Europe although that may tell us more about surviving records from relatively recent times than it does about global business acumen during the history of mankind.
I don’t think the concept has been tried globally at scale before.
For anyone not familiar with economic bubbles try Looking up the Mississippi Company for an example fomr France (albeit run by a Scotsman – sorry Euan) or the South Sea Bubble – an English version of the same problem that, coincidentally, seemed to be independently running at the same time as the Mississippi Company effort.
Perhaps, then, such matters were in fact a little more Global at the time than is normally apparent when considering the history of individual countries.
The Dutch got in first with their Tulip Mania period some 80 years earlier.
Anybody who wants to understand Anthropogenic Global Warming should start by reading “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” published in 1843 (!!) by Charles Mackay. It’s available as a Kindle ebook for $0.99.
Or free at Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518
It’s a great read. I think my favourite South Sea Bubble company was one For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is.
Tyndall’s 1861 lecture is very much worth reading, too.
http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~vijay/Papers/Spectroscopy/tyndall-1861.pdf
I priced it at 0.6% of world GDP to get rid of fossil fuels by building 120 nuclear reactors for the next 50 years.
Would any of the experts here like to give it a go?
“120 nuclear reactors for the next 50 years”
120/year, you mean?
Right now this planet is not equipped with knowledgeable manpower and technical resources capable of starting building nuclear reactors at that pace… 10/ month??? No way.
Just think of this: there is a total of 3 places on Earth where the RPVs’ 3D forgings could be made, and just one of them can take months.
Symptomatic of why the current designs, whilst fit for purpose, aren’t adequate for our needs.
They are perfectly fit for purpose. But they need to be built in higher numbers than at present in order to reduce costs.
Just as they were in the past.
That’s due to incentives, not a physical law of the universe. As it happens France and the US have shown these kind of build out rates were perfectly feasible at one time in our history.
If there were a market for 120 pressure vessels a year, the facilities to produce them would get built. And all the nice cost reductions would result from it.
Hi Ben , I’m writing a paper on this at present, and your figures are in the ballpark. Around 1,000 large NPPs ( 1,5GW size ) would largely eliminate current coal for power generation. We’d need around the same again for electricity growth in developing countries out to 2050.
Add in high temperature process heat ( tricky ) , replacing Gas and growth due to electrification of other key sectors ,,,,,
The average coal generator is around 300 MW ( with plants typically 2 – 3 generators ) , and Gas Turbines are similarly under 500 MW, so SMR’s are key , especially e,g for smaller grids and to permit phased replacements , flexibility etc ,,,,
Another worthy report which probably says not much – “it depends on the assumptions”. Sure, with enough storage, over capacity, HVDC transmission, a renewables grid is possible. But what’s enough?
Some thoughts on the technologies:
Hydro: The pumped hydro capacity depends on whether salt water hydro capacity can be expanded. If yes, then a 2.1 expansion is easy. Personally, I think much, much more will be needed: e.g the UK will have to go from 10s of GWh to 100s or even to TWh.
Onshore wind: Optimistic as limited by locations. Unless Kitegen takes off?
Offshore wind: Great prospects, but x43? I think the North Sea could end up with >200GW, which is not enough for northern Europe.
Solar PV: 230GW per year is quite feasible (and probably inevitable) given how cheap the technology is. But this doesn’t really help high latitude countries, and the HVDC to link deserts to consumers is prohibitive. What to do with the glut of solar will be as much a problem as an opportunity.
CSP: Forget it. But solar heating, perhaps with a generating component, will become a major player.
Bioenergy: With current processes, forget it. We need to reduce it, not increase it. If good progress can be made with 2nd Gen fuels, or better still from algae, then the target could easily be surpassed. A decade ago there was a lot of investment in this area, but most went bust.
Geothermal: Expensive in most places. Could fracking technologies make it cheaper? If we can make 10,000m long pipes 4,000m underground, does more come within reach?
Gas powered fuel cells might make a big difference, as they have the efficiency of CCGT, but with the flexibility of OCGT. They can also make high grade heat and operate at a local (<MW) scale where that heat can be used. But I've been waiting for one for over a decade now.
> “But what’s enough?”
You’ve touched on a (deliberately ?) hidden circularity.
We are constantly told that 405ppmv (+ or -) of atmospheric CO2 is leading to climate catastrophe. Then we are constantly told that some modelled global temperature increase must be less than 1.5C (was 2C) to prevent this.
What we are *NOT* informed of is what ppmv of atmospheric CO2 will achieve this putative aim. Utterly dishonest.
[For those who will contest this, just supply the linked hard paper demonstrating the desired ppmv magic number]
There is no magic number.
The 2C threshold was officially adopted by the UNFCCC at the Cancun conference in 2010. It’s still the official target. The 1.5C threshold originated because the Pacific Island nations demanded more protection against rising sea levels. It has no official standing but it’s good for scaring people.
The 2C threshold was a target plucked out of the air before the 1995 Berlin conference because the delegates were demanding a number to shoot at. It has no scientific basis, as I noted in this post:
http://euanmearns.com/the-two-degrees-c-dangerous-interference-threshold-a-meaningless-metric/
I’m also unaware of any study which conclusively demonstrates that atmospheric CO2 concentrations of greater than 400ppm will lead to climate catastrophe.
Roger Andrews — Regarding your last paragraph, I am unsure what “catastrophe” means to you. I know of no paper which links atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to “climate catastrophe”, but I do know of many papers which give the sea stands together with the carbon dioxide levels in the past. Roughly, higher carbon dioxide levels are strongly correlated with higher sea levels and other measures of higher globally averaged temperatures. It is known that the correlation is casual; see for a selection of the original research “The Global Warming Papers”, edited by Archer & Pierrehumbert and for a thorough history “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart, the latter freely available online from the American Institute of Physics.
We can use the past to predict the future providing the situation in the future is the same as in the past; incidently that is just the conservation of energy via Emmy Noether’s theorems. While the current configuration of the continents is not identical to that of the mid-Pliocene, it is close enough to have the highest confidence that the climate system of Terra is the same now as it was then. The only exception is that Terra’s climate is badly out of equilibrium now but wasn’t then.
In particular, if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is kept above 400 ppm, or so, until equilibrium is obtained, the same conditions will prevail; the global temperature will be at least 2 °C higher than now and the global sea level will be about 25 meters higher than now. By the way, it takes centuries to approach equilibrium.
For details and some references to the extensive literature on mid-Pliocene climate see the Wikipedia page on Pliocene climate.
” Roughly, higher carbon dioxide levels are strongly correlated with higher sea levels and other measures of higher globally averaged temperatures. It is known that the correlation is casual;”
1) you meant causal, not casual, right?
2) it is not causal at all.CO2 concentration follows temperature rise, not the opposite… otherwise at 405 ppmV of CO2 we would be baked already. Also, it is normal that CO2 increases as the oceans’ temperature increase (for whatever reason they may do that)… since the equilibrium concentration of CO2 is strongly temperature-dependent.
3) the temperature of planet Earth depends on a thousand parameters, not just one like the IPCC clique would like us to believe… just think of albedo, a very badly measured parameter which can have a forcing (W/m2) way higher than the one given by an increase of CO2 concentration, or the distribution of clouds, which is very badly modeled even by the latest state-of-the-art global circulation models, like those of the CMIP-6.
Just to mention one very large discrepancy of such models, they do not take into account the effect of 100s of billions of tons of melt water from Antarctica, which is always mentioned as one potential catastrophe in the making… 10s of meters of sea level rise. Just last week nature, the journal, has published a paper where the authors adamantly state this… I can give you the reference of you wish.
Cheers.
Seeing as you are happy to quote Wiki, perhaps you can explain how the world got from 4000ppm of Co2 and 21.7C about 500 Million years ago during the Cambrian down to 180ppm of Co2 of the Quaternary Glaciation of the last 2 Million years.
Shouldn’t there have been unstoppable runaway warming at 10 times the current level of Co2?
robertok06 — Yes, causal, thank you for noticing.
Disputing that requires that you establish Arrhenius and others were wrong. Just where in the global warming papers, reference given, did the various authors go wrong?
Furthermore, Terrean climate has generally cooled since the Eocene Climatic Optimum, about 50 million years ago. See the Wikipedia page for the temperature graph. You must explain this decline in the face of a slowly increasing solar constant. Geophysicists appeal to the known decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. That decline is explained by weathering removing carbon dioxide faster than vulcanism expressed it.
There is a statistical measure of causality due to a person named Liang. I call this Liang causality although the papers use another name. Applied to the global temperature and carbon dioxide levels of the last 130 years or so, Liang causality runs from carbon dioxide to global temperature. The prior 3.2 million years requires a more complicated model as some carbon dioxide was repeatedly added and removed from the atmosphere.
But no such complications arise for the mid-Pliocene, before the initiation of glacial cycling. Nor are such complications necessary in order to predict the future, as I indicated.
I strongly recommend that you read “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart. At a minimum it will help avoid future misunderstandings.
A C Osborn — See my reply to Roberto just above regarding the explanation by geophysicists.
I don’t pay serious attention to claims of “unstoppable global warming”. There are various so-called positive feedbacks but it remains the case that the climate of the mid-Pliocene provides excellent guidance for the equilibrium climate if carbon dioxide levels remain at least 400 ppm.
Mr Benson said “In particular, if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is kept above 400 ppm, or so, until equilibrium is obtained, the same conditions will prevail; the global temperature will be at least 2 °C higher than now and the global sea level will be about 25 meters higher than now.”
Can you explain where the water to raise the Sea Levels by 25 metres is going to come from with just a 2C rise in temperature please?
A C Osborn — A combination of various extents of melting of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. If it all melted the sea stand would be over 70 meters higher.
I suggest that you check the temperatures in Greenland and Anarctica, 2C will make no difference at all.
I also suggest that you check just how much Ice has been added to Greenland over the last year.
“Disputing that requires that you establish Arrhenius and others were wrong.”
I don’t have any citations handy, but I have read of at least 2 replications fo Arrhenius’ experiment, about a hundred years apart, which each concluded that Arrhenius “test tube warming” was a true greenhouse effect caused by the flask that contained the CO2 and not the CO2 itself. Also, the real atmosphere, or ocean-earth-atmosphere-space integrated climate system, is subject to positive and negative feedback effects that do not exist in an in vitro experiment.
” in the past. Roughly, higher carbon dioxide levels are strongly correlated with higher sea levels and other measures of higher globally averaged temperatures. It is known that the correlation is casual;”
The Vostok ice core indicates that causation flows from higher temperatures to higher CO2. Thus, higher temps in the past logically caused higher sea levels, and, according to this 700,000 year ice core, higher CO2 as well.
A C Osborn — The increase in temperature is the global average. The tropics warms only slightly and the Arctic warms a lot. The current arctic warming is called polar amplification.
Nehemiah — You are mistaken about the Arrhenius experiment. See the reference I give below.
You are also mistaken about the direction of the causality now and into the future. Read what I have written above in prior comments with as much care as I used in writing each.
Both of you would profit by reading “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart, freely available online. At the least you will understand what climatologists have determined.
Polar amplification only works in Climate Models and adjusted Temperature data.
Currently it is -19.6C in the Arctic and -25C in Greenland, not much melting going on there.
A C Osborn — And in the very remote past crocodiles basked under palm trees around the shores of the Arctic Sea.
I do recommend learning some geology and geophysics. As it is you completely miss the point.
And, oh yes, what about the opening of the Arctic shipping routes? Arctic amplification at work.
I know plenty of “history” thank you.
It is typical that you think you know more than the rest of us.
As to Arctic Shipping Routes being open, I suggest that you educate yourself.
The route was only open to Ships accompanied by Ice Breakers or by new Ice Breaking (Strengthened) Bulk Carriers.
A C Osborn — By reading the Wikipedia articles on the Northeast and Northwest passages, I found that the first commercial ship to traverse from the Atlantic to the Pacific did so in 1932 despite earlier attempts which had to overwinter. Now there are tens of such trips per year.
As you state, those are ice hardened but the more occasional traversals of the Northwest Passage appear to often be by ordinary cruise ships, unaccompanied as best as I can determine. In any case that is only possible quite recently.
Mr Benson, you said “he global temperature will be at least 2 °C higher than now and the global sea level will be about 25 meters higher than now. ”
Where will the water come from to raise the Sea Level by 25 Metres?
I notice that you also did not comment about the list of Cold Weather I listed November 22, 2018 at 10:14 pm.
You can now add to that list that yesterday was the coldest November 22nd on record in Toronto.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/11/22/record-breaking-cold-toronto/
and
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/novem-brrrrr-chilly-weather-smashes-records-1.4188404
“together with the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies”.
In Australia there are no subsidies for coal or gas power plants. Mining companies and farmers get a diesel rebate because their vehicles and equipment don’t use public roads to any significant extent
Unless the buffing come up with a battery powered tractor or ore haulage truck, I can’t see how the removal of subsidies could have the slightest effect on emissions.
> ” … their vehicles and equipment don’t use public roads to any significant extent”
Nor to any extent. That fact has never stopped the dishonest from repeating their false assertions, geefully promulgated in the MSM over and over.
Around here the farmers move the combines on public roads. Preceeded and followed by trucks carrying warning signs.
No subsidies? Not for the plant but what about for the fuel? There’s plenty of ways in which mining and exploration are subsidised. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-11/coal-oil-and-gas-companies-receive-4-billion-dollar-in-subsidie/5881814
It’s disingenuous to describe tax deductions for exploration as subsidies. Exploration is a form of capital investment and should be treated as such by the tax code.
Installing solar panels or wind turbine on my roof is very obviously a capital investment. If I get to offset the cost against my taxes, would you call that a subsidy or not? If you would, why is it different from exploration?
If your house is a limited company, or you are self employed and use your home as a business premises then you may use this as a tax deduction. Best of luck with the tax authorities
Are you expecting to be entirely off grid at all times no matter what your panels are delivering?
Or do you anticipate drawing power from a commercial grid when you need it?
If the latter, how much are you prepared to pay for that backup cover?
That is not really relevant, Grant, but assume that I still import power, i.e. I still pay grid fees. Is it a subsidy or not to be able to offset the cost against taxes?
If it comes down to a difference in tax treatment, namely that I’m an individual so my investment can’t be offset and hence any payment to me (e.g. feedin tarifs in place of tax offsets) is a subsidy, whereas oil/gas/coal exploration is done by companies and can be offset and hence are not subsidies, then I’d suggest that identifying subsidies is entirely arbitrary and not worth all of the attention renewables sceptics give it.
It is entirely reasonable to identify exploration incentives as subsidies, just as it is to identify R&D tax offsets as R&D subsidies (as they are indeed called).
Your home solar installation is neither here nor there. Businesses and households have different tax rules because they exist for different purposes.
The proper analogy is between oil exploration deductions and the deductions companies get for building a solar panel factory. Or any kind of industrial complex, really. The fossil fuel industry should get the same treatment in the tax code as any other company, no better or worse.
No, explortion is speculative in that they might have to drill a dozen wells to find one exploitable resource. It is more similar to R&D than to building a factory. R&D tax offsets are referred to as R&D subsidies, ergo exploration tax relief is a subsidy.
If you have to fall back on the structure of the tax code to decide whether there is or isn’t a subsidy, then your definition is entirely arbitrary. We subsidise things to make them more affordable. Is that what is happening with exploration, R&D and solar panels – answer, yes, so they are all subsidies.
R&D write-offs are write-offs, not subsidies – at least in the commercial world. Costs of production for raw materials and labour are offsettable against business profit taxation, as is investment in production facilities: tax codes vary, but they typically provide that investment is written down in some sense consistent with the remaining useful life of the asset to derive the tax offset from time to time. In the case of a dry hole, or a warehouse fire, the write down is logically immediate.
Private individuals are not taxed as businesses. As final consumers, they pay the taxes embedded in all the things they buy, alongside income taxes, property taxes and other taxes levied against them. Not everything a consumer buys is subject to the same tax: most obviously, gasoline is typically subject to high rates of tax, while most staple foods attract little tax other than that embedded in the cost of production and transport. Individuals may be entitled to tax rebates in a variety of circumstances: e.g. supporting a family, saving towards a pension. These only become subsidies when offsets exceed the tax that they are offset against, or when their is some payment that lowers the price below a free market level (e.g. the widespread payment of kerosene subsidies for the poor in many parts of the world).
Tax may be levied in a discriminatory manner: for example, typically LPG used as motor fuel incurs much lower rates of tax than gasoline, and there are few taxes currently levied on EVs. Subsidies are payments, such as those paid to EV manufacturers to allow them to discount the cost of their vehicles, or above market prices paid as feed in tariffs.
Exploration, development andproduction operations costs are a part of doing business. Companies are normally taxed on profits. Profits are the difference between sales revenue and the costs of doing business. Capital expenditure is a cost and is offset. There are also some extra taxes that oil companies have to pay depending on the country including, royalties, production bonuses, petroleum revenue taxes and supplementary profit taxes. Post tax profit margins are normally less than 10%. This is relatively low.
There are some consumption subsidies in countries like Nigeria, where petrol is sold at below cost by the national oil company to citizens. I think that this is dumb as it encourages waste, smuggling to neighbouring states and other distortions. Subsidies are very tough to remove politically efforts to do this leading to civil unrest.
Where does this idea of crashing the global economy come from? Why should investment in any particular aspect of the economy cause such destruction? $4 trillion a year is about 5% of world GDP, and according to you an *increase* of 5% could crash the world ecoomy. I’m fascinated to learn the mechanism for such destruction.
Because having wasted, oh sorry, invested $4Trillion per year for 30 odd years there will be nothing but unreliable, non dispatchable Renewable Energy, which cannot be used for Heavy Industry.
Have you read the other posts on this Forum?
I wonder whether you have read other posts. Euan and Rgoer have identified plenty of ways to make renewables dispatchable, including pumped hydro, batteries, compressed air and power to methane/H2 (not sure they have covered that, but I guess they must have). These solutions *currently* don’t scale sufficiently, but 30 years and $4 trillion a year mean the current state of the art will not stand still.
Yes, I read Euan & Rogers posts, but the thing that you are totally ignoring is the Waste of money.
Why spend $4Triilion a year on a non problem.
The money would be far better spent on alleviating current real problems, there is nothing wrong with the current Energy Generation.
Waste is irrelevant. Huge amounts of economic activity are by some definition a waste of money but nobody claims they are crashing the economy. On the contrary our entire economic system is built on increasing activity, whether waste or not. If we cut out all the waste overnight, that really would depress (dare I say crash) the economy.
Current energy generation technology, apart from nuclear, generates CO2. That is generally accepted to be a real problem. The barriers to fixing other real problems are political, not a lack of the money that is instead going to renewables.
“nothing wrong with the current Energy Generation.”
Nothing gravely wrong–except depletion! It is a mathematical certainty that production will peak, plateau, and then decline inexorably. And there are numerous studies indicating that that day is not very many years away..When aggregate energy production begins contracting, GDP will also begin contracting, because production of goods and services requires work to be performed, and the “ability to do work” is literally the definition of work in the physical sciences. Less energy, less work performed, fewer goods and services per capita, everyone grows progressively poorer with no bottom in sight. Yes, we might finally perfect fusion, fast breeders, thorium, LENR, or something else–but we cannot just take that for granted. Technological breakthroughs are possible, but far from guaranteed.
ERRATUM:
“and the “ability to do work” is literally the definition of work”
Sorry, meant to type: the “ability to do work” is literally the definition of ENERGY
“Nothing gravely wrong–except depletion! It is a mathematical certainty that production will peak, plateau, and then decline inexorably. And there are numerous studies indicating that that day is not very many years away”
It has been “not very far away” for last 50 years at least.
Nuclear power can replace all of the Fossil Furl usage over time, it just takes the will to do so.
We does not exist due to the Green Blob.
Euan and Rgoer have identified plenty of ways to make renewables dispatchable
Euan and Roger have done nothing of the sort. Read our posts.
I don’t understnd your objection. Are you objecting to the word ‘identfied’? If I rephrase to say that you continually *discuss* the technologies necessary to make renewables dispatchable, does that pass muster, or are you saying that even with batteries, pumped hydro, CAES and power-to-gas renewables can still not be made dispatchable? That seems an odd claim if so.
ps. sorry about the typo on Roger (my brother’s name too).
are you saying that even with batteries, pumped hydro, CAES and power-to-gas renewables can still not be made dispatchable?
Yes, or at least not at any acceptable cost. And you can add ARES, FLES, weights dropped down mine shafts and lake-bottom bladders to your list. I’m too busy to link to all the posts we’ve written on this subject but I’m sure you could find them if you looked hard enough.
The only cases where intermittent renewables might be made dispatchable at reasonable cost with existing storage technologies are a) solar PV in tropical latitudes where seasonal storage requirements are low and b) countries/states with MWh of potentially-developable sea water pumped hydro potential, although there are only three of them in the world (Chile, California and Croatia).
My original statement about these technologies involved 30 years:
Yes
And you still haven’t provided an “excuse” for those record breaking US temperatures by huge amounts, but I am sure you will think of something, but NOT Arctic Amplification.
This article assumes we have until 2050 until the SHTF ? Wishful thinking. All the sources I follow say will be lucky to make it to 2025. Watch the film chasing ice. (free on you tube), then get back to me. Again, no mention of climate engineering in this article. No surprise at all.
T Keith. Well, that’s an hour of my life wasted watching that. You must follow some strange sources to believe what you do!
You didn’t find Chasing Ice interesting? It’s very impressive (calving) and highly informative on the rates/actuality of glacier retreat. Why would that not be of interest?
I don’t think there is any chance of humanity disappearing by 2025 (unlike Tom), but we _are_ currently setting our future path, because there is an awful lot of momentum in some of the earth systems we are currently applying a forcing function to. Ice-melt is a very good example of this as it takes decades or centuries for ice levels to equilibrate after a change in temperature profile. And Chasing Ice helps get some sort of perspective on part of that process.
And here was me thinking it was the balance between winter snow fall and summer melt that was key and that winter snow fall levels were as, if not more important, than temperature.
I suggest you take a look at Actual Data for yourself.
Arctic Ice is above normal for this time of year already.
Greenland added record amounts of Snow to it’s Ice last Year.
Antarctica has also added Ice to it’s interior.
The Upper Atmosphere has cooled dramatically due to the “quiet Sun” and shrunk considerably.
The Global Temperature has dropped a massive amount in the last 2 years since the 2015/16 El Nino.
This official data is all available, you just won’t see many headlines about it in the MSM.
You can also check that US F3+ Tornados are down, there is no increase in US Hurricanes and US Wildfires are also down.
Sea Level Rise is NOT increasing.
Oceans are not getting Acidic.
Northern Heisphere Snow is increasing.
The last time the world (or at the very least the northern hemisphere) was 2C degrees warmer than today, the Sahara was a habitable grassland. Nowadays we would probably turn it into a massive grain belt. I don’t see that +2C is a problem, all things considered. However, -2C would be a catastrophe. Even -1C would be pretty bad. Either one believes that the current temperature of earth is, by fabulous good luck or divine providence, the perfect ideal temperature for the earth, which seems like an improbable stroke of good fortune given that earth has been warmer than today for most of the (pre)history of life on earth, or one believes that the optimal temperature is something higher than what we have today, which seems more believable.
+100
Plenty of people who have studied this _do_ think that +2C is a problem, all things considered. We just got a big report on what happens at +1.5C. Have you read it? What expertise do you have to dispute it, beyond ‘I reckon’?
Part of the reason why the holocene temperature is ‘the perfect ideal temperature for the earth’ is not really the temp itself, but because we positioned all our infrastructure (cities) and populations according to the pertaining conditions. Changing things like sea level, where the crops and forest grow, where the deserts are, and which bits are covered in ice requires us to move everything & everyone around to accommodate the new setup. The rate of change is also important. Make it slow enough and we can cope, at least up to a point.
Wookey,
It is a lot easier to cope with relatively inexpensive energy than with expensive energy.
Compare the Dust Bowl and the response with the pre-puebloans.
Oh wait current changes are unprecedented.
T2M
I don’t need to read it, others, who are scientists have.
They have condemned it with real data, which is readily available.
Perhaps you ought to aquaint yourself with the data also, before believing propaganda.
And you still haven’t provided an “excuse” for those record breaking US temperatures by huge amounts, but I am sure you will think of something, but NOT Arctic Amplification.