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Author Topic: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE 🌟  (Read 3487 times)

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AGelbert

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Quote
Next time you hear that responding to climate change is too expensive, ask, compared to what? 

For the price of the Iraq War, the U.S. could have gotten halfway to a renewable power system  :o
By David Roberts

Discussions of how to respond to climate change often involve Very Large Numbers — the needed investments to transition to a fully renewable energy system are in the hundreds of billions. The brain sort of shuts down when it encounters numbers like that. They are too big to fathom. The one thing that does seem true about them is that nobody’s ever going to spend that kind of money on anything. Right? It seems hopeless.

So I always enjoy it when someone comes along to provide some perspective, a comparison that can give us context and help us see the numbers afresh. Today, wind analyst Paul Gipe asks, how much renewable energy could we have gotten from what we spent on the Iraq War?

The total cost of the Iraq War, including future costs to care for veterans, is $2.2 trillion. If we include the interest we have to pay on the debt we used to finance the war, that figure rises to $3.9 trillion by 2053. (See Gipe’s article for sources and details.)

So what could that get us? Gipe gets deep into the weeds on renewables cost and yields, but here’s the top-line conclusion:

If we had invested the $2.2 trillion in wind and solar, the US would be generating 21% of its electricity with renewable energy. If we had invested the $3.9 trillion that the war in Iraq will ultimately cost, we would generate nearly 40% of our electricity with new renewables. Combined with the 10% of supply from existing hydroelectricity, the US could have surpassed 50% of total renewables in supply.

He notes that his estimates are extremely conservative, and with some reasonable amendments, that 40 percent figure could easily become 60 percent.

So, let’s call it half. For the price of the Iraq War, the U.S. could have gotten halfway to a fully renewable power supply.

Full Story here: 👍👍👍 😎 

http://grist.org/climate-energy/for-the-price-of-the-iraq-war-the-u-s-could-have-gotten-halfway-to-a-renewable-power-system/

So much for the BULLSHIT and LIES from the fossil fuel energy "experts" about renewable energy implementation timelines!
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Portugal Hit 70% Renewable Electricity In Q1 2013
 

April 9, 2013 Karl-Friedrich Lenz

Reposted from Lenz Blog:

Portugal is the newest country to make the list of over 60% renewable electricity. According to this report by the network operator REN, it got 70% in quarter one of this year. The largest part (37%) comes from hydro, which had excellent weather conditions, leading to a 312% increase over last year’s figures. But wind also contributed 27%, with a 60% increase, also primarily due to favorable weather conditions.   

As expected, generation from coal was down by 29%, and from gas was down by 44% (please cheer and applaud for Portugal now).   

Thanks to this tweet by ekopolitan for the link to this piece of very welcome good news.

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/09/portugal-hit-70-renewable-electricity-in-q1-2013/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Solar = 100%  Of New Power Capacity In March, Renewables = 82% In Q1 

April 12, 2013 Tim Tyler

Editor’s note: I write about solar and wind power obsessively, almost every day. Still, FERC’s recent numbers came as a bit of a surprise to me. Over 28% of new US power capacity in Q1 was from large-scale solar installations (small- and medium-scale installations would actually boost solar’s percentage of the pie considerably, but they’re harder to track and count). Wind power accounted for nearly 51% of new power capacity (and this is just after the rush to get projects completed before the wind power production tax credit expired). More details in the post below from Solar Love:

Renewables are leading again. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects has just released a report for the first three months of 2013.

The report is called the “Energy Infrastructure Update” and it shows that renewable energy sources (biomass, geothermal, solar, water, wind) have accounted for 82% of all new domestic electrical generating capacity installed for the first quarter of 2013. The total amount of the combined renewables came in at 1,546 MW.

So far this year, coal, nuclear, and oil have provided no new generating capacity,    which is good news to say the least. Natural gas came in with 340 MW of electrical generating capacity installed for the first quarter of 2013.

The breakdown of the report put wind energy in the lead for quarter one, with 6 new “units” totaling 958 MW. Second place went to solar, with 38 units totaling 537 MW accounting for over 28% of new power capacity in Q1. (Obviously, this doesn’t include small- or medium-scale solar installations, which account for about half of all US solar power capacity.) During the first quarter of 2012, solar only installed 264 MW, so this year solar has more than doubled its newly installed capacity (537 MW).

The big winner in renewables for the month of March was solar, which produced 100% of the new electrical generation capacity, with 7 new units with a combined capacity of 44 MW in California, Nevada, New Jersey, Hawaii, Arizona, and North Carolina.

In the past couple of years, the installed price of solar has dropped about 40%. This has certainly spurred on a good portion of the growth, but the price is projected to fall much more in the coming years. So what lies ahead?

One of the other key players in the renewable mix in quarter one was biomass, with 28 units that totaled 46 MW. And even water was in the picture for the first quarter, with 4 new units with an installed capacity of 5.4 MW. Geothermal is lagging behind so far this year with no

new capacity reported. Here’s a full table: (go to article at the link for the full table 8))

Nearly 16% of total installed US generating capacity now goes to renewable energy sources.

Here’s a break down of the current installed generating capacity from the report:

Water — 8.53%
Wind — 5.18%
Biomass— 1.3%
Solar — 0.44%
Geothermal — 0.32%

For a comparison, that is more than these combined:
Nuclear — 9.15%
Oil — 3.54%


According to the US Energy Information Administration, the actual net electrical generation from renewable energy sources in the United States now totals a bit more than 13%. (Just a note since generating capacity is not the same as actual generation.)

It is clear, however, that renewable energy sources continue to dominate the new electrical generating capacity being brought on-line in the United States. It seems like with every one of these reports it becomes clearer that coal is slowly fading away and a cleaner future is on its way with renewables 👍👍 👍  😎

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/12/solar-100-of-new-power-capacity-in-march-renewables-82-in-q1/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Is Renewable Energy's Biggest Problem Solved?

German researchers have found a way to overcome one of the problems with renewable energy -- the fact that it is not always available -- by linking different options in a unified system.


April 5, 2013 

Critics of renewables have always claimed that sun and wind are only intermittent producers of electricity and need fossil fuel plants as back-up to make them viable. But German engineers have proved this is not so.

full story here:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/renewable-energys-biggest-problem-solved
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Largest Wind Farm In Southern Hemisphere Opens Down Under 👍👍👍

April 15, 2013 Ronald Brakels

The 420 megawatt Macarthur wind farm was opened in the state of Victoria on Friday. It is the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere and its 3 megawatt Vestas turbines are the largest in Australia. The Mcarthur Wind Farm is actually the first project to use Vestas’ V112-3.0 MW wind turbines. The project’s expected operating capacity is 35% and its cost was almost exactly one billion dollars.

One billion dollars may sound like a lot of money, probably because it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good deal. The wind farm has an operating life of 25 years and if a 5% discount rate is used for the cost of money, it will generate electricity at about 6 cents a kilowatt-hour. While this is slightly higher than the average price of electricity generated from coal in Australia, it does have the very large advantage of being non-fatal on both the personal and planetary scales. It’s also cheaper than electricity from new coal plants and is a major reason why Australia is extremely unlikely to ever build any new coal capacity.   👍 👍👍 😎


Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/15/largest-wind-farm-in-southern-hemisphere-opens-down-under/#5ZQ0GoDQSv8oLuwO.99

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Sweden’s Quest To Be The First Oil-Free Nation   
 

April 15, 2013 Guest Contributor

This post first appeared on Fuel Freedom

By Zana Nesheiwat


Famous for Volvo, Ikea and Absolut Vodka, Sweden is now on a new pursuit to become the first completely oil-free economy in the world by 2020.

The oil crisis in the early 1970s forced Sweden to embark on a quest for alternative energy sources. Its phasing out of oil has proceeded smoothly; in 1970, oil accounted for 77% of Sweden’s energy, but by 2003 that figure fell to 32%.



SNIPPET

International oil dependency is one of the world’s biggest problems and as Sahlin notes, a Sweden free of fossil fuels would give the country enormous advantages, “not least by reducing the impact from fluctuations in oil prices. The price of oil has tripled since 1996.” Sweden’s investments, actions and laws are no accident, and although Sweden’s goal of eliminating oil consumption is seen as ambitious by the rest of the world, their attention to the detrimental effects of this dependence is worth noting. As Nelson Mandela reminds us “it seems impossible until it is done.”

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/15/swedens-quest-to-be-the-first-oil-free-nation/#GYdi7O3zPVZIIuPj.99
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Mark Fiore gives it to oil lovers with both (shotgun NOT oil!) barrels!
WATCH: Tar Sands Timmy Needs a Pipeline Cartoon 

The Keystone XL is our ticket to energy independence! 🦖😈

—By Mark Fiore


http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/04/mark-fiore-tar-sands-timmy-keystone-pipeline%20


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use

By David Roberts

The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses.
For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs.
 
While the notion is incredibly useful, especially in folding ecological concerns into economics, I’ve always had my reservations about it. Environmentalists these days love speaking in the language of economics — it makes them sound Serious — but I worry that wrapping this notion in a bloodless technical term tends to have a narcotizing effect. It brings to mind incrementalism: boost a few taxes here, tighten a regulation there, and the industrial juggernaut can keep right on chugging. However, if we take the idea seriously, not just as an accounting phenomenon but as a deep description of current human practices, its implications are positively revolutionary.
 
To see what I mean, check out a recent report [PDF] done by environmental consultancy Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program. TEEB asked Trucost to tally up the total “unpriced natural capital” consumed by the world’s top industrial sectors. (“Natural capital” refers to ecological materials and services like, say, clean water or a stable atmosphere; “unpriced” means that businesses don’t pay to consume them.)
 
It’s a huge task; obviously, doing it required a specific methodology that built in a series of assumptions. (Plenty of details in the report.) But it serves as an important signpost pointing the way to the truth about externalities.
 

Here’s how those costs break down:
 
The majority of unpriced natural capital costs are from

greenhouse gas emissions (38%),
followed by water use (25%),
land use (24%),
air pollution (7%),
land and water pollution (5%),
and waste (1%)
.

 
So how much is that costing us? Trucost’s headline results are fairly stunning.
 
First, the total unpriced natural capital consumed by the more than 1,000 “global primary production and primary processing region-sectors” amounts to $7.3 trillion dollars a year — 13 percent of 2009 global GDP. :o

Full Story with charts here:

http://grist.org/business-technology/none-of-the-worlds-top-industries-would-be-profitable-if-they-paid-for-the-natural-capital-they-use/

I'm happy to see the theme of the article I wrote some time ago is gathering traction.  I love it when they start talking about REAL WORLD COSTS, not industry's convenient EROEI happy numbers.

For those who who haven't read it and want the down and dirty details of the fossil and nuclear fuel scam, go here:


Hope for a Viable Biosphere of Renewables: Why They Work and Fossil & Nuclear Fuels Never Did

The Fossil Fuelers 🦖 DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks 🦀, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or     PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Solar Power Record In Germany — 22.68 GW — Infographic

April 16, 2013 Thomas
 

On Monday, the 15th of April, 2013, the approximate 1.3 million solar power systems in Germany set a new domestic/world record by reaching a peak power output of 22.68 GW at noon.

The New Normal

This new record is almost 0.5 GW above the “old” record of 22.2 GW, which was set on May 25th, 2012. Allthough I love celebrating all solar records, the biggest news might be that “just” 22.68 GW is apparently no longer newsworthy in Germany, because above 15-20 GW of solar have become a regularity.

During the first two weeks of April, solar surpassed the 20 GW mark on several occasions and made a meaningful contribution to the domestic power supply on every single day. For everybody remotely familiar with German or Central European weather conditions, it’s needless to say that it wasn’t all sunshine & cloudless skies in April.


Graphs: Bruno Burger, Fraunhofer ISE

Since solar panels last for 25+ years and have almost no marginal costs, I like to use the opportunity to mention the fact that whatever might happen in policy in the coming years, those yellow areas of the electricity market will remain liberated* from the external effects caused by conventional electricity production for at least one generation. (*To use a slightly more energy revolutionary sort of language).

So, lets celebrate the new solar world record of 22.68 GW of solar power on a national grid, despite its relative “mediocrity,” with a little infographic!


In case you are wondering: The equivalents mentioned in the infographic were chosen for the Japanese “market” (for solar and ideas).

The 167 GWh of solar electricity provided a little more than 12% of the total German electricity consumption on a typical Monday in April (presuming that consumption hasn’t changed too much since last year).

The 34,000 tons of oil are calculated by considering a thermal power plant efficency of 42%, meaning that for each kWh of electricity you got to burn 2.4 kWh of oil. (42% is the average for Japanese oil-fired power stations that usually provided peakload electricity before, and now even more so after, the Fukushima nuclear accident.)

The number of nuclear reactors refers to each one running for 24 hours straight. The comparison is intended to show that distributed solar can make a big impact and doesn’t need years to build. I am aware that comparing clean peak-load solar operating in the renewable energy paradigm with old-school baseload nuclear is relatively pointless.

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/16/solar-power-record-in-germany-22-68-gw-infographic/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Great Discussion of how big oil makes WE-THE-PEOPLE pay for pollution from Big Oil!    More proof this S H I T was NEVER cost effective! :o

By the way, Thom comes up with a PRICELESS quote by John kenneth Galbraith at the start of the discussion. 



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: This is an investment bet that ABB made 5 years ago that continues to pay off very well. ABB was, and still is, smart.
ABB bets on solar power with $1 billion takeover.

Credit: Reuters/Michael Buholzer

By Silke Koltrowitz

ZURICH | Mon Apr 22, 2013 8:07am EDT

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss industrial group ABB (ABBN.VX) is to buy U.S. solar energy company Power-One Inc (PWER.O) for about $1 billion, betting that growth in emerging markets will revive a sector ravaged by overcapacity and weakening demand in recession-hit Europe.

The world's biggest supplier of industrial motors and power grids said on Monday it had agreed to pay $6.35 per share in cash for Power-One, the second-largest maker of solar inverters that allow solar power to be fed into grids.

The offer price is 57 percent above Power-One's closing price on Friday, boosted by $266 million in net cash held by debt-free Power-One. Stripping out its cash pile, Power-One's enterprise value stands at $762 million, valuing the bid at a more modest 6.4 times 2012 core earnings.

As solar power gets closer to competing with conventional forms of energy such as gas and coal, demand for solar panels that harness the sun's energy is rising.

The same goes for solar inverters, which are needed to feed that power into large electricity grids from commercial solar panel installations and smaller units on factories and homes.

"We consider the acquisition of Power-One as a smart strategic move for ABB to broaden its solar product portfolio at the right time," Vontobel analysts said.

The solar inverters business is one of the last profitable parts of the solar value chain - mainly due to its relatively complex technology - while makers of cells and panels have suffered massively from the fact that their products are easy to replicate.

Peers like Germany's Siemens (SIEGn.DE) and Bosch ROBG.UL recently ended ventures in the solar industry after oversupply, weak economies and a cut in government subsidies triggered a collapse in demand for solar panels and prices slumped, leading to a wave of insolvencies in the industry.

Even makers of the solar inverters have suffered.

Germany's SMA Solar (S92G.DE), the world's biggest maker of the components, reported a 58-percent drop in 2012 operating earnings last month and said sustained lower prices from competitors could severely impair its business.

However, ABB believes the solar market is set to grow its way out of overcapacity as electricity costs rise and falling prices of solar power systems make it a more competitive source of energy.

ABB is buying into solar energy now because it sees a shift in demand towards emerging markets such as China and the Middle East, said Ulrich Spiesshofer, head of ABB Discrete and Motion, the business that includes ABB's solar activities.


The company took a 35 percent stake in Germany's Novatec Solar in 2011.
"Solar is, long-term, the fastest-growing renewable generation market in the world. ABB believes in this market," Spiesshofer said in a company video.

At 7:52 a.m. EDT, ABB shares were up 0.9 percent at 20.11 Swiss francs, outperforming an almost flat European industrial sector index .SXNP. SMA Solar shares were up almost 9 percent.

PROJECTED GROWTH

The solar inverters market is forecast to grow by more than 10 percent per year until 2021, ABB said. Solar inverter industry revenues reached $7 billion last year, according to research firm IHS.

Camarillo, California-based Power-One's market share in the inverter industry has doubled to 10 percent since 2009, while SMA Solar's has dropped to 25 percent from 38 percent, ABB said in a presentation.

ABB Chief Executive Joe Hogan said the deal should boost net income within a year. He said the company had no interest in buying solar panel or machinery makers.

Sarasin analyst Martin Schwab said the bid price for Power-One seemed high, but that the deal might pay off. Vontobel analysts called the price reasonable, given the target's net cash position and positive operating cash flow.

ABB said it would pay for the transaction from its own funds and that it included Power-One's net cash of $266 million.

Subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, the deal is expected to close in the second half of 2013.

Power-One employs almost 3,300 people, mainly in China, Italy, the United States and Slovakia and had sales of around $1 billion in 2012. The firm posted a fourth-quarter loss per share in January.

Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) acted as financial adviser to ABB, and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP acted as legal adviser. Goldman Sachs & Co. (GS.N) acted as financial adviser to Power-One, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP as legal adviser.

(Additional reporting by Katharina Bart and Christoph Steitz; Editing by Mark Potter and Tom Pfeiffer)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/22/us-abb-power-one-idUSBRE93L04U20130422


NOTE: ABB operates in over 100 countries and is into just about everything to do with the electrical grid, it's power sources and smart grid energy management.

Product guide for ABB in the USA:
http://www.abb.us/ProductGuide/


I do believe ABB KNOWS how to make a GOOD BET on the future of Energy Sources!

Latest from ABB U.S.

ABB named Top 10 Smart Grid Vendor by GTM Research
2013-03-25 - ABB recognized for its ongoing contributions to transmission and distribution grid management, to OT/IT convergence with Ventyx and to communications with Tropos Networks.

ABB reports record U.S. revenues, rising 26 percent to $6.7 billion U.S. revenues and employment doubled since 2007


http://www.abb.us/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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High-Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal System From IBM Promises 80% Efficiency, Potable Water, And Air Conditioning

April 24, 2013 Nathan

This article was originally published on Solar Love.

How does a cost-competitive photovoltaic system that is able to concentrate sunlight 2000 times and then capture 80% of the concentrated energy sound? Pretty good, right? Such a system is currently being developed by researchers at IBM Research, Airlight Energy, ETH Zurich, and Interstate University of Applied Sciences Buchs NTB, after winning a three-year $2.4 million grant from the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation.

Image Credit: © IBM

And in addition to generating electricity, the system can itself desalinate water and provide air-conditioning, useful features for the sunny and remote regions that the system is designed for.

An economical High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system, that in addition to supplying electricity can desalinate water and provide air conditioning, is the complete package as far as many regions of the world are concerned.


The prototype system makes use of a large parabolic dish, composed of a number of mirror facets, which are coordinated to a sun tracking system. The system automatically repositions itself to the optimum angle for power generation. The sunlight that hits the mirrors is reflected off of them onto a number of microchannel-liquid cooled receivers with triple junction photovoltaic chips. Every one of these 1×1 centimeter chips “can convert 200-250 watts, on average, over a typical eight hour day in a sunny region.” And there are hundreds of these chips in the design, providing a total of about 25 kilowatts of electrical power.

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/24/high-concentration-photovoltaic-thermal-system-from-ibm-promises-80-efficiency-potable-water-and-air-conditioning/#91GKRhQQjjGISl7K.99

As noted in the video below, we only need about 0.4% of the solar energy arriving on the Earth to supply ALL of our ENERGY NEEDS!

We DON'T NEED FOSSIL FUELS! We DO NEED to stop using them. The claim 😈 that we MUST rely on fossil fuels 🦖 for now because they are "cheap" is inaccurate, erroneous and outdated information.  Watch this video for PROOF!
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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: It is no surprise to me that the link to the Scientific American Article which described the path to 100% Renewable Energy by 2030 is dead. The Hydrocarbom Hellspawn never stop their skullduggery

The link to the Budischak, et al study at the end of the article is still good. 🕵️

It's more than clear that we could supply 100% of our energy needs from renewable sources. Jacobson and Delucchi did that bit of math in 2009.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030


Solar, alone, provides far more harvest-able energy than we can conceive of using.

We know that we can run major grids using nothing but renewable energy. Budischak, et al. ran the numbers for the largest wholesale grid in the world. Diensendorf, et al. did the same for all of Australia.

While Jacobson and Delucchi showed that the energy was available and we have the technology needed to harvest it, these other studies have shown that it would be practical to use renewables for our energy needs.


https://docs.google.com/file/d/1NrBZJejkUTRYJv5YE__kBFuecdDL2pDTvKLyBjfCPr_8yR7eCTDhLGm8oEPo/edit
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Baseload power is a myth: even intermittent renewables will work

By Mark Diesendorf on 10 April 2013

The future of civilisation and much biodiversity hangs to a large degree on whether we can replace fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – with clean, safe and affordable energy within several decades. The good news is that renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency measures have advanced with extraordinary speed over the past decade.
 
Energy efficient buildings and appliances, solar hot water, on-shore wind, solar photovoltaic (PV) modules, concentrated solar thermal (CST) power with thermal storage and gas turbines burning a wide range of renewable liquid and gaseous fuels are commercially available on a large scale. The costs of these technologies have declined substantially, especially those of solar PV. In 2012, despite the global financial crisis, global investment in these clean, safe and healthy technologies amounted to US $269 billion. Denmark, Scotland and Germany and several states/provinces around the world have official targets of around 100% renewable electricity and are implementing policies to achieve them.
 
The principal barrier is resistance from vested interests and their supporters in the big greenhouse gas polluting industries and from an unsafe, expensive, polluting, would-be competitor to a renewable energy future, nuclear power. These powerful interests are running a campaign of renewable energy denial that is almost as fierce as the long-running campaign of climate change denial. Both campaigns are particularly noisy in the Murdoch press. So far the anti-renewables campaign, with its misinformation and gross exaggerations, has received little critical examination in the mainstream media.
 
The renewable energy deniers rehash, among others, the old myth that renewable energy is unreliable in supplying base-load demand.

 
Renewable electricity is reliable

In a previous article for The Conversation I reported on the initial results of computer simulations by a research team at the University of New South Wales that busted the myth that renewable energy cannot supply base-load demand. However at the time of the article I was still under the misconception that some base-load renewable energy supply may be needed to be part of the renewable energy mix.
 
Since then Ben Elliston, Iain MacGill and I have performed thousands of computer simulations of 100% renewable electricity in the National Electricity Market (NEM), using actual hourly data on electricity demand, wind and solar power for 2010. Our latest research, available here and reported here, finds that generating systems comprising a mix of different commercially available renewable energy technologies, located on geographically dispersed sites, do not need base-load power stations to achieve the same reliability as fossil-fuelled systems.
 
The old myth was based on the incorrect assumption that base-load demand can only be supplied by base-load power stations; for example, coal in Australia and nuclear in France. However, the mix of renewable energy technologies in our computer model, which has no base-load power stations, easily supplies base-load demand. Our optimal mix comprises wind 50-60%; solar PV 15-20%; concentrated solar thermal with 15 hours of thermal storage 15-20%; and the small remainder supplied by existing hydro and gas turbines burning renewable gases or liquids. (Contrary to some claims, concentrated solar with thermal storage does not behave as base-load in winter; however, that doesn’t matter.)
 
The real challenge is to supply peaks in demand on calm winter evenings following overcast days. That’s when the peak-load power stations, that is, hydro and gas turbines, make vital contributions by filling gaps in wind and solar generation.

 
Renewable electricity is affordable

Our latest peer-reviewed paper, currently in press in Energy Policy journal, compares the economics of two new alternative hypothetical generation systems for 2030: 100% renewable electricity versus an “efficient” fossil-fuelled system. Both systems have commercially available technologies and both satisfy the NEM reliability criterion. However, the renewable energy system has zero greenhouse gas emissions while the efficient fossil scenario has high emissions and water use and so would be unacceptable in environmental terms.
 
We used the technology costs projected to 2030 in the conservative 2012 study by the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE). (In my personal view, future solar PV and wind costs are likely to be lower than the BREE projections, and future fossil fuel and nuclear costs are likely to be higher.) Then, we did thousands of hourly simulations of supply and demand over 2010, until we found the mix of renewable energy sources that gave the minimum annual cost.
 
Under transparent assumptions, we found that the total annualised cost (including capital, operation, maintenance and fuel where relevant) of the least-cost renewable energy system is $7-10 billion per year higher than that of the “efficient” fossil scenario. For comparison, the subsidies to the production and use of all fossil fuels in Australia are at least $10 billion per year. So, if governments shifted the fossil subsidies to renewable electricity, we could easily pay for the latter’s additional costs.

 
Thus 100% renewable electricity would be affordable under sensible government policy, busting another myth.   

:
All we need are effective policies to drive the transition.

 
This article was first published in The Conversation. It was reproduced with permission. It is an update of an earlier article written by Diesendorf for RenewEconomy, published last week.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/baseload-power-is-a-myth-even-intermittent-renewables-will-work-92421



Note: I am guilty as SIN of putting ALL the HTML FONT exaggerations in the above.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: A warning from 2012 about what was coming now (and getting worse each year) that has been mostly ignored by TPTB.  :(

Why climate change is not an environmental problem


http://grist.org/climate-energy/why-climate-change-is-not-an-environmental-problem-the-video/?









He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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