Several years ago. It looks like he was right.

Look, I am not against solar and other renewables, but we’re going to need other forms of energy production to replace carbon fuels. Since it still seems like nuclear fusion is still decades away, I think nuclear is the way to go.

Last edited Sat Jan 25, 2020, 11:39 AM - Edit history (1)

Unlike the former resident curmudgeon, I believe that there are places and situations where renewables make more sense than nuclear. I really don’t see it as economical to build fission plants in most of Polynesia or on the islands of the Lesser Antilles. Solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage sound good to me.

But in industrialized, heavily-populated parts of the mainland UP TO DATE nuclear power plants are a good idea to replace sooty coal, lignite, and natural gas,

He posts quite often in the science forum.

And I am sure he still lurks around here from time to time.

But some unfashionable arguments were ignored.

After all, if you take away a source of relatively carbon-free electricity, and electrical customer demand remains the same, then what else is there but existing CO2-emitting generation to pick up the difference? Any existing renewables are already dispatched to the max since their energy is least-cost (once built it's just the variable O&M cost), so they can't pick up any more. And any new renewable capacity takes time to build and get online, and then operates at low capacity factors and so a lot of it GW-wise has to be built.

Nobody looked at what generation was being shut down and what generation existed and was being built and didn't see an increase in fossil fuel generation for at least a few years?

Renewables Update, 3/8/17
https://www.renewable-ei.org/en/column/column_20170308.php

...the first link is especially remarkable in its illiteracy and compels me to break my personal rule of giving up on this space, since I am a scientist as opposed to a faith based type.

So called "renewable energy" is available at random times, not necessarily at times of high demand. It happens that the highest demand periods for electrical energy in most places is in the late afternoon and early evening. It's widely known that the sun is either low in the sky or absent in the late afternoon. Nevertheless, solar energy is great.

Thus, if one is simply taking total generation figures, one is in fact including wasted energy as "production." It is not. Nor do these figures record the energy wasted by reheating boilers that were shut down for a few hours when the wind wasn't blowing and the sun wasn't shining.

The atmosphere, however, records this. We hit 415.73 ppm of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa on January 21st. It appears that so called "renewable energy" has not saved us, and isn't saving us. In fact, it won't save us, but it's good for keeping the coal industry going since steel towers for wind power are made using steel and steel is made with coal. And of course, all that asphalt for roads into wilderness areas for huge semi trailer trucks to haul those towers back and forth every 20 years is good for the petroleum industry. (Another component of wind turbines, aluminum, which depends on petroleum coke for electrodes, also "good." )

The gold standard for the types of energy produced by humanity on this planet is the IEA's World Energy Outlook, published every damn year, including most of the last half a century of "renewables will save us" rhetoric, a reactionary rhetoric that never asks why, two centuries ago, with a population that was a fraction of the current population, the world abandoned so called "renewable energy."

I report on it over in the science section where, um, scientists are welcome.

Here is the report on the 2019 WEO release.

World Energy Outlook, 2017, 2018, 2019. Data Tables of Primary Energy Sources.

For convenience, here's the table of data I assembled those reports, all of which are in my files. As a scientist data on something called "reality" is important to me:



I know, I know, "renewable energy" is growing "exponentially" over here, in the E&E forum, but in the WEO reports, in this century all that wind, solar, geothermal and tidal energy so loved here grew, in the by 9.74 exajoules in the 21st century, to a whopping 12.26 exajoules compared to the growth of coal which grew by 63.22 exajoules to at total of 159.98 exajoules and total world energy consumption, which grew by 179.15 exajoules to a total of 599.34 exajoules.

In the "percent" talk we all love so much, all the wind, solar, geothermal and tidal facilities in the world produced 2.04% of the world's energy in 2018, and grew at 5.04% the rate of world energy demand, and 15.4% as fast as coal in this century.

But don't worry. Be happy. Amory Lovins still says we can save the world with conservation, and Elon Musk still says we can save the world with electric cars for billionaires and millionaires.

Fuck poor people.

I used to write here quite a in this forum, as I recall, for well over a decade, during a fierce debate over whether or not the world would be saved by so called "renewable energy."

Then, as a scientist, I realized I was arguing with faith based people, and scientists arguing with faith based people never "win" the argument, at least in the minds of those people having, um, faith.

Fuck those who die because people accepted faith more than data.

But the OP is somewhat surprising, inasmuch as it acknowledges a bitter reality, here of all places, which is that opposition to nuclear energy kills people, real people. Of course, 1000 or so killed Germans pales in comparison to the six or seven million people who die each year from combustion wastes, both from dangerous fossil fuel combustion and "renewable" biomass combustion, many of whom might have been saved were it not for all the anti-nuclear rhetoric, which stopped in its tracks, the growth of nuclear energy, which has consistently held at around 28 exajoules per year, more than double the output of all the worlds, wind, solar, geothermal and tidal energy that's so popular here.

We're hit a figure of close 516 ppm of CO2 last week when measured at Mauna Loa. I'm sure in the faith based community we'll address that all "by 2050" when the world will be powered on 100% renewable energy as an endless parade of breathlessly posted "studies" here and elsewhere, year after year, decade after decade "show" "could" happen.

It's been great to visit old friends.

Have a nice Sunday afternoon.

Will close it's last coal plant in 2025. Scotland is on track to hit 100% renewable energy this year.

The share of coal in the UK’s electricity system has fallen to record lows in recent months, according to government data.

The figures show electricity generated by the UK’s most polluting power plants made up an average of 0.7% of the total in the second quarter of this year. The amount of coal used to power the electricity grid fell by almost two-thirds compared with the same months last year.

A government spokesperson said coal-generated energy “will soon be a distant memory” as the UK moves towards becoming a net zero emissions economy.

“This new record low is a result of our world-leading low-carbon energy industry, which provided more than half of our energy last year and continues to go from strength to strength as we aim to end our contribution to climate change entirely by 2050,” the spokesperson said.

The UK electricity market is on track to phase out coal-fired power generation entirely by the government’s target date of 2025.

(snip)

Meanwhile, the government’s data shows that renewable energy climbed by 12% from the second quarter of last year, boosted by the startup of the Beatrice windfarm in the Moray Firth in Scotland.

This is from 4 months ago
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/30/share-of-coal-in-uks-electricity-system-falls-to-record-lows

... because people falsely regard natural gas as "clean" backup power for their unsustainable renewable energy schemes.

The problem is there is more than enough natural gas in the ground to destroy whatever is left of earth's natural environment.

Hybrid gas - wind - solar systems are still a fossil fueled nightmare. They will not save the world.

The only way to quit fossil fuels is to quit fossil fuels, including natural gas.

A society powered by the wind and the sun would look nothing like the high energy industrial consumer economy many affluent people now enjoy.

It's still burning dead dino meat.

The problem is that people will not just go COLD turkey.

But you can nudge them in the direction we need to go.

You and I both know that there's a good chance we are beyond the tipping point. There are plenty of negative feedback loops that will require major changes (that aren't going to happen IMO) to reverse.

But there are places that are moving in the right direction. Little things like energy standards for appliances and getting rid of incandescent bulbs have reduced the demand growth of electricity. Utilities have dropped plans to add new peaker plants and they can't even justify COMPLETING nuclear plants - wind and solar are already cheaper. Batteries are filling in roles that spare power plants use to stand ready just in case. When they stand ready, the boiler is up to temp so they are burning fuel just to be ready state.

The A#1 thing we need are transmission lines to move power long distances from where the wind is blowing and the sun is shining to where it's needed. Texas has done this, but they are a self contained market. They are at 20% from wind, starting to build out solar and have yet to tap off shore. It can be done, but will it?

That Texas is not adverse to wind energy means something.

Rather like Denmark.

Something not good.

Antinuclear activists tend to become feckless shills of the natural gas industry.

Texas is okay with that.

France closed its last coal mine in 2004.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3651881.stm

The transition for Germany is going to be more difficult.

https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm

Regional variations in solar and wind energy inputs can't be completely smoothed over by batteries or ultra-high-voltage power lines. That's just the way nature rolls.