When Horses can Beat Tanks -- Renewable energy against the fossil lobby.

 

The fossil lobbies are fighting for their survival. They are facing a competitor, renewable energy, which is less expensive, more efficient, less polluting, and less prone to create wars, you would think that they would give up. But, no, they are fighting a slick and well-financed propaganda war. 

Look at the image above, it comes from the "Empowerment Alliance." Do take a look at their website. It is an enlightening experience on the current propaganda techniques. They are not very sophisticated: you may think that the image above is gross and that no one would be so easily swayed by it. Yet, these techniques are known to be effective. 

The renewable industry isn't even remotely able to match this tsunami of propaganda. They seem to believe, naively, that they can win the battle against the fossil lobby just by the quality of their products. Maybe, but often the real world doesn't work in that way. Otherwise, people wouldn't prefer concoctions of sugar and artificial coloring to plain water. 

So, we are fighting a difficult battle for clean energy. A little like fighting tanks with horses. But, you know, there is a chance for horses to win: it is when the tanks run out of fuel!

 

"Space Fusion Power:" Energy Too Cheap to Meter

 

The energy genie in Walt Disney's movie "Our Friend the Atom"

Do you remember that old prediction saying that nuclear technology would bring us energy "too cheap to meter?" It was said about nuclear fusion in a 1954 speech by the then-Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis L. Strauss. Over the years, it was widely mocked and taken as an example of technological over-optimism. It was the opposite of the predictions of the 1972 report "The Limits to Growth," ridiculed for being too pessimistic.  

Well, it seems that more than one prediction that went out of fashion is being revised and reconsidered. For one thing, the limits to growth are being reached right now (and peak oil, too!), but at the same time, the idea of "energy too cheap to meter" is becoming true -- with just one small change: the nuclear plant that will produce it is not located on Earth, but safely kept at some 150 million km from here. 

We call this energy "renewable" when we collect it using photovoltaic technologies (or, indirectly, using wind plants). Strictly speaking, it is not renewable: it will be available at most for a few billion years in the future. Nevertheless, that should be a time span long enough for most of us. For the time being, we can call it "Space Fusion Power." It is power from nuclear fusion, it comes from space, so, why not? 

Space Fusion Power is not yet too cheap to meter, but surely very cheap, and heading in that direction. 

Look at this table:

Image from "World Nuclear Report" -- the data are updated to 2020. Today, with the cost of natural gas increased of a factor of about 10, there is no comparison anymore. Renewables beat everything else in terms of cost. Yet, plenty of people still haven't realized how the rules of the game are changed and still reason on the basis of the situation of 10 years ago. A few, though, are starting to open their eyes to the new reality. History is on the side of renewables and they will forever bury fossil fuels (and nuclear, too). 

 

How about storage? That's becoming very cheap, too!  (image source).

But we need too much space for the solar light collectors, don't we? Oh, yeah? Take a look at this image from a recent article by Jacobson et al. 

It refers to an energy production comparable to the current one. Can it be optimistic? Maybe, but not too much. 

Let me pause for a moment to let commenters scream, "renewables will never work because of this and that."  With "this and that" anything from rare earths, copper, intermittency, not liquid fuels, planes, whatever you have.  I know. Nothing comes for free. But think about that for just a moment: if renewable power comes for a tenth of the cost of fossil-generated power, it means that renewables require less effort, fewer resources, and fewer complications than fossil fuels. And storage is not a problem when energy is very cheap, as it is becoming. 

So, we have to get used to the idea that renewables are cheap. Very cheap. So cheap that they may soon become "too cheap to meter." The idea is slowly diffusing in the collective Western consciousness, despite the social Alzheimer's syndrome that seems to be affecting everyone, everywhere. But, once it penetrates the cerebral cortex, some people are even able to reason about it! If renewables have become 10 times cheaper than any other kind of power generation technology, the consequence is:..... Ah....  

All our problems are solved, then? Well, no.... In a complex system (and we are living in one), there are no such things as problems and solutions. There are only potentials and feedbacks. More simply: in a complex system, there is always change. You may like the change or not, but that's how things are: the system couldn't care less about what we humans think are "problems." It will change when and if it decides to do so. 

And things are going to change. Things are going to change a lot. Things are going to change much more than you can imagine. 

How are they going to change? What kind of world will be one where we have abundant and nearly free energy from space? Good question. We'll have to see....

To know more on this subject, see these papers

https://rethinkdisruption.com/next-economy-growth-degrowth/

http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/145Country/22-145Countries.pdf

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

The Solar Revolution Moves on!

https://taiyangnews.info/markets/china-installed-31-gw-solar-pv-in-h1-2022/

China Installed 31 GW Solar PV In H1/2022

by Anu Bhambhani

The China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) says during H1/2022, China installed 30.88 GW of new solar PV capacity, growing 137.4% annually over 14.1 GW reported for the same period last year (see China May Exit 2021 With Up To 65 GW New PV: CPIA).

The association counts 13.21 GW installed in Q1/2022, followed by another 17.67 GW added in Q2/2022 of the total. Cumulative installed PV capacity of the world’s largest solar market at the end of June 2022 increased to 340 GW, at the same level as wind power (see China PV News Snippets).

CPIA’s Honorary Chairman Wang Bohua said they forecast China to exit 2022 with 75 GW annual installations under a conservative scenario, and 90 GW under its optimistic scenario, which will be in any case much higher than the 54 GW installed in 2021. However, CPIA has not increased its forecast range for 2022, a level it already forecasted in Feb. 2022 (see Up To 90 GW New Solar In China In 2022). For 2023, the association predicts between 80 GW to 95 GW new installations.

Further growth can be expected during the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) that’s supposed to run between 2021 and 2025 as 392.16 GW of total PV capacity is targeted to be installed by 25 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions during the period. CPIA specified that in the next 4 years, 344.48 GW is to be added.

Bohua also shared an update on the Chinese plan to use its desert regions including Gobi Desert to install 97.05 GW new wind and solar capacity. It said up to now, work on more than 95 GW has been started.

The association acknowledged that the market share of large size silicon wafers has expanded rapidly with some companies having converted all their production lines to produce 182mm and 210mm sized products. However, some firms have tried to replace diamond wire process with tungsten wire which the CPIA believes is expected to further refine the wire diameter and promote thinner wafers, from 165μm to 160μm.

Even in terms of module power thanks to tenders in China, 540W+ has become the mainstream product in the market, something that even EnergyTrend also pointed at in its recent report (see 80% Chinese Producers Get 210mm Capability).

Demand for n-type products is also on the rise as n-type cell expansion projects account for 1/3rd of total expansion capacity. Announced demand for n-type modules has exceeded 4 GW, which is a 4-fold increase compared to entire 2021.

The association also reiterated solar production capacity data for H1/2022 as released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) (see China’s Solar PV Production Capacity In H1/2022).

A new Revolution in China!

 

Unnoticed, unreported, sometimes despised, the renewable revolution is coming. And, soon, it will be unstoppable. China is leading the way. 

From Taiyang news

"While the capacity it would bring online is not clear, one can safely assume it would be somewhere in the higher double digit or even 3 digit GW level. It would be a great help for the country as it makes efforts to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060"

We must do more to promote renewable energy. Otherwise, we risk losing the battle

 

Above, you can see the answer to a question about renewable energy given by the "Leonardo" AI system, one of the best available to the public. Leonardo works by parsing a huge database downloaded from the Web, searching for an answer on the basis of the popularity and the reputation of the sites it examines. So, you can see it as a special kind of search engine that will focus on a specific question and give you an answer weighed for relevance and diffusion. You can also see it as an instant "opinion poll" that tells you what the opinion leaders are thinking. 

This answer about renewables is deeply worrisome. It means that the opinion leaders believe the legend (*) that renewable energy is an appendage of fossil fuels and that it cannot stand by itself without the support of fossil energy. It confirms what you can note if you examine what is being said in the social media: a large number of "environmentalists" seem to have engaged in a personal crusade to denigrate renewables. 

In Sweden, where elections will be held in September, one of the main issues right now is the centre/right promise to build 10 new reactors and to finance the investment partly by obliging wind and solar power systems to pay an extra fee. Nobody among the proposers seems to be worried about how long it will take to build these reactors, and where the uranium needed to power them will come from. This is not just worrisome. It is a tragedy in the making. 

The problem, here, is that Leonardo (just like the general public) has no access to the data published in scientific journals, usually kept hidden behind paywalls. Which means, in practice, that Leonardo does not parse the high quality information of refereed scientific journals. The result is that Leonardo makes the same mistakes many people do, swayed by the by special interest lobbies, such as the fossil fuel industry. 

Once more, humans show their capability of shooting themselves in their feet. Governments pay huge amounts of money to scientists to develop and evaluate renewable energy technologies. Scientists give to publishers their results for free, then the publishers make these results available to the public at exorbitant fees, even thought the public has already paid for these results with their taxes. 

We have to rethink of what we are doing as scientists, researchers, and developers. It is not possible to waste so much effort because of these absurd rules, especially in a moment when renewable energy is desperately necessary in a world where the combined action of climate change and resource depletion is destroying the wealth of entire nations. 

We can't reform science in a single day, but I invite my colleagues to come down from the ivory tower and engage in informing the public about the real value and effectiveness of renewable energy. Do it. It is your duty as scientists, and as human beings. The battle is not lost, yet, but it will be if you don't engage in it. 

 h/t Anders Wijkman and Domenico Rutigliano (developer of the Leonardo program.)

(*) If you believe that the idea that renewables cannot support themselves is not a legend, write me. I'll send you a preprint of our recent paper on the subject. (ugo.bardi(whirlywhirl)unifi.it)

Renewable energy: the game of denigration continues

 

A new example of someone engaging into the popular game of denigrating solar energy:

https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/the-future-of-electricity-d227eac74ba8

Fortunately, this post does not appear on a peer reviewed journal, but this type of paper is becoming the run-of-the-mill of the discussion. It contains classical statements such as:

 "Energy captured and transformed by solar and wind cannot be compared to coal or natural gas used in power plants:"

Why that? Well, because,

"1. As mentioned above these sources can de-stabilize the grid’s voltage and frequency, and thus need to be balanced with either gas fired power plants or batteries

2. Weather dependent energy is available half of the time at best, so you need double, triple the nameplate capacity to make sure you have enough"

and therefore

 "solar and wind are mere additions to an ever growing fossil fuel platform. " and "we can safely say, that a nationwide stable electric grid (which is available on demand 24/7, just like today) is practically impossible to build based on renewables and battery power alone, or at least be maintained without the massive aid provided by fossil fuels.

And more of the same: no quantification, no calculation, no justification. The references are carefully chosen only among those that support the author's viewpoint. The many studies that prove that renewable energy does not need the support of fossil fuels are ignored. It is like that because it has to be like that. Typical.

The author signs his blog as "The Honest Sorcerer." There is no evidence that he is a scientist and, as I said, this is not a peer reviewed paper. The problem is that the public and decision-makers, alike, read this kind of papers. I know plenty of smart people, even scientists, who have completely swallowed this nonsense. And the more people believe in this assessment of renewable energy, the more the assessment spreads over the media.

The results can be tragic. In Italy, we have a large wind plant ready to be built, approved by all the agencies charged with approving it, and yet it cannot be built for the opposition of the cultural ministry of the Italian government. 

We are facing a failure of the communication strategy of the renewable industry. In time, it may be that people will understand how things stand but, at present, we need a more proactive stance to fight this kind of disinformation. That doesn't mean that the Honest Sorcerer and the others should be silenced, not at all, but that we should state more openly, more often, and more clearly, that renewable energy CAN sustain a complex civilisation, and not just that: renewable energy is cheaper, more efficient, less polluting, and better than fossil fuels in all aspects. But it is true that it will never work if we continue believing that it can't.

Idiocracy and Energy: If you forget physics, you'll suffer the consequences

Forgetting about simple physics makes people do stupid and dangerous things. See, for instance, the "water bubble" a fashionable toy. This is NOT a good idea. The concentration of CO2 inside the ball will rapidly rise and if you stay in there for more than a few minutes you'll suffer CO2-generated hypoxia. At the very minimum, you may suffer headaches, vomit, dizziness, and the like. Staying inside for a long time, you might faint (it has happened) or even die (it has not happened, so far, fortunately). The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued an alert in 2011 about these water bubbles, but it seems to have gone unheeded. Unfortunately, until someone suffers brain damage or dies, these dangerous things will remain freely available.  

But it seems that plenty of people don't know the most elementary rules of physics, those, for instance, that rule the functioning of the human metabolism. Look at this:

In 2019, Hyundai produced this image as an ad for their "Nexo" hydrogen car. It was meant as a demonstration that their car produces no harmful gases. Obviously, the image is photoshopped, not the photo of a real test. Remarkably, though, nobody at Hyundai thought that this image shows a risky situation. And no one felt as necessary to add an alert such as "Do not try that at home."

To be fair, if this experiment were done for real, it would not be as dangerous as staying inside a water bubble for a long time. In this case, the flow of the exhaust of the car would remove part of the CO2 in the bubble. Still, it would be a risky experiment, given the small size of the bubble and the high metabolic activity of the running lady. Remarkably, though, this image seems to be understood as a demonstration of what a great idea is the hydrogen car. It still makes the rounds on social media. 

It is always the same problem: not knowing the elementary laws of physics causes you to make stupid and dangerous things, like putting your child inside a plastic bubble, or just stupid things, like buying a hydrogen car.