Does the development of renewable energies (Solar Power, Wind Power, Hydroelectric Power, Geothermal Energy and Biomass) meet human needs according to expectations? What kind of problems face with ecosystem in the future if we use solar energy alone?
Some enthusiasts believe the world can run on renewable energies alone, but most analysts see that as unlikely in the absence of several miraculous technology developments, at least in the next several decades. Some of the issues include:
1. Most renewables (solar, wind) are intermittent, meaning they cannot be expected to produce power on demand but rather produce it on a resource availability schedule. This requires very large grids with much better energy storage if there are no dispatchable systems to provide reliability.
2. While the total amount of, for example, solar energy falling on the earth's surface is quite large, the realistic logistics of converting renewables to usable energy are difficult in terms of land use and large separations of resource availability from end users.
3. Most renewables contribute electrical power while few contribute to transportation. This can be partially addressed by converting transportation to batteries, but this is a tough problem for heavy load systems (notwithstanding the Tesla announcement) and even more difficult for aviation. Ethanol is a good transportation fuel, but the current processes that produce it have dubious sustainability credentials at best.
4. Renewables have their own environmental and social disadvantages, including land use, increased agriculture (which often is very tough on the environment), competition with food, resource depletion. As examples, most hydro facilities in the US could not be built under current regulation. Hydrothermal systems commonly deplete their resource in the first decade of operation and must move to a new resource, and Denmark (the leading country in wind development) requires that all new wind mills be out of sight (off shore) or replace an existing system because of their visual and psychological impact on people.
5. Cost is less of an issue in that many renewables (wind, solar, goethermal) now compete reaonsably well with fossil fuels, especially if you ignore the intermittancy issue.
Most analysts forsee a future energy infrastructure that includes many different systems, including a significant amount of continued fossil use, with carbon capture systems that address the environmental issues of fossil use.
Some enthusiasts believe the world can run on renewable energies alone, but most analysts see that as unlikely in the absence of several miraculous technology developments, at least in the next several decades. Some of the issues include:
1. Most renewables (solar, wind) are intermittent, meaning they cannot be expected to produce power on demand but rather produce it on a resource availability schedule. This requires very large grids with much better energy storage if there are no dispatchable systems to provide reliability.
2. While the total amount of, for example, solar energy falling on the earth's surface is quite large, the realistic logistics of converting renewables to usable energy are difficult in terms of land use and large separations of resource availability from end users.
3. Most renewables contribute electrical power while few contribute to transportation. This can be partially addressed by converting transportation to batteries, but this is a tough problem for heavy load systems (notwithstanding the Tesla announcement) and even more difficult for aviation. Ethanol is a good transportation fuel, but the current processes that produce it have dubious sustainability credentials at best.
4. Renewables have their own environmental and social disadvantages, including land use, increased agriculture (which often is very tough on the environment), competition with food, resource depletion. As examples, most hydro facilities in the US could not be built under current regulation. Hydrothermal systems commonly deplete their resource in the first decade of operation and must move to a new resource, and Denmark (the leading country in wind development) requires that all new wind mills be out of sight (off shore) or replace an existing system because of their visual and psychological impact on people.
5. Cost is less of an issue in that many renewables (wind, solar, goethermal) now compete reaonsably well with fossil fuels, especially if you ignore the intermittancy issue.
Most analysts forsee a future energy infrastructure that includes many different systems, including a significant amount of continued fossil use, with carbon capture systems that address the environmental issues of fossil use.
I think the previous answer summarizes all the problems can be occurred or expected.
In terms of bio-fuels, they meet the human need to some extent. For instance, there are some companies already blend diesel with small fractions of biodiesel without any modifications to the automotive system. If people would totally rely on bio-fuels for the transportation sector, this however, will lead to more land and water to be needed as mentioned by Larry. It is possible to produce biodiesel from waste cooking oil and from plants that grow without human intervene, and this might a bit address the problem of lands and water.
I totally agree with professor Baxter, the concept of micro grids could be a solution for the future energy needs. Beside the energy demand it should be noted that, Many predictions are taking about the end of oil era in about 2040, by emphasizing on the great progresses in the field of electric and hybrid cars as well as the development of renewable energies. However it should be noted that although electric and hybrid cars are growing rapidly, and they will be the future of transfer, there are several reasons that confirm the need for oil will be continued many years after 2040.
Transformation is only a limited part of oil needs and since the population of the world is growing and the need for energy as well as the production of petrochemicals (such as plastics) are rising, the need for oil will be rising for at least 20 years from now.
Personally, I think the peak point in the rising need for oil in the world will be at least about 20-30 years in the future and although the need for oil for transformation will be decreasing, the need for the petrochemicals will be rising.
A 100% renewable energy supply is possible, but it will need some time to realise it. As sooner we start as earlier we can harvest the benefits of such a transition (http://www.neocarbonenergy.fi/).
At COP23 (6 to 17 November 2017) in Bonn, Germany, various studies were presented about this issue. The 100% RES Platform gives a good overview about the different building blocks necessary (https://go100re.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/100RE-Building-Blocks.pdf).
The earliest transition will happen in the power sector were the economics of RES power is already visible. In 2016, new investments in renewable energy projects (excluding large hydro-electric power plants) were USD 244 billion (EUR 222 billion). This was about double the investments in conventional power projects. The total new installed renewable power capacity (excluding large hydro) increased from 127.5 GW in 2015 to a record of 138.5 GW in 2016 and solar power accounted for over 56 % of this capacity. For 2017 the capacity of new solar PV power projects is expected to reach 100GW. It is worthwhile to mention that this will be about the same capacity installed in one year than the total installed PV capacity at the end of 2012. More info can be found at the annual PV reports of the IEA PVPS programme or the Joint Research Centre.
Definitely, renewable energies (Solar, Wind, Hydroelectric Power, Geothermal and Biomass) meet human needs to help reduce the impacts of the use of fossil fuels in global warming, it is necessary that these clean energies are competitive in the global energy market. But, it is necessary to take advantage of fossil resources in the production of products that support renewable energies, for example we are working on the mineral coal valorization to obtain products such as graphene and graphene quamtum dots that have applications in different fields of renewable energies.
My studies show that renewables lack a technology for storage, daily storage, and long term storage. The Power Wall might suffice for daily storage on a microgrid but the long terms storage problem persists. The only technology at this time to bridge the lack of storage is some nuclear power. It would be best if about half our energ came from renewables and half from nuclear power. There are at least three new nuclear technologies to replace the ones currently in practice which have safety and spent fuel disposal problems. These are addressed with new nuclear designs. More comments are on my web page http://egpreston.com
The economics does not favour nuclear power. Prices of nuclear power plants have continuously increased over the last 60 years.
Have a look at the World nuclear report 2017: (https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/20170912wnisr2017-en-lr.pdf):
"New renewables beat existing nuclear. Renewable energy auctions achieved record low prices at and below US$30/MWh in Chile, Mexico, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Average generating costs of amortized nuclear power plants in the U.S. were US$35.5 in 2015."
Power auctions in 2016 (Saudi Arabia) and 2017 (Mexico) had even lower prices at US$ 17.7/MWh for electricity from solar PV.
Compared to the latest nuclear power project announced in the UK, these prices are only about 15% of the guaranteed strike price of Hinkley point at GBP 92/MWh (without inflation index, which will rise this price even further and guaranteed for 35 years compared to 20 or 25 years for solar).
Concerning the question of storage: 20 years ago nobody believed in the achieved cost reduction of renewable power generation. The same is now true for the development of electricity storage in batteries or solar fuels.
A final word about the societal costs of nuclear waste: As nuclear waste will be with us for many, many years, nobody can really tell the true costs and therefore, they are not factored in any economic calculation.
Citation from the BBC: "Japan's government estimates the cost of cleaning up radioactive contamination and compensating victims of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has more than doubled, reports say. The latest estimate from the trade ministry put the expected cost at some 20 trillion yen ($180bn, £142bn). "
With USD 180 billion one could install about 200GW of solar PV systems in 2017. Or it would be possible to install 450GWh of electricity storage (calculated according to the price of the 100MWh TESLA system in Australia).
The energy cost of renewables must include all ancillary services also. Add them and the system cost skyrockets. Leave out the ancillary services and the grid goes into blackout mode. I've simulated this. You can't just ignore it.
I also agree with Prof.Baxter & Prof. Prestone; some enthusiasts believe run the world with renewable energy and do not account of the grid ancillary cost of handling intermittency. It is good to reduce the burning of fossil fuels for power generation, however, renewable itself has not arrived the status of servicing power generation requirement. Both reliability and affordability are important in power generation. It is possible to show renewable sources are better comparing the sources individually. However, we need to look at how each power generation technology serve in the grid as contingency reserves, controlling, base load, peak load etc.,
In order to better understand the problem I have prepared two load duration curves, one is natural demand, the other is 50% penetration of renewables. Here is the curve http://egpreston.com/LDC.jpg Note that if we add more renewables a lot of energy will have to be dumped and the peak demand still requires a lot of fossil fuels to serve. We can fix this with storage but the storage will need to be an ancilary cost because the capital cost of storage cannot be financed in our market. It will be a very expensive add on cost, as expensive as nuclear power (as stated in the earlier comment).
I don't know why ResearchGate messes up the links. Here is the graph
www.egpreston.com/LDC.jpg showing ERCOT load duration curve and how the curve looks with 50% penetration with wind and solar. Adding more wind and solar is going to require storage which would have to be financed as an ancillary service in ERCOT.
1) What are " skyrocketing" costs? The statement is not a scientific one.
2) Has anyone already calculated the societal costs - those costs not paid by the ratepayer, but all citizens - of nuclear waste or burning fossil fuels?
3) Costs for "grid" integration of renewable energy sources are only relevant in such countries, which actually have a grid. And those grids were build for centralised power generation. However, if no grid exists yet, the issue is a different one.
4) Technological and economic developments:
It is well known that Thomas Alva Edison build the first electricity distribution system based on DC in the early 1880s. He was opposing the AC technology, but at the end of 1892 was forced to leave his own company General Electric, which was merged with Thomson-Houston to be able to compete with Westinghouse for the more lukrative and growing AC market.
- Badges
- Science topic