CleanTechnica Watch will be an ongoing series of articles
that discuss their antinuclear energy
articles, which are typically either republished from other antinuclear energy
sources or written by an assortment of antinuclear guests.
You can think of these articles as a form of public peer
review.
Their policy of hoovering up antinuclear pieces to put on
their website is a convenience for me in that they have become my go-to source
for nuclear energy misinformation material.
In a nutshell, CleanTechnica promotes the belief that the planet can decarbonize without help from nuclear.
Reality Check
The German Energy
Transition
Studies, and there is no shortage of them, have limited
value. As any experienced engineer knows, real world data trumps theoretical
calculation.
Luckily we have the German experiment (often referred to as
the Energiewende or Energy Transition) which has been testing the hypothesis
that a highly motivated, wealthy, industrialized nation can rapidly decarbonize
its electrical grid by displacing nuclear energy with wind and solar.
The experiment isn't complete, but it has already provided a wealth of
real-world data.
Putting the cost into
perspective
The roughly $30 billion dollars being spent annually to
expand wind and solar in Germany could build enough third generation AP 1000
nuclear reactors to fully decarbonize their grid over a ten year period
(similar to what France did decades ago).
$30 billion a year would pay for forty custom built $7.5
billion Generation III AP1000 reactors over ten years.
$30B/year x 10years =
$300B
$300B/$7.5B = 40 AP1000 reactors
Add those to existing reactors and they could supply about
97% of Germany's electricity by 2025.
From the German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy,
second in command to Merkel, who was also the Federal Minister for the
Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety from 2005 to 2009:
I
don’t know any other economy that can bear this burden [$30billion a year]...We
have to make sure that we connect the energy switch to economic success, or at
least not endanger it. Germany must focus on the cheapest clean-energy sources
as well as efficient fossil-fuel-fired plants to stop spiraling power
prices."
While
renewable aid costs are at the “limit” of what the economy can bear, Germany
will keep pushing wind and solar power, the most cost-effective renewable
sources, Gabriel said. Biomass energy is too expensive and its cost structure
hasn’t improved, he said.
Biomass
Growth of biomass essentially stopped when its subsidies were truncated. It
currently provides roughly four percent of Germany's total energy (electricity,
heat, transport) consumption.
Given
the discussion about the sustainability of biomass, the question is therefore
whether the Energiewende itself is sustainable. That’s one reason why the
German government has slammed the brakes on biomass.
Biofuel
There was a time not long ago when many renewable enthusiasts
thought biofuels were going to save the world and diesel cars were all the rage.
Now they think it will be wind and solar.
The
focus is on reducing carbon emissions, but the German biofuels sector itself understands
the change to be a challenge to its own market. In other words, biofuels for
mobility probably do not have a bright future in Germany.
Biogas
Growth of biogas has also ended:
Biogas
additions are to be kept below the replacement rate, meaning that the share of
this electricity will eventually shrink.
Hydroelectric
Hydro electricity output, having little or no growth
potential, is highly dependent on precipitation patterns and has declined for
the last two years to 19.3 TWh after reaching its peak of 23.1 TWh in 2002. It
provides roughly one percent of Germany's total energy (electricity, heat,
transport) consumption. Source: 2016 BP Statistical Review.
Solar
Growth
of solar dropped 90% this year as a result of its subsidy ending. It currently
provides only three percent of Germany's total energy (electricity, heat,
transport) consumption.
And with only one third of those ceilings actually built, the result is
a complete disaster. I recall that Germany used to build 7 GW of solar a year
under a market-based feed-in tariff. Now we get close to nothing.
Onshore Wind
The growth of onshore wind will soon be curtailed with the
removal of its subsidy.
A lot of offshore wind power is to be auctioned off by 2020 regardless
of the share of electricity. The result will be a dramatically shrinking
auction amount for onshore wind power. A back of the envelope calculation
reveals that around 2.0 GW might be the new maximum annually gross – meaning
that decommissioned turbines will not be subtracted.
One
main option for these wind farm operators who cannot rebuild would be to sell
electricity from their old turbines on the wholesale exchange, but both wind
and solar power will make themselves worthless on the wholesale market because prices will drop when most of this
electricity is generated [the Sporadic Power Glut Effect I mention below].
Offshore Wind
Germany
plans to cap the expansion of offshore wind power at the start of the next
decade to ensure the future growth of renewables keeps step with the
construction of new power lines, according to a revision to a new energy law
seen by Reuters.
Source: Germany
to limit offshore wind power
Their goal is 45% renewable electricity (roughly 25% of total energy use) a decade from now, 80% by 2050 (roughly 40% of total energy use).
Their goal is 45% renewable electricity (roughly 25% of total energy use) a decade from now, 80% by 2050 (roughly 40% of total energy use).
But with wind, offshore wind in particular, being the only
renewable source left with significant growth potential, how much further can
Germany decarbonize?
The Wind and Solar
Sporadic Power Glut Effect
When there's too much wind and solar capacity in a grid they
can produce more power than is needed at a given time of day, creating a glut
that can drive the wholesale value of power down to a level that, if it happens
often enough, will eventually lead to fiscal insolvency for power producers. All
power companies have bills to pay. It's simple supply and demand economics. A
rare penny becomes worthless if someone dispenses a billion of them they discovered
in a warehouse. This started out as an economic theory but has since been repeatedly
proven in practice.
Let's gave it a name: Sporadic Power Glut Effect. The only
way out is to limit solar and wind capacity or to add more subsidies.
Can Germany get there from here?
...and if they can, will it only prove that it takes a very wealthy nation with similar wind, water, and sun resources to decarbonize without help from nuclear? Wind and solar combined produce about 20% of German
electricity. If the combination of wind and solar ever reach roughly 40% of
electricity production, the sporadic power glut effect will come into play. At
this point Germany will have replaced roughly 50% of their electricity with
renewables and that will be that. Moreover, if they follow through with replacing
the 14% they get from nuclear with coal, further emissions reductions may never
materialize.
Greenhouse gas
emissions
After decades of progress, CO2 emissions reductions have
stagnated since reaching a low following the 2008 recession.
There is growing concern among some renewables enthusiasts that
Germany
may give it up at the 45% target a decade from now. Why? Because it's just
going to get more expensive to displace fossil fuels without help from nuclear as
the low hanging fruit has already been picked.
Even if they manage to replace 80% of electricity production
with renewables three and a half decades from today, which is looking less and
less likely, about 60% of their total energy would still be coming from fossil
fuels. Wind, solar, hydro, and biomass are going to need a lot of help from
some other low carbon source of energy if we are to displace the $50 trillion
dollars invested in fossil fuels globally.
Conclusions
It's complicated. I happen to live in a city where well over 90% of our electricity comes from renewable energy. It's been that way for decades because it was, and still is, the cheapest way to make electricity. We just happen to be surrounded by mountain streams to dam up. Some places have little water but lots of sun, or wind. Many places have very little of any of those things. The feasibility of using renewables is all about location, location, location. We have no overarching need for nuclear but other places do.
Future low carbon energy grids will, like today, contain
a mix of nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro. And because we don't yet have a
scalable zero carbon energy source that can replace gas powered load following
and peaking power stations, there will also be a need for just enough gas to
stitch all of these sources together. The real value of wind and solar are as
natural gas (or in the case of Germany, coal) power station fuel flow reduction
devices. They can't replace it entirely, but they certainly can reduce fuel use
when the wind blows and/or the sun is shining.
Reducing emissions from the production of electricity garners
most of our attention because decarbonizing energy used for transportation and
heat is even more difficult, and that's where nuclear, especially when used for
both heat and power, is likely to prove most valuable after wind and solar have
reached their economic limits.
Nuclear, wind, and solar should continue to grow in parallel.
We also need to continue preventing the premature closing of existing nuclear power
stations (as has been accomplished in New York and Illinois) by low gas prices and antinuclear groups while also continuing to grow wind
and solar until they have reached their economically feasible percentages
(sporadic power glut effect). And from there, continue to increase use of
nuclear to displace fossil fuels, coal in particular and oil in tandem with
further electrification of transport.
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