Thursday, April 30, 2015

Devilish Details

I'm seeing
Puzzling evidence
     -Talking Heads

Who would have thought...?
It figures
     _Alanis Morissette

Greetings 
     Tip O'Neil once is said "All politics is local."  Perhaps the same might be said of energy.  For instance , it is well recognized that any benefits of driving an eletric car will depend on the fuel used to generate the electricity.  See PNAS study : here.   So, if if you fill up in a state that relies mainly on coal, driving your EV may be worse than your old  ICE.  On the other hand if you live in hydro heavy northwest, you will see some environmental benefit.

       How about the environmental benefits of solar panels?   The article below  here (h/t Ben) , provides an interesting analysis of pv panels.  The author reasons that  there are several factors that need to be considered :  The energy that goes into the panels. the energy required to transport it to where it is used, and the solar influx of the location where it is used .  

     Most  PV panels are made in China  (87%!), which has a notoriously dirty energy system.  They are shipped around the world, and may end up in a country with less than optimal sunny-ness.  Like Germany  (or Oregon).  The author  suggest that in such a scenario, you would still get some benefit - but much lower than advertised.   Here, he calculates the impacts , without transportation.

 "If solar modules manufactured in China are installed in Germany, then the carbon footprint increases to about 120 gCO2e/kWh for both mono- and multi-si -- which makes solar PV only 3.75 times less carbon-intensive than natural gas, not 15 times."  


     The author takes the analysis one step further, by analyzing the growth rate of the PV systems.  As we know, the carbon impact of a PV system is "front loaded" in the early years.  Thus there is a "burp" of CO2 at the beginning,  and the system is in carbon "debt" for a number of years while it is off setting grid power.  With an individual panel, the debt is paid off in the later years.  However in a growing industry, the payback from the early panel is swamped by the debt of  manufacture of the later panels.    The author attempts to look at this factor across the industry using "dynamic life cycle analysis"    He notes:

"This means that the net CO2 balance of solar PV was negative for the period 1998-2008. Solar PV power was growing too fast to be sustainable, and the aggregate of solar panels actually increased GHG emissions and energy use. According to the paper, the net CO2 emissions of the solar PV industry during those 10 years accounted to 800,000 tonnes of CO2. [16] These figures take into account the fact that, as a consequence of a cleaner grid and better manufacturing processes, the production of solar PV panels becomes more energy efficient and less carbon-intensive over time.

       This is kind of an odd result.   For now, we may actually be digging the hole deeper, while we think we are making things better.  Do we ever get out of carbon debt?    Presumably, once all the needed PV's are installed.  But , pretty soon we have start doing it all over, as the current PV's degrade and we have to replace them.  
       He does suggest  one possible way out.

"By carefully selecting the locations for production and installation we could improve the sustainability of solar PV power in a spectacular way. For PV modules produced in countries with low-carbon energy grids -- such as France, Norway, Canada or Belgium -- and installed in countries with high insolation and carbon-intensive grids -- such as China, India, the Middle East or Australia -- greenhouse gas emissions can be as low as 6-9 gCO2/kWh of generated electricity. [16] [20] [14-15] That's 13 to 20 times less CO2 per kWh than solar PV cells manufactured in China and installed in Germany. [25]

            When we consider "green power" it is easy to forget the industrial economy that is needed for its development, manufacture, installations, and operation.  For an interesting tour of the various industries behind PV panels - Take a look here

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How Sustainable is PV Solar Power?

How sustainable is pv solar powerSolar photovoltaic (PV) systems generate "free" electricity from sunlight, but manufacturing them is an energy-intensive process.
It's generally assumed that it only takes a few years before solar panels have generated as much energy as it took to make them, resulting in very low greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional grid electricity.
However, the studies upon which this assumption is based are written by a handful of researchers who arguably have a positive bias towards solar PV. A more critical analysis shows that the cumulative energy and CO2 balance of the industry is negative, meaning that solar PV has actually increased energy use and greenhouse gas emissions instead of lowering them.
This doesn't mean that the technology is useless. It's just that our approach is wrong. By carefully selecting the location of the manufacturing and the installation of solar panels, the potential of solar power could be huge. We have to rethink the way we use and produce solar energy systems on a global scale.
Picture: Jonathan Potts.


There's nothing but good news about solar energy these days. The average global price of PV panels has plummeted by more than 75% since 2008, and this trend is expected to continue in the coming years, though at a lower rate. [1-2] According to the 2015 solar outlook by investment bank Deutsche Bank, solar systems will be at grid parity in up to 80% of the global market by the end of 2017, meaning that PV electricity will be cost-effective compared to electricity from the grid. [3-4]
Lower costs have spurred an increase in solar PV installments. According to the Renewables 2014 Global Status Report, a record of more than 39 gigawatt (GW) of solar PV capacity was added in 2013, which brings total (peak) capacity worldwide to 139 GW at the end of 2013. While this is not even enough to generate 1% of global electricity demand, the growth is impressive. Almost half of all PV capacity in operation today was added in the past two years (2012-2013). [5] In 2014, an estimated 45 GW was added, bringing the total to 184 GW. [6] [4].
Solar PV total global capacitySolar PV total global capacity, 2004-2013. Source: Renewables 2014 Global Status Report.
Meanwhile, solar cells are becoming more energy efficient, and the same goes for the technology used to manufacture them. For example, the polysilicon content in solar cells -- the most energy-intensive component -- has come down to 5.5-6.0 grams per watt peak (g/wp), a number that will further decrease to 4.5-5.0 g/wp in 2017. [2] Both trends have a positive effect on the sustainability of solar PV systems. According to the latest life cycle analyses, which measure the environmental impact of solar panels from production to decommission, greenhouse gas emissions have come down to around 30 grams of CO2-equivalents per kilwatt-hour of electricity generated (gCO2e/kWh), compared to 40-50 grams of CO2-equivalents ten years ago. [7-11] [12]
According to these numbers, electricity generated by photovoltaic systems is 15 times less carbon-intensive than electricity generated by a natural gas plant (450 gCO2e/kWh), and at least 30 times less carbon-intensive than electricity generated by a coal plant (+1,000 gCO2e/kWh). The most-cited energy payback times (EPBT) for solar PV systems are between one and two years. It seems that photovoltaic power, around since the 1970s, is finally ready to take over the role of fossil fuels.
Manufacturing has Moved to China
Unfortunately, a critical review of the PV solar industry paints a very different picture. Many commenters attribute the plummeting cost of solar PV to more efficient manufacturing processes and scale economies. However, if we look at the graph below, we see that the decline in costs accelerates sharply from 2009 onwards. This acceleration has nothing to do with more efficient manufacturing processes or a technological breakthrough. Instead, it's the consequence of moving almost the entire PV manufacturing industry from western countries to Asian countries, where labour and energy are cheaper and where environmental restrictions are more loose.
Less than 10 years ago, almost all solar panels were produced in Europe, Japan, and the USA. In 2013, Asia accounted for 87% of global production (up from 85% in 2012), with China producing 67% of the world total (62% in 2012). Europe's share continued to fall, to 9% in 2013 (11% in 2012), while Japan's share remained at 5% and the US share was only 2.6%. [5]
Price of silicon solar cells wikipedia
Compared to Europe, Japan and the USA, the electric grid in China is about twice as carbon-intensive and about 50% less energy efficient. [13-15] Because the manufacture of solar PV cells relies heavily on the use of electricity (for more than 95%) [16], this means that in spite of the lower prices and the increasing efficiency, the production of solar cells has become more energy-intensive, resulting in longer energy payback times and higher greenhouse gas emissions. The geographical shift in manufacturing has made almost all life cycle analyses of solar PV panels obsolete, because they are based on a scenario of domestic manufacturing, either in Europe or in the United States.
LCA of Solar Panels Manufactured in China
We could find only one study that investigates the manufacturing of solar panels in China, and it's very recent. In 2014, a team of researchers performed a comparative life cycle analysis between domestic and overseas manufacturing scenarios, taking into account geographic diversity by utilizing localized inventory data for processes and materials. [13] In the domestic manufacturing scenario, silicon PV modules (mono-si with 14% efficiency and multi-si with 13.2% efficiency) are made and installed in Spain. In the overseas manufacturing scenario, the panels are made in China and installed in Spain.
For solar panels manufactured in China, the carbon footprint and the energy payback time are almost doubled
Compared to the domestic manufacturing scenario, the carbon footprint and the energy payback time are almost doubled in the overseas manufacturing scenario. The carbon footprint of the modules made in Spain (which has a cleaner grid than the average in Europe) is 37.3 and 31.8 gCO2e/kWh for mono-si and multi-si, respectively, while the energy payback times are 1.9 and 1.6 years. However, for the modules made in China, the carbon footprint is72.2 and 69.2 gCO2e/kWh for mono-si and multi-si, respectively, while the energy payback times are 2.4 and 2.3 years. [13]
Carbon footprints solar cells produced in china and europe
At least as important as the place of manufacturing is the place of installation. Almost all LCAs -- including the one that deals with manufacturing in China -- assume a solar insolation of 1,700 kilowatt-hour per square meter per year (kWh/m2/yr), typical of Southern Europe and the southwestern USA. If solar modules manufactured in China are installed in Germany, then the carbon footprint increases to about 120 gCO2e/kWh for both mono- and multi-si -- which makes solar PV only 3.75 times less carbon-intensive than natural gas, not 15 times.
Considering that at the end of 2014, Germany had more solar PV installed than all Southern European nations combined, and twice as much as the entire United States, this number is not a worst-case scenario. It reflects the carbon intensity of most solar PV systems installed between 2009 and 2014. More critical researchers had already anticipated these results. A 2010 study refers to the 2008 consensus figure of 50 gCO2e/kWh mentioned above, and adds that "in less sunny locations, or in carbon-intensive economies, these emissions can be up to 2-4 times higher". [17] Taking the more recent figure of 30 gCO2e/kWh as a starting point, which reflects improvements in solar cell and manufacturing efficiency, this would be 60-120 gCO2e/kWh, which corresponds neatly with the numbers of the 2014 study.
Solar insolation in europe
Solar insolation in north america
Solar insolation in Europe and the USA. Source: SolarGIS.
These results don't include the energy required to ship the solar panels from China to Europe. Transportation is usually ignored in LCAs of solar panels that assume domestic production, which would make comparisons difficult. Furthermore, energy requirements for transportation are very case-specific. It should also be kept in mind that these results are based on a solar PV lifespan of 30 years. This might be over-optimistic, because the relocation of manufacturing to China has been associated with a decrease in the quality of PV solar panels. [18] Research has shown that the percentage of defective or under-performing PV cells has risen substantially in recent years, which could have a negative influence on the lifespan of the average solar panel, decreasing its sustainability.
Energy Cannibalism
Solar PV electricity remains less carbon-intensive than conventional grid electricity, even when solar cells are manufactured in China and installed in countries with relatively low solar insolation. This seems to suggest that solar PV remains a good choice no matter where the panels are produced or installed. However, if we take into account the growth of the industry, the energy and carbon balance can quickly turn negative. That's because at high growth rates, the energy and CO2 savings made by the cumulative installed capacity of solar PV systems can be cancelled out by the energy use and CO2 emissions from the production of new installed capacity. [16] [19-20]
At high growth rates, the energy and CO2 savings made by the cumulative installed capacity of solar PV systems can be cancelled out by the energy use and CO2 emissions from the production of new installed capacity
A life cycle analysis that takes into account the growth rate of solar PV is called a "dynamic" life cycle analysis, as opposed to a "static" LCA, which looks only at an individual solar PV system. The two factors that determine the outcome of a dynamic life cycle analysis are the growth rate on the one hand, and the embodied energy and carbon of the PV system on the other hand. If the growth rate or the embodied energy or carbon increases, so does the "erosion" or "cannibalization" of the energy and CO2 savings made due to the production of newly installed capacity. [16]
For the deployment of solar PV systems to grow while remaining net greenhouse gas mitigators, they must grow at a rate slower than the inverse of their CO2 payback time. [19] For example, if the average energy and CO2 payback times of a solar PV system are four years and the industry grows at a rate of 25%, no net energy is produced and no greenhouse gas emissions are offset. [19] If the growth rate is higher than 25%, the aggregate of solar PV systems actually becomes a net CO2 and energy sink. In this scenario, the industry expands so fast that the energy savings and GHG emissions prevented by solar PV systems are negated to fabricate the next wave of solar PV systems. [20]
The CO2 Balance of Solar PV
Several studies have undertaken a dynamic life cycle analysis of renewable energy technologies. The results -- which are valid for the period between 1998 and 2008 -- are very sobering for those that have put their hopes on the carbon mitigation potential of solar PV power. A 2009 paper, which takes into account the geographical distribution of global solar PV installations, sets the maximum sustainable annual growth rate at 23%, while the actual average annual growth rate of solar PV between 1998 and 2008 was 40%. [16] [21]
5241805533_88dc0e75a8_z
This means that the net CO2 balance of solar PV was negative for the period 1998-2008. Solar PV power was growing too fast to be sustainable, and the aggregate of solar panels actually increased GHG emissions and energy use. According to the paper, the net CO2 emissions of the solar PV industry during those 10 years accounted to 800,000 tonnes of CO2. [16] These figures take into account the fact that, as a consequence of a cleaner grid and better manufacturing processes, the production of solar PV panels becomes more energy efficient and less carbon-intensive over time.
Between 2009 and 2014, solar PV grew four times too fast to be sustainable
The sustainability of solar PV has further deteriorated since 2008. On the one hand, industry growth rates have accelerated. Solar PV grew on average by 59% per year between 2008 and 2014, compared to an annual growth rate of 40% between 1998 and 2008 . [5] On the other hand, manufacturing has become more carbon-intensive. For its calculations of the CO2 balance in 2008, the study discussed above considers the carbon intensity of production worldwide to be 500 gCO2e/kWh. In 2013, with 87% of the production in Asia, this number had risen to about 950 gCO2e/kWh, which halves the maximum sustainable growth rate to about 12%.
If we also take into account the changes in geographic distribution of solar panels, with an increasing percentage installed in regions with higher solar insolation, the maximum sustainable growth rate increases to about 16%. [23-24] Although more recent research is not available, it's obvious that the CO2 emissions of the solar PV industry have further increased during the period 2009-2014. If we would consider all solar panels in the world as one large energy generating plant, it would not have generated any net energy or CO2-savings.
The Solution: Rethink the Manufacture and Use of Solar PV
Obviously, the net CO2 balance of solar PV could be improved by limiting the growth of the industry, but that would be undesirable. If we want solar PV to become important, it has to grow fast. Therefore, it's much more interesting to focus on lowering the embodied energy of solar PV power systems, which automatically results in higher sustainable growth rates. The shorter the energy and CO2 payback times, the faster the industry can grow without becoming a net producer of CO2.
Annual net CO2 balance at different growth rates solar PV
Annual net CO2 balance of the crystalline silicon PV industry at different growth rates for different combinations of countries of production and installation. Source: Briner 2009.
Embodied energy and CO2 will gradually decrease because of technological advances such as higher solar cell efficiencies and more efficient manufacturing techniques, and also as a consequence of the recycling of solar panels, which is not yet a reality. However, what matters most is where solar panels are manufactured, and where they are installed. The location of production and installation is a decisive factor because there are three parameters in a life cycle analysis that are location dependent: the carbon intensity of the electricity used in production, the carbon intensity of the displaced electricity mix at the place of installation, and the solar insolation in the place of installation. [16]
By carefully selecting the locations for production and installation we could improve the sustainability of solar PV power in a spectacular way. For PV modules produced in countries with low-carbon energy grids -- such as France, Norway, Canada or Belgium -- and installed in countries with high insolation and carbon-intensive grids -- such as China, India, the Middle East or Australia -- greenhouse gas emissions can be as low as 6-9 gCO2/kWh of generated electricity. [16] [20] [14-15] That's 13 to 20 times less CO2 per kWh than solar PV cells manufactured in China and installed in Germany. [25]
Sustainable growth rates of 300-460% are possible when PV modules are produced in countries with low-carbon energy grids and installed in countries with high insolation and carbon-intensive grids
This would allow sustainable growth rates of up to 300-460%, far above what's even necessary. If solar PV would grow on average at a rate of 100% per year, it would take less than 10 years to meet today's electricity's demand. If it would grow at the 16% maximum sustainable growth rate we calculated above, meeting today's electricity demand would take until 2045 -- with no net CO2 savings. By that time, according to the forecasts, total global electricity demand will have more than doubled. [26]
Of course, producing and installing solar panels in the right places implies international cooperation and a sound economic system, none of which exist. Manufacturing solar panels in Europe or the USA would also make them more expensive again, while many countries with the right conditions for solar don't have the money to install them in large amounts.
CO2 mitigation potential of PV produced in china
CO2 mitigation potential for crystalline silicon PV modules produced in China and installed in different countries. Source: Briner 2009.
An alternative solution is using on-site generation from renewables to meet a greater proportion of the electricity demand of PV manufacturing facilities -- which can also happen in a country with a carbon-intensive grid. For example, if the electricity for the manufacturing of solar cells would be supplied by other solar cells, then the greenhouse emissions of solar PV systems could be reduced by 50-70%, depending on where they are produced (Europe or the USA). [7] In China, this decrease in CO2 emissions would even be greater.
In yet another scenario, we could dedicate nuclear plants exclusively to the manufacture of solar cells. Because nuclear is less carbon-intensive than PV solar, this sounds like the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to start producing a massive amount of solar cells without raising energy use and greenhouse emissions. But don't underestimate the task ahead. A 1 GW nuclear power plant can produce about 11 million square metres of solar panels per year, which corresponds to 1.66 GWp of solar power (based on the often cited average number of 150 w/m2). We would have needed 24 nuclear plants -- or 1 in 20 atomic plants worldwide -- working full-time to produce the solar panels manufactured in 2013. [27]
What About Storage?
Why does the production of solar PV requires so much energy? Because the low power density -- several orders of magnitude below fossil fuels -- and the intermittency of solar power require a much larger energy infrastructure than fossil fuels do. It's important to realize that the intermittency of solar power is not taken into account in our analysis. Solar power is not always available, which means that we need a backup-source of power or a storage system to jump in when the need is there. This component is usually not considered in LCAs of solar PV, even though it has a large influence on the sustainability of solar power.
E3DC_A_S10_seitlich_weissStorage is no longer an academic question because several manufacturers -- most notably Tesla -- are pushing lithium-ion battery storage as an alternative for a grid-connected solar PV system. Lithium-ion batteries are more compact and technically superior to the lead-acid batteries commonly used in off-grid solar systems. Furthermore, the disincentivation of  grid-connected solar systems in a growing number of countries makes off-grid systems more attractive.
In the next article, we investigate the sustainability of a PV-system with a lithium-ion battery. Meanwhile, enjoy the sun and stay tuned.
Kris De Decker (edited by Aaron Vansintjan)

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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Ecce Homo


I am the man who 
brought you the yo-yo
     -Joe Jackson

Can't be a man 
if he doesn't smoke
the same cigarettes as me
      -Mick Jagger


Greetings

     Happy Earth Day!  (a little late).   Back in the days when Earth Day was a new idea, environmentalists could look around and see "mother nature on the run".   Their goal then was to get humans to back off, and let nature do its thing.  After all, nature had been doing so for millions of years, and it seems to have worked out.

   That was then.    Then Bill McKibben wrote "The End of Nature", and someone coined the term "anthropecene".   Nature was no longer doing its thing alone  we were "helping"..  

     What's next?  The "Eco modernist Manifesto" of course!    Below Clive Hamilton, an Australian philosopher , who incidentally wrote an excellent book "  Requiem For a Species, examine the "manifesto" and the "post environmental" movement.  something you are going to hear a lot more about, as it is a well funded, gee wiz, "technology can fix anything", type of philosophy that appeals to our optimistic  "can do" culture..   And its got a lot of money behind it.
     
           While Hamilton rightly turns away from this absurdity, he seems to fall into the arms of another absurd idea - endless growth.   He suggests we adopt the view of the IPCC  which ( though it's own technological magic - CCS ),  offers a vision of continued economic growth of 2%.     The IPCC'S version of "green growth"  may be preferable to putting all our faith in future developments in nuclear power,  but it maintains the same self contradictory goal - endless growth.    
As George Monbiot put it, here
"The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth’s living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence. As a result they are mentioned almost nowhere. They are the 21st Century’s great taboo, the subjects guaranteed to alienate your friends and neighbours. We live as if trapped inside a Sunday supplement: obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle class conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic that demands our attention.
"Statements of the bleeding obvious, the outcomes of basic arithmetic, are treated as exotic and unpardonable distractions, while the impossible proposition by which we live is regarded as so sane and normal and unremarkable that it isn’t worthy of mention. That’s how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it.

For a more fully developed view of degrowth see  here
             But logic rarely moves politics.   Money does.  As  Hamilton points out, the Break through Institute has strong monied  advocates. (Exxon, Koch, and the American Enterprise Institute)    The IPCC,  similarly reflect to the mainstream economic  credo " growth is not just good - it is the highest good "  .  And where is the profit in degrowth?
Once again , here' s Monbiot (I think)
Capitalism can sell many things, but it can't sell "less".
   
----

from here

The Technofix Is In: A critique of “An Ecomodernist Manifesto” 
The world’s best scientists are warning that the world is warming inexorably, the oceans are becoming acidic and have turned into a “plastic soup,” and we are in the middle of the kind of mass extinction event not seen on the planet in millions of years. But don’t worry — a new breed of environmentalists has just released a manifesto declaring that, with a little faith in technology, humanity can move into a “great” new century of prosperity and universal human dignity on a thriving planet. How can this be?
For some years the California-based Breakthrough Institute has been vigorously promoting what it claims to be a new “post-environmentalism,” one highly critical of the mainstream environment movement and no longer wedded to the verities of the past.
In a much-discussed 2004 article, “The Death of Environmentalism,” the Institute’s founders, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, argued that mainstream greens had become too professionalised and insular. Caught up in Beltway politics, Big Green failed to recognize that the American political landscape had shifted well to the right. Their messages no longer cut through, and environmentalism needed a bold new vision to inspire citizens.
So far so good. But the bold new vision turned out not to be one calling for a far-reaching shake-up, but the opposite — collaborating with the same conservatives that Shellenberger and Nordhaus said had been winning the battle.
The institute maintains a determinedly optimistic view of the world, although the bright facade frequently veils a rancor directed against other environmentalists. This rancor perhaps explains some of its baffling policy stances.
The institute frequently attacks renewable energy and energy efficiency, at times with a highly tendentious use of data. For an organization concerned about spiraling greenhouse gas emissions, it’s hard to work out why the group is so dismissive, except as a way of differentiating itself from mainstream environmentalism. Conversely, it vigorously promotes nuclear power, also deploying data and arguments in a misleading way.
Nuclear power has become an obsession for the institute, a kind of signifier by which players in the environmental debate are allocated to the “good guys” box or the “bad guys” box. In a perfect example of mimesis, the dogmatic stance of some anti-nuclear campaigners is reflected back by these pro-nuclear campaigners.
Describing themselves as “ecomodernists,” those gathered around The Breakthrough Institute are not anti-science; they are after all ecomodernists. But in order to maintain their belief in a bright new future, they must find ways to temper or reinterpret the increasingly dire warnings from the world’s scientists. The preferred strategy is to scan the world for good news stories and from them create an alternative perceptual reality. (The recently launched “Bright Spots” is a similar approach.)
And this has led them to their most audacious declaration to date: the publication, last week, of what they are calling An Ecomodernist Manifesto, a self-consciously provocative attempt to make sense of what some scientists are calling “the Anthropocene,” or the Age of Humans. In the end, however, the manifesto’s faith in technological breakthroughs means it substitutes a kind of Californian positivity for the hard reality of climate politics. As a roadmap out of our ecological and social predicaments it leads us nowhere.
But before I go any further, first some background to understand how we got here.
Anthropocene: good or bad?
When Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the term “the Anthropocene” in the year 2000, he was expressing his frustration at the inability of his fellow scientists to see that human activity has changed the Earth System, not just on its surface, but in fundamental ways. We have become so powerful, he argued, that we now rival the great forces of nature, to the point where we have disturbed the functioning of the planet as a whole.
In saying that Earth had passed out of the Holocene epoch and into the Anthropocene, Crutzen mostly expressed anxiety about the effect of carbon emissions and the unfolding catastrophe of climate change. It was global warming above all that he identified as the central process driving Earth into a new and dangerous epoch.
Yet as the scientific debate about the Anthropocene unfolded, some associated with The Breakthrough Institute began to reframe it in an unexpected way. If we live on an Earth dominated by humans, they reasoned, why not embrace our role as “the God species”? If humans have become the dominant force, why not extend our domination and turn it to the good rather than pull back?
The ecomoderns believe that human beings are not destructive creatures — and certainly not sinful ones as some greens imply — but creative, ingenious and basically well-meaning. If it is our destiny to inherit Earth, then the arrival of the Anthropocene is the fulfilment of that destiny.
One scientist close to The Breakthrough Institute, landscape ecologist Erle Ellis, began to do what no one had anticipated. He started to put the word “good” next to the word “Anthropocene.” He wrote of humanity’s transition to a higher level of planetary significance as “an amazing opportunity” and of how “we will be proud of the planet we create in the Anthropocene.”
For many, this was a jaw-dropping reframing of Anthropocene science. But for conservative environmentalists, like the influential Andrew Revkin at The New York Times, the “good Anthropocene” neatly reversed the dispiriting message of a collapsing Earth system, and so it had immediate appeal. (You can find more of Revkin’s thoughts on the Anthropocene here and here.)
There are facts and there are interpretations put on facts, and sometimes the most robust facts cannot penetrate the defensive walls of the determined optimist. Voltaire satirized Leibniz’s belief “that good ultimately will prevail in the world” in Candide (published in 1759 and subtitled l’Optimisme). But neither the harshest facts nor the sharpest satire can dissuade those determined to declare, “Well, I’m an optimist.”
In the hands of the ecomodernists, optimism isn’t used as a torch to light the way forward, but rather as a cudgel with which to beat intellectual opponents into submission — because, especially in the United States, to be less than optimistic is to be, in a way, un-American. The ecomodernists have been trying to achieve a monopoly on optimism as a way of winning the debate about how to balance human interests with the needs of wild nature. In the end, it doesn’t work, as the relentless optimism in their manifesto comes across as detached and dreamy, and blind to the hard truths of political combat.
A new manifesto
Many were aghast that people claiming to be environmentalists could so misread the science of climate change as to append “good” to “Anthropocene.” How can a happy future be conjured from the devastation that will be visited on millions of people by global warming, much of which is already locked in to the climate system?
Undeterred, and as if emboldened by the dismay, The Breakthrough Institute has now gone one better. An Ecomodernist Manifesto, signed by 18 “scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens” associated with the institute, is not satisfied with proclaiming that we can look forward to a good Anthropocene. The manifesto declares that we are entering a great Anthropocene.
What force can turn a gloomy prognosis into a golden future? The answer, of course, is technology. The manifesto’s authors are convinced that “knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.”
For those who believe we must embrace low-emissions technology (i.e. all of us who recognize the reality of anthropogenic climate change) the manifesto is oddly selective, dismissing many large-scale renewable energy technologies (especially wind power and biomass), and taking a skeptical view of solar energy’s potential.
And so the manifesto returns to the ecomoderns’ peculiar obsession: only nuclear power can give us climate stabilization. But, the authors concede, the nuclear industry is flat on its face in most places, so we must wait for the next generation of nuclear fission (or even fusion!) plants, before which opposition will surely melt away. In the meantime, we will need to build more hydroelectric dams and construct “fossil fuel plants with carbon capture and storage” technology.
Here the ability to set aside science is on full display. The manifesto does not say how long we will need to wait for the next generation of nuclear plants, or how much of the global carbon budget will be used up while we cool our heels. Perhaps it might take 20 years for the first plants to be built, and 40 before they are making a large dent in global emissions. By then the planet will be, in Christine Lagard’s arresting phrase, “roasted, toasted, fried and grilled,” and there will be no way to rescue the situation.
If we must wait a long time for the solution, the standby of carbon capture and storage is almost as speculative. Even “clean coal’s” boosters accept that the technology will not be cutting global emissions significantly for two or three decades.
Those who signed the manifesto must “know” all this, so their stance can only be described as a form of denial or at least evasion, one that selectively permits certain facts through the optimo-filter while blocking or downplaying others.
Politics gone missing
The ecomoderns’ techno-fetishism is possible only because they don’t think about politics. It is true that thinking about the politics of climate change is depressing. For those who “embrace an optimistic view toward human capacities and the future,” the easiest path is to ignore the messy world of politics and focus one’s gaze on humankind’s amazing technological achievements.
And so in the manifesto, which tells a story of how we got here and where we should go, there is no mention of the forces, national and international, that have given us rising carbon dioxide concentrations, acidifying oceans and all the rest. We look in vain to find reference to the proven power of corporations and lobbyists to stop environmental laws, or to the total victory of money politics in the United States, now entrenched after Citizens United. Exxon and organized denialism do not appear even between the lines.
For the ecomoderns, the story of the past and the story of the future revolve around one thing: “Meaningful climate mitigation is fundamentally a technological challenge.” It’s an entire historiography in which the human relationship to the natural world depends essentially on human ingenuity and entrepreneurship. It is not kings, presidents, proletarians or generals who make history — but rather scientists, inventors and engineers, and it is they who will save us.
It’s a Silicon Valley view of the world, one of heroic inventors like Steve Jobs, who disrupt the old and bring in the new to improve our lives. This position is a defense of the status quo and is the same one argued by those who have resisted all climate protection legislation that would disrupt the structure of power, not least in the coal lobby’s appeal to the pipe dream of “clean coal.”
If you believe that solving the climate change problem “is fundamentally a technological challenge,” then we are in this mess not because of the power of the fossil fuel lobby, not because of the influence of the campaign of denial, not because of money politics, not because persuading consumers to accept a price on carbon seems too hard, and not because getting international cooperation has been fraught. No, we are in this mess because technology has not evolved quickly enough to avoid it.
Yet no one involved in the climate change debate can be unaware that the technologies to sharply reduce global emissions have been available for a long time. Nor can they be unaware that for at least 15 years every study of the economics of transforming the energy economies of nations like the United States shows that the cost to GDP would extremely small. An exhaustive assessment in the latest IPCC report has been summarized like this:
Ambitious climate protection would cost only 0.06 percentage points of growth each year. This means that instead of a growth rate of about 2 percent per year, we would see a growth rate of 1.94 percent per year. Thus economic growth would merely continue at a slightly slower pace.
The roadblock to climate mitigation has never been technological. Nor has it been economic. It has been political. The ecomoderns’ claim that we must wait for new technologies to make serious mitigation possible is not merely untrue, it is irresponsible.
The technofix is in
An Ecomodernist Manifesto does not offer a new way out of the climate morass, but only a warmed-over version of the old-fashioned American technofix. Politics has gone AWOL in it. The only place politics intrudes is where the manifesto bewails social and institutional obstacles to the further spread of nuclear power. So it is the greens who bring politics to the climate debate! This is not an accidental slip, for The Breakthrough Institute gives the impression of being motivated less by the vision of a great future on a human-regulated Earth than by animosity towards other environmentalists.
Predictably, the manifesto has been greeted with enthusiasm by various purveyors of climate science denial, like the National Review, the Fraser Institute and, in Australia, the Murdoch media’s chief promoter of climate denial and denigrator of renewables (the Australian’s Graham Lloyd.)
We cannot be held responsible for the supporters our ideas attract. Yet in pursuit of its bold new vision, The Breakthrough Institute has allied itself with some unsavory characters, like the American Enterprise Institute which has been active in promoting climate science denial and has been partly funded by Exxon and the Koch Brothers. Is this the “post-partisan politics” foreshadowed by “The Death of Environmentalism”? If so, it’s a tarnished vision and reflects The Breakthrough Institute’s self-defeating policy of cozying up to environmentalism’s natural enemies and alienating its most stalwart friends.
Disagreement within the broad coalition that is the environment movement is not only inevitable, but desirable, and that includes disputing the pros and cons of nuclear power. But one thing we all ought to agree on is the basic science of climate change, and any reasonable reading rules out a rosy view of what the Anthropocene holds in store for us.

Clive Hamilton is the author of Earthmasters: The dawn of the age of climate engineering (Yale University Press) and Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change (Earthscan), among other books. He is professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra.

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Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Leading a horse to water


It's getting better all the time
Can't get no worse
     - Beatles
Don't turn on the lights
cause I don't wanna see
     _Randy Newman  (Momma told me not to come)

Greetings
      We've all seen the headlines about how cheap wind and solar are, and how they are growing by leaps and bounds.   Surely they will overtake fossil fuels soon!   Bloomberg Reports "Fossil Fuels Just Lost the Race Against Renewables"    Michael Klare reports that its a "Renewable Revolution" 
   It all sounds pretty exciting.  With all this cheap renewable energy, businesses and utilities are bound to switch.   Right?    
       Of, course we would all welcome a renewable revolution - one where renewables  were a substitute for fossil fuels, one that would result in a reduction of CO2.   But its not clear this this " revolution"  is quite living up to those hopes.    Its true that renewables are getting cheaper, and they are getting installed at breakneck speed.    And that';s been true for the last ten to fifteen years.  But the results are less stunning.   In 2000, renewables amounted to 13% of total world energy use.    And that is about what it is today.(2013 data)       So  the tremendous growth in solar and wind has not displaced the burning of fossil fuels, . but merely supplemented them.   This is of course confirmed by the growth in CO2 emmissions  
      One reason is that renewables are mainly focus in electricity generation, which is only 40% of the energy use.   Transportation and industrial use has had little impact from renewables.   But even looking electrical generation ,   fossil fuel generated power continues to grow ( US).
     OK, so its still early in the game.,  Renewables are growing at exponential rates.  At some point they will  break out and  take over  from fossil fuels?   Perhaps,  but it may take a lot longer than than we'd like .  Smil suggests that, if history is any guide, it will take 50-60 years.  Here's another interesting piece from Nature suggesting some " laws of energy transitions" , which describes the likely trajectory. They suggest that new energy systems initially have an exponential growth rate, but that it soon turns into a straight line.   The authors also suggest the underlying cause.  Basically, it's the problem of " stranded assets".  Large energy users may be willing to buy renewables once the old devices break down.  But as long as the old coal fired furnace still works, they are not willing to swap it out.
     This makes some sense.   Imagine you have an ICE car.  Now an electric car comes on the market.   Even if the the electric will save money over the long run, you may not buy it.  Why shell out all that money, when the ICE runs fine?   Now, imagine your ICE is an energy system that costs hundreds of thousands, and is designed to last 25 years.   A tax incentive may help you decide which system to buy, once you are in the market.  But its less likely to move you into the market in the first place.
      All this suggests that a "supply side" approach has its limits, and won't get us where we need to go.  We need a reduced  demand for fossil fuels. not merely an incre4ased supply of renewables.          
   Below  (and here ), Brad Plummer explains further. 

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Clean energy is growing fast — but it's not yet winning the race against fossil fuels



For decades, fossil fuels have provided the vast, vast majority of the world's energy. But in recent years, cleaner sources like wind and solar have been growing at an astonishingly rapid clip.
So a lot of people are keenly interested in when we might hit a tipping point. When will clean energy start growing faster than fossil fuels? This week, Bloomberg declared we've already hit that point: "Fossil Fuels Just Lost the Race Against Renewables." That's stirred a lot of excitement.
Unfortunately, that headline isn't quite right. Clean energy isn't winning the race against fossil fuels. Not yet. And it's worth exploring in more detail why this is wrong — to better understand just how massive a task it will be to clean up the world's energy supply and avoid significant global warming.

This chart, showing clean energy winning, omits a few things...

Bloomberg's key piece of evidence is a chart from Bloomberg New Energy Finance showing that countries around the world added more electric generating capacity from hydropower, nuclear, solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal in 2013 than they did from oil, gas, and coal:
(Bloomberg New Energy Finance)
That is a neat milestone. But it doesn't prove that clean energy is growing faster than dirty energy. There are a two big things this chart omits:
1) Electricity is not the same as energy. The first thing to note is that the chart above only shows electricity capacity additions. Remember, "electricity" is not the same thing as "energy." We use electricity to power our homes and appliances. But most of the world's cars and planes don't run on electricity; they run on oil. A lot of buildings don't use electricity for heat; they burn gas. Those non-electricity energy sources aren't counted above.
Yet if we're worried about global warming, we have to consider that bigger picture. Electricity and heat were only responsible for about 42 percent of global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion in 2012. For clean energy to truly win the race, it will have to make inroads in other sectors as well, particularly transportation.
2) 1 GW of solar is not equal to 1 GW of coal. The second criticism of the chart above is that it only shows electricity capacity additions. "Capacity" is defined as the maximum output a power plant can produce under specific conditions. It is not same as how much electricity a power plant will actually generate in its lifetime.
Here's a way to illustrate the difference: coal plants can burn coal pretty much around the clock. So, over the long run, a coal plant will typically produce around 50 to 80 percent of its maximum output. Solar photovoltaic panels, by contrast, usually only work when the sun is shining. In the long run, they might produce just 20 percent of their maximum output. These percentages are known as "capacity factors."
This is important to keep in mind. Imagine that the world installed 2 gigawatts' worth of solar panels and a 1-gigawatt coal plant. If you only looked at a chart of capacity additions, you'd assume solar is absolutely crushing coal. But that's not necessarily true! When you take capacity factors into account, the coal plant is likely producing more total electricity.

For now, fossil fuels are still keeping pace with renewables

So let's look at a better chart that shows the world's energy consumption from different sources. This way we're looking at all primary energy — not just electricity but also cars and airplanes and heating and so on. We're also not being misled by looking solely at capacity; we're looking at actual use.
As it happens, BP offers this data in its Statistical Review of World Energy 2014. And the chart below looks more daunting for clean energy:
(<a href="http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html">BP Statistical Review of Energy 2014</a>/Vox)
All told, fossil fuels made up 87 percent of the world's primary energy consumption in 2013. By contrast, low-carbon sources — including nuclear, hydropower, wind, solar, and biomass — made up just 13 percent.
That ratio hasn't changed since 1999, as the University of Colorado's Roger Pielke Jr. points out. In other words, the world's energy supply hasn't gotten any cleaner for 14 years.
Yes, clean energy sources have been rising over that time. That little yellow sliver showing renewable energy is growing at rapid clip (that includes solar and wind, but it also includes biomass energy and biofuels/ethanol for vehicles, both of which often come in for criticism). Hydropower is also expanding. Nuclear power, by contrast, is stagnating.
But coal, natural gas, and oil have more than kept pace with the growth of clean energy. An illustrative example: In 2013, non-hydro renewable energy consumption grew by 38.5 million TOE (tons of oil equivalent). But coal consumption grew by 103 million TOE — more than twice as much. If this is a race, fossil fuels are holding their own.

There's reason to be optimistic about clean energy — but the challenge is daunting

Solar panels in a row at sunrise. (Photo by Frank Bienewald/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Now, this isn't meant to be a pessimistic post about renewables. That Bloomberg chart does offer some genuinely good news about clean electricity — namely, that the world is building more and more power plants fueled by solar, wind, and hydro, while the pace of fossil-fuel plant additions is slowing down.
What's more, there are lots of encouraging clean-energy trends out there. The cost of wind and solar has been dropping dramatically all over the world. The price of batteries for electric cars has been plummeting much faster than expected (which is crucial, because building cars that run on clean electricity instead of gasoline will be an important part of greening the energy supply). Meanwhile, China has been cracking down on dirty coal plants in a quest to mop up air pollution.
Given these trends, it's quite likely that, at some point soon, clean energy will grow faster than fossil fuels globally. Maybe we're already approaching the inflection point. Maybe we'll hit it in 2020. It's hard to predict exactly. But when that happens, the fraction of energy we get from low-carbon sources will start expanding. The fraction of energy from fossil fuels will start shrinking.
Still, if the world wants to avoid drastic global warming, then it's not enough to have some progress in clean energy here or there. There will need to be a truly seismic shift — the proportion of energy we get from carbon-free sources would have to rise from 13 percent to something like 90 percent this century, maybe more.
We're not yet close to that pace. Here's a glimpse at how dramatically our energy system would have to change to get there.
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(Thanks to Robert Wilson for first pointing out/critiquing the Bloomberg story, which is being circulated far and wide this week.)

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