The Future is not what it used to be. Although I don’t expect to have a rocket car anytime soon, it looks as though dreams of solar panels and wind turbines powering a green economy are no longer in the future, they are now. I’m working on a new “solutions” piece for Yale Climate Connections, and gathering a wealth of exciting perspectives.
I unexpectedly found myself on a Skype call the other day with S. David Freeman, former chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and someone who has forgotten way more about energy than I ever will know. 89 odd years old and spot on.
Turns out he’s got a lot of company these days in heralding the new age of renewable energy.
Large wind and solar power farms have the economics to go toe-to-toe with the cheapest fossil fuel-based power supplies in the United States according to the venerable financial advisory firm Lazard Ltd. Thanks to falling costs and rising efficiency, reports Lazard in an analysis released this week, utility-scale installations of solar panels and wind turbines now produce power at a cost that’s competitive with natural gas and coal-fired generating stations—even without subsidies.
The results appear in the eighth annual update of Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis [pdf], which compares the combined cost of financing, building, and operating power generating plants using a variety of energy technologies. Lazard projects that new utility-scale solar plants will deliver energy at US $72-86 per megawatt-hour, and wind turbines beat that with a cost of $37-81/MWh.
Those renewable energy options compare well against the cost of the most cost-effective natural gas-fired technology—combined cycle plants—which delivers at a projected $61-127/MWh (depending on whether the plant captures its carbon dioxide emissions). The renewables look even better against coal in Lazard’s analysis, which prices new coal-fired generation at $66-171/MWh.
The London-based Financial Times says the message is that renewables arestarting to “outshine” gas. The FT quotes George Bilicic, Lazard global head of power, energy & infrastructure, accepting that renewable energy has finally arrived: “We used to say some day solar and wind power would be competitive with conventional generation. Well, now it is some day.”
Large wind farms and solar plants are now cost-competitive with gas-fired power in many parts of the US even without subsidy, according to Lazard, raising the prospect of a fundamental shift in the country’s energy market.
Costs have fallen and efficiency has risen for solar panels and wind turbines, the investment bank found, to the point that in areas of strong wind or sunshine they can provide electricity more cheaply than fossil fuel plants.
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However, the economics of wind power have been improving sharply, with its lowest possible unsubsidised cost dropping from a minimum of $101 per megawatt hour in 2009 to a minimum of $37 per MWh today, according to Lazard calculations published on Thursday.The decline in solar costs has been even more dramatic: since 2009 the lowest possible cost of generation from a large photovoltaic solar plant has plunged almost 80 per cent, from $323 per MWh to $72 per MWh. Technical progress and huge investment in solar module manufacturing capacity in China, which created a glut in the global market, sent the price of panels tumbling.
At those prices, in areas of strong sunshine or wind, the costs of unsubsidised renewables are comparable to new gas-fired plants, which are expected to deliver power at a cost of $61-$87 per MWh.
Because solar power is available during the day, and can generate most at times of high demand for power for air-conditioning, it can compete with gas “peaking” plants, which have a cost per MWh of $179-$230, making the comparison even more favourable.
This just in: Saving the planet would be cheap; it might even be free. But will anyone believe the good news?
I’ve just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New Climate Economy Project, and a working paper from the International Monetary Fund. Both claim that strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth. This may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. These are serious, careful analyses.
–Enter the prophets of climate despair, who wave away all this analysis and declare that the only way to limit carbon emissions is to bring an end to economic growth.
You mostly hear this from people on the right, who normally say that free-market economies are endlessly flexible and creative. But when you propose putting a price on carbon, suddenly they insist that industry will be completely incapable of adapting to changed incentives. Why, it’s almost as if they’re looking for excuses to avoid confronting climate change, and, in particular, to avoid anything that hurts fossil-fuel interests, no matter how beneficial to everyone else.
But climate despair produces some odd bedfellows: Koch-fueled insistence that emission limits would kill economic growth is echoed by some who see this as an argument not against climate action, but against growth. You can find this attitude in the mostly European “degrowth” movement, or in American groups like the Post Carbon Institute; I’ve encountered claims that saving the planet requires an end to growth at left-leaning meetings on “rethinking economics.” To be fair, anti-growth environmentalism is a marginal position even on the left, but it’s widespread enough to call out nonetheless.
James Hansen, former Chief Atmospheric Scientist at NASA, has been outspoken on the issue, and pretty much spot on scientifically for 30 years. Lately, he has been extremely politically active, and giving his natural born Iowa conservative bent full scope. He is an advocate of “fee and dividend” carbon taxes.
Conservatives are not the enemy of the planet. Historically they are its best friend. Conservation and creation care are in the blood of most conservatives.
The political divide occurs because conservatives fear that liberals will use the climate issue to increase taxes and government intrusion. Policy prescriptions proposed by liberals stoke those concerns and provide fertile ground for anti-science nut-cases to flourish.
Most conservatives I have met are thoughtful. They do not want to go down in history as being responsible for blocking effective action to stabilize climate. Gaining their support for a rising revenue-neutral carbon fee, which is in fact a conservative approach, is possible.
Approval of a rising carbon fee during the next few years is crucial. It is also feasible. Climate events should help. Although the U.S. has been cool this year, global temperature in 2014 is likely to be the warmest year in the data record. And 2015 should break that record. Extreme climate events are likely to become more noticeable during the next several years.
Most marchers tomorrow will be liberals. The truth they must face is the fact that prescriptive liberal policies have no chance of solving the global climate problem.
Citizens Climate Lobby advocates carbon fee and 100% dividend. Founder Marshall Saunders espouses respect and love for political opponents of a carbon fee, and repeated engagement. CCL is bipartisan and growing rapidly, but it needs more volunteers (CitizensClimateLobby.org).
Quoth James Hansen:
LISTEN TO THIS MAN.
Mr. Freeman needs to check his assumptions. Powerplants are only cheap after they’re paid off if they also have (a) substantial remaining lifespan and (b) low O&M costs. These things do not appear to be true of wind turbines. The lifespan of inverters for solar appears to be an issue also.
These people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. What does their power cost during periods of peak demand? Cheap power when you don’t need it is worth nothing; when you need power badly, even costly power is better than no power.
Let me note one thing here: time-shifting. Batteries are costly, but it is very cheap to time-shift air-conditioning demand via ice storage. Pre-generating the afternoon and evening A/C requirement using noon-peaking PV would be one of the cheapest schemes for demand-side management.
The FT article is behind a registration wall, but I’ll bet that it doesn’t even mention this issue.
When one mentions costs and than uses figures that vary by better than two hundred percent my experiene in actually building things is watch your wallet as the specker and the estimating company do not know what they are talking about. The guy does not mention that wind turbines kill a lot of birds and need federal exemptions to operate, that the eco crowd refuses them to be built in their view, and what do you do when the wind stops or the sun sets. Add in the costs of alternate sources at full demand loading and the price triples as instead of one source you have two, with one or the other just sitting there looking pretty.
What are these “proscriptive liberal policies” of which you speak? The only policy options on the table I am aware of are “fee and dividend” and “permit auctions with free market trading mechanisms”. Both are intrinsically conservative approaches to limiting carbon emissions.
I think we have all internalized the liberal/commie boogie/straw man image promoted by self declared ‘conservatives’ who are in fact reactionaries.
(It’s PREscriptive, not PROscriptive) I think he means the “liberal” approach is “government telling us” (prescribing) via regulation and taxing (and keeping some of the tax money to manage the program and “grow” government). The only really “conservative” part of the fee and dividend is giving it all back to the public.
I think Hansen is only in favor of fee and dividend because he thinks we need to start somewhere soon and hates the cap and trade approach because it doesn’t really limit emissions in any meaningful way.
The prescriptive liberal policies are things like “renewable” (rather than carbon-free) portfolio “standards” (meaning mandates), PV subsidies, net metering and the like. These measure their results in dollars and kWh, not actual GHG cuts. They say “you shall use / be paid to use THIS”, giving awards for effort rather than results.
If people were serious they’d start talking about things like building codes. For instance, there are SIP technologies which lend themselves to factory fabrication of entire building shells and have far better energy performance than site-built construction. Local building codes often prescribe just the opposite, making it hard to get a permit to use SOTA methods and materials. Where’s the crews with petitions to get statewide building-code overrides on the ballot?
Then there’s my favorite hobby-horse, but you’re tired of hearing about that.
Probably starting with Ronald Reagan we were all told “Government needs to get out of the way of business”. It turns out that this myth is just that, a myth. The truth is that government does all the heavy lifting and risky investments then business steps in when the risk is low (or zero) to take all the credit. To learn more, watch the video with author Mariana Mazzucato
http://tvo.org/video/206666/mariana-mazzucato-counting-state
or read her 2013 book “The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public Vs. Private Sector Myths”. One of the things her book mentions is DARPAe (DARPA energy) which is responsible for a lot of new technology including solar and wind. Most people today will remember DARPA, or ARPA as it was previously known, as the US government agency responsible for funding the development of things like: microelectronics, internet, IT-revolution, GPS, and lots more. Apparently, companies today like Apple and Google would not have formed without government support.
Correction: ARPA-e (rather than DARPA-e)
Everything at MIT was funded by the Pentagon for decades. Now our taxes go to fund biopharmaceutical research that will make some private companies rich in the coming decades…
David Freeman makes good points, but we may not have the 20 to 30 years he seems to see as necessary to make the switch to “free” energy (which is never really “free”). CO2 levels will be over 450 PPM by then, and we may have passed the tipping points that will lead to uncontrollable feedbacks.
I love Krugman’s thinking on any issue 99% of the time, but he strays a bit from reality with his comments here. He DOES come back on course with “Why, it’s almost as if they’re looking for excuses to avoid confronting climate change, and, in particular, to avoid anything that hurts fossil-fuel interests, no matter how beneficial to everyone else”. I think he is muddying the waters a bit with his comments about “climate despair” and “anti-growth environmentalism”. The “anti-growthers” have been around for decades—-ever since it became obvious that human population growth and economic models were unsustainable. limate change issues are more recent icing on the cake, albeit more serious considering how fast we’ve gone down the “slippery slope” of AGW impact..
Hansen is one of my heroes, but the comments excerpted here seem to be more in the vein of politics and “reaching out”. The conservatives that matter today are NOT the planet’s “best friend”, and do NOT have “conservation and creation care” in their blood. The ones I have met are ideologues who mindlessly parrot “government is bad, regulation is bad, taxes are bad, the free market has all the answers” kinds of talking points (and that’s ignoring their position on “social issues”). They are the tools of the plutocracy and the “pro-growthers” in “conserving” the status quo and BAU. IMO. Hansen is pandering a bit and even “liberal bashing” as he seeks support for a carbon tax.
RE: E-Pot’s “listen to this man”
“…..prescriptive liberal policies have no chance of solving the global climate problem…” needs to have this added “……not because they won’t work but because the so-called ‘conservatives’ will never allow them to be adopted in time to avoid catastrophe”.
Not so, DOGgie. The prescriptive policies won’t work because they have been carefully tuned by the fossil energy interest themselves (the ultimate donors for the controlled “environmental” organizations) to ultimately leave them in control of the only game in town. Just like Vermont: with Vermont Yankee going away, and coal effectively prohibited, the natural gas lobby has won. Oh, you’ll have some “renewables” for show, but the lower efficiency of simple-cycle gas turbines needed to track the ups and downs of wind and PV means the gas company’s sales are just as good as if the state went all-CCGT. And of course, even all-CCGT is at least a factor of 3 too carbon-intensive to stabilize the climate.
It’s evil, but you have to admire the cleverness of the scheme: get the most intense opposition united behind an orthodoxy that doesn’t actually accomplish the putative objective, but leaves you with 100% of the remaining business. They’ll demonize the heterodox without you having to lift a finger.
Perhaps too much conspiracy thinking there, but the argument does hang together somewhat. It is one of many alternate universes that we may inhabit, and I won’t argue against it.
Vermont had, in 2012, the “second-lowest per capita natural gas consumption of all states in 2012.” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
So, it is bound to go up for a while after Vt Yankee closes. The real question is – for how long? Perhaps Hydro Quebec can replace that juice?
This institute is not the first and probably won’t be the last to recognize that renewables are cheaper, cleaner, and better than the competition.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/citigroup-says-the-age-of-renewables-has-begun
Its interesting that Hansen shows his conservative leanings here. That might explain his thinking.
Of course, planting political labels on a technical issue is a mistake. That should be a clear warning sign.
Politics really has no place in pure technical matters. It comes into play in policy.
Mixing them makes a mess.
“Conservative leanings”? Arcus swings and misses again with a superficial comment that says nothing much of consequence. Hansen is conservative only in the sense that he wants to conserve the planet for future generations. Try reading his writings and the full article from which Peter extracted the quote.
“Politics really has no place in pure technical matters. It comes into play in policy.
Mixing them makes a mess”. Lord love a duck! Has Arcus been out of the country for the last 14 years?
DOG- swings and misses again by talking first, researching… well not at all.
“Hansen describes himself as a moderate conservative and is registered to vote as an independent. More importantly, he has been shopping around a framework for climate legislation that conservative elected officials might find interesting if they find themselves in a problem-solving mood.”
http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=6897
While we are off topic, here is a rebuttal to Hansens pro nuclear energy proposal from some people with more expertise than him on the topic.
http://www.cneas.tohoku.ac.jp/labs/china/asuka/_src/2014/nuclear_power-climate_change_enver2.pdf
moderate conservative
Hes a good climatologist. Like many scientists, not so good outside his area of expertise.
The history of great scientists is replete with examples of that kind of mistake.
Einstein and Bohr had a friendly disagreement on the matter of quantum mechanics.
Einstein did not believe in applying probability to the theory. He was wrong.
He said, “God does not play dice”
Bohr said, “Einstein, stop telling God what to do.”
Arcus is still searching for anything that will support his cognitive dissonance
“….a rebuttal to Hansens pro nuclear energy proposal from some people with more expertise than him on the topic”? The very first line of their paper has them introducing themselves as “…academic researchers working on the studies and policy recommendations for the mitigation of climate change issues from the economic and political perspectives”. I think all of us who frequent Crock can read between the lines there (but not Arcus—he has read into it that they “have more expertise on the topic” than Hansen, who is a climate scientist—LOL).
My “researching” on Hansen is not like Arcus’s “looking up” of sound bites and quotes (and interpreting them to suit his preconceived notions as he did with this cherry-picked quote from a four-year-old article). I READ his BOOKS his writings and commentaries. I too am a “moderate conservative” in this day and age when so many have run screaming past me to the far right as I stood still—-so far that they have almost fallen off the edge of the earth. They now consider me a communist-nazi-socialist even though I’ve “moved” hardly at all. I would ask Arcus how many “conservatives” are getting themselves arrested over climate change issues?.
Arcus then launches into “non sequitur land” with “He’s a good climatologist. Like many scientists, not so good outside his area of expertise”. What exactly is Hansen doing that is “outside his area of expertise”? Making suggestions that nuclear power is needed to reduce CO2 releases into the atmosphere?
The rest of the comment is just Arcus impressing himself with his own clever rhetoric based on his faulty premise of “… that kind of mistake”. Booooring.
A lot of Crocks blog comments end up as arguments for renewable vs. nuclear. The greenman is highlighting rapid advancements that are happening, both options are available to energy providers and a mixture of both are good for diversification, both have positive and negative aspects (budget,time,operation etc). I would hope the comments would become more positive and celebrate the latest developments in our pressing need to stop burning coal, rather than just championing one choice.
America’s dirtiest power plants are the elephant in the room when it comes to global warming,”
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/9136/20140920/power-plants-dirty-world-more.htm
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2371263/world-carbon-budget-will-be-exhausted-in-a-generation-scientists-warn
A couple of good links—-let’s hope that Arcus reads them. (And we might ask why he didn’t post them first–????)
I would hope the comments would stay on topic. Unfortunately, they are always laced with pro nuclear anti renewable barbs any time renewables are mentioned. That does not seem to conform with your idea of harmony. In any case, its no reason to give nuclear a free pass on open discussion.
Arcus distorts and misleads once again with the bald-faced assertion that “….comments….are always laced with pro nuclear anti renewable barbs any time renewables are mentioned”.
Always? And Anytime? And BARBS? Arcus’s cognitive dissonance keeps him from really understanding where E-Pot and I are coming from in our comments. E-Pot is more of a “pro nuclear” booster than I am (I am mainly anti CO2 but agree with Hansen that things are so serious that we need to utilize nuclear).
My “barbs” are directed at Arcus’s bright-sided, shallow, and misleading commentary, NOT renewables themselves, which we must move to more far more rapidly so that we can phase out fossil fuels and avoid CAGW.
I find some of the arguments here ridiculous. It goes from we are all doomed and renewables can’t help, to nuclear is our only hope. This is an article on renewables that cites real figures from real experts on costs. It would have been nice if we had a real discussion about that. So far, the only commentary on that has been sadly short of any real discussion of economics or the time value of money. Any technical discussion would have included that.
Meanwhile, no one has commented that solar has real potential in displacement of peak power. Its in the text. Solar already competes with peak plants. In fact, its biggest effect is on daytime peak.
I noticed today that the 10AM california net demand (demand minus variable renewables) was less than at 3AM today. caiso.com
Its already happening. Too late to argue about it.
As Amory Lovins said,
As Economists Argue, Renewables Keep Getting Cheaper
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/amory-lovins-as-economists-argue-renewables-keep-getting-cheaper
I can say one thing for sure. Renewables are the future not matter what happens with GHG. All the opinion commentary in the world is not going to change that.
Will you (and your ideological companions) ever admit that nuclear is a major fighter in the war against GHG emissions from the energy sector? If you insist that it must be banned, you are one with the enemy.
It doesn’t matter how much cheaper renewables get. What matters is how much GHG they can displace. If you need electricity at midnight, and the renewables clock out at 6 PM… why can’t you admit that you NEED something else?
In multiple markets, renewables are allowed to sell energy at negative prices. This means that what they are generating is a NET COST. Why are they even allowed to do this?
Arcus finds some of the arguments here ridiculous? What borders on the ridiculous is his stating that anyone here has said “…renewables can’t help and nuclear is our only hope”. That hasn’t happened, and he is just building more straw men. It is also ridiculous that he fails to accept in the slightest that we ARE “doomed” IF we don’t get moving faster on CO2—-maybe not tomorrow, but the handwriting is on the wall.
No, he goes tripping off into La-La land with ANOTHER wish that we be bright-sided and talk about costs, etc, and gives is another meaningless link that he has “researched”.
Of course solar is making great progress, of course renewables are getting cheaper, of course nuclear is expensive and can’t compete costwise, of course renewables are the future. Why doesn’t he recognize that atmospheric and ocean CO2 continue to go up (and are even accelerating) and may cut us off at the knees before any of those truths are fulfilled. It’s all about COAL! (and mainly in China)