I was at an American Wind Energy event yesterday in Lansing Mi, listened to a lot of industry and utility folks describe how they are integrating wind into their systems.
Nutshell takeaway:
Coal – less.
Wind – More.
Solar – coming.
Natural gas – depends on price.
Policy – would be nice to have one
Not much doubt that everyone gets that we are transitioning to renewables, and soon. Obviously some spread in how fast they think it will happen.
Found this on Cleantechnica – Energy analyst Michael Liebrich seems to get the general gist of where things are going, better than most.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and Financial Times (FT) held an excellent panel discussion tonight on technology, innovation, business, and the future of energy. It was a wonderful event, and I have several great clips from it to share in the coming days and weeks. To start with, here’s a short one from Michael Liebreich (above).
If you are not a video person, the essence of the clip is in the title: “Energy Efficiency & Distributed Renewables Will Kill Energy Suppliers.” I think that captures it well enough.
In case you are not already aware, Michael Liebreich was the founder of New Energy Finance (which was in 2009 sold to Bloomberg L.P and became Bloomberg New Energy Finance), was the CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance for years before switching to Chairman of the Advisory Board in 2014, and is a former member of the Zayed Future Energy Prize selection panel, among many others things.
Does not “Energy Efficiency & Distributed Renewables Will Kill Energy Suppliers.” imply that we might as well come to grips with the fact that our energy future can not be based on a for-profit free enterprise solution, but that a non-profit utility model (perhaps based on taxes, not fee-for-usage) is the future?
And the sooner we realize this, the sooner we can stop our twenty five year-old habit of sitting back and sitting back and sitting back and waiting for the ‘miracle’ of the market to solve our problem, but, rather, we can get about the business of building and deploying?
The market has but one goal. Growth. GNP is growth. The health of all the worlds economies is measured by growth. Borrowing money and paying it back at compound interest demands growth.
Growth …”is”… the problem.
You bet your bottom dollar we are headed for a change in that. The (BAU) market won’t solve anything.
The market … “is”…. the problem.
Peter – Thanks. This theme is rising in multiple places.
Conservation and demand reduction has reduced the market for large centralized base load power.
Conservation has been the pinprick that burst the oil market bubble.
Recents events in oil have highlighted the stranded assets and divestment dilemma. They have moved from the realm of possibility to the realization of immediate financial pain.
This should push investment dollars away from oil and towards more profitable enterprises. It always struck me as odd and counterproductive to pursue oil futures. It really has not worked out well for anyone. The benefit of high oil prices is the plateau of oil demand. Otherwise, attempts to drill unconventional in US/Canada has resulted to counter OPEC has resulted in heavy oilco losses on both sides.
If we are serious about GW, now is the time to increase gas taxes. Fuel prices do affect consumption. And right now, gas taxes are not really covering highway costs.
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/01/21/jonathon-porritt-oil-gas-companies-failing-society-zayed-future-energy-prize-masdar/
Large scale solar powered desalination plants, essential for a warming world and happening in Northern Saudi Arabia.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/saudis-build-worlds-first-large-scale-solar-powered-desalination-plant-82903
Michael Liebrich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance Discussed How Energy Efficiency & Distributed Renewable Energy Will Kill Energy Suppliers…
Hilarious! No ridiculous! Michael Liebrich sits there and says (at 0:27) “What you’ve got now is a situation in country after country as I travel the world…”
Stop it right hhere. He travels the world. Let me guess – on a bicycle? Or horse? On a sailboat? On a solar paneled airplane? I’m not buying it – he flies. Has he given a moment’s thought to the big Boeing 747 or Airbus he gets on that gulps fossil fuel with a ferocious appetite? Or to the air-conditioned hotel he stays in. Or the car he drives (which I’ll guess is not an EV charged on solar panels). Has he taken a notice that as Europe gets more efficient PER CAPITA, the world’s population is climbing rapidly, and much of the demand is in developing countries that happily mine coal without giving a passing thought to AGW.
Peter, next time you hop on that airplane to Greenland and the helicopter out to the ice cap, give a moment to reflect on how much fossil fuel you consumed on the journey. Yeah, it’s nice that you charged your satellite phone battery off a solar panel. By the way, the satellite that makes the phone usable and the energy to run the whole international communications grid is also most fossil-fuel based, though some is nuclear – a pittance comes from renewables.
Worldwide total fossil fuel consumption continues to rise, year on year. True, there is nothing wrong with energy efficiency, but cutting 5% here and there with energy-saving lightbulbs is like trying to save the sinking Titanic with a bailing bucket.
Yeah, fuck you, Peter, for using 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.1 per cent of all the fossil fuel used since 1850 in your travels!!!
And look! There’s Al Gore, he is fat. And shiny. So shiny!
And, say…. let’s talk about reducing our gasoline consumption by 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002 per cent of all the fossil fuel used since 1850. By spending our political capital on a gas tax when nobody has a clue how to translate that into renewable infrastructure.
Exxon Mobil is LOVING this dialectic.
In ten or twenty years every house will have solar panels and make its own electricity, so will businesses, schools and government buildings. How much coal will we need then. http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/blog/how-cheap-is-coal-as-a-fuel
I live in Vermont. How am I going to heat my house with electricity from solar panel? How am I going to be able to afford putting a $30,000 system on my roof? Something that can’t possibly make enough electricity to run my appliances AND heat my house AND fuel my car AND heat my water AND drive my industrial processes?
Why should I even have to think about any of this? Isn’t AGW a national problem? Why is the answer to a national problem being ‘solved’ with something on my roof which is payed for out of my pocket? WTF do we pay taxes for, if we are not going to get services in return?
Michael Liebrich is not hilarious, he is right to be optimistic and I thank this daily site for keeping our attention focused on the issues. Slowly but surely renewables are making a difference, everyday I see a new story of a roll-out or development. We are transitioning. How many GHG emitting power stations have not been needed because of efficiency gains, wind, solar and others. I saw a figure of fourteen in the U.K alone.
And here in the U.S of A things are happening too:
“Installations of wind power in the U.S. surged sixfold last year, making it the largest market for the technology worldwide after China. ”
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2015/01/u-s-wind-power-installations-swelled-sixfold-in-2014?cmpid=rss
“On January 29, the Department of Interior (DOI) will auction off the largest area of federal waters in the nation for the development of offshore wind power.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/23/3614786/burst-of-wind-off-massachusetts/
Britain needs 14 fewer power stations thanks to energy efficiency gains
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2390876/britain-needs-14-fewer-power-stations-thanks-to-energy-efficiency-gains
Oh and I nearly forgot to mention today’s grand opening of the Mojav Solar Project, ” The plant uses advanced parabolic trough technology that has made the 280 MegaWatt plant one of the most innovative projects in the country and the second-largest plant of its kind in the world” Something to cheer about nothing to sneer at eh !
http://inhabitat.com/grand-opening-today-the-mojave-solar-project-is-officially-fully-operational/
Then there’s the plan for more efficient street lights, so if we can get past the politics and denial and create a spirit akin to WWII we can get somewhere quickly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/white-house-light-poles_n_6533332.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change
Taking the technical conclusions, social science and psychological conclusions together, it seems to imply that using preformed, spatially organized groups, where you’ve already got social processes going on and people already know each other and monitor and see each other, is likely to be most beneficial. Energy just hasn’t been the key focus, but similarly energy isn’t the key focus in the workplace.