The clean energy transition endures, nevertheless, growing pains emerge.
Yesterday, Chevron announced a $53 billion acquisition of a midsize rival, as Big Oil consolidates and doubles down on the betthat fossil fuel demand will continue to increase.
But if you zoom out just a bit, the picture may be a bit clearer. This morning, the International Energy Agency predicted that global demand for oil, natural gas and coal will peak in about seven years, as my colleague Brad Plumer reported. Solar, wind, hydropower, electric vehicles and heat pumps are all projected to surge.
A separate study that came out last week suggests the world may have reached “a global irreversible solar tipping point,” with ever-cheaper solar dominating electricity markets purely because of market forces, without any additional climate policies.
For the past few months, we’ve been telling you all about the U.S. energy transition that’s arriving faster than you think. But the move toward solar is global: the study’s authors expect solar to be the cheapest source of electricity in almost all countries by 2027.
If the I.E.A.’s projections come to pass, oil and gas demand would most likely plateau at slightly above today’s levels for the next three decades, expanding in developing countries and shrinking in advanced economies. Demand for coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, would start declining, though it might fluctuate year to year if, say, coal plants needed to run more often during heat waves or droughts.
“The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told Brad.
A number of technologies have been affected by Covid induced inflation, supply chain issues, and a coordinated pushback of misinformation from the fossil fuel interests.
The Interior Department on Tuesday approved a plan to install up to 176 giant wind turbines off the coast of Virginia, clearing the way for what would be the nation’s largest offshore wind farm yet.
The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, to be built by Dominion Energy, is the fifth commercial-scale offshore wind project approved by the Biden administration. If completed, the 2.6-gigawatt wind farm would produce enough electricity to power more than 900,000 homes, without creating any of the carbon dioxide emissions that are heating the planet.
The decision comes at a perilous time for the offshore wind industry. To fight climate change, the Biden administration wants to install 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power in the United States by 2030. But that plan has run into serious trouble lately, as developers have struggled with soaring coasts, rising interest rates, supply chain delays and bursts of local opposition.
While dozens of offshore wind farms are being planned along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, not all of those projects are guaranteed to be built. In Massachusetts, the company behind the Commonwealth Wind project terminated its contracts with state utilities this year, citing unexpected inflation, and said it plans to rebid at higher prices. In New York, the developers of four proposed offshore wind farms recently asked the state for more money before moving forward. New York rejected that request and it’s unclear if the projects will move ahead.
Pulling in one direction are the countries and governments that want to increase fossil fuel production, which are reaping the vast profits that oil and gas still generate. Pulling the other way are the leaders, entrepreneurs, policymakers and activists who are urgently trying to move the world toward clean energy, empowered by the stunning drop in cost for solar and other clean energy technologies.
The fossil fuel camp is betting that acquisitions like the Chevron-Hess deal and investments in new production will pay off in the long term. But the example of solar shows that market forces can be uniquely powerful in their own right.
“There is a lot of policy that still needs to be written,” Nijsse said. But “we can repeat the success of solar in different sectors.”
A year and a half ago, things looked rosy for offshore wind. States signed 20-year contracts for cheap electricity. Companies announced or started to build manufacturing facilities to help create a domestic supply chain for the industry. Even the Cape Wind controversy of the 2010s seemed more and more like a hiccup in the story of the American offshore wind revolution.
But then came a global inflation crisis, new supply chain disruptions and a growing movement of people calling for a pause on offshore wind development as dead humpback whales washed up on beaches.
To get a full picture of where the industry stands in late 2023, here’s what you need to know:
Despite the challenges facing the industry, the news is positive when it comes to Vineyard Wind 1, the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm. The 62-turbine project is under construction in the water about 15 miles from Martha’s Vineyard, and the first electrons are expected to flow into the grid by December. By the time it’s fully up and running next year, the 800 megawatt project should produce enough electricity to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts.
Several miles west, closer to Long Island, offshore construction for the 12-turbine, 132 megawatt South Fork Wind farm is also underway. Its developers anticipate delivering some power to their New York customers by the end of the year.
The problems began about a year ago when offshore wind developer Avangrid began sounding the alarm about the ballooning costs of its 1,200 megawatt project known as Commonwealth Wind. The company said the project was “no longer viable” under the terms of its existing contracts with electric utilities because it would be unable to secure financing. Another developer, SouthCoast Wind (formerly Mayflower Wind) also said its own 1,200 megawatt project could be at risk.There are seven offshore wind turbines operating in the U.S. — five near Block Island and two off the Virginia coast. Together, they can generate 42 megawatts of power. With the addition of Vineyard Wind 1 and South Fork Wind, the country will have 81 turbines capable of producing nearly a gigawatt — or 1,000 megawatts — of power.
That’s a far cry from the Biden administration’s goal of 30 gigawatts by 2030, but it’s a step. And industry experts and clean energy advocates say the progress on these two first projects should not be understated; getting to this point was never a sure thing.
“We should not lose sight of the fact that Vineyard Wind was not inevitable,” said Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy at the Environmental League of Massachusetts. “It is a very big deal and should be celebrated as such.”
The future of subsequent projects in the Northeast pipeline, however, is much more uncertain. These projects face a lot of economic issues — inflation, rising interest rates and supply chain disruptions or backlogs. Long permitting timelines and a failure by industry leaders and state officials to build in buffers for economic turbulence, also played a role.
“This is a real moment of crisis for the industry,” said Amber Hewitt, a senior director at the National Wildlife Federation. “I believe the industry will endure, but the question is when and at what scale.”
–“We are experiencing a setback, but so is almost every offshore wind project across the globe,” said Sen. Mike Barrett, co-chair of the state’s Legislature’s Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee.
He’s right; these struggles are not unique to Massachusetts. The developers behind four projects in New York have asked the state to adjust their contracts. New Jerseylawmakers passed a bill this summer to help another troubled project with its federal financing. And earlier this week, Avangrid canceled its contract for an 800 megawatt project in Connecticut.
Even in Northern Europe, where offshore wind turbines have been in the water for decades, upcoming projects face economic challenges and potential delays.
–But several experts WBUR spoke with insisted that the industry is not doomed.
“When it comes to offshore wind, I’m always nervous and always optimistic,” Hewitt said. “This is not indicative of this industry not being all it’s cracked up to be. It’s the reality of trying to launch an industry this big, this fast.”
I was but a moment ago giving thought to how this religious fervor is a mark of a dying beast, something just falling to the wayside in the inevitable (if we are to survive) march of progress. Pretty much everything we are dealing with is at the end of its lifecycle, and overall big picture is being replaced with the latest technology. That it’s going to take probably thirty years to completely fall to the wayside is ~ bothersome
Is this a bad time to mention what might happen to all those nuclear sites and their attendant waste for the next ten thousand years if we don’t survive?
Those nuclear sites are few and far between.
I heartily recommend Alan Weisman’s 2008 book The World Without Us, describing the effects on various aspects of human developments if humans were to instantly vanish. Inspired by his visit to the Chernobyl exclusion zone, where he noted thriving wildlife (i.e., background radiation is less of a threat than human destruction of habitat), he started thinking of how quickly human constructions fall apart without constant maintenance.
He addressed Manhattan, the stages by which an abandoned house goes to rot, the Panama Canal, the Houston area’s oil refineries, etc. He notes which animals would be the losers (fancy bred dogs) and the winners, trees splitting and reclaiming the pavement, water not pumped or drained, and so forth.
I have it right … here, somewhere
FWIW, I grew up reading a great deal of SF set in a post-apocalyptic global thermonuclear war wasteland, so I don’t worry about how a measly 440 nuclear reactors worldwide (often with multiple at one site) would be noticeable to any surviving world ecosystem.
The deaths of coral reefs and changes to ocean currents will affect more life, and even then removing the pressure of the giant commercial fishing fleets would be a great benefit to marine life.
One minor upside I consider from ExxonMobil buying shale giant Pioneer was that we might have fewer spewing abandoned wells left behind by bankrupt companies if some corporation with deep pockets owns them and is responsible for their eventual retirement. (Hey, it’s a small dream, OK?)
The IEA is notorious for past failures of predictions (like chronically underforecasting the growth of RE). Are we supposed to start trusting their analysis now?
‘“The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told Brad.’
Fatih Birol includes nuclear in the portfolio of clean energies. ‘”Globally, nuclear energy is the second source of clean electricity today. It provides uninterrupted electricity service without providing emissions around the world, and if you look at the OECD economies – such as Japan, the US and Europe – nuclear is the number one source of clean electricity. And it is has been so for the last three decades. So, therefore, when we think of electricity security, when we think of clean electricity to reach our climate targets, in my view nuclear should have an integral part in the countries where governments and citizens are part of the solution,” Birol said.’ https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Nuclear-is-integral-to-clean-energy-transition-say
The leading source of clean energy is, of course, hydro, at 15.2%, more than wind and solar combined ( 12% ). Nuclear had a bad year, with the two largest users in Europe, France and Ukraine, suffering major disruption. France had more than half its fleet out rectifying stress cracks in a safety system, and Ukraine had a war. Japan is still taking time to turn most of its reactors on after Fukushima, and Germany turned off its last three. Previously nuclear had managed about 10% of world power production; last year it was down to 9.2%
Coal alone, at 35.8%, made nearly at much power as hydro, nuclear, wind and solar combined, while gas and other fossil fuels made another 25.2%.
Coal made 35.4% of the world’s power, nearly as much as hydro, nuclear and other renewables combined, and natural gas was a healthy second at 22.7%
Ignore last sentence of preceding, and add source -https://www.statista.com/statistics/269811/world-electricity-production-by-energy-source/