Let me begin this contemplation by stating that I do not hate ‘renewables’ nor am I a fossil fuel industry shill (the two common accusations lobbed at me whenever I criticise the notion of a ‘green/clean’ energy future). I have constructed my family’s 3.35 kW solar photovoltaic system from the ground up.
It consists of a variety of 100 and 150 watt panels placed upon our deck gazebo and two-car garage, lots of copper connectors, numerous charge controllers and deep cycle batteries (whose efficiency suffers in our Canadian winters due to their storage in our garage that despite being insulated is not heated and can get quite cold), and several inverters. What I am, I like to believe, is a realist that recognises this system’s limitations and implications for our world but especially for those colder-climate regions.
Here are a couple of recent pictures of part of our system, taken this past summer followed by one during the previous winter (those are 100 watt panels in the photo; there are 15 more panels on the garage directly behind the gazebo — 11 x 100 watt and 5 x 150 watt — and another 5 x 100 watt panels on the gazebo roof’s other side to capture late evening rays during our summers):
Here are my pre-gazebo versions that allowed me to periodically alter the angle of numerous smaller panels (40 watt) to better capture direct light:
Let me be frank, I truly believe that ‘clean/green’ energy is a misnomer; in fact, it’s a significant distortion of language that has been employed as a marketing scheme to sell products and a virtue-signalling myth to keep these products flowing to consumers. Not only does no such animal exist, but the complex narratives we’ve weaved about it are rife with the cognitive distortions of denial and bargaining, and heavily influenced by Big Money propaganda.
These stories we are told about a ‘clean/green’ energy future completely overlook a number of inconvenient facts.
First, the dominant narrative rarely if ever discusses all the fossil fuels that would be required to build out the non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies’ infrastructure and its products. Yes, there are arguments that ‘renewables’ can supply the energy required to replace these fossil fuel inputs. But this bargaining strategy ignores that almost all evidence/data supporting this perspective is dependent upon small-scale pilot projects that have not been and very likely will never be scaled up due to both technological and economic impediments. The tale is merely one of theoretical ‘possibilities’, predicated upon many as-yet-to-be-hatched chickens.
It’s also likely no coincidence that much (most?) of the capital funding going into ‘renewables’ and its widespread marketing campaign is being supplied by the corporate energy interests of Big Oil[1] and Wall Street Banks (who also fund Big Oil)[2].
The more damning issue, at least from a non-economic perspective (but has gargantuan economic implications if we were ever to deal with it properly — which we don’t), is the significant ecological systems destruction that would result from such a massive undertaking — to say little of the sociological/cultural implications for many of the regions home to the mineral extraction sites. Not only is there ample bargaining in this story as well — we can develop ‘cleaner’ means of doing business and ones that will benefit impacted peoples — but A LOT of denial regarding the significant environmental impacts (that mostly happen in faraway places that are out of sight — and therefore out of mind — and that can sometimes take years to manifest themselves).
The ‘green/clean’ energy-based, utopian future appears increasingly to have become a grand and extremely attractive narrative which its adherents have argued is the ONLY means of ‘solving’ our fossil fuel addiction. It reduces significantly the anxiety-provoking thoughts that accompany a realisation that humanity have severely overshot the natural carrying capacity of the planet, destroying it and untold numbers of other species, and faces a less than utopian future — to say the least. And it avoids, through the use of a tight Overton Window, the much more difficult option of a gargantuan ‘powering down’ our so-called ‘advanced’ economies and mitigating our overshoot in ways that most people (particularly in these ‘advanced’ economies) would not readily accept.”
But it also happens to bring with it a system of industrial production that sustains the status quo power and wealth structures. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the ruling caste of our planet is increasingly throwing its support behind this ‘solution’ to our energy ‘problem’. And, unfortunately, it seems a lot of very well-intentioned people and groups are being swayed by the widespread propaganda because after all who doesn’t want to avoid huge sacrifices and disruptions to the energy slaves and technological conveniences that provide our ‘advanced’ status.
“Keeping at the forefront of one’s thinking the fact that the future is unknowable, unpredictable, and full of unknown unknowns, anything is possible. But I would argue we do ourselves no favours in participating in and believing without full skepticism our various narratives about endless growth and technological ingenuity as the saviours that will make our utopian dreams/wishes of a ‘clean/green’ future come true.
Such magical thinking keeps us on a trajectory that increasingly is looking to be suicidal in nature, or, at the most promising, deeply ‘disappointing’ and broadly chaotic/catastrophic.”
P.S.
The solar photovoltaic system I have constructed for many thousands of dollars (Canadian) supplies very little in the way of sustained power for our household. I mainly rely upon it as a marginal emergency backup system during our periodic power grid losses. It was capable of running a refrigerator/freezer in our garage for about 3 days during a blackout we experienced due to a devastating derecho that hit most of Ontario, Canada this past spring, before the battery system was drained and required several days to recharge. We have come to rely far more on the gas/propane generators we have. With no other source of home heating as this time, I hate to think of what we would do if our natural gas heating system was down during one of our long, Canadian winters. I know that our solar-based system would not be of much use in that situation.
Mississippi residents are consistently told that renewable energy sources, like solar panels, are now the lowest-cost ways to generate electricity, but these claims are based on creative accounting gimmicks that only examine a small portion of the expenses incurred to integrate solar onto the grid while excluding many others.
When these hidden expenses are accounted for, it becomes obvious that solar is much more expensive than Mississippi’s existing coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants and that adding more solar will increase electricity prices for the families and businesses that rely upon it. One of the most common ways of estimating the cost of generating electricity from different types of power plants is a metric called the Levelized Cost of Energy, or LCOE.
The LCOE is an estimate of the long-term average cost of producing electricity from a power plant. These values are estimated by taking the costs of the plant, such as the money needed to build and operate it, fuel costs, and the cost to borrow money, and dividing them by the amount of electricity generated by the plant (generally megawatt hours) over its useful lifetime.
In other words, LCOE estimates are essentially like calculating the cost of your car on a per-mile-driven basis after accounting for expenses like initial capital investment, loan and insurance payments, fuel costs, and maintenance.
We can estimate the LCOE of new solar facilities in Mississippi by using overnight capital cost estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Electricity Market Module and other state-specific factors. We can then compare the cost of solar to the real-world cost data for the coal and natural gas generators at the Victor J. Daniel Jr. Generating Plant, and the Grand Gulf nuclear power plant using the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Form 1 database.
Solar panels purchased for home use under incentive programs many years ago are nearing the end of their life cycle. Many are already winding up in landfills. (Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times)
California has been a pioneer in pushing for rooftop solar power, building up the largest solar market in the U.S. More than 20 years and 1.3 million rooftops later, the bill is coming due.
Beginning in 2006, the state, focused on how to incentivize people to take up solar power, showered subsidies on homeowners who installed photovoltaic panels but had no comprehensive plan to dispose of them. Now, panels purchased under those programs are nearing the end of their typical 25-to-30-year life cycle.
Many are already winding up in landfills, where in some cases, they could potentially contaminate groundwater with toxic heavy metals such as lead, selenium and cadmium.
Sam Vanderhoof, a solar industry expert and chief executive of Recycle PV Solar, says that only 1 in 10 panels are actually recycled, according to estimates drawn from International Renewable Energy Agency data on decommissioned panels and from industry leaders.
The looming challenge over how to handle truckloads of waste, some of it contaminated, illustrates how cutting-edge environmental policy can create unforeseen problems down the road.
“The industry is supposed to be green,” Vanderhoof said. “But in reality, it’s all about the money.”
California came early to solar power. Small governmental rebates did little to bring down the price of solar panels or to encourage their adoption until 2006, when the California Public Utilities Commission formed the California Solar Initiative. That granted $3.3 billion in subsidies for installing solar panels on rooftops.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Preface. All solar (and wind) do is add to the giant bonfire of burning fossil fuels — which still provide two-thirds of the power for the electric grid. Electricity is just a fraction of how we use energy, over 80% is fossil fueled because electricity can’t replace their use in fertilizer, transportation, half a million products made out of fossil fuels (i.e. plastic) and so on. Without natural gas, the electric grid won’t be able to stay up since there are no other options for storage that scale up. All of this explained at great length in my books.
When you hear things like “solar power provided 100% of California’s power today”, no it didn’t. For a few hours it provided 100% of ELECTRIC power, and the money lost by all the other power providers that had to shut down, the ones that actually assure reliability to the grid since solar and wind are extremely unreliable and seasonal, means that they have to spend less to maintain their facilities, shortening their lifespan, especially coal and nuclear which take many hours to ramp up or down.
***
Solar power contraptions require oil for every single step of their life cycle
Look at all the fossil energy used to make solar panels in this youtube video: How It’s Made Solar Panels
If solar power and concentrated solar power plants can’t produce enough power to replicate themselves entirely over their life cycle, plus produce the energy needed by society, then they are not sustainable. Every single step of their life cycle depends on fossil fuels, from diesel mining trucks, diesel ships to take the ore to facilities that use fossil fuels to crush the rock, coal blast and smelting furnaces, transportation of the myriad parts from all over the globe to the manufacturing facility, and finally delivered to the final site, where workers arrive in gas-burning vehicles over petroleum asphalt roads.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Further to my recent post about the intermittency of solar power, I thought I’d tackle some of you more mathematically challenged and hopefully bring more light (no pun intended) to the problems facing those who believe in 100% renewables running complex civilisation.
If on a perfect cloudless sunny day you plot the output of a solar array between sunrise and sunset you’ll end up with a perfect bell curve. This rarely happens of course. Clouds come and go, and depending on where your panels are installed all sorts of things can shade your panels, like trees. The curve then comes out looking rather less perfect, a bit like this…:
The pale blue area is the cloudless curve, the darker one is real life. Around 8am there’s a dip, could be caused by a cloud or a tree; and by the way, it only takes partial shading of a single panel to cause s drop off in production for the entire array. So a shadow caused by a stink pipe protruding through one’s roof could cause this….
Back to the curve. The AREA under this curve is important. It represents the ENERGY generated by the power shown on the y axis multiplied by the time on the X axis. Energy is power X time, hence kWh is the preferred unit of energy when discussing electricity.
The variability of the sun’s input plus all the shading issues make measuring the energy generated on any one day kind of difficult. Luckily, we have technology….
Maximum Power Point Trackers (MPPTs) have white man’s magic built into them to not just measure energy but even store the data so that nerds like us can talk about it and even blog about it…!
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Preface. I once yanked this paper after huge blow back, but in the past few years, I have no reason to doubt Ferroni and Hopkirks methods, boundaries, or conclusions, so I’m putting this post back.
An ERoEI of less than 1 means there is a net energy loss. In this paper Ferroni and Hopkirk found the EROEI of Solar PV to be negative, just .82 (+/-) 15%) in countries north of the Swiss Alps.
The problem with EROEI is that there is endless arguing over the boundaries. For example, Prieto and Hall’s 2013 book, “Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution-The Energy Return on Investment” had energy data for over 20 activities outside the production process of the modules, typically NOT included in EROEI studies. But these steps are necessary, or the solar PV installation won’t happen, and Pablo Prieto built several large installations and was in charge of the finances, so he knew everything required — the road built to access the site, the new transmission lines, the security fence and system and more that EROI studies typically don’t include.
This paper goes beyond Prieto and Hall’s boundaries because it includes labor, the costs of the energy required to integrate and buffer intermittent PV-electricity in the grid (i.e. storage via pumped hydro, batteries, natural gas or coal backup plants), and the energy embodied in faulty equipment. If Prieto & Hall had included these then their paper would have found a negative EROI, as Prieto wrote here. Though Prieto and Hall’s EROI of 2.6 : 1 in sunny Spain is still far less than the EROI of 10 to 14 many scientists believe necessary to maintain our current civilization.
Another important finding of this paper is that based on recycling rates of PV in Germany, solar panel lifespan is closer to 17 or 18 years than 25. And that doesn’t count the solar panels that are abandoned or tossed in the trash…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The world’s most forbidding deserts could be the best places on Earth for harvesting solar power – the most abundant and clean source of energy we have. Deserts are spacious, relatively flat, rich in silicon – the raw material for the semiconductors from which solar cells are made — and never short of sunlight. In fact, the ten largest solar plants around the world are all located in deserts or dry regions.
Researchers imagine it might be possible to transform the world’s largest desert, the Sahara, into a giant solar farm, capable of meeting four times the world’s current energy demand. Blueprints have been drawn up for projects in Tunisia and Morocco that would supply electricity for millions of households in Europe.
While the black surfaces of solar panels absorb most of the sunlight that reaches them, only a fraction (around 15%) of that incoming energy gets converted to electricity. The rest is returned to the environment as heat. The panels are usually much darker than the ground they cover, so a vast expanse of solar cells will absorb a lot of additional energy and emit it as heat, affecting the climate.
If these effects were only local, they might not matter in a sparsely populated and barren desert. But the scale of the installations that would be needed to make a dent in the world’s fossil energy demand would be vast, covering thousands of square kilometres. Heat re-emitted from an area this size will be redistributed by the flow of air in the atmosphere, having regional and even global effects on the climate.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The International Energy Agency (IEA), the Paris-based consortium of 30 countries, has told us in its flagship World Energy Outlook 2020 that solar-produced electricity is now the “cheapest electricity in history.” That seems like very good news, that is, until the actual expected impact of that fact is examined more closely.
For those who are concerned about climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric generation, it is certainly good news—but not quite good enough to make a dent in fossil fuel emissions.
Setting aside any concerns about critical materials needed to make the solar revolution reach completion, it may surprise many readers of the “cheapest electricity in history” headline that growth in solar energy will likely NOT lead to a reduction of fossil fuel burning anytime soon. In fact, the IEA’s main forecast has natural gas consumption growing by 30 percent through 2040 while oil consumption levels off but does not decline. Coal use does continue to decline as a share of total energy.
With solar energy and other renewables expected to grow so much by 2040, how can this be so? The answer is that what the IEA calls non-hydro renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass) will provide 80 percent of the INCREASE in expected global electricity demand. That means that the fossil fuel electricity infrastructure will continue to grow and that existing plants will remain in place rather than be supplanted by renewables.
Of course, for the part of the economy that runs on liquid fuels including transportation and many industrial processes requiring high heat, more renewable electricity doesn’t make much of a dent in fossil fuel use. Even where transportation is being electrified, the growth in internal combustion engine vehicles continues to dwarf those running on electricity…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Everybody loves solar power, right? It’s nice, clean, renewable energy that’s available pretty much everywhere the sun shines. If only the panels weren’t so expensive. Even better, solar is now the cheapest form of electricity for companies to build, according to the International Energy Agency. But solar isn’t all apples and sunshine — there’s a dark side you might not know about. Manufacturing solar panels is a dirty process from start to finish. Mining quartz for silicon causes the lung disease silicosis, and the production of solar cells uses a lot of energy, water, and toxic chemicals.
The other issue is that solar cells have a guaranteed life expectancy of about 25 years, with average efficiency losses of 0.5% per year. If replacement begins after 25 years, time is running out for all the panels that were installed during the early 2000s boom. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) projects that by 2050, we’ll be looking at 78 million metric tons of bulky e-waste. The IREA also believe that we’ll be generating six million metric tons of new solar e-waste every year by then, too. Unfortunately, there are hardly any measures in place to recycle solar panels, at least in the US.
How are solar panels made, anyway? And why is it so hard to recycle them? Let’s shed some light on the subject.
Solar panels come in three basic types — monocrystalline, polycrystalline, and thin-film. Each cell of a monocrystalline solar panel is made from a single silicon crystal. These are the single malt Scotch of solar panels, and are usually black.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
(Natural News) California issued its first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years last week as the state’s grid operator tried to keep the power system from complete collapse in the midst of a heat wave, and some are pointing out that the situation demonstrates the failures of green energy.
The rolling blackouts affected upwards of 2 million Californians. Many of the outages took place in the afternoon, when power demand peaked as people starting turning up their air conditioning at the same time that solar power supplies started slowing down as the sun set.
The state’s three biggest utilities – Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, and San Diego Gas & Electric – cut off power to homes and businesses for roughly an hour at a time until the close of an emergency declaration, and this was followed by a second outage.
On top of that, erratic output from the state’s wind farms failed to make up the gap. Around a third of the state’s electricity comes from renewable sources thanks to state law mandates, and these alternatives proved incapable of keeping up during peak power usage. In the past, utilities and grid operators in the state bought extra electricity from other states when it fell short, but the vast size of the heat wave meant that other states were also reaching their limits and had none to spare.
Governor Gavin Newsom ordered an investigation into the outages seen in the state over the weekend, vowing to uncover the cause. However, Republican Assemblyman Jim Patterson of Fresno, who serves as the Committee on Utilities and Energy’s Vice Chair, said that the problem can be traced to California’s reduced dependence on natural gas.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Going Off-Grid for electricity can be one of the biggest challenges you can face and also one of the most expensive.
After doing a Geoff Lawton Permaculture design course in 2013 I learnt the secret to taking my family’s home off-grid in the city which I had been wanting to do for years and was constantly told I couldn’t.
You can see our Off-Grid house in Sydney in this video.
There is also the other element to going Off-Grid and doing it in a permaculture way.
For us doing it with low embodied energy products, using solar panels that would pay back their environmental footprint not just the bank account. Batteries that would last a very long time and also be choice that would make a difference for our children was very hard to get to the bottom of and talk to guys who could answer any of these questions.
Most sales guys just want to sell you a 6.6kw solar system because that’s the best payback period financially for most countries. I remember one guy giving us a quote and asking “ are you one of these greenie types?” You think maybe growing all your own food and the garden tour he got 1st would have quietly helped him answer that question in his own head.
Going Off-Grid for electricity and taking responsibility for your own power is one of the most rewarding things that you can do in my opinion. 3rd to growing your own food and harvesting your own water.
I created this Video to help people understand the basics of Off-Grid Solar and help you get your head around Off-Grid and how different it is to Grid tied systems.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Something that long hasn’t set well with me in the green movement is that so much of it is based on marketable products. For example, not long ago, the world was set alight by the idea of plant-based soda bottles. It was as if making plastic from plants had solved all our issues, and suddenly, using these innovative new bottles made the plastic-bottle experience guilt-free. Of course, that wasn’t the case.
Bioplastics, in many ways, are likely more problematic than petroleum-based plastic. In the case of Coca-Cola’s “PlantBottle”, the end result was the same non-biodegradable chemistry. It just had to be derived from plant-based ethanol instead of fossil fuels. With that in mind, it’s probably worth pointing out just how much fossil fuel was required to grow, harvest, transport, and process the plants to make that plastic. In reality, we’d only found a new way to make the same old problem, which really boils down to the fact that disposable plastic bottles are detrimental to the environment.
In other words, the packaging both literally and figuratively changed, but the end product wasn’t green at all. That didn’t stop the marketing bonanza. Soon, “plant-based”, “biobased” and “biodegradable” plastics were everywhere, and the prefixes “bio” and “plant” persuaded consumers that now an end to the issue of plastics was in-hand. We were on route to a viable solution, and buying our water in biobased plastic bottles was aiding in this answer. What a sham!
The truth is that we needed to (and still need to) drastically reduce our use of plastics and eliminate disposable plastics, but this would be detrimental to a convenience-based economy that hugely relies on fossil fuels, plastic packaging, and nonessential “necessities” to survive. The answer isn’t a new type of plastic, i.e. a new way to continue along the wrong route. Rather, it is a re-imagining of how we are living, a version of vitality not reliant of caffeinated cola products distributed in plastic bottles.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
More than thirty years ago a giant tower was built in Manzanares, Spain, to produce electricity in a way that at the time must have seen even more eccentric than it seems now, by harnessing the power of air movement. The Manzanares tower was, sadly, toppled by a storm. Decades ago, several other firms tried to replicate the idea, but none has succeeded. Why?
A simple idea
The idea behind the so-called solar wind towers is pretty straightforward. The more popular version is the solar updraft tower, which works as follows:
On the ground, around the hollow tower, there is a solar energy collector—a transparent surface suspended a little above ground—which heats the air underneath.
As the air heats up, it is drawn into the tower, also called a solar chimney, since hot air is lighter than cold air. It enters the tower and moves up it to escape through the top. In the process, it activates a number of wind turbines located around the base of the tower. The main benefit over other renewable technologies? Doing away with the intermittency of PV solar, since the air beneath the collector could stay hot even when the sun is not shining.
A more recent take on solar wind towers involved water as well. Dubbed the Solar Wind Downdraft Tower, this project first made headlines in 2014, but since then there have been few updates, and those have been far between. The latest was from last year, when the company behind it, Solar Wind Energy Tower, announced a letter of intent by an investment company to provide financing for the project. That financing was to come from investors that the company was yet to find.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
I want to be optimistic about the future. I really do.
But there’s virtually no chance of the world transitioning gently to an alternative energy-powered future.
These Are The ‘Good Old Days’
I’m often asked where I stand on wind, solar and other alternative energy sources.
My answer is: I love them. But they’re incapable of enabling our society to smoothly slip over to powering itself by other means.
They’re not going to “save us”.
Some people are convinced otherwise. If we can just fight off the evil oil companies, get our act together, and install a national alternative energy system infrastructure, we’ll be just fine. Meaning that we”ll be able to continue to live as we do today, but powered fully by clean renewable energy.
That’s just not going to happen. At least, not without a lot of painful disruption and sacrifice.
The top three reasons why are:
Math
Human behavior
Time, scale, & cost
I walk through the detail below. I’m doing so to debunk the magical thinking behind the current “Green Revolution” because I fear it offers a false promise.
Look, I’m a huge fan of renewable energy. And I’m 1,000% in favor of weaning the world off of its toxic addiction to fossil fuels.
But we have to be eyes wide open about our future prospects. Deluding ourselves with “feel good” but unrealistic expectations about green energy will result in the same sort of poor decisions, malinvestment, and crushed dreams as fossil-based system has.
As we constantly repeat here at Peak Prosperity: Energy is everything.
Without as much available, the future is going to be exceptionally difficult compared to the present. Which is why I call the time we’re living in now The Good Old Days.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Powering the world’s economy with wind, water and solar, and perhaps a little wood sounds like a good idea until a person looks at the details. The economy can use small amounts of wind, water and solar, but adding these types of energy in large quantities is not necessarily beneficial to the system.
While a change to renewables may, in theory, help save world ecosystems, it will also tend to make the electric grid increasingly unstable. To prevent grid failure, electrical systems will need to pay substantial subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear electricity providers that can offer backup generation when intermittent generation is not available. Modelers have tended to overlook these difficulties. As a result, the models they provide offer an unrealistically favorable view of the benefit (energy payback) of wind and solar.
If the approach of mandating wind, water, and solar were carried far enough, it might have the unfortunate effect of saving the world’s ecosystem by wiping out most of the people living within the ecosystem. It is almost certain that this was not the intended impact when legislators initially passed the mandates.
[1] History suggests that in the past, wind and water never provided a very large percentage of total energy supply.
Figure 1. Annual energy consumption per person (megajoules) in England and Wales 1561-70 to 1850-9 and in Italy 1861-70. Figure by Tony Wrigley, Cambridge University.
Figure 1 shows that before and during the Industrial Revolution, wind and water energy provided 1% to 3% of total energy consumption.
For an energy source to work well, it needs to be able to produce an adequate “return” for the effort that is put into gathering it and putting it to use. Wind and water seemed to produce an adequate return for a few specialized tasks that could be done intermittently and that didn’t require heat energy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
