Renewable energy pitfalls

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The tenth anniversary of the Fukushima accident has generated unanimously cheerful comments in the Western press: wind and solar energy have become cheaper than nuclear energy, so those countries that are still developing nuclear power plants are acting unwisely. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of the figures shows that the reality differs sharply from the proposed optimistic picture.

First, the energy costs for wind and solar are not at all what the reports portray. Second, and more importantly, an attempt to fully transition to them will cause an inevitable economic and civilizational catastrophe - because of which, as we will show below, it will never be completed. The reality will turn out to be completely different from what the Western world thinks today. However, and not at all what it seems to many outside its borders, including in Russia. Let's figure out why.

What is happening on the planet has divided the Western world into two camps with directly opposite visions of the future. According to the first one, in order to stop global warming, it is necessary to develop solar and wind power plants. Fortunately, even now they give a kilowatt-hour for only four or six cents, like coal, and almost as cheap as gas.

Representatives of the second believe that none of this will happen: oil, gas and coal will be the main sources of electricity in 20 years. A careful analysis shows that the second camp often has some interest in the oil and gas field, and the first showed insufficient interest while studying physics in school.

It would seem that to us, the inhabitants of Russia, this Western discussion? In fact, we do not have such camps. The attitude to the current energy revolution here is often determined not by one's views on energy problems, but only by political orientation. Some believe that SES and WPPs will quickly defeat the thermal power industry - after all, this is important for “oil and gas Mordor to collapse”.

Others say that there is no global warming or that people are not involved in it, therefore, in fact, the "green transition" is just a fairy tale for "kickbacks and cuts in the West" or its liberation from raw materials dependence (Russian oil and gas supplies).

However, if we carefully analyze the mistakes of Western approaches to the issue, we will quickly understand: both "Russian" points of view are just as wrong. This is because they do not come from real energy and physics, but from the political preferences of their carriers.

Why is "green" energy cheap, but only until it begins to dominate

There are practically carbon-free electric power industries on the planet. And these are not only small Iceland, Costa Rica, Switzerland and Albania, but also Norway, Sweden, 60 million France, 100 million Congo and 200 million Brazil. In all of them, 80% or more of electricity is obtained from renewable sources or at nuclear power plants. It is easy to see that carbon neutrality can be achieved.

The trouble is that in all these countries it was not achieved through wind turbines and solar panels - the bulk of their non-carbon energy is the essence of hydroelectric power plants and nuclear power plants (in the case of France). However, this success is difficult for others to repeat. Iceland, Brazil and the Congo have unique conditions: it is either so cold (Iceland) that the population is negligible and it is easy to cover the needs of hydroelectric power stations, or it is so hot that precipitation is monstrously abundant, and the same hydroelectric power plants cover the needs of even 100- and 200- million population.

Most of the countries of the Western world have an ideological dislike for hydroelectric power plants and psychological dislike for nuclear power plants. This means that all they have to do is build windmills and solar panels. And it seems that there are successes on this path: as the editorial staff of Nature writes, the cost of a kilowatt-hour from them has reached the level of the cost of electricity from fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, Nature is somewhat mistaken here. What is commonly referred to in the press as the "leveled price of electricity" (LCOE) is actually "leveled" and not the actual price of electricity from different sources. And in order to "align" it, the data on the real value is subjected to some refinement.

First example: loading power plants. The annual output of kilowatt-hours of a wind turbine in the United States is equal to its operation at full capacity for 0.33 years. The rest of the time he cannot work: the wind does not blow. For solar panels, the annual output is equal to the peak for 0.22 years: the rest of the time, either night or cloudiness interfere with work.

But in the estimates of the "leveled" cost of a kilowatt-hour, these figures are taken as 0, 41 and 0, 29 - much higher than the real ones. Why? Because the authors of the "aligned" estimate are looking for a long-term forecast. It is believed that in the future the load on the wind turbine will increase, as it will increasingly be placed in the sea, where the wind really blows more often. And the solar battery - because it will increasingly be placed on a "sunflower", a movable structure, all the time orienting the photocell directly to the sun.

All this, of course, is true. But there is a nuance: a wind turbine in the sea is more expensive than on land (you need a foundation or anchors), and a solar battery on a "sunflower" is more expensive than a simple stationary one. But such an increase in the cost of the "leveled" cost of a kilowatt-hour is not considered by anyone.

Second detail. The authors of the leveled estimates of the kilowatt-hour price estimate the cost of gas to be much higher than it is in the real United States today. They proceed from the assumption that gas prices will rise. But the problem is that they do not indicate any reason for such a rise in price.

On the contrary: the shale revolution in the United States over the past ten years has dropped the cost of gas by about half, and, according to all available estimates, such cheap methane will last for a very long time. If we remove the assumption that gas prices will rise, electricity from SPPs and WPPs in the long term will not even be comparable with a kilowatt-hour from gas thermal power plants, but much more expensive.

The third and probably the most important nuance. Low prices for solar and wind power plants are obtained, first of all, because wherever they are built, there is a rule: if SES and WPPs generate electricity, the network completely takes it away. And only if the output of these power plants is suddenly very high, and the demand is very low, some part of the electricity remains unclaimed.

But for TPPs, the opposite is true: when SPPs and WPPs generate electricity, they make it clear to the owners of TPPs that their kilowatt-hours are not needed now, and in fact they are forced to stop generating. The logic here seems to be clear: a thermal power plant can turn on at the request of its owners, but a solar power plant and a wind farm cannot, since people still do not know how to make the sun shine at night or set the wind calm.

But this means that thermal power plants start operating fewer hours a year - that is, the economic return from them decreases. As a result, the "thermal" kilowatt-hour becomes more expensive, even if fuel for thermal power plants is becoming cheaper.

This has been the case in the United States over the past 15 years. During this time, electricity there has risen in price by 20% - despite the simultaneous fall in the price of coal and gas by about half. Two-thirds of the cost of a kilowatt-hour from a TPP is the cost of fuel. Consequently, electricity from thermal power plants in the United States should have dropped in price by one and a half times - and not increased by 20%.

However, if we remember that now TPPs cannot work when they want, but only when calm and cloudy conditions at SPP and WPP allow them, then the question of the reason for the rise in prices is largely clarified. Thermal power plants in modern Western energy are in the position of a useless stepdaughter - in such conditions it would be strange to expect that the prices of their energy will not rise.

Any country that wants to have SPP and WPP as the main type of generation should be prepared for the fact that it will not work to keep the price of green kilowatt-hour low forever. As soon as the share of electricity from SPP and WPP goes beyond 20% - and the total price of electricity will begin to rise sharply. Simply because TPPs will be in ever more economically worse conditions.

Let's take the graph above: in Denmark a kilowatt-hour cost 30 rubles for a consumer citizen by the end of the last decade. In Germany - in the region of 25. This reflects the difference between them: in Denmark, half of the electricity from solar power plants and wind farms, and in Germany only in the region of a third.

As soon as Denmark transfers 75% of its electricity to SES and WPPs, prices there will easily go out for 50 rubles per kilowatt-hour. The exact same thing will happen in the United States if they try to take the renewable energy route this far.

And yet it won't stop anyone

At this point, Western supporters of traditional energy make a logical, as it seems to them, conclusion: this means that renewable energy will not be able to seriously displace fossil fuels. Coal and gas, they write, will be the backbone of power generation in the Western world in 20 years.

This is a naive point of view. The fact is that the Western world, firstly, is rich, and secondly, it objectively has nowhere to spend money. Take a look at the United States: last year showed that this country can print trillions of dollars without any acceleration in inflation. The transition to renewable energy as the main one requires from this country not trillions, but only hundreds of billions of dollars a year. States can afford it by simply using the "printing press" - and not at full capacity. In fact, even a printing press is not needed: private investors there have more funds on hand than worthy investment objects.

Western Europe has other economists with different beliefs, so it doesn't print money. However, even there they will not become the main problem of the “green transition”.

Let's turn to recent history: in Germany in the past 20 years, electricity for the population has doubled - and there are still no social protests against this. In Denmark, the story is even tougher (higher price increases), but there are no protests either. The West as a whole lives so well that its inhabitants are willing to pay ten times more for electricity than Russians and will not experience poverty.

Yes, those who are heated with electricity will suffer a little from the cold, but this is not a problem. In Europe, it is traditionally bad to heat houses in winter: in England, for example, the average winter temperature in rooms is +18, and in the 60s it was +12. It's just that Europeans will dress a little warmer in winter, and the winter excess mortality from cold will slightly increase.

But Western Europeans are still emotionally insensitive to it: everyone knows that cold excess mortality in England steadily takes away tens of thousands of people a year, including from insufficient heating of premises. And still, there are no protests about this. There is no doubt that Westerners are willing to endure even more than they are today.

Moreover, the transition to renewable energy offers their lives some kind of goal, which also looks worthy - to prevent an alleged global catastrophe. This means that the increased electricity prices and the winter chill in their homes will give them a little more faith in the meaningfulness of their lives - and this is the kind of thing for which a representative of our species is willing to pay anything.

Suffice it to recall the Crusades, the rejection of DDT, and the like. The practical impact of such events is unimportant: the main thing is that the actions within their framework appear to be highly moral to the actors themselves.

Another objection of energy conservatives is also untenable: they say, due to the rise in electricity prices, industrial goods of Western countries will become uncompetitive with the goods of those who are not satisfied with the massive transition to SPP and WPP.

The fact is that the Western world has long voiced a way to deal with this: a carbon tax. It is assumed that after its implementation, products from countries where electricity is less "green" will be subject to an additional tax - the funds from which the Western world uses to finance its own transition to SPP and WPP.

Does this violate the spirit of free trade and the general principle of the WTO? It doesn't matter: the Western world dominates the planet, and as it wants, it will. For example, the United States has shown more than once that it can impose anti-dumping duties on those who do not dump, and they will get nothing for it. Or even ignore the demands of the UN International Criminal Court to pay another country reparations for aggression - and, again, they will get nothing for it.

It’s clearer that they’ll get nothing for the carbon tax either, because the power is on their side. It is impossible to punish the strong for breaking the rules of the game: he sets them, and the weaker can only adapt to them. But do not influence them in any way.

Summarize. There is nothing impossible in building a huge number of solar power plants and wind farms and covering them with three quarters - or even 95% - of the conventional electricity consumption of Denmark or Great Britain.

Yes, in winter there are periodically periods of combination of strong cloudiness, short daylight hours and calm weather. Let's say this happens over the continental United States once every ten years and lasts about a week. It is clear that it is unrealistic to cover the weekly consumption of a large country from lithium storage devices. To do this, in the same States, they would have to be set at 80 billion kilowatt-hours, which would cost $ 40 trillion in current prices, and a lot of trillion dollars in any conceivable future.

But this can be easily circumvented by containing a small number of gas-fired thermal power plants, which are turned on only during the period of such winter calm and cloudy "failures" of renewable generation. Winters in the Western world are very mild, and such "peak" gas-fired thermal power plants are unlikely to contribute more than 5-10% to the total annual electricity generation. That is, SPP and WPP can make the main - overwhelming - contribution to electricity generation, even if such electricity will (due to the difficulties of its intraday accumulation) be noticeably more expensive than today.

However, a catastrophe still cannot be avoided: this is indicated by the history of similar green initiatives of the past

So, we found out that the transition to SPP and WPP as the main source of generation is quite possible. It seems to be a victory. After all, thermal energy kills quite seriously: tens of thousands of people per year die from it in the United States, and hundreds of thousands in the Western world as a whole.

But before rejoicing in the victory, it is worth recalling other examples of similar campaigns dictated by environmental considerations. For example, take the crusade against DDT. What were the two main troubles that the Greens of the 1960s attributed to DDT and who wanted to win? The first: a decrease in the number of birds, the second: an increase in the number of cancers. DDT, as its fighters have made it clear, makes the eggshell thinner, leading to the death of chicks, and, in addition, causes cancer in humans.

Today, it has been about forty years since DDT was banned in the United States. The number of birds then fell, and the number of cancers per capita rose sharply. Western countries are investing huge amounts of money in solving these problems, but so far they have not been able to solve them.

The next green crusade was organized against the overpopulation of the Earth and the resulting depletion of natural resources - oil, soil and anything else. And also, of course, mass death from hunger, which theorists of the "overpopulation of the Earth" did not tire of and do not tire of promising us until now.

About forty years have passed since the start of the fight against overpopulation. The population of the Earth has grown exponentially, but this did not turn out to be a problem. But the monstrously acute problem of our time is the decline in the birth rate, which promises a catastrophe for a number of world economies. And again, serious funds are being invested in attempts to change the situation - but so far to no avail.

Fears about the depletion of oil and other resources also ended in a strange way: today they produce much more oil than in the 1970s, and it costs - taking into account dollar inflation - even less than then. The situation is similar with gas and coal.

It turned out no better with hunger, the onset of which was foreshadowed by supporters of the fight against population growth: human nutrition is now the best for the entire known period, both in terms of calories and in terms of quality, and continues to improve.

The third green crusade of our time is against nuclear energy. Recall that Greenpeace employees and a number of other organizations argued that nuclear power killed tens of thousands of people as a result of accidents, so the nuclear power plants should be closed. Results?

According to modern data, thermal power plants actually kill many hundreds of thousands of people around the planet. But the nuclear power plant in the entire history killed no more than four thousand people (Chernobyl). Due to the existence of the nuclear power plant, the generation of TPPs slightly decreased - and this saved 1.8 million lives. In addition to this, the slowdown in the development of nuclear power plants caused by protests by the greens is responsible for the bulk of modern global warming.

Any outside observer in these three examples could have noticed the same pattern. A crusade "on emotions" goes to defend something and for the sake of this proposes to fight against the fact that this "something" is threatening. However, he chooses false targets, therefore, defeating his enemy, such a crusade does not help anyone.

But he is capable of causing negative consequences just for the one who is called upon to defend. For example, there are suggestions that the sharp increase in the number of observed birds during the use of DDT is the result of the suppression of populations of insects that threaten the birds.

Others argue that the fight against overpopulation of the Earth - which did not exist - forced the same China to adopt a policy of "one family, one child" - and as a result, today's China is on the verge of a demographic catastrophe. By the end of the century, its population, with current trends, will be halved, sending the country's economy into a severe knockdown.

Still others note that the fight against nuclear power plants led to their undersubstitution of coal-fired thermal power plants, and a corresponding increase in the number of victims of the energy sector by millions of people. Well, and to the main part of the global warming, which is so much talked about on TV.

Let's try to apply the blueprint of the standard green crusade to the renewable energy story. What should be expected from the active introduction of SPP and WPP in the Western world?

Brave new world: finishing touches for a portrait

The West is introducing renewable energy not because it will reduce the number of victims of thermal power plants: no Greta Thunberg and other popular green activists even mention this fact in their speeches from high stands. They do this with one specific goal: to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the world around them.

But the transition to SPP and WPP cannot do this. We have already written about the reasons, but we will briefly repeat: no more than 20% of the energy we consume is electrical. More than 80% is spent mainly on heating (more than half), transport (over 20%) and a little more on cooking. Renewable energy can easily close 17% of electricity generation. Part of the transport 20% - also, due to electric vehicles and electric trucks.

But with warmth, as we indicated earlier, it simply will not work. Any suggestions on replacing the heat of fossil fuel with hydrogen stored from SPP and WPP will give nothing. Hydrogen from them is several times more expensive than from natural gas. And, besides, it is very difficult to transport and store. Replacing heat with "green hydrogen" is not just expensive.

To do this, it will be necessary to change absolutely the entire economy of the Western world: the share of costs for primary energy there will grow from a few percent of GDP, as it is today, to a dozen or more percent of GDP. Let us recall that the level of spending by Western states on military operations during World War II was similar. Such mobilization tension cannot be closed by any printing press. It will clearly require the most serious (again, at the level of a major war) efforts from society as a whole.

The fact is that the non-Western world will certainly not follow the path of transition to electric power generation (and even more so - heat generation) only from SES and WPPs. It will act like China today: build wind turbines and solar panels, but only in such volumes that do not worsen the operating mode of other types of power plants. In other words, SPP and WPP there will not cover more than 20-30% of all electricity generation.

Moreover, the non-Western world will not agree to the use of ultra-expensive green hydrogen. Developing economies are simply not wealthy enough to afford this.

This means that any efforts by Western states to combat global warming by using renewable energy are doomed. You cannot urge your citizens to tighten their belts for a brighter future if these citizens know that more and more carbon dioxide is being produced in China, India, Bangladesh and other Indonesia. And the situation is exactly that today. The Western world controls a much smaller proportion of the world's population today than it did a hundred years ago. Therefore, it can only affect a smaller part of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

Moreover: CO2 emissions in the non-Western world are growing rapidly. Many billions of people live there, and they live in poverty. As their wealth grows, they will inevitably consume more energy - and emit a lot more carbon dioxide. Even if the entire Western world stops emitting CO2 altogether by the middle of the century, the increase in emissions in the non-Western world will be enough to fully compensate for the Western decline.

Civilization disaster

As a result, by the middle of the 21st century, before the great Western march towards renewable energy, a slightly disappointing picture will be painted. Developed countries mainly - more than 50% - will generate electricity from the sun and wind turbines. For this they will pay with a sharp rise in prices for electricity and heat for citizens - an increase that will not be in the world around them.

But all this will not in any way reduce carbon dioxide emissions on the planet, since no one outside the Western world is ready to pay such a price for the fight against global warming. Moreover, many developing countries by 2050 will no longer want to fight it, even for free.

The point is that the real - not modeled - impact of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on the world around us is pretty well covered in the scientific literature. For example, they honestly write that the Sahara is shrinking by 12 thousand square kilometers a year.

It is simply overgrown with vegetation, which needs less water with a higher CO2 content in the air - and it rains here more often, because precipitation inevitably increases with global warming. As a result, in 1984-2015, the area of the planet's main desert was reduced to the territory of the whole of Germany. Moreover, some scientists believe that this process will accelerate significantly in the next decades.

Let's imagine ourselves in the place of the authorities of African countries on the border with the Sahara: it retreats to the north by an average of 2.5 kilometers a year, and for decades in a row. How will we treat those who, from the stands of the UN, will urge us to significantly raise the cost of electricity, and thus fight CO2 emissions, so that the terrible global warming does not turn our land into a desert?

It will be difficult for us to take such people seriously. After all, our eyes tell us that the savannah is taking over the desert. We will remember how certain places looked in our childhood, and see how they look today.

The situation is similar in other parts of the world. The deserts of Namibia, Kalmykia (now almost everywhere turned into semi-deserts and steppes), the outskirts of the Gobi, and so on are subject to overgrowth. You can tell a resident of the lands near the Russian Akhtuba for a long time that global warming leads to desertification, but it will be difficult to dissuade him from the fact that in his childhood the banks of Akhtuba were covered with sand - and today they are covered with vegetation.

Victory: difficult to achieve, but automatically leading to defeat

There is one more difficult problem. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions already by the end of the 1990s provided one-twentieth of all food production in the world (by stimulating plant photosynthesis). As Mikhail Budyko (the discoverer of global warming in its modern sense) noted in his publications of that time, anthropogenic CO2 was already feeding 300 million people.

Since then, 20 years have passed, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased significantly. Therefore, he now feeds more than half a billion people. According to the forecast of the same Budyko, in the 21st century this figure will reach one billion. Who and where will get food for them in the event of a hypothetical victory over anthropogenic emissions? But this is exactly the goal that is being set for renewable energy today.

It turns out that Western society has set itself a large, elusive goal of a truly epochal scale - but at the same time such that if it is achieved, the difficulties will become much greater than there are now. Victory along this path risks becoming a defeat that will deal a serious blow to both human societies and the biosphere. Indeed, in order to feed the billion people who will provide food for anthropogenic CO2 in this century, the people of the XXII century will have to take millions of square kilometers of additional land from the wild.

All this means that the Western world is at risk of facing a full-fledged civilization crisis. He will make huge, colossal efforts to reduce CO2 emissions - but in the end he will not be able to make a difference. If suddenly he succeeds, he will face an ever-deepening rift between him and the rest of the planet: it will be extremely difficult for the hungry inhabitants of the third world to understand the meaning of what the inhabitants of the first world are doing.