World Set to Add 'Record-Breaking' Renewables to Electricity Systems

[Think. Again.]

By: Cristen Hemingway Jaynes
Published: June 1, 2023
Ecowatch

A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that renewable power capacity additions are set to rise by a third globally this year, with wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) leading the way.

Prompted by the worldwide energy crisis, it will be the largest yearly increase ever.

According to the report, concerns about energy security and increased fossil fuel prices have driven strong wind power and solar PV deployment.

“Solar and wind are leading the rapid expansion of the new global energy economy. This year, the world is set to add a record-breaking amount of renewables to electricity systems – more than the total power capacity of Germany and Spain combined,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a press release from the IEA.

The striking growth is predicted to continue into 2024, with total global renewable electricity capacity soaring to 4,500 gigawatts (GW) — the equivalent of the combined total power production of China and the U.S., the report said.

Additions to global renewable energy capacity are poised to increase by 107 GW, the biggest absolute rise in history, and are expected to reach more than 440 GW this year.

Europe has placed renewables at the head of the continent’s response to the energy crisis, and new policies in India and the U.S. are helping to propel marked growth there that is expected to continue for the next two years.

This year and next, China is expected to be responsible for nearly 55 percent of the additions to renewable energy capacity worldwide.

“The global energy crisis has shown renewables are critical for making energy supplies not just cleaner but also more secure and affordable – and governments are responding with efforts to deploy them faster,” Birol said in the press release.

According to the report, two-thirds of the renewable power capacity increase this year will be due to additions of solar PV, and that expansion is expected to continue in 2024. Smaller PV systems are growing, while large-scale solar PV plants continue to expand. Rooftop solar PV is being stimulated by rising electricity prices, allowing consumers to cut energy costs.

Solar PV manufacturing capacity is predicted to increase by more than two times to 1,000 GW next year, with China leading the way, and helped by growing diversification of supply in Europe, India and the U.S.

-snip-

From 2021 to 2023, EU power consumers are estimated to have saved 100 billion euros with wind capacity and newly installed solar PV, the report said. In Europe, prices for wholesale electricity would have risen by eight percent last year without increased renewables capacity.

Expectations for European additions of renewable energy capacity have risen by 40 percent from prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as many countries increased their uptake of wind and solar in order to lower their dependency on natural gas from Russia.

Small-scale rooftop solar has become more financially appealing as electricity prices have soared and policy support has increased in major European markets, primarily in Italy, the Netherlands and Germany.

The report added that governmental policies need to be adjusted to account for changing market conditions, especially when it comes to auctions of renewable energy, which saw a record 16 percent in undersubscriptions last year.

Policies must also concentrate on investment in and timely planning of grids.

The report added that by next year several European countries, including Ireland, Spain and Germany, will see their combined share of solar PVs and wind rise to make up more than 40 percent of their yearly total electricity generation.

More at https://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy-capacity-global-increase-2023.html

[NNadir]

1. The unit of energy is the Joule. So called "renewable energy" is always dishonestly stated as...

...peak power, measured in Watts for systems that require redundancy using dangerous fossil fuels operate, as if wind and solar operate at 100% capacity utilization. They never do.

Unreliable energy is dirty energy.

The disingenuous rhetoric is why we spent 3.3 trillion dollars between 2004 and 2019 on so called "renewable energy," solar and wind, for just 12 Exajoules out of 624 Exajoules, resulting in carbon dioxide concentrations now above 424 ppm, less than 10 years after we saw 400 ppm for the first time.

I often argue one cannot be a journalist if one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.

It's why money is being squandered on this useless, ineffective, and dirty exercise.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[Think. Again.]

2. I think...

I think you misunderstood the intention of the book "How to Lie with Statistics"

It was written as a guide on seeing through bad faith arguments, not on how to make them.

[NNadir]

3. People lie, both to each other and to themselves, but numbers don't lie.

No statistics were involved in the numbers I offered. They are publically available facts. If one refuses to learn the difference between facts and statistics, one may end up lying to one's self.

I've provided links to them in this space many times.

Here is an example of absolute numbers, 50 years into endless cheering for so called "renewable energy."

May 2023: 424.00 ppm
May 2022: 420.99 ppm
Last updated: Jun 05, 2023

Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2

What part of these numbers is difficult to understand?

These are measurements using very sophisticated analytical chemistry by highly educated people, who can, in fact, tell the difference between a number and statistic.

It's not like this endless cheering has ever been absent here. I've been writing here for over 20 years, and still people, usually with a low level understanding of mathematics, are making these tiresome arguments in defense of the indefensible.

Here we are after all this: 424 ppm, 3.01 ppm higher than last year.

[Think. Again.]

4. ...

That's funny, the numbers for CO2 emmissions seem to be exactly the same for the past 50 years that we've been using nuclear energy energy.

[mopinko]

6. he loves to turn

a calculus problem into simple arithmetic, to come up w the answer he wants.

[NNadir]

7. I simply state facts. Period.

I reference what I say.

[mopinko]

9. u state the facts u like,

and leave the rest. u beef about materials for pv, but pretend the steel, cement and uranium for nukes falls from the sky. u want cradle to grave accounting for renewables, but not for nukes.

u put no value on distributed production. in your world we have to wire every home and biz to a nuke. in my world, remote areas get power.
u put no value on multiple sources, which lets u fill in the low spots in those ‘unreliable’ renewals. no, the sun doesnt always shine. but if it’s running my air conditioning, i dont need it to. same w winter cold. here, when it’s hella cold, the sky is clear. solar is the perfect peak source.

when i say i get almost $0 elec bills, that seems to mean nothing. i dont have a dirty battery. i’m happy to send what i dont need to the grid, and use the grid other times. it balances out, i get paid for my power. and when we have a heat wave, it’s not me requiring that coal peaker plant.
that $200/mo on my $20k investment cannot be beat.

those r the facts that i see when i read your posts. painting a simple picture of a complex problem.
i respect your experience and your knowledge. i do. but insisting only nukes can save us is just so simple as to be flat out wrong.

[NNadir]

13. I survey the scientific literature regularly.

I'm not going to apologize for my journal here, which has many thousands of references to the primary scientific literature as links.

My experience here is that people who don't have either access to information they don't like, simply respond with platitudes to ignore facts they don't like.

The fact that half a century of wild cheering for solar and wind, and the expenditure of trillions of dollars on solar and wind the rate of degradation of the atmosphere is accelerating, having reached 2.4 ppm/year.

They don't work, if "working" involves addressing climate change.

Ignoring that fact because one doesn't like it is a demonstration that no amount of information can address dogma.

[mopinko]

15. i do appreciate the facts u bring.

Last edited Tue Jun 6, 2023, 02:52 PM - Edit history (1)

but the stat u just gave- sounds bad. but i think u r missing some data there.
yes, co2 is still rising. cuz there r more humans in more places putting more stress on the planet that have nothing to do w power generation. nukes wont stop the loss of forests to food and people. nukes wont stop bad ag practices.

i just dont see ANY single solution to the fix we r in. my personal pet solution is anaerobic digesters required on every cafo. that’s not only renewable, and reliable, it solves a huge pollution problem. the entire town of amana ia is powered by a single dairy farm. win-win.
and tho i know it is a low quality source, i am not the only 1 who thinks we could extract a lot of metals from the coal ash pits that are poisoning coal country. there are a lot of research projects on that 1. another win-win.

rly, my beef is that you have a single solution that rly doesnt solve everything.
and we’re not even talking about ghg’s besides co2 here.

[NNadir]

18. I'm not here to suggest there is a solution to this tragedy.

Last edited Tue Jun 6, 2023, 02:50 PM - Edit history (1)

Nuclear energy may not be able to undo what fear and ignorance has brought us, because much has been irretrievably lost to the kind of wishful thinking that OPs like this one are merely yet another instance.

All I am saying, based on thirty years of intense study is that if anything is saved or if anything that can be restored, nuclear engineers will drive the saving and or the restoration.

I am proud of my son who is on the front lines of nuclear engineering. The issue is exergy, and the primary energy that drives its recovery.

It's a little late for the public to understand that the laws of thermodynamics are not subject to wishful thinking. If, however, we do not recognize that and insist on throwing good money after bad with cheering, then what we are seeing will only get worse faster.

That, I think is a fact.

Facts matter.

[NNadir]

8. Nuclear energy has been reliably producing 28-30 Exajoules...

...of energy - note the use of Joules, a unit of energy - while under attack by people who actually think that reactionary return to the 19th century who were disinterested in the use of dangerous fossil fuels.

Nuclear was held to standards that no other form of energy can meet.

We stopped building them because of appeals to ignorance.

Wind and solar combined, at a cost of trillions of dollars have never, not once, produced as much energy as the growth of fossil fuels on the years between 2020 and 2021.

I can provide the IEA WEO 2022 reference for this but I'm on my cell phone waiting for a colleague at a scientific conference.

Wind and solar are lipstick on the fossil fuel pig. They generate more complacency than energy.

Sorry, but facts matter.

[Think. Again.]

16. Has it occurred to you...

"We stopped building them because of appeals to ignorance."

Do you not see similarities in the lack of popular acceptance of nuclear and the other forms of carbon free energy generation?

I believe arguments such as yours, against solar, wind, etc, are helping the rise of CO2 emmissions.

[NNadir]

20. The worship of popularity over reason and facts is a well known...

....logical fallacy. This element of bad thinking in courses on critical thinking has many names, the bandwagon fallacy, appeal to popularity fallacy, etc.

It is a core of advertising.

It is not the case that best selling cars are necessarily good cars.

The successful marketing of bad ideas, whether it's racism, cigarette smoking, or antinukism or for that matter fossil fuels, is killing people and the planet.

I do note that if you scratch the surface of almost any purveyors of the disastrous failed wind and solar scheme, you will find an antinuke raising specious exercises of selective attention.

Most people want cheap gasoline and natural gas. That doesn't make either acceptable.

I never see an antinuke who applies the same rhetoric to fossil fuels as they apply to nuclear energy. Hence the planet is being killed.

[Seinan Sensei]

11. "Figures don't lie, but liars figure"

Summarizes the book How to Lie with Statistics

[MLAA]

10. Thank you, I wasn't aware of this. I appreciate your patience and explanations.

[Crowman2009]

5. If that's the case, let's end coal use now!

And send Manchin to the poor house.

[hunter]

14. We need to quit fossil fuels now. Most of these projects will only prolong our use of fossil fuels.

And they'll do NOTHING, absolutely nothing, to reduce the total amount of fossil fuel waste that we humans dump into our earth's atmosphere.

Cheerleading for these large scale wind and solar projects is just another flavor of climate change denial. They all depend on fossil fuels for their economic viability.

Let's say these solar and wind projects cut our fossil fuel use in half over a one year period. That's a very generous estimate. Most solar and wind projects have a capacity factor much less than that.

So we end up dumping the same amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere over a two year period instead of one. Well fuck. Nothing is changed. More species go extinct and pressures on civilization eventually cause it to collapse. Billions of people suffer and die. We do not save the world.

Aggressive renewable energy schemes in places like California, Denmark, and Germany have FAILED. The experiment has been done, the numbers are in. They've proven themselves incapable of displacing fossil fuels entirely, which is something we must do. All they've done is prolonged our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas.

Like it or not, nuclear power is the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely.

At this point of my argument I usually see a lot of hand-waving about magical energy storage systems. Unfortunately there are none that could be built at the scales required to support an entire electric grid when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

Very wealthy people can pretend to circumvent these actual physical limits, this reality, with their huge solar arrays, multiple Tesla Powerwalls, and diesel backup generators powered by vegetable oil, but these systems are far beyond the financial reach of most of the human population and what's worse, manufacturing such systems has huge environmental impacts that are in most ways as bad as using fossil fuels directly.

Nuclear power plants and the electric grids they support are made from more common materials -- mostly concrete, steel, and aluminium. For the same capacity, renewable energy schemes require far more of these common materials than nuclear power does, and a lot of rarer materials nuclear powered grids do not.

We have the technology we need to quit fossil fuels entirely. We just have to do it.

[Think. Again.]

17. Say again?

You write: "Aggressive renewable energy schemes in places like California, Denmark, and Germany have FAILED. The experiment has been done, the numbers are in. They've proven themselves incapable of displacing fossil fuels entirely, which is something we must do. All they've done is prolonged our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas."



"According to GlobalData’s report, ‘Denmark Power Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2021 – Market Trends, Regulations, and Competitive Landscape’, the Danish Government continues to play a pivotal role by encouraging renewable energy development. Its objective is to increase the share of green energy in the power mix and gradually increase the share of renewable energy to 100% in both the energy and transport sectors by 2050."

From: https://www.energyglobal.com/special-reports/03092021/globaldata-renewables-in-denmark-to-reach-nearly-100-share/

[hunter]

19. That's a damned accounting trick.

Denmark exports excess wind energy when they can't use all of it domestically and then counts that against the fossil fuels they burn when the wind isn't blowing.

Carbon intensity in Denmark is typically above 200 gCO₂eq/kWh most of the year, compared to France's 32.

California does a little better than Denmark thanks to it's large hydroelectric resources and remaining nuclear power plant.

You can explore the numbers starting here:

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR

These are facts, not deceptive advertising. Denmark would be shit out of luck if it didn't have large natural gas reserves. California would be shit out of luck without natural gas.

Germany is shit out of luck now that they're not buying cheap Russian natural gas. Instead they burn filthy coal.

[Think. Again.]

21. If...

If don't ALL speed up the transition away from fossil fuels USING EVERY AVAILABLE TOOL WE HAVE, we will ALL be shit out of luck.

[hunter]

23. Large scale wind and solar development on previously undeveloped land- and seascapes is despicable.

The high intensity mining and energy-intensive refining of the uncommon materials required to build these follies is despicable.

"We had to destroy the natural world in order to save it!" is not an ethical position.

Let's be honest. One of the reasons wind and solar enthusiasts oppose nuclear power is that it will ultimately make wind and solar power redundant. Nobody wants intermittent electric power when they've got a reliable, affordable, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year 'round power source.

I don't hate solar power. Go ahead, put it on rooftops and over parking lots if that tickles your fancy. So much as I hate car culture, I'm not going to tell anyone they suck because they bought a new car or put solar panels on their roof. I own cars myself, and honestly I've been quite fond of some of the cars I've owned. I have a few hundred watts of readily deployable solar capacity which is pretty useful in power failures or in the field, enough to charge cell phones and chromebooks, and lights too.

I do regularly oppose large scale wind and solar developments on previously undeveloped land- and seascapes. Those are a false hope that shouldn't be subsidized.

Once upon a time I was an anti-nuclear activist and a pretty radical one at that. That was a path I went down when I first met Helen Caldicott as a very intense and somewhat crazy 17 year old.

I spent endless hours and burned a lot of gasoline on the road between San Onofre and Humboldt Bay in my opposition to nuclear power.

I'm not an anti-nuclear activist any longer. The evolution of my opinion is documented here on DU over the past 21 years. Some of it can be seen in my journal.

[Think. Again.]

24. Not me...

I've never been anti-nuclear. I am FOR rationally, safely, and quickly reducing the burning of fossil fuels.

I have never been for unnecessary natural resource destruction to generate energy, a vast amount of which is wasted. Yes to rooftops, parking lots, deserts, and everywhere that is not environmentally sensitive. DOUBLE yes to reduction of unnecessary power use, leakage, and waste.

I don't assume that alternative energy tech has reached it's peak development. I know improvements and refinements will continue to reduce the materials and energy costs we currently need to expend to produce non-CO2 emmitting power, just as the safety of nuke plants has developed, wattage of lighting and heating has decreased, etc.

I don't consider any relatively new (but proven-to-be-effective) power generation method to be "folly" and I don't immediately denigrate anything that isn't my single tech of choice.

I see very clearly that in our particular situation, at this particular time, we must do all we can with whatever tools we can safely use, to continue beating back the amount of CO2 we emit while also (always) working toward a safer, more flexible, more sustainable, and more just energy/electricity generation and distribution system.

[hunter]

25. Bulldozing fragile desert ecologies for solar panels is a vile thing to do.

How is that "saving the world?"

And yes, aggressive renewable energy schemes in California have FAILED and will only prolong our use of natural gas.

The numbers are easily available for anyone to see.

California has many gigawatts of wind, solar, and energy storage systems. You can subtract out nuclear and fossil fuel power from the actual data to see what kind of electric grid you'd get without those power inputs. It ain't pretty.

The amount of energy storage required to support a reliable electric grid without using fossil fuels or nuclear power is entirely ludicrous and always will be.

No magical battery systems will save us. It's not that we don't have the technology, it's that economically viable energy storage systems at the scales required to support a reliable electric grid with unreliable renewable energy inputs are very much limited by basic physical realities.

You can look at California's numbers here:

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO

You can use this ACTUAL DATA, and data freely available from other sources, to model any sort of renewable energy utopia you like.

Have at it...

The problems with renewable energy are the same at any scale, from a small cabin in the hills to an entire electric grid. If renewable energy can't sufficiently displace fossil fuels in a wealthy state like California, certainly not enough to "save the world," then the problem is even worse when you consider there are about 8 billion people on this planet who depend on high density energy resources for their survival.

As I've often said, enthusiasm for large scale environmentally destructive wind and solar projects, electric cars, and the like, is just another flavor of climate change denial.

[Think. Again.]

26. May I ask...

What your (realistic) suggestions might be for eliminating CO2 emissions as quickly as possible while keeping society stable?

[Think. Again.]

27. Also...

When you write;

"California has many gigawatts of wind, solar, and energy storage systems. You can subtract out nuclear and fossil fuel power from the actual data to see what kind of electric grid you'd get without those power inputs. It ain't pretty. "

And;

" If renewable energy can't sufficiently displace fossil fuels in a wealthy state like California, certainly not enough to "save the world,"

Are you suggesting that California has reached it's limit and could not produce more gigawatts from anything other than FF's and nuclear? All alternative sources have already peaked?

[hunter]

28. Who cares? The capacity factors of wind and solar are pretty dismal.

When the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow for days or weeks on end, what sort of power do you end up using?

With both wind and solar, doubling name plate capacity does not double the amount of usable power, especially with all the physical limitations of energy storage systems. There is no economically viable energy storage system that can carry an entire electric grid for days or weeks, and it's likely there never will be. So here in California, and in Denmark, we burn gas. In Germany they burn coal and whatever natural gas they can get.

Here's the way I see it. If you have an electric grid where 50% of the electricity comes from nuclear power then doubling that nuclear capacity means ALL your electricity comes from nuclear power. Job done. Nuclear power is a mature seventy year old technology. 21st century nuclear power plant designs have addressed all the safety concerns of the twentieth century.

The same is not true of wind or solar. If 50% of your energy comes from wind and solar then doubling the nameplate capacity does not double the amount of usable electric power. At a certain point new solar and wind capacity does not, and can not, pay for itself.

An aggressive nuclear program could replace all fossil fuel electric power plants and then go on to produce synthetic nitrogen for agriculture and transportation fuels as well.

Solar and wind power will never do that.

[Think. Again.]

29. hmmm...

I guess we could find a way to shoot all that radioactive waste to the sun... or something...

And at least new car designs would get interesting!

[hunter]

30. Radioactive waste is an utterly negligible problem compared to fossil fuel waste.

Fossil fuel waste is destroying the natural world as we know it and will probably be the ultimate cause of this civilization's collapse.

[Think. Again.]

32. Absolutely agree!

Yes, I'm pretty sure we agree that fossil fuel burning is the reason we're all having this discussion.

[Finishline42]

31. Respectfully...

Here's another view of solar farms

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Finishline42]

22. Two things

1st - The US uses 20 million barrels of oil a DAY (the world uses about 100 million). That isn't changing significantly anytime soon. It would crash our economy and millions would die.

2nd - We have just over 100 nuclear reactors producing just under 20% of our electricity. The country will not allow the building of another 100 to take us to 40%.

The two new reactors in Georgia is the only way to add to our existing fleet - IMO - add to an existing location.

I do think there is promise in SMR's.

You've said many times that wind and solar could not provide enough power (amperage?) for our industrialized society. But they certainly can produce a lot of power for residential use. I am wondering if SMR's in groups of 4 (per the TVA guy) would fill the gap?