The Renewable Energy Reality Check
"Renewable energy is ideologically very attractive. After all, who would not want clean and "free" energy for everyone forever? Such ideological perfection can easily switch off the critical thinking of environmentally conscious individuals and this is exactly what we are seeing at the moment. This article will therefore attempt to reactivate some of that critical thinking.
Minimal impact on climate change
The first point to be made is that the chances of renewable energy being deployed at a rate sufficiently high to have a meaningful impact on climate change are slim to none. Leading energy authorities such as the IEA, BP, the EIA and Exxon all agree that renewable energy other than hydro will probably contribute about 5% of the global energy mix by 2035. By that time, atmospheric CO2 concentrations will already be well past 450 ppm.
Energy mix projections by the IEA
Even if all of these energy experts are off by 100% and renewable energy sources like solar, wind and biofuels contribute 10% of global energy by 2035, global CO2 emissions will still be increasing, rapidly driving atmospheric concentrations towards 550 ppm and beyond. Decarbonizing the energy sector by other means (e.g. CCS and nuclear) will be much more effective."
http://theenergycollective.com/schalk-cloete/228151/renewable-energy-reality-check#comment-form
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Last edited Thu May 23, 2013, 06:04 PM - Edit history (1)
“It’s not 1990 anymore.”
CHRIS NELDER: MAY 9, 2013
"We're fifteen to twenty years out of date in how we think about renewables," said Dr. Eric Martinot to an audience at the first Pathways to 100% Renewables Conference held April 16 in San Francisco. "It's not 1990 anymore."
Dr. Martinot and his team recently compiled their 2013 Renewables Global Futures report from two years of research in which they conducted interviews with 170 experts and policymakers from fifteen countries, including local city officials and stakeholders from more than twenty cities. They also reviewed more than 50 recently published scenarios by credible international organizations, energy companies, and research institutes, along with government policy targets for renewable energy, and various corporate reports and energy literature.
The report observes that "[t]he history of energy scenarios is full of similar projections for renewable energy that proved too low by a factor of 10, or were achieved a decade earlier than expected." For example, the International Energy Agency's 2000 estimate for wind power in 2010 was 34 gigawatts, while the actual level was 200 gigawatts. The World Bank's 1996 estimate for China was 9 gigawatts of wind and 0.5 gigawatts for solar PV by 2020, but by 2011 the country had already achieved 62 gigawatts of wind and 3 gigawatts of PV.
Dr. Martinot's conclusion from this exhaustive survey? "The conservative scenarios are simply no longer credible."
There is now a yawning gap between "conservative" scenarios and more optimistic ones, as illustrated in this chart contrasting scenarios published in 2012 by entities like the IEA and ExxonMobil with those offered by groups like the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (an international scientific policy research organization), Greenpeace, and the World Wildlife Fund...
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/conventional-wisdom-about-clean-energy-is-way-out-of-date?utm_source=Solar&utm_medium=Picture&utm_campaign=GTMDaily
There is a lot of negativity on this board and a great deal of it is aimed at the timetable for deploying renewables. The study in the OP confirms my own research on this topic - research that forms the basis for my outlook on what is coming down the pike for our energy future.
The thoughts I share on the our energy future are often termed "overly optimistic" (to use the most polite phrase), and inevitably the person holding that view will buttresses their argument with the IEA or EIA numbers. I hope this post gives some food for thought for those who misuse the word Cornucopian to let me know they think I'm being unrealistic. One particular poster, in fact, just loves to use the EIA, BP and IEA numbers to create graphs reflecting his feelings of gloom and despair.
Let's recap the numbers above:
..."projections for renewable energy that proved too low by a factor of 10, or were achieved a decade earlier than expected"
in 2000 International Energy Agency saysin 2010 wind power will be at 34 gigawatts;
actual level was 200 gigawatts.
1996 World Bank estimate for China by 2020:
9 gigawatts of wind and 0.5 gigawatts for solar PV
China in 2011 has 62 gigawatts of wind and 3 gigawatts of PV (and they are just getting started - k)
10 years ahead of schedule and wind is 7X+ while solar is 6X. How much do you think they will exceed World Bank predictions by the time 2020 actually gets here?
So when you look at charts like this:
Or tables like this:
Remember who has a record of poor predictions. That isn't saying we are going to address this threat as fast as we need to, but at least let's start the discussion about what we are going to do with a realistic eye on what is good analysis and what isn't.
Sources referenced in the OP include:
The IEA (International Energy Agency):
The Energy Watch Group (EWG), a coalition of scientists and politicians which analyses official energy industry predictions, claims that the IEA has had an institutional bias towards traditional energy sources and has been using "misleading data" to undermine the case for renewable energy, such as wind and solar. A 2008 EWG report compares IEA projections about the growth of wind power capacity and finds that it has consistently underestimated the amount of energy the wind power industry can deliver.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Energy_Agency
BP (British Petroleum)
EIA (Energy Information Administration)
The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, expose several errors in the Energy Information Agency's weekly oil report, including one in September that was large enough to cause a jump in oil prices, and a litany of problems with its data collection, including the use of ancient technology and out-of-date methodology, that make it nearly impossible for staff to detect errors. A weak security system also leaves the data open to being hacked or leaked, the documents show.
Moreover, problems with EIA data underscore the hazards of depending on companies or other firms to self-report data.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703523204575130141392493862.html
Exxon
15% isn't enough to make a difference either (and this is electricity alone).
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7310
It's Lee Raymond. And calling Mr. Raymond "fat" is "fairly low".
An apology is probably in order, though not as though Lee cares.
Now, why did you post his photo in the first place? 
Blue line is electricity production. Orange line is fossil fuels used in that production. Took the EIA figures, and made 1999 the baseline. Already happening.
Renewables have as yet made no impact at all on the carbon emissions of global primary energy usage. That's both because the proportional contribution of new sources like wind and PV is still very small, and also because their contribution has so far been additive rather than displacing fossil sources. That last factor - the additive nature of new energy sources - is the one that worries me the most on the global level where climate change happens.
The top chart is the percent annual change in AGGI: the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index. The bottom one is the percent annual change in CO2. (Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/)
Both have been trending lower. The sharp drop occurs around 1990 and has to do, in AGGI's case, mostly with the Montreal Protocol, which banned CFCs for refrigeration; these gases were powerful greenhouse gases in their own right. The one for CO2 I'm guessing happened because of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, which shuttered a vast number of inefficient factories and power plants.
The creep lower since that time in both cases would have mostly to do with increasing efficiency and conservation measures, although in both Europe's and the US's case there's been a switch to lower carbon sources, renewables in Europe's case, natural gas mostly in the case of the US, although renewables are starting to have an effect as I showed above. Note also if you look at the source link you'll see that methane has been flat for a long time, so obviously there's been improvement there, mostly probably due to much less flaring off of natural gas and probably some due to plugging leaks in natural gas pipelines.
The industrialization of China probably is what's kept that graph you published from getting any better, but China has made quite a bit of progress itself even as it continues to grow. The fact the graphs I'm showing here don't show any spike in either case since China started to industrialize is a tribute to what they've done, if you think about it. It's just that there's a lot of them, and you can't blame them for wanting a better standard of living.
As shown from the same data set:
You shouldn't put your faith in dropping percentages. That's a linear trend line on the graph, with as tight a fit as you could ask for. The CO2-equivalent has been rising by a steady 2.8 ppm/year for the last 21 years.
which would indicate a greater capacity to absorb CO2 from either your supposition or plants. The data don't seem to support that:
This is year over year variability as measured by the percent diff between the low of the year for CO2 and the peak, from the weekly Mauna Loa readings, starting in 1975. Eyeballing this chart - you kinda have to strain your eyes - you get the feeling variability has been falling. To figure out if my eyes were deceiving me or not, I did a 5 year moving average of the figures:
This appears to show that the capacity for Earth to absorb CO2 has actually been declining over the years. Your point about deforestation may be one reason. If phytoplankton are doing anything, it doesn't look like it's enough to offset what's going into the atmosphere.
Anyway, not an encouraging chart.
Shoulda done this at the same time.
So, upshot is more variability in ppm terms, but not really enough to show it in percent terms, which means negligible statistically. Earth is not more effectively mitigating CO2 releases over the years.
