The 2019 IEA WEO Is Out: Solar and Wind Energy Grew By 15.35% From 2017-2018.

[NNadir]

Last edited Thu Nov 14, 2019, 11:55 PM - Edit history (1)

The 2019 World Energy Outlook, put out by the International Energy Agency is out; I downloaded it this afternoon. I've been calculating from the figures provided in table 1.1 on page 38, (interestingly the same page and table number as in the 2018 edition.)

For some time, relying on the 2018 Edition, I have been including the following text in many of my posts in which I address our belief that solar and wind energy will save the day:

In this century, world energy demand grew by 164.83 exajoules to 584.95 exajoules.

In this century, world gas demand grew by 43.38 exajoules to 130.08 exajoules.

In this century, the use of petroleum grew by 32.03 exajoules to 185.68 exajoules.

In this century, the use of coal grew by 60.25 exajoules to 157.01 exajoules.

In this century, the solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which people so cheerfully have bet the entire planetary atmosphere, stealing the future from all future generations, grew by 8.12 exajoules to 10.63 exajoules.

10.63 exajoules is under 2% of the world energy demand.

2018 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38 (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)

This is not going to popular, but, sorry, for the record, I'm a scientist, and as one, I do not elevate my pet theories over experimental results. Solar and wind did not save the day; they are not saving the day; they won't save the day. This week we went past 410 ppm of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide concentrations in the planetary atmosphere; we will surely approach or pass 418 this May.

If you want someone to tell you what you want to hear, I'm not the guy to do it.

To me, facts matter.

The title of this post is an abuse of language, deliberately, because it is what I call "percent" talk. It is an abuse of language since it is a very different thing to say that I have increased my wealth by 200% if I had a dollar and now have three, than if I am Bill Gates and I announce that I have increased my wealth by 200%.

It is true that solar and wind energy (with a little geothermal and tidal energy thrown in - the IEA calls all 4 categories "other" ) grew by 15.35% but the total in 2017 was 10.63 exajoules, and in 2018 was 12.27 exajoules, thus 15.35% is an increase of just 1.63 exajoules.

The reason that solar and wind can grow so seemingly large in "percent talk" is that they have both been consistently been trivial, all through half a century of wild cheering for them, and the expenditure of trillions of dollars on them. In "percent talk" however, they cracked 2% this year, and now represent 2.05% of world energy output.

For comparison purposes, the fastest growing source of energy from 2017 to 2018 was, unsurprisingly, dangerous natural gas, which grew by 6.95 exajoules to 130.08 exajoules. Dangerous petroleum grew by 2.76 exajoules to 188.45 exajoules. Dangerous coal, which decreased moderately from 2016 to 2017 actually (to my surprise) grew by 2.97 exajoules to 159.98 exajoules.

World Energy Demand grew by 14.36 exajoules to just shy of 600 exajoules, to 599.34 exajoules to be exact, or in "percent talk," 879.49% faster than solar, wind, geothermal and tidal energy combined. When I started writing here on Energy and the Environment and hearing how the world would be saved by renewable energy and conservation, that figure was under 450 exajoules. If this sounds like Schadenfreude, there's no happiness in it for me; I would have rather been wrong than right.

There is popular enthusiasm for "phasing out" the world's only sustainable form of energy, nuclear energy, an idea that represents mass insanity, mass ignorance, and mass hysteria.

To my surprise, while under constant attack by uneducated and, in my opinion extremely stupid people who obviously can't think, the production of nuclear primary energy rose by 0.88 exajoules to 29.68 exajoules. This is almost certainly connected with Chinese nuclear plant construction.

This rise in nuclear output is not enough, not even close to being enough, but we'd rather have California burn to the ground in darkness, laced with all those extra required power lines required to connect to wind turbines and solar cells, than open science or engineering books.

(I actually saw a person from San Francisco who writes here, complain about PSEG's last nuclear plant while bashing that company for having poorly maintained power transmission lines all over the state. The IEA, which represents solar and wind energy as "sustainable" although they are no such thing, has also written publications about the increased requirement for transmission lines (with the resultant requirement for copper, aluminum and steel) to make us all "renewable." There is simply no addressing ignorance.)

Along side all of this, seven million people will die this year, 19,000 today, from combustion wastes from dangerous fossil fuel and dangerous biomass combustion waste, also known as "air pollution."

Fukushima.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

OK Boomers?

Have a nice evening.

[Eko]

1. Hey Boomer,

How much did Nuclear grow?
Thanks,
Eko.
(oh yeah, if somebody alerts on me for using the term Boomer, the poster used it to call those who don't agree with him, I'm just using the same term back at him).

[progree]

2. Hey boomer! It's going to be great, everybody's going to start sailing now (yeah wind power)

and all that. Rah Rah Rah! Eliminating greenhouse gasses by the gigatons! It is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius etc.

Greta Thunberg Sparks Surge In Sailboat Hitchhiking
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142395843

[NNadir]

3. You know the sad thing we are leaving these kids...

...besides a destroyed atmosphere:

It is the absurd idea that we should return to the 19th century.

There is a reason humanity abandoned so called "renewable energy" in the 19th century.

Most people lived dire short lives of poverty, even more so then that now.

I admire that young woman for her righteous anger.

We deserve to be called on the carpet, because as I often say, "history will not forgive us."

But she's no engineer.

We can eliminate poverty, and with it environmentally destructive lifestyles, but only if we defeat ignorance.

[progree]

4. I'm a fan of hers, overall. What worries me though is the comments on the thread "a nearly

self-sustaining way of life" etc. "cleaner transport and more" Yes, we should just drop everything and spend a month sailing across the Atlantic and another month sailing back.

[NNadir]

5. There are a lot of Millenials with a deeper understanding...

...of the issues.

Overall, I'm impressed by their generation.

As much as we have screwed them, I can say that they have at least access to the information that can save the world.

My son spent this summer at Oak Ridge, got to tour the high flux reactor, worked with neutrons. It's not like he's going to take this paranoid antinuke dogma seriously. He knows ignorance when he sees it.

Even if we have mindless airheads whining endlessly about a few beta particles in the soil at 1950s weapons plants, these kids are sharp, and many can grasp the tools quickly and deeply in ways us old folks can barely imagine.

They grew up with powerful computational tools, and are developing deeper ones by the hour.

This young woman should not be required to really understand even the most primitive engineering requirements, so long as she starkly draws out the reality of what we have done. She is in moral marketing, not science.

Each of them has a role, and I believe they have in them to be a great generation.

I bless them, even though it may be too much to ask their forgiveness. Frankly, we don't deserve it.