A Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report plots out global power markets for the next 25 years.
If accurate, solar energy will soon dominate, and electric cars will go mainstream.
The forecast states coal and gas are in terminal decline because of the “beautiful math” of declining solar and wind costs.
Peak Fossil Fuel Usage
In contrast to peak oil forecasts that have been in vogue, BNEF says the World is on the Brink of Peak Fossil Fuels for Electricity.
It’s not that we running out, but rather solar and wind will become so cheap, it will cost too much to use fossil fuels.
Here are the eight shifts BNEF sees coming.
1. There Will Be No Golden Age of Gas
The cost of wind and solar power are falling too quickly for gas ever to dominate on a global scale. “You can’t fight the future,” said Seb Henbest, the report’s lead author. “The economics are increasingly locked in.” The peak year for coal, gas, and oil: 2025.
2. Renewables Attract $7.8 Trillion
Already in many regions the lifetime cost of wind and solar is less than the cost of building new fossil fuel plants, and that trend will continue. But by 2027, something remarkable happens. At that point, building new wind farms and solar fields will often be cheaper than running the existing coal and gas generators. “This is a tipping point that results in rapid and widespread renewables development,” according to BNEF. By 2028, batteries will be as ubiquitous as rooftop solar is today.
3. Electric Cars Rescue Power Markets
By 2028, batteries will be as ubiquitous as rooftop solar is today.
4. Batteries Join the Grid
The scale up of electric cars increases demand for renewable energy and drives down the cost of batteries. And as those costs fall, batteries can increasingly be used to store solar power. In expensive electricity markets like Hawaii, battery storage for solar already makes economic sense, and it won’t be long before that becomes the norm.
5. Solar and Wind Prices Plummet
The chart below is arguably the most important chart in energy markets. It describes a pattern so consistent, and so powerful, industries set their clocks by it. It’s the beautiful math of declining solar costs.
The chart is on a logarithmic scale, so the declines are even more profound than at first glance. For every doubling in the world’s solar panels, costs fall by 26 percent, a number known as solar’s “learning rate.”
6. Capacity Factors Go Wild
One of the fast-moving stories in renewable energy is the shifts in what’s known as the capacity factor. That’s the percentage of a power plant’s maximum potential that’s actually achieved over time.
Consider a wind farm. Even at high altitudes, the wind isn’t consistent and varies in strength with the time of day, weather, and the seasons. Here’s a watercolor plot of wind power capacity factors over time. Some wind farms in Texas are now achieving capacity factors of 50 percent, according to BNEF.
7. A New Polluter to Worry About
China, the biggest and fastest-growing polluter, became a major global concern over the last few decades. But that perception is changing fast. China’s evolving economy and its massive shift from coal to renewables mean it will have the greatest reduction in carbon emissions of any country in the next 25 years, according to BNEF. That’s good news for the climate and is a significant change for the global energy outlook.
That leaves India, which is emerging as the biggest threat to efforts to curb climate change. India’s electricity demand is expected to increase fourfold by 2040, and the country will need to invest in a variety of energy sources to meet this overwhelming new demand. India has hundreds of millions of people with little or no access to electricity, and the country sits atop a mountain of coal. It intends to use it.
8. The Transformation Continues
Without additional policy action by governments, global carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector will peak in the 2020s and remain relatively flat for the the foreseeable future. That’s not enough to prevent the surface of the Earth from heating more than 2 degrees Celsius, according to BNEF. That’s considered the point of no return for some of the worst consequences of climate change.
Seven of Eight
That was one of the best Bloomberg articles I have seen in a long time.
BNEF laid out some nice ideas to consider, marred slightly with global warming nonsense in point eight.
If the report is even close to being accurate, geopolitical questions and concerns hit the spotlight.
Geopolitical Questions and Consequences
- How much carnage did the US needlessly cause in the Middle-East over oil?
- How quickly will the oil producing countries be in serious trouble?
- Are tensions with India about to pick up?
- Other than India (and perhaps even India), countries sitting on stockpiles of coal, may have little use for those stockpiles.
It remains to be seen if things play out that way, but if so, huge changes are coming, by 2025.
For trends of a different nature, please see Mary Meeker on Internet Trends – An Excellent Presentation.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Let’s try this again:
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources.
SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
There is no way a battery can compete with the energy output of gasoline.
IF I sell 160,000 battery powered “automobiles” it would appear I can make money doing this as Tesla stock is hanging tough while incumbent players are rolling over.
Having said that Tesla will never be able to compete and win going toe to toe with the Chevy Volt.
It must remain a “premium option” to survive.
In other words this article is bs and the author knows it.
Indeed, this Bloomberg article is completely bereft of any understanding of Physics, math, or the laws of thermodynamics…Recent studies have shown that in temperate zones, it takes more energy to make and install solar panels than they will generate in their entire lifetime, LOL…Entropy is a killer for batteries, as lots of energy is lost in every cycle, and the battery itself deteriorates with every cycle. Wind is not dispatchable, so inflicts large costs on the entire power system, as other plants are forced to work inefficiently, while not providing much power much of the time……I could go on….
Not according to
http://solarcraft.com/solar-energy-myths-facts/
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/solar-panels-now-make-more-electricity-they-use
Etc.
etc… as in more propaganda from websites that are touting solar energy …. no doubt funded by solar energy manufacturers … and inhabited by fools who refuse to acknowledge facts….
There are a lot of such sites around. They serve to reinforce the belief in lies
Germany building more coal plants…. sun doesn’t shine at night….. expensive…
Does that shine a ray of light onto your solar panel? A glimmer?
Batteries don’t compete with gasoline, they store electric power created by other sources. The Sun creates more energy in a single hour than all of the oil on earth combined (indeed the Sun can be said to have created that oil). As we figure out better and better ways to capture the suns energy it will inevitably replace oil in the production of electricity. The only thing this article is pointing out is that it is happening way faster than naysayers would like.
Solar panels have been around for a hell of a long time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_solar_cells
Yet even after hundreds of billions of dollars of investments and subsidies…. they still generate no nett energy return…
For every unit of energy you waste manufacturing them — you get less out of the life of a solar system — significantly less if you are using batteries.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
Time to give this nonsense a rest — I am tired of my tax dollars being spent to subsidize some rich’s guy’s Tesla or some Green Groupies root top solar system.
If this cannot stand on its own after all these decades on the taxpayer tit — it is time to junk this white elephant.
Correct observation. Energy is only a tiny component of oil. All alternatives do not substitute any of the oil-related byproducts, therefore, if we are to fully transition to the electron economy, similar materials will have to be extracted through other means. And if alternative energy is dedicated to material synthesis than it will, almost entirely, be consumed in order to reproduce materials needed for their construction.
If electricity coming off a solar panel is used in every aspect of solar panel construction (mining, refining, smelting, component transportation), then it ends up producing a negative return.
The only reason wind, solar and nuclear forms of energy appear even remotely viable is because their entire existence utilizes fossil fuel infrastructure.
Not according to what others say, one study has it at first 4 yrs electricity makes the panel. I posted a couple of links to that… sometimes they take a whille to show.
This article is also BS because it leaves out the cost of installation. Even if the solar panels were free, they wouldn’t make sense outside of southern areas with very little cloud cover.
Look deeper into articles like this and you will find a political agenda. The authors are likely pushing climate change as means to bilk alt energy investors.
Someday, alt energy will make economic sense. That will only happen when fossil fuels are very expensive and remain expensive for a long time.
Of course the Green Brigade also votes…. when they are not singing Koombaya and eating organic oatmeal.
So the politicians need to toss them some scraps in the form of subsidies to make their solar delusion a reality. Unfortunately the reality is a white elephant
OH look – a white elephant!!! Gather the kids to have a look:
Ivanpah Solar Plant May Be Forced to Shut Down
A federally backed, $2.2 billion solar project in the California desert isn’t producing the electricity it is contractually required to deliver to PG&E Corp. , which says the solar plant may be forced to shut down if it doesn’t receive a break Thursday from state regulators.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, owned by BrightSource Energy Inc., NRG Energy Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, uses more than 170,000 mirrors mounted to the ground to reflect sunlight to 450-foot-high towers topped by boilers that heat up to create steam, which in turn is used to generate electricity.
But the unconventional solar-thermal project, financed with $1.5 billion in federal loans, has riled environmentalists by killing thousands of birds, many of which are burned to death—and has so far failed to produce the expected power.
Power from the two Ivanpah units that serve PG&E last year fetched about $200 a megawatt-hour on average during summer months, and about $135 a megawatt-hour on average the rest of the year, according to sales data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
That compares to an average price of $57 a megawatt-hour for solar power sold under contracts signed in 2015, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Power from natural-gas plants went for $35 a megawatt-hour on average in California’s wholesale market last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data compiled by the Energy Department.
More http://www.wsj.com/articles/ivanpah-solar-plant-may-be-forced-to-shut-down-1458170858
Exactly!
Try making a solar panel with fossil fuel inputs. Try smelting metal using power from solar panels — get ready to cover a massive piece of land at huge expense.
Try operating mining machinery using Tesla technology —- and without government subsidies.
Not gonna happen.
Solar panels are batteries — the way they work is you burn one unit of coal to make them — and you get that unit and a tiny bit more out of the panels over many years.
They produce virtually 0 nett energy.
Now throw a set of batteries into the equation and you get a big negative nett return on your coal.
Well these charts show return on energy invested, energy payback times , including fittings etc. For those who say solar is net negative you are going to have to provide me a link !
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/26/solar-energy-payback-time-charts/
You don’t think the site you are referencing is slightly biased?
http://cleantechnica.com/70-80-99-9-100-renewables-study-central/
No articles explaining that Germany is building loads of coal fired plants to provide electricity when the sun isn’t shining?
Finally just to note that EROI (energy return on investment) numbers are not standardized , you will find nuclear between 1 and 75 for example (depending on what you include for total energy costs) , solar is around six or more (fairly widely calculated at that ) , set to increase once high efficiency (50%) panels go into production (if, when etc.) , wind is better still , and hydro … there are comparison charts out there , but you would have to read widely to form an opinion as they vary greatly .
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
The other problem with alternative energy is that it is that it is intermittent — i.e the sun does not shine in the night.
So what that means is you must operate TWO systems –if you want power around the clock.
So that means you continue to operate the fossil fuel plants or nuclear plants PLUS the alternative energy plants.
Let’s have a look at what that does to the price of electricity:
Germany’s Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy
Companies Worry Cost of Plan to Trim Nuclear, Fossil Fuels Will Undermine Competitiveness
Average electricity prices for companies have jumped 60% over the past five years because of costs passed along as part of government subsidies of renewable energy producers.
Prices are now more than double those in the U.S.
“German industry is going to gradually lose its competitiveness if this course isn’t reversed soon,” said Kurt Bock, chief executive of BASF SE, the world’s largest chemical maker.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-expensive-gamble-on-renewable-energy-1409106602
Denmark – another alternative energy groupies also has some of the most expensive energy in the developed world — and they have just cancelled all wind farms because they have come to their senses and now understand that the more alternative energy they add to the grid – the more expensive electricity becomes.
You already have a timing problem. Gas and coal plants work best at huge scale. That means you are building a massive fire and keeping it going 24-7. But electric use is highly cyclical, with much more used in the daytime than night time with occasional super spikes on very hot days. Peak demand can be meet by gas turbines that switch on and off as needed but that increases wear and tear costs as well as fixed costs.
Solar is actually better aligned with use since peak demand comes during the day. If you can use batteries as backup then you have a transition away from coal, oil and gas.
As a solar user I cast in three things:
1. Batteries and other equipment have a limited life, and must be replaced. Materials must be mined. That’s not easily sustainable.
2. Nothing short of fusion power will replace hydrocarbons for energy efficiency, both for motive forces and electricity. Renewables don’t cut it for motive forces.
3. First world nations run on reliability. Renewables are not reliable, on the scale we have now.
Granted, small and distributed is far better for resiliency, but there still must be the reliability, efficiency, and sustainability factors.
These three challenges still must be resolved.
A last thought: Fish apparently have higher priority than clean cheap electricity from hydroelectric projects. Wind turbines kill millions of birds annually. Solar cells and batteries have toxic mining and production processes.
If human life is not the highest priority, green power is not possible.
1. They can be replaced. “In theory” with proper recycling there is no net addition to material needs apart from increases in the base size of the system.
2. There is the possibility of renewable synthesized fuels ( simple example being hydrogen) . Battery powered traction is quite impressive also, it is more a question of battery cost and storage size.
3.Reliability is teething, no more.
For environmental concerns, they should be placed as priority and the increased cost included from the start. There are solutions to all of those. Should not lose track that the rest of western consumer habits are just as damaging – all fall under the same category, from clothing to electronics, autos to jewelry.
If, maybe, some day, in 10 years time, in twenty years time….
This is the mantra of the Alternative Energy Groupie …..
It ain’t gonna happen – in case you hadn’t noticed…. we are currently scraping the bottoms of old wells …
THE DECLINE OF THE WORLD’S MAJOR OIL FIELDS: Aging giant fields produce more than half of global oil supply and are already declining as group, Cobb writes. Research suggests that their annual production decline rates are likely to accelerate.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0412/The-decline-of-the-world-s-major-oil-fields
We need a viable – CHEAP – alternative to oil NOW.
One of the best qualities of fossil fuel energy storage and transportation (aside from it being stable at room temperature), is the fact that half of every fossil fuel reaction component is oxygen – that is something readily available at everywhere. What is often ignored when calculating fossil fuel engine efficiency vs. a battery is that an electrical device has to carry 2 reagents in itself, both of which, typically preserve their mass all throughout the reaction. When it comes to vehicles, a flat electric car weighs as much as a charged one. A gasoline car not only pulls half the reagents out of air, but the liquid portion also depletes, making the vehicle lighter and therefore more efficient the closer it is to running out of gas.
Stationary plants do not have to deliver air to their combustion chambers. Air delivers itself.
Lastly, centralization always leads to better production, storage and distribution or resources. The very idea that electron economy will either lead to, or rely on decentralized operation hints that it is an unsustainable arrangement. Only time decentralization happens in nature is when systems either collapse or are about to collapse.
Julia – then consider hydrogen production from renewable.
Call solar centralized then, with the sun as center. Happy?
@Crysangle
It’s still a worthy goal, but risks and challenges must not be minimized.
Also, I tend to prefer pyrolysis for energy generation. Produce Biochar and syngas at the same time while meeting the reliability, sustainability, and can (and was, in WW2) used as motive force.
When costs are dropping fast, as they are for solar energy, converting to solar energy too soon can be very costly, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be appropriate to convert at some point.
Explain to me how lower costs of solar gear overcome the problem that Germany has — namely having to operate two systems to provide electricity because the sun does not shine at night?
Solar is still massively expensive compared to coal generated electricity — that is why it does not exist in countries that smart enough not to subsidize it.
All solar installations would IMMEDIATELY stop operating if government subsidies were revoked.
Thomas – you are going to find that studies about how to convert to 100% renewable are often by lobby groups or environmentalists etc. . Point taken . However read through some of their studies and figure out if they are wrong , several seem to fully account there is no real material or or technical barrier . It is a question of public will on the scale needed , and so that means political oversight of the execution if it is to take place on the scale imagined in the time frame sought .
You talk of cost of electricity and its effect on the global economy – but in real terms all that is happening is that you would be devoting a certain amount of productivity and labour to one end (setting up and maintaining a renewable energy reality ) , which would naturally raise the true cost of what was normal production due to a reduction in manufacturing resources (labour ) … or to put it another way it would mean diverting production from some things we like towards building a renewable grid instead . In fact it does not have to be sum negative … imagine this tech. appearing one hundred years ago and that being the direction society took, where we would be now . You would not look back and think ‘ hey , look at all the progress having to build a nationwide/global 100 % renewable energy arrangement has taken off us ‘ . It is all relative . I’ll try to post you a link to just one article after this as an example … argue with them , not me 😉 .
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html
‘in 20-40 years, says Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson’
Stopped reading there – because essentially that says its is not possible nor are we anywhere near being close to making it possible.
It’s pie in the sky…..
How about this:
‘in 20-40 years I will be able to breed sheep with solar panels and create renewable energy’
‘in 20-40 years Martians will land on earth and provide us with unlimited free energy’
Oh and in 50 years if we manufacture 91,000,000 solar panels per year — we will be able to replace fossil fuels!!!
One problem — we need to burn coal to make these panels – a lot of it — and we need the raw materials to do so….
Wonder how much land you would need for 4,550,000,000 solar panels?
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
Total gibberish.
The problem at hand is this — solar energy is INTERMITTENT – which means you need to run a back up system (using fossil fuels or nuclear) to provide power when the sun does not shine.
Are you with me so far?
That means you need to PAY for two systems. That means electricity costs go through the roof (as they have in Germany)
I trust you get comprehend this.
High electricity costs are a drag on the economy — they mean that businesses are less competitive with businesses located in countries where electricity is produced cheaply e.g. China.
It also means that individuals have to use more of their earnings to pay electricity bills – so they buy less goods and services.
I deal in FACTS. I deal in REALITY.
Unless what you want me to read addresses the above I have no interest.
Solar energy is madness. It will lead to recession and bankruptcy for countries that adopt it.
I really cannot make this any more simple than I have.
You’re all nascent Social Crediters and beneficiaries of Wisdomics/Gracenomics.
Even me?
Well yeah, you’re way ahead of most here conceptually, …and didn’t you commit the unforgivable sin of not only responding to me, but actually acknowledging that Social Credit might be the way we’ll have to go?
We have forms of social credit already in most societies.
Have to? That implies lack of choice, not too far off what is going on now either.
Sure you are not rooting for an extension of the status quo?
Ration books were necessary once too….
We have SOCIALIST/RE-Distributive forms of non-Social Credit….which does not actually solve the problem. As I won the debate (by default actually because no one can present any evidence to rebut) a few years back on this forum about whether or not Social Credit was socialism….which it is not…I can speak authoritatively. Social Credit is a DISTRIBUTIVE NOT A RE-distributive paradigm which fits seamlessly within profit making economic systems.
And yes we have to…if we are actually going to resolve the ACTUAL AND DEEPEST problem with modern technologically advanced economies. The facts are the facts and the truth is the truth.
Whether or not true, solar energy will need adjusting power to keep the level steady in the grid. Sometimes it has been known that sun doesn’t shine or winds blow. The latter is very true in my native country when the coldest season is upon us and during that time there is very little of sunshine either.
And when it comes to vehicles, better have some real good batteries that can cope up with minus 40 degrees Celsius temperatures. In those days the inside of a car might also need some real good heater…
Other aspects are the overall costs. I suppose one has to change the whole lot of batteries when they get old. And that is quite a bit of cost at least nowadays.
Then there are considerations like charging up the batteries. Going to gasoline station it takes normally few minutes to fill up the tank but waiting an hour for the batteries to be charged might not make anyone happy.
Solar power might become handy when combining LED lights with solar panels and batteries. They require such little electricity that one could enjoy very nice lights 24/7.
It’s all about the price and usability in the end so I never say never.
Let’s save the best for last:
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
Or… it would require lifestyle changes.
Such things as rotating shifts, perhaps? Pricing power usage according to demand?
Nah, it could never work.
Note that the projections in the article do not call for non-renewable energy use to decline. They simply show most of the growth coming in the renewable sector.
The thing is…
I have raised considerable cash for various ventures. The punters always ask for projections….
And I always give them what they want — I do not tell them the truth — because frankly I have not got the slightest clue what the prospects are — so I give them what they want to hear — within reason — because I want the best valuation
So I don’t really put a lot of faith in projections.
The other thing is..
The more alternative energy we roll out the more we have to pour in subsidies — which is like socialism — you take from the strong viable parts of the economy to pay for white elephants.
I have pointed out projects in Germany, Denmark and California – massive white elephants that cause electricity costs to sky rocket.
What superb irony — this is a finance site — MIsh is a financial advisor — the articles on this site regularly trash socialist programmes as stupid wastes of money.
Yet the vast majority of you – including Mish — are suggesting that we continue to pour good money after bad into the Mother of all Socialist Boondoggles otherwise known as alternative energy!!!!
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/s/su-tm3x.gif
Carl – there is a vast rural market in developing countries for who renewable is the ideal, sometimes only, solution.
So a subsistence farmer in India will get a solar panel and a light bulb — paid for by whom?
Oh right — the same people who subsidize your solar panels on your roof will pay for the Indian guy to have a light bulb — i.e. the taxpayers.
I guarantee you if you asked a farmer in India if he’d rather have the cash instead of the panel and bulb — he’d take your cash.
Crysangle, I agree. In rural markets renewable becomes competitive much more quickly because of the huge savings in transmission costs.
I understand that Google invested 50 million real dollars in renewable energy to determine if they should get on board
You have seen their conclusions. 91million panels/year x 50 years…
You have also seen my comments about having to operate two generation systems – one solar wile the sun shines – one coal/gas/or nuclear when the sun does not shine
Resulting in massive electricity prices.
Which part exactly do you disagree with and why?
TM – but still they pay. I can’t guarantee the motives in schemes like the following, I know some are pure business, others sponsored in some way…. nothing new there, I remember villages decades ago, tens of miles off track, just straw huts, but every village had one store, the only building with a sign, and crates in front of it… you know what they read…. ‘ Coca-Cola’ and ‘Fanta’… just like the contents of the crates :
http://qz.com/587325/pay-as-you-go-solar-power-is-bringing-electricity-to-more-people-in-rural-east-africa/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2016/01/28/how-kenyas-m-kopa-brings-prepaid-solar-power-to-rural-africa/#1daa366970f4
Instead of acting like a sponge for articles that support what you want to believe — why don’t you do like I have done — and searched for the opposing view.
That is how I found the stories on the German disaster…
Then apply a bit of common sense.
We all know that the sun does not always shine — we all know that we need power 24/7 so that would lead most people to wonder — hey – where do we get the power from when the sun is not shining?
Then we’d see that Germany is building a lot of coal plants — aha!!! – thats where the power comes from when the sun doesn’t shine — eureka!!!
And that would — ideally – lead someone to conclude that solar power is a boondoggle… it solves nothing — all it does it make things worse…. because it leads to massively expensive energy …
And massively expensive energy is a massive drag on the economy.
Alas – why are we wasting hundreds of billions of tax payer money on something that is actually a BAD thing?
Should we not use it on projects that promote economic prosperity?
Third go at replying you Thomas… keeps eating comments with links.
Firstly it is not either or. Renewable tech. is a valid avenue. It should replace fossil fuels for various reasons under different circumstances. There are many areas where it will not for a long time.
Forget the subsidy story, there are so many subsidies of one kind or another for all energies that market price as comparison is hopeless. I disagree with subsidies. All you can do is look at prices and guess into the future using whatever criteria are important to you.
Global warming… well duh, of course we have an effect, but it is going to be hard to pinpoint it as we have no control running alongside. It will be even harder to judge its benefits and disadvantages, study should not be just thrown into the bin , nor used as hype.
Germany still manages trade surpluses in spite of its energy costs, that is to say it is not the deciding factor. Picture this – is it better to employ local people who have no work to build and maintain your own system, or to work to earn back the money you send abroad to buy fuel? Take your pick.
I’ll post parts of links just after this… you’ll have to Google the pages. Some explain energy pay back, others solar in developing countries.
One other thing, you should hope renewable catches on, by the time the other three quarters of the world starts using oil anything like the US you are going to be looking at everyway possible to fix the costs.
“Germany still manages trade surpluses in spite of its energy costs, that is to say it is not the deciding factor. ”
Did you miss the part about companies threatening to leave because they are no longer competitive?
Oh I see so we should adopt solar power and run two systems at the same time — TO CREATE JOBS.
Is this for real?
I know – let’s just run 9 power plants — each with different fuels — imagine the number of jobs that would create!!!
I am all for this — so long as one of the plants is fueled by the politicians who make these insane decisions to build solar plants — and the fools who vote for them
Quartz pay-as-you-go-solar-power-is-bringing-electricity-to-more-people-in-rural-east-africa/
forbes /how-kenyas-m-kopa-brings-prepaid-solar-power-to-rural-africa
solarchoice /blog/news/solar-energy-myth-buster-1-they-take-more-energy-to-manufacture-then-they-will-ever-generate-
These are easy to find topics for anyone who takes the time.
I bet you could find lots of rosy stories about solar on the Solyndra web site too!
Thomas – you are fast to bring up subsidies but Google involvement in renewable , and hence their opinion , may be a long the lines of :
“The Google deal is structured as a tax-equity transaction, meaning the web search developer gets tax breaks that flow from solar systems financed by the fund. Earlier this week, First Solar Inc. and SunPower Corp. said they’d form a yieldco, a business model that channels income from operating wind and solar farms into dividends for investors.
Renewable-energy projects are entitled to various tax benefits, including a credit for 30 percent of the installed cost of a solar power system. Unprofitable companies, such as SolarCity, often can’t use the credits and provide them instead to tax-equity investors
Google announced a similar deal in January, agreeing to invest in the tax credits generated by a $188 million solar project in Utah being built by Scatec Solar ASA.
It is all based on tax law–Has nothing (or almost nothing) to do with engineering/economics/environment.”
Courtesy web .
Even the your link questions their renewable greater than coal as false .
Shale oil is very low EROI
Oil is cheap now , economy stagnant , oil reserves as questionable as anything else ….
Feels like being in the eye of the storm , where different energy lobbies , geopolitical initiatives , economic values , monetary efforts , are competing, none of them with an answer , all of them with ‘the’ answer …
don’t ya think ???
Renewable will take over a large portion of global generation, it will be used where efficiencies in consumption are well underway, electronics, motor, lighting… that is in fact most household usage bar heating. The negative articles posted in comments here are purposefully lacking in detail.
There is a difference between state subsidized introduction, the long term cost reduction in manufacture due to that push, and technological efficiency/consumer adaptation over time.
Fossil fuels will still be used where concentrated high energy is needed. Heating is an obvious one, but there are many others, auto not being one.
In all though society will be moving towards greater efficiency and less power consumption, we could reduce to 25% of current usage and survive ok as long as that were handled properly ( not suggesting that)… the only real question as far as timeline at the moment is how much is actually pushed onto society, crossed with how willing society is to accept the changes new tech. brings. The latter will only improve, due to technological advancement.
Let’s save the best for last:
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/
Solar panels lose 2% output per year. After 25 years you lost half your investment. Batteries have a shorter lifetime. After seven years some batteries need replacing. Be careful how you estimate the cost of solar. Do not expect the high cost of coal fired electricity under Obama to remain high under a Trump presidency.
Most panels are guaranteed 80% for 25 yrs. Decent batteries should last 15 yrs if you use them properly.
“…batteries should last 15 yrs…”
Not in a solar/alt energy set-up. Batteries are cycled up&down per energy demand which is never an optimal use cycle. If you get 7-8 years from batteries in a homestead or commercial solar/alt energy system then you are doing pretty well. 15 years? no way.
Sure way. Choose opz batteries with a capacity that ensures you never use more than 50%. That is why I mention below you have to be realistic with calculations and costs. Ours still work fine after a decade… just looked up some specs. at random for similar:
Design life at 20 °C
– 15 years for 6/12 V blocks and cells ≥ 3500 Ah;
– 20 years for 2 V cells 125 – 3350 Ah (80 % remaining capacity from C10)
……..
15-20 years lifetime
4000 cycles 30% de discharge ( before reaching 80% capacity)
Etc.
“never use more then 50 percent”
LOL
Crys — they would be guaranteed for 25 years — because the solar panel manufacturers won’t be around in 25 years — why not just say 100 years?
The problem is not the panels – it is the batteries — and you will be doing very well to get 10 years out of them.
Of course your neigbhours will all be chipping in with their tax money to pay most of the cost of the replacement so what’s the big deal right.
If you had to dip into your own pocket for another $15k in 10 years — instead of getting subsidies — do you think you would put a solar system on your home?
If you had to pay the total costs of that system — would you be installing it?
Don’t kid yourself that they are ‘green’ either — massive amounts of lignite coal are burned making these toxic waste dumps in China
I am astounded at how powerful the solar PR machine is — in spite of the overwhelming facts that have been posted here explaining why this industry is a total scam and should not exist — people still believe the BS.
I chalk that up to the fact that people understand oil is finite — so they need to have hope in their being a future — solar ticks the boxes — I like to refer to it as Solar Jesus.
700 million people in china live in homes powered by coal They are still building multiple coal plants in China every month. Africa has to take the pitiful solar route because of donations and denied funding by the IMF for coal. (They are now working with Asian funding) Modern coal plants emit non dangerous non harmful levels of particulates, and man made CO2 increase is currently feeding one billion more people due to aerial fertilization of the planet and saving water and land. (Search peer reviewed science site “CO2 Science”)
We are not running out of energy… https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
I can tell.mbthe major objective is to make energy usagevtotally unaffordabe. Its working.r
Man made global warming is a belief or religion, and is not science. Climatologists must vow a link between atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate before their research grants are funded. The link has never been tested. The link is not a testable hypothesis. Climatologists who question man made global warming do not get hired, cannot receive government grants, and cannot publish articles in journals reviewed by climatologists.
The balance between absorbed solar radiation and Earth’s black body emission of radiation cannot be disturbed by carbon dioxide. Energy absorbed by carbon dioxide is redistributed to adjacent molecules at the speed of sound. The adjacent molecules emit any radiation absorbed by carbon dioxide. If climate were influenced then water vapor absorbs more light than carbon dioxide and would be a bigger problem than carbon dioxide.
The thing is…
Who cares if climate change is caused by man?
The global economy exists because of fossil fuels.
We have NO alternative – we either burn baby burn — or we collapse into chaos, suffering and starvation.
Yes, but that will change. Decades, not centuries.
“We have NO alternative – we either burn baby burn — or we collapse into chaos, suffering and starvation.”
Why would we collapse into chaos, suffering and starvation? Most people lived quite well before coal fired power plants. My great grandmother, who grew up without electricity and automobiles, told me those things and the telephone caused the world to go to hell. The only invention she liked was indoor plumbing. But she still had an outhouse because she thought it was uncivilized to poop in the same building that you eat and sleep in.
“Climate change” is rather here nor there. The interesting part is whether solar costs can continue it’s recently rapid drop long enough to become a cheaper way to generate electricity than fossil. Even though “peak oil” has been put on the back burner for now, fossil fuel extraction costs still remain way above what they were for most of the Big Oil era. The cheapest and easiest oil and gas IS mostly behind us. Some Bedouin driving a tent pole into the dessert sand, is no longer likely to find another megafield gushing back at him.
Solar, as it’s usage grows, will start running into limits as well, as growth can only remain exponential for so long in a finite environment. So it will eventually come down to how fossil and renewable costs evolve once the easy era for both are over. A bunch of Fed welfare recipients at Bloomberg and their New York social circle, may have the spare funds to bias their personal preference a bit away from costs towards feelgood hype, but there will always be enough poor people who don’t have that option, to ensure the lowest cost source will never really be mothballed.
Jack, You don’t quite understand the thermodynamics of global warming. While you’re correct that the black body radiation emitted by the earth has to match that absorbed by the earth, at least at a steady state condition, regardless of the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, that does not preclude the earths atmosphere from warming up. The greenhouse gasses act as a blanket on the atmosphere, making it more difficult for the radiation to escape into out space. The lower portions of the atmosphere and the earths surface have to heat up in order to emit the same amount of radiation from the earth into space.
You can look at Venus as an extreme example of this. Venus has to maintain the same balance, but the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere cause the surface to heat up to extreme temperatures to omit the required radiation to keep the temperature at equilibrium.
If you don’t think global warming is occurring, then I would like to know how it’s not occurring. Unless you also believe we aren’t increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, which would require another explanation as to how this isn’t happening with all the carbon we burn,
Solar power is great for space travel.
It is also good for growing plants and getting a tan (Vitamin D right?)
And not much more.
Also consider that politics will impede progress. While in Pennsylvania last month we noticed some wind turbines not turning. We asked a local if they were broken. He said it was intentionally turned off because legislation was passed that only 30% of the power could be supplied by wind. An example of politicians talking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time.
They clearly have learned from the German debacle.
If you want the most expensive electricity in the world — try to replace the current generation method with wind and solar.
The obvious problem is – you really need to pound this message home by repeating it — those generation methods are intermittent
i.e. they don’t generate power constantly.
So you need to keep the old system in place — which means you have to pay to operate two systems.
Welcome to massive electricity bills.
You should thank your local politicians for not making a HUGE mistake that would have cost you a fortune!
As a household, we have a constant oversupply of cheaper than grid renewable electricity, day and night. There are many factors relative to each other in the calculation, there is no exact answer as energy use depends on many variables.
Do you know the price of oil, gas or coal in one years time? Do you trust that someone will supply you with them?
I know that we will have the power we require in one years time, in a decades time, and at no further cost or reliance.
For us it worked cheaper, others aren’t happy with their set ups, each person has to study and be realistic in terms of expectations – the actual systems are generally reliable and perform to spec.
I’m waiting for prices to come down a bit more before I take the plunge. I really want EV cars that can store excess solar power during the day and be used to provide household power during emergencies, like after a hurricane.
In the meantime, I’ve made some small investments in a new A/C, water heater, and lighting and cut my household power usage by 55%. Remarkable how much you can save when you figure out how to do it.
Of course, my electric bills are so low now that it makes the investment in solar take even longer to pay off.
EROI: see https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
Unless either an incredible breakthrough in energy storage occurs, or an equally incredible worldwide acceptance of energy poverty occurs, the role of solar and wind will remain limited.
Resources that should be applied to the development of much better nuclear are wasted on the deployment of fickle and low density sources of energy that cannot deliver, however expensive they make fossil fuels.
The Bloomberg report shows that ideology still rules.
The problem with nuclear energy, which is different from fossil fuels, is that you cannot, from an engineering standpoint, provide a 100% guarantee that you can stop a nuclear reaction over the lifetime of a plant.
That means you must accept the risk of a meltdown, even if the risk is remote. That might be okay if it’s not you or your loved ones getting hurt.
As John says, plus I am not at all at ease with centralized production or supply, inevitably leads to manipulation, dependency, mismanagement. Give me one good reason to subscribe to all that when there are simple and effective alternatives that leave me in charge of my choices.
Now redo the predictions without massive subsidies and tax breaks for so called “alternate energy”
No subsidy in fossil fuels?
🙂
This is the coup de grace…
Because the sun does not always shine — it is necessary to have a complete ‘alternative’ energy system to ensure continuous electricity – in the case of Germany alternative energy = lignite coal – the filthiest….
ATTENTION GREEN GROUPIES – READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY
Between 2011 and 2015 Germany will open 10.7 GW of new coal fired power stations.
This is more new coal coal capacity than was constructed in the entire two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The expected annual electricity production of these power stations will far exceed that of existing solar panels and will be approximately the same as that of Germany’s existing solar panels and wind turbines combined.
Solar panels and wind turbines however have expected life spans of no more than 25 years.
Coal power plants typically last 50 years or longer.
At best you could call the recent developments in Germany’s electricity sector contradictory.
https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-germanys-nuclear-phaseout-is-leading-to-more-coal-burning/
https://carboncounter.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/coalvre1.png
Love that last line’s understatement …. most have been written by a Brit 🙂
No more nonsense about peak oil, which we have had since 1860?
Of course in the 1950s nuclear energy was going to be too cheap to meter
What most people don’t understand is that peak oil isn’t about “running out of oil”. It’s about the price of oil reaching a point where substitutes will be cheaper to exploit. Which is exactly what this article is about, albeit that the cause of peak oil is substitution with extremely inexpensive solar/wind.
Everyone is missing the point! This is about investment, financial instruments, IPOs, DEBT, all the wonderful things that the financial media trumpets at every opportunity. Even climate change has involved trillions of “investment” dollar bets.It is about flow, about getting people to place bets on the “next big thing”.
In reality, the single best “investment” we could make today is to build casinos on every corner, as gambling seems to be the only viable choice for our economy. Governments appear to be the easiest target for the casinos as they can gamble with other people’s money and rationalize that even stupid bets are good as they “stimulate” the economy. It is no different than China building empty cities to pretend that they have a real economy. How long can we absorb this level of waste before we find ourselves completely bankrupt. Can a world full of gamblers produce enough to prevent starvation?
There are so many lobbies and agendas everywhere that the only way to have any idea is to do proper due diligence, and that means avoiding all the biases, including personal ones… without being defeatist, you eventually realize all the same, that what makes sense is often not what is up for grabs… that is already owned and managed by interests well outside of our reach.
The article indicates batteries are coming, but provides no explanation of why batteries will become more cost effective, other than implying that will be the effect of increased demand. Wind and solar energy won’t replace conventional forms of energy generation unless a better way of storing electrical energy is discovered, or unless heavy energy users become very flexible with their loads, tailoring use to the vicissitudes of sunlight and wind.
The most interesting technology I’ve heard of is the LMSRs that could create hydro-carbons out of the air. Renewable gasoline. That is the type of technology one can build an economy upon. Solar and wind are for managed decline.
Someday they will come up with something close to the ideal battery. That will change perceptions considerably
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/130380-future-batteries-coming-soon-charge-in-seconds-last-months-and-power-over-the-air
NASA + US military + everyone else have been working on battery technology for decades… batteries are the WEAK LINK in the alt energy story, and until such a breakthrough in battery tech. occurs, the alt energy story is a very short story – it can’t scale, period. Batteries are necessary but expensive + toxic + inadequate.
None of the Bloomberg forecasts will come even close to reality because battery tech. simply cannot support such a scale – can’t happen… no unless batt.tech. undergoes an incredible revolution… but the best brains & budgets have been hammering on batt.tech. for almost a century w/ minimal progress.
I wish Musk/Tesla all the luck in the world in producing a better battery, but I fail to see how/why they would suddenly succeed where NASA et al have failed for decades… IMO, batteries will REMAIN the weak link and this dynamic blows Bloomberg’s forecasts out of the water…
Yep, batteries would be the breakthrough. Current arrangements work to the degree they do, but are limited by storage.
The more people working on battery technology the sooner an acceptable answer will be found – I am optimistic on this, in spite of constant failed claims of success.
Any battery that can hold lots of energy, be able to charge and discharge rapidly will be a bomb. We are already seeing this with Tesla fires and notebook explosions. Electricity is energy and a battery is simply another vessel to contain it.
We see continued efforts on all fronts but the one that is most generally leaned upon the heaviest is conservation, either through efficiency or simply reduction of use. They are pushing towards smaller cars, smaller homes and fewer factories. If this is a trend, please do tell at what it points? It doesn’t look good to me unless we are dreaming of life in “the shire”. People can imagine how our ancestors managed to survive without all of our modern luxuries, but few have actually experienced it. It is a HARD life.
Bloomberg, both the man and the media LP, is not a reliable source about energy.
Karl Denniger has it right. LFTR’s, thorium reactors.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2491667.
You want your air conditioner and refrigeration it ain’t going happen with alternatives.
We need to get real.
Stop the bullshit.
Hopefully fusion someday but not now.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html
Look up absorption cooling for ac, solar heat to cold, it is possible.
Gas fridges exist, but probably a self contained delivery system ( you virtually choose what you want and fridge delivers like a dispenser etc.) likely route…. check out how much energy efficiency is possible
http://www.aselfsufficientlife.com/chest-freezer-to-fridge-conversion-the-most-energy-efficient-fridge-ever.html
Possible possible, does not mean it will be the route taken, for now.
The takeaway on that fridge is :
“the new fridge consumes 0.15KWh to 0.18KWh in any given 24 hours.”
@ that would be a small 20/50 W panel running 10/5 hrs daily… but the point is how efficiency changes the equation.
Isn’t it interesting that what could be a viable and safe energy source (molten salt thorium reactors) are never discussed as an alternative energy source , particularly in the MSM.
Might that be because even after huge investments in thorium — it does not produce any nett energy?
I am trying to mate solar panels with sheep here in NZ to try to make renewable energy. Does the MSM cover my amazing story?
Solar sheep hybrid? Now that DOES sound interesting, but painful for the sheep!
I need to get the ear of Elon Musk to find out how he was able to convince the US taxpayer to fund his ridiculous contraptions.
I think the way it works is you need to get designated as a Hopium Project. i.e. you need to convince the Politburo that your idea — even though it will never work — serves a purpose — the purpose is to give the masses hope that there is a future…
Solar and Windmill manufacturers have done a great job with that as well — as have the shale people …. the thorium industry has failed….
How do I get on that list???? Maybe I need to hire Tesla’s PR company… the sheep need to be herded…. the MSM needs to get behind me….. they can convince the sheep of just about anything….
Look at the number of people on this blog who actually believe solar is the saviour — even after the facts have been presented demonstrating without a doubt that solar is a complete and utter joke.
I need to also make people believe a circle is a square — that 1+1=7.6 — that they can pick oranges off of a apple tree.
“A New Polluter to Worry About”
Batteries. Oddly, not mentioned in the story.
Of course not – that implies the extremely difficult topic of asking a consumer to throw them in the right bin.
You don’t understand operating energy production/delivery, period.
Without batteries, alt energy is not practical. And batteries are a woefully inadequate (economically & functionally) element in the equation even when optimized… so the alt energy story is really a BATTERY story – a story that hasn’t changed in 100 years. The limitations of battery technology = limitations of scaling alt energy.
Ron J is 100% correct – any alt energy story that excludes the “battery problem” is peddling fiction.
Maybe I don’t, but I run full system calculations and costs that work in practice for me. See ya.
Pretty naive forecast. Oil and gas will be around a lot longer than the climate change loons want; no matter what. Alternative fuels are going to cost the poor a lot of money while the one percenters get even richer.
Funny, I thought oil and fossill energy were owned and run, for and by, the top %, and cost the citizen more than money many times. Not that I am saying alternative fuels are a ready replacement in many cases.
What the Politico-Legal-Bankster cartel benefits from, is not producing energy cost effectively. That will always be a hard problem, with returns limited by competition. And, you actually need to pay someone competent to do something useful, to get the plants t work.
Instead, they want money to be “invested”, which is where they take their cut, and how they wield their power. So, the less well understood and more speculative and hype driven the field, the better off they are. And those are the “bad” 1%ers. I doubt anyone much minds someone making a buck off of building an entire nuclear complex, running it safely for decades, powering a city. But a few thousand Solyndras enriching government apologists, banksters and the sycophant class, is an entire matter altogether.
Indeed, or you could bring in the military industrial complex, foreign political sponsorship by contractual deficit… and so on and so forth….
“The climate is still in trouble”
The climate is always in trouble. We just had the hottest year on record and last week i saw a picture of cherries on the tree, glazed over with ice.
“How quickly will the oil producing countries be in serious trouble?”
ALREADY in trouble (see Saudia Arabia issuing bonds). The drop in crude price has meant hundreds of $billions less in annual revenue for OPEC … those $$s no longer available to purchase international goods.
On a brighter note:) … the decline of coal will mean Warren Buffet takes it in the shorts for his railroad bet (partially predicated on hauling coal).
On another note, “oil countries” will never fundamentally be in any bigger “trouble” than all those countries who never had any oil windfall to being with….
Several studies have shown that even if alternative power was free. It still would cost much more than conventional power. For instance, a free solar panel or wind turbine still requires installation, maintenance, and backup fossil fuel power plants. Those three things alone cause a much higher electric bill than you have today. Add In the actual cost of solar panel or wind turbine and now you have a formula for a electric bill headed for the sky. Free solar or wind power would land up raising our electric bills several times more than They are now. If you want to actually replace most of our electric used today. And still have it as dependable and useable as it is today. You would have to be willing to pay many times what you pay today. Hello, $400-600 plus electric bill. That’s more than many pay for rent in lower cost states. The current alternative to a sky high electric bill is to move back into the dark ages. We could sit around in the dark and freeze, roast, or camp out, when when our solar or wind generators are not working.
No, you can’t calculate along the lines of a straight exchange and expect it to work. That said there is a loooot of room for renewable to phase in with the right approach.
Now if solar panels could be modified to also generate electricity from moonlight and starlight that would be helpful!!!
Can someone give me a grant of 10 billion dollars to work on such technology.
I promise that in ’20-40 years’ this will happen!
Of course would still need fossil fuel or nuclear for the cloudy periods — so that really does not solve anything ….
Since I am raising 10B can someone please delete that bit of information after I hit submit?
The Germans might be reading this and considering investing — best if they don’t see that sentence.
If you want to see what happens to REAL (practical) alt energy development, check out the biodiesel story.
Biodiesel produced from algae could/should displace every drop of fossil fuel demand, but when the biodiesel/algae process was demonstrated on a small-scale, the big energy (fossil fuel) companies bought the patents & technology and stuffed it into a grave.
Every commercial energy consumer (diesel/natgas) could now be running on domestic biodiesel (at a lower cost, too) but the fossil fuel energy industry won’t let it happen, period.
This is what happens to the better mousetrap – it is Bought&Squashed by massive, entrenched, politically-connected corporate interests.
We will fight more wars for oil & burn fossil fuels til the cows come home… why? Because the “right people” profit. Crony capitalism (US style) at work.
Synthesized liquid fuel creation has to be up there with battery technology, both in effect achieve the same end, energy storage and transfer.
Yes, it is called coal to liquid, and works well.
he NYT’s Andy Revkin notes that China opened its first large-scale coal-to-liquid (CTL) facility on December 30. CTL technology, which converts coal into liquid fuel such as gasoline or diesel, has been around since the early 20th century, but has only been widely used twice – in Germany during World War II and in South Africa since the 1970s. As the new plant in Inner Mongolia suggests, China is likely to be the third country to produce significant amounts of CTL fuel.
Why does this matter?
The benefit of CTL is that it provides energy independence to countries with limited domestic oil resources but sizable coal deposits. The main drawback – and it’s a doozy – is CTL’s lifecycle carbon emissions.
First, large amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted when coal is turned into a liquid. These processing-related emissions are much greater than those associated with the conversion of oil into gasoline. Second, automobiles running on CTL fuel produce tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide which are essentially equivalent to those from cars burning gasoline.
In sum, CTL fuel produces between 2 to 3 times as much carbon dioxide as oil.
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2009/01/08/china-coal-liquefaction-and-more/
I would consider this article green fantasy.
ZH didn’t have this yet – 5 biggest Italian banks trading halted after plunge, could not find in English
http://www.eleconomista.es/mercados-cotizaciones/noticias/7633023/06/16/La-bolsa-italiana-suspende-la-cotizacion-de-cinco-bancos-italianos.html
Free to wipe this comment Mish.
Global warming? What a farce. Right along with evolution and gravity. Bunch of scientific hocus pocus designed to get into my pockets. Thank God Donald Trump will put an end to this liberal nonsense and get Mexico to pay to build that wall.
We will never know because there are so many lined up willing to lie cheat and steal to profit from the next crisis or trend that the real science will be lost. There has simply been too much fraud involved in it to have any credibility, which is a shame as we need credible science, not like how the Nazis used evolution as an excuse to terminate people.
Al Gore should be sued for the lying he propagated and should have ALL of the resultant profits stripped away from him. Please show me ANYONE who is promoting climate change that does not have a financial agenda to back it. When the government actually pays people to DISPROVE climate change, then maybe we will have a chance. The first and best step is to outlaw insider trading by government officials, employees AND advisers, so that if they want to promote their theories, there is NO profits allowed to be made from their behalf.
Every scientific experiment is designed to falsify a theory. Take evolution. It is impossible to prove that evolution is “true”. Science recognizes that. The only thing you can do is prove it is false. So if I find evidence of dinosaurs feeding on humans, then evolution, as a theory, is falsified. As long as I cannot falsify a theory, the theory gains credibility. It becomes “well regarded” in the scientific community. The more and more experiments that are performed that cannot falsify a theory, the more well regarded the theory becomes over time.
There have been a number of theories as to why the globe is warming. Sun cycles, normal variation, increased cosmic radiation, etc… Every one quickly and easily dispelled through the scientific method. Anthropogenic global warming is that last man standing. It would be easily disproved: show that green house gases don’t really cause increased temperatures, show that the quantity isn’t really growing, show that there is some offsetting mechanism for the growth, and I’m sure a ton I am unaware of. None of these have been shown to be true. But every government research grant is intended to falsify AGW. It is just that none have. So it is now a well-regarded theory.
But believe me, the guy who does it will get rich through the help of Exxon and the Saudis.
To Mish’s question 2, about how quickly the problems will be felt in the Middle East, I’ll add a question 2.B. My question is, how long after economic problems appear in the Middle East will it be before we see a decline in global terrorism? Some of there excess cash flow has been used to build fundamentalist Islamic schools in poor areas around the globe, and other funds have been used to support terrorism more directly. As the money dries up, will terrorism begin to decline?
This is in line with other comments on the continuous replacement cost of renewable. This is ( or could be) local labour, instead of placing dollars in the hands of foreign powers.
Notice the heart of terrorism is not in rich MENA countries, it is in the poor MENA countries, or those thoroughly destroyed by American military power. As they become poorer, and the US drones some more women and kids, I expect terrorism to continue to increase.
The heart of terrorism in America appears to be relatively well off Muslims who are simply bored and spoiled, looking for an excuse to kill.
Who was Bin Laden?
The terrorists in EU have had decent jobs and education and are CITIZENS of their despised nations, yet found the time and motivation to kill. Look at how many western Muslims are going to Syria to fight. Poor my ass. It is radicalization that USES religion and the plight of others to justify their insanity. These religious extremists have been in existence since the origins of religion. It is circumstance and opportunity that fuel their growth and activities, but it is their core beliefs that provide the foundation for it all.
The heart of terrorism is Islam as currently and historically taught and practiced.
https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
65 global attacks, over 500 murdered in one fairly typical day
How exactly are the components and materials (especially rare earths, 95% controlled by China) used in renewables supposed to be cheaper than coal and oil? There is a reason renewables are called “horizon” technologies.
If solar were to be ramped up from a nearly non-existent source of electricity to say 10% globally — the materials used to make the panels would run out – or prices would rise to such absurd levels that the panel costs would be astronomical.
Here’s a graphs putting things in perspective:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/bernstein-energy-supply.jpg
Mish, I can’t believe that you accepted that entire article so casually. I was expecting you to punch lots of holes in it. For one, Tesla gets federal and state tax credits because it does not produce emissions; however, there is no thought about where and how that electricity was produced and transmitted. What is going to happen if all of those tax credits go away after January 2017? I have a real problem with the expression of “beautiful math”. How about some “hard math”? I do not believe these people are capable of connecting the dots between reality and their dreams.
The trends are likely accurate – timeframes in question – but yes, these things are subsidized. But is that going to change? There is a lot of information in that article – I doubt all of it is wrong.
All of it is wrong because it rests on the premise that the world will keep throwing good money after bad until “a miracle happens”.
You left our one word – massively – as in massively subsidized.
I’ve posted the example of Germany’s failed experiment with alternative energy.
If the trend were to continue in the direction it is in all countries — would that not cause a global recession – then depression?
Alternative energy causes electricity prices to increase dramatically – Germany pays around double what the US pays for electricity.
If the entire world paid what Germany is paying that would be a MASSIVE brake on the economy
The adoption of alternative energy on a large scale (it currently is insignificant – fortunately) would be the biggest economic disaster in the history of the world
Do you not see that Mish?
it is not good money after bad. The trend line on costs prove that. There have been a number of radical improvements in the level of output of solar cells, making for smaller, cheaper systems as well as thin film printing systems used in manufacturing.
There already exist proven technologies that will make batteries far cheaper and more effective. Mass manufacturing of those technologies are the stumbling blocks. But I am optimistic those issues will be overcome.
Why the heck do we want to live in a world where you have to pump gas and change the oil in your car all of the time? Or pay ever increasing electric bills?
That is just plain rubbish. Battery technology is not proved — when I looked at solar the installer said ‘stay away from anything new like lithium – expensive — and we don’t know how long they will last because they have not be around long enough – stay with the tried and true’
Remind me how much it would cost if you had a grid powered by solar — with batteries backing it up for when the sun is not shining.
Hundreds of billions for a small city — trillions for anything larger?
Once again – Google blew 50 million bucks researching this — they concluded it is impossible.
Which part didn’t you understand?
Mish qualifies his approval, and the data is a very good starting point for any discussion.
The average income of a Tesla owner is 250k…. that means that the average Joe is subsidizing the rides of some rather wealthy people
Go figure!
Exactly; Middle class paying for toys for the wealthy.
I call BS having not seen the term ‘interest rate’ anywhere in the article.
We don’t know financial shit from financial shinola in this la la land of a planet anymore.
Every investment makes sense when money is free.
Actual cost and who pays remains to be seen
Consider that the word “battery” is being used far too literally here — a mistake by Bloomberg. In this context it means “energy supply-leveling reserve device”, not necessarily a chemical/electrical widget. It could be a tank of grid-heated molten salt buried under your yard with a Stirling engine running your household generator (and some other domestic things directly); or pumping water up into a municipal reservoir for later hydroelectric generation. You could have a 5 ton motor/generator flywheel spun-up to 100,000 rpm (in a vacuum chamber in your basement) when electricity is abundant, draining the power off as needed. Giant watchspring, anyone? These things don’t wear-out much, and don’t have to be bought from China.
Lots of buildings and campuses chill water at night and use it for air conditioning during the day — that’s a battery too. On a larger scale, Toronto uses Lake Ontario as a seasonal heat sink… battery.
You’re stuck in a box. Think what’s outside.
It is extremely expensive, and the largest subsidy of all is giving solar and wind the first right to the grid and guaranteed sale of whatever meager power they kick out, needed or not, and the 100 percent conventional back up required. Hundreds of billions of dollars of other peoples money creates an industry rife with misinformation, fraud, and propaganda.
Dead on.
If not for MASSIVE taxpayer subsidies in the countries that have charged ahead with solar such as the US, Germany, Denmark and Spain …. these industries would NOT exist.
The next time someone proudly proclaims they have installed panels on their roof top — remember this —- YOU contributed to paying the invoice
Mish – you really need to re-evaluate your position on this — you have posted this article inferring that you support solar and are drinking the koolaid.
The koolaid is laced with smack.
Environmental considerations
Main article: Environmental impact of the coal industry
Most[which?] coal liquefaction processes are associated with significant CO2 emissions from the gasification process or from heat and electricity inputs to the reactors.[citation needed], thus contributing to global warming[disputed – discuss], especially if coal liquefaction is conducted without carbon capture and storage technologies.[13] High water consumption in water-gas shift or methane steam reforming reactions is another adverse environmental effect.[citation needed] On the other hand, synthetic fuels produced by indirect coal liquefaction processes tend to be ‘cleaner’ than naturally occurring crudes, as heteroatom (e.g. sulfur) compounds are not synthesized or are excluded from the final product.[citation needed]
Pyrolysis of coal produces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known carcinogens.[14]
CO2 emission control at Erdos CTL, an Inner Mongolian plant with a carbon capture and storage demonstration project, involves injecting CO2 into the saline aquifer of Erdos Basin, at a rate of 100,000 tonnes per year.[15][third-party source needed] As of late October 2013, an accumulated amount of 154,000 tonnes of CO2 had been injected since 2010, which reached or exceeded the design value.[16][third-party source needed]
Ultimately, coal liquefaction-derived fuels will be judged relative to targets established for low-greenhouse gas emissions fuels.[editorializing] For example, in the United States, the Renewable Fuel Standard and Low-carbon fuel standard such as enacted in the State of California reflect an increasing demand for low carbon-footprint fuels. Also, legislation in the United States has restricted the military’s use of alternative liquid fuels to only those demonstrated to have life-cycle GHG emissions less than or equal to those of their conventional petroleum-based equivalent, as required by Section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_liquefaction
Do you think alternative energy is going to replace conventional energy anytime soon? I have seen simular stories regarding large scale solar installations, or thermal power installs. This really saddens and surprises me. The idea of alternative energy sounds wonderful. But after reading this… I see no way wind energy will become more widespread anytime soon. I hope we find some other alternative energy source someday soon. Because large solar or wind farms generate little power and are large scale land and animal destroying machines. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-dirty-part-of-green-energy_us_57607f8fe4b057ac661b23d0
It is a physical impossibility:
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
We often hear how solar power is getting cheaper everyday. But did you know that a solar panel install still costs more per kilowatt out the gate. Than conventional generation. Even when the solar panels are free. Then include The other costs after the get and for backup generation and you are headed for a financial disaster. This does not even include the wildlife deaths and habitat destruction of a large scale install. Did you know that the Seirra club and other environmental organizations are starting to fight large scale alternative energy installs. http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/12/the_solar_swindle.html
No subsidies – no solar.
Maybe Bloomberg should write a major report on that.
While they are at it they could do one on the massive amounts of subsidies that Tesla receives. And that the average income of a Tesla owner is 250k
Money that is coming directly out of YOUR pockets….
Solar and wind can supply about 80% of our energy without storage. we can improve out efficiny in by about 50%. That is the cheapest “energy” we can install right now. Back up solar and wind with hydro and oil and gas from wastes. Make most vehicles eletric so we can supply the remaining hydrocarbon from wastes. We need chemicals., hydrocarbons from wastes does that too. That’s the fastest, cheapest and ONLY renwables system that will work, forever, cleaner, safer…better. Here are some details http://solarpanelsuit.com/solar-blog/top-7-benefits-of-going-solar/
The devil is … in the detail…
Renewable energy ‘simply won’t work’: Top Google engineers
Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.
Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren’t guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or “technology” of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company.
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear.
All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive – which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source.
The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil