All countries want to have a standard of living as high as possible, that doesn’t mean that they will be able to do so in 40 years even though it is a desirable outcome. It would also be desirable if Australia and US that have a relatively low GDP/BTU($110GDP/1million BTU) to at least close the gap with some of the G7 countries that have $180-200 GDP/1million BTU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gdp-energy-efficiency.jpg
While this is a moving target we should be able to catch up to some extent just as many Asia economies are catching up GDP/capita with higher growth rates. A big switch away from FF to electric based renewable and nuclear energy is going to give a considerable gain in GDP/BTU, and so too will higher energy prices, so it seems sensible to plan on realistic energy needs for 2050. A world GDP/capita of $30,000 in 2050 and an energy intensity of $300 GDP/1million BTU(approx 1 QUAD/10million), about double present world energy use. That’s still a lot of additional wind, hydro ,solar and nuclear, but over a 40 year period.

It seems that switching from coal(retiring >40 year old base-load power plants) to NG peaking is a good trade-off as a long term transition to carbon free energy. NG has half the CO2 emissions and will allow wind and solar to be integrated, keeping all( new) NG power plants and progressively reducing their use (capacity factor), but maintaining full NG peak(if or when needed).

I’ve seen it said many times on this blog and elsewhere that you don’t want to build too much generating capacity because of the variation in demand, that we don’t want to “overbuild.” We always overbuild, though, because we need to be able to meet peak demand. The costs of that overbuilding have always been figured in to electric rates. Why is the future going to be any different. Besides, we’ll be not only able to desalinate in off hours but also to be producing either hydrogen (most probably for ammonia-powered engines) or recycling boron. In either case the ammonia and/or boron would act as a sort of giant storage battery, increasing the efficiency of the whole system. I sure wouldn’t worry too much about overbuilding. We’d be lucky to have such a problem.

For example his discussion of “Pumped Water Storage”.
He states that “world hydro-electricity meets only 15% of electricity demand, (6%in Australia ) so when wind and sun(solar?) were meeting little of the demand, pumped hydro could not take up much of the demand even if suitable sites were available.”

Firstly, most hydro is not pumped storage hydro, but none the less hydro capacity factor is generally 0.50, so existing hydro could supply 30% of electricity demand part of the time. In Australia, hydro (6% electricity production ) meets 18% peak demand(8.5GW). Australia only has 1.2GW of pumped storage(13%). In the US hydro contributes 7% of the 450GWa , but the US has 80GW hydro capacity including 18GW of pumped hydro, but only 35GWa hydro production.
So instead of discussing pumped water storage he is actually using hydro production not even hydro capacity. He goes on:

“To increase generating capacity would be to build alternate plant that would sit idle much of the time.”
In many cases adding pumped hydro requires a modification to just the turbines to be able to reverse. In other cases new storage may be needed. All peak capacity such as NG only operates part of the time, for NG the capacity is 0.10. With little additional cost, much hydro capacity could be expanded( same production over shorter periods ie peak demand). This is what peak capacity does, its “idle much of the time”.

Finally he claims that in future hydro will decline due to climate change( presumably less rainfall). It is estimated that only 10% of world hydro potential has been developed. For example the DOE Idaho Laboratory estimates the US has 300GWa potential( http://hydropower.inl.gov/resourceassessment/pdfs/main_report_appendix_a_final.pdf.).
For pumped water storage, no net water is used so changes in rainfall patterns are not an issue.
In Australia’s case Tasmania hydro has 2,200MW capacity(1,000MWa) but can only export 600MW via the Bass-Link HVDC line. Tasmania has excellent wind resources that can have a high capacity factor(>0.40) due to its location in the reliable roaring 40′s. The building of 4,000MW wind capacity in Tasmania and installing reversible turbines at existing dams, and increasing the Bass-Link by 2,000MW capacity would allow up to 2600MW peak electricity to be supplied to mainland Australia every day,using wind power to pump the water back to the higher elevation reservoirs or surplus renewable energy from the mainland during off-peak periods.
As far as replacing oil used in transport, Trainer uses a hypothetical ” hydrogen fuel” scenario, claiming that this would need X4 the electrical energy presently generated to replace the energy content of oil. Electric cars with battery storage does not seem to be considered by Trainer as an option to replace oil based fuels, even though they are X4 more efficient at delivering power ( 85% ) than using oil based fuels (15-20% efficient).

I am not very knowledgeable of solar power issues, but Trainer seems to dismiss solar because it cannot supply energy more than 7 hours a day but claims it has to be able to store energy for more than 12 hours. What about load following, with 3 hours storage to match peak summer demand, with night-time off-peak energy and winter energy supplied by wind with hydro back-up?

Trainers thesis(2050 assumption) is that the world would need X9 the energy used today if 9Billion people are to have the expected energy consumption used by Australia in 2050( 100% higher than today using FF’s). Since he tried to demonstrate this cannot be done with renewable energy or nuclear, his solution is that developed countries instead dramatically reduce their economies and energy use, to present day 3rd world economies. He doesn’t consider a more plausible scenario that OECD countries increase renewable energy to replace FF energy( using 25% more energy, or perhaps 25% less energy) and developing countries also increase renewable energy to have a considerable growth(100%) in energy use, BUT still use less energy per capita than developed countries. Or is there some reason why all nations must use the same per capita energy by 2050??

He similarly dismisses energy efficiency gains( GDP energy intensity) because that alone would not allow all 9Billion people to have the GDP/capita of what Australia is expected to have in 2050, even though energy efficiency has increased GDP /energy unit by 1% per year in last 40 years.

After reading Ted Trainer’s primer ( as far as the section on wind energy), it’s clear that he has a very poor grasp of the basics of wind energy.

1) Capacity factor: while this is as low as 0.18 in some poor sites in Germany, it is much higher is US and Australia(average 0.33). Part of the reason is the feed-in-tariffs in EU encourage over capacity building( ie a large turbine on a smaller swept area). Another factor is the rapid growth in installed capacity( 30% in US in 2008), so by Dec 2008, the US had 25GW capacity but 8GW was installed in 2008 so not contributing power in a full year( ie those 8GW’s capacity would only have been half the expected capacity in 2009)
Keeping in mind that the capacity in UK may only be 0.3, generating more than 10% of capacity most of the time means actually generating > 33% of average capacity( ie 10% of 0.30).

2) Intermittent: Even the UK is only 250,000 km3, one 20th the size of the US or Australia. Weather systems( for example blocking highs with low wind) can span half a continent( SW Australia) and thus cause local periods of low wind. A national grid for example presently available in US spans >2,000 km, allowing at least some wind energy from distant regions. For example Canada moves hydro power >1500 km via HVDC to the US eastern distributor.

Australia’s Eastern Grid extends from Ceduna( West), Hobart(South) and North past Gladstone. It could be extended to WA connecting to Kalgoorlie, to benefit from the 2-3 day delay in weather systems. Keeping in mind that wind turbines in US and Australia are generally producing power at about the capacity factor( ie a 1MW turbine producing 200-400KW) and rarely close to 1MW(1% of time) , geographically(>1000km) dispersed wind will be producing 0.2 to 0.5 capacity >95% of the time( ie 0.35 =/-0.15.

World Resource: Jacobson paper estimates 72TW using the better sites( >7m/sec) representing 12% of the land area ( excluding Antarctica’s very large potential). For US that’s 5,500GW average power( not capacity) about X10 all energy used. Note some earlier estimates were based on 10m height wind speeds, at >80 m( todays wind machines are up to 120m hub height) wind speeds are considerable higher, and since energy is cube of wind velocity, energy can be very much higher. Another error that is often made is to calculate average wind speed across a country, for example MacKay’s “energy without hot air” calculates wind energy of UK on the average of 6m/sec at 25m. The better sites in Scotland have speeds of >9m/sec so deliver x(1.5)^3= X3.2 , actually 5% of area has wind speeds >12m/sec at 100m, so would produce X8 as much power. This means that wind power resources can be derived from relatively small areas and it is much more economic to use these remote windy sites once the electric grid is installed. The UK is only now beginning to build in these high wind sites, initially siting close to grid power but at poorer wind sites.

Costs: Larger turbines are delivering lower costs/kWh. A world wide shortage of steel in 2007-2008 and wind turbine back-orders of 2 years resulted in price rises. These price pressures have now eased.

Storage: Australia uses hydro to provide 8.5GW peak power, but only 3GWa. If the Bass-Link was expanded beyond the 600MW capacity up to 2GW peak power in Tasmania could be used. Many sites in Tasmania could very cheaply be converted to pumped storage by using reversible turbines. Overall hydro peak could be increased by additional turbines at existing Snowy hydro sites( for example Tumut2 has 3 of its six 250 MW turbines used for pump storage). In theory, Australia could have all of its 50GW peak electricity backed up by several hours of hydro(100GWh), without using any more water.

The US and Canada have 6,000GWh storage in just a 1meter change in Lake Erie/Lake Ontario water levels ( a 99 meter difference at Niagara falls). Many Canadian hydro project run now as base-load power but could be used for peak power back-up instead of NG.

The final comment is that wind generates electricity, we never have to replace the energy content of coal or oil but only 1/4 for vehicles and 1/2 for the most efficient coal fired plants. Its important to not ALL energy systems can fail, either a nuclear power shut down, a gas explosion shutting down NG power, or a drought reducing hydro and yes an unusual wind pattern reducing wind energy. A large national grid with diverse energy sources and back-up storage in several regions can reduce a total failure, but they sometimes happen.

Hope this post is not too late for your consideration,

http://www.icis.com/blogs/biofuels/archives/2008/12/a-short-essay-on-biofuels-and.html

Barney Foran was interviewed some years back about his super duper energy efficient house. “Has it saved you money?” asks the wide eyed reporter. “Yes,” grins Barney, who appreciates exactly the irony of what he is about to say, “Enough to fly the family to the Gold Coast for a holiday”.

The effect is called the “rebound” effect by economists. Eating less red meat reduces your greenhouse footprint by a huge amount, but it also saves you money and what you spend that money on is critical. Spend
it on air travel and any savings vanish.

I just want that when I go to a shop to buy a product, and am choosing between two alternatives, that I can feel confident that I don;t have to make mental adjustments to cater for climate change, or other significant environmental costs.

If Product B has lower impact than Product A, then why is it that Product B has to bear the costs of improving production, but Product A gets to share the costs of screwing the environment on everyone.

Things wil never change when people on tight budgets are expected to pay more for products that do the right thing. When push comes to shove the vast majoriy of people simply can not or will not make that choice to spend more money…

Happy Christmas guys by the way – this site has certainly provided much needed sanity in a crazy climate year.