100 Per Cent Renewables Study Needs a Makeover

Posted on 2 May 2013 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Martin Nicholson. Martin studied mathematics, engineering and electrical sciences at Cambridge University in the UK and graduated with a Masters degree in 1974. He published a peer-reviewed book on low-carbon energy systems in 2012: The Power Makers’ Challenge: and the need for Fission Energy

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In late April 2013, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) released its draft report titled 100 Per Cent Renewables Study – Draft Modelling Outcomes. The study was commissioned by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE) to explore future scenarios for the National Electricity Market (NEM) fuelled entirely by renewable resources.

AEMO provided scenarios for a 100 per cent renewable electricity supply at 2030 and 2050 along with the generation plant and the major transmission networks required to support each scenario. The study included estimated capital cost requirements for each scenario and an indicative estimate of the impact on customer energy prices.

AEMO found that a 100 per cent renewable system is likely to require much higher capacity reserves than a conventional power system. They estimated that the generation nameplate capacity could need to be over twice the maximum customer demand.

Assuming the reason for commissioning the report was to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electricity generation, it is disappointing that the DCCEE didn’t also request that nuclear power be included along with the renewable resources.

According to AEMO, to convert the NEM to a 100 per cent renewable system will cost at least $219 to $332 billion. This is excluding significant costs for the land (which could be as much as 5,000 sq kms) and augmentation of the distribution network. This is starting to sound worse than the recent high-speed train proposal from Melbourne to Brisbane.

Example of supply and demand in a winter week (scenario 2 in 2050)

According to the Australian Energy Regulator, the current NEM has an installed capacity of 46 GW made up of 26 GW of coal plants, 9 GW of gas, 8 GW of hydro and just over 2 GW of wind.

The following analysis is partly based on a paper I will present at a conference in July this year.

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Can household solar photovoltaics provide a primary source of low-emission power?

Posted on 1 April 2013 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Graham Palmer. Graham is an industrial engineer and energy commenter from Melbourne. For another BNC post featuring his work, see Does energy efficiency reduce emissions and peak demand?

Click the above image to download the PDF (full version is free – Open Access)

With declining system costs and assuming a short energy payback period, photovoltaics (PV) should, at face value, be able to make a meaningful contribution to reducing the emission intensity of Australia’s electricity system. But will it? Graham Palmer takes a critical look at this key question. The original peer-reviewed paper is:

Palmer, G. (2013) Household Solar Photovoltaics: Supplier of Marginal Abatement, or Primary Source of Low-Emission Power? Sustainability 5(4), 1406-1442; doi: 10.3390/su5041406

The energy return on investment (EROI) of solar PV has been the subject of many studies over decades, with some recent studies suggesting an energy payback of less than 2 years. However conventional PV-LCA’s usually focus on ingot/wafer/cell/module/BOS, with the LCA boundary ending at the inverter output.

Further, some researchers argue that upstream energy impacts that are beyond the standard PV-LCA boundaries can make up half of the energy impacts.

My paper builds on a recent study by Prieto and Hall titled “Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution: The Energy Return on Investment”.

Hall is arguably the world’s leading expert on the concept of EROI and Prieto was a chief engineer for several major photovoltaic projects in Spain. Based on real-world experience in Spain’s large PV expansion before the GFC, they conclude that the EROI of PV is far lower than commonly assumed, and may be too low to support an energy and economic transition away from fossil fuels. Given Spain’s excellent solar insolation, this is a serious concern.

Taking a similar approach, I examine the role of high-penetration household PV within the Australian NEM, with a focus on Melbourne. I also include an analysis of intermittency, grid integration and the energy costs of storage. Once these downstream energy costs are included, and assuming that PV has an integral role in the electricity system, the EROI drops below the minimum threshold generally considered necessary to transition from fossil fuels.

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Counting the hidden costs of energy

Posted on 22 March 2013 by Barry Brook

When comparing power sources, we have to take the costs of system effects into account.

By Martin Nicholson and Barry Brook. This article was first published on The Conversation. A response was then published on Business Spectator. It is worth reading both pieces, and the comments that followed them (for instance, Martin’s reply).

A recent Bloomberg press release got wide coverage with its claim that wind power is now cheaper than coal. But a new report from the OECD shows that when you cover the full cost to the grid, variable renewables like wind don’t add up as favourably.

It is often claimed that introducing variable renewable energy resources such as solar and wind into the electricity network comes with some extra cost penalties, due to “system effects”. These system effects include intermittent electricity access, network congestion, instability, environmental impacts, and security of supply.

Now a new report from the OECD titled System Effects of Low-Carbon Electricity Systems gives some hard dollar values for these additional imposts. The OECD work focuses on nuclear power, coal, gas, and renewables such as wind and solar. Their conclusion is that grid-level system costs can have significant impacts on the total cost of delivered electricity for some power-generation technologies.

All generation technologies cause system effects to some degree. They are all connected to the same transmission and distribution grid structure and deliver electricity into the same market. They also exert impacts on each other, on the total load available to satisfy demand, and the stability of the grid’s frequency control. These dependencies are heightened by the fact that only small amounts of cost-efficient electricity storage are available.

Any electricity generation technology can cause grid instability and price fluctuations if it goes offline unexpectedly. But a key finding of the OECD report is that renewables that are particularly variable, such as wind and solar, generate system effects that are at least an order of magnitude greater than for “dispatchable” technologies such as coal, gas, and nuclear.

These renewable sources require no fuel, and so have very low operating costs. This allows them to enter the market at low prices (or even negative prices if production subsidies or generation mandates are in place).

As a consequence, with the current power-generation mix in the OECD (including Australia), dispatchable technologies will suffer due to lower average electricity prices and reduced capacity factors when a significant quantity of low-cost renewable energy is available. (That is, dispatchable units will more often be forced to ramp down their output when there are high flows of low-cost renewable energy, yet will still need to be ready to ramp up again when the output from variable renewable generators is not sufficient to meet the total demand across the grid.)

The report defines grid-level system costs as the total costs (on top of plant-level costs) to supply electricity at a given load and given level of security of supply. These additional costs include the extra investment to extend and reinforce the grid, plus the costs for increased short-term balancing and for maintaining the long-term adequacy of electricity supply in the face of intermittent variable renewables.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 3 Comments »

81,000 truckers for solar!

Posted on 14 March 2013 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. He has published a book on diet and science, CSIRO Perfidy.

What’s a solar atlas?

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently released its World Solar Atlas report reckoning that the world’s entire projected needs in 2050 of something beginning with “e” could be met with solar panels on less than one percent of the planet’s surface. Pundits covering the report suffered some confusion about whether the ‘e’ was ‘electricity’ or ‘energy’, but none bothered with the obvious implication that covering one percent of Australia, for example, in solar power stations would require trucks as well as panels and land. Extrapolating from the proposed Moree Solar Farm project shows that this “one percent solution” would keep our entire 81,000 strong articulated truck fleet busy lugging stuff out into the bush for a minimum of four years and involve some 50 million round trips. That’s right, all the semi-trailers, all the B-Doubles, and all the road trains. All diverted from goods transport, food harvests and whatever else they do and all doing nothing else but carting solar stuff for four full years. Allocating 8,000 of the fleet to the build would see it stretch out to four decades. Read on for the details…

I didn’t see any mainstream media coverage of the WWF report, but then again, the Lance Armstrong soapie broke at about the same time and didn’t leave much room for other news. So coverage was left to the renewable energy bloggies.

Here’s a sample of the headlines: “… Solar power could serve all the World’s Energy Needs”, and “… solar panels in harmony with nature”, and “…land requirements insignificant”, and “solar could power entire world with less than 1% of land mass”.

“Bloggie” is a neologism related fairly clearly to “groupie” and I’m expecting it to go viral.

Here’s a couple of typical paragraphs that illustrate the coverage:

Highlighting the fact that a global switch to renewable energy is not just necessary, but doable, a new report released by the WWF concludes that the solar arrays necessary to meet all the world’s projected energy needs in 2050 would cover under one percent of global land area. Obviously this is a theoretical exercise, and 100 percent of the planet’s electricity needs are not actually going to be filled through solar.

and

The report illustrates that PV technology, when well-planned, does not conflict with conservation goals and clarifies that no country or region must choose between solar PV and space for humans and nature.

Electricity? Energy? Both start with ‘e’

What’s the problem? Well the problems begin with the letter ‘e’. Globally, electricity is only about 18 percent of energy use (IEA). So meeting all the world’s energy needs is very different from meeting all the world’s electricity needs.

Both needs begin with ‘e’ but getting them confused is no minor matter.

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Two decades and counting…

Posted on 18 February 2013 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. He has published a book on diet and science, CSIRO Perfidy.

While the French have been generating electricty for ~80 grams of CO2 per kWh for two decades, the Germans are still putting out ~450 grams/kwh and Australia is close to world’s  worst practice ~850 grams/kwh. The anti-nuclear movement has corrupted green thinking and cost us two decades and thousands of lives in the battle to avoid dangerous climate change … and counting.

Introduction

This submission relates to clause (e), “any other relevant matters”, on the list of things to be considered by the Select Committee on the Port Augusta Power Stations. The relevant matter is climate change and the place of wind and solar energy technologies in the battle to reduce Australian and global emissions as required by physical climate change emission budget constraints.

The 2009 paper: The Copenhagen Diagnosis gives long term sustainable limits for greenhouse gas emissions and work by NASA climate scientists led by James Hansen details more immediate requirements.

Port Augusta coal-fired power station, South Australia

Climate, oil and energy

For the past 20 years, there has been a competitive cacophony about the urgency of climate change by Governments and environmentalists around the world … but very little action. The emission reductions supposedly generated by the 1997 Kyoto protocol have in fact been measurably less than the increase in imports of emission intensive products by countries in the first world from countries in the third world. Many countries have simply out-sourced their emissions. This comprehensive failure has accelerated the urgency of substantive action.

During virtually all of these two decades, the French have been generating electricity using nuclear reactors at a CO2 emission rate of about 80 grams per kilowatt hour, compared to the global  average of over 500. Australia has a worst-in-class level of about 850 grams CO2 per kilowatt hour. The French completely transformed and grew their electricity generation infrastructure over a two decade period in the 1970s and 80s. The spur was oil prices rather than climate change, but the lesson remains. A fast affordable move to low carbon electricity is possible. The French did it. The Swiss did it. The Swedes did it. It isn’t the total solution to our climate problems, but it would be a bloody good start.

In contrast, it’s been 12 years since the Germans introduced a feed in tariff to reward rich Germans for electricity generated by putting solar panels on their roofs. We copied them. During this  period the German Government has incurred a 100 billion Euro debt to be paid over the next 20 years to those same rich Germans for a miserable 19 terawatt hours per year of day-time only electricity (about 3.3 percent of its total). And after all this expense and a forest of wind farms they are still generating 450 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour as a result of one the biggest white elephant projects in the history of cool technologies being promoted well beyond their tiny niche of applicability.

To admit the French are right about anything is clearly something everybody in general, and the Germans in particular, would like to avoid, but we really need to get over this, to give them credit and move on.

The French didn’t panic when a nuclear melt-down at Three Mile Island in 1979 resulted in no deaths. After all the people who didn’t die weren’t French and the reactor wasn’t French either. The French also didn’t panic in 1986 when a steam explosion in Ukraine at Chernobyl blew the top off a reactor without a containment building and killed less people than many a drunken Australian Easter holiday road toll. Again — not French.

In the 1980s, the French added 216 terawatt-hours/yr of nuclear electricity to the 100 or so they built in the 1970s. By the time of the formation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, their carbon dioxide cost per kilowatt hour of electricity was down to about 100 grams and hit 80 soon after. Meanwhile the Germans and most of the rest of us just continued to bugger up the climate big time.

Had we followed the French and gone nuclear in a big way, as they did in Switzerland and Sweden, the world would be very different. It is ironic that sincere concern for the planet has often gone hand in hand with innumeracy, irrationality and frequently both. The 2010 floods in Pakistan displaced 20 million people; cyclone Nargis in 2008 killed 140,000; These are the kinds of events which environmental and Green anti-nuclear activism has made more likely in the future because of ill-informed fear-mongering. Had we all gone nuclear and decarbonised our electricity, we’d still have work to do, but the urgency would be considerably reduced and some of the key technologies would be cheaper and better.

The anti-nuclear movement has cost us all a couple of decades … and counting.

Let me say one last thing about Chernobyl before moving on. The accident at Chernobyl was a horrid industrial accident which taught engineers valuable lessons and nobody builds reactors like that anymore. The radioactive plume from the accident increased natural radiation levels in large areas of what are now Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and they have been eating plenty of food with higher than normal radiation levels in those three countries for 25 years.

And the result? Three tenths of a half of a sixth of bugger all.

During this 25 years the three countries have had about 14 million cases of cancer (rough estimate based on Globocan data) with about 6,000 likely due to Iodine-131 emitted in the first days of the accident. It was a predicted problem and avoided elsewhere, but the Soviets stuffed up. Nevertheless, these extra cancers were treatable thyroid cancers with just a couple of dozen deaths.

It may seem to flippant to dismiss “just a couple of dozen deaths” and 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer. Not so. If these three countries had had Australian age standardised per-capita cancer rates during the past 25 years, they’d have had something in the order of 20 million cancers … not 6,000 but 6 million extra cancers!

Australian’s are flippant about much bigger causes of cancer and other diseases than tiny amounts of radiation. They are happy to eat BBQ’d meat, get pissed, get fat, get unfit, feed themselves and their children bacon and eggs, sausages and steak. And they still smoke cigarettes. All of these are far more potent as causes of cancer than small amounts of extra radiation in food or soil. Australians are flippant about causes of vast oceans of cancer and terrified of things that don’t even cause detectable ripples. Anti-nuclear campaigners are conveniently ignorant of comparative risks so it’s easy for them to tell cancer horror stories to the general public because the general public has no idea about comparative risks.

It is far worse than flippant to risk the destabilisation of the unusually benign climate of the past 10,000 years because of a few dozen deaths. That’s nutter stuff. When anti-nuclear elder “states person” Helen Caldicott told people at a press conference in Canada just a week after the deathless Fukushima melt-downs in 2011 that they should stop eating Turkish apricots because the whole of Turkey was contaminated by the Chernobyl plume, she showed exactly what a nutter she was and is. Turkey has half the age standardised rate of cancer of Australia. What has all that contamination done in Turkey? Nothing. Bring on those apricots!

Happily, a growing number of environmentalists have realised they have been deluded by anti-nuclear fear mongering and are now pro-nuclear. Once you start checking information issued by the likes of Caldicott, the result should be inevitable. Most of us just find it hard to believe that a person can tell so many untruths with such sincerity and even harder to admit our own gullibility. It took me months to finally “come out” as pro-nuclear after I realised what a crock of rubbish I’d believed for so long. Even more unfortunately, while some environmentalists have woken up,
it’s looking like we will have to wait for the rest to die.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 2 Comments »

Energy Policy – substance wins over style

Posted on 4 February 2013 by Barry Brook

There’s a gradual, but a rising tide of rational, enviro-progressive scientists out there who are committed to solving some of the world’s biggest problems. Many of these problems involve touchy subjects, including ways to reduce poverty while improving or maintaining high standards of living elsewhere, the means for ‘sustainable’ electricity generation, and how to limit the human population’s over-consumption and over-production.

Inevitably, however, many well-intentioned, but grossly misinformed environmentalists (‘enviro-conservatives’?) object to technical solutions based on emotional or ideological grounds alone. As self-professed enviro-progressives (but also scientists who base decisions on evidence, logic and balancing trade-offs as part of our everyday work), we hope to reduce this backlash by providing the data and analyses needed to make the best and most coherent decisions about our future.

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Reference paper:

Hong, S., Bradshaw, C.J.A. & Brook, B.W. (2013) Evaluating options for the future energy mix of Japan after the Fukushima nuclear crisis. Energy Policy, doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2013.01.002

On 14 September 2012, Japan’s government announced a nuclear-free policy to phase out its nuclear power generation by 2040. Of course, electricity demand would have to be supplied by both renewable energy and fossil fuels to respond the public unwillingness for nuclear power.

But is this most environmentally sound, safest and economically rational aim? In a new paper we’ve just had published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy, we set out to test Japan’s intentions the best way we know – using empirical data and robust scenario modelling.

Before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japan produced 25% of its total electricity consumption from nuclear power, 63% from fossil fuels (mostly coal and liquefied natural gas), and 10% from renewables (including hydro). Originally, the Japanese government had planned to increase nuclear power up to 45% of supply, and include new renewables builds, to combine to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and meet or exceed their Kyoto targets. However, the original plan could reduce emissions by the energy sector from 1122 Mt CO2e in 2010 to < 720 Mt CO2e by 2030 (< 70% of 1990 emission levels).

After the accident, the National Policy Unit in Japan hinted that the original plan was likely to be scrapped in favour of a new scenario, whereby the nuclear target was to be reduced to somewhere between 0–35% and the renewables target increased to 20–30%. These new plans, obviously, will not be able to meet the original emission reduction targets (Cyranoski, 2012; Normile, 2012). Our paper examines the implications of these different energy mixes.

Why do many people think ‘an anti-nuclear policy’ is environmentally friendly or sustainable?

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Zero emission synfuel from seawater

Posted on 16 January 2013 by Barry Brook

Guest post by John Morgan. John runs R&D programmes at a Sydney startup company. He has a PhD in physical chemistry, and research experience in chemical engineering in the US and at CSIRO. He is a regular commenter on BNC.

You can follow John on Twitter @JohnDPMorgan

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Introduction

Liquid hydrocarbons account for about one third of fossil carbon dioxide emissions, and while transition to electric vehicles is possible for some passenger transport, it is simply not feasible to substitute for liquid fuel in most long haul transport, aviation, or agricultural and industrial prime movers. Synthesizing fuel from carbon dioxide extracted from air is possible in principle but horrendously expensive.  Yet, if we are to achieve CO2 levels of 350 ppm from our current 392 ppm, CO2 removal from the biosphere appears necessary.

Two papers published last year described a new approach to zero emissions synfuel, looking at direct carbon dioxide extraction from seawater.  The new insight in these papers is that CO2 is very soluble in seawater, where the concentration is about 140 times higher than in the atmosphere. This could make seawater extraction a lot cheaper than direct air capture.

The work was done by the US Navy (full text here), and by the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC),who each developed membrane processes to extract CO2 from seawater.   The Navy’s interest is military – shipboard production of synthetic jet fuel far from supply lines – but I figure we can beat this sword into a ploughshare.

Rather than going after the CO2 directly with chemical scrubbers, they use electrochemical processes to split seawater into an acid and base stream, and the CO2 bubbles off from the acidified water.  The two streams are recombined and returned to the ocean.  While these processes are novel, they are very similar to a number of ion exchange processes, including desalination, which are currently deployed at scale.

The Navy costed the production of jet fuel at sea.  But they neglected to include the cost of energy for the carbon capture process.  I used the PARC research to estimate it and include it in the Navy costings.  I arrived at $1.78 per litre. I was also able to calculate the cost of just the carbon capture part of the process at about $114 per tonne of CO2.

But if we don’t insist on running these processes on an expensive ocean-going platform, the cost drops to $0.79 per litre for synfuel and $37 /tCO­2.  The costs are rough and there are a number of caveats, but this is surprisingly low. To put it in context, the American Physical Society recently reviewed carbon capture from air, and “optimistically” costed it at about $600/tonne.

The Navy costings are based on commercially available equipment whose capital and operating costs are understood for all processes except the membrane CO2 extraction. Analogous processes like desalination are available for a cost baseline for membrane extraction.  The costing assumed power from Navy nuclear reactors. (They also costed OTEC power – Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion – but this is not a commercially available technology.)

I describe the CO2 capture and fuel synthesis processes below, and show how the costings were derived.  I also consider how the costs would change for civilian nuclear electricity (Table 1).  In brief, accepting the Navy’s assumptions leads to plausible prices for synfuel and carbon capture, but the amount of new power generation required makes very large volume production unlikely.

A spreadsheet with my cost calculations can be downloaded here: Synfuel cost model.

CCS – Carbon capture from seawater

Concepts for carbon capture from air have been developed, but never realized.  The basic idea is to pass air over alkaline scrubbers, such as amine or carbonate solutions, extract the CO2, and recycle the scrubber solution.  Because the concentration of CO2 in air is so low, a very large surface area is required, and the process is energy intensive and overall very expensive.

The American Physical Society prepared a technology assessment on this approach in 2011. The results weren’t promising.  A 1 Mt/yr CO2 extractor comprised five 1 m x 1 m x 1 kilometre long air contactors, occupying about 1.5 km2.  The cost, so far as it could be determined for an undeveloped technology, and making optimistic assumptions, was about $600 per tonne.  Another 2011 study estimated costs based on current experience with trace gas removal systems at about $1000 per tonne.

Graphic – cover of the APS report, with link

Graphic – cover of the APS report, with link

But CO2 is very soluble in water, and its concentration in the ocean is about 140 times higher than in air.  So we are using the whole of the ocean surface as an air contactor right now – for better or worse!  The extraction system is ‘built’, we just need to recover the CO2.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 4 Comments »

Energy White Paper is hazy on future vision for nuclear

Posted on 15 November 2012 by Barry Brook

The Energy White Paper 2012 (EWP2012), released by the Australian Government last week, seeks to map out a strategic policy framework for future energy supply. One of the major goals of EWP2012 is to provide a “clear vision” of how Australia should set about the long-term task of decarbonising our stationary electricity, liquid fuels and industrial sectors. So how well does it succeed?

As an overview of the current status quo on domestic supply, distribution and exports of energy, it is a fine document. However, as a forward-looking, agenda-setting stimulus paper, it has weaknesses. The focus is strongly on how natural gas and unconventional fossil fuel markets might develop in the coming decades under various uncertainties, and the impact of these on national economic growth and trade. In terms of its projections of the expansion of currently poorly developed “alternative” (non-fossil) electricity – the biggest issue to address – let’s consider the medium-demand scenario (Fig. 6.1, pg 88):

This shows a gradual phase out of traditional coal (to be replaced by carbon-capture and storage [CCS] variants after about 2035) and a ramp-up of combined cycle gas (both CCS and non-CCS). Up to half of electricity is coming from wind, solar thermal, solar PV and engineered geothermal by 2050. The estimated cost is “more than $200 billion in new generation investment”.

These projected finances are based on the levelised cost of electricity estimates provided in the recent AETA report, but do not adequately consider “value” of the electricity, as I explained here. Putting that to one side, the basic technology options, with current and projected 2030 prices, are shown in Fig. 6.2:

Nuclear power – generated by both large (“monolithic”) and small (“modular”) reactors – are an obvious low-cost, low-carbon (and baseload) standout here in Fig. 6.2. Yet nuclear power is invisible in the Fig. 6.1 projections.

Why? This is explained in Box 6.3 on pg 98 of EWP2012. The argument made is that there is no “social consensus” on the technology (is there one for coal-seam gas?), nor an economic case (but that is relative to its direct competitor, black and brown coal, with no carbon price).

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CSIRO Energy Future 2050 tool

Posted on 8 November 2012 by Barry Brook

CSIRO eFuture have built a new tool for exploring scenarios of Australia’s electricity future. It gives great flexibility to ‘build your own future’ and is a wonderful point of reference for debates on clean energy pathways from today through to 2050. It’s based, among other things, on the data published in the recent AETA report that I commented on here.

Their description:

Explore scenarios around technology cost, electricity demand and fuel prices, and see how your choices impact Australia’s electricity costs, technology mix and carbon emissions through to 2050.

Below is an example scenario that I think is likely. But do try your own (just make sure you can justify it!). Oh, and spread the word that this fantastic tool exists.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Policy, Renewables, Scenarios | 1 Comment »

Objective analysis of nuclear and wind-solar options – needs $$ support

Posted on 6 November 2012 by Barry Brook

I’ve never asked the BNC community for any financial contribution. There’s no tip jar on the site; indeed I happily fund the website costs out of my pocket and give my time freely, because I think it’s a worthwhile pursuit. But now, I’d like to ask you to give a little, to a most worthy cause that encapsulates all that BraveNewClimate is about.

Ben Heard, my friend, colleague and fellow environmentalist traveller on the pro-nuclear, pro-full-decarbonisation road, has worked incredibly hard on a collaboration to do some serious clean energy planning. In this impressive 15,000 word report, Ben and his co-authors consider two alternate energy solutions, a hybrid solar/wind renewable solution and a reference nuclear solution,  against the challenge of delivering the same hypothetical energy task: the replacement of the Northern and Playford Coal-Fired Power Stations in northern South Australia with clean energy. The report compares these solutions against 13 holistic sustainability and economic criteria. It’s a terrific case study, the lessons of which are applicable to decision makers far and wide.

As he says in his DSA post here, they wrote the report unpaid, because it matters. But if it’s going to have real-world impact, it needs effective publicity and wide distribution. This report must get into the hands of lots of people. That is where you can come in. Please consider giving a small donation to make it happen, even if it’s only a few $$. Every little bit helps.

Although the project has already received over half of the requested funds from 42 supporters, input has recently slowed to a trickle. As with most crowdsourced funding requests, the early donations are relatively easy to secure, whereas the ‘long tail’ is much tougher. It’s the old Pareto 80:20 principle.

To get a taste of what you would be supporting, you can read a preview of the introduction, here: Zero Carbon Options: Seeking an Economic Mix for an Environmental Outcome (4-page PDF). It’s well written and engaging, and, having twice refereed the whole report, I can confirm that it’s also extremely rigorous.

Below are some additional words from Ben, written especially for the BNC audience.

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Zero Carbon Options – Launch the Report

Ben Heard

It’s not an original concept, either for the pages of BNC or anything else. We have all heard that the major hurdle nuclear power faces is social acceptance.

However after nearly two years of independent nuclear advocacy, I think I’m in a position to nuance that a little. The key word is “social”. Acceptance, per se, is not the issue.

I have had a lot of conversations about nuclear power in the last two years. I have written a lot of articles, and given a lot of presentations. I have had many confidential meetings, taught many classes, and landed a pretty convincing debate victory. Along the way a few things have become very clear.

  • Far, far more people are essentially supportive of the deployment of nuclear power in Australia than I originally believed. If this group is a minority of the population, it is not a small minority. However for the majority of these people the opinion is held quietly, mainly it seems from a sense of futility
  • Many, many people want to know more about nuclear power. They want information. Whatever their view, it is not strongly held. Their opinions are in play. These people range in age, gender, political leaning and general walk of life but there are common reasons why they are seeking answers: concerns about climate change and a search for a solution that is up to the challenge
  • A huge number of people in what I would describe as positions of power or influence in the political or business community, particularly in the energy community, are strongly supportive of nuclear power. But they see too much downside risk in either themselves or their organisation standing by that position

The “acceptance” of nuclear is everywhere. But except in rare and valuable forums like Brave New Climate, it has not been socialised. It has not been shared, voiced, and reinforced. It has not been widely stated, restated, and stood by because of a reinforcing silence and, frankly, fears of what other people think. Fear of how they will react. Nuclear suffers an appalling first mover syndrome for those who feel they have something at stake, whether it is friendships, votes, funding or customers.

That’s a deadlock we need to break. That’s why we wrote Zero Carbon Options.

When Brown & Pang approached me for a collaboration in nuclear, two things struck me. The first was the quality of their work. The second was that they did it. They did not wait for funding, or a buyer. They wrote a report Australia needed on nuclear workforce requirements because it needed to be done.

We agreed on something else that needed to be done. Something so simple it’s weird that it hadn’t been done before: a straight-up comparison of how two zero-carbon options would perform against an identical, precisely defined task: the replacement of actual coal-fired baseload in South Australia. Could there be a clearer, more tangible, more relevant way to demonstrate the essential role of nuclear power than such a comparison?

Six-months, 15,000 words, dozens of drafts and two rounds of expert review later, the report is finished. It is clear, easy to follow and well-structured. It is well researched and comprehensive. It will look outstanding, and it offers this unique comparison of options into the public conversation. As this article goes live it is in the safe hands of Brown & Pang for graphic design, and I am preparing to launch it. That, we hope, is where you come in.

Everything to date has been our work, freely given. We were happy to move and make this report happen. But launching a report in a meaningful way requires funds that independent consultants lack. We need your help to take a big step in socialising the acceptance of nuclear power. To that end we are accepting pledges for the launch of Zero Carbon Options via crowd-funding site Pozible.

The launch will be held in Adelaide on Wednesday 5 December. Based virtually on word of mouth (no media, no advertising) nearly 60 tickets have been snapped up for this in the week since it was announced. We are providing written invitations to every sitting member of the South Australian parliament, as well as a full range of Federal and local Government identities. We will be issuing media releases and invitations, and several media opportunities are already lining up. After I present the findings of the report, peer reviewers Professor Barry Brook and author and BNC regular Mr Martin Nicholson will be joined by myself and Professor Doug Boreham from Canada for a moderated question-and-answer session. Attendees will receive a hard copy of the report.

I know we can use this report to take a big step toward socialising the acceptance of nuclear power in Australia. But we can’t do it without you. Let’s get the nuclear discussion right into the mainstream in 2013. Please make a pledge and help us launch Zero Carbon Options.

Please visit our fundraising site and make a pledge by clicking on the image below.

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To register comments, go to the Brave New Climate Discussion Forum

Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables, Scenarios | 1 Comment »

Is Japan’s nuclear-free pathway an environmentally friendly choice?

Posted on 5 October 2012 by Barry Brook

The Fukushima crisis sparked protests and prompted a move away from nuclear energy for Japan

Below is an essay I co-wrote with one of my current Ph.D. students, Sanghuyn Hong. In it, we take a critical look at the current national energy policy of Japan, and highlight the unfortunate implications of a strategy that preferences fossil fuels over nuclear energy.

San, in the first year of his studies, is from South Korea, and is researching current and future energy policies in South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Read or leave your comment the original article here.

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On 14 September 2012, the Japanese Government considered a new policy that excited many self-proclaimed environmentalists and anti-nuclear power protesters. Following intense political wrangling, they proposed phasing out the use of nuclear power in Japan by 2040, replacing it with renewable energy (and fossil fuels). This decision, if carried through, has important environmental and financial implications that may come as a surprise to many.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident on 11 Mar 2011, caused by an earthquake-triggered tsunami, consigned the established Japanese electricity-generation plan to the dustbin. Along with it went Japan’s Kyoto-protocol commitments for greenhouse-gas mitigation.

Originally, the Japanese government had planned to increase nuclear power to 45% and renewables (including hydro) to 20% by the year 2030, up from 26% and 10% respectively in 2010. After the accident, the National Policy Unit in Japan hinted that the original plan was likely to be scrapped in favour of a new scenario, whereby the nuclear target was to be reduced to somewhere between 0–35% and the renewables target increased to 20–30%. Even with an increased share of renewables, the shift away from nuclear under any of the proposed scenarios will lead to greater use of fossil fuels.

To compare the proposed options fairly, we argue that it makes sense take a holistic view of their relative sustainability. To do this, we need to account for a range of environmental and socio-economic factors, including greenhouse-gas emissions, water consumption, land transformation, health and safety issues, and cost of electricity. One should use an evidence-based auditing method like multi-criteria decision-making analysis (MCDMA), which is transparent and relatively objective.

Our recent research (currently submitted to the journal Energy) uses MCDMA to show that even when the negative consequences of using nuclear power are properly factored in (and costs assigned to waste management, accident consequences, and so on), those scenarios with reduced nuclear power result in a less sustainable future in Japan.

In particular, the greenhouse-gas emissions of the nuclear-free scenario can reach up to about 430 kg per megawatt hour. By comparison, in the 35% nuclear-power scenario, it is only 267 kg per megawatt hour, in spite of the higher renewable energy share of the former. Except for the differing nuclear capacity, in all scenarios the ratio of coal to gas power had the largest influence on greenhouse-gas emissions.

Unfortunately, a high dependency on renewables without ongoing support for nuclear in Japan cannot cut the electricity generation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions unless some currently undeveloped alternative forms of cheap, large-scale energy storage are deployed in the future.

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Filed under: Emissions, Future, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 2 Comments »

Critique of Lovins book ‘Reinventing Fire’

Posted on 10 September 2012 by Barry Brook

The following is a critique, by Ted Trainer, of the energy chapters in Amory Lovins’ new book, Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era. Ted is seeking feedback, so please head over to the BNC Discussion forum and leave your comments — on his appraisal, or on your own thoughts of Lovins’ prose.

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A note on the energy chapters in, A. Lovins, Reinventing Fire, Rocky Mountains Institute, 2011.

Ted Trainer, UNSW

This book continues the presentation of the Lovins perspective, essentially the claim that there is great scope for conservation measures and alternative technologies to solve our problems and enable maintenance of rich world economies and lifestyles.  He says at least 80% of US power, and possibly all of it can come from renewable energy sources by 2050.  My comments refer only to the two energy chapters, one on transport fuel and one on power supply.

I don’t think these chapters add much to his Winning the Oil End Game.  More importantly, I regard the arguments as quite unsatisfactory and unconvincing.  They are almost all superficial; there is no detail and no derivation of conclusions.  The core issues require numerical analyses; they are about whether or not quantities and targets can be achieved but there are few if any explanations of this kind in the energy chapters.  The approach is to make vague and generalised claims, support them with a few spectacular examples, and proceed as if this establishes that the practice in question could be implemented everywhere.  As Smil (undated) said long ago, Lovin’s style is “… discourse by declaration.” This is disappointing as Lovins has extensive expertise on these issues and it could have been applied here more effectively to clarifying the potential and limits of renewable energy.

Lovins claims huge reductions in energy demand will be achieved by efficiency effort.  His renewable scenario actually assumes a 70% reduction on the level of electricity demand he says that business as usual would produce by 2050 (from 6000TWh/y down to 1650 TWh/y.)  I can’t find any evidence or reasoning supporting this claim in the book. There is much discussion of energy reducing technologies, but no case that these would add to the claimed reduction.

Regarding the difference conservation etc. might make, the estimates I am aware of for the rich countries indicate in recent years a business as usual demand trend rising to about twice the present level by 2050. (Demand is down at present, partly due to the GFC.) Clear and confident estimates of future efficiency gains do not seem to exist, understandably, but for working purposes I assume a 33% reduction to the level business as usual would generate. Note that US population is rising significantly (.91% p.a.) and at this rate would be 50% higher by 2050, so Lovins is actually assuming a very big reduction in energy consumption per capita by 2050.

Smil is one among many who stress the huge gulf that typically exists between what is technically/theoretically possible on the laboratory bench and what is likely to be achieved in the real world.  In my critical discussion of the “Tech-fix” position (Trainer, 2012a) I set out the cascade through what might be a) “theoretically possible” without consideration of limiting factors, b) technically possible given real-world difficulties, c) economically possible, e.g., in view of the infinite cost of being as efficient as is possible, d) has an acceptable EROI, e) is socially acceptable, and f) is the final achievement after the Jevons or rebound effect has operated (e.g. where increased car efficiency results in an increase in driving and fuel use.)  A good example is where Smeets and Faaij (2007) conclude that global biomass production potential is 1,550 EJ/y, but Field, Lobell and Campbell (2007) conclude that the amount that might be obtained after taking into account all limiting factors would be a mere 27 EJ/y.  I don’t think there is any reference in Lovins’ two energy chapters to any of these factors, or even to the EROI concept.

Lovins always has an enthusiastically optimistic view of probable future trends in costs.  However discussion of all issues to do with energy, resources, technology, environment and consumption should be based on the assumption that in the near future there are very likely to be large and irreversible rises in the prices of energy, resources, materials, construction, plant and technology etc.  These will multiply through the whole economy, impacting further on the construction of new energy technologies, cutting into the availability of capital to build them in large quantity, and into the incomes and capital available to pay for energy and efficiency improvements.

Costs

It is not difficult to show how most or all energy could come from renewables; you just assume enough plant to do it when there is little sun or wind. My main interest is in the capital cost of the energy technologies required to enable demand to be met at all times, and my general view is that renewable energy will be much too capital costly to run consumer societies. (The best current statement of the case is Trainer, 2012b, and as applied to Australia, 2012c.)

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Filed under: Emissions, Renewables, Scenarios | 3 Comments »

Fit-for-service low-carbon electricity technologies are the key

Posted on 8 August 2012 by Barry Brook

This article (by Barry Brook) was originally published on The Conversation website until the title: “Low-carbon electricity must be fit-for-service (and nuclear power is)“. You can wade through the 224 comments over there (if you dare…) See also the comment here by Keith Orchison.

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To paraphrase George Orwell, “All electricity is created equal, but some of its generating technologies are more equal than others”. This is a key point – emphasised but typically overlooked – in the new report Australian Energy Technology Assessment (AETA) on current and future costs of electricity options for Australia, released yesterday by the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics.

No such thing as a free lunch: nuclear power can do what many renewable energy systems have not yet done on a large scale – deliver. Flickr/Gretchen Mahan

Assessing the ‘levelised’ costs of existing energy technologies is already surprisingly difficult, given the array of assumptions that need to be made, on capital and owner’s costs, financing terms and associated risk, facility lifespans, fuel supply, government policy interventions, and so on. It gets even more challenging when projecting future cost changes, because learning curves and settled-down costs, uptake rates, future fuel and material supply bottlenecks, training, price incentives, social license, and other ‘known unknowns’ need to be factored into the economic modelling.

So the AETA authors had a difficult task on their hand. Perhaps the most contentious, yet important task, is defining the relative market value and role for technologies within a national electricity system. From the perspective of replacing fossil-fuel combustion with alternatives, a crucial issue is how effective it is, at a large scale, in providing a fit-for-service replacement for existing coal plants.

In a recent paper I co-authored with two colleagues in the journal Energy, we assessed technologies against a range of criteria intended to determine their suitability as a baseload alternative. These were:

Proven: Has the technology been used at commercial scale?

Scalable: Can the technology be built in sufficient quantity to replace significant proportions of existing fossil-fuel generators?

Dispatchable: Can the output be allocated by the system operator to meet the anticipated load?

Fuel supply: Is the energy source reliable and plentiful, even when, as with some kinds of renewable energy, it varies with time?

Load access: Can the generator be installed close to a load centre?

Storage: Does the technology require electricity storage in order to deliver a high capacity factor?

Emission intensity: Is the emission intensity high (>300 kg CO2e/MWh), moderate or low (<100)?

Capacity factor: Is the capacity factor high (>70%), moderate or low (<40%)?

For a technology to be considered fit-for-service as a baseload generator (i.e., a direct replacement for coal or combined-cycle gas power plants) it needs to be scalable, dispatchable without large storage and have a reliable fuel supply, low or moderate  emissions intensity and a high capacity factor. The only current technologies that score well enough to meet these criteria are nuclear power and solar thermal with thermal storage and/or hybrid gas. Coal and gas with carbon capture and engineered geothermal could also qualify but are only at the pilot plant stage of development.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 3 Comments »

No easy substitutes for fossil fuels

Posted on 2 August 2012 by Barry Brook

The following guest post is republished (with permission from the author) from Opinion Online. Tom Biegler, who wrote this piece, worked with Martin Nicholson and me on our 2010 Energy paper, How carbon pricing changes the relative competitiveness of low-carbon baseload generating technologies. Tom noted to me that he:

carefully avoided mentioning nuclear, which can do the job, only because it would deflect attention from my arguments

For the audience of BNC however, I’m sure this conclusion about nuclear as a viable and proven fossil-fuel replacement comes as no surprise!

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How clear is the roadmap to a ‘clean energy future’?

Guest Post by Dr. Tom Biegler. Tom is a physical chemist and former CSIRO divisional head, spent much of his career managing technological research and development related to the resources industry. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.

To go with Clean Energy Week comes a new report from The Climate Institute telling us that Australians overwhelmingly support renewable energy but don’t understand how carbon pricing will work. Not surprisingly, they are also sceptical about the political motivations behind its introduction. I think their scepticism is misdirected. Their target should be the carbon tax itself.

Carbon pricing (of which the tax is a temporary start) is the standard economic remedy for problems like carbon dioxide emissions. As Tim Colebatch, an economist, wrote in The Age recently: “Give us a price incentive, and we find ways to reduce emissions with little damage to profits or our standards of living”.

The tax should work in two ways. It should encourage substitution of high-emission fossil fuels by lower-emission alternatives (“our clean energy future”, as the government puts it); and discourage energy usage in general (“behaviour change”) by raising energy costs. Clean energy will cost more. After all, if low-emission technologies were not more expensive there would be no need for a tax.

Fine in principle, but will it work?

I need to assert here that I am not a climate sceptic. And I see the timing of Australia’s tax and its explicit contribution to global climate change as important but separate issues.

The carbon price policy is based on two premises: the right technologies will be there when needed; and significantly less energy will be used as its price rises.

Underlying the whole matter is energy’s key economic role. Energy is the lever that multiplies the output of human personal effort to give us our unprecedented productivity and prosperity. Energy builds economies. Whatever its shortcomings, the bonanza of fossil fuels we inherited has given us our present living standards.

Both of the above premises have major problems. Firstly, in my opinion (after all, this is a journal of opinion) the expectations regarding renewable energies have been raised to quite unreasonable levels. The proposition as accepted by the public is that feeble, intermittent solar, wind, ocean energy, etc, can effectively replace intensely combustible, high energy fossil fuels as drivers of prosperity. The enormous scale and associated cost of collecting and processing this weak energy is what makes the proposition extraordinary. Extraordinary propositions need extraordinary evidence. That’s the sceptics’ slogan, and that’s why I am sceptical about renewables.

Coal. It’s cheap, abundant, polluting… and tough to replace.

The evidence is in fact very ordinary.

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Filed under: Emissions, Policy, Renewables | 1 Comment »

Does energy efficiency reduce emissions and peak demand?

Posted on 13 July 2012 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Graham Palmer. Graham is an industrial engineer and energy commenter from Melbourne. For another BNC post featuring his work, see Coal dependence and the renewables paradox.

This post summarises the findings of a paper just published in the peer-reviewed journal Sustainability by Graham Palmer, entitled “Does energy efficiency reduce emissions and peak demand? A case study of 50 years of space heating in Melbourne“.

Energy efficiency is a key component of climate change policy, and is promoted as a low cost means to reduce greenhouse emissions and reduce peak demand. Energy efficiency is also a key component of the “soft energy path”, originally articulated by Amory Lovins in 1976 in his famous article in Foreign Affairs as a solution to energy supply concerns and declining resources, then later adopted as a solution to climate change.

Such is the power and intuitive appeal of the idea of energy efficiency that it has been almost universally adopted as a key plank of the “sustainability project” by environmental NGOs, green parties, and large sections of Government. Yet Jevon’s Paradox, or the energy efficiency rebound effect, suggests that some, or all, of the gains of energy efficiency are “taken back” in the long-run, and has been passionately debated since the 1980s.

The most common explanation for the failure to reduce energy is that we haven’t tried enough; therefore the solution should be increased regulation and greater stringency, along with greater support for efficiency programs. But a historical examination shows that an improvement in efficiency of Melbourne’s space heating has in fact been sustained and significant, yet energy demand continues to grow. An examination of the specific case of Melbourne’s space heating over a 50-year time-scale provides an opportunity to reconcile the contradiction between the short-run gains from efficiency at a household level, with the irrefutable increase in aggregate energy consumption over the long run. Melbourne’s winter heating is an important case study because the heating load is possibly the single largest peak energy load on any energy source in Australia – the demand on the gas network is regularly 10,000 to 15,000 MW (gas) – so any de-carbonisation plan needs to effectively deal with it.

The paper has two main findings.

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Filed under: Emissions, Policy, Renewables | 4 Comments »

Radio debate on nuclear power for addressing climate change – Brook vs Ludlum

Posted on 10 July 2012 by Barry Brook

Scott Ludlum

Barry Brook

Yesterday I debated nuclear energy and climate change on 891 ABC radio with Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, on the afternoon show hosted by Sonya Feldhoff. (It was a studio interview, so the audio quality is quite good.) We had a decent amount of time to cover off on issues, including answering callers, but as always, there was much more that could have been said!

Download the audio file here (39 minutes, MP3)

Another item of interest are two new articles on the UK proposal to construct the first Integral Fast Reactor to dispose of its separated plutonium inventory (first discussed on BNC in Disposal of UK plutonium stocks with a climate change focus).

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 1 Comment »

The Power Makers’ Challenge – and the need for Fission Energy (Part 1)

Posted on 11 May 2012 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Martin Nicholson. Martin studied mathematics, engineering and electrical sciences at Cambridge University in the UK and graduated with a Masters degree in 1974. He has spent most of his working life as business owner and chief executive of a number of information technology companies in Australia. He has a strong interest in business and public affairs and is a keen observer of the climate change debate and the impact on energy. He is author of Energy in a Changing Climate, as well as an upcoming book on sustainable energy systems, and is the lead author of the 2011 paper in the journal Energy “How carbon pricing changes the relative competitiveness of low-carbon baseload generating technologies“. He wrote a popular post last year on BNC entitled: Cutting Australia’s carbon abatement costs with nuclear power

This post, and the  one to follow, provides an insight into Martin’s new book: The Power Makers’ Challenge: and the need for Fission Energy

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PART 1

Introduction from the Book Cover

“The Power Makers – the producers of our electricity – must meet the demands of their customers while also addressing the threat of climate change. There are widely differing views about solutions to electricity generation in an emission constrained world. Some see the problem as relatively straight forward, requiring deep cuts in emissions now by improving energy efficiency, energy conservation and using only renewable resources. Many electricity industry engineers and scientists see the problem as being much more involved.

The Power Makers ’ Challenge: and the need for Fission Energy (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2813-7) looks at why using only conventional renewable energy sources is not quite as simple as it seems. Following a general introduction to electricity and its distribution, the author quantifies the reductions needed in greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector in the face of ever increasing world demands for electricity. It provides some much needed background on the many energy sources available for producing electricity and discusses their advantages and limitations to meet both the emission reduction challenge and electricity demand.

By analysing the three main groups of energy sources: renewable energy, fossil fuels and fission energy (nuclear power), readers can assess the ability of each group to meet the challenge of both reducing emissions and maintaining reliable supply at least cost. It is written for both non-technical and technical readers.”

Synopsis

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are changing the landscape for our Power Makers – those good folks that deliver our ultra-reliable electricity supply.

The Power Makers have been largely reliant on fossil fuels for providing abundant and relatively cheap energy and delivering a high standard of living in developed countries. Even so, more than a third of all humanity still has no access to electricity. For those living in less-developed countries, their long-term aspirations are to achieve the same high standard of living enjoyed in the developed world. That means access to abundant cheap energy – and much more of it!

The mainstream scientific consensus is that GHG emissions are the primary cause of recent global warming. In addition, fossil fuels are a finite resource. Continuing to use fossil fuels as our main energy source for generating electricity could lead to both an energy supply and climate disaster: two good reasons for migrating our electricity generation away from fossil fuels.

Technically, economically, socially and politically – we face many challenges in trying to harness non-fossil-fuel energy on a large scale.

The challenge facing our Power Makers is to maintain a reliable, cost effective electricity supply with substantially less emissions. With over 65% of our electricity currently coming from fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) that produce 44% of the world’s GHG emissions, this is no small challenge. The Power Makers have no choice but to clean up the fossil fuel power plants (or replace them) while maintaining the supply security paramount for both Power Makers and their customers.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 9 Comments »

The Nuclear Energy Solution

Posted on 12 April 2012 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Bill Sacks and Greg Meyerson. Bill is a physicist and a radiologist, and wrote Lessons about nuclear energy from the Japanese quake and tsunami about a  month into the Fukushima crisis. Greg is an English professor with specialization in critical theory. Both are based in the U.S. For further details about the authors, see the Endnote to this post.

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NUCLEAR ENERGY: THE ONLY SOLUTION TO THE ENERGY PROBLEM AND GLOBAL WARMING  By Bill Sacks and Greg Meyerson

The following is a brief rationale and outline of a much longer essay that is also available on bravenewclimate.com (CLICK HERE to download the printable PDF, 58 pages).

This essay unifies four critical contentions that the authors cannot find combined in any other of the many sources on nuclear energy.  Our four contentions are 1) fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) are now the main source of global warming; 2) they must be completely replaced with clean energy sources, chiefly nuclear energy since the inherent physical properties of wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal severely limit their use; 3) radiation at the dose ranges encountered in nature, as well as by the public in nuclear accidents, actually promotes, rather than destroys, health; and 4) the profit system presents an inherent obstacle to achieving the goal of clean, sustainable energy.

The authors hold the opinion that all four of these aspects are inseparable, and that a general understanding of all is necessary if any progress is to be made in solving the problems of inaccessibility of adequate electricity for much of humanity and anthropogenic global warming that is nearing tipping points that threaten to make self-amplifying and irreversible changes.  No one of these four, in our view, can be safely put aside as a distraction from some “main” point.

Recognition that the earth is warming and that human activity, rather than natural cycles, is now responsible is only the beginning of this solution — a necessary but not sufficient condition.  Similarly broad general understanding of the severe inherent limitations of all clean alternatives to nuclear energy is needed to hasten the building of nuclear plants world over, and to end the wasteful efforts to scale up wind and solar particularly, that profit a few but at the expense of rich governmental subsidies and higher energy costs that further restrict access to electricity.

Furthermore if nuclear energy is to gain the respect and advocacy of the public, the exaggerated fears of radiation have to be brought under rational control, which requires first that governmental regulatory agencies around the world be forced to admit that they have been basing their restrictions on an obsolete relic of the Cold War — one that falsely claims that all radiation is harmful to our health regardless of how low the dose, known as the linear-no-threshold (LNT) assumption.  However, the science of biological effects of ionizing radiation overwhelmingly points to an evolved response that protects against any harm from low levels of radiation, known as the hormetic effect, or hormesis, a very general biological response to all sorts of chemical and physical agents.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 68 Comments »

Further critique of ’100% renewable electricity in Australia’ – winter demand and other problems

Posted on 21 March 2012 by Barry Brook

Recently on BNC, I ran two guest posts on the economic and technical challenges of supplying an energy-intensive, developed-world market using 100% renewable sources (under a situation where large hydro and/or conventional geothermal can provide little or no contribution). The case study was the national electricity market of Australia, with an average demand of 25-30 GWe.

100% renewable electricity for Australia – the cost

and the response, from one of the authors of the original simulation study:

100% Renewable Electricity for Australia: Response to Lang

Below is a further commentary, by Ted Trainer of UNSW, which focuses particularly on the issues of supplying winter demand, the feasibility of the biomass option for the gas backup, and the “big gaps” problem (i.e., long-run gambler’s ruin). Ted asked me to post it here on BNC to solicit constructive feedback (and has promised me he will be responding to comments!).

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Comments on

“Simulations of scenarios with 100% renewable electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market”  Solar 12011, 49th AuSES Annual Conference,  30 Nov – 2 Dec., By Ben Elliston, Mark Diesendorf and Iain Macgill, UNSW.

Ted Trainer; 21.3.2012

The paper outlines a supply pattern whereby it is claimed that 100% of present Australian electricity demand could be provided by renewable energy.

The following notes indicate why I think that although technically this could be done, we could not afford the capital cost.  This is mainly because the analysis seems to significantly underestimate the amount of plant that would be required.

I think this is a valuable contribution to the discussion of the potential and limits of renewable energy.  It takes the kind of approach needed, focusing on the combination of renewable sources that might meet daily demand.  However it is not difficult to set out a scenario whereby this might be done technically; the problems are what quantity of redundant plant would be needed to deal with fluctuations in renewable energy sources, and what might the capital cost of this amount to?

Two of the plots given set out the contributions that might be combined to meet daily demand over about 8 days in 2010, in summer and winter.  It seems to me that when these contributions are added the total capacity needed is much more than the paper states.

Australia's recent history of energy use by source

The task is to supply 31 GW.  The plots given show that at one point in time wind is contributing a maximum of 13.5 GW, but at other times its contribution is close to zero, meaning that other sources are backing up for it.  The corresponding peak inputs from the other sources are, PV 9 GW, solar thermal 27, hydro 5 GW and gas from biomass 24 GW.  Thus the total amount of plant required would be 75.5 GW of peak capacity… to supply an average 31 GW.  (in his response to Peter Lang, Mark Diesendorf says their total requirement is 84.9 GW.) That’s the magnitude of the redundancy problem and this is the major limiting factor for renewables; the need for a lot of back up plant, which will sit idle much of the time.

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Filed under: Renewables | 44 Comments »

Purpose and target audience of BraveNewClimate.com

Posted on 7 March 2012 by Barry Brook

Before I write a scientific paper, I always try to identify: (1) my main message [MM], in 25 words or less, and (2) my target audience [TA]. Doing this helps focus the ‘story’ of the manuscript on a key point. Papers that try to present multiple messages are typically confusing and/or too long for busy researchers to read. It also dictates the background and specialist terminology that the reader might be safely assumed to understand, as well as guiding the choice of journal that I will submit to. For instance, a paper written for Nature requires more general context setting than one sent to Wildlife Research.

However, it occurred to me that I’ve never tried to define the main message of the BraveNewClimate.com blog, nor really reflected on who the chief audience is. So let’s try.

In reality, both have evolved over time. Back in late 2008 – early 2009, when the blog (and my thinking on climate change policy) was in its infancy, it would have read something this:

2009 MM: Communicate the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming to the general public and policy makers, and advocate the need for, and urgency of, effective mitigation.

2009 TA: People seeking understanding of past climate change, current/future impacts, and the basis of modelled forecasts – all explained in relatively straightforward terms. A secondary target audience was those who were confused by, or enamored of, the repeated assertions of ‘the sceptics’.

Although I was proud to have developed the website on this scientific and philosophical foundation, neither of the above MM or TA are appropriate to BNC’s central purpose in 2012. So let’s try again.

2012 MM: To advocate an evidence-based approach to eliminating global fossil fuel emissions, based on a pragmatic and rational mix of nuclear and other low-carbon energy sources.

2012 TA: Environmentalists who disregard or oppose nuclear energy, and instead believe that renewables are sufficient (or that continuing to rely on fossil fuels is a rational energy policy).

The main message changed because I became progressively more interested in educating people on practical solutions to the problems of global change, rather than preaching doom-and-gloom. This shift in purpose was not because I don’t still consider the impacts of climate change to be incredibly serious and the evidence (ever increasingly) compelling — I do! It’s rather that I found the generic message of: “This is really bad, we must do something!” to be ineffectual, unappealing, and frankly, depressing. Besides, there are other sites that do this very well, so I now tend to leave it in their capable hands.

Instead, I became interested (okay, obsessed is a better word) with grasping and communicating the high-level issues associated with which low-carbon energy solutions will work most effectively at displacing fossil fuels and thus ‘solving’ climate change, at scale, in time, and within reasonable costs.

(more…)

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 45 Comments »

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