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Half of Scotland's Energy Consumption Came From Renewables Last Year (heraldscotland.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an article on Herald Scotland: Scotland has met a key target for renewable energy consumption, according to official figures. Statistics published by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change show 57.7% of Scottish electricity consumption came from renewables in 2015 -- 7.7% ahead of the 50% target. The SNP welcomed the figures and pledged to bring forward plans to go further if re-elected in May. Deputy First Minister and SNP campaign director John Swinney said: "The SNP have long championed green energy and these new figures show the huge progress we have made - but we are determined to go even further.
Half of Scotland's ELECTRICITY Consumption Came From Renewables Last Year
The summary has more words than the article. I had to check because I wasn't sure if renewables consumed or generated half of Scotland's Energy.
Sharp readers will notice that the summary contradicts the headline, then makes a meaningless calculation, dividing apples by oranges.
First, as is typical of green fluff pieces, they conflate energy with electricity. Electricity accounts for about 35% of Ireland's energy usage. If renewables provided half of the -electricity-, that would be 17% of the -energy-.
Secondly, they've improperly conflated consumption with production. You could produce terawatts of energy in the summer and use to heat molten salt for a month and that does squat for you when the bulk of consumption is winter heating.
Roughly 8% of energy consumed was produced by renewable sources. This is hard to measure for certain, so call it 5%-15%.
Electricity consumption has dropped by 15% as prices have increased over the last five years in order to pay for the more-expensive renewables. If we add back the 15% of electricity people wanted but weren't able to use because it was too expensive, we get 35% of 35% = 12% of Ireland's energy needs were matched by their renewable production.
If the paragraph above doesn't isn't entirely clear, consider this. The government could shut down all gas pumps, all natural gas service, and most of the electric power plants, then correctly claim that 100% of their energy consumed was coming from renewables. That would be true, but horribly misleading because it measures energy consumed rather than energy demand - what people WANTED to use. The article has committed the same error, in a less extreme fashion, by ignoring the drop in consumption caused by higher prices - people wanted to continue to use more energy, but couldn't do so with the same paycheck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Wind, wave and tide make up more than 80% of Scotland's renewable energy. They are considering nuclear as renewable in the 57% figure.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
As already pointed out, the 57% number is electricity, not energy. I suspect they burn a lot of natural gas for heat since they have the North Sea fields. Graphs here indicate that about 3/4 comes from wind, about 1/4 from hydro. Other sources are negligible (obviously Scotland is too far north and too cloudy for PV).
Actually, thermodynamics tells that ALL the energy is not renewable... entropy and stuff...
How is nuclear a renewable? You still needed fissile materials, and those are pulled out of the ground just like fossil fuels.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Little good it does you if part of the process is "now wait a few million years..."
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And most of those renewables is hydro....
No, as it turns out, most of those renewables are wind.
Here are some earlier articles that give a bit more information:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/wind-power-providing-almost-half-of-scotland-s-energy-supply-1-4023886
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-35160271
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c4ef7ed8-a8c8-11e5-843e-626928909745.html
Actually, thermodynamics tells that ALL the energy is not renewable... entropy and stuff...
To the contrary. The first law of thermodynamics tells us that all energy is conserved. You don't have to ever worry about energy conservation: the laws of physics guarantee it will happen.
Usable energy... now, that's a different case.
I'm not calling this story out for half-truths, but I'm not sure about this article. Renewables to me suggest nuclear, wind, solar, thermal, and tidal power. I'm pretty sure they're not big nuclear fans in Scotland and I don't think solar would work well (since they're so far north). So is 57% of electricity production really coming from wind, therma and tidal power?
Yes: wind.
That would be a HUGE story,
Well, it made a slashdot headline.
but I don't think that's realistically possible.
Scotland turns out to be windy.
We have "whisky" in Scotland. Slainte!
As technology advances we'll always find new ways to get at oil.
We are using oil faster than we are finding new sources, a temporary blip in shale oil notwithstanding.
In reality there is no "peak oil", eventually solar will get good enough to replace many uses of oil,
While I'm a big fan of solar, we're still a long way away. Solar is not even close to being a viable substitute for transportation fuel right now, and we'll need to move quickly if we want to get there before hitting peak oil.
IIRC, Denmark produces 110% of it's electricity needs from renewable sources, likely mostly wind. I think they're selling the excess to other nearby countries.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
California hopes to have 50% of their electricity from renewables by 2030. If Scotland has already achieved this then it is likely California lacks ambition.
There is a peak for every non renewable resource at a certain cost.
Once alternatives are found for that non-renewable resource then demand for it at the higher prices will collapse.
There is plenty of gold available at $10,000 per oz. But we'll probably never mine it.
Alternative energy and electric cars are collapsing the maximum price of oil. There may be lots of oil available at $200 a barrel-- but we may never collect it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's also extremely windy, extremely empty (that's one of its highlights), has only concentrated centres of population (so you don't have to transport stuff very far to serve a lot of people), and approves huge fields of on-shore and off-shore wind turbines (several high profile projects there).
There's probably exactly 0% solar, to be honest.
Outside the major cities, up in the Highlands, you will literally struggle to find a petrol station and/or a pub that has an Internet connection at all. But you'll pass at least two fields full of wind turbines on the way there.
California hopes to have 50% of their electricity from renewables by 2030. If Scotland has already achieved this then it is likely California lacks ambition.
Here in California, we shit ambition and wipe with the non-believers. Just take a look at our proposed high speed rail line! Nobody said we had the money to make anything happen, though. But anyway, wind farms kill birds, so PETA will fights those. We're out of water, so hydro is no go. Solar? The hippies up north will cry if we trap the spirit of mother Gaia for our selfish needs. Wave generators? Save the whales! Nukes? Jesus Christ, haven't you been listening? And thus it always goes around here. So much butthurt, so little progress, and no funding.
...and they don't have bird killing windmills and solar panels.
If your photovoltaic panels are killing birds, you probably wired grid power to the frames. Don't do that.
> Are you seriously suggesting that, after electricity demand dropped 15%, the suppliers did not reduce electricity generation?
No, I'm saying that smashing your car will reduce your C02 footprint. HOWEVER, it will also leave you without transportation, and any judgement about policies should recognize that cost.
Let's try this again. It's about the difference between energy demand (what people need/want/used to have) versus what they got after the market was artificially limited.
Pretend the government shut down all gas stations, all supply of heating oil, and all of the other energy other than electric. So nobody can drive, groceries don't get delivered, people freeze to death, etc. They then announce they've achieved 100% renewable energy.
The claim of "100% renewable energy" would be both completely true and completely false. True, 100% of the energy ACTUALLY SUPPLIED would be from renewables, but that was done by not providing 75% of the energy NEEDED. Do you see the issue there? If I stick you in a cage and give you a piece of paper and claim "that piece of paper will provide all of your nutrition" that's true - you're not getting any other nutrition, but it's not meeting any of your nutritional NEEDS. With me so far?
Obviously any policy which causes people to make due with less should recognize that cost, that distinction between meeting the needs/wants vs cutting people off. In this case, people got 15% less electricity. That should be accounted for if you want to accurately understand the results of the policies.
People have budgets. They get a certain paycheck each week. When electricity rates went up significantly to pay for renewable subsidies, people bought less electricity - 15% less. they spent a little bit money, and for that they got 15% energy. The usage prior to the increase shows the natural consumption - the amount people need/want at natural market rates. After the manipulation, they didn't that much. Renewables (and all other sources) didn't provide for the actual demand, 15% LESS electricity was provided than a few years before.
What do you do to follow demand? It's not a square wave, it's a curve. You need little units to fill in the gaps and nuclear doesn't do those well at the moment.
Nothing prevents a nuclear power plant from load following except the current use of steam turbines. Use a Brayton cycle turbine and that problem goes away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't just think in boolean - get real :)
We can have equipment to compensate for the reactive power factor too.
Energy monocultures suck and are usually only promoted by salesfolk and deluded fanboys.
I propose a nation powered only by nuclear power only as a thought experiment. While I do believe that a nation could derive all utility power from nuclear reactors I also realize that doing so is not likely practical. I also believe that a nation like the USA could replace all of its coal power plants and most of its natural gas power plants with nuclear, and should. That would mean something like 75% of the electricity would come from nuclear. The rest would come from natural gas, wind, hydro, with small contributions from others. Wind only makes sense in few places, if it needs subsidies to keep going then they need to disappear. Natural gas has properties that makes it nearly ideal for generating electricity and poor for most anything else, use it for that so long as we can.
If you wish to advocate nuclear power it is worth learning about the topic. The website describing waste processing at Harford into MOX fuel and the portions about low level waste that cannot be reprocessed may help you avoid embarrassing mistakes.
I've seen some very interesting TED Talks and other presentations on Youtube over the years and I am convinced that we can reprocess wastes much more efficiently than we have in the past if only the US Department of Energy actually gave a damn about its mandate. The claim that we can reduce waste to nearly nothing is not hyperbole. Reprocessing fuel into MOX is a bad idea, solid fuel reactors are the problem. Using molten salt reactors and continuous reprocessing can eliminate vast quantities of waste, including the waste we've already produced.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.