Renewables Fastest-Growing Energy Sources, Feds Say (computerworld.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computerworld written by Lucas Mearian: By 2040, coal, natural gas and renewable energy sources will provide roughly equal shares (28%-29%) of world electricity generation -- a tremendous change from 2012, when coal provided 40% of all power generation, according to a new report. The report, International Energy Outlook 2016, was released today by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Renewables are now the world's fastest-growing energy source and are expected to increase by 2.6% per year through 2040. Hydropower and wind are the two largest contributors to the increase in world electricity generation from renewable energy sources, the report stated. Together, hydro and wind account for two-thirds of the total increase in renewable energy from 2012 to 2040. In contrast, coal is the world's slowest-growing energy source, rising by 0.6% per year through 2040. By 2030, natural gas surpasses coal to become the world's second-largest energy source after liquid fuels, the report stated. The world's energy consumption is expected to increase by 48% over the next three decades even as renewable energy sources increase. Fossil fuels will still supply more than three-quarters of the world's energy by 2030. Currently, China, the U.S. and India are the top three coal-consuming countries, making up 70% of the world's coal use. China's coal use is expected to decline as their economy slows and policies to combat air pollution and climate change become implemented. The Environmental Protection Agency's new Clean Power Plan regulations intend to dramatically lower the use of coal in the U.S. over the next three decades. "Of the world's three largest coal consumers, only India is projected to increase coal use throughout the projection period," the report stated.

Comments

EVERYONE says

[Maury Markowitz]

"Renewables Fastest-Growing Energy Sources, Feds Say"

No, everyone says this. And has for years. Ok, in the US things were upset by the NG expansion, but everyone knew that would only last so long. And outside the US this has been true since about 2010.

With wind at $1.50 and PV not much more than that, and PPA's for PV at 3 cents/kWh and wind at 4 to 5, nothing else can compete. And those are subsidized prices.

Re:EVERYONE says

[rahvin112]

Wind and PV subsidies are set to taper out and end by ~2020-2024. Both subsidies drop every year until they end. Installed price only needs to fall a little more and they will still be cheaper than the cheapest oldest dirtiest coal power plant.

Nothing else can even come close to the price they are selling 20 year purchase agreements at. In fact wind is probably cheaper at this point without subsidy as generator prices fell nearly 20% last year. Everyone who pay any intention to investing news has known this since before 2010, about 2009 is when the investment market blew up. Solar companies are turning down contracts and investment money because they can't train people fast enough to install panels and the same is happening on the wind side where the people that install the turbines are in such hot demand it's actually delaying construction of wind farms.

Re:EVERYONE says

[AmiMoJo]

The social effects are impressive too. Energy production is being democratized. Individuals or small groups can buy PV and turbines with guaranteed returns on their investment and freedom from the energy market, which is many countries has badly broken.

Re:Tautology

[SirSlud]

Yes, the word "always" is an approximation. Wow, that's like .. so interesting dude.

We've got to get off fossil fuels faster

[presidenteloco]

than this projection says we will.

Around 60% fossil fuel electricity generation in 2040, as is forecast, is way too much, considering that we need to get the whole energy economy, including transportation, heating, industry, etc. which this report doesn't cover, off fossil fuels almost completely by mid-century or so, to keep a chance of managing global warming.

We need technology and economy tipping points, in between now and 2050, so that the rate of change accelerates very rapidly. Government policy should be aimed at expediting those tipping points and rapid transitions to a fundamentally new energy technology mix.

Re:We've got to get off fossil fuels faster

[blindseer]

I agree, we should move away from fossil fuels. I just believe the path is nuclear power.

Anyone that says we shouldn't build nuclear power plants because of Chernobyl and Fukushima should realize that they are saying we shouldn't build the next Tesla because the Ford Pinto was a death trap. We haven't built nuclear power plants like those for 40 years, this is doubly so for Chernobyl because that was built from stolen plans, with a known flaw, by people that didn't give a shit. We have new designs that simply cannot melt down.

Solar power is worthless, it costs too much and provides power only when the sun shines. Wind is cheap but unreliable, I think it has a place in our mix of power sources but a small part of the mix. A large part, as much as 80%, should be nuclear.

One reason why we keep using these old nuclear power plants is because we need the power and the current regulatory environment effectively bars new construction. If we want to retire these old nuclear power plants then we need new ones to replace them. Replacing them with wind and solar is somewhere between exceedingly expensive and physically impossible.

Re:We've got to get off fossil fuels faster

[blindseer]

The power plants I've toured typically have multiple boilers and turbines under one roof. A partially completed plant is likely capable of producing power so long as there is at least one boiler and one turbine.

I recall one power plant had two boilers, only one operating as the other was quite old and kept only as a last resort backup. I recall it had four turbines and room for one more. Three turbines produced electricity while the fourth produced chilled water for the site. A portion of the steam was diverted to provide heat. The technicians there explained they had the ability to divert steam pretty much as they wished so that they can start and stop any turbine as they wished, add and remove turbines while operating, and throttle the boilers as necessary. It was not stated explicitly but it was implied that they'd be able to add and remove boilers as well. I suspect that this would be much more involved as the boilers are much larger and have many more points of contact with the building than the turbines.

I saw a talk from someone proposing a nuclear power plant with three modular reactors and five turbines on site. I don't recall the sizes of each but it was something like 200MW turbines and 300MW reactors. 200MW x 5 turbines means 1GW of turbine capacity, 300MW x 3 reactors means 900MW capacity. Even if they failed to complete the site as planned then so long as they had a single reactor and a single turbine they'd be able to produce 200MW of electricity. Add another turbine and output goes to 300MW. Add another reactor, now 400MW. Add another turbine, now 600MW. And so on and so on. Assuming a large enough site then they could keep going but soon economics and safety factors sets in and few people are willing to build any power plant with more than 1GW of capacity on a single site.

Also, you claim that we've hit a hard limit on the price of coal and natural gas but I'm not so sure. While i agree that we've gone about as far as we can go with efficiency gains I have to wonder if we cannot make natural gas cheaper.

I also believe that we are close to hitting the limits on wind and solar as well, if we have not already. I have been following the development of PV solar for some time now and while we see many claims of more efficient PV cells they rarely or never make it to market because of cost. The efficiency gain is worthless if they cost so much that they'd never pay for themselves. These high efficiency panels may find uses in space applications since launching mass to orbit and beyond is exceedingly expensive but the math favors heavier and cheaper PV panels as space launches get cheaper.

What I've seen as a trend in PV development is a focus on making them cheaper rather than more efficient. They'll give up as much as 1/2 of the power output per area if it means making them 1/4 the price. They'll just make up the difference in volume.

I believe the distinction between "terrestrial grade" and "space grade" PV cells will blur in time as space flight costs go down and consistency of production improves.

Oh, and windmills are windmills. I don't see a whole lot of gains there either. The best we'll see is an improvement in price due to volume. People have been experimenting with windmills for centuries now, I don't expect to see big gains here.

Re:We've got to get off fossil fuels faster

[blindseer]

Far too small - nukes are about a lot of heat and big turbines.

I was referring to a talk on small modular reactors, the whole point was to make them small. The idea is that by making them small enough to be mass produced on an assembly line and trucking them to the power plant site the price should be much lower than conventional nuclear and competitive with any other energy source.

Turbines on the 200MW scale are also small enough to move by truck. These were also chosen based on price, they give the most output per dollar. They may not be as efficient as larger turbines but the goal is to reduce capital and operating expense. Since the fuel is thorium and uranium the cost of fuel is a very very small part of the cost of operation, therefore efficiency losses are much less of a concern compared to other fuels.

Also, I am not sure if I got my numbers right but they are in the ballpark. It may have been a 600MW or maybe 150MW reactor. What I am quite sure of is that the proposal had three small modular reactors to drive five COTS steam turbines. This plant has not yet been built but they did a lot of the engineering already. By using common parts where possible they thought they could get a price point so low that it would be an offer that few could refuse.

So, if subsidization of renewable energy,

[mxyztplk]

when combined with constraints on non-renewable energy, were to be as projected in the study (i.e., per present policies), by 2040 fossil fuel and nuclear might constitute only about ...
(wait for it)...
83% of the world energy usage.

That is, by 2040, renewables might then manage to constitute a whopping 16-17% of world energy usage, skyrocking up from some 13% in 2016, under their assumptions.

The authors of the study do not even attempt to estimate the likelihood of those assumptions, which is prudent considering how costly the renewable energy subsidies and fossil fuel limitation policies are.

The following is a link to the study that the ComputerWorld article is attempting to summarize:
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/i...