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Renewables Are Set To Overtake Gas and Coal By 2027 (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: Renewable energy, including solar, wind and hydroelectric will overtake natural gas as an energy source by 2027. According to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ten years later those same renewables will have surpassed the largest electricity-generating fossil fuel: coal. Solar and wind will account for almost 60% of the $11.4 trillion invested in energy over the next 25 years, according to Bloomberg's New Energy Outlook 2016 report. One conclusion that may surprise, Bloomberg noted, is that the forecast shows no golden age for natural gas, except in North America. As a global generation source, gas will be overtaken by renewables in 2027. The electric vehicle boom will increase electricity demand by 2,701TWh (terawatt hours), or 8% of global electricity demand in 2040. The rise of EVs will drive down the cost of lithium-ion batteries, making them increasingly attractive to be deployed alongside residential and commercial solar systems.
I really like that guy, but bis plans for emergy generation are just totally mad.
He wants to re-establish coal, and leave the Paris deal.
all the disinformation making useless stupid people dumbasses , and not knowing how anything works
especially about the future....Berra
Title and summary don't agree. There is a difference between "surpass coal and gas by 2027" and "surpass gas by 2027 and surpass coal by 2037".
Even ignoring the date differences, there's a difference between "surpass gas", "surpass coal", and "surpass gas and coal".
And let's not get into the whole base load thing. Gas and solar isn't baseload, but coal is....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I don't like it. The inconsistency of solar and wind will do nasty things to our electric grid if much more is added. Really we should be developing more hydro and nuclear. And we shouldn't be trying to stamp out coal. Coal is nigh obsolete at this point, and actual good developments and growth in hydro and nuclear would eliminate the need for coal and gas to compensate for fluxes in solar and wind capacity.
Nothing else needs to be said.
If renewable resource are really going to overpower coal and fuel in 2027, it will really be helpful for mankind.
Are you fucking kidding me? We're trusting THEM as a source now?
The editors at Slashdot ought to know that BNEF is just another sock puppet media outlet in Bloomberg's empire of disinformation. BNEF has a particularly sinister mission, however. That is, its sole purpose is to generate news stories that are favorable to the alternative energy industry to make those companies look attractive for investment. That is all they do, and they are paid handsomely by alternative energy companies to do it.
As an investor in BDCs, I have to be very careful that the companies I invest in do not provide financing to clients of BNEF.
I see no reason why polluting industries like (oil/gas companies) should be subsidized at all. Frankly, we should be taxing them based on how much pollution they emit and how damaging it is. We are eventually going to have to remove CO2 from the air and it's going to be a pricey project. We might as well start saving money for it now.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The inconsistency of solar and wind will do nasty things to our electric grid if much more is added.
Really? You're an expert in engineering of electric grids? You have clear data on how there is no way to mitigate any adverse effects of increased solar and wind power? You have unambiguous evidence that a distributed and smarter grid is somehow impossible? I've never seen any credible argument that proves we couldn't substantially increase the amount of wind and solar we use but maybe you have information the rest of us do not?
Really we should be developing more hydro and nuclear.
How do you propose to seriously increase the use of hydro given that most of the major rivers that can be dammed already are? We could scale hydro some but where is your evidence that it will be able to provide double digit percentages of our power needs?
In principle I don't have a problem with more nuclear (fission) power but in practice I don't see it happening. Yes the state of the art has improved (and I'm aware of the details) but unfortunately not enough to really make a bulletproof argument that it is truly safe. The fact that only governments are willing to insure them is proof enough of that. Really the only hope for nuclear power is a breakthrough in fission I think and that seems to always be 20 years in the future...
And we shouldn't be trying to stamp out coal.
What we should be doing is trying to get coal to cost the full value of its impact. Right now coal is subsidized AND it doesn't include the cost of mitigating CO2 and other pollutants that burning coal generates. If we choose to use coal the cost of using it should include the full cost of any externalities it currently gets to ignore - in otherwords the cost of cleaning up the burning of coal should be in the price we pay for it.
First, you can get solar panels on your home. This often pays back in 5-10 years.
You can donate to groups which work with alternative energies. For example, Everybody Solar helps non-profits such as schools, homeless shelters and science museums get solar panels. So you can help the environment while helping other people. Any eventual long-term solution is going to involve at least some nuclear and CASEnergy is a group pushing for more more nuclear plants that you can donate to http://casenergy.org/.
You can also donate to candidates who will help. Local candidates may matter the most, but in the US there are a handful of obvious elections to point out. One of them is Emily Cain http://emilycain.com/ who is running for the House in a very competitive district in Maine against an opponent who is very not good on environmental issues. Every dollar helps.
Large scale maybe, but if every home could provide 75% of their load through local solar panels during a hot summer day then the overall grid will be better. As the usage wouldn't spike as much.
I've wondered for a long time why we don't have every commercial building rooftop covered in solar panels. Particularly any building that utilizes air conditioning. It's just wasted space right now. Rather than put the panels in fields somewhere, use the space we already have for something productive.
I realize there are some economic and technical hurdles but in principle it's insane not to use solar panels on rooftops wherever possible. Install some battery systems and smarts to the grid to distribute the power adequately.
Question is, is there enough factory capacity and available rare earths to MAKE sufficient solar panels to do so ?
Factory capacity is an adjustable resource and if the demand is there the factory capacity will follow. There are plenty of rare earth minerals available. We aren't actually utilizing much of the capacity available but if solar panel production scaled sufficiently it would become economically viable to open up more mines. The US has substantial rare earth reserves as do a few other places but there currently isn't enough demand to justify reopening the mines at this time.
Logistics is always the tough part of the solution.
My background is in industrial engineering and I'm also an accountant. The logistics of solar panel production are a solved problem. The hard part is the economics. You have competing fossil fuels being sold below actual cost (their cost doesn't currently include the full cost of the pollution they generate), you have solar panels that are getting more competitive every day but still are pretty expensive, and we have a grid that needs updating to handle large scale solar. Scale would solve some of the cost problems but technology improvements are still needed to really get them where they need to go.
Too little, too late humaaaans!
I forget the Slashdot groupthink on this topic... All I know is that it must be the opposite of Micro$oft. Enlighten me, please.
"...those same renewables will have surpassed the largest electricity-generating fossil fuel: coal."
Well, obviously. Aren't there efforts to make coal "illegal"?
Despite not having labeled the vertical axis on thier graphs I am going to guess this is a somewhat reasonable extrapolation. However it completely misses things like new regulations and new technologies. If we still power our electric cars with lithium ion batteries in 2040 it will be a sad day indeed as it's not unlikely a better battery technology will come around by then. It's actually pretty likely this report will be far off the mark.
Ah, but what of the pollution costs of rare earth mining and refining ?
Probably substantial and it should be factored into the cost of any products that use them. My guess is that the pollutants that result from such refining are substantially easier to mitigate than the CO2 and other crap that spews from every fossil fuel power plant, mine and transport. If for no other reason than scale. I'm no expert so I could be wrong but I doubt it. The amounts of rare earth minerals needed for a typical solar panel is minute. Compare this to the (literally) tons of coal burned for every human on earth it seems improbably that the pollution footprint for the rare earth mining and use would be greater than the footprint for coal mining and use.
I don't think anyone who understands the technology is arguing that there is no pollution from wind or solar. There clearly is. But it also seems clear from the available data that it is an improvement. We're looking for least-worst here. There is no useful form of power without some drawbacks. Even photosynthesis has some negative implications in certain circumstances. Where the problem lies is that some forms of energy (particularly fossil fuels) aren't realizing even close to the full cost of the pollution they generate. It's a tough problem. The solutions are mostly straightforward (taxes mostly) but politically that is very difficult to realize.
I do not agree with you, but I ,ll defend to the death your right to say it...
So, does this mean we can finally build a wall around the UAE, set some nukes off to discourage escape, and WIRM ship all of the muslims to one country so they can live how they want without them trying to inflict sharia on everyone else?
So the first question is just, do renewables actually work to replace base load?
Some renewables already do work identically to base load sources (hydro, geothermal, solar thermal, etc) so to some degree the answer is clearly yes. The other arguments are more nuanced but also at the end are a clear yes.
With sufficient scale, more variable renewables like wind and solar effectively load balance themselves by being geographically dispersed. The wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun is always shining somewhere during the day. As long as you can transmit the power where it is needed, the variations are smooth and the problem is functionally identical to dealing with fluctuating demand. The grid already deals with variations in demand and supply so this is nothing new and we're no where close to our limit in being able to handle variation.
There also is the option of further smoothing of fluctuations with power storage systems (batteries, hydro storage, etc). Generate power from your solar panels during the day and put the extra into batteries for use overnight or on cloudy days. The goal is to smooth the variations not eliminate them.
The biggest flaw in the base load argument however is that it assumes that we cannot have some fossil fuel power sources. The goal shouldn't be to eliminate them altogether (which is probably impossible anyway) but to reduce their impact to less than what the Earth's climate regulation can handle. Right now we simply have more CO2 and other pollutants being generated than the planet can handle. If much/most of our power comes from renewables (plus probably nuclear) and we have to supplement from time to time with fossil fuels that's fine. We just need to get the fossil fuel use low enough that climate change doesn't render the planet uninhabitable.
Many events are perpetually 10 years from now. Diabetes cures, global collapse for various reasons, commercial fusion reactors, peak oil. My BS detector goes off for any dramatic prediction 10 years in the future.
One look at page 6 of this report proves this article wrong.
http://www.iea.org/publication...
This is a wild, fantastic, totally unrealizable dream. The fact that people are sold this bs, and some believe it, is the reason your grandkids, or maybe your great-grandkids are going to starve. There is no way to reduce CO2 emissions without heavy emphasis on nuclear power (clean, incredibly safe) through about 2050-2060. Wake up, and support your grandchildren's right to live.
Just saying...
Why buy solar this year @$0.40/watt when it will be $0.27/watt next year.
It's a theory and has about the same validity as predicting global temperatures for the next ten years. Once the reality of removal of subsidies and replacement costs takes hold, cheaper sources will be back.
Or regulatory improvements are needed to solve the mis-pricing of fossil fuels and reveal how uncompetitively expensive they are.
Exactly. This is actually what should happen first. Unfortunately it's such a political hot potato that it's really hard to make progress. Worse it has all sorts of geo-political implications too. No country wants to be the only one to pay full price for their fossil fuels because their ability to compete economically would be sunk.
Fossil fuels should be a lot more expensive than they currently are. Frankly, solar would be extremely competitive today if we adjusted to price for fossil fuels to include the cost of pollution mitigation.
We know exactly what Trump would do.
It's gonna be classy and it's gonna be HUUUUUUGGGEEEE, dripping in gold and marble.
And no loser poor people, anywhere.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
50 Photos Taken At Right Moment 2016|Funny Photo Taken At Right Moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
By 2027? I wonder, if we'll have the flying car by then...
This reminds me of a tale about one ancient prankster, who promised a local ruler to teach a donkey to read — in 20 years (in exchange for room, board, and pay). Asked by a friend, if he is not afraid to fail — and face the consequences of the ruler's anger — he replied: "In 20 years either the donkey, or the ruler, or myself will die."
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Practical fusion power is (as always) only 10 years away. As a result, except for the few windy places on the planet where wind or hydro power is practical, renewables will become irrelevant. Incidentally a comet with 3.2 times the mass of Chicxulub will strike the earth in late May of 2023 causing a mass extinction event.
I have to wonder if these guys would still make their prediction if they knew they would face death by fire in 2027 if their prediction did not come true. Aside from hydroelectric, coal is currently the cheapest source of electricity. Considering the fact that most of the world is so poor they can barely afford basic food and shelter I don't see coal generated electricity disappearing any time soon. There is no way that most developing countries have the technical expertise to build or maintain massive solar or wind farms or the money to replace millions of solar panels when they reach EOL in 20-30 years.
If Greenies were really serious about practical alternatives to electricity generated by combustion they would be advocating nuclear rather than solar. Nuclear really could replace coal and oil for electricity generation in some distant, speculative future even without any tech advances. Now it is still too expensive and too highly technical for most countries though. Not just to build, run, and maintain them, but the cost of the electricity itself will be much higher than coal. Much cheaper than solar or wind power though. Solar is a rich person's electricity source and at least without fundamental advances in photovoltaic tech will not be replacing combustion in most of the world at any time in the near future.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Mostly for the same reason commercial buildings aren't covered in rooftop gardens in order to supply food to the cafeteria downstairs. It doesn't make any sense to the people who actually have to allocate their scarce resources toward accomplishing useful things.
The occupants of the building don't actually have to be the ones to install or utilize the solar array tough that certainly is an option. They can sell the space to companies that generate the power even if they don't need it themselves. As I said the space is a wasted asset right now. Cities have tons of underutilized roof space that would be perfect for solar arrays. It has the added benefit of generating the power close to the point of use to there are minimal transmission losses. I work in a building that has about 200,000 square feet of mostly empty roof. The occupants are industrial concerns. It would be a perfect place for the power company to install rooftop solar even if none of the occupants needed it. Doing so requires an investment horizon of a decade or so but a forward thinking landlord could easily turn a profit with the right setup.
When you say economic hurdles, what you really mean is "This doesn't make any financial sense to do, and it would cause a massive waste of resources (as shown by the resource costs vs. benefits), but I think people should maybe do it anyway." Wishful thinking doesn't make reality go away.
That's not at all what I meant but thanks for trying to put words in my mouth. Rooftop solar arrays have already been successfully installed on commercial buildings with long term contracts. Any circumstance where solar arrays make sense on an open patch of land will probably make just as much sense on the roof of a building AND be less wasteful to boot.
All of this is brought about by economies of scale and the end of untaxed subsidies for fossil fuels and fossil fuel usage. Solar and wind are currently cheaper than non-subsidized coal, oil, and even gas.
And people like me are buying solar PV cells and replacing inefficient appliances (fridge,stove,washer,dryer) with new EnergyStar ones that use 1/10 the energy, and investing all that profit in our retirement accounts. Even renters can buy shares in Community Solar (so that it transfers when you move) or one of the Solar capital ETFs.
Adapt. Nobody is going to prop up your dying fossil fuel lifestyle, grandpa!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ah, but what of the pollution costs of rare earth mining and refining ? **MY** background is as a geologist.
... and not a semiconductor engineer. Silicon solar cells (and for that matter, the rest of the glass-encapsulated solar array) don't require rare earth materials.
Wishful thinking does not equal economic policy. Ignoring basic physics is no way to run an industry folks.
you go hear
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3083825/sustainable-it/renewable-energy-will-overtake-natural-gas-by-2027.html
look at the graph, it is crappy
Why, why can't people do decent time series charts ?
(colors are hard to tell apart, legend not in order of lines, notenough contrast tick mark lines, numbers on x axis suck.
and that is just a casual glance; I'm willing to give them the y axis scale in teh legend, even tho it ain't great
Obama is strangling offshore oil leasing
no, free market economics means Gulf Mex is more $ then fracking
yet the idiots in the gop say, obama.....
NDak, booming....examnple of free market, obama wrong...except of course, the absolute # of jobs is small, and now ND ain't that great
isn't it amazing, almost any post on slashdot, you can find some way it ties into some stupid GOP argument ?
My home state has already been logged and coal-mined to the point of insanity, now it's being fracked into oblivion. When I drive home (80 miles or so) there are so many drilling rigs on the way that you could practically walk there on them. There's one in view from my kitchen window. And twice now in the last couple months I've noticed the odor of natural gas (with odorant) coming up out of my washer. (Yeah, the plumbing's a little wonky, but it's not *that* fucked up). It's pretty clear that the various resource extraction industries are going to continue ass-raping this region for the foreseeable future.
So you don't want to go with the capitalist response, of encouraging certain market behaviors and discouraging others through the use of taxes. You want the government to simply ban coal, and spend large amounts of your tax dollars to move away from fossil fuel-based power.
Ok. If that's how you want to play it.
Until you can perform tasks like you can with gasoline - drive for hours, fill up in minutes - this is all BS, plain and simple. No matter how much people want to push their BS ideas. It just won't work till you have power 24/7 and as much as you want/need - like you do using today's tech...
Even if we reduce natural gas use in electricity generation, there will still remain a massive amount of natural gas, oil and propane used for heating, cooking and industrial processes.
We should replace natural gas heating with geothermal heat pumps.