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Renewables Overtake Coal As World's Largest Source of Power Capacity (ft.com)
The world's largest source of power capacity is now renewables, as roughly half a million solar panels were installed every single day last year. In addition, two wind turbines were erected every hour in countries such as China, according to the International Energy Agency. Financial Times reports (Editor's note: may be paywalled; alternate source): Although coal and other fossil fuels remain the largest source of electricity generation, many conventional power utilities and energy groups have been confounded by the speed at which renewables have grown and the rapid drop in costs for the technologies. Average global generation costs for new onshore wind farms fell by an estimated 30 percent between 2010 and 2015 while those for big solar panel plants fell by an even steeper two-thirds, an IEA report published on Tuesday showed. The Paris-based agency thinks costs are likely to fall even further over the next five years, by 15 percent on average for wind and by a quarter for solar power. It said an unprecedented 153 gigawatts of green electricity was installed last year, mostly wind and solar projects, which has more than the total power capacity in Canada. It was also more than the amount of conventional fossil fuel or nuclear power added in 2015, leading renewables to surpass coal's cumulative share of global power capacity -- though not electricity generation. A power plant's capacity is the maximum amount of electricity it can potentially produce. The amount of energy a plant actually generates varies according to how long it produces power over a period of time. Coal power plants supplied close to 39 percent of the world's power in 2015, while renewables, including old hydropower dams, accounted for 23 percent, IEA data show. But the agency expects renewables' share of power generation to rise to 28 percent by 2021, when it predicts they will supply the equivalent of all the electricity generated today in the U.S. and E.U. combined.
That you think the Financial Times is part of the "green left" shows that you've got no business pointing out anything to anybody.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Plus, since hydroelectric is usually considered 'renewable', water keeps flowing (usually) through dams on cold winter nights.
Canada has quite a few cold winter nights, yet "Manitoba, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon and Quebec produce over 90% of their power from hydroelectricity. Quebec generates half of Canada's hydroelectric power."
Actually, in many places it does. The sun heating certain areas in the morning creates wind. Those areas cooling in the evening causes wind. At mid-day and mid-night, there is no heat gradient to cause strong wind.
Alternately, storms blow for days at a time, with strong winds for the whole period. And windmills are shut down so they don't break from turning past their rated rpm.
And nice way to completely leave off solar, as the article/submission mentioned how many millions of solar panels were installed last year. They sure don't produce much energy in a Northern winter.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Yeah its got nothing to do with the hundreds of millions spent on half built nuclear plants.... you guys dug your own grave on that one.
Its not saying renewables produce more power but that more renewable capacity was added this year than non-renewable capacity. But the bulk of capacity remains non-renewable.
It said right here:
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But the agency expects renewablesâ(TM) share of power generation to rise to 28 per cent by 2021, when it predicts they will supply the equivalent of all the electricity generated today in the US and EU combined.
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So by 2021, they hope it will be up to 28 percent of total capacity. Thus... no, renewables are not the majority of power generation and the title is wrong.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
and certainly not when covered with snow, as we get plenty of here in Canada...
The headline is wrong, as usual. In fact even reading the summary shows you it can't be right:
Coal power plants supplied close to 39 percent of the world's power in 2015, while renewables, including old hydropower dams, accounted for 23 percent, IEA data show
So renewables are around half of what coal is. If you look at the original article, even just the sub-header, you'll see that:
153 GigaWatts of renewables make up over half the new capacity added globally.
That's "new capacity added so far this year", not "total capacity" as the headline here claims.
Windmills are there to cover peaks.
No, this is nonsense. Windmills are there to produce power when the wind is blowing. Wind is not "peaking power", that can fill in the gaps from other sources, because it is not dependable. The opposite is true: variable winds create peaks and troughs that need to be filled by on-demand sources such as gas turbines or ... hydro.
The world would have to stop spinning (so the solar panels were always lot and at a perfect angle with zero clouds) with all the panels moved to the equator, while the wind would have to be a constant gale at all wind locations..
Nope. The capacity of an installed solar panel is the sum or average of expected generation over a day/month/year, so it takes generation time and location into account.
And the wind around here is a yearly average as the given power level, and at least here, wind generates more than all the petrochemicals in the same grid. But then, I'm not in the US.
The proof renewables work is all the lies told by those who hate them. If they didn't work, then they wouldn't need to lie so much to make them look bad.
Learn to love Alaska
I saw the title of this submission, and it immediately set off my bullshit detector.
The thing you need to recognise is just how much energy we get from fossil fuels. It's insane. We use 2% of our natural gas production to produce ammonia, for example, but to do the same thing using renewables would take 30% of the world's entire renewable and nuclear power capacity. Then there's steel production. Then there's concrete production.
The only way this submission is accurate is if you define your terms in such a way that you are specifically trying to get a certain result.
so build some solar and wind much more south? Alabama AND Arizona for example. electricity is the cheapest form of energy to transport
Mighta missed it, but between Ontario and say Arizona there's at least 1800 miles. And between Ontario and Alabama it's around 1k miles. While the NA grid is somewhat interconnected, there are still separate network grids in case of catastrophic failure. On top of that, there isn't a big nationwide high voltage DC grid for the delivery of power from plants. And HVDC is the only way you're going to be transporting power that far while reducing the loss. AC it actually becomes very cost prohibitive very quickly over very long distances and more electricity is lost due to resistance and heat.
Ontario's best solution for electricity has always been nuclear, followed by hydro-electric to round it out. Followed by coal and natural gas for peak demands. The current government(Liberal) decided that "coal is nasty, evil and dirty" and shut them down, instead of say retrofitting them. And there were even a few leaked documents that they wanted to do the same with natural gas power plants and wanted to ban natural gas for home use, forcing everyone onto electric. The price started climbing quickly once these cheap sources were removed from the grid.
If you want to see this insanity in action, go look at the current NDP government in Alberta. Where they're pushing the same policy. The problem in Alberta is, whole lotta area and people are very spread out. Coal is plentiful, and in turn small out of the nowhere places where it's cost prohibitive to build NG, impossible to build nuclear, and where solar or wind is also prohibitive. They're now scrambling to build thousands of KM of power lines. Small towns and cities like Grande Prairie and Grande Cache rely on small scale coal plants to keep people from freezing to death in the winter when there are grid failures for example. The winter I spent in Grande Cache, the nighttime lows hit -48C with a windchill of -55C. The daytime highs were between -25C and -38C not counting windchills. We had 3 days with no power due to high winds, the mall, fire dept, and all government buildings had power though. So people who didn't have wood as a backup, could safely stay somewhere.
Om, nomnomnom...