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.

Comments

Renewables will never work

[AK Marc]

So, is it time to go back to all the nay sayers who have over the past 10 years asserted this point was impossible, and say "I told you so"? Or will they just continue to assert that the numbers are all lies, and only coal can make electricity?

Re: Renewables will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

"capacity"? You mean if the sun was shining on every single solar panel in the world then it hypothetically would generate as much electricity as coal actually produces. Seriously.

Re:Renewables will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe when renewables actually PRODUCE as much power as coal, that might be a better day to beat your chest.

Re:Renewables will never work

[hawguy]

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."

Re:Renewables will never work

[I'm New Around Here]

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.

Re:Renewables will never work

[Mashiki]

What you mean like here in Ontario? Where the windmills don't turn because the government pays them not to produce electricity? Where it accounts for under 2% of the total generation but responsible for 80% of the price increase in the last decade? From at peak of 0.07kWh to 0.18kWh. Where you can have 45+ days in a row without direct sunlight for solar. Yeah, they're doing a world of good for us. 70k people have had their electricity cut in the last 2 years, 700k customers are 4 months or more in arrears right now. The largest hydro company(Ontario Hydro) has 1.3m customers for example. FYI: Electricity is called hydro here, because our primary generation source used to be hydro-electric.

Re:Renewables will never work

[x0ra]

and certainly not when covered with snow, as we get plenty of here in Canada...

Re:Renewables will never work

[arglebargle_xiv]

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.

Re:Renewables will never work

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re: Renewables will never work

[Mashiki]

That was federal, not provincial and had to do with replacing a 1st gen medical reactor, which is still in use. Just a FYI. I think you're talking about the hundred million on a "natural gas" generating station, that was cancelled because the NIMBY's in Mississauga threw a hissyfit. That's the same NG plant, that the current government is under 2 investigations for relating to the destruction of documents.

Re:Renewables will never work

[AK Marc]

All the oil pumped out of the ground in Alaska is a "gift" from Alaska to the oil companies (though the free gift is then taxed). When you count the trillions of dollars of petrochemical subsidies, the few millions on renewables isn't even a rounding error.

Re: Renewables will never work

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:Renewables will never work

[Sique]

The "small fraction" was put to numbers in the arcticle: 39% of all generated electical energy is fossil, 23% is renewables. So the small fraction is actually more close to 2/3. For sufficiently large values for "small", your argument holds.

Re:Renewables will never work

[Mashiki]

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.

Re:Renewables will never work

[GNious]

So'eh, progress is not something to be proud of ... gotcha

Re:Renewables will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

The majority of the world's population do live between +/- 24 degrees of the equator though, so solar is a good option for most people, most of the time.

No single source of power is going to work for every possible use case: wind is inconsistent, gas pollutes, nuclear is expensive, solar is season- and location-dependent, hydro uses a lot of land, geothermal is rare, tidal is cyclic, coal is just horrific. The sensible thing to do is to use varied mix and invest in a decent grid so that when one area (e.g. southern solar) has excess power, it can shift/sell it to somewhere that needs it (e.g. northern winter) efficiently.

Re: Renewables will never work

[FirstOne]

"capacity"? You mean if the sun was shining on every single solar panel in the world

Even on a mostly cloudy day my solar panels produce about a quarter(1/4) of their normal output. Enough to run the house loads (frig, freezer, PC, lights, tv, etc).

I cut household electricity CO2 footprint by another metric ton this year. Soon.my PV will be on a solar tracker, that should reduce non-food related CO2 footprint to near zero.. I will be the first person in my republican dominated city to achieve a near zero carbon footprint house. Someone's got to break the mold, and leave FF behind, I hope many others will follow.

P.S. My residence along with the city and most of South Florida will be underwater one hundred years from now. (unstoppable sea level increase). You would think they would sit up and take notice as the bi-annual king tides are now flooding the streets in front of million$+ houses, might give them a clue. But no, blinders on, full speed ahead, buy that big ass SUV, Yacht, waste energy, burn those fossil fuels unending (And seal a watery fate.)

Re: Renewables will never work

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a yacht is handy when the sea level increases . . .

Let me know when ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... they overtake coal for amount generated per unit time.

Renewables may have higher total peak, but coal plants have level output and can run 24/7, while sun is only about a third of the day and wind varies with the weather - at a power output proportional to the CUBE of the windspeed.

Re:Let me know when ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The power can be stored,

The issue is not that the power can be stored.

The issue is that power capacity comparisons overstate the total amount of energy you get out of the renewable generation equipment over the long haul because coal generation can run near capacity all the time and renewables (excluding water power) only a small part of the time.

I'm quite supportive of renewable energy. (I'm a major participant on one of the renewable energy tech discussion boards, too.) But while it's very GOOD that renewable power has passed coal in power capacity, even with near-ideal load-levelling storage, it will take about another factor of three before it surpasses coal in providing usable energy to the loads.

Re:Let me know when ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Moving the goal posts.

Nope. The article's author apparently thought the offence's 35 yard line was the goal post. I was just pointing out where they ACTUALLY are. B-)

We need about another seven first-downs to get there. But we ARE on our way.

Hydroelectric

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we know how much of the produced renewable energy is from hydroelectric stations (water dams)? I would suspect that it's still more than 70%.
The article mentions mostly wind and solar power, perhaps they're the main growth factory.

By the way, do they count burning wood as renewable energy? Renewable and green should not be confused.

Re:Power != energy

[PopeRatzo]

That this still needs to be pointed out shows just how dangerous and naive the green left still is.

That you think the Financial Times is part of the "green left" shows that you've got no business pointing out anything to anybody.

Re:Power != energy

[hyades1]

It takes a special kind of idiot to believe the Financial Times is part of anything liberal or "left".

Re:Subsidies

[hyades1]

Yes, they've been doing exactly that with oil for generations. The petrochemical corporations have even persuaded governments to fight wars on their behalf.

The effect on the competition has been devastating.

Coal's not cheap

[rsilvergun]

when you can't externalize the environmental costs.

Re:Subsidies

[Maxo-Texas]

Exactly.. We spent $2 trillion dollars and over 4,000 lives to protect Oil Company interests in the middle east.

That's a huge subsidy that doesn't get counted as a subsidy.

... Title is wrong

[Karmashock]

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:
""
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.
""
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.

Re:Subsidies

[ShanghaiBill]

That's a huge subsidy that doesn't get counted as a subsidy.

Nor should it, because it was NOT a subsidy. The price of oil skyrocketed when war broke out in 2003, and remained high for more than a decade. Subsidies encourage over production. The Iraq war did the exact opposite. It depressed output, and pushed up prices.

You obviously think the Iraq war was dumb, but it is also obvious that it was even dumber than you think. We paid more in excess oil prices than we spent on the war itself.

Re:I'm confused

[arglebargle_xiv]

It's OK, the headline is wrong, see the other replies that have pointed this out.

Positive side: You've demonstrated reading comprehension, which is better than the editors here have done.

Re:Subsidies

[hackwrench]

This would have been a prime time for you to point out what you think it should be counted as, but you stopped short at arguing he had simply misfiled it under subsidy.

Re:Subsidies

[someone1234]

Nope. If they wage their own war, at least they pay the costs.

Re:Subsidies

[gweihir]

Yep. Except for the Oil-Execs, that benefited hugely from all this (and the destruction of the planet they are driving forward).

Making America Great again - with wind power!

[burni2]

The U.S. were once pioneers of wind power(4) in size not only in space but in wind turbines (you might think that the danes were the only pioneers?).

You need to take a look at the good old west. Water pumps powered by wind turbines. Offgrid farms getting their first electricity from wind turbines.

Wind power plants are indeed smaller production unit than a big coal or even a nuclear power plant, that needed to be manufactured as well as their parts (also done in the US). While manufacturing solar panels got outsourced like chip manufacturing.

Meaning! you can employ more people with wind power than with coal power, coal power and nuclear power destroys much more jobs that it generates!

It is different with wind turbines, they need good old american craftsmanship to build a solid turbine that sustains harsh conditions.

Some american wind power history:

1941
American visionary Palmer Putnam built a 1.25 Megawatt! turbine(1) in 1941.

Indeed after some time it threw a blade. But before that it produced more energy and ran longer than the german multi million dollar 1980s disaster called Growian.

Whiners fall down and never try again. Pioneers stand up shake the dust off, don't mind their bruises and climb that horse again, and again till they succeed.

1982-1988
MOD-2 a 2.5 Megawatt turbine with 91m (~275 ft.) diameter rotor. (2) and so on ..

Pioneers can and will fail, but as Kennedy said, that you don't go to the moon because its easy, but because its hard! And generating power from wind is hard but in the recent 30 years we got quite a good understanding how to do it and how to size up the turbines!

Can you feel the changing wind right now? Do you got faith of the heart or fraid of the trump? (3)

This is what made america great, having faith of the heart and this is what can make america great again.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Subsidies

[Maxo-Texas]

The oil companies didn't have to pay for their own security and they didn't have to pay for the true cost of oil.

It's also very expensive to maintain a naval and coast guard fleet to protect oil tankers. The oil companies should be paying for it.

If they had to pay for those things- their prices would be much higher. So their prices are subsidized by tax payers.

The hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Subsidies

[guises]

Subsidies don't always encourage overproduction, that's too simplistic. Subsidies are about promoting something, certainly, but how the subsidy is crafted depends on what it's trying to encourage. There are farm subsidies for leaving your field fallow, for example. That's the opposite of overproduction.

Also, when you say, "It depressed output, and pushed up prices." in the same sentence like that you're implying a causal relationship. You're implying that prices went up due to a supply and demand dynamic. This was not the case, prices went up by a great deal more than could be explained that way, generating huge profits for the oil companies.

Did renewables replace any carbon based plants?

[zerofoo]

How many carbon based power plants were taken off-line and replaced by renewable generation capacity last year?

After much research, I haven't found a single instance of that happening - ever.

Have renewables caused a moratorium on all new carbon based power plants? I don't think so. Asia (as of last year) was opening more than one coal power plant PER DAY:

http://climatechangedispatch.c...

Renewables have two mathematically inescapable problems:

1. Renewable's land requirements per kWh are far too high.
2. Renewable's storage requirements to meet base load demand simply do not exist - presumably because storage costs are also very high.

I ran the numbers on a very small 2kW self-installed system - it would take me over 10 years in a best case scenario to recoup the costs at current utility rates.

Until renewables become far cheaper, generate more kWh per square-foot, and solve the storage problem - they will never reduce or replace carbon based generation.

Re:Subsidies

[ShanghaiBill]

You're implying that prices went up due to a supply and demand dynamic. This was not the case, prices went up by a great deal more than could be explained that way

You misunderstand supply and demand. If supply is halved, that doesn't mean the price doubles. It means that the price rises until people use half as much, which is WAY WAY more than doubling. Historically, if the price of oil doubles, demand falls by about 3%. So a shortfall in production of 3% is enough to double the price of oil.

Re:Subsidies

[Mr D from 63]

Most of this renewable power this article is cheering about is hydro and biomass. Wind and solar, the two sources that everyone wants to claim will solve all our problems, are only actually generating a very small percentage of global electricity, and that's mostly wind. Solar barely registers on the scale of GWH generation globally.

Re:Subsidies

[AK Marc]

Nope. Protecting the people is. Business interests aren't people. Though you've hit on the good reason why the taxes need to be higher on the rich. Tax 90% of all income over $5M a year (gross, not AGI) would be a good place to start. The rich benefit from wars. The poor never do. If China invaded the US and won, the homeless guy in San Fran might see a change in the uniform of the person who orders him to not sleep on the park bench, but no other change to his life. But Bill Gates and such would see a huge difference when MS is nationalized.

The (current) military exists solely to protect the profits of the 1%, and serves no other purpose. Taxing the middle class for that is absurd.

Re:Subsidies

[silentcoder]

>Colonialism involves colonies, where the inhabitants of the area in question are citizens of the mother country.

So according to your bizarre and unique (made up) definition - the Dutch colonies (which once spanned half the globe) were not colonies then. Since nobody in them were citizens of the mother country, the best you could hope for was 'employee of the corporation' - but most were simply 'slaves' or 'natives to be shoved aside'.

In fact, hardly any colonial power EVER granted citizens to the people of the colonies - that would mean you have to give those people RIGHTS and no colonial government wanted to do that. Citizens of the motherland who went to live in the colonies usually retained their citizenship - but the people being taken over never gained it.
In the aftermath of colonialism a lot of colonial powers gave a path to citizenship for their former non-citizen subjects - which usually only consisted of some rules to make emigrating to the land that once ruled you a little easier than it is for other people. The levels of that vary greatly even within a single colonial power. For example citizens of former British colonies can get automatic citizenship in Britain - but not ALL former colonies. It does not apply to South Africans for example.

Re: Subsidies

[silentcoder]

You think there are no health effects within 1000m of a coal plant ? Hell the health effects of coal are far worse, over a much larger area - and of course you get it double because living anywhere within about 50-thousand meters of a coal MINE is seriously hazardous to health as well.