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Renewable Energy Policies Actually Work (arstechnica.com)
Renewable energy use and reduced energy use overall have helped carbon emissions remain flat or below average as the global economy continued to grow over the years. But, as new research has found, government policy also appears to play a large role. Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica: The researchers started by identifying countries that show a "peak and decline" pattern of carbon emissions since the 1990s. They came up with 18, all but one of them in Europe -- the exception is the United States. For comparison, they created two different control groups of 30 countries, neither of which has seen emissions decline. One group saw high GDP growth, while the second saw moderate economic growth; in the past, these would have been associated with corresponding changes in emissions. Within each country, the researchers looked into whether there were government energy policies that could influence the trajectory of emissions. They also examined four items that could drive changes in emissions: total energy use, share of energy provided by fossil fuels, the carbon intensity of the overall energy mix, and efficiency (as measured by energy losses during use). On average, emissions in the decline group dropped by 2.4 percent over the decade between 2005 and 2015.
Half of this drop came from lowering the percentage of fossil fuels used, with renewables making a large contribution; another 35 percent came from a drop in energy use. But the most significant factor varied from country to country. Austria, Finland, and Sweden saw a drop in the share of fossil fuels within their energy mix. In contrast, a drop in total energy use was the biggest factor for France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The U.S. was an odd one out, with all four possible factors playing significant roles in causing emissions to drop. For the two control groups, however, there was a single dominant factor: total energy use counted for 75 and 80 percent of the change in the low- and high-economic growth groups, respectively. But there was considerably more variability in the low-economic growth group. All of the high-growth group saw increased energy use contribute 60 percent of the growth in emissions or more. In contrast, some of the low-growth group actually saw their energy use drop. So why are some countries so successful at dropping their emissions? Part of it is likely to be economic growth, but the biggest reason may have to do with government policies. "By 2015, the countries in the group that saw declining emissions had an average of 35 policies that promoted renewable energy and another 23 that promoted energy efficiency," reports Ars Technica. "Both of those numbers are significantly higher than the averages for the control groups. And there's evidence that these policies are effective. The number of pro-efficiency policies correlated with the drop in energy use, while the number of renewable policies correlated with the drop in the share of fossil fuels."
Half of this drop came from lowering the percentage of fossil fuels used, with renewables making a large contribution; another 35 percent came from a drop in energy use. But the most significant factor varied from country to country. Austria, Finland, and Sweden saw a drop in the share of fossil fuels within their energy mix. In contrast, a drop in total energy use was the biggest factor for France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The U.S. was an odd one out, with all four possible factors playing significant roles in causing emissions to drop. For the two control groups, however, there was a single dominant factor: total energy use counted for 75 and 80 percent of the change in the low- and high-economic growth groups, respectively. But there was considerably more variability in the low-economic growth group. All of the high-growth group saw increased energy use contribute 60 percent of the growth in emissions or more. In contrast, some of the low-growth group actually saw their energy use drop. So why are some countries so successful at dropping their emissions? Part of it is likely to be economic growth, but the biggest reason may have to do with government policies. "By 2015, the countries in the group that saw declining emissions had an average of 35 policies that promoted renewable energy and another 23 that promoted energy efficiency," reports Ars Technica. "Both of those numbers are significantly higher than the averages for the control groups. And there's evidence that these policies are effective. The number of pro-efficiency policies correlated with the drop in energy use, while the number of renewable policies correlated with the drop in the share of fossil fuels."
So why are some countries so successful at dropping their emissions? Part of it is likely to be economic growth, but the biggest reason may have to do with government policies.
Ya think. And where do those "government policies" come from?
In the U.S. one of our two major political parties represents a minority of voters but thanks to our voting system has had a stranglehold on policy and that party is dedicated to doing everything possible to maximize donor profit. To them that means oppose anything and everything that has anything to do with mitigating climate change. For that matter anything to do with preserving or improving the environment. Our current EPA head was appointed for the express purpose of destroying the EPA.
Their mindless followers vote them in being mesmerized by keywords like "job creation" and chimeras like "the liberals are coming to get your guns." They will churn up FUD with their industry-funded studies. Much you will see repeated right here on /.
Don't look to the U.S. to help with this problem until we get rid of the minority rule. The majority wants something done about climate change.
America did sign the Paris accord -- Trump withdrew from it. However, my understanding is that the withdrawal won't be complete for a couple more years anyway. So America's drop in CO2 happened *despite* pulling out the agreement, certainly not because of it.
Georgetown, Texas tried to go the renewables route. They ended up paying more and getting less.
Thanks to renewables, Australia ended up paying $500 a day per family for electricity.
America, the country that didn't sign the Paris accord, dropped CO2 emissions more than anyone else.
It's currently technologically impossible for renewables to provide baseload power at a competitive, or even reasonable, price, and will not do so anytime in the near future no matter how much religious environmentalists claim otherwise.
Firstly, here is some background on your source:
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is a conservative think tank based in Austin, Texas. ... In 2015, TPPF had total revenue of $10.8 million. Donors to the organisation include energy companies Chevron, ExxonMobil, and other fossil fuel interests.
That place is as likely to deliver an unbiased assessment of whatever went on in Georgetown Texas as mice re likely to give an unbiased assessment of cats. From what I can gather about Georgetown Texas from other sources, their problem seems to have been that they made some really badly advised long term fixed price contracts for renewable energy. That is too bad for Georgetown Texas but hardly a reason for the rest of us to write off wind and solar power and grid storage because a bunch of useful idiots at a conservative think tank funded by oil companies says so.
I live in South Australia and buy power from the grid, and I think I would have noticed if this were true as presented here.
The referenced article appears to refer to wholesale spot prices - the electricity market in Australia is, through an artificial market created in the wake of privatization, structured as wholesale provider (usually, generators) selling to retail entities, that then sell power to end users. Consumers sign up for an "agreed tariff" contract arrangement with a pricing structure at least as opaque as any mobile phone regime, and retailers buy off the wholesalers at spot prices that vary more or less minute by minute, depending on demand. Those wholesale prices do routinely spike and crash over the course of a day - especially during summer - as factories start up and shut down, people turn their air conditioners on and off, and so on. It doesn't help that power is distributed across different timezones - SA users routinely use power generated in Victoria, and vice versa, which itself creates artificially high peaks and troughs.
It also doesn't help that politics gets involved - most providers see the writing on the wall and are trying to transition away from coal-based generation, but with a major coal industry to support they've seen significant push-back from government, which last year proposed putting out to tender the construction of new coal-based generation, because private industry wasn't willing to undertake it in a free market.
Obviously not written by someone who lives in Australia:
--- Our coal plants fail during peak demand, like our hottest-on-record January this year. Congrats coal, you fail at the definition of baseload.
--- The conservative coalition promised a saving of $500 when our experiment at a carbon price was axed. Surprising nobody, we didn't! I believe these figures more than the nonsense from that Borepatch site, a site that's keen to list externalities like the cost of food when power goes up, but not when we burn the Earth's densest carbon sinks.
--- There's a phrase in Australia: gold-plated power grid. Different states privatised their energy grids, and their new owners went on a spending spree which was passed on to us. The cost is significantly higher than the glorified rounding error in that Borepatch article.
--- Victoria has some of the dirtiest coal in the world. Hazelwood, the power station listed in that article, was the least efficient and most greenhouse-pollution generating station in Australia, and needed to go.
--- AGL, Australia's largest electricity retailer, has said they're not investing in new coal plants because its not economical. The private sector, which conservatarians always tell us works best because they have a profit motive, doesn't want more Australian coal.
I can see where you're coming from. The only way we're going to make the significant and immediate reductions to carbon we need to mitigate or limit climate issues (we're past the point of avoiding) is investment in nuclear.
Cheers, ~ Ruben
In the U.S. one of our two major political parties represents a minority of voters but thanks to our voting system has had a stranglehold on policy and that party is dedicated to doing everything possible to maximize donor profit.
California has 55 electoral votes, 7 of which are due to illegals(*). The US census counts people, not citizens, in an area to determine how many electoral votes a state gets.
California gets a significant extra amount of influence in elections due to the electoral college - are you willing to give that up?
Also, the EC is what keeps California and NY from ganging up on all the other states. In effect, it prevents the US from having a civil war, and breaking up into smaller national entities.
Are you willing to give *that* up? Just because your candidate lost the popular vote?
And finally, House representatives are also allocated by the census count. California gets 7 more reps due to its illegal population.
All of which means California gets to dominate affairs in the US house of representatives and presidential elections out of proportion to their electorate.
Their mindless followers vote them in being mesmerized by keywords like "job creation" and chimeras like "the liberals are coming to get your guns." They will churn up FUD with their industry-funded studies.
a) A lot of jobs *were* created. Chrysler just opened an idled plant, creating 6500 more. Look around - the economy is doing great!
b) The house just passed a law making private sale of guns illegal. Also, NY just passed a gun confiscation law, which is ripe for abuse.
(*) About 2.3 million illegals, at 700,000 per house rep/electoral vote. The electoral formula is non-linear, and estimates of illegals are sketchy, but it's about right.
(Incidentally, this is why the Dems are so much against the wall. They don't care about any of the issues - cost, crime, jobs, and so on - that's not their problem to fix. That's why Pelosi kept the government shutdown past $6 billion to avoid spending $5 billion on a wall "that would do nothing". It would have been more cost effective to build the wall even if it did do "nothing".)
The link reckons the Australian electricity costs from the peak rather than average costs, which determine what consumers actually pay. Furthermore, a decision by a judge to prevent the opening of a new coal mine could not possibly effect electricity prices two days later.
The other thing links to an unsourced powerpoint that combines just plain gobbledygook bullet points ("No pure electrons"), with dubious, unsourced figures, e.g. "return on investment" in solar being "$775/MWh" which of course is not an ROI figure at all. It's just the total subsidy figure divided by the amount of electricity generated, which of course is really low for coal because (a) the huge installed base of coal plants and (b) nobody in his right mind would pour money into coal.
Why?
The LCOE for wind has been lower than coal since around 2010. The LCOE for newly constructed photovoltaic plants has been dropping every year, and by some calculations the LCOE for new photovoltaic plants is already less than for new coal plants. So, yeah. Money isn't pouring into coal plant construction, either private or public.
That said, natural gas kicks the crap out of everything when it comes levelized cost.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Look, you can try the "but look...people funding" it's EEEEVVVVVVIIIIILLLLL. On the other hand, I can look from my own damn backyard and see the gigantic clusterfuck that "renewables" did to Ontario.
Right wing news? Sure. Centerist? That's not a problem either. How about far-left wing? Oh well what the fuck. How about the CBC? Well damn this is just great. This "unbiased assessment" from multiple media outlets here in Canada is pretty good at explaining just how much the entire thing "broke" Ontario's electrical system. This is the same bullshit now going on in multiple US states, the exact same shit. FiT(Feed in Tariff) programs, paying extremely high rates, with very specific companies who have/had an interest, causing the electricity price to go right through the roof. Oh and those "green energy jobs" that progressives, environmentalists and leftist cow on about? They don't appear. But boy oh boy do businesses flee. And of course Ontario isn't a on-off either, there's Germany, and Greece, and Spain, and Italy, and, and, and, and...
~10 years years ago, if you lived in the most populous place in Canada(between Windsor and Ottawa), you payed between 0.045 and 0.085kWh. Today you pay between 0.085 and 0.185kWh. Businesses fled. People fled. The electricity rate is so out of reach for the poor that they had to mandate under law no winter electrical disconnection just to make sure people wouldn't freeze to death. These rates for electricity hit the poor so bad, that a few years ago that charities ran out of money in December to cover heating costs. The winter period in Southern Ontario is generally late-October to as late as the end of May, you'll find that most people don't consider spring starting until the May 24 weekend, even then seeing 4C daytime highs happens often enough.
Look. Believe whatever you want about useful idiots, "because oil." Then dig your head out of your ass and then look to British Columbia. Same bullshit. Then look to Alberta under the NDP, same bullshit. Then look back to Ontario. 'Hey boys what happened to the Liberal Party of Ontario that held a majority status from 2003 to 2017?' Oh, they are no longer a recognized political party, and can fit in a 1986 Dodge Minivan? Well hot shit.
Om, nomnomnom...
Because stating that renewables are not currently competitive and sufficient is the exact same thing as writing them off. Try real arguments instead of hyperbole.
Really? https://www.bloomberg.com/news... ... that was three years ago and Bloomberg is hardly a bastion of tree hugging libtardism.
Here's some background on the source for the source of your second link: TLDR, RWNJ who tends to play extremely fast and very loose with the data.
Of course, the record-breaking high temperatures occurring across two states on that day had nothing to do with the price of of that electricity, did it?
Here's the truth about Georgetown (I live nearby so caught the local news about it):
"City Manager David Morgan said the power cost adjustment increase is because they leaned on forecasts back in 2012 and 2013 that predicted a shortage of power and a significant rise in energy prices.
"Ultimately, we selected wind and solar because we could lock in at competitive prices long-term,” Morgan said.
Morgan said the cost increase has nothing to do with the renewable energy sources.
"The reality is if we would have had those similar kinds of contracts, but they were with gas or coal. And we priced those out, we took bids from different types of energy sources. If we had those same types of contracts, we'd be in the same position today,” Morgan said."
https://www.kvue.com/article/m...
That's fine if you don't like the messenger. Here's what I'd like to know, was anything they said a lie?
You don't like the message so you kill the messenger, that does not change the truth. If they lied then what's the truth? Do you have counterexamples?
I have an issue with the idea that picking one single example of one town in Texas from a report made by an institute funded by people with vested interests in discrediting the renewable energy industry should be taken as the irrefutable truth. If you want to discredit renewables I won't even get up out of my armchair to answer the phone until you have got multiple sources of data that do not have a massive conflict of interest, like a conservative think tank funded by oil companies and your dataset consists of quite a lot more than a single town in Texas that signed some rather ill conceived long term fixed price contracts.
So why are some countries so successful at dropping their emissions?
Because they export their polluting industries to the 3rd world like the US did to Mexico? This is an excellent example of an intentionally misleading analysis. CO2 emissions in CA and Germany have increased from 2010 till today. This is the period when we actually had a renewable energy policy, and the increase in CO2 was mostly due to bad renewable energy policy and doesn't count the extra emissions from methane we had during that same period.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Because stating that renewables are not currently competitive...
...is total bullshit in 2019. It will be even more bullshit in 2020, 2021, 2022...you get it.
Ezekiel 23:20
I pay .25 per kwh. Stop whining and chop some firewood.
In the case of BC, it was a right wing government balancing the books by demanding hydro pay billions in dividends to the Province. As well as deciding to build a massive dam without doing due diligence and forcing twinning of some power lines as they might be needed in the future.
Now I understand that you're against hydro as it is renewable and figure we should all be burning coal but here in BC, we've been using hydro for over a hundred years and that is the source of 99% of our energy. (There's some remote communities burn diesel for power).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"Insightful"?
Bullshit. It's a strawman. The countries that are reducing their carbon output have done none of the things that the parent suggests are required to reduce CO2 emissions.
Again, bullshit!
China has been investing heavily in renewable energy sources and, guess what, the USA emits more CO2 than India, and of course, on a per-capita basis, the USA's CO2 output is far greater than any other country.
On this path, the USA is going to have the world's most expensive energy and is going to be a huge competitive disadvantage.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Sure, and watch your economy collapse.
Just another day in Paradise
CO2 emissions are fixable without "demolishing civilization".
It's only the people who want to do nothing about climate change that are pushing the narrative that it's a problem that cannot be solved "without demolishing civilization".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Just Millennial SJW types. They have never seen a real recession so they think these things are the worst things that can happen.
The Great Recession hit at the same time that most millennials were attempting to enter the job market. It hurt that generation worse than any other. Despite this, I think that it's wise to view catastrophes caused by climate change as, if not "the worst things that can happen," to be worse than temporary economic woes caused by a recession. I have children, and I will probably one day have grandchildren. It would be pretty shitty of me to prioritize short term amenities over the sustainability of life on the planet that my progeny will depend on. Unlike the baby boomers, I don't wish take a mortgage out on my children's future for my own benefit.
Of course, asserting that one has to choose between economic stability and sound climate policy is a false dichotomy anyway.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
It's just a shell game. The fundamental trend over the time period in question has been to move all industrial production to China. Global CO2 increased because industrial activity increased. But the LOCATION of the production shifted to China. So if the laws are working, all they are doing is helping speed the catastrophic decline of the West's industrial base, and boosting China's GDP.
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The proponents of "green" energy always point to the early wins. There are a lot of easy wins early on in the process, when most energy still comes from nuclear, coal, or whatever. Those existing plants can adjust their output to allow for the massive fluctuations of solar and wind generation, as long as the solar/wind is a minor part of the grid.
Things change when solar/wind become a large part of the generation capacity. On sunny summer days, Germany doesn't know what to do with all it's solar energy, and they've been know to pay other countries to take it. In bad weather, they import energy. Renewable energy on the massive scale Germany has implemented It only works, because they can leech off the capabilities of the countries around them. Germany's energy looks cleaner, because someone else is burning extra coal. If Germany is really does close their nuclear plants, the situation will get massively worse.
Unless large scale energy storage is solved, renewable energy will remain limited in its potential. In addition, we will always need something to handle baseline load, for which nuclear remains the greenest and safest option.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The OP is similarly wrong about Australia. The meteoric rise in electricity costs were the result of a massive gold plating effort for long distance transmission. However that is completely irrelevant since what is being quoted is the difference in wholesale and retail electricity costs. The wholesale cost spikes to that extent not because of green or dirty power, but because of not enough power. It's an exercise in convincing industrial users to load shed by pricing them out of the market.
Incidentally these spikes are usually the result of high temperature on sunny days and would be best resolved in installing more solar capacity.
Ignore my last comment, you deserve a proper response: To go down a list of points:
1. Electricity grid mismanagement and renewable policies are not the same thing. There are places with bigger price rises in electricity happily burning more coal than they did in the past. There are places with far more green energy where prices have fallen. You are complaining about one thing and using it as evidence against another.
2. 0.185kWh isn't an insanely high cost of electricity. It's normal once you get away from your fantasy prices funded by the destruction of your own health. People shouldn't flee those prices they should adapt. The fact that they flee rather than actually reduce your ridiculously inefficient living (Canada is outdone by very few in energy consumption per household) is more of a poor reflection on those people than anything else. We'll welcome them with open arms here, but they'll need to open their wallets (0.22/kWh and we have shithouse green policies here and just opened a new coal fired power station 2 years ago to boot)
3. WTF are you doing that is breaking the bank heating houses with electricity. Don't tell me you are using turn of the previous century era bar heaters.
4. BC has used hydro power for a long time. So thanks for pointing me towards them, it further reinforces that green power has nothing to do with the problems you describe.
5. Just because a political party suffers the wrath of a population doesn't mean that what they were doing didn't make sense (or was even related to green energy for that matter). We too relegated one of our major parties to a minority party. They proceeded to win the immediate following election. Turns out they weren't as bad as people thought.