Wind and Solar Power Advance, but Carbon Refuses to Retreat
- 7 years ago
Wind and Solar Power Advance, but Carbon Refuses to Retreat
The most worrisome aspect about the all-out push for a future powered by renewables has to do with cost: The price of turbines and solar panels may be falling,
but the cost of integrating these intermittent sources of energy — on when the wind blows and the sun shines; off when they don’t — is not.
It found no correlation between the additions of solar
and wind power and the carbon intensity of energy: Despite additions of renewable capacity, carbon intensity remained flat.
And yet as climate diplomats gather this week in Bonn, Germany, for the 23rd Conference of the Parties under the auspices of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, I would like to point their attention to a different, perhaps gloomier statistic: the world’s carbon intensity of energy.
A study by Lion Hirth from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found
that the value of wind power falls from 110 percent of the average power price to 50 to 80 percent as the penetration of wind rises from zero to 30 percent of total consumption.
Capacity from renewable sources has grown by leaps
and bounds, outpacing growth from all other sources — including coal, natural gas and nuclear power — in recent years.
For instance, the Diablo Canyon reactor that California plans to close produces 14 times as much power
as the Topaz solar farm, which requires 500 times as much land, according to Environmental Progress.
The renewables-or-bust crowd on the periphery of the meeting in Bonn might argue
that the sun and wind owe their poor track record at decarbonization in countries like Germany to the fact that nuclear power was being phased out at the same time that they came online.
The most worrisome aspect about the all-out push for a future powered by renewables has to do with cost: The price of turbines and solar panels may be falling,
but the cost of integrating these intermittent sources of energy — on when the wind blows and the sun shines; off when they don’t — is not.
It found no correlation between the additions of solar
and wind power and the carbon intensity of energy: Despite additions of renewable capacity, carbon intensity remained flat.
And yet as climate diplomats gather this week in Bonn, Germany, for the 23rd Conference of the Parties under the auspices of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, I would like to point their attention to a different, perhaps gloomier statistic: the world’s carbon intensity of energy.
A study by Lion Hirth from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found
that the value of wind power falls from 110 percent of the average power price to 50 to 80 percent as the penetration of wind rises from zero to 30 percent of total consumption.
Capacity from renewable sources has grown by leaps
and bounds, outpacing growth from all other sources — including coal, natural gas and nuclear power — in recent years.
For instance, the Diablo Canyon reactor that California plans to close produces 14 times as much power
as the Topaz solar farm, which requires 500 times as much land, according to Environmental Progress.
The renewables-or-bust crowd on the periphery of the meeting in Bonn might argue
that the sun and wind owe their poor track record at decarbonization in countries like Germany to the fact that nuclear power was being phased out at the same time that they came online.