How well are the renewables doing?
As it turns out, they are doing well in China
The Rocky Mountain Institute, Amory Lovins’s think tank, recently released a new report on renewable energy. RMI is generally speaking an anti-nuclear and anti-fossil fuel think tank, but despite this, they have good insights on other clean technologies.
The general rule when reading energy reports is that it is always important to acknowledge that the Fossil Fuel Industry and the Renewable Industry disagree on the future demand for energy. This gap leaves a massive uncertainty, and as we know from experience, nobody can accurately predict the future.
Who should we believe? Exxon that invests in oil or Rystad Energy that invests in renewables? Both are likely to be biased.
That detail aside, it is true that in terms of levelised cost of electricity, renewables have fallen below traditional thermal generation. The question within the energy debate is with what factor should one multiply the cost of renewables to reflect the total system cost?
Regardless, it is true that in terms of total capacity and electricity generated (without making a statement on the quality of the electricity), that the last decade saw a mass adaption of wind and solar. These trends are likely to continue, because there is no indication (yet) on a kink in the S-curve.
Then, there are a few interesting graphs on the electrification of transport:
On energy losses:
On energy Efficiency:
It is important to acknowledge though that energy efficiency doesn’t necessarily imply economic efficiency. A heat pump might be 3x or 4x more efficient than a gas boiler per kwh ,but because it uses electricity, the price of electricity will have to be 3x lower than gas for it to be competitive! Additionally, this makes no statement about the cost to amortize the system.
Energy efficiency is an old debate, and policies that promote it are difficult to assess because of the free rider problem in economics.
On the progress being made towards 100% electrification, China is certainly the fastest growing market.
On the Global South in General, it does appear that many developing countries have reached peak coal.
RMI furthermore has some interesting graphs on how previous technologies replaced each other in previous industrial revolutions.
My personal skepticism is that, as with most predictions of peak coal, peak oil, and peak LNG, these predictions are probably too premature.
I can also draw any graph from the black curve and project forward my preferred pathway.
Obviously Renewable fart energy density has a domestic use and with the help of Complicit BRICS manipulation it his highly profitable. Ramaphosa's brother-in-law can attest to that. That is why he loves BRICS so much as China does
Very interesting. I think there is one error. Because heat pumps produce ~3 times as much heat per kWh than gas they are cost effective for electricity prices up to ~3 times higher than gas prices.
Unfortunately electricity prices are often >4 times gas prices, as in the UK now.
They are less than 3 times gas prices in counties like France, Sweden and Norway, which have reliable clean energy like nuclear and hydro.
Countries dependent on intermittent renewables like Denmark, Germany and the UK all have electricity prices > 3 times gas prices.
Intermittent renewables make electricity prices too expensive for best pumps.
They also make electricity less reliable in cold weather, which is another reason not to rely on electric heat pumps.