Tag Archive for: renewables

The Case for an Inclusive Energy Strategy

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The justification for rapidly transitioning the global energy economy to renewables is to avert a catastrophic environmental crisis. It is based on the premise that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from the combustion of coal, natural gas, and oil, are altering our atmosphere, which in turn is leading to a host of negative consequences too numerous to mention.

It is possible nowadays to find almost anything, from crime and disease and mental health to species extinctions, deforestation and disappearing coral reefs, being attributed to climate change. And if you research almost anything involving the design of civilization, not just the production and consumption of energy but housing, mining, ranching, farming, shipping, transportation, waste management, water treatment, etc., the data most prominently reported are always carbon and CO2. The actual units of energy or water, or tonnage of product, or any other practical data necessary to inform management and logistics, has now become secondary. It’s all about carbon.

This may or may not be a compelling and appropriate redirection of our intellectual resources, but it is a distraction from what remains necessary, which is cutting through the avalanche of carbon data to get at how much energy we use and how much energy we need. And while some revanchist holdouts actually still believe atmospheric CO2 is not an existential threat, but in fact is an existential necessity, and are still willing to engage in debate over what they still view as an open question, there is no debate, anywhere, over the fact that we need adequate energy supplies if we are to continue to have a civilization. The only debate in that regard is how much energy do we need.

To that end, there are two encouraging avenues towards a consensus on energy strategy. The first is to agree on energy solutions that adequately address climate change concerns but make economic sense anyway. The second, which follows from the first, is to identify emerging technologies that will maximize energy efficiency. Anytime there is a cost-effective way to get the same energy service from less raw fuel input, the more efficient solution has an economic advantage. And this is where there are compelling arguments for electrification.

The Case for Electrification

The best way to illustrate why using electricity wherever possible can be a universally preferable energy solution is based on how much energy is lost using combustion-based solutions. In the United States, based on statistics from the Energy Information Administration, when using coal, oil and natural gas, 2/3rds of the raw energy input is lost to heat, friction, and exhaust. Examples of this are found in the most widely relied-upon applications. A coal or natural gas fired power plant still only averages 33 percent efficiency. A gasoline fueled vehicle typically only converts about 25 percent of the energy embodied in a gallon of gas into traction to move it down the road.

With electricity, these ratios are often flipped. Electricity generated by solar or wind energy goes directly into the transmission lines, where, just as with any electricity generator, about 5 percent is lost between the the source and the end user. Unlike coal and natural gas, solar and wind power is intermittent and requires battery storage, but in that round-trip cycle of charging and discharging, the electricity going back out still retains 80 percent of the electricity that went in.

These are clear advantages. They suggest that by electrifying major sectors of the economy, including most transportation and residential applications of energy, it would be possible to enjoy the same level of energy services while only expending half as much raw energy input. But there are also big challenges to electrification.

With respect to producing electricity, there is the need to occupy massive amounts of space for wind and solar farms. In the case of solar farms, they have to be overbuilt in order to still deliver adequate power during the short days of winter. Wind turbines, which require even more space than solar, would have to sprawl over thousands of miles, including offshore areas. They are decentralized sources of power, which means they require huge investments in distribution systems. They deliver intermittent power and require battery storage facilities.

There are also not-so-obvious problems with electrification—specifically, the so-called embodied energy in these solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to make them, transport them, and install them, and yet they only have a useful life of 20-30 years. This energy debt has to be paid back before these technologies can be counted as renewable. They also consume far more resources in their manufacture than conventional energy generators, and they are expensive to recycle.

These concerns, however, are not an argument against electrification; they are only about how to generate electricity. For example, if nuclear power were supplying more electricity to the grid, there would be no need for excessive new transmission lines or battery farms, and nuclear power plants can last 60 years or longer.

On the end-user side, there are also problems with electrification. EV batteries are expensive and use a lot of resources. They are so heavy that EVs are causing unanticipated wear on roadways and far more pollution from tire fragments. And, of course, they take too long to charge. When it comes to residential electrification, heat pumps are an efficient solution in warmer climates, but they won’t work in a Minnesota winter. Heat pumps operate by extracting heat from one place—outdoors—then concentrating it, because it may be cold outside, to transfer it into your home. That’s fine in California in January, when it’s a bitter 48 degrees outside. But there simply isn’t enough heat in the air when it’s 20 below zero outside. The colder it gets outdoors, the more a heat pump has to work.

The Case for Fossil Fuels

There is an immutable reality confronting proponents of renewables, which is that fossil fuel still provide 80 percent of global energy. This reality is compounded by two additional facts. First, the most favored renewables, wind and solar, only account for 7 percent of global energy production; the rest, in roughly equal proportions, are big hydroelectric turbines and nuclear power stations. Second, for everyone on earth to consume just half as much energy as Americans do, global energy production would have to double.

To reference units that energy economists rely on, according to the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of Global Energy, in 2022 total raw energy inputs worldwide were just over 600 exajoules. Taking into account a projected global population of 10 billion people by 2050 and a per capita energy input of 100 gigajoules (about one-third of the current U.S. per capita energy input), global energy production must rise to 1,000 exajoules in just 28 years. To do that purely with wind and solar sources of energy would require a 25X increase from the amount of installed base today. Even if there were space enough to do this, the resource consumption would make today’s global mining impact trivial by comparison. And based on a 20-30 year service life for wind and solar installations, by the time it was completed, you would have to start all over again.

Adding to these cautionary facts is the rising awareness, alluded to already, that renewables aren’t always renewable. The most egregious example of this may be biofuel plantations around the world, which already consume approximately 500,000 square miles in exchange for only displacing 2 percent of oil production. For all practical purposes, biofuel is fully built out. And as previously noted, there is significant negative environmental impact from most renewables, certainly including current biofuel, battery, solar, and wind technology.

The good news is there is enough fossil fuel to supply, just based on proven reserves, 500 exajoules of power per year for another 100 years. Taking into account estimated undiscovered reserves (including Abiotic oil) in the United States onshore and offshore and in the rest of the world is likely to double that estimate. That allows plenty of time to research and develop alternative sources of energy, but without fossil fuel providing at least half of our energy, delivering adequate energy to everyone on earth, i.e., achieving a minimum worldwide total of 1,000 exajoules of energy per year, is probably impossible.

As we pursue breakthrough energy technologies such as advanced fission power and fusion, our ability to more efficiently harness fossil fuel continues to progress. Combined cycle natural gas power plants now achieve over 60 percent conversion efficiencies, and the latest designs (that use a heat exchanger that can harvest higher temperatures from the first turbine’s exhaust) promise to deliver even higher conversion efficiencies. Similarly, the latest hybrid automotive designs, using high-compression engines, regenerative braking, and innovative transmissions, have gasoline-to-traction conversion efficiencies approaching 50 percent.

Our Magnificent Future

This is just the beginning. An all-of-the-above energy development strategy means that no promising leads are excluded, and no technologies need be deployed before they’re ready. There are technologies emerging that can convert raw coal into clean burning natural gas or zero emission hydrogen. There are stationary battery solutions that use abundant and inexpensive iron, sulfur, and water and last longer than lithium-ion batteries. There are solid state batteries being developed for EVs and hybrids that have higher energy density, can tolerate more cycles before degrading, and can be charged in minutes.

Looking further into the future reveals wondrous innovations that we can already imagine attaining feasibility. With abundant energy, we no longer have to be concerned about how much power is necessary to run desalination plants to turn millions of acre feet of ocean water into fresh water. With abundant energy, we can electrolyze hydrogen from water, extract CO2 from the atmosphere, and blend them into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.

Most significant of all, of course, is the impact abundant energy will have on the quality of life for everyone on earth. Abundant energy is, by definition, almost always affordable energy. And a global energy grid that offers an inclusive assortment of energy options—renewables, nuclear, and fossil fuels—is also a resilient grid, able to withstand disruptions because multiple alternative sources of energy are always present.

By adopting an inclusive, all-of-the-above energy strategy, sustainable abundance in all things is possible because energy is the foundation of general economic growth. Hence, delivering affordable energy translates into everything becoming more affordable, and that, ultimately, is the prerequisite for global equity among peoples and nations. By encouraging energy development on all fronts simultaneously, humanity can eliminate energy poverty, which is one of the most problematic obstacles to peace and prosperity. In so doing, we shall make all other challenges, daunting though they may be, a little bit easier to overcome.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

How to Deliver Affordable Energy Again in California

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Californians pay some of the highest prices for energy in the United States. Gasoline last year averaged $4.89 per gallon, and diesel fuel $5.07 per gallon, both the highest in the country. Electricity rates had California 45th in the nation in 2023 at $0.27 per kilowatt-hour, the worst of every major state with the sole exception of Massachusetts, which edged California out for the 46th spot at $0.28 per kilowatt-hour. Only in the price of natural gas was California’s performance not the worst, insofar as California’s prices were the 6th worst in the nation at $19.63 per thousand cubic feet, with the only major state that with higher prices being Florida at $25.37 per thousand cubic feet.

Energy is already punitively expensive in California, but it’s likely to get worse. Achieving “net zero” emissions requires mass conversion to renewable electricity, and that process has barely begun. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, in 2021 (the most recent year for which we have data), Californians consumed 6.9 quadrillion BTUs of energy, yet in that same year, according to the California Energy Commission, the state only produced 0.7 quadrillion BTUs of electricity. Isn’t the goal “net zero”? And to do that, don’t we have to electrify every sector of our economy? We’re only 10 percent of the way.

Now to be fair – don’t wander yet, this is important – electricity can deliver energy services more efficiently than combustion. “Non-thermal electricity,” delivered from solar panels into batteries and then into EVs or heat pumps, for example, may allow that total power requirement to drop significantly. Let’s assume that if we electrify everything, the improvements in efficiency will mean we can cut it in half and still have enough energy. That’s ambitious but plausible, but it still means our electricity production today is only at 20 percent of where it’s going to need to be. We will still need to produce 3.5 quadrillion BTUs per year, which in electrical terms is 115 gigawatt-years (about 1.0 million gigawatt- hours). In 2021 we generated 22.2 gigawatt-years (that’s 194,127 gigawatt-hours). As for our favored renewables, in 2021 solar contributed 33,260 gigawatt-hours, and wind contributed 15,173 gigawatt-hours.

If all these numbers are numbing, have another cup of coffee. They are the basic parameters that govern California’s path to net zero. They are immutable. They matter. To summarize the previous paragraph: The electricity produced by utility scale solar and wind energy in California in 2021 amounted to 4.8 percent of how much electricity the state is going to need if it intends to fulfill its goal of net zero. It falls short by more than 20X. And that’s probably a best case estimate.

To be sure, other acceptable energy solutions may help. Geothermal energy in 2021 added 11,116 gigawatt-hours, less than but comparable to wind. Biomass added 5,381 gigawatt-hours, and small hydro, which remains off the forbidden list at least for now, added another 2,531 gigawatt-hours. But that’s not much, and expansion potential for those solutions are limited. Fully 65 percent of California’s electricity generated in 2021 came from the bad guys – natural gas 50.2 percent, nuclear 8.5 percent, and “large hydro” 6.2 percent.

So here is the question: Can Californians rely primarily on wind turbines, photovoltaics, and batteries to generate more than five times as much electricity as they did in 2021, convert their entire transportation sector to EVs, their entire residential sector to heat pumps, induction cooktops, and electric water heaters, and work similar massive miracles to convert their commercial and industrial sectors – possibly relying on electrolyzed hydrogen (which is less efficient to generate, meaning more capacity would be required) – and keep their prices for energy to the retail and wholesale consumer competitive with the rest of America, much less the rest of the world?

The answer to that question ought to be obvious. No. California’s state legislature, backed by every renewables special interest in the world, is embarking on an economic experiment on the backs of California’s struggling households and beleaguered businesses, and it is not going to end well. Compromise is urgently required.

Here are ten policy suggestions:

1 – Require minimum 50 percent domestic content for all energy, from gasoline to photovoltaic panels to batteries. That might stimulate a more realistic assessment of what is economically and environmentally sustainable.

2 – Revise Newsom’s executive order mandating pure EV sales of new cars by 2035 to include advanced hybrids. This will allow electric drivetrains to be paired with innovative new ultra efficient, ultra clean combustion engines, fueled with green or blue hydrogen fuel, natural gas, or gasoline. There are simply too many promising new automotive technologies to bet everything on pure EVs.

3 – Reverse existing incentives to encourage at least two types of energy to be deliverable to new residential or commercial buildings. This will improve resiliency in the face of shortages or natural disasters. It will also force competition between energy providers, lowering prices.

4 – Declare an end to the moratorium on nuclear power.

5 – Repeal CO2 emissions reporting requirements on large corporations. Under the new law, they are required to source this information from all their vendors including small businesses. It places a massive burden on all businesses for no purpose other than to produce reports. This information is not essential to formulating sound energy policy.

6 – Require the state legislature to review economic impact reports, environmental impact reports, and carbon lifecycle analysis from multiple independent sources before mandating any new energy policy.

7 – End the regulatory push to eliminate natural gas hookups, abolish VMT penalties on home builders, and make solar roofs and other “renewable” features optional on new home construction.

8 – Retrofit to the highest modern standards and technologies instead of closing California’s natural gas fueled generating plants.

9 – Increase safe, responsible drilling for oil and gas in-state.

10 – Recognize that offshore wind development is an environmental catastrophe and an economic drain, and cancel all public sector support for these projects. Redirect savings into researching potential breakthrough energy technologies.

An inherent handicap towards advocating a comprehensive new energy strategy in California is the fact that energy sectors compete with each other, as they should. The EV lobby wants to eliminate gasoline. The PV and wind lobby wants to keep natural gas around for their peaker plants, that is, until the battery lobby ramps up storage capacity, wherein they’ll want to eliminate natural gas. Most of these energy interests are either indifferent to or happy to reinforce the disparaging stereotypes surrounding nuclear and “large hydro.” And so it goes.

This innate competitive drive makes it challenging for California’s energy industry to unite behind a comprehensive policy agenda, but it shouldn’t prevent political leadership from designing an energy strategy that pushes diverse energy solutions, and the industries that provide them, into healthy competition. That’s how capitalism – as opposed to crony capitalism and monopoly capitalism – is supposed to work. The old truism is nonetheless true, when companies have to compete, the consumer wins.

California can set an inspiring example by embracing an all-of-the-above strategy to energy production. This would mean continued reliance on oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, while incorporating the highest standards possible to reduce pollution and improve efficiency. And while it would still provide for ongoing investment in renewables, it would be at a pace that spares the consumer having to pay locked-in rates on energy solutions that quickly become overpriced and obsolete.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

California’s Impossible War on Oil and Gas

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Determined to save the world from climate change, California has nearly shut down its oil and gas industry, though the Golden State currently gets 50 percent of its total energy from oil and another 34 percent from gas. The state’s most recent move was a decision by California’s Geologic Energy Management Division to deny new hydraulic fracturing permits on oil and gas wells.

The assault on oil and gas has been unrelenting. In September 2023, California attorney general Rob Bonta sued Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP for allegedly causing climate change-related damages and deceiving the public. A year before that, in September 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to ban new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of any occupied structure—a restriction so likely to kill the industry that more than 623,000 registered voters have endorsed a referendum to repeal it this November.

The state government in Sacramento seems determined to be in the vanguard of an international movement to achieve the goals announced last December at the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai. As part of a quest to achieve global “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, countries committed to tripling their nuclear-energy output, with the presumption that renewables—primarily wind and solar—would make up whatever was left over after the demise of oil, gas, and coal.

A careful examination of global energy and population trends strongly suggests that this is a delusion. The most authoritative source on global energy production is the Statistical Review of World Energy, published annually. In the 2023 edition, total global energy inputs for the previous year amounted to 604 exajoules. Based on current data on population and energy use, that equates to 288 gigajoules per capita in the United States and a mere 67 gigajoules per capita in the rest of the world. By 2050—the target date for achieving global “net zero”—total global population will likely level off at about 10 billion. If so, for every person in the world to have access to, say, 100 gigajoules, total global energy production will need to expand to 1,000 exajoules, an increase of 66 percent. Meantime, if all goes according to plan, coal, oil, and gas—which, according to the Statistical Review, provided 82 percent of those 604 exajoules of energy in 2022—will be completely phased out, providing no energy by 2050.

This is not possible. To begin with, the 82 percent figure is misleading, because most official sources, including the Statistical Review and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, inflate the reported energy inputs of “non-thermal” energy (that is, all energy sources except for the “combustibles”—coal, oil, gas, and biofuel), ostensibly to show how much of the less-efficient fossil fuel is already being displaced. In terms of actual electricity that these sources deliver to the grid: in 2022, 15.6 exajoules (EJ) came from hydroelectric power, 9.6 EJ from nuclear, 7.6 EJ from wind, 4.8 EJ from solar, and 2.8 EJ from biomass, plus another 4.3 EJ from biofuel (which already consumes an estimated 450,000 square miles of land, while displacing less than 2 percent of global transportation fuel demand). Altogether, “non-thermal renewables” (including nuclear) delivered only 44.7 EJ of power in 2022. We’ve got 27 years to boost that to 1,000 EJ.

And 1,000 EJ represents the bare minimum to which global energy production must aspire. For Americans to reduce their per capita energy consumption to 100 gigajoules from the current 288 would require extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency. Can electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other innovations increase efficiency that much? Because that’s what proponents of net zero and electrification of the economy must accomplish. Otherwise, 1,000 EJ will not be nearly enough for humanity.

Where will this energy come from? Tripling nuclear power would increase the non-fossil-fuel total to 64 EJ. Shall we double hydroelectric capacity, along with biomass and biofuel? That would get us to 87 EJ, though few would find it desirable to dam every remaining stretch of river and allocate nearly 1 million square miles of rainforest to growing cane ethanol and palm oil diesel. And this brings us to wind and solar: under this scenario, they would have to expand their output from 12.4 EJs to an almost unthinkable 913 EJs—an increase of 74 times.

It isn’t easy to summarize the challenges posed by massively increasing solar and wind energy. The uptick in mining; the land consumed; the expansion of transmission lines; the necessity for a staggering quantity of electricity-storage assets to balance these intermittent sources; the vulnerability of wind and solar farms to weather events, including deep freezes, tornadoes, and hail; and the stupefying task of doing it all over again every 20 to 30 years, as the wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and storage batteries reach the end of their useful lives—all this suggests that procuring more than 90 percent of global energy from wind and solar is a fool’s errand.

California’s climate warriors may succeed in their quest to eliminate fossil fuel in the state, but it will come at a grievous cost to their fellow residents, and it’s an example that the world cannot possibly emulate. Geothermal energy may offset some of this. Perhaps nuclear capacity could more than triple. But the path for California and the world is to utilize coal, oil, and gas in as clean and sustainable a manner as possible. “Alternative energy” is not a viable alternative.

This article originally appeared in City Journal.

The Delusions of Davos and Dubai – Part Two: Can Wind & Solar Expand 50-100 Times?

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In the most recent “Conference of the Parties,” otherwise known as the United Nations extravaganza that convenes every few years for world leaders to discuss the climate crisis, several goals were publicly proclaimed. Notable were the goals to triple production of renewable energy by 2030 and triple production of nuclear energy by 2050. Against the backdrop of current global energy production by fuel type, and as quantified in Part One, against a goal of increasing total energy production from 600 exajoules in 2022 to at least 1,000 exajoules by 2050, where does COP 28’s goals put the world’s energy economy? How much will production of renewable energy have to increase?

To answer this question, it is necessary to recognize and account for the fact that most renewable energy takes the form of electricity, generated through wind, solar, or geothermal sources. And when measuring how much the base of renewables installed so far will contribute to the target of 1,000 exajoules of energy production per year in order to realize—best-case scenario—800 exajoules of energy services, the data reported in the Statistical Review of Global Energy is profoundly misleading.

Without understanding how current renewables data as reported in summary charts can mislead an analyst into overstating its current contribution to global energy, it is impossible to accurately assess the true magnitude of the expansion in renewables needed to achieve a goal of 1,000 exajoules of global energy production per year. How the summary charts mislead is buried in the Appendix.

As the authors disclose (ref. page 56, “Methodology”) in the Appendix: “in the Statistical Review of World Energy, the primary energy of non-fossil based electricity (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass in power and other renewables sources) has been calculated on an ‘input-equivalent’ basis – i.e. based on the equivalent amount of fossil fuel input required to generate that amount of electricity in a standard thermal power plant.”

It is difficult to overstate how important it is to not overlook this seemingly innocuous footnote.

In plain English, what they are saying is when they report (ref. page 9 “Primary Energy: Consumption by fuel”) the share of global energy contributed by all non-thermal sources—hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar—they gross up the lower, actual production number and report on the chart an imputed and much larger amount, calculated as if these four sources of energy were operating at the efficiency of thermal power inputs, i.e., at 40 percent efficiency.

Why? We may presume that the energy analysts preparing these charts gross up the contribution of non-thermal energy (Lawrence Livermore also does this, by the way, on their energy flowchart) in order to demonstrate how much fossil fuel production is being offset by using non-thermal sources. That seems innocent enough. But it’s misleading.

If we’re setting a goal of 1,000 exajoules of ultimate world energy production and assuming 80 percent of that 1,000 exajoules of energy input shall be realized as end-user energy services, then we have to examine how much usable energy wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear are actually being generated today. That means we need to know how much electricity they actually generate and send into the grid. An imputed, grossed-up number is not helpful.

Getting to 1,000 Exajoules per Year without Coal, Oil, and Gas

Fortunately, the actual amount of power currently generated by hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar can be found in the inner chapters of the Statistical Review. But it is important to recognize that if energy production shifts from thermal sources to electricity, it will still take at least 1,000 exajoules of power generation to produce 800 exajoules of energy services.

It must be again emphasized that it is an extraordinary assumption to project an 80 percent retention of energy from input into the grid to actual end use. For example, we might assume that from the generating plant, 5 percent was lost in transmission, another 5 percent lost from charging and subsequently discharging the electricity to and from utility-scale storage batteries, another 5 percent in the charge/discharge cycle through an onboard battery in an EV, and another 5 percent converting that electricity into traction from the electric motor. Those are extraordinarily optimistic numbers, using a best-case example. Is a heat pump that efficient, or an air conditioner, or a cooktop, or any number of appliances, farm machinery, industrial equipment, and other vital infrastructure? Definitely not yet, and quite possibly never.

The point here is 1,000 exajoules represents the absolute minimum to which global energy production must grow in the next 25 years if every person on earth is to have access to enough energy to enable prosperity and security. How do we get there? Let’s take the experts at their word and assume that use of coal, oil, and gas will be completely eliminated by 2050.

On the chart below, the assumptions governing the future mix of fuels worldwide adhere to the resolutions just made at the recent Conference of the Parties. That is, nuclear energy will be tripled, and use of oil, natural gas, and coal will be eliminated. To take some of the pressure off of the required expansion of solar and wind energy, for this analysis, the sacrilegious assumption is made to double hydroelectric capacity, double geothermal production, and double biofuel production. It won’t matter much. Here goes:

There’s a lot to chew on in this data, but it’s worth the effort. Because the facts they present are immutable and carry with them significant implications for global energy policy. The first column of data shows how much fuel was burned or generated worldwide in 2022—the raw fuel inputs, which total 604 exajoules.

The second column of data shows the number of energy services that reached end-users in 2022 in the form of heating, cooling, traction, light, communications, etc. It is clear that for thermal sources of energy, the lower numbers reflect the currently estimated degree of conversion efficiency worldwide, about 40 percent. But for non-thermal sources of energy (appended to the right with “gen,” signifying generated energy), these numbers are based on terawatt-hour reports featured in individual sections of the Statistical Review dedicated to those sources of energy. Converted from terawatt-hours to exajoules, these are the actual amounts of electricity that went into transmission lines around the world to be consumed by end users.

The third column of data calculates a hypothetical 2050 global fuel mix based on the agreed COP 28 targets. As seen in column 4 “multiple,” nuclear energy is tripled in accordance with COP 28. Also, in accordance with COP 28, use of coal, oil, and gas is eliminated. Not agreed to at COP 28, but to help reach the 1,000 exajoule target, production of geothermal and biofuel energy are both doubled. That leaves the remainder of the needed power to be provided (in this example) equally by wind and solar. It is reasonable to assume, based on everything they’re saying in Dubai and Davos, that this is the model. This is the logical realization of what they’re calling for.

These calculations yield an overwhelming reality check. Yet what assumption is incorrect? The target of 1,000 exajoules is almost certainly too low. Nuclear power is tripled, and hydropower and biofuel are both doubled. None of that is easy; in the case of biofuel, it could be an environmental catastrophe. But even if those other non-thermal sources of energy were to increase two to three times, without coal, oil, and gas, a stupefying expansion of wind and solar would be required.  “Tripling” these renewables doesn’t even get us into the ballpark.

To deliver 1,000 exajoules of power to the world by 2050, for every wind turbine we have today, expect to see more than 60 of them. For every field of photovoltaics we have today, expect to see nearly 100 more of them. Is this feasible? Because from Dubai to Davos, this is what they’re claiming we’re going to do.

Confronted with these facts, even the most enthusiastic proponents of wind and solar energy may hesitate when considering the magnitude of the task. Eliminating production of fossil fuel entirely by 2050 ought to be seen, for all practical purposes, as impossible. The uptick in mining, the land consumed, the expansion of transmission lines, the necessity for a staggering quantity of electricity storage assets to balance these intermittent sources, the vulnerability of wind and solar farms to weather events including deep freezes, tornadoes, and hail, and the stupefying task of doing it all over again every 20-30 years as the wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and storage batteries reach the end of their useful lives—all of this suggests procuring 90+ percent of global energy from wind and solar energy is a fool’s errand.

If coal, oil, and gas are phased out and it is unrealistic to expect nearly 1,000 exajoules of power to be delivered by wind and solar-generated electricity, what’s left? Part three of this series will examine the potential of the remaining energy alternatives—nuclear, hydroelectric, biofuel, geothermal—along with possible innovations that someday may change the rules.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

The Sustainable Alternative to Renewables in California

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Anyone serious about ushering California into an electric age, much less the entire world, faces immutable facts that are indifferent to passions and principles. With algebraic certainty, these facts lead to uncomfortable conclusions: It is impractical if not impossible to achieve an all-electric future by relying on solar, wind, and geothermal power, supplemented by more novel power generation technologies such as harvesting the energy in waves and tides. And even if it were done, it might not be the optimal solution for the environment.

A few years ago, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, Mark Jacobson, completed a report that quantified what it would take, in terms of the installed base of renewable generating and storage assets to move California to a 100 percent net zero energy economy. Relying primarily on over 20,000 wind turbines with an average capacity of 5 megawatts each, along with utility scale solar farms, an analysis published in March 2022 by the California Policy Center estimated the land requirement for this undertaking at over 10,000 square miles on land, mostly for wind farms, and over 15,000 square miles offshore, also for wind farms.

In theory, Jacobson’s recommendations would work, insofar as this stupefying quantity of wind and solar power, properly buffered with battery storage assets, would nearly double the capacity of California’s energy grid. Jacobson’s scheme estimates California’s average electricity output expanding to just over 100 gigawatts. In 2019, the most recent year for which complete data is available, California’s electricity grid produced, on average, 54 gigawatts.

To understand why a credible best case scenario would only require Californians to double their electricity output in order to go all electric, the following chart, prepared by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, can be helpful.

A detailed review of the data on this chart can be found in a July 2022 California Policy Center analysis, but for the moment, three critical variables are explanatory. California’s total energy consumption of 7,352 trillion BTUs, the “rejected energy” of 4,842 TBTUs, and the “energy services” of 2,510 TBTUs. What this describes is the overall efficiency of energy use in California. Of the energy Californians consume to power their residential, commercial, industrial and transportation sectors, 34 percent actually performs a service – heating, cooling, illumination, pumping, traction, etc. – and 66 percent (the “rejected energy”) is lost through friction, heat, wasted motion, leakage, etc.

The promise of electricity is that it can stand this ratio on its head. The appeal of electric power lies in its efficiency in conversion. Electric transmission losses are about 5 percent, with another 10 percent lost in a modern onboard battery’s charge/discharge cycle and the electric motor’s conversion of electrons into traction. Compare the electric car’s overall 85 percent efficiency to a gasoline powered automobile, which at best can achieve efficiencies of 35 percent.

The 2,510 TBTUs of energy Californians consumed in 2019 equate to 735 terawatt-hours, which in turn equates to an average output on the electricity grid of 84 gigawatts. This means that if every energy service in California were using electricity at 85 percent efficiency, a grid capacity of 100 gigawatts would be sufficient to power all of it. That’s a stretch, but it’s in the ballpark. It would require extraordinary engineering achievements as well as aggressive energy conservation programs. It is therefore the absolute minimum amount of electricity required for California to go 100 percent electric.

Disrupting the dream of accomplishing this goal while relying almost exclusively on wind and solar energy, however, are cold facts: Renewables aren’t renewable, and they aren’t sustainable. The footprint of wind and solar facilities on land and ocean, the battery farms to buffer their intermittency, the raw materials necessary to build them all, the maintenance, replacement, and recycling costs, are far in excess of anything Californians should have to endure, and far in excess of what the world’s resources have to give.

Imagine, for example, if the materials necessary for these wind, solar and battery assets were sourced here in California. Why not? California has many of the necessary raw materials ready for extraction. Are Californians willing to mine the lithium and quarry the concrete? More generally, are Californians willing to confront the fact that renewable energy technologies use orders of magnitude more natural resources than conventional energy?

The alternative to massively subsidized wind, solar and battery farms that despoil literally thousands of square miles of land and ocean is far more practical. Develop energy generation capacity using proven technologies, and further improve them. Californians should be pioneering the installation of the most advanced combine cycle natural gas generating plants and nuclear power plants. Instead of mandating all-electric cars, we should permit within the new mandates hybrid cars that retain range-extending advanced internal combustion engines. We should be allocating billions to upgrade our existing and proposed reservoirs to incorporate pump storage, which is still the most cost-effective way to store large amounts of renewable electricity.

This all-of-the-above approach to energy, on the surface, seems to be moving slightly away from climate purity. But a cradle-to-grave assessment of renewables may belie that first impression. Moreover, if California is serious about setting an example for the world, which after all will yield far more planetary benefits than going it alone, we must develop energy technologies that are practical.

There is enough wealth, and enough political will, for Californians to actually inflict upon themselves an all-electric future that rejects natural gas and nuclear power, rejects pump storage, and rejects advanced hybrid vehicles. But where the climate purists and their special interest puppeteers see a grand vision, history may only recognize hubris and corruption. Californians must put their impressive wealth and willpower into researching breakthrough technologies, while remaining practical in the meantime. That is how California can more effectively demonstrate effective leadership, and set an example for the world to follow.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.