I find it maddening how Greens latch onto LCOE without really understanding it, and then when you explain why it is a very deceptive metric, it completely unphases them. They are very generous spending other people’s money.
W&S require vastly more new power lines than does nuclear, because the former, due to their low energy density and inherently land-gobbling physical characteristics, will have to be installed in far more places than the small number of nuclear plants that could be built instead. And those lines are so lovely to look at, don’t you think?
Very well explained. Now it's more understandable why LCOE is a complete scam right now. And more taking into account that the amortization of assets happens ALWAYS. Many activists should learn some accountability because if business follow the criteria they use for energy, many companies would be bankrupt.
W&S require vastly more new power lines than does nuclear, because the former, due to their low energy density and inherently land-gobbling physical characteristics, will have to be installed in far more places than the small number of nuclear plants that could be built instead. And those lines are so lovely to look at, don’t you think?
Good explanation. Note what Chris Wright said during his confirmation hearing that intermittent renewables like solar and wind compare to an Uber ride that is cheap but the driver does not tell you where he will drop you off. Another issue, though, is the reality that long term capital costs 6-8% vs ~2-3% the previous 15 years.
Yeah- the longer you spend looking into energy the more LCOE is just total bunk. A beautiful metric made for the grid of the 1970s that just keeps on ticking forever…. At least the Lazard people have finally started making noise about how it shouldn’t be used for intermittent sources, but activists aren’t ever going to listen.
The “activists” are frothing-at-the-mouth oil haters, and are willing to lie through their teeth to promote their alternative agenda, regardless of its lack of merit. The “environmental” lobby is in the process of replicating the monumental damage they did by opposing nuclear beginning in the 70s — thereby contributing hundreds of billions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere that should have been avoided. Now, they’re responsible for an increasingly expensive and unreliable grid that is costing America jobs and prosperity, and robbing Americans in the form of needlessly high power bills. Oh, and this unreliable/unstable grid is also higher-carbon than it needs to be, because the junk heap of W&S will never work without reliable gas backup.
We could also get into the needless environmental degradation in the form of all the mines that will be required to build the huge quantity of W&S plants, and the enormous battery plants that, in the fantasy world of the “greens”, will make W&S work.
California spends ten billion dollars a year to subsidise the renewable rent seekers. Fat lot of good that did them in managing climate risks for Los Angeles. Switch all climate spending to the metric of cooling return on investment.
"Deep down, though, they must know LCOE is horseshit."
If only. I've run into far too many True Believers who are absolutely convinced that if wind/solar isn't providing ALL THE POWER the only possible explanation is that we have yet to build enough of it (or, at least slightly more reasonably, that we have yet to build enough battery storage to level out the hourly over/under capacity issues). I'd be curious what the LCOE would look like if intermittent sources were required to include enough battery backup to meet peak demand using only the excess they store themselves during peak generation hours (not relying on a backup fossil fuel site at all).
Absolutely outstanding post Quico. The most cogent explanation I’ve yet seen of why and how LCOE’s are utter garbage. How is it that no politicians — even those with no energy expertise, let alone any grasp of the fraud embedded in LCOE’s — are capable of questioning why W&S need these massive subsidies at the same time that they are allegedly so cheap??
First, intermittent renewable energy generation which is usually located far from demand centers, while clean, cannot possibly power America. Only nuclear generation can. We should be using the sites of current coal fired power stations which have in place transmission and cooling infrastructure and are close to locations where energy is needed to build new nuclear capacity. Democrats largely reject new nuclear power plants.
Secondly, we are not on track to reduce carbon emissions adequately to halt disastrous climate change. At this stage of the problem only geoengineering can save humanity. Republicans largely reject geoengineering and because they believe in crazy conspiracy theories refuse to support even research into how it might help. With both parties standing in the way of necessary solutions to the looming climate disaster we are clearly fucked.
Republicans largely reject geoengineering? Geoengineering in general, or just the impractically expensive technologies that Quico here has repeatedly pointed out are far too expensive to deploy at the relevant scale? Which Republicans? I'm genuinely curious.
I'm a Republican. I support geoengineering (at least, I'm interested in promoting field testing of the salt and iron techniques Quico advocates so effectively for here). I also support substantial investments in ramping up Nuclear power (both current tech and investing in next Gen). I haven't gotten much pushback on any of those views from the Right (aside from occasional free market purists who reject government subsidies or investment in ANY tech ala "Government should not be picking winners and losers, let the markets decide"). I'm honestly not seeing Republicans be the obstacle here.
Steven: It’s a general impression I have formed from mostly reading comments on the issue. Most of those who engage in conspiracy theories seem to me to fall on the far right, of course, the far left also have their share of wackos.
I don't think we can say either Republicans or Democrats are for or against climate repair. It's worse than that: the idea is so far outside the Overton Window, they don't even have a position on it. Don't have to. It's on no radars.
Still, doomerism is lazy and wrong. We're not on a great trajectory, it's going to take some time to recalibrate. But nobody's hair is on fire.
Yeah, about that.. multiple studies find that the only sense in which partisanship significantly affects overall susceptibility to conspiracy theories is that partisanship itself is somewhat correlated with it, it's not a Right/Left issue. This is in line with more general findings that partisanship is associated with greater willingness to associate negative attributes and assume negative motivations to the opposing side. For example https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-022-09812-3
Incidentally, you might check out Campbell and Kay, 2014; Kahan, et al., 2015, for studies suggesting that conservatives favor solar geoengineering for its perceived ability to offer a technological solution that avoids regulatory actions and emission cuts.
AFAICT, Quico occasionally self-sabotages inadvertantly with messaging that signals membership on the Left (perceived partisan alignment of the speaker DOES significantly impact support for geoengineering policies in both directions), but the actual policies advocated here are usually favorably received on my side of the aisle.
Steven: Thanks. I will rewrite that based on your comment. There’s still plenty to criticize the right when it comes to climate change like their mostly outright denial of its existence. 😎
Shrug. Last I heard Trump's nominee for Secretary of Energy largely reiterated reasonable points well in line with the latest IPCC findings during his confirmation hearings, so... That may be another stereotype of yours that's due for an update in light of new evidence.
OTOH, I'm skeptical of the IPCC itself as a bunch of partisan hacks organized with an explicit agenda and admitted political biases, so I'm clearly to the right of him in that regard. I'm particularly skeptical of the scientific output of ideological monocultures in general and very skeptical of confirmation bias distorting results when the funding specifies the desired conclusions a priori. Aren't you? I personally give a lot more credence to folks like Bjorn Lomborg and Judith Curry on the topic of climate. Which is to say that like much of the Republican base I fall somewhere between "alarmist" and "denier" by just being a skeptic who's interested in a better quality of research and debate than we're generally seeing from the climate science community.
I'm more than a little tired of climate alarmists making claims that aren't substantiated by the actual data; especially when they ignore the uncertainties, exclude contrary data, make dubious attribution to climate change of events well within normal historical patterns, then overstate their conclusions without the many caveats found within the body of the research. Perhaps that sounds a touch extreme, but it's really nothing more than things Quico has likewise criticized the climate cult for here and there. Far too often alarmist activists HAVE compromised the integrity of climate science and ruined their credibility with the public by trying to manipulate rather than only inform. So my position on climate change policy is the same as for most controversial issues: I read the best arguments that I can find from both sides (which brought me here), occasionally give the data a look myself (I'm no climatologist, but I am an analyst), and hedge my bets against the worst case if it's affordable to do so.
AFAICT the data for anthropogenic climate change representing an imminent and severe threat to human life right now is still deeply uncertain. As Quico says, it's not "hair on fire" just yet and we can't often separate the signal from the noise for sure. Frankly, the case that the current climate changes are primarily anthropogenic is itself still quite uncertain. OTOH, climate is always changing and I like the idea of society having tech that ensures we aren't vulnerable to it changing in ways hostile to us, regardless whether the source of that change is natural or man-made. There's an excellent "energy abundance" and "air quality" case for nuclear power even aside from any climate considerations. There's an excellent "disaster prevention" case for developing geoengineering even aside from any attribution to climate change being anthropogenic or not.
It seems to me that most folks on this side aren't against the idea that things are gradually getting warmer per se, they're more against anti-capitalists using that as an excuse to demonize ordinary people, seize control of the economy, and condemn them to poverty (both energy and financial) with impractical policies that don't even ultimately do much regarding the supposed threat. When "Climate Change" is overwhelmingly represented politically by alarmists who already repeatedly made predictions proven false and wasted absurd sums of taxpayer money on 'green' boondoggles... Yeah, they're going to oppose "those people" and dismiss pretty much everything else they might say as just another power grab. It's kinda noteworthy that the European countries that DID try implementing climate policies that Republicans successfully opposed here have generally found themselves with damaged economies, mass protests, had to roll back at least some of those policies, and generally STILL didn't reduce emissions as much as the US, having had essentially no significant impact on climate models at all. I didn't think that opposing bad science and bad policies should be conflated with opposing good science and good policies.
To me it seems that there is indeed a chance that the current debate about climate change a a lot of to do about nothing. However there's a change that positive feedback mechanisms can make the world a much less inhabitable place rather quickly. It seems that a great many people are willing to take that chance, especially those who don't understand the significance of the data and aren't really experiencing very much pain at the moment.
Quico, this is a brilliant article. I am sure The Australian newspaper would publish it. Their lead journalists Nick Cater, Chris Kenny and others would just lap this up. It explains why Donald Trump was elected. These arguments are a grenade in the electoral debate. Ordinary voters see through the horseshit of high power bills. By contrast, the perverse corrupt incentives of the 'renewable' industry constrain them to fail to understand simple reality. This pervasive failure reflects the Upton Sinclair principle that you can't convince a man of something when his salary depends on not understanding it. A key implication is that climate policy has to be decoupled from carbon policy, as a basis to give priority to solar geoengineering to prevent tipping points.
I just shared this excellent essay with my Facebook friends and followers with the following text:
This explanation of Levelized Cost of Energy is the flip side of the value of "dispatchability" in electricity sources, which I've been nattering on about here for many years.
And the point that the pro-nuclear Quico Toro misses is that nuclear power also needs a dispatchable partner (like gas or coal or special peaking hydro) to keep the lights on in the real world.
Partly because we use about twice as much electricity at peak timescas at low-demand times, and partly because the often reliable nuclear stations are perfectly capable of shutting down for several years in a row – or just shutting down prematurely forever! — and leaving the grid to make do without.
In Ontario, for example, we survived SEVEN YEARS with NO electricity from the entire 4-reactor Pickering-A station. And a big multi-year "derating" of many stations when a neglected accident pathway was discovered after it fell off the experts' desk for decades.
In this regard, nuclear power looks a little like wind power in super slow motion.
Uh, OK. Sure. But you also have Pickering B, and Bruce and Darlington, and the James Bay hydro project and … and…. and…
Nuclear runs pretty damn consistently and it is pretty easy to do outages in low peak demand times like spring and fall. The idea that nuclear is somehow intermittent because there are occasional maintenance outages is just a silly argument by people who have never thought about how grids are designed historically.
Ratiomnalista, when we lost the output of a full 4-unit STATION for 7 YEARS, that was not just a little maintenance outage. I was a huge hole in our electricity supplies for much longer than any Dunkelflaute in the history of the planet. And most nuclear designs are vulnerable to huge and sudden de-ratings or shutdowns based on new analysis or a surprising nuclear incident halfway around the world.
Ontario gets more than half it's electricity from nuclear and not all of the reactors are on-line now to produce that amount of power. Six of eight at Pickering are active and I believe 4 will be refurbished and the remaining two moth-balled. Three of four are active at Darlington and the fourth due back on line relatively soon. There has never, NEVER been a significant incident at Darlington or Pickering. If you think wind and solar are viable alternatives to nukes and hydro, you are delusional. Maybe you are willing to freeze in the depths of a Canadian winter, I am not.
Yes, LCOE is just a shorthand and doesn't tell the whole story, without considering storage cost/options (not just batteries but all kinds of storage) the ability to shift demand, the need for and cost of additional transmission capacity (and/or "repowered" existing transmission lines), the externalities of various types of generation, as well as the ability to reduce intermittency by using a blend of sources and geographies. LCOE is a shorthand kind of like GDP is a shorthand. If I walk and cycle to work instead of driving, my quality of life goes way up, but GDP goes down (I'm not buying gasoline, I may get by with one less car for the family). But GDP is still a useful measure just as LCOE is.
It is complicated. From what I have seen, despite what true believers say it would be very expensive to run a grid 100% on wind and solar. But the cost is much lower to get most of the way there.
The world installed 440GW of solar PV last year. I don't think most places are using it because it is expensive. They are using it because it is distributed, scalable, easy to install and maintain, does not pollute their air, and it is now very cheap. If it is expensive in the USA, it is not because the modules or equipment are expensive when they leave the factory at wholesale level. It is expensive for the same reasons other things are in the US -- regulatory barriers, lawyers/permitting, NEPA, lack of competition, tariffs, and lots of resistance from those who see it as a threat (the entire fossil fuel industry).
Umm... there's one thing glaringly missing from these comparisons.... storage. With investment in large-scale batteries and/or pumped hydro, surplus power generated when wind and sun at their optimum can be used at a later date. The state of South Australia often suns on 100% renewables, thanks to a massive battery. The eastern states of Australia will soon have plenty of pumped hydro capacity through recent investment to upgrade the Snowy Mountains Hyrdo Scheme. No need to build new dams - just pump water back up the mountain using surplus power, and generate it again when it's needed. No need for your beloved nuclear. and very little need for fossil fuel backup. Factor that into your LCOE and see how you go.
I didn't want the post to sprawl, so I tried to keep it simple. But in the Lazard report battery storage is a *much* more expensive avenue than firming with combined cycle gas.
Quico, firming the grid with Combined Cycle Gas is almost as dumb as firming it with nuclear. In both cases you can't afford to keep the firming capacity idle while the intermittent generators are available. CC Gas is just like simple-cycle gas but with an extra cycle added when it's built (typically a steam turbine added to a gas turbine). IF it can run 24/7 "baseload", the extra mortgage cost will be paid off by the slightly higher efficiency. But firming capacity is on-call reserve capacity and never runs 24/7 baseload. So why would a sane person/grid invest in the extra cycle??
One of the dirty secrets of the electricity business is that old single-cycle (steam-turbine) coal-fired stations are the best firming capacity, even better than new gas turbines! They can run in "spinning reserve" mode at much lower power levels than gas turbines, which produce unacceptable NOx emissions when they idle below ~40% full capacity.
There is much too much foolish talk online about using relatively inflexible generators to "firm" capricious generators like wind and solar. IRL, inflexible generators like nuclear stations create their own need for dispatchable capacity, to match their 24/7 take-it-or-pay output to the grid's fluctuating demands.
Snowy 2 is about the biggest crock of horseshit ever. See Ted Woodley's demolition of the lies around its massive cost escalations and engineering failures. A starting point is his short interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddKy_dQIZ_o
Batteries can store for hours, but intermittency requires storage for weeks.
Agreed, though as with the fossil backup, the storage construction and maintenance costs should be accounted for in evaluating comparative costs. In addition, wherever fossil fuels are used, the cost of emissions also need to be accounted for.
My guess is that wind and solar will still win, but accurate and fully-inclusive numbers must be used.
The good thing is that this is actually really easy from a policy perspective, if we go about it the right way. The right way is to internalize the externalities, then let the market figure it out. That means that we need to ensure that the each type of power generating facility pays its full costs (which requires carbon taxes or something similar, plus regulations to restrict or charge for other sorts of environmental impacts), and avoid subsidizing any of them, then let the market work out the best energy mix.
Great explanation.
I find it maddening how Greens latch onto LCOE without really understanding it, and then when you explain why it is a very deceptive metric, it completely unphases them. They are very generous spending other people’s money.
W&S require vastly more new power lines than does nuclear, because the former, due to their low energy density and inherently land-gobbling physical characteristics, will have to be installed in far more places than the small number of nuclear plants that could be built instead. And those lines are so lovely to look at, don’t you think?
Very well explained. Now it's more understandable why LCOE is a complete scam right now. And more taking into account that the amortization of assets happens ALWAYS. Many activists should learn some accountability because if business follow the criteria they use for energy, many companies would be bankrupt.
One thing that is also missing; the costs of building and maintaining new powerlines which are often necessary for wind and solar. https://forestpolicypub.com/2023/08/16/transmission-line-build-out-across-the-west-impacts-to-wildfire-and-from-wildfire/
W&S require vastly more new power lines than does nuclear, because the former, due to their low energy density and inherently land-gobbling physical characteristics, will have to be installed in far more places than the small number of nuclear plants that could be built instead. And those lines are so lovely to look at, don’t you think?
Good explanation. Note what Chris Wright said during his confirmation hearing that intermittent renewables like solar and wind compare to an Uber ride that is cheap but the driver does not tell you where he will drop you off. Another issue, though, is the reality that long term capital costs 6-8% vs ~2-3% the previous 15 years.
Yeah- the longer you spend looking into energy the more LCOE is just total bunk. A beautiful metric made for the grid of the 1970s that just keeps on ticking forever…. At least the Lazard people have finally started making noise about how it shouldn’t be used for intermittent sources, but activists aren’t ever going to listen.
The “activists” are frothing-at-the-mouth oil haters, and are willing to lie through their teeth to promote their alternative agenda, regardless of its lack of merit. The “environmental” lobby is in the process of replicating the monumental damage they did by opposing nuclear beginning in the 70s — thereby contributing hundreds of billions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere that should have been avoided. Now, they’re responsible for an increasingly expensive and unreliable grid that is costing America jobs and prosperity, and robbing Americans in the form of needlessly high power bills. Oh, and this unreliable/unstable grid is also higher-carbon than it needs to be, because the junk heap of W&S will never work without reliable gas backup.
We could also get into the needless environmental degradation in the form of all the mines that will be required to build the huge quantity of W&S plants, and the enormous battery plants that, in the fantasy world of the “greens”, will make W&S work.
Is Moss Landing still on fire?
California spends ten billion dollars a year to subsidise the renewable rent seekers. Fat lot of good that did them in managing climate risks for Los Angeles. Switch all climate spending to the metric of cooling return on investment.
"Deep down, though, they must know LCOE is horseshit."
If only. I've run into far too many True Believers who are absolutely convinced that if wind/solar isn't providing ALL THE POWER the only possible explanation is that we have yet to build enough of it (or, at least slightly more reasonably, that we have yet to build enough battery storage to level out the hourly over/under capacity issues). I'd be curious what the LCOE would look like if intermittent sources were required to include enough battery backup to meet peak demand using only the excess they store themselves during peak generation hours (not relying on a backup fossil fuel site at all).
True believers in a renewable energy transition are idiots. See Simon Michaux's analysis of battery backup costs, let alone metal costs and supply.
Link?
Michaux has a lot of papers that are free on the internet, eg https://www.akadeemia.ee/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/simon-michaux.-30.05.2022.pdf
Title ASSESSMENTS OF THE PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS TO
GLOBALLY PHASE OUT FOSSIL FUELS
Absolutely outstanding post Quico. The most cogent explanation I’ve yet seen of why and how LCOE’s are utter garbage. How is it that no politicians — even those with no energy expertise, let alone any grasp of the fraud embedded in LCOE’s — are capable of questioning why W&S need these massive subsidies at the same time that they are allegedly so cheap??
Trump questions it. Chris Wright questions it. Peter Dutton questions it. That is a main part of why they are winning.
Of course you’re correct … I was referring to the clueless class who run, for example, the once-great State of California.
First, intermittent renewable energy generation which is usually located far from demand centers, while clean, cannot possibly power America. Only nuclear generation can. We should be using the sites of current coal fired power stations which have in place transmission and cooling infrastructure and are close to locations where energy is needed to build new nuclear capacity. Democrats largely reject new nuclear power plants.
Secondly, we are not on track to reduce carbon emissions adequately to halt disastrous climate change. At this stage of the problem only geoengineering can save humanity. Republicans largely reject geoengineering and because they believe in crazy conspiracy theories refuse to support even research into how it might help. With both parties standing in the way of necessary solutions to the looming climate disaster we are clearly fucked.
Republicans largely reject geoengineering? Geoengineering in general, or just the impractically expensive technologies that Quico here has repeatedly pointed out are far too expensive to deploy at the relevant scale? Which Republicans? I'm genuinely curious.
I'm a Republican. I support geoengineering (at least, I'm interested in promoting field testing of the salt and iron techniques Quico advocates so effectively for here). I also support substantial investments in ramping up Nuclear power (both current tech and investing in next Gen). I haven't gotten much pushback on any of those views from the Right (aside from occasional free market purists who reject government subsidies or investment in ANY tech ala "Government should not be picking winners and losers, let the markets decide"). I'm honestly not seeing Republicans be the obstacle here.
Steven: It’s a general impression I have formed from mostly reading comments on the issue. Most of those who engage in conspiracy theories seem to me to fall on the far right, of course, the far left also have their share of wackos.
I don't think we can say either Republicans or Democrats are for or against climate repair. It's worse than that: the idea is so far outside the Overton Window, they don't even have a position on it. Don't have to. It's on no radars.
Still, doomerism is lazy and wrong. We're not on a great trajectory, it's going to take some time to recalibrate. But nobody's hair is on fire.
Yeah, about that.. multiple studies find that the only sense in which partisanship significantly affects overall susceptibility to conspiracy theories is that partisanship itself is somewhat correlated with it, it's not a Right/Left issue. This is in line with more general findings that partisanship is associated with greater willingness to associate negative attributes and assume negative motivations to the opposing side. For example https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-022-09812-3
Incidentally, you might check out Campbell and Kay, 2014; Kahan, et al., 2015, for studies suggesting that conservatives favor solar geoengineering for its perceived ability to offer a technological solution that avoids regulatory actions and emission cuts.
AFAICT, Quico occasionally self-sabotages inadvertantly with messaging that signals membership on the Left (perceived partisan alignment of the speaker DOES significantly impact support for geoengineering policies in both directions), but the actual policies advocated here are usually favorably received on my side of the aisle.
Steven: Thanks. I will rewrite that based on your comment. There’s still plenty to criticize the right when it comes to climate change like their mostly outright denial of its existence. 😎
Shrug. Last I heard Trump's nominee for Secretary of Energy largely reiterated reasonable points well in line with the latest IPCC findings during his confirmation hearings, so... That may be another stereotype of yours that's due for an update in light of new evidence.
OTOH, I'm skeptical of the IPCC itself as a bunch of partisan hacks organized with an explicit agenda and admitted political biases, so I'm clearly to the right of him in that regard. I'm particularly skeptical of the scientific output of ideological monocultures in general and very skeptical of confirmation bias distorting results when the funding specifies the desired conclusions a priori. Aren't you? I personally give a lot more credence to folks like Bjorn Lomborg and Judith Curry on the topic of climate. Which is to say that like much of the Republican base I fall somewhere between "alarmist" and "denier" by just being a skeptic who's interested in a better quality of research and debate than we're generally seeing from the climate science community.
I'm more than a little tired of climate alarmists making claims that aren't substantiated by the actual data; especially when they ignore the uncertainties, exclude contrary data, make dubious attribution to climate change of events well within normal historical patterns, then overstate their conclusions without the many caveats found within the body of the research. Perhaps that sounds a touch extreme, but it's really nothing more than things Quico has likewise criticized the climate cult for here and there. Far too often alarmist activists HAVE compromised the integrity of climate science and ruined their credibility with the public by trying to manipulate rather than only inform. So my position on climate change policy is the same as for most controversial issues: I read the best arguments that I can find from both sides (which brought me here), occasionally give the data a look myself (I'm no climatologist, but I am an analyst), and hedge my bets against the worst case if it's affordable to do so.
AFAICT the data for anthropogenic climate change representing an imminent and severe threat to human life right now is still deeply uncertain. As Quico says, it's not "hair on fire" just yet and we can't often separate the signal from the noise for sure. Frankly, the case that the current climate changes are primarily anthropogenic is itself still quite uncertain. OTOH, climate is always changing and I like the idea of society having tech that ensures we aren't vulnerable to it changing in ways hostile to us, regardless whether the source of that change is natural or man-made. There's an excellent "energy abundance" and "air quality" case for nuclear power even aside from any climate considerations. There's an excellent "disaster prevention" case for developing geoengineering even aside from any attribution to climate change being anthropogenic or not.
It seems to me that most folks on this side aren't against the idea that things are gradually getting warmer per se, they're more against anti-capitalists using that as an excuse to demonize ordinary people, seize control of the economy, and condemn them to poverty (both energy and financial) with impractical policies that don't even ultimately do much regarding the supposed threat. When "Climate Change" is overwhelmingly represented politically by alarmists who already repeatedly made predictions proven false and wasted absurd sums of taxpayer money on 'green' boondoggles... Yeah, they're going to oppose "those people" and dismiss pretty much everything else they might say as just another power grab. It's kinda noteworthy that the European countries that DID try implementing climate policies that Republicans successfully opposed here have generally found themselves with damaged economies, mass protests, had to roll back at least some of those policies, and generally STILL didn't reduce emissions as much as the US, having had essentially no significant impact on climate models at all. I didn't think that opposing bad science and bad policies should be conflated with opposing good science and good policies.
To me it seems that there is indeed a chance that the current debate about climate change a a lot of to do about nothing. However there's a change that positive feedback mechanisms can make the world a much less inhabitable place rather quickly. It seems that a great many people are willing to take that chance, especially those who don't understand the significance of the data and aren't really experiencing very much pain at the moment.
Excellent commentary.
Quico, this is a brilliant article. I am sure The Australian newspaper would publish it. Their lead journalists Nick Cater, Chris Kenny and others would just lap this up. It explains why Donald Trump was elected. These arguments are a grenade in the electoral debate. Ordinary voters see through the horseshit of high power bills. By contrast, the perverse corrupt incentives of the 'renewable' industry constrain them to fail to understand simple reality. This pervasive failure reflects the Upton Sinclair principle that you can't convince a man of something when his salary depends on not understanding it. A key implication is that climate policy has to be decoupled from carbon policy, as a basis to give priority to solar geoengineering to prevent tipping points.
I just shared this excellent essay with my Facebook friends and followers with the following text:
This explanation of Levelized Cost of Energy is the flip side of the value of "dispatchability" in electricity sources, which I've been nattering on about here for many years.
And the point that the pro-nuclear Quico Toro misses is that nuclear power also needs a dispatchable partner (like gas or coal or special peaking hydro) to keep the lights on in the real world.
Partly because we use about twice as much electricity at peak timescas at low-demand times, and partly because the often reliable nuclear stations are perfectly capable of shutting down for several years in a row – or just shutting down prematurely forever! — and leaving the grid to make do without.
In Ontario, for example, we survived SEVEN YEARS with NO electricity from the entire 4-reactor Pickering-A station. And a big multi-year "derating" of many stations when a neglected accident pathway was discovered after it fell off the experts' desk for decades.
In this regard, nuclear power looks a little like wind power in super slow motion.
Comments welcome as always.
Uh, OK. Sure. But you also have Pickering B, and Bruce and Darlington, and the James Bay hydro project and … and…. and…
Nuclear runs pretty damn consistently and it is pretty easy to do outages in low peak demand times like spring and fall. The idea that nuclear is somehow intermittent because there are occasional maintenance outages is just a silly argument by people who have never thought about how grids are designed historically.
Ratiomnalista, when we lost the output of a full 4-unit STATION for 7 YEARS, that was not just a little maintenance outage. I was a huge hole in our electricity supplies for much longer than any Dunkelflaute in the history of the planet. And most nuclear designs are vulnerable to huge and sudden de-ratings or shutdowns based on new analysis or a surprising nuclear incident halfway around the world.
If I’m not mistaken, nuclear plants have the highest utilization rates of any power source, including gas.
Ontario gets more than half it's electricity from nuclear and not all of the reactors are on-line now to produce that amount of power. Six of eight at Pickering are active and I believe 4 will be refurbished and the remaining two moth-balled. Three of four are active at Darlington and the fourth due back on line relatively soon. There has never, NEVER been a significant incident at Darlington or Pickering. If you think wind and solar are viable alternatives to nukes and hydro, you are delusional. Maybe you are willing to freeze in the depths of a Canadian winter, I am not.
Quico, I shared your analysis with climate colleagues who support accelerating the renewable transition, and received this counter argument.
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/is-renewable-energy-cheaper-than
I would find it helpful to see your comments on the assertions here, which I think contain significantly wrong assumptions.
Yes, LCOE is just a shorthand and doesn't tell the whole story, without considering storage cost/options (not just batteries but all kinds of storage) the ability to shift demand, the need for and cost of additional transmission capacity (and/or "repowered" existing transmission lines), the externalities of various types of generation, as well as the ability to reduce intermittency by using a blend of sources and geographies. LCOE is a shorthand kind of like GDP is a shorthand. If I walk and cycle to work instead of driving, my quality of life goes way up, but GDP goes down (I'm not buying gasoline, I may get by with one less car for the family). But GDP is still a useful measure just as LCOE is.
It is complicated. From what I have seen, despite what true believers say it would be very expensive to run a grid 100% on wind and solar. But the cost is much lower to get most of the way there.
The world installed 440GW of solar PV last year. I don't think most places are using it because it is expensive. They are using it because it is distributed, scalable, easy to install and maintain, does not pollute their air, and it is now very cheap. If it is expensive in the USA, it is not because the modules or equipment are expensive when they leave the factory at wholesale level. It is expensive for the same reasons other things are in the US -- regulatory barriers, lawyers/permitting, NEPA, lack of competition, tariffs, and lots of resistance from those who see it as a threat (the entire fossil fuel industry).
Umm... there's one thing glaringly missing from these comparisons.... storage. With investment in large-scale batteries and/or pumped hydro, surplus power generated when wind and sun at their optimum can be used at a later date. The state of South Australia often suns on 100% renewables, thanks to a massive battery. The eastern states of Australia will soon have plenty of pumped hydro capacity through recent investment to upgrade the Snowy Mountains Hyrdo Scheme. No need to build new dams - just pump water back up the mountain using surplus power, and generate it again when it's needed. No need for your beloved nuclear. and very little need for fossil fuel backup. Factor that into your LCOE and see how you go.
I didn't want the post to sprawl, so I tried to keep it simple. But in the Lazard report battery storage is a *much* more expensive avenue than firming with combined cycle gas.
Quico, firming the grid with Combined Cycle Gas is almost as dumb as firming it with nuclear. In both cases you can't afford to keep the firming capacity idle while the intermittent generators are available. CC Gas is just like simple-cycle gas but with an extra cycle added when it's built (typically a steam turbine added to a gas turbine). IF it can run 24/7 "baseload", the extra mortgage cost will be paid off by the slightly higher efficiency. But firming capacity is on-call reserve capacity and never runs 24/7 baseload. So why would a sane person/grid invest in the extra cycle??
One of the dirty secrets of the electricity business is that old single-cycle (steam-turbine) coal-fired stations are the best firming capacity, even better than new gas turbines! They can run in "spinning reserve" mode at much lower power levels than gas turbines, which produce unacceptable NOx emissions when they idle below ~40% full capacity.
There is much too much foolish talk online about using relatively inflexible generators to "firm" capricious generators like wind and solar. IRL, inflexible generators like nuclear stations create their own need for dispatchable capacity, to match their 24/7 take-it-or-pay output to the grid's fluctuating demands.
Snowy 2 is about the biggest crock of horseshit ever. See Ted Woodley's demolition of the lies around its massive cost escalations and engineering failures. A starting point is his short interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddKy_dQIZ_o
Batteries can store for hours, but intermittency requires storage for weeks.
I would like to see the financials on that 100% battery deal. I bet it was ~0% interest rate.
Agreed, though as with the fossil backup, the storage construction and maintenance costs should be accounted for in evaluating comparative costs. In addition, wherever fossil fuels are used, the cost of emissions also need to be accounted for.
My guess is that wind and solar will still win, but accurate and fully-inclusive numbers must be used.
The good thing is that this is actually really easy from a policy perspective, if we go about it the right way. The right way is to internalize the externalities, then let the market figure it out. That means that we need to ensure that the each type of power generating facility pays its full costs (which requires carbon taxes or something similar, plus regulations to restrict or charge for other sorts of environmental impacts), and avoid subsidizing any of them, then let the market work out the best energy mix.
Can someone see that the influential substacker Noah Smith sees this? (Noahpinion)