"There are places around the world where it is possible to locate a 22-sqaure mile utility scale solar farm, such as the Bhadla Solar Park pictured below from satellite, which is in the desert of western Rajasthan, India. That massive solar park has a capacity of about 2.25 gigawatts, which in terms of generation (assuming a capacity factor of ~30%) would be about the same as a single 700 MW nuclear facility."
In addition to bad news about Copenhagen Atomics and the Colorado Rockies ;-), I'm afraid I have some bad news about this assessment. If one goes the the absolutely mind-bogglingly-good "Global Solar Atlas" website...
...one can actually model the Bhadla Solar Park to get an estimate of the annual electricity generated from the Bhadla Solar Park. I did that. I plugged in a capacity of 2.25 GW, and got an annual electrical generation from photovoltaics of:
3884.718 gigawatt-hours per year.
If one divides that by the capacity of the plant of 2.25 GW, times 8766 hours in a year, one gets a value of:
3884.718/(2.25 x 8766) = approximately ***20 percent***. So the average output over the year is only 2.25 GW x ***20*** percent = 450 megawatts. Not 700 MW. (Sorry about that!)
Note that this is a "new location" value...it does not include the degradation that would occur over time.
Sooo...lets say a nuclear plant has a 90 percent capacity factor. That means a nuclear plant would produce 2.25 GW x 90 percent = approximately 2 gigawatts, averaged over the year. In contrast, the Bhadla Solar Park, even though the same 2.25 GW capacity, is only producing 450 megawatts, averaged over the whole year. And again, that's when the Bhadla Solar Park is brand new, not when it has aged.
I concluded that youroptimism for solar neglects key considerations. There are geographical areas and niche applications where it may make sense to rely on solar. New York’s high latitude and cloudiness is one location where it does not. I do not disagree that it is scalable and safe. His arguments for solar cheapness ignore the expensive challenge to integrate solar energy into the electric grid when and where it is needed. Full consideration of the ancillary services requirements suggests that it will not be simple either. When enormous tracts of land are covered up with solar panels I think that its popularity will wane. I am not a New York solar energy optimist.
Comparing Russian natural gas and Chinese solar is not appropriate. Natural gas is a fuel and more broadly a consumable. Solar is the power plant and more broadly CAPEX. If a consumable becomes unavailable the supply drops to zero after one inventory turn which for natural gas is one winter. For CAPEX the product becomes unavailable after one lifecycle which for solar is predicted to be 25 years.
We have many consumables that are largely sourced from China, which will be a much larger problem than solar. I agree that rare earth's are one of those consumables, which should be considered.
The really under appreciated part of comparing an embargo against China vs. Russia is that China is major not importer of the two most important consumables oil and food.
Except solar is pretty much useless without a buffer which supplies most of the system energy. So essentially solar = natural gas. Theoretically it could reduce NG usage slightly, but in practice that is dubious. So solar consumes vast resources while providing very little useful energy.
Nuclear does consume fuel but it is far less than solar consumes material over its full lifecycle.
If they really believed in their paper they would release it for public scrutiny. Why are they hiding it from free public release. If they were honest they would have a webpage where energy analysts could post a critique of their paper and thereupon they could respond to that.
Nothing new that solar displaces coal. But typically it actually is displaced with gas or biomass. If there is sufficient reservoir hydro to buffer the solar then of course they can use solar to displace some coal directly. Otherwise the evidence is that overall solar is NOT displacing fossil. And when it does in some niche locations, that comes at a much higher cost than better alternatives, i.e. supercritical coal, CCGT, Hydro or Nuclear.
Chile's geography, especially towards the central part of the country where the majority of the people live is subject to inversion. Santiago's air pollution used to be horrible, then the government adopted stricter emissions for automobiles and banned wood burning stoves. The copper mines nearby remain a source of air pollution but there's doubt closing the nearby coal plants made a difference. The solar farms are located a few hundred kilometers north in the Atacama so clouds are virtually not an issue.
The country also has virtually no natural gas reserves and instead has to get it from Argentina, so up until recently their power generation was either coal or small amounts of hydro. Of course there was a plan to build HidroAysén in Patagonia but that was scrapped due to environmental concerns - much of it coming from the Global North.
Thanks for that fact based reasoning on solar energy versus the more heretical approach of the sun worshippers. While you mentioned the supply chain challenges more in passing, it did conjure up how Europe decided to depend on Russian natural gas only to have that become its Achilles heel once sides were picked in the Ukraine conflict. Today, the solar supply chain goes through China no matter how you slice it, but especially worrisome is in the area of the rare earth materials. We really cannot afford to outsource our key materials needs to China especially in light of how our country is playing hardball around key access to microchip technology. The economic war the U.S. is having with China is not something to brush under the rug when considering a key energy source. If we took our investments in solar and redirected to nuclear and education around those (several nuclear models to choose from) technologies, we would like reduce the footprint needed to produce more power that we will by taking vast swaths of land and dedicate those to solar facilities. Ultimately, with the emphasis on all things electric (which does not feel like our central organizers are being thoughtful of fault tolerant backups like natural gas for things like water heaters and stoves), we will need all electricity creating energy sources on deck, but what we choose to emphasize will play a role in our ability to support the central planners dreams and aspirations.
We only need them all on deck due to the rejection of nuclear. A combo of nuclear and natural gas would give us all the clean energy we would ever need. We could then remove the monstrosities across the great outdoors before the disposal of all that material becomes a problem.
Coming late to the party and overwhelmed by all the comments that mitigate Roger's enthusiasm, I would like to spell a few "implacable laws" that complement the mentioned "Iron law of climate policy".
Beyond the imperative never to contradict the principles of thermodynamics, the energy sector must obey some laws.
All of these have huge economic consequences (doubling costs and multiplying badly used investments) that the PV and wind enthusiasts tend to neglect or dismiss.
A. Electricity generation is not electricity supply.
Whatever the method of production — continuous or intermittent — the consumer must be supplied with electricity without interruption.
It follows that intermittent production is not able to ensure supply.
B. Electricity cannot be stored in quantity.
Production must correspond exactly to the instantaneous demand.
To build up a reserve, electricity must be converted into an energy vector of a different nature, and then reinstated in the reverse direction. Losses occur at each of these stages, and the network must carry a multiplied amount of traffic.
C. The law of intermittency load factor.
The load factor CF is the average utilisation rate of the nominal capacity of a facility over a given period, usually one year. A CF of 30% is not realistic, even in Rajasthan or Arizona. In Germany, a costly PV champion, it's only 11%. For solar, the difference of daily insolation between Summer and Winter exacerbates this issue.
Any activity consisting of using a resource that is obtained intermittently will only have a load factor lower than that of the intermittent source, will have to operate synchronously with the instantaneous variations of the source, and must have at least the same rated power as the source.
This means, for example, that the peak production of the 2.25 GW Rajasthan plant must be absorbed by a storage facility (batteries or pump-storage), and that transport lines must also meet this power.
D. The negative law of intermittent sources.
When any proportion of an intermittent production is added to a system that must operate without interruption, it destabilizes the system and increases its costs.
E. An additional factor in relation with wind or solar must also be considered: the huge territory they are taking hostage to produce such diluted energy.
Production must correspond exactly to the instantaneous demand."
Electricity is not presently stored in quantity. That does not mean is "cannot" be stored in quantity. It's likely that, circa 2050, more than 100 million EVs will be on the road in the U.S. alone, averaging 40+ kWh of batteries. That's more than 4,000,000 GWh of battery storage, or one hundred nuclear plants of gigawatt size, for 40 hours.
And if the average automotive battery is used for 10 years, and then traded for a new one at 80 percent capacity, that will mean 10 million new automotive batteries at 32 kWh of capacity will likely be available to the grid every year, starting in 2060.
Obviously, not all cars on the road will ever be giving all their electricity to the grid at any time. And obviously, even the old batteries will eventually not be able to be recharged enough to provide useful power. But the amount of electricity storage available from automotive batteries alone will be mind-boggling, compared to current levels. (We're easily talking about 100-1000+ times current levels.)
And that does *not* include grid-scale batteries that will be added.
It seems likely that more GHG emission reduction would result from a given amount of investment in natural gas capacity to replace and avoid new coal capacity, than the same amount invested in natural gas plus solar and also avoiding coal capacity - due to the extra infrastructure cost of solar. personal solar is fine, without subsidies people will find what works. but large scaling threatens habitat. we may have aota until constraints are discovered and energy policy matures, but once there is better understanding it is quite important for growth of wealth and knowledge and conservation of environment that energy source types are selected that provide large increase of electricity and industrial heat to power emerging cloud-intelligent economy, and are most concentrated in their mining/transport/operation impact on environment. Globally generally that will likely point to N2N, the fastest increase of natural gas capacity to avoid hazards of new coal capacity and the land and marine impact of harvesters (solar, wind). While the fastest technology development is applied to fission, so that construction cost can become scalable and output temperature can be increased. Once developed fission should replace all large new capacity so we can intensify energy production.
Solar is only cheap due to subsidies, and it's not the solar panel cost that governs the cost of providing reliable energy from them. If, by saying that solar has a sunny future, you mean that lots of solar panels will be sold and installed, I'd agree. Somehow that train seems to have left the station. But to stretch that analogy too far, that train is gonna run out of fuel, or crash, but it will not get us to a significantly cleaner energy future. We seem doomed to spending a huge sum on new solar, but it's not going to end up making much difference in the ways we want it to. And by the time we come to accept that as a society and stop running headlong toward even more deployment of it, everything we have installed now will need to be decommissioned and we don't have a plan for that so...
All of this is just my grump old man view of things, based on what I've read and my life experience, from both inside and outside my tribe-bubble.
I really appreciate your posts and I'm glad you felt it was safe to put this one up. I just don't think it's one of your better ones :-).
Nuclear is more competitive in countries like South Korea where fossil fuels must be imported. In the U.S. we have vast supplies of cheap fossil fuels, making nuclear less competitive. We also have the no nothing anti nukes.
Way too optimistic. A number of experts, including Goering G&R, are warning of peak Shale in the US. While the EPA, Demonrats, UN, Globalists are seeking to ban coal use. Thing about nuclear, when the shit hits the fan, its too late to say: "hey, let's build nuclear". You start now and you start big, like order 2 dozen NPPs at once. No pussyfooting around. Force the supply chain and workforce to be developed with guaranteed demand.
Thank you for this essay, sir. It is not often I disagree with you, but in this case, I make an exception. Solar is little more than a “niche” source, similar to that of wind that you described so nicely in a recent posting. You discussed three major reasons for your bullish attitude, all of which are valid to some degree and certainly respectable. I think your argument for “cheap and getting cheaper” is flawed because it does not account for its terribly unreliable availability.
It's been said that the only two things that are constant are death and taxes. (Geologists would add, “and climate change.”) But the other constant, one that is seldom discussed, is population growth. With that growth comes the demand for resources; more land, more water, more food, more minerals, and so forth. Yet, we live on a planet with finite resources. History has taught us that we are obligated to use those resources in a responsible manner, one that maximizes production and usefulness but reduces waste.
On the energy density ladder, wind is barely off the ground, but solar is only marginally better, and both are orders of magnitude less than fossil and nuclear. This means that more of those finite resources are needed to convert the energy needed for societies to thrive. Solar needs a lot of land, and a lot more steel than even wind needs. And, the waste from solar is toxic and will require advanced disposal, again, more land.
Solar may have a place in the energy wheel; small solar panels for traffic signals or pipeline monitoring; roof top solar in isolated areas, etc. Space, where land use on the Moon is not a limiting factor. But to power society, I don’t think so.
The “push” is for a more sustainable future, as it should be. Comparatively speaking, solar is less sustainable than its alternatives because it is a resource hog. If it is to be a bridge, my only hope is that it is a simple span rather than a complex truss like the Key Bridge.
Thanks again for your work! It is always a learning experience.
Dr. Pielke - I'm amazed at your enthusiasm for solar energy, which is useful at a small, individual user level, but minimally useful at an industrial scale. First, on a 25/7 basis, it produces power only about 20% of the time, and requires a backup system to generate energy when the sun is not shining. The cost of solar energy must include the cost of the backup system, so the cost of solar panels is virtually meaningless as an isolated item. In reality, solar energy in actual use is the most expensive mode available - see the costs of electricity in all the places which have embraced solar - California, Germany, and Denmark. The overall costs of solar are 2-3x those of natural gas.
Secondly you tout the benefits of a huge solar installation (22 sq miles). This is equal to 14,000 acres. By comparison a nuclear of fossil fuel plant can be built on about 10 acres, a 1400:1 space need. To provide enough energy from solar to meet real needs we'd have to give up substantial farmland. What are you going to eat then?
Lastly, solar has a short life span - in reality about 15 years from actual experience, and every year the efficiency of the panels degrades by a few percent. By contrast nuclear can run for 80-100 years in stable fashion. No one has yet addressed the ultimate disposition of the old solar panels, which would be of enormous size and containing several hazardous metals. The issue of finding and mining enough of these metals for the initial construction of the panels is degrading huge tracts of land.
Nothing about solar is positive except that the fuel is theoretically free. When this small advantage is compared to everything else, it should be a non-starter in the mix.
Everyone seems to be missing the fact that the only reasons solar is growing are the production and investment tax credits paid by the citizens of this country to support this industry. Add in solar RECS and renewable mandates. The industry would implode without these subsidies paid for by poor people to placate the rich. Every project looks wonderful to Paul when Peter is paying for it
I do not disagree with your assessment of wind vs solar prospects, but a true AOTA strategy encourages all avoidance of CO2 emissions equally and does not require us to be more or less pessimistic about one technology over another.
This does not mean that people should not write about the potentials and the downsides of one technology or another. [I am far from criticizing this pro-solar post.] But the point is to judge each by their potential to reduce net emissions, not to be better or worse that some other technology.
"Another challenge: There’s far more solar power available in summer than in winter, and no battery today can store electricity for months to manage those seasonal disparities."
In principle the excess solar (or wind) energy that is produced at peak (at near zero marginal cost) coud be "stored" by removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
"Do we also want to talk about the environmental impact of mining lithium for example?"
Photovoltaics don't use lithium, so there's no need to talk about mining lithium when talking about photovoltaics.
And in reality, the "mining" of lithium is changing so fast, that it doesn't even make sense to talk much about that aspect of battery electric vehicles....at least without also looking at possible future developments.
For example, here's an article that discusses how "produced water" from fracking (which is essentially the unwanted water that comes up with the oil) could be a significant source of lithium in the U.S.:
There are lots of lithium resources, including seawater. But ramping up production to the scale required for BEVs & Utility Energy Storage is not feasible in anywhere near the proposed time frames.
Lithium just being one material that needs massive expansion, also nickel, copper, rare earths, cobalt, manganese, graphite & aluminum. Many of those minerals are mined in unstable countries, subject to boycotts, wars and/or political impediments.
Even without that, it typically takes 10yrs to develop a new mine and only after exploration ramps up to find new mineral resources. Which starts in universities, training more geologists, mining engineers and geophysicists. The energy transition being touted by the Globalists or the Globalitarian Misanthropists, as they are being called, is a pipe dream and will result in disaster.
So batteries to store solar energy do not contain lithium? Ah ok, you definitively qualify yourself. Obviously everything that your ideology virus supports is good and rapidly changing for good. You are either a troll or a champion of misinformation. Your choice. Thank you, no need to reply.
I probably got my mechanical engineering degree, with coursework focusing on energy production (nuclear engineering, solar energy engineering, electrical power generation from coal and natural gas, geothermal energy production) when you were either in grade school or diapers.
And I spent most of my 30+ years in mechanical and environmental engineering studying the environmental impacts of energy production and use. I've quite literally forgotten more about energy production, and its resultant environmental impacts, than you will likely ever learn in the rest of your life.
For example, if I asked you to compare the environmental impacts of the lithium mining in major lithium producing countries, could you write even a single sentence without doing an Internet search?
You are an energy professional, I am a financial professional. So what? You want to tell me that you own the truth? No you don’t. Photovoltaics need to store energy unless you want to rely on the grid; and to store energy batteries are needed. The point is not about lithium per se but it is the concept of clean energy that in reality is not clean at all but people conveniently ignore the environmental impact. It is an epistemological issue or in economic terms people focus on “what is seen” and ZERO on “what is not seen” (read some Bastiat and you will get wiser). Obviously the amount of economic vested interest, I was about to write corruption, in solar and wind is gigantic and there are plenty of “useful idiots” pushing it with zero logic.
Important note: My name is on the patent largely via the generosity of Scott H. Goodwin, who was the principal investigator behind the idea. My contribution to his idea was modest.
"You want to tell me that you own the truth?"
No, I want to tell you that photovoltaics don't "require" lithium. Because they don't. And anyone who had knowledge about photovoltaics and storage of the energy they generate would tell you that.
I already covered just a few ways that do *not* involve batteries that can store energy from photovoltaics. I didn't even *touch* the subject of batteries for grid storage of electricity that don't involve lithium. There batteries based on sodium, and batteries based on iron, for example:
And I did not even cover the possibility that electricity from photovoltaics could simply *not be stored at all*. That is, to use electricity from photovoltaics when they are available, and simply use other sources when electricity from photovoltaics aren't available. That's routinely done all over the world.
"It is an epistemological issue or in economic terms people focus on 'what is seen' and ZERO on 'what is not seen' (read some Bastiat and you will get wiser)."
I'm very familiar with Bastiat's point about broken glass and "what is seen" and "what is not seen." Probably because, while I've taken some courses in economics at the university level, you clearly have never taken a course in mechanical engineering related to energy generation and storage at the university level. So before you advise *me* on what to do to "get wiser," I recommend you actually try to educate yourself about electrical energy generation and storage.
As an aside, I would highly recommend Ernest Schneyder's book, "The War Below," which discusses the problems faced by the mining industry and the energy transition. Very good presentation of the tradeoffs.
Thanks again for the smack down! You were far more polite than I would have been.
"There are places around the world where it is possible to locate a 22-sqaure mile utility scale solar farm, such as the Bhadla Solar Park pictured below from satellite, which is in the desert of western Rajasthan, India. That massive solar park has a capacity of about 2.25 gigawatts, which in terms of generation (assuming a capacity factor of ~30%) would be about the same as a single 700 MW nuclear facility."
In addition to bad news about Copenhagen Atomics and the Colorado Rockies ;-), I'm afraid I have some bad news about this assessment. If one goes the the absolutely mind-bogglingly-good "Global Solar Atlas" website...
https://globalsolaratlas.info/map
...one can actually model the Bhadla Solar Park to get an estimate of the annual electricity generated from the Bhadla Solar Park. I did that. I plugged in a capacity of 2.25 GW, and got an annual electrical generation from photovoltaics of:
3884.718 gigawatt-hours per year.
If one divides that by the capacity of the plant of 2.25 GW, times 8766 hours in a year, one gets a value of:
3884.718/(2.25 x 8766) = approximately ***20 percent***. So the average output over the year is only 2.25 GW x ***20*** percent = 450 megawatts. Not 700 MW. (Sorry about that!)
Note that this is a "new location" value...it does not include the degradation that would occur over time.
Sooo...lets say a nuclear plant has a 90 percent capacity factor. That means a nuclear plant would produce 2.25 GW x 90 percent = approximately 2 gigawatts, averaged over the year. In contrast, the Bhadla Solar Park, even though the same 2.25 GW capacity, is only producing 450 megawatts, averaged over the whole year. And again, that's when the Bhadla Solar Park is brand new, not when it has aged.
I disagree with bullishness for solar in the context of New York’s net-zero transition plan. I documented my reasons in a post at my blog. (https://pragmaticenvironmentalistofnewyork.blog/2024/05/14/roger-pilke-jr-bullish-on-solar/)
I concluded that youroptimism for solar neglects key considerations. There are geographical areas and niche applications where it may make sense to rely on solar. New York’s high latitude and cloudiness is one location where it does not. I do not disagree that it is scalable and safe. His arguments for solar cheapness ignore the expensive challenge to integrate solar energy into the electric grid when and where it is needed. Full consideration of the ancillary services requirements suggests that it will not be simple either. When enormous tracts of land are covered up with solar panels I think that its popularity will wane. I am not a New York solar energy optimist.
Comparing Russian natural gas and Chinese solar is not appropriate. Natural gas is a fuel and more broadly a consumable. Solar is the power plant and more broadly CAPEX. If a consumable becomes unavailable the supply drops to zero after one inventory turn which for natural gas is one winter. For CAPEX the product becomes unavailable after one lifecycle which for solar is predicted to be 25 years.
We have many consumables that are largely sourced from China, which will be a much larger problem than solar. I agree that rare earth's are one of those consumables, which should be considered.
The really under appreciated part of comparing an embargo against China vs. Russia is that China is major not importer of the two most important consumables oil and food.
Except solar is pretty much useless without a buffer which supplies most of the system energy. So essentially solar = natural gas. Theoretically it could reduce NG usage slightly, but in practice that is dubious. So solar consumes vast resources while providing very little useful energy.
Nuclear does consume fuel but it is far less than solar consumes material over its full lifecycle.
Interesting new paper finds solar displaced coal in Chile and had measurable air quality and health benefits:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069624000731
If they really believed in their paper they would release it for public scrutiny. Why are they hiding it from free public release. If they were honest they would have a webpage where energy analysts could post a critique of their paper and thereupon they could respond to that.
Nothing new that solar displaces coal. But typically it actually is displaced with gas or biomass. If there is sufficient reservoir hydro to buffer the solar then of course they can use solar to displace some coal directly. Otherwise the evidence is that overall solar is NOT displacing fossil. And when it does in some niche locations, that comes at a much higher cost than better alternatives, i.e. supercritical coal, CCGT, Hydro or Nuclear.
Chile's geography, especially towards the central part of the country where the majority of the people live is subject to inversion. Santiago's air pollution used to be horrible, then the government adopted stricter emissions for automobiles and banned wood burning stoves. The copper mines nearby remain a source of air pollution but there's doubt closing the nearby coal plants made a difference. The solar farms are located a few hundred kilometers north in the Atacama so clouds are virtually not an issue.
The country also has virtually no natural gas reserves and instead has to get it from Argentina, so up until recently their power generation was either coal or small amounts of hydro. Of course there was a plan to build HidroAysén in Patagonia but that was scrapped due to environmental concerns - much of it coming from the Global North.
Thanks for that fact based reasoning on solar energy versus the more heretical approach of the sun worshippers. While you mentioned the supply chain challenges more in passing, it did conjure up how Europe decided to depend on Russian natural gas only to have that become its Achilles heel once sides were picked in the Ukraine conflict. Today, the solar supply chain goes through China no matter how you slice it, but especially worrisome is in the area of the rare earth materials. We really cannot afford to outsource our key materials needs to China especially in light of how our country is playing hardball around key access to microchip technology. The economic war the U.S. is having with China is not something to brush under the rug when considering a key energy source. If we took our investments in solar and redirected to nuclear and education around those (several nuclear models to choose from) technologies, we would like reduce the footprint needed to produce more power that we will by taking vast swaths of land and dedicate those to solar facilities. Ultimately, with the emphasis on all things electric (which does not feel like our central organizers are being thoughtful of fault tolerant backups like natural gas for things like water heaters and stoves), we will need all electricity creating energy sources on deck, but what we choose to emphasize will play a role in our ability to support the central planners dreams and aspirations.
We only need them all on deck due to the rejection of nuclear. A combo of nuclear and natural gas would give us all the clean energy we would ever need. We could then remove the monstrosities across the great outdoors before the disposal of all that material becomes a problem.
Just a quick note of appreciation for everyone's comments and discussion on this post
Great to see such healthy disagreement and agreement
Thank you!
Coming late to the party and overwhelmed by all the comments that mitigate Roger's enthusiasm, I would like to spell a few "implacable laws" that complement the mentioned "Iron law of climate policy".
Beyond the imperative never to contradict the principles of thermodynamics, the energy sector must obey some laws.
All of these have huge economic consequences (doubling costs and multiplying badly used investments) that the PV and wind enthusiasts tend to neglect or dismiss.
A. Electricity generation is not electricity supply.
Whatever the method of production — continuous or intermittent — the consumer must be supplied with electricity without interruption.
It follows that intermittent production is not able to ensure supply.
B. Electricity cannot be stored in quantity.
Production must correspond exactly to the instantaneous demand.
To build up a reserve, electricity must be converted into an energy vector of a different nature, and then reinstated in the reverse direction. Losses occur at each of these stages, and the network must carry a multiplied amount of traffic.
C. The law of intermittency load factor.
The load factor CF is the average utilisation rate of the nominal capacity of a facility over a given period, usually one year. A CF of 30% is not realistic, even in Rajasthan or Arizona. In Germany, a costly PV champion, it's only 11%. For solar, the difference of daily insolation between Summer and Winter exacerbates this issue.
Any activity consisting of using a resource that is obtained intermittently will only have a load factor lower than that of the intermittent source, will have to operate synchronously with the instantaneous variations of the source, and must have at least the same rated power as the source.
This means, for example, that the peak production of the 2.25 GW Rajasthan plant must be absorbed by a storage facility (batteries or pump-storage), and that transport lines must also meet this power.
D. The negative law of intermittent sources.
When any proportion of an intermittent production is added to a system that must operate without interruption, it destabilizes the system and increases its costs.
E. An additional factor in relation with wind or solar must also be considered: the huge territory they are taking hostage to produce such diluted energy.
"B. Electricity cannot be stored in quantity.
Production must correspond exactly to the instantaneous demand."
Electricity is not presently stored in quantity. That does not mean is "cannot" be stored in quantity. It's likely that, circa 2050, more than 100 million EVs will be on the road in the U.S. alone, averaging 40+ kWh of batteries. That's more than 4,000,000 GWh of battery storage, or one hundred nuclear plants of gigawatt size, for 40 hours.
And if the average automotive battery is used for 10 years, and then traded for a new one at 80 percent capacity, that will mean 10 million new automotive batteries at 32 kWh of capacity will likely be available to the grid every year, starting in 2060.
Obviously, not all cars on the road will ever be giving all their electricity to the grid at any time. And obviously, even the old batteries will eventually not be able to be recharged enough to provide useful power. But the amount of electricity storage available from automotive batteries alone will be mind-boggling, compared to current levels. (We're easily talking about 100-1000+ times current levels.)
And that does *not* include grid-scale batteries that will be added.
It seems likely that more GHG emission reduction would result from a given amount of investment in natural gas capacity to replace and avoid new coal capacity, than the same amount invested in natural gas plus solar and also avoiding coal capacity - due to the extra infrastructure cost of solar. personal solar is fine, without subsidies people will find what works. but large scaling threatens habitat. we may have aota until constraints are discovered and energy policy matures, but once there is better understanding it is quite important for growth of wealth and knowledge and conservation of environment that energy source types are selected that provide large increase of electricity and industrial heat to power emerging cloud-intelligent economy, and are most concentrated in their mining/transport/operation impact on environment. Globally generally that will likely point to N2N, the fastest increase of natural gas capacity to avoid hazards of new coal capacity and the land and marine impact of harvesters (solar, wind). While the fastest technology development is applied to fission, so that construction cost can become scalable and output temperature can be increased. Once developed fission should replace all large new capacity so we can intensify energy production.
Solar is only cheap due to subsidies, and it's not the solar panel cost that governs the cost of providing reliable energy from them. If, by saying that solar has a sunny future, you mean that lots of solar panels will be sold and installed, I'd agree. Somehow that train seems to have left the station. But to stretch that analogy too far, that train is gonna run out of fuel, or crash, but it will not get us to a significantly cleaner energy future. We seem doomed to spending a huge sum on new solar, but it's not going to end up making much difference in the ways we want it to. And by the time we come to accept that as a society and stop running headlong toward even more deployment of it, everything we have installed now will need to be decommissioned and we don't have a plan for that so...
All of this is just my grump old man view of things, based on what I've read and my life experience, from both inside and outside my tribe-bubble.
I really appreciate your posts and I'm glad you felt it was safe to put this one up. I just don't think it's one of your better ones :-).
Nuclear is more competitive in countries like South Korea where fossil fuels must be imported. In the U.S. we have vast supplies of cheap fossil fuels, making nuclear less competitive. We also have the no nothing anti nukes.
Way too optimistic. A number of experts, including Goering G&R, are warning of peak Shale in the US. While the EPA, Demonrats, UN, Globalists are seeking to ban coal use. Thing about nuclear, when the shit hits the fan, its too late to say: "hey, let's build nuclear". You start now and you start big, like order 2 dozen NPPs at once. No pussyfooting around. Force the supply chain and workforce to be developed with guaranteed demand.
Thank you for this essay, sir. It is not often I disagree with you, but in this case, I make an exception. Solar is little more than a “niche” source, similar to that of wind that you described so nicely in a recent posting. You discussed three major reasons for your bullish attitude, all of which are valid to some degree and certainly respectable. I think your argument for “cheap and getting cheaper” is flawed because it does not account for its terribly unreliable availability.
It's been said that the only two things that are constant are death and taxes. (Geologists would add, “and climate change.”) But the other constant, one that is seldom discussed, is population growth. With that growth comes the demand for resources; more land, more water, more food, more minerals, and so forth. Yet, we live on a planet with finite resources. History has taught us that we are obligated to use those resources in a responsible manner, one that maximizes production and usefulness but reduces waste.
On the energy density ladder, wind is barely off the ground, but solar is only marginally better, and both are orders of magnitude less than fossil and nuclear. This means that more of those finite resources are needed to convert the energy needed for societies to thrive. Solar needs a lot of land, and a lot more steel than even wind needs. And, the waste from solar is toxic and will require advanced disposal, again, more land.
Solar may have a place in the energy wheel; small solar panels for traffic signals or pipeline monitoring; roof top solar in isolated areas, etc. Space, where land use on the Moon is not a limiting factor. But to power society, I don’t think so.
The “push” is for a more sustainable future, as it should be. Comparatively speaking, solar is less sustainable than its alternatives because it is a resource hog. If it is to be a bridge, my only hope is that it is a simple span rather than a complex truss like the Key Bridge.
Thanks again for your work! It is always a learning experience.
Dr. Pielke - I'm amazed at your enthusiasm for solar energy, which is useful at a small, individual user level, but minimally useful at an industrial scale. First, on a 25/7 basis, it produces power only about 20% of the time, and requires a backup system to generate energy when the sun is not shining. The cost of solar energy must include the cost of the backup system, so the cost of solar panels is virtually meaningless as an isolated item. In reality, solar energy in actual use is the most expensive mode available - see the costs of electricity in all the places which have embraced solar - California, Germany, and Denmark. The overall costs of solar are 2-3x those of natural gas.
Secondly you tout the benefits of a huge solar installation (22 sq miles). This is equal to 14,000 acres. By comparison a nuclear of fossil fuel plant can be built on about 10 acres, a 1400:1 space need. To provide enough energy from solar to meet real needs we'd have to give up substantial farmland. What are you going to eat then?
Lastly, solar has a short life span - in reality about 15 years from actual experience, and every year the efficiency of the panels degrades by a few percent. By contrast nuclear can run for 80-100 years in stable fashion. No one has yet addressed the ultimate disposition of the old solar panels, which would be of enormous size and containing several hazardous metals. The issue of finding and mining enough of these metals for the initial construction of the panels is degrading huge tracts of land.
Nothing about solar is positive except that the fuel is theoretically free. When this small advantage is compared to everything else, it should be a non-starter in the mix.
Everyone seems to be missing the fact that the only reasons solar is growing are the production and investment tax credits paid by the citizens of this country to support this industry. Add in solar RECS and renewable mandates. The industry would implode without these subsidies paid for by poor people to placate the rich. Every project looks wonderful to Paul when Peter is paying for it
I do not disagree with your assessment of wind vs solar prospects, but a true AOTA strategy encourages all avoidance of CO2 emissions equally and does not require us to be more or less pessimistic about one technology over another.
This does not mean that people should not write about the potentials and the downsides of one technology or another. [I am far from criticizing this pro-solar post.] But the point is to judge each by their potential to reduce net emissions, not to be better or worse that some other technology.
"Another challenge: There’s far more solar power available in summer than in winter, and no battery today can store electricity for months to manage those seasonal disparities."
In principle the excess solar (or wind) energy that is produced at peak (at near zero marginal cost) coud be "stored" by removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Do we also want to talk about the environmental impact of mining lithium for example? Or digging other rare earths?
"Do we also want to talk about the environmental impact of mining lithium for example?"
Photovoltaics don't use lithium, so there's no need to talk about mining lithium when talking about photovoltaics.
And in reality, the "mining" of lithium is changing so fast, that it doesn't even make sense to talk much about that aspect of battery electric vehicles....at least without also looking at possible future developments.
For example, here's an article that discusses how "produced water" from fracking (which is essentially the unwanted water that comes up with the oil) could be a significant source of lithium in the U.S.:
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-05-shale-reservoirs-substantial-source-lithium.html
There are lots of lithium resources, including seawater. But ramping up production to the scale required for BEVs & Utility Energy Storage is not feasible in anywhere near the proposed time frames.
Lithium just being one material that needs massive expansion, also nickel, copper, rare earths, cobalt, manganese, graphite & aluminum. Many of those minerals are mined in unstable countries, subject to boycotts, wars and/or political impediments.
Even without that, it typically takes 10yrs to develop a new mine and only after exploration ramps up to find new mineral resources. Which starts in universities, training more geologists, mining engineers and geophysicists. The energy transition being touted by the Globalists or the Globalitarian Misanthropists, as they are being called, is a pipe dream and will result in disaster.
So batteries to store solar energy do not contain lithium? Ah ok, you definitively qualify yourself. Obviously everything that your ideology virus supports is good and rapidly changing for good. You are either a troll or a champion of misinformation. Your choice. Thank you, no need to reply.
Daniele, I'm an energy *professional*.
I probably got my mechanical engineering degree, with coursework focusing on energy production (nuclear engineering, solar energy engineering, electrical power generation from coal and natural gas, geothermal energy production) when you were either in grade school or diapers.
And I spent most of my 30+ years in mechanical and environmental engineering studying the environmental impacts of energy production and use. I've quite literally forgotten more about energy production, and its resultant environmental impacts, than you will likely ever learn in the rest of your life.
For example, if I asked you to compare the environmental impacts of the lithium mining in major lithium producing countries, could you write even a single sentence without doing an Internet search?
You are an energy professional, I am a financial professional. So what? You want to tell me that you own the truth? No you don’t. Photovoltaics need to store energy unless you want to rely on the grid; and to store energy batteries are needed. The point is not about lithium per se but it is the concept of clean energy that in reality is not clean at all but people conveniently ignore the environmental impact. It is an epistemological issue or in economic terms people focus on “what is seen” and ZERO on “what is not seen” (read some Bastiat and you will get wiser). Obviously the amount of economic vested interest, I was about to write corruption, in solar and wind is gigantic and there are plenty of “useful idiots” pushing it with zero logic.
"Photovoltaics need to store energy unless you want to rely on the grid; and to store energy batteries are needed."
That's nonsense.
Pumped storage stores energy. Producing hydrogen via electrolysis stores energy. Moving blocks of concrete up and down stores energy:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkobayashisolomon/2023/12/20/energy-vault-wins-big-with-gravity-storage-in-china/?sh=32d9565c6c69
Even bags filled with pressurized water store energy. And how do I know this? My name is on the patent:
"Energy Storage Reservoir."
Patent number: US 2014/0042753 A1
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140042753A1/fr
Important note: My name is on the patent largely via the generosity of Scott H. Goodwin, who was the principal investigator behind the idea. My contribution to his idea was modest.
"You want to tell me that you own the truth?"
No, I want to tell you that photovoltaics don't "require" lithium. Because they don't. And anyone who had knowledge about photovoltaics and storage of the energy they generate would tell you that.
I already covered just a few ways that do *not* involve batteries that can store energy from photovoltaics. I didn't even *touch* the subject of batteries for grid storage of electricity that don't involve lithium. There batteries based on sodium, and batteries based on iron, for example:
https://www.gep.com/blog/strategy/lithium-ion-vs-sodium-ion-battery#
https://www.energy-storage.news/startup-form-energys-100-hour-iron-air-battery-tech-attracts-another-us-utilitys-attention/
And I did not even cover the possibility that electricity from photovoltaics could simply *not be stored at all*. That is, to use electricity from photovoltaics when they are available, and simply use other sources when electricity from photovoltaics aren't available. That's routinely done all over the world.
"It is an epistemological issue or in economic terms people focus on 'what is seen' and ZERO on 'what is not seen' (read some Bastiat and you will get wiser)."
I'm very familiar with Bastiat's point about broken glass and "what is seen" and "what is not seen." Probably because, while I've taken some courses in economics at the university level, you clearly have never taken a course in mechanical engineering related to energy generation and storage at the university level. So before you advise *me* on what to do to "get wiser," I recommend you actually try to educate yourself about electrical energy generation and storage.
Thank you for this, sir!
As an aside, I would highly recommend Ernest Schneyder's book, "The War Below," which discusses the problems faced by the mining industry and the energy transition. Very good presentation of the tradeoffs.
Thanks again for the smack down! You were far more polite than I would have been.