Excellent article, Chris."Cheap renewable energy" doesn't exist at scale. Explanations are helpful, but the best data comes from actual results in Germany, the UK, Spain, and California. Electricity prices in these places are horrible, and the systems are so brittle they will suffer more blackouts. A good cradle-to-grave analysis would probably show that "cheap renewable energy" has actually increased CO2 emissions. This is foolishness squared!
Matt, I lived for five years in Hellerup, just north of Copenhagen while working for Maersk. We loved our time in Denmark, but I paid four times as much per kilowatt hour as a typical American paid. I spent a bunch of time in Stavanger as a BP guy earlier. Norway is blessed with excellent hydropower (along with a hell of a lot of rain and snow) and has cheap electricity. We were looking at running this hydropower offshore to replace the gas we used to generate electricity to provide power for our platforms. I am very informed on electricity in Scandinavia.
Well, please check how we are doing in the Nordics. Very cheap electricity, CO2 emissions down by some 90% during the last 15 years. And it is still getting better.
We do engineering well and avoid ideological questions.
Very good. I doubt that our energy ministers have clued onto this and certainly aren’t losing any sleep over it, though I note that QLD is keeping its coal power for a bit longer than they previously said. Thank goodness.
Maybe our federal energy minister thinks the laws of physics don’t apply here ? I’d buy a gas backup generator for my house if I was sure that gas would be around, but they seem to want to ban that too.
Watching what they do and not what they say is indeed the line to pay attention to, because they cannot afford to speak the truth. Otherwise the media apparatus will eat them alive and they know they can't lose favour with the voter.
This is what happens when a whole generation has been brought up on sheer ideology: whole electorates swinging on the base of whether candidates mention renewables, and candidates themselves thinking it's literally renewables or extinction. The details? The price tag? The actual emissions of the whole process? No one cares, because this is just fanaticism and political expediency, not anything thoroughly planned and designed to serve a purpose beyond grabbing votes and power.
Love your work, Chris. Not many journos dig very far into electricity and energy per se.
You know and I know the warnings will be ignored, they've been coming in for a decade but it's never renewables to blame when grids go down or prices shoot up. No matter which way we look at renewables, whether it be from a generation perspective or an environmental one, they fail. Badly.
Even if they could sustain a grid of any substantiality, the materials involved in making renewable energy harvesting machines and any concept of storage are too much for the earth to supply.
Emissions too, they don't mitigate much at all in the grand scheme.
If renewables were a high school project they'd be marked 'F', and let's face it, that's about all they are.
I'm glad people are talking about this. I think most people could care less about grid instability right up until it affects them. For those rational humans among us who both understand climate change is real AND understand how intrinsically important reliable electricity is, we have a duty to help others understand the important choices we face. It's not oil and gas being greedy, it's just a very very very difficult engineering problem with many layers and different solutions for each geography. I live here in Spain and I was amazed they got power back within 24 hours. It should be a wake up call but no one wants to raise the issue of wind/solar causing instability. Reminds me of that Who song "Eminence Front." Sun shines, people forget.
Thanks Chris. Unfortunately we now have a Labor Party that thinks the sun shines out of their backside and so you are probably just talking into the wind…and we can’t use either of those sources for sustainable power!
Excellent article, Chris."Cheap renewable energy" doesn't exist at scale. Explanations are helpful, but the best data comes from actual results in Germany, the UK, Spain, and California. Electricity prices in these places are horrible, and the systems are so brittle they will suffer more blackouts. A good cradle-to-grave analysis would probably show that "cheap renewable energy" has actually increased CO2 emissions. This is foolishness squared!
Matt, I lived for five years in Hellerup, just north of Copenhagen while working for Maersk. We loved our time in Denmark, but I paid four times as much per kilowatt hour as a typical American paid. I spent a bunch of time in Stavanger as a BP guy earlier. Norway is blessed with excellent hydropower (along with a hell of a lot of rain and snow) and has cheap electricity. We were looking at running this hydropower offshore to replace the gas we used to generate electricity to provide power for our platforms. I am very informed on electricity in Scandinavia.
Well, please check how we are doing in the Nordics. Very cheap electricity, CO2 emissions down by some 90% during the last 15 years. And it is still getting better.
We do engineering well and avoid ideological questions.
See https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/greenhouse-gas-emission-intensity-of-1
Very good. I doubt that our energy ministers have clued onto this and certainly aren’t losing any sleep over it, though I note that QLD is keeping its coal power for a bit longer than they previously said. Thank goodness.
Maybe our federal energy minister thinks the laws of physics don’t apply here ? I’d buy a gas backup generator for my house if I was sure that gas would be around, but they seem to want to ban that too.
Watching what they do and not what they say is indeed the line to pay attention to, because they cannot afford to speak the truth. Otherwise the media apparatus will eat them alive and they know they can't lose favour with the voter.
This is what happens when a whole generation has been brought up on sheer ideology: whole electorates swinging on the base of whether candidates mention renewables, and candidates themselves thinking it's literally renewables or extinction. The details? The price tag? The actual emissions of the whole process? No one cares, because this is just fanaticism and political expediency, not anything thoroughly planned and designed to serve a purpose beyond grabbing votes and power.
Yeah we’re fucked…
the national power grid will fall over with an unsustainable level of renewable sources…
Then maybe the electorate will wake up?
Maybe?????
Well, in Finland the national grid is adding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser systems to the grid. Such systems maintain inertia.
It is an engineering task, not an impossible task to have a lot of renewable generation.
Love your work, Chris. Not many journos dig very far into electricity and energy per se.
You know and I know the warnings will be ignored, they've been coming in for a decade but it's never renewables to blame when grids go down or prices shoot up. No matter which way we look at renewables, whether it be from a generation perspective or an environmental one, they fail. Badly.
Even if they could sustain a grid of any substantiality, the materials involved in making renewable energy harvesting machines and any concept of storage are too much for the earth to supply.
Emissions too, they don't mitigate much at all in the grand scheme.
If renewables were a high school project they'd be marked 'F', and let's face it, that's about all they are.
Great piece Chris, the musical analogy is for frequency was very good too.
Unfortunately Blackout Bowen and colleagues are unable to see the obvious.
I'm glad people are talking about this. I think most people could care less about grid instability right up until it affects them. For those rational humans among us who both understand climate change is real AND understand how intrinsically important reliable electricity is, we have a duty to help others understand the important choices we face. It's not oil and gas being greedy, it's just a very very very difficult engineering problem with many layers and different solutions for each geography. I live here in Spain and I was amazed they got power back within 24 hours. It should be a wake up call but no one wants to raise the issue of wind/solar causing instability. Reminds me of that Who song "Eminence Front." Sun shines, people forget.
Thanks Chris. Unfortunately we now have a Labor Party that thinks the sun shines out of their backside and so you are probably just talking into the wind…and we can’t use either of those sources for sustainable power!
Its only a matter of when and where😁