Posts Tagged ‘solar power’
“It always seems impossible until it is done”*…
Adam Tooze unpacks a recent report from the clean energy think tank Ember— one that heralded a profoundly important historical turning point…
Electrification is key to the new energy system that is being built around the world. Electricity generation is one process we do know how to decarbonize. With concerted action, net neutrality is within reach in electric power generation for OECD countries by the 2030s and for the whole world by 2045. Furthermore, as Ember points out, electrification will replace “fossil fuel burning that currently takes place in car and bus engines, boilers, furnaces and other applications.”
Green electrification is the key to the future. And in 2023, according to Ember’s report, almost the entirety of new power demand was covered by growth in renewables, above all solar. Though there was growth in demand for electricity around the world, fossil fuel generation barely increased. Growth in solar and wind alone were sufficient to cover 82 percent of new electricity demand.
This is not new in rich countries. In the OECD demand growth for electricity is not strong or is even negative and renewable investment has been ongoing for two decades. The sensation is that this is now happening at the global level where the growth in demand for electric power is relentless.
In 2024 Ember expects the trend to be even more pronounced. This year, for the first time there will be substantial growth in global demand for electricity, whilst fossil fuel generation will likely fall…
… There is an obfuscation involved in talking about “the global” when, in fact, there is one country that dominates the entire dynamic of the energy transition: China.
As Ember’s data show: “China remained the main engine of global electricity demand growth. China’s rapid growth (+606 TWh, +6.9%) was just 21 TWh lower than the net global increase. India’s growth (+99 TWh, +5.4%) was the next largest contributor.”
Until the 2010s China fed its voracious demand for new power with coal-fired power stations. The energy transition in the advanced economies was never going to be sufficient to offset this. Of course, the renewable energy transition in the West was also painfully slow. But even if the USA and the EU had taken more drastic action, China’s growth was simply too large and too dirty. The fact that we are now reaching a turning point in the balance between fossil and clean power generation is due to a turning point in China: a huge surge in renewable energy investment.
In 2023 China alone accounted for more than half of the new global additions in wind and solar…
Measured in terms of power consumed China’s electrification of road transport is 3.5 times larger than that of the entire rest of the world. That is the EV revolution that the West is so worried about….
It is also the largest heat pump market in the world with more installations per year than any other country. Electrolysers, used mostly in demonstration plants by chemical and petrochemical companies, have also grown faster in China than the rest of the world. As a result, China accounted for 50% of global electrolyser capacity in 2023…
But as Ember notes, this process of applying electricity to new uses, is only at the beginning.
“Even in China, electrification is still in its infancy. Only a fifth of China’s electricity demand growth in 2023 (124 TWh of 606 TWh) was from the three electrification technologies, but this share will rise in time. These technologies added 1.4% to China’s electricity demand in 2023, up from 1.1% in 2022. Meanwhile in the rest of the world, electrification added 0.25% to electricity demand in 2022 and 0.28% in 2023. As China further accelerates the deployment of key electrification technologies and the world continues to catch up, the contribution of electrification will expand even further.“
At COP28 in 2023 many countries around the world committed to tripling global renewable electricity capacity by 2030. This has the potential to almost halve power sector emissions by 2030, as coal-fired power generation will be replaced first. Furthermore, it will provide enough new electricity to replace drive forward the electrification of transport, home and industrial heating with a 32 percent increase in electricity demand.
Having shattered all previous experience of renewable power rollout, China’s huge surge in solar now actually puts us within striking distance of achieving a net zero path, driven by green electric power…
What we are witnessing is the most rapid take-up of a significant energy technology in history.
The response of Western politicians? Protectionism. Of course there are complex motives. They need to build coalitions to sustain the energy transition. They are worried about the CCP regime in China. They want to escape extreme dependence on imported sources of energy (though of course in the renewable space it is capital equipment not energy they are importing). But the more basic question is simply this. Are Western government and societies willing to prioritize the energy transition if it is not their drama, not their success story? Or, if the PV panels and the electric vehicles are from China, do other interests take priority?
In the European case one can see a compromise based on a balance between domestic and Chinese-sourced energy transition solutions. As Martin Sandbu has remarked there is at least the possibility of a grand bargain. In the case of the United States it seems increasingly clear that the energy transition as such is a second order concern, and geopolitical confrontation and the struggle to form domestic coalitions take precedence. That is depressing. And it matters. But, as Ember’s data make clear, it is far from being a decisive obstacle. The global energy transition will go on anyway…
“The beginning of a new era: How the ‘global’ energy transition is happening in China,” from @adam_tooze and @EmberClimate. Eminently worth reading in full (both Tooze’s summary and the Ember report).
Apposite (and divergent, though not opposite, from Tooze): “The climate case for Biden’s new China tariffs,” from @timmcdonnell in @semafor.
And this: “We might be closer to changing course on climate change than we realized,” from @voxdotcom.
* Nelson Mandela
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As we find solace where we can, we might spare a thought for Joseph Wood Krutch; he died on this date in 1970. An author, critic, and naturalist, he began his career in New York City, where he was a professor at Columbia and theater critic for The Nation, and where he wrote The Modern Temper (challenging the then-fashionable notions of scientific progress and optimism), biographies of Samuel Johnson and Henry David Thoreau, and (inspired by Thoreau) The Twelve Seasons, Krutch’s first nature book.
In 1952, on doctor’s orders, Krutch left the East for Tucson and the Sonoran Desert, where he began writing about ecology, the southwestern desert environment, and the natural history of the Grand Canyon. He won renown as a naturalist, nature writer, and an early conservationist for works like The Voice of the Desert and The Desert Year, arguing that human beings must move beyond purely human centered conceptions of “conservation” and learn to value nature for its own sake.
“People overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years”*…
This is especially true, argue Sam Butler-Sloss and Kingsmill Bond of the Rocky Mountain Institute, when it comes to assessing our progress in addressing the challenges of climate change with renewable energy solutions…
The renewable revolution is advancing at remarkable speed. In fact, the speed of the renewable revolution has defied many leading energy commentators who have continuously underestimated its true trajectory. They have suffered from what statisticians call a systematic bias, that is, an error that consistently skews in one direction. Noise, or a random error, is inherent to forecasting; bias, however, requires a deeper explanation.
So why do so many intelligent people undersell the pace and dynamism of the renewable revolution? Leaving aside the inherent bias of those seeking to prop up the fossil fuel system in order to enjoy the largesse of its annual $2 trillion in rents, we identify eight deadly sins of the energy transition.
Whether intentional or unwitting, these eight general errors of perspective are holding back understanding, wasting time and capital, and fueling unproductive climate pessimism…
The renewable revolution is plainly gaining speed and impact. Read on to learn why are so many analysts so wrong about the pace and scale of innovation: “The Eight Deadly Sins of Analyzing the Energy Transition,” from @SamButl3r and @KingsmillBond at @RockyMtnInst. (TotH to friend MZ)
See also: “When Idiot Savants Do Climate Economics.”
* Bill Gates
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As we contemplate compounding, we might recall that it was on this date in 1896 that Nikola Tesla and Westinghouse Electric achieved the first long-distance transmission of hydroelectricity: from the Niagara Falls Power Company to Buffalo, N.Y., 26 miles away.
“Some people call it global warming; some people call it climate change. What is the difference?”*…
Climate change has had, and probably will have, very unequal consequences for different groups of people. We often assume that developed societies will fare better in a warmer future than the developing world. Yet the Dutch thrived in the 17th century not simply because their republic was rich, but because much of its wealth derived from activities that benefited from climate change.
Today, we can learn from the republic by strengthening social safety nets, investing in technologies that exploit or reduce climate change, and thinking proactively about how we will adapt to the planet of our future. It just so happens that much of the federal government in the United States is abandoning these policies, but there are more optimistic stories at the state and municipal levels, and there is exciting news coming out of China and India…
Compared to the climate change we’re experiencing now, the Little Ice Age — which chilled the globe from the 13th to the 19th century — was modest. “The world has already warmed more, relative to mid-20th-century temperature averages, than it cooled in the chilliest stretches of the Little Ice Age,” says Dagomar Degroot, a historian at Georgetown University. “And there is much more warming to come.”
In his new book, “The Frigid Golden Age,” Degroot argues that the Little Ice Age– and more specifically, the Dutch experience of the period– has a lot to teach present-day societies about coping with climate change. He summarizes his findings at: “When the World Was Cold.”
* Frank Luntz, Republican pollster and political consultant
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As we beat the heat, we might recall that it was on this date in 1955, at General Motors cars how in Detroit, that G. M. engineer William G. Cobb unveiled the “Sunmobile”– a 15-inch prototype of an electric car powered by the sun, the first working solar-powered car.
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