27-year-old chemist discovers a process for recycling rare earths.
Gordon Edwards, 17 Mar 25 – The article copied below, translated by Google Translate, adds an optimistic note to the rise of renewables as the most affordable choice for rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Toxic materials are often used in the construction and operation of industrial infrastructure of many kinds. This includes renewable energy equipment such as wind, solar, geothermal and other renewables.
The so-called “rare earths” (also named “lanthanides”) are a group of 17 metals in the
periodic table that have unusual properties that are ideal for use in electronic and electricity generating devices. Mining these metals is very dangerous for the workers and the environment. The metals themselves have a high chemical toxicity. But they are needed for renewable energy systems as well as many other electronic applications.
Note, however, that wind and solar do not create toxic waste. They simply make use of these naturally-occurring toxic materials that can, in principe, be recycled and used again and again. Recycling and reusing such toxic materials ought to be an essential built-in requirement of renewable energy systems.
Nuclear power, on the other hand, literally creates hundreds of highly toxic new elements that cannot be recycled or re-used for civilian purposes simply because they are too radioactive – meaning their atoms are unstable and will spontaneously disintegrate, giving off biologically damaging atomic radiation. A radioactive variety (“isotope”) of any given element is always much more toxic than the non-radioactive variety of the same element.
Even the finest stainless steal and zirconium-alloy structures used in the core of a nuclear reactor will have to be kept out of the environemnt of living things for thousands of years as radioactive waste. These originally non-radioactive metals have become intensely radioactuve.
Such is not the case with materials used in wind and solar. No new toxic materials are created, and those toxics that are used can be recycled and reused many times.
Ironically, one of the reasons why rare earths are so dangerous to mine is because of the inevitable presence of radioactive elements – uranium, thorium and their decay products – leading to excessive exposure to radon gas and radioactive dust that can be very harmful over the long term. It turns out that rare earths have a strong geochemical affinity with uranium and thorium, the two principle primordial radionuclides on Earth.
P.S.
One of the reasons why Donald Trump wants to acquire Greenland is because there is a mountain of rare earth ores near the Inuit community of Narsaq. Thanks to Nancy Covington and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Canada (IPPNWC) (then called Physicians for Global Survival) I was sent to Narsaq in 2016 to explain the radioactive dangers of mining that mountain, called Kvanefjeld in Danish or Kuannersuit in Greenlandic (the native Inuit language).
ETH Chemist Discovers Process for Recycling Rare Earths
The mining of rare earths is environmentally harmful and controlled by China. Chemist Marie Perrin (27) has developed a method that could solve both problems.
“Why is the sky blue? How do clouds form?” Marie Perrin asked herself as a child. “Even then, I was very curious,” she recalls. Her curiosity not only ensured that the daughter of two scientists understood the world around her better with each passing year. It could also soon be a reason why this world is changing. The now 27-year-old and her team at ETH Zurich have developed a method for recycling rare earths.
Important Resource for the Energy Transition
Rare earths are 17 metals that are used in all modern devices: in batteries, smartphones and computers, in wind turbines and electric cars. “They’re all around us,” says Perrin, “but only one percent of all rare earths are recycled.” Recycling is important because the energy transition is requiring ever more rare earths. Their extraction is not only expensive but also highly harmful to the environment and often releases radioactivity.
There’s also a geopolitical problem looming over them: Around 70 percent of rare earths are mined in China. What this could mean for the rest of the world became clear in 2010, when a conflict arose between China and Japan. China informally stopped exports of rare earths to Japan. Prices rose by over 1,000 percent, and supply shortages arose around the world. “If you compare it to oil, the largest exporting countries have a market share of 30 to 40 percent,” explains Marie Perrin.
Lightbulbs made from ETH waste
“We were lucky to have discovered this method,” recalls Perrin. Originally, her research had nothing to do with the recycling of rare earths. But she discovered that the molecules she was studying had the potential to do just that. The chemist devoted herself to her research: “I fished old energy-saving light bulbs out of the ETH recycling bins and experimented with them in the lab,” says Perrin. Until she succeeded in separating the rare earth europium from the light bulb.
Perrin compares the process to baking pizza: Imagine mixing a pinch of salt into pizza dough. How can you recover the salt that has now dispersed throughout the dough? You need something that can distinguish and separate the elements in the dough from those in the salt.
In Marie Perrin’s case, this ingredient is called tetrathiometalate. “Using the known methods, this process had to be repeated several times,” explains Perrin. “This requires an enormous amount of resources.” With Perrin’s process, the rare earth europium can be separated from the other elements in a light bulb in a high degree of purity in a single step.
Initiative Required
Perrin’s research team published their results in the journal Nature Communications, filed a patent, and was faced with the question: What next? “Either you sell the license to larger chemical companies or you develop the technology further in-house,” explains Perrin. “It was clear to me that I wanted to do it myself.” The risk of the process gathering dust in a drawer at a large company was too great for her – as was her curiosity to find out where the technology could lead her.
Together with an old school friend and her doctoral supervisor, Marie Perrin founded the startup REEcover. The goal: to make the process scalable with light bulbs in a first step. In a second step, it will be expanded to include other of the 16 remaining rare earths. “I’m a researcher and had no entrepreneurial experience,” says the Frenchwoman. But her curiosity drives her forward here too: “There’s something new every day, which is fun.
“A Promising Future“
Our timing is good,” Perrin is aware. The European Union passed a law on critical raw materials in 2024. One of the goals of the law is to reduce dependence on rare earths from China. This is another reason why REEcover is considered one of the most promising startups at ETH.
How the IEA is grossly biased against renewables – the IEA should be scrapped
David Toke, Mar 11, 2025
The International Energy Agency (the IEA) is hopelessly biased against renewable energy both in terms of the projections of future energy development it has made and also in the way it frames the statistics about energy supply. The statistical methods used by the IEA favour fossil fuels and nuclear power. The IEA does not give sufficient attention to energy efficiency. These things can be illustrated by reference to analysis of its past energy projections and also by analysing the way it counts energy statistics. The question that must be posed, is what is the point of the IEA if it gets things so badly wrong…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Conclusion
The way that the IEA compiles its statistics is grossly biased against renewable energy and in favour of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Its future energy projections have been abysmal, and this failure illustrates its appalling bias. The IEA’s approach also obscures the impact of energy transition which will involve increasing dominance by electric-battery and heat pump technologies. The IEA fails to give priority to energy efficiency. Rather it tends to talk more about absolute increases in energy consumption, such as in data centres (for example see HERE).
Yet such notions of accelerated absolute increases in energy consumption have already proved to be overblown. This is demonstrated by China’s DeepSeek AI project which is being powered by a small fraction of the energy consumption of earlier AI projects (See HERE). The IEA is also keen on pushing nuclear power fantasies, including small modular reactors (see HERE).
In general the IEA tends to talk about energy security rather than energy transition, as can be seem in the executive summary of its 2024 World Energy Energy Outlook (see HERE). Yet energy transition will implicitly give us energy security. It will do through the replacement of of insecure and volatile fossil fuel supplies with renewable energy and electrically based energy efficient technologies.
The key to understand this is that the IEA is not independent in focus or finance. The IEA is financed by a collection of mostly western governments. We should remember that the IEA was formed to, in effect, help western countries cope with the fact that the western based oil companies lost control of oil markets after 1973. The Secretariat is based in nuclear-dominated France. The information it gives is seriously flawed.
The conditions which led to the IEA’s formation have fundamentally changed. Our biggest challenge now is energy transition and the climate struggle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The IEA’s projections are wholly unreliable and its statistics give a false impression of what is happening.
The main energy trade groups already have their own trade associations – eg IRENA for renewables, the WNA for nuclear, and we know that the oil and gas companies look after themselves. The IEA serves no useful purpose. It needs to be scrapped. A new intergovernmental organisation could be created, to which the IEA staff could be redeployed, with a mission of promoting energy efficiency technologies. https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/how-the-iea-is-grossly-biased-against
Most Contaminated U.S. Nuclear Site Is Set to Be the Largest Solar Farm.
Plans to transform Hanford, which was integral to the nation’s nuclear arsenal after World War II, had just begun inching forward when President Trump started his second term.
New York Times, By Keith Schneider, Reporting from Richland, Wash, March 5, 2025,
In the weeks since President Trump has taken office, he has pushed to unleash oil and gas production and has signed executive orders halting the country’s transition to renewable energy.
But in Washington State, a government-led effort has just started to build what is expected to be the country’s largest solar generating station. The project is finally inching forward, after decades of cleaning up radioactive and chemical waste in fits and starts, at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a sweep of desert that was pivotal to the nation’s weapons arsenal from 1943 until it was shut down in 1989. A developer, Hecate, was brought on last year to turn big stretches of the site into solar farms.
Hecate will have access to 10,300 acres that the government has determined sufficiently safe to redevelop. The company has already started site evaluation on 8,000 acres, an area nearly 10 times the size of Central Park in New York and enough space for 3.45 million photovoltaic panels. (Hanford’s site is nearly 400,000 acres.)
If all goes according to plan, the Hecate project, which is expected to be completed in 2030, will be by far the largest site the government has cleaned up and converted from land that had been used for nuclear research, weapons and waste storage. It is expected to generate up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity — enough roughly to supply all the homes in Seattle, San Francisco, and Denver — and store 2,000 more in a large battery installation at a total cost of $4 billion. The photovoltaic panels and batteries will provide twice as much energy as a conventional nuclear power plant. The nation’s current biggest solar plant, the Copper Mountain Solar Facility in Nevada, can generate up to 802 megawatts of energy.
The big unknown still hanging over the plan is whether the Trump administration will thwart efforts that the Biden administration put in place to develop more clean electricity generation………………………………………….
While a clean energy project may clash with Mr. Trump’s policies, there’s a reason the administration may allow Hecate’s solar development to move forward: the revenue the government will get for the land lease. Hecate and the Energy Department declined to discuss the land’s market value, but private solar developers in the region said such easements typically paid landowners $300 an acre annually.
Two officials at the Energy Department, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said that neither the president nor the leaders of the administration’s effort to reshape federal agencies had yet to intervene in the solar project, but that the future of the initiative was uncertain. One of the officials said the new energy secretary, Chris Wright, a former oil executive, had not yet reviewed the project as of late February.
Alex Pugh, Hecate’s director of development, said the company was moving ahead despite shifting political winds. “The fundamentals of the project are strong regardless of policy direction,” he said. “The region needs the project. There is a huge demand for electricity here.”
…………………….Hecate identified the large expanse of open ground alongside high-voltage transmission lines at Hanford as a potential site for its plant several years ago, Mr. Pugh said — long before the Energy Department solicited proposals. The potential benefits, he said, were plainly apparent.
………………….What they also have, however, is risk. The site where Hecate plans to build its photovoltaic panels is near an area where groundwater and soil were decontaminated and alongside an experimental 400-megawatt nuclear reactor complex that was decommissioned in 2001. It’s also about 20 miles south of B Reactor, the world’s first full-scale nuclear reactor, which produced the plutonium for the atomic
UK Energy Secretary Signals China Pivot
By Irina Slav – Feb 28, 2025,
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/UK-Energy-Secretary-Signals-China-Pivot.html
UK’s energy secretary is reportedly scheduled to travel to China next month in a bid to forge a closer relationship with the country, despite it being seen by previous governments in London as a threat to national security.
The report comes from Reuters, which spoke to unnamed sources close to Ed Miliband, who said the top energy member of the UK cabinet will discuss alternative energy sources in China. What he will not discuss, per the sources, is nuclear energy.
The UK’s Labour government is looking to mend fences with China after the last series of Conservative cabinets all demonstrated mistrust and suspicion to Beijing, in sync with the EU and the United States. However, the Starmer government has signaled it was willing to change this, diverging from the EU/U.S. course of import tariffs and accusations of national security attacks on the part of the Chinese.
In the energy sector, Chinese equipment and components are crucial for the Starmer government’s transition efforts as the country is the largest producer of things such as solar panels, wind turbines, and inverters. It is also the lowest-cost producer, ironically thanks to the amount of coal-powered generation Chinese manufacturers use to make the transition components.
The UK has some of the most ambitious transition goals in the world, aiming to generate as much as 95% of its electricity from non-hydrocarbon sources. As part of efforts to achieve this, the government has committed to doubling onshore wind energy by 2030, quadrupling offshore wind, and trebling solar power by the end of the decade.
To do this, the Starmer government would need to speed up the pace of growth in wind and solar capacity considerably. In offshore wind alone, the government would need to approve more offshore capacity in the next two annual renewable energy auctions, than it has approved in the last six auctions, the country’s grid operator warned last year.
Solar a beacon of hope as Ukrainians yearn for peace
Solar a beacon of hope as Ukrainians yearn for peace. Solar energy has been
essential for survival in Ukraine during nearly three years of war since
the Russian invasion in 2022. As citizens hope for peace, PV will be
instrumental in supporting post-war recovery, whenever it comes.
PV Magazine 19th Feb 2025,
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/02/19/solar-a-beacon-of-hope-as-ukrainians-yearn-for-peace/
Green power- not for us?
Renew Extra 15th Feb 2025
The Social Market Foundation, a cross-party think-tank, says that 48% of UK survey respondents felt the ‘green transition’ was ‘happening to them, not with them’. And 63% thought it wouldn’t work anyway. Certainly there has been some opposition to some green polices, and there have been claims that Starmer’s plan to remove ‘infrastructure blockers’, for example local objectors to green energy projects like wind and solar farms, and the extra grid links needed for them, could backfire. Although Labours plans for ‘pushing past nimbyism’ and putting many new small nuclear plants around the country could also attract fierce local opposition. In this case, small isn’t green- indeed, as well as potentially costing more, SMRs may actually increase security, safety and waste management problem. Lots of issues there too then…………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………… for the present, wind, on and offshore, and solar, large and small, are by far the main contenders for UK power supply, with wind, now at 30% of UK power, already overtaking natural gas. That’s good news, but, as David Toke has noted, with heat supply still not seriously being addressed, if we really do want to get to net zero soon, then the pressure will be on to get all the existing renewable options expanding even more rapidly- along with storage. And, I would add, also getting inputs from new sources like tidal turbines as fast as possible. As well as paying proper attention to energy saving and energy efficiency- the cash and carbon saving option that few oppose, but sadly too few actually adopt. https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2025/02/green-power-not-for-us.html
Octopus Energy launches renewables investment platform for consumers
Octopus Energy, the UK’s largest energy supplier, has launched an
investment platform allowing consumers to buy shares of a renewable energy
project. Octopus has launched ‘the Collective’ which it says is a
first-of-its-kind initiative that enables customers to invest in renewables
themselves. There is a minimum investment requirement of £25 but, since
there are no fees and the Collective is free to join, all returns go to the
investor. A YouGov survey revealed that 33% of Brits want to invest in
green power; Octopus says that by becoming the first energy company in the
UK with a retail investment platform regulated by the Financial Conduct
Authority (FCA), it will meet this demand.
Current 10th Feb 2025 https://www.current-news.co.uk/octopus-energy-launches-renewables-investment-platform-for-consumers/
Prioritizing nuclear power and natural gas over renewable energy is a risky move for Ontario’s energy future
Norman W. Park, The Conversation, 11 Feb 25
The demand for electricity is growing rapidly as the world transitions from fossil fuels to low carbon-emitting forms of energy. However, making this transition will be difficult.
Ontario is projected to require 75 per cent more electricity by 2050, spurred by increasing demand from the industrial sector, data centres, electric vehicle (EV) adoption and households, according to the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO).
To meet this demand, Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce has proposed transforming the province into an “energy superpower” by aggressively expanding nuclear energy and natural gas while cutting support for wind and solar renewable energy.
This plan was spelled out in a policy directive from Lecce instructing the IESO to consider bids from all energy sources, opening the door to allow bids from natural gas and nuclear energy.
This is a departure from previous policies. Previously, under former Energy Minister Todd Smith, the IESO had stipulated bids for the electrical grid should only be from wind, solar, hydro or biomass.
The Ontario government should reconsider these plans. Non-renewable energy sources are costly, rely on new, expensive technologies, ignore the harm to human health and ignore the consequences for global warming.
Expanding nuclear
A central pillar of the Ontario government’s energy plan is the aggressive expansion of nuclear power. The province has committed to refurbishing 14 CANDU reactors at Bruce, Darlington and Pickering, and has proposed constructing new reactors at Bruce.
Ontario is also the first jurisdiction in the world to contractually build a BWRX–300 small modular reactor project at Darlington, despite not knowing its projected cost.
The cost of this small modular reactor may be much higher than similarly sized solar, wind and natural gas projects. This is unsurprising, given that the costs of nuclear projects are often much higher than projected.
Ontario encountered a similar issue when the Darlington nuclear generating station was constructed. The actual costs of nuclear projects were more than double projected costs and took almost six years longer to complete than projected.
Given these historical challenges and uncertainties, the province’s push for nuclear expansion is a cause for concern.
Opposition to wind and solar
Despite significant cost reductions in utility-scale wind and solar farms, which makes them less expensive than nuclear and fossil fuels in many parts of the world, Ontario’s recent policy directive reduced support for these non-emitting renewable energy sources…………………………………………………………..
Reconsidering Ontario’s energy transition
Ontario’s energy transition must involve supplying more energy to an expanding electrical grid while ensuring it remains reliable and resilient. The current government’s plans to turn the province into an “energy superpower” will commit Ontario to decades of costly expenditures and relies on unproven new technologies.
The government’s proposal to increase natural gas to supply the electricity grid and new buildings will increase the risk of premature death and serious illness to Ontarians and will increase greenhouse gas emission, undermining efforts to combat global warming.
Lecce should reconsider his current policy directive to the IESO. Future bids for the electrical grid should instead be evaluated for their impacts on the health of Ontario residents and climate change.
Ontario’s energy policies should also be guided by knowledgeable experts outside of government, rather than solely by politicians. Establishing a blue-ribbon committee comprising energy scientists and environmental specialists would provide needed oversight and ensure the province’s energy strategy is cost-effective, technologically sound and aligned with climate goals.
Ontario has an opportunity to lead by example in balancing energy needs with environmental and health priorities. https://theconversation.com/prioritizing-nuclear-power-and-natural-gas-over-renewable-energy-is-a-risky-move-for-ontarios-energy-future-246289
With calls for nuclear, are Scottish Labour stuck in the 70s?
BE careful what you wish for. I’ve dreamt all my life of the harnessing of robots
and artificial intelligence, enabling a wondrous and liberated human
civilisation. And now you tell me their power needs mean we must build more
domestic nuclear reactors? Sometimes the big narratives really don’t line
up.
We live in a country where renewable energy provided 113% of
Scotland’s overall electricity consumption in 2022 – and it’s set to
ascend over the coming decades. It’s an infrastructural build-out which
is, rightly, one solid plank in the economic and societal case for
independence.
The sense that a Scottish national future is desirable comes
significantly from the vigour, the virtue – and the permanence – of our
renewables sector. So it was jarring, as well as embarrassing, to hear Anas
Sarwar deride John Swinney in Holyrood on Thursday as “trapped in the
1970s”, as the First Minister resisted Labour’s calls for a new wave of
nuclear power plants across the UK. What could be more 70s than
atomics+computers = progress!
The National 8th Feb 2025 https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24920161.calls-nuclear-scottish-labour-stuck-70s/
China AI startup rattles US new nukes plan
January 30, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/china-ai-startup-rattles-us-new-nuke-plan/
Innovative computer modelling with AI doesn’t need the most expensive and dangerous energy from nukes
The much touted second-coming of a “nuclear renaissance” in the United States fueled by the projected soaring global demand to power artificial intelligence (AI) just got a major setback with the surprise January 20, 2025 overnight emergence of an apparently more competitive and efficient Chinese AI startup company, DeepSeek. The US stock market plummeted for the S&P 500 nuclear power companies that have been financially scaling up as the most reliable 24/7 electricity supply for a massive expansion of energy intensive data centers. China’s surprise rollout of DeepSeek and sudden rise to international acclaim at the start of 2025 has seriously disrupted the US claim to global dominance in cloud computing, networking and data storage services powered by extravagantly expensive atomic energy.
US-based AI technology firms, including Nvidia, which lost nearly $600 billion in the January 27th record breaking single day’s largest stock selloff, have led the way in rebranding nuclear power as the preferred choice as the 24/7 power supplier for a massive AI surge. The sudden emergence of DeepSeek, only two months in the making, is being compared to a “sputnik moment” for the US AI market, referencing the former Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite into orbit in 1959 that triggered a US technological panic and launched America into a “space race” with Russia. DeepSeek has just as suddenly now laid claim to competitively take the technological lead to advance mere computer modelling to an innovative era of computer reasoning.
Starting in 2023 and swelling in 2024, there was sort of a “gold rush” of fast money that sprang up to finance AI deals with new reactor licensing and construction of still unproven Small Modular Reactor (SMR) designs as well as repowering uneconomical, permanently closed reactors like Three Mile Island Unit 1. The Big Tech corporate promotion was primarily driven by the leading hyperscalers including Google, Amazon, MicroSoft, Meta Platforms (aka Facebook) and Oracle. A series of deals have since been cut with the established S&P 500 nuclear corporations led by Constellation Energy, Vistra, and the usual suspects of nuclear start-ups including Oklo Power, NuScale, Talen Energy Corp and TerraPower.
However, like a bolt from the blue, the US nuclear industry has been rattled on the stock market. The S&P 500 nuclear power giants Constellation Energy (CEG) and Vistra (VST) are under scrutiny as international energy analysts reevaluate the energy needs of AI data centers along with that same host of nuclear power start-ups.
Power stocks plunge as energy needs called into question because of new China AI lab
Mon, Jan 27 2025, Spencer Kimball, CNBC
- Constellation Energy, Vistra Corp., Talen Energy and GE Vernova tumbled as China’s DeepSeek AI lab debuted, scaring investors with a lower-cost business model.
- Constellation, Vistra and GE Vernova were leading the S&P 500 this year as investors speculated on AI’s power needs.
- Now, the arrival of DeepSeek is raising questions about how much power will actually be needed.
Power companies that are most exposed to the tech sector’s data center boom plunged Monday, as the debut of China’s DeepSeek open-source AI laboratory led investors to question how much energy artificial intelligence applications will actually consume.
Vistra closed nearly 30% lower, erasing its gains for 2025. Constellation Energy, Talen Energy and GE Vernova tumbled more than 20%, with the latter two stocks also giving up this year’s gains.
Before Monday’s selloff, Constellation, Vistra and GE Vernova had surged to top of the S&P 500 as investors speculated that AI data centers will boost demand for enormous amounts of electricity………………
DeepSeek released an AI model on Christmas Day that Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang described in an interview with CNBC last week as “earth shattering.” Scale AI provides training data for AI applications.
DeepSeek followed up last week with the release of a reasoning model named DeepSeek-R1 that competes with OpenAI’s o1 model. DeepSeek has since risen to the top of mobile app stores. Wang said DeepSeek has essentially caught up with OpenAI.
“Their model is actually the top performing, or roughly on par with the best American models,” Wang told CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin in a Jan. 23 interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has described DeepSeek as “super-compute efficient.” Bank of America analysts said in a Monday note that DeepSeek is “challenging the notion of U.S. leadership in AI and raising doubts about the high expectations for cloud capex, chip growth and power requirements.”
The tech companies have anticipated needing so much electricity to supply data centers that they have increasingly looked to nuclear power as a source of reliable, carbon-free energy.
Constellation, for example, has signed a power agreement with Microsoft to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Talen is powering an Amazon data center with electricity from the nearby Susquehanna nuclear plant…………………………
Renewables to dominate future EU energy supply despite nuclear buzz – German engineers
Clean Energy Wire, 24 Jan 2025, Benjamin Wehrmann, https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewables-dominate-future-eu-energy-supply-despite-nuclear-buzz-german-engineers
The Association of German Engineers (VDI) has cautioned that new-found enthusiasm for nuclear power, as a means to mitigate global warming, must not slow the rollout of renewables, which are set to become the dominant power source. Germany and Europe therefore must stick to a path that maximises the potential of renewable power, and keeps the supplementary role of nuclear power in check, said VDI energy expert Harald Bradke. A recent paper from the International Energy Agency (IEA) titled “The Path to a New Era for Nuclear Energy” indicated there had been a recent shift towards nuclear energy, which according to the VDI “could lead to false conclusions if taken superficially.”
The IEA’s own World Energy Outlook 2024 painted a more nuanced picture, particularly for Europe, the VDI argued. The energy agency found that the EU’s nuclear power production dropped from 854 TWh in 2010 to 616 TWh in 2023, leading the technology’s share in electricity production to fall from 29 to 23 percent. One scenario on “announced pledges” that countries made in the context of the Paris Climate Agreement used by the IEA for the EU would mean that nuclear generation grows to 860 TWh by 2050 – while its share continues to slide to about 15 percent by that year. At the same time, renewables could grow from 45 to 84 percent. Solar PV’s share in this scenario grows form 9 percent to 24 percent and wind power’s share from 18 to 46 percent between 2023 and 2050. “These figures support the assumption that renewable energy sources are going to remain the main drivers of the energy transition despite the prognosed surge in nuclear energy production,” said VDI energy expert Badke.
Germany shuttered its last three nuclear reactors in April 2023. The step that ended a process which had been in the making for more than two decades was met with criticism both domestically and internationally due to its timing during the European energy crisis and the lost potential of nuclear energy generation for emissions reduction. However, despite a nuclear renaissance championed by Europe’s nuclear power leader France, most countries in the EU have much larger and more advanced plans to boost their renewable power capacities.
Globally, the IEA’s outlook found that nuclear power production grew by a mere 0.33 percent between 2010 and 2023 to 2,765 terawatt hours (TWh), while the share of nuclear power in global electricity production shrank from 13 to 9 percent during the same period. The IEA’s announced pledges scenario forecast a doubling of the world’s nuclear generation to 6,055 TWh by 2050. However, due to the simultaneous rapid surge in electricity demand that looks set to more than double, the technology’s share would remain at only 9 percent by the middle of the century, VDI pointed out.
At the same time, forecasts show that renewables will grow at a much faster pace worldwide during this time: solar power’s global electricity production share will rise from only 5 percent in 2023 to about 40 percent by 2050, while wind power’s share is expected to rise from 8 to 26 percent. All renewable energy sources together could increase their share from 30 to 83 percent, IEA found.
California debunks a big myth about renewable energy
Matt Simon, Grist, January 24th 2025, https://airqualitynews.com/fuels/california-debunks-a-big-myth-about-renewable-energy/
One of the biggest myths about renewable energy is that it isn’t reliable. Sure, the sun sets every night and winds calm down, putting solar panels and turbines to sleep. But when those renewables are humming, they’re providing the grid with electricity and charging banks of batteries, which then supply power at night.
A new study in the journal Renewable Energy that looked at California’s deployment of renewable power highlights just how reliable the future of energy might be. It found that last year, from late winter to early summer, renewables fulfilled 100 percent of the state’s electricity demand for up to 10 hours on 98 of 116 days, a record for California. Not only were there no blackouts during that time, thanks in part to backup battery power, but at their peak the renewables provided up to 162 percent of the grid’s needs — adding extra electricity California could export to neighboring states or use to fill batteries.
This study really finds that we can keep the grid stable with more and more renewables,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, a civil and environmental engineer at Stanford University and lead author of the new paper. “Every major renewable — geothermal, hydro, wind, solar in particular, even offshore wind — is lower cost than fossil fuels” on average, globally.
Yet Californians pay the second highest rates for electricity in the country. That’s not because of renewables, but in part because utilities’ electrical equipment has set off wildfires — like the Camp Fire started by Pacific Gas and Electric’s power lines, which devastated the town of Paradise and killed 85 people — and now they’re passing the costs that come from lawsuits and burying transmission lines to their customers. While investigators don’t know for sure what sparked all of the wildfires that have ravaged Los Angeles this month, they’ll be scrutinizing electrical equipment in the area. Power lines are especially prone to failing in high winds, like the 100-mile-per-hour gusts that turned these Southern California fires into monsters.
Even with the incessant challenge of wildfires, California utilities are rapidly shifting to clean energy, with about half of the state’s power generated by renewables like hydropower, wind, and solar. The study compared 116 days in 2024 to the same period in 2023 and discovered California’s output from solar was 31 percent higher and wind 8 percent. After increasing more than 30-fold between 2020 and 2023, the state’s battery capacity doubled between 2023 and 2024, and is now equivalent to the juice produced by more than four nuclear power plants. According to the study, all that new clean tech helped California’s power plants burn 40 percent less fossil fuel for electricty last year.
Those batteries help grid operators be more flexible in meeting demand for electricity, which tends to peak when people return home in the early evening and switch on appliances like air conditioners — just when the grid is losing solar power. “Now we’re seeing the batteries get charged up in the middle of the day, and then meet the portion of the demand in the evening, especially during those hot summer days,” said Mark Rothleder, chief operating officer of the California Independent System Operator, the nonprofit that runs the state’s grid.
Another pervasive myth about renewables is that they won’t be able to support a lot more electric vehicles, induction stoves, and heat pumps plugging into the grid. But here, too, California busts the myth: Between 2023 and 2024, demand on the state’s grid during the study period actually dropped by about 1 percent.
Why? In part because some customers installed their own solar panels, using that free solar energy instead of drawing power from the grid. In 2016, almost none of those customers had batteries to store that solar power to use at night. But battery adoption rose each of the following years, reaching 13 percent of buildings installing solar in 2023, then skyrocketing to 38 percent last year. (That is, of the 1,222 megawatts of solar capacity added last year, 464 megawatts included batteries.) That reduces demand on the grid because those customers can now use their solar power at night.
Batteries also help utilities get better returns on their investments in solar panels. A solar farm makes all its money selling electricity during the day. But if it has batteries attached to the farm, it can also provide energy in the evening, when electricity prices rise due to increased demand. “That evening battery contribution is very key to the economics working out well,” said Jan Kleissl, director of the Center for Energy Research at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the new paper.
So utilities are incentivized to invest in batteries, which also provide reliable backup power to avoid blackouts. But like any technology, batteries can fail. Last week, a battery storage plant caught fire on California’s central coast, the largest of its kind in the world, but it only knocked out 2 percent of the state’s energy storage capacity. A grid fully running on renewables will have a lot of redundancy built in, beyond multiple battery plants: Electric school buses and other EVs, for instance, are beginning to send power back to the grid when a utility needs it — a potentially vast network of backup energy.
But here’s where the economics get funky. The more renewables on the grid, the lower the electricity prices tend to be for customers, according to the new study. From October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024, South Dakota, Montana, and Iowa provided 110 percent, 87 percent, and 79 percent, respectively, of their electricity demand with renewables, particularly wind and hydropower. Accordingly, the three have some of the lowest electricity prices in the country.
California, on the other hand, got 47 percent of its power from renewables over the same period, yet wildfires and other factors have translated into higher electricity prices. The California Public Utilities Commission, for instance, authorized its three largest utilities to collect $27 billion in wildfire prevention and insurance costs from ratepayers between 2019 and 2023.
Climate change is making California ever more prone to burn — a growing challenge for utilities. But the state’s banner year for solar and batteries just poked a whole lot of holes in the notion that renewables aren’t reliable.
Wind, not nuclear, is the best way to meet Sweden’s climate goals, leading think tank says
By Reuters, January 24, 2025,
Reporting by Simon Johnson Editing by Frances Kerry
STOCKHOLM, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The cheapest way for Sweden to meet its expected rise in demand for electricity and goal of net zero emissions by 2045 is to build more onshore wind parks rather than increase the number of nuclear power plants, a leading think tank said on Thursday.
Sweden’s government has said it wants to build up to 10 new nuclear power plants by 2045 as transport and industry shift away from fossil fuels and demand for electricity is forecast to reach around 300 Terawatt hours (TWh) from 135 TWh in 2023.
The SNS think tank said that new nuclear power would be the most expensive solution, while more onshore wind and solar power combined with boosted production from hydropower plants and existing nuclear reactors would be able to meet increased demand without increasing Sweden’s low electricity prices.
“The high costs linked to nuclear power mean that these kinds of plants should primarily be built in countries with significantly higher electricity prices,” SNS said in a report on Sweden’s energy transition…………………………………………………………..
SNS said the government should focus on improving the electricity grid and regulatory framework to support private investment in new energy production. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/wind-not-nuclear-is-best-way-meet-swedens-climate-goals-leading-think-tank-says-2025-01-23/
Europe posts record negative power prices for 2024 as renewables rise
The number of periods when day-ahead power prices fell to zero or below hit a record 4,838 instances in Europe in 2024, driven by surging renewables, weak demand, and limited grid flexibility, says Montel Analytics.
PV Magazine January 21, 2025 Brian Publicover
Europe recorded 4,838 periods of day-ahead power prices falling to zero or below in 2024, a record high driven by rising renewable generation, sluggish demand, and constrained grid flexibility, according to a new report from Montel Analytics. The total is nearly double the 2,442 instances that were recorded in 2023.
The Oslo-based market intelligence firm said that the increase was driven by surging wind and solar generation capacity, as well as sluggish demand and limited demand-side response mechanisms.
Finland led in negative pricing at 721 hours, mainly due to high wind production and low grid interconnectivity with Sweden and Estonia, said Montel Analytics. It noted that solar oversupply in the Netherlands and wind output in Sweden also weighed on prices, while the Iberian Peninsula experienced negative prices for the first time during the second quarter of 2024.
The energy data specialist said that renewables accounted for 50.4% of Europe’s total power mix, which was an all-time high. Fossil fuels, meanwhile, dropped to less than 25% of the continental total.
………………………Harreman also noted the widening price gap between solar peak and evening peak periods, as renewables displaced conventional generation.
Industrial demand remained below pre-pandemic levels, and rooftop solar continued to offset household electricity usage, said the company. It reported that total European electricity demand fell 7.7% year on year to 2,678 TWh, underscoring broader economic weakness, particularly in Germany. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/21/europe-posts-record-negative-power-prices-for-2024-as-renewables-rise/
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