Researchers agree: The world can reach a 100% renewable energy system by or before 2050
Oxford Brookes University , 09 August 2022
New analysis of energy research by 23 scientists around the
world has concluded that the world can reach a 100% renewable energy system
by or before 2050.
The findings, explained in a recent paper On the History
and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research published by the IEEE
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) are that such systems
can power all energy in all regions of the world at low cost. As such,
society will not need to rely on fossil fuels in the future.
In the early
2020s, there is growing scientific consensus that renewable energy
generated by solar panels and wind turbines and the associated
infrastructure will dominate the future energy system, and new research
increasingly shows that 100% renewable energy systems are not only feasible
but also cost effective. This provides the key to a sustainable
civilization and the long-lasting prosperity of humankind.
Oxford Brookes University 9th Aug 2022
A concerted push now for renewable energy would save Britons billions of pounds
The UK would be paying “billions” of pounds less for its energy, if it had
stuck with plans to reduce fossil fuel use, an energy boss has said. Greg
Jackson, chief executive of Octopus energy, told the BBC there should be a
concerted push now. The same “sense of urgency” should be applied to the
switch to green energy, as there was for finding a Covid vaccine, he said.
The government said it had delivered a 500% increase in renewables since
2010. “Without the clean energy we have deployed over the past decade,
bills would be even higher today,” a spokesperson for the Department for
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said. There were already
plans to invest further in renewables, BEIS said.
In 2013, the coalition
government led by David Cameron made a series of changes, including cutting
back support for energy efficiency and later ended subsidies for onshore
wind. “If we hadn’t done that, energy bills this year would be billions of
pounds lower than they are,” Mr Jackson told the Big Green Money Show on
BBC Radio 5. “It’s short term behaviour that has left us even more exposed
than we need to be.”
Octopus Energy generates electricity from renewable
sources, including wind and solar and supplies energy to three million UK
customers. A report earlier this year by energy analysis site Carbon Brief
said bills in the UK were nearly £2.5bn higher than they would have been if
climate policies had not been scrapped over the past decade.
BBC 2nd Sept 2022
Expert forum Claverton Energy Group concludes that renewable energy +battery storage can meet UK’s needs – nuclear is not needed.
Open University Professor Bill Nuttall’s updated version of his 2005 ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ book makes a case for nuclear power as low carbon and reliable, although, as the promotional blurb says, it accepts that
‘in recent years it has struggled to play a strong role in global plans for electricity generation in the 21st century’.
The new book also accepts that the much-hyped renaissance didn’t in the event happen- with Fukushima blowing it off course. Do we really want to build new nuclear plants to be ready on standby to provide spinning reserve backup and/or to provide rotational grid stability? Hydro can do that, and wind too to some extent, and virtual inertia can be provided by battery systems fed by PV solar.
Claverton Energy Group (CEG), a UK energy expert forum, has recently summarised some of the key conclusions of current research on energy system mixes and say they show that renewables can supply all our needs, with grid balancing provided in part by battery and heat storage.
Nuclear is not needed. The newly revised and updated 100% renewables global energy scenario produced by Prof Mark Jacobson and his team at Stanford University has come to similar conclusions, with 4 hour battery storage playing major balancing roles. All at competitive costs.
Renew Extra 20th Aug 2022
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2022/08/nuclear-renaissance-revisited.html
100% renewables is feasible worldwide at low cost.
Christian Breyer et al, On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy
Systems Research. Research on 100% renewable energy systems is a relatively
recent phenomenon. It was initiated in the mid-1970s, catalyzed by
skyrocketing oil prices. Since the mid-2000s, it has quickly evolved into a
prominent research field encompassing an expansive and growing number of
research groups and organizations across the world. The main conclusion of
most of these studies is that 100% renewables is feasible worldwide at low
cost.
IEEE Access 29th July 2022
Renewables are booming – REN21 Global Review
As the new annual REN21 global review illustrates, renewables are booming
most places, supplying 28% of global electricity, with PV solar especially
lifting off fast, including, at last, in Australia and, crucially, Africa,
north and south. In all, there’s over 1TW of PV in place globally.
The scale and reach of some of the new projects planned is very dramatic. For
example, there is a proposal for a 20GW PV array in north Australia which
would send power to Singapore.
Meanwhile, wind also continues to boom,
offshore especially, with ever larger, taller devices, as well as floating
units. There are some huge projects planned. For example, up to 20GW of
offshore wind has been proposed by Denmark for islands off NE Europe,
including 10GW linked to an artificial ‘hydrogen island’ in the North
Sea, on its part of the Dogger Bank. Denmark also plans two other offshore
wind-based energy islands for the North Sea and Baltic Sea with the
potential for some hydrogen production.
Clearly hydrogen is becoming a
regularly featured energy vector, in part since it can be stored in a range
of ways and the cost of producing it by electrolysis using renewable power
is falling.
However, although, batteries still rule the roost, at least for
short-term storage, there are also other energy storage options, some of
which may offer advantages in the newly emerging flexible energy systems,
including heat stores of various types and some intriguing gravity-based
systems. Bew and updated studies of the long term global potential of
renewables are emerging.
Prof. Mark Jacobson and his team at Stanford
University have produced an updated set of 100% wind, water and solar
energy 2050 scenarios covering 145 countries. Because battery costs have
dropped dramatically and because four-hour batteries are now readily
available, it is now justifiable to include a larger penetration of
batteries than in the previous studies’. So less demand response and very
long term storage is needed, reducing costs.
Renew Extra 6th Aug 2022
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2022/08/global-renewables-review.html
Nuclear energy vs renewables: which is the best solution for the climate crisis?
There is no silver bullet to the climate crisis, and renewables
look like a better, cheaper solution.
In addition to safety concerns,
rising costs are a central reason why the number of new plants under
construction remains limited. Since 2011, nuclear power construction costs
globally have doubled or even tripled.
China is, however, notable in its
nuclear ambitions. The country is planning at least 150 new reactors in the
next 15 years, more than the rest of the world has built in the past 35,
though cost could ultimately change this direction of travel. There are
some big nuclear power stations on the cards – think Hinkley Point C or
Sizewell C in the UK.
But the major excitement among many nuclear
enthusiasts, including plenty of UK MPs is around so-called small modular
reactors (SMRs). If you believe the hype, they are the answer to all
climate and energy ills.
So what is the solution? Renewables, renewables
and more renewables? In short, yes. The costs of solar, wind power and
storage continue to fall, and by 2026 global renewable electricity capacity
is forecast to rise by more than 60 per cent, to a level that would equal
the current total global power capacity of fossil fuels and nuclear
combined, says the IEA.
Some argue nuclear can be a clean back-up option
for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun isn’t shining. But again,
other options already exist, including demand response (for example,
plugging in your electric car when there is lots of energy and not
switching on your washing machine when the system is under strain),
large-scale storage and interconnections between different countries.
New Statesman 4th Aug 2022
Prairie Island Indian Community planning to set up large renewable energy project, keen to be rid of nuclear power plant and nuclear wastes
Prairie Island Indian Community nuclear concern powers net zero carbon emissions plan,
Catharine Richert, Prairie Island Indian Community, Welch, Minn., August 1, 2022 , Growing up on the Prairie Island Indian Community reservation, Calais Lone Elk had a plan — a set of steps burned in her mind and logged with her school to help her find her family in the event of an explosion at the nearby nuclear power plant.
“If you went to school and something happened out here, where do you meet your parents? Where do you reconnect with your family? Because you can’t come back here,” she said. “Those are things that I don’t think are normal.”
Lone Elk is 37 now, and still constantly reviewing her escape plan for an emergency at the nearby power plant.
It sits just 700 yards away from her community of 100 homes, its powerlines lining backyards and main thoroughfares.
For Lone Elk and others living in Prairie Island, concerns about the nuclear power plant’s safety are a source of low-grade daily stress. Despite official assurances, many people believe it’s bad for their health to be living so close.
“We all have a plan, whether we voice it or not. We all have an idea of what we have to do or what we need to do. And we all know that we have to go up-wind of that nuclear plant,” Lone Elk said
But it’s also a physical reminder of the environmental injustices endured by Native people for generations, said tribal council vice president Shelley Buck.
“Since this plant was created, our energy history here has been focused on the power plant and the nuclear waste that is stored right next door to us,” she said.
Today, the Prairie Island Community is seeking to disentangle itself from a power plant it never wanted. It’s created a $46 million plan to produce net zero carbon emissions within the next decade.
Buck said it’s an ambitious step toward being a sovereign nation that’s energy sovereign, too.
“To do a big project like net zero really helps us change that narrative into something positive showing how energy can be used as a positive force,” she said. “By offsetting or eliminating the carbon that we produce, it’s a positive for everybody.”
Why not go big?’
Prairie Island members are descendants of the Mdewakanton Band of Eastern Dakota. They made their home in southern Minnesota, but lost that land in 1851 in the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux.
It wasn’t until 1934 that the land on the banks of the Mississippi just north of Red Wing became a federally recognized reservation.
The Prairie Island power plant was issued its first operating license in 1974, and it was renewed in 2011. Initially, tribal members say the plant was described to them as a steam power plant. It’s one of two nuclear power plants, the second in Monticello, that Xcel says are critical to its plans of producing carbon-free electricity by 2050, and is considered safe by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In the early 1990s, Xcel Energy asked the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency permission to store nuclear waste there — at least temporarily until a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain opened, a plan that has since stalled due to local opposition.
As a child, Mikhail Childs remembers his father protesting the prospect of storing nuclear waste so close to the reservation.
“Some of the earliest memories I have are of protestors standing in the road, blocking semi-trucks hauling nuclear waste,” he said. “The way [my dad] explained it to me was that all this land we reside on is sacred … We believe that in our creation story, the creation took place just miles down the river.”
But here’s the twist, and it’s an important one: Through all these years of living with a nuclear power plant next door, Prairie Island hasn’t been powered by the energy generated there, said Buck. The community just recently started getting natural gas from Xcel.
It’s a logistical detail that she said prevented the tribal community from being eligible for the Renewable Development Fund, a pot of state money financed by Xcel customers for renewable energy projects for Xcel service areas, she said.
Then in 2020, a legislative change allowed Prairie Island to tap $46 million from the fund for the project.
While the tribe had toyed with doing wind power and other renewable projects in the past, a large amount of funding created the opportunity to do more.
“Why not go big?” said Buck.
One goal, different solutions
And by big, Buck is referring to a plan that aims to eliminate 20 million pounds of carbon annually through a raft of renewable energy and efficiency upgrades. Prairie Island’s Treasure Island Resort and Casino is the largest energy user on the reservation.
The plan involves multiple ways of achieving that goal, said Andrea Thompson, who has been hired by the tribe as the project’s energy program manager. …………………………………..
Their plan involves constructing a 10-to-15 acre solar array that aims to reduce carbon emissions by more than 550,000 pounds annually, phasing out natural gas in favor of geothermal energy and electrification, and promoting zero-emission and energy efficiency residential upgrades………………………….. more https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11069613/Global-warming-trigger-nuclear-war-financial-crisis-extinction-level-pandemic-2070.htm
Latest Research – Baseload generators such as Sizewell C nuclear power plants are not needed in an all-renewable future and their use would simply increase costs
Latest Research – Baseload generators such as Sizewell C nuclear power
plants are not needed in an all-renewable future and their use would simply
increase costs. Sizewell C is much more expensive and slower to build than
proven and reliable alternative low carbon solutions say elite Energy Think
Tank. Professor Mark Barrett, from UCL, who has modeled the comparative
costs of nuclear and renewable power, using hour-by-hour wind and solar
data with 35 years of weather data , said: “Nuclear power is more
expensive and slower to build than renewables, particularly offshore wind.
7 GW of wind will generate about 40% more electricity than Hinkley at about
30-50% of the cost per kWh and will be built in half the time. Neither wind
nor nuclear plant operates all the time, so both will need backup. Modeling
shows the total cost of a renewable generation to be less than nuclear and
to be just as able to provide continuous power even with wind and solar
droughts.”
100% Renewables 26th July 2022
No need for miracle technologies to rapidly decarbonise energy
Most of the world can switch to renewable energy without destabilizing
power grids, at low cost, and relying almost entirely on existing
technologies, according to a new Stanford University study.
With countries facing record-high fuel prices, energy blackmail from Russia, up to seven
million deaths per year due to air pollution, and an endless parade of
climate disasters, there’s no need for “miracle technologies” to put
things right, writes Stanford civil and environmental engineering professor
Mark Z. Jacobson, in a post for The Hill.
“By electrifying all energy sectors; producing electricity from clean, renewable sources; creating
heat, cold, and hydrogen from such electricity; storing electricity, heat,
cold and the hydrogen; expanding transmission; and shifting the time of
some electricity use, we can create safe, cheap and reliable energy
everywhere.”
Jacobson’s study covered the 145 countries that account
for 99.7% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and relied solely on onshore
and offshore wind, various solar technologies, geothermal, hydropower,
small amounts of tidal and wave energy, and different forms of storage. The
transition would cost about US$62 trillion, he says. With annual energy
cost savings of $11 trillion, the investment would pay back in less than
six years.
The Energy Mix 13th July 2022
Greenpeace and other NGOs call for a green reconstruction plan for Ukraine
Activists from Greenpeace raised a replica wind turbine, close to the
venue of the Ukraine Recovery Conference today in Lugano, in a call for
recovery efforts to be based on sustainable energy systems, not nuclear or
fossil fuels. As donors meet to discuss reconstruction after the Russian
invasion, Greenpeace together with Ecoaction and more than 45 Ukrainian
civil society organisations is calling for a green reconstruction plan.
Ukrainian non-governmental organisations have developed guiding principles
to ensure that Ukraine’s green post-war reconstruction delivers
sustainable economic development and is beneficial to people and nature.
Greenpeace 4th July 2022
Renewables supply nearly half of German power demand in first half 2022
Renewable energy has supplied roughly half of Germany’s electricity
demand for the first half of 2022, new data has shown, boosting the amount
of renewables in the mix by six percentage points compared to the same
period in 2021. Germany’s Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research
Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and the Federal Association of Energy and Water
Management (BDEW) said on Monday that renewables had covered around 49% of
gross domestic electricity consumption over the period. In a joint press
release, the organisations said that the main contributor to the increased
renewables output was a “significant increase” in onshore wind and
solar capacity – each generating around one-fifth more electricity than
in the same period in 2021.
Renew Economy 6th July 2022
Spain and Portugal stand out from the European Union, in slashing energy bills because of their high renewable energy use
Spain and Portugal have broken ranks with the EU to allow themselves the
space to slash their energy bills by 40 per cent. The move is being allowed
because both southern European countries have a large amount of renewable
energy and aren’t as reliant on fossil fuels as the rest of the Continent.
MSM 31st May 2022
Canada can achieve 100% zero-emission electricity by 2035 – with renewable energy, storage, energy efficiency , and interprovincial transmission
| Canada can achieve 100% zero-emission electricity by 2035 with an electricity system that prioritizes renewable energy, storage, energy efficiency, and interprovincial transmission and avoids the pitfalls of nuclear generation, fossil gas, carbon capture and storage, and carbon offsets, the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) concludes in a modelling study released this week. And the authors note two equally important dimensions of the transition: decolonizing power to benefit Indigenous peoples, and engaging with communities at the outset to save precious time and money. “At a time when energy security and affordability are top of mind for many Canadians, this report shows that a clean electricity pathway based on renewables offers an affordable option for ambitiously reducing emissions while meeting increasing electricity demand,” the Foundation writes. The Energy Mix 27th May 2022https://www.theenergymix.com/2022/05/27/canada-can-hit-100-zero-emission-electricity-by-2035-without-nuclear-ccs-report-finds/ |
EU hits fast forward on renewables, including “massive deployment” of solar
Spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European Commission unveils massive scaling-up and speeding-up of renewable energy, with solar as the “kingpin.” The post EU hits fast forward on renewables, including “massive deployment” of solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.
EU hits fast forward on renewables, including “massive deployment” of solar — RenewEconomy
Energy saving and renewables to create many more jobs than nuclear could.
Dave Elliott: Renewable energy has the potential to create twice as many
jobs as nuclear, and three times as many jobs per million pounds invested
compared to gas or coal power, while investment in energy efficiency can
create five times as many.
So says a new UK Energy Research Centre study of
Green Job Creation, based on a new review of the literature. It’s an
update to their earlier 2014 low carbon energy & employment study. That was
a bit more cautious about making final pronouncements, since, it said, it
was difficult to assess net economy-wide impacts over time. For example,
though some sectors might benefit more than others, if there was full
employment, new investment was unlikely to create extra jobs net of any
losses. A bit sniffily it said ‘the proper domain for the debate about
the long-term role of renewable energy and energy efficiency is the wider
framework of energy and environmental policy, not a narrow analysis of
green job impacts.’
In reality, we can’t just chase for the optimal
number of green jobs. The choice of technology will be made mostly on the
basis of a range of other issues- although, as UKERC says, job quality is
also important if we want to move to a socially and environmentally
sustainable future, a point I have developed in a recent study. We need
good, sustainable jobs as part of a global ‘just transition’.
Renew Extra 14th May 2022
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2022/05/renewables-energy-saving-create-most.html
1 This Month
5 March -Online – Reversing nuclearization:
From nuclear weapons in Belarus and NATO host countries to a European-Nuclear-Weapon Free Zone
11am-12:30pm Eastern Time USA / 5pm-6:30pm CET
of the week – Advocating for a
nuclear free beach – https://www.samuellawrencefoundation.org/
The Samuel Lawrence Foundation advocates for a Nuclear Waste Free Beach at San Onofre, join us and take action!
10 March A LIVE WEBINAR THE REAL EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR POWER
What the Industry Isn’t Telling Us
1:00 PM Mountain, 2 pm Central, 3 pm Eastern. Live on the Keepers of the Water Facebook page
18 March Webinar @ 1 PM EST: An Assessment of SMR Projects: The Case of Canada
register for the zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o8BIIOUvQ2ONJR1nta65DQ#/registration
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
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