Renew Extra Weekly

 Some have argued that the wide use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will require substantial amounts of energy and that this will overwhelm any environmental gains from improved energy use efficiency and emission reduction.  However, there are other views.  LSE's Grantham Institute and Systemiq produced a study last year claiming that AI applications in just three sectors (power, food, and mobility) could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 3.2 to 5.4 billion metric tons annually by 2035. That would more than offset all projected data centre emissions from AI across the entire global economy in the same period, and move us 36% closer to an ambitious 2035 emissions reduction trajectory versus business as usual.  A recent overview of the issues said that ‘This would be a huge win, and powered by only three sectors’. But it also reported that a more recent paper from MIT is much more cautious: ‘AI is likely to worsen climate change even if it stimulates large emi...

 Integrated renewables- the cheapest option   IRENA has develop a new energy costing system and found that renewables plus storage could supply firm power at low system costs- see my earlier post .  Another new metric for assessing the total levelized cost of energy (LCOE) has also emerged with equally striking results. It puts the costs of a mix of offshore wind & solar at about €46/MWh in a future climate-neutral energy system for Denmark- less than half the equivalent cost of nuclear under the same conditions. Thats the conclusion of a  new multi-authored peer reviewed study with inputs from Denmark, Finland, Chile, Croatia and the UK. It introduces a new system-based LCOE metric - referred to as SLCOE. It says that ‘while the LCOE is only a function of the respective technology, the SLCOE is a function of both the technology and the energy system context in which it operates’.  It shows that ‘the SLCOE of wind power and solar photovoltaics can be much lo...

Some changes are afoot with Renew and NATTA, so here’s a short update, along with a retrospective account of their long history. The normal Renew extra weekly news service will return with the next issue.  In 1976, along with colleagues from the Open University Faculty of Technology, I helped organise a conference on alternative energy held at Cranfield University. It attracted about over 50 people from around the UK and led to the establishment of NATTA, the Network for Alternative Technology and Technology Assessment, which I then led. Alternative Technology- what’s that? Basically, it means wind, solar, and other sources of renewable energy - then something of a novelty but now commonplace. And NATTA played a role it making that happen.  It started out by organising follow up conferences around the country and, in 1979, setting up a bimonthly membership newsletter. That expanded and became ‘Renew’ which I have run bimonthly, in various formats, to this day .  The ...

 The USA under Trump is losing ground to China on, amongst other things, renewable energy. China is investing heavily in it, Trump is trying to stop it, onshore and offshore wind especially. It all adds up to what some see as fatal energy policy error, with the US trapped into a dead-end commitment to fossil fuels , destined to lead to ever rising energy and climate costs, with the war on Iran possibly being seen by future historians as a key part in a process of US decline. By contrast, China is now leading the way on low cost green energy deployment, and also on new energy tech R&D.  For example, it now leads on solar research – actually aided by Trump.  Collaboration on PV research with the US did significantly decreased after the 2018 ‘China Initiative’ launched by the Trump administration. But there has been a compensatory acceleration of collaborations between China & other countries, particularly with S. Korea and Germany. And now there are more impactf...

The National Energy System Operator estimates that up to 4.1GW of nuclear will be needed to deliver a clean power system in the UK by 2030, with scope for further capacity to be delivered if new small modular reactor (SMR) technology can be developed. Overall, the government’s aim seems to be to ramp up nuclear capacity to 24GW by 2050 – though that is still to be confirmed, with new ‘roadmap’ review underway.  It certainly would be hard. And expensive. But the money seems to be there for things like this. For example, Rolls Royce’s Small Modular Reactor design has been backed by up to £599m from the National Wealth Fund in a partnership deal with Great British Energy - Nuclear (GBE-N). This, it is said , will enable work to begin on the delivery of the UK's first SMR on Anglesey in North Wales, with £2.5bn having been allocated to SMR development. And over £14bn has been provided for the next large reactor at Sizewell. With, presumably, more to come.  However, major projects...

 In a key new report entitled ‘24 / 7 Renewables: the economics of firm solar and wind’, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says that hybrid renewables plus battery systems can deliver firm power at lower costs than fossil fuels when combined to provide ‘round-the-clock’ electricity supply. For example, it says the costs of ‘firm levelised supply’ for solar projects combined with storage now range from $54-82 per megawatt-hour (MWh) in most regions, compared to $70–85 per MWh for new coal in China and $100 per MWh for new gas globally. The IRENA report comes at a time when the conventional metric for comparing power cost, the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE), has come under attack for ignoring the full cost of using variable renewables. For example, the LSE Grantham Institute says LCOE doesn’t measure the full system costs of balancing variable renewable and some see this as undermining the case for renewables. IRENA accepts that ‘plant level metrics such as LCOE mu...