‘Solar will very shortly overtake every other type of electricity generation and together with batteries, will electrify everything, everywhere’ says the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in a new report on the cleantech revolution. Certainly renewables generation is now very cheap and solar PV deployment is doubling every 2-3 years, while battery storage, for backup, is doubling every year. Wind is also doing well around the world, with offshore wind leading in some locations, as I reported in an earlier post, and some new major projects going ahead.
Overall, RMI say that ‘clean technologies will continue to follow S-curves, cascading across sectors and geographies,’ with China, the world’s largest energy consumer, in the lead. It explains that ‘China, lacks oil and gas, and cleantech is a path to leadership, clean air, and zero emissions’. And so it will ‘continue to deploy cleantech rapidly’. So it sees China as ‘the pivot nation in the transition away from fossil fuels, and most areas of demand have clearly peaked there’. Also ‘peaks are showing up across the Global South, from S. America to South Africa & Thailand’.
It's very optimistic stuff, reflecting the approach of RMI’s founder Dr Amory Lovins. Away with the old, in with the new- and fast. It says ‘S-curves imply that by 2030 solar and wind generation will triple to over 12,000 TWh and EVs will be two-thirds of car sales,’ pushing fossil use even further out. Taking a broad view , RMI claims that ‘New fossil electricity capacity peaked in 2010, oil and gas capex in 2014, and internal combustion engine car sales in 2017. Fossil demand peaked for industry in 2014, for buildings in 2018, most likely for electricity in 2023, and will shortly peak in transport’, and it says that this will continue, since ‘the drivers of growth are more powerful than the barriers. Falling cleantech costs, the energy security of eternal renewables, Chinese leadership, and a race to the top will continue to overwhelm a fragile fossil fuel system which wastes two-thirds of its primary energy and fails to pay for its externality costs’.
Well maybe, and China does have some very large solar PV projects, but it is not exactly a bastion of freedom! And in the short term at least there is still a lot of fossil fuel being used there, and elsewhere, as a new study from the UK Energy Institute (EI) and co-authors KPMG and Kearney notes. But it also notes that global renewable generation, excluding hydro, was up 13% to a record global high of 4,748TWh in 2023, due almost entirely by wind and solar expansion, led by China, which added 55% of all renewable generation additions in 2023.
Meantime, nuclear is still in the game, including in China. Indeed, the US Energy Information Administration says that ‘China continues rapid growth of nuclear power capacity’, although the chart it uses to support this assertion says it shows ‘annual installed’ net capacity, whereas, in fact it shows total capacity and growth in that has actually been slowing. It’s 58GW now, only making a small overall power contribution in China- EIA says 5% in 2023. By contrast, as noted above, renewables are roaring ahead in China- growing 4 times faster than in the G7 countries overall, with wind and solar adding almost 300GW last year. And it is on track reach 1,200GW of wind and solar total capacity by end of 2024 – 6 years ahead of target.
Ever hopeful though, the nuclear lobby globally still looks to new technology, like Small Modular Reactors, to improve things, even if so far that doesn’t look too promising, with, as a Reuters article reports, there being project failures and high costs. But, SMR apologists say, it is early days yet- first designs often have problems and it takes time to get costs down. However, it would require some very radical cost reductions to compete with renewables, now at all time low costs, especially since they are likely to continue to getting cheaper.
That leaves nuclear proponents with the wider system cost argument. Intermittent renewables require backup/balancing from flexible forms of generation, storage and interconnectors, which adds to the overall system cost. Despite the fact that nuclear plants are basically inflexible, some see nuclear as helping out with balancing, and as being needed as renewables expand. Indeed, the Reuters article quotes MIT Nuclear Engineering Prof. Jacopo Buongiorno as saying ‘studies have shown that when you’re going for deep decarbonization – so not 20%-30%, but 80%-90% grid decarbonization – then the value of renewables goes down and the value of nuclear goes up dramatically’. So he says ‘it's not either nuclear or renewables, it's both, and they play different roles on the grid. If it takes 10 years to deploy nuclear, whether large nuclear plants or SMRS, it’s worth the wait.’ A last ditch case!
However, that ignores the likelihood that, not only will renewables get cheaper too, but so also will backup/flexibility technologies- battery storage already has, mostly so far for short term grid balancing, while hydrogen storage could be a larger-scale longer-term flexible system winner- helping to match supply and demand better, and so cutting system costs. So, some say, could Power to Gas green methanol production systems coupled with direct air capture.
It may have its ups and downs (notably the recent storm destruction of a large floating PV array in India) and there are strategic issues to debate, but in general clever new green tech does seem likely to keep on winning... unlike nuclear. Even fusion, the great long term hope of some, has taken another dive- the huge ITER project in the south of France has been hit a 10 year delay and €5 billion cost hike.
Good thing we still have the free fusion reactor in the sky....with Ember reporting that global use of solar PV has expanded by 23% last year, and wind power by 10%, with renewables overall now supplying around 30% of global power and wind and solar projected to supply nearly 70% of global electricity by 2050. Moreover, some studies have suggested that renewables overall could supply around 100% of all power, or even all energy, by then, with solar playing a major role.
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