In my self-appointed role, critiquing various plans to radically transform the world’s energy system, I get to review a huge amount of shoddy, shoddy and incompetent work. As people began to advocate for this “energy transition,” the stars frequently aligned to produce the greatest degree of incompetence. Let’s start with the fact that the “smartest” people are full of arrogance and arrogance, but in reality are not very smart. Add to that the countless Politics and English majors that have flooded into a field that requires technical calculations. Additionally, groupthink and formal enforcement prevent anyone from pointing out obvious flaws. And then throw in a massive dose of religious fervor to hinder the intrusion of anything resembling critical thinking. All in all, it’s a prescription for disaster.
But in a field filled with jobs as bad, worse, worse, and dangerously incompetent, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything as shockingly incompetent as The report was just released by the International Energy Agency with the title “Batteries and safe energy conversion.” The report only has the date identified as the month “April 2024”, but Press Release launched just two days ago on April 25.
If I had been assigned by North Korea to write a Report intended to somehow cause the West to destroy itself, I don’t know what I would have done differently.
Are you familiar with the International Energy Agency? It is not part of the United Nations, but a separate consortium of about 40 countries, mostly Western and mostly rich, established after the oil shock of the 1970s. with the goal at that time of promoting energy security. Of course, it is based in Paris. The current head (and since 2015) is a guy named Fatih Barol. Here is an image of Barol from Wikipedia:
Somewhere along the way, the IEA completely lost track of its energy security mission and became an unabashed advocate for the green energy transition. That’s where they are today.
I don’t know how many people work at the IEA, but it seems that most of them were involved in writing this Report. On page 5 there is a list of about 35 “directors,” “lead authors,” and “lead authors” among IEA staff, plus four others who provide “support,” and then, from 6 to page 8, about 89 people said “senior government representatives and international experts outside the IEA” who somehow “contributed to this process.” From the contents of the Report, one has to wonder whether any of these people had ever finished sixth-grade arithmetic, let alone whether any had read any important works in the field. or not.
The Report’s thesis is that batteries, and especially lithium-ion batteries, are key to the impending energy transition and need to be scaled up massively and immediately with whatever subsidies and funding available. What government support does it need? Here are a few quotes from the press release:
After their deployment in the energy sector more than doubled last year, batteries need to lead to a sixfold increase in global energy storage capacity to help the world meet the 2030 targets. . . . In the first comprehensive analysis of the entire battery ecosystem, the IEA Special Report on Batteries and the Secure Energy Transition sets out the role of batteries alongside renewables as a competitive alternative , safe and sustainable for generating electricity from fossil fuels. . . . IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol [said,] “Batteries will provide a foundation in both areas, playing an invaluable role in scaling renewable energy and vehicle electrification while providing secure and sustainable power to businesses. industry and households.
I think it would be too much for me to expect these adults to have read My energy storage reportpublished by the Global Warming Policy Foundation in December 2022. But if you claim that you have in your hands “competitive, safe and sustainable alternative to fossil fuel electricity generation,” like these people, there are a very clear set of questions that need to be addressed. These include:
- Quantitatively, the amount of energy stored in watt-hours (or gigawatt-hours) Is it necessary to provide full backup power to the national grid after all fossil fuel backups have been eliminated and storage is all that is left available when instantaneous generators Doesn’t supply enough demand?
- How much will that amount of storage cost?
- What is the maximum period of time that energy must be stored in storage before being used, and is the proposed storage technology capable of performing the task of storing energy for that period of time?
There are other relatively important questions, but at least those are really necessary questions.
The IEA report mentions none of these issues.
What we get instead are endless lighthearted conversations about the wonders of lithium ion battery technology, how rapidly costs are falling, how deployments are skyrocketing, and what the unthinkable (i.e. meeting the UN COP 28 emissions reduction targets) is just around the corner if only we accelerate the process with massive government “support.” The full report is about 159 pages (with appendices and references) so I can only give you a small sample. But here are a few choice quotes from the Executive Summary:
- From page 11: “Batteries are an essential part of today’s global energy system and are the fastest growing energy technology on the market. Battery storage in the power sector is the fastest growing energy technology in 2023 and is already on the market, with deployments more than doubling year-on-year.”
- Also from page 11: “Lithium-ion batteries dominate battery usage due to recent cost reductions and performance improvements. Lithium-ion batteries have outperformed alternatives over the past decade thanks to a 90% cost reduction since 2010, higher energy density and longer lifespan.”
- From page 12: “Policy support has accelerated battery deployment in many markets, but the battery supply chain is very centralized. Strong government support for electric vehicle deployment and incentives for battery storage are expanding the battery market worldwide.” [For the obtuse among the readership, “policy support” is code for vast subsidies and handouts.]
- See more from page 12: “Batteries are key to the transition away from fossil fuels and accelerating energy efficiency through electrification and greater use of renewables in power.”
- Still on page 12: “To triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 while maintaining electricity security, energy storage needs to increase sixfold. To facilitate the rapid adoption of new solar and wind power, global energy storage capacity will increase to 1,500 GW by 2030 in the NZE Scenario, meeting the Paris Agreement target on limit global average temperature rise to 1.5°C or less by 2100. Battery storage delivers 90% of that growth, increasing 14-fold to 1200 GW by 2030.”
Check the last bullet point. Yes, they are stupid enough to discuss energy storage in GW instead of GWh. How do they come up with goals to achieve their goals? “Energy storage needs to increase sixfold” when they don’t even know the proper units to calculate? You will not find the answers in this Report. In my own energy storage report, I calculated that achieving a zero-emissions electricity sector that could operate for a year without fossil fuel backups would require increased energy storage. quantity somehow gets around. 10,000 times. I’ve used the correct units and shown how to do my calculations.
And what about the question of how long energy must be stored to back up the wind/solar grid and whether the proposed technology is up to the task? In my own report, which looked only at year-long scenarios, I showed that the majority of stored energy would need to be held for six to 12 months before being used. In the other side blog post on September 28, 2023, I presented a new report from the UK Royal Society (which I described as “semi-authoritative”), using 37 years of data. Based on 37 years of data, that report concluded that hundreds of hours’ worth of the grid’s peak power use would need to be stored in storage. for decades to overcome the worst droughts and winds. I quoted this from the Executive Summary of the Royal Society report:
Wind supply can vary on time scales over decades and will require tens of TWh of long-term storage. The scale is more than 1000 times that currently provided by pumped hydro in the UK and more than what can be imagined by conventional batteries.
(Emphasis mine.). I am willing to forgive these IEA people for being ignorant of my own reporting, but not for being completely ignorant of the Royal Society’s efforts.
The full discussion I could find in the IEA Report on the need for large amounts of long-term storage includes a chart and a paragraph of text on page 47. Here is the chart:
And text:
Air iron and other battery technologies that could potentially allow electricity to be stored for longer periods of weeks, are still in their infancy. It is currently unclear whether such technologies can be developed to deliver what is needed in a cost-effective manner. For longer term storage, such as seasonal storage, battery technology is not fit for purpose and other mechanical technologies, e.g. pumped hydro and chemical storage, for example Hydrogen storage, for example, needs to be implemented.
So more than 90% of the storage needed to back up the grid is supplied intermittently needing to be stored for months and years, but unique battery technology can even last for “months and years.” week” are things “in their childhood” and where is it? “unclear” that they can be provided in one “how to save costs.”
Overall, this is a very silly and embarrassing job by the IEA. Surely our government will respond by spending a few hundred billion more dollars to subsidize batteries to do the job they are perfectly capable of doing. “unsuitable.”
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