If you’ve read my energy storage report, or just a summary of the parts of the report that have appeared on this blog, you’ve probably thought: this is a bit obvious. Surely the great powers must have thought of at least some of these issues, and there must be some sort of official stance on the responses somewhere.
So I thought to look for the closest thing I could find to the Official Party Line on how the US is supposed to achieve Net Zero emissions from the power sector someday soon. The most reliable thing I’ve found is a Big Report coming out in August 2022 from something called the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, titled “Consider supply-side options to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035.” A press release accompanying August 30 is titled “The NREL study identifies opportunities and challenges in achieving the U.S. Transition Goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035.”
What is NREL? The report identifies it as a private laboratory “operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the United States Department of Energy under Contract.” In other words, it’s a group that clearly advocates for “renewable” energy, getting tons of taxpayer dollars to put out advocacy pieces that make it look like the organization’s preferred plans will work. motion.
Make no mistake, This Report is a big deal. The report identifies approximately five “lead authors,” six “contributing authors,” and 56 editors, contributors, commentators, and others. Undoubtedly millions of dollars of your taxpayer dollars were used to create the Report and basic models (compared to the $0 and zero cents Manhattan Contrarian was paid for its energy storage report) ). The final product is a great illustration of why centralized planning doesn’t work and can never work.
So now that our President is said to have committed the country to this “100% clean electricity” thing by 2035, surely these geniuses will tell us exactly how it will be done. How does it work and how much does it cost? Good luck finding that here. From the press release:
Research . . . is the initial exploration of the transition to a 100% clean electricity system by 2035—and helps to improve understanding of both the opportunities and challenges in achieving the ambitious goal. Overall, NREL finds many paths to 100% clean electricity by 2035 will generate significant benefits, but the exact combination of technology and costs will be dictated by research and development decisions. development (R&D), manufacturing and infrastructure investment over the next decade.
It was an “initial poll”. With the country said to have committed to the trillion dollar project on which all of our lives depend, they are just starting to think about how to do it. “The exact combination of technology and cost” – in other words, everything that matters – “will be determined by research and development” – in other words, still has to be invented. But don’t worry, all of that will be done in the next ten years, with plenty of time left to deploy things at scale in the three years between then and 2035.
You won’t be surprised how much solar and wind power the future holds. How much?
Achieving those levels would require an additional 40–90 gigawatts of on-grid solar per year and 70–150 gigawatts of wind per year by the end of the decade under this modeled scenario. That’s more than four times the current annual deployment rate for each technology.
So there would be an immediate increase in solar and wind deployment to four times the current annual rate. No problem! But what if someone out there objected to having tens of thousands of square miles covered by these things?
If there are site and land use challenges to deploy this new generation capacity and related transmission system, nuclear capacity will make all the difference and more than double the capacity. Current installed capacity in 2035.
Oh, we’re going to double our installed nuclear capacity by 2035. Has anyone told these people it takes more than 13 years to build a nuclear plant? There are currently exactly two nuclear plants under construction in the US, both at the same location in Georgia. One of them began construction in 2009 and is expected to be operational next year. It’s been 14 years since the first shovel was put in the ground, and no other plants nearby put the shovel in the ground.
Well, let’s get to the heart of things, namely the issue of energy storage. From page xii of the Report:
The main uncertainty in achieving 100% clean electricity is the combination of technologies that help achieve this goal at the lowest cost—especially considering the need to meet periods of peak demand or during periods of low wind and solar output. The analysis reveals a potentially important role for a number of technologies that have not yet been deployed at scale, including seasonal storage and some CCS-related technologies. The combination of these technologies varies considerably in the scenarios evaluated depending on the technology cost and performance assumptions.
Aha! All of this requires some sort of “seasonal storage” technology that is “not yet deployed at scale.” (There is an underrated way!). Do they even have an idea how that can be done?
Seasonal storage is represented in the model by clean hydrogen fuel-burning turbines but can also include various technologies in different stages of development assuming they achieve comparable cost and performance. on one’s own. There is considerable uncertainty about the route of seasonal fuel storage, which may include syngas and ammonia, as well as the use of alternative conversion technologies such as fuel cells. Other technological avenues are also discussed in the report. Regardless of the technology, achieving seasonal storage capacity at the scale envisioned in these results requires significant infrastructure development, including fuel storage, transportation networks, and more. and pipelines, as well as the additional generating capacity needed to produce clean fuels.
In other words, they have no clue. They’re frantically pitching ideas for things that have never been tried or proven, let alone cost – and supposed we’ll be moving our entire energy system to this in 13 years. It’s no surprise that the best idea they have is hydrogen – which, as I thoroughly described in my report, is a terrible idea. And all the infrastructure they talk about is hydrogen – none of which currently exists, or is under construction, or is even in the planning stages.
Back to the press release:
A growing research team has demonstrated that cost-effective highly renewable energy systems are possible, but costs will increase as systems gain access to 100% carbon-free electricity. called the “ultimate 10% challenge”. The increase in costs is mainly due to the seasonal mismatch between the production and consumption of variable renewable energy.
I have news for them: they will be in trouble long before they get 90% from renewables. Just look at Germany or El Hierro Island to see how that happens. But assuming they’re right, and the wall won’t appear until the renewable energy penetration rate hits 90%. They fully admitted that they had no answers at the time. Again from the press release:
However, the shift from 90% clean grid to full decarbonization can be accelerated by developing large-scale, commercial deployment solutions for clean hydrogen and other low-carbon fuels, nuclear advanced, meet demand meet price, carbon capture and storage, direct air capture and advanced grid control. These areas are ripe for further R&D.
Notice how this “need-filling” thing has suddenly crept in without any definition of what it means. Here’s what it means: if the system they created doesn’t work, they have the right to turn your power off anytime they want. Or raise prices so high that you can’t afford electricity.
The report has a large section on cost/benefit analysis, where it can be concluded with certainty that benefits outweigh costs in any given situation in many situations. This has no solved storage problems or proven solutions or known costs remotely.
Click here to read the full article.
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