64 MW of peak solar power is about to go online.
Nevada Solar One power plant uses concentrated solar power (csp) to create 64 megawatts of energy for peak load (during the hot of the day when it is most needed). It will come online this summer and become the worlds third largest solar power plant. It is being constructed using Schott solar parabolic collectors. (read my interview with Schott about these collectors here)
To put this in perspective thats enough energy for 40,000 homes, and will reduce co2 emissions by nearly 200 million pounds. The equivalent of taking 17,000 cars off the road. The 400 acre facility will create power for energy hungry Las Vegas, as well as the five neighboring states. The 184,000 mirrors are made from recycled aluminum and the size of plants like this could be scaled up to meet the energy demands of much of the mid and western states.
As you can see there are many sites in the United States that would make excellent concentrated solar therm power sites. Many near large cities and other urban areas that would benefit from having clean peak power. Peak power is most often gas or oil power plants that have to turn on during the day to supply demand during high energy use periods (for things like air conditioning). The nice thing about CSP plants is that at the hottest point in the day they are making the most power.
I’m trying to find out what the expected annual electricity generation (e.g., kilowatt-hours) would be for this 64 MW solar facility – I couldn’t find this important info mentioned in any of the materials referenced about this renewable energy project. If, on average, the Nevada Solar One Power Plant generated electricity equivalent to the amount produced should the facility operate at full capacity for only 5 hours per day, this solar generating plant would produce about 117-million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. However, this output would be equivalent to a capacity factor of 21% (= 5 divided by 24) – which may be high for most solar facilities.
Nonetheless, the claim that this facility would support the electricity demand of 40,000 homes appears to be hyperbole given that the national average residential customer in NV consumes nearly 12,000 kWh per year. If it operated at nearly a 21% annual capacity factor – which would be quite good for solar – this 64 MW facility would generate only enough electricity to equal the yearly consumption of only about 10,000 average residential customers in its home state.
Hello George: You make a couple assumptions that I am not sure of, where did you find the average energy usage statistics for NV homes?
Also you forget that this is a CSP plant (not PV) that means that it makes energy even when the sun is down (just because the sun went down doesn’t mean the heat vanishes from the storage liquid).
I would say that even after the sun went down this facility would continue to pump out energy into the night hours.
thanks for your comment.
Greetings,
The US DOE’s Energy Information Administration published a summary of electricity usage by state by type of consumer for data obtained in 2003 (Residential is one of the 3 principal consumer sectors – Comercial and Industrial comprise other 2). Here is the weblink to this Excel spreadsheet – http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/esr/table1abcd.xls (go to Table 1 worksheet and multiply Column C data of top table – monthly data for residential consumers – by 12 to get annual average). NV residential consumers in 2003 consumed on average a total of 11,599 kWh’s (i.e., 967 kWh/month x 12 months).
I’m aware that Nevada One Solar is a CSP plant, and understand that CSP plants operate at higher efficiencies than PV facilities. However, the electricity generation potential of any solar facility declines sharply when the sun is situated near the horizon. None of the solar trough plants in CA (SEGS I through XI) have operated with annual capacity factors exceeding 21% according to EIA’s 906 database (see 2005 – ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/electricity/f906920_2005.zip ).
Is there information available regarding the expected annual generation total (kWh’s) for the Nevada One renewable energy facility? It would also be interesting to know how many hours per calendar day, week or month this facility would be expected to generate 64 MW (full power) or at over 90% of this level.
In addition, this webpage’s article (above) claims that the Nevada One generating plant is expected to offset “nearly 200-million pounds” of CO2 emissions per year. Unfortunately, there were no details provided to explain how 100,000 tons of CO2 emissions offset was derived. But according to EPA’s 2002 eGrid emission data, power plants in NV emit on average over 1,550 pounds of CO2 per MWh generated (megawatt-hour). Assuming this average is applicable in estimating the CO2 emissions offset potential of the NV CSP facility (I believe it should be), in order to achieve the claimed 200-million pounds of potential CO2 offset the Nevada One Solar Plant would need to generate about 125-million kWh’s annually (i.e., operate at nearly 23% annual capacity factor).
Do you know what the annual capacity factor is of any other CSP plants are that are now operating in the US (e.g., Saguaro 1 MW facility which began operation in Dec. 2005) or elsewhere? I understand there are claims that parabolic trough technology will achieve much higher annual capacity factors than 23%, but are there any commercial facilities which are actually operating with significantly higher capacity factor levels?
I believe this is a very promising and much needed technology, but we need to maintain some skepticism about the performance claims of any industry.
Correction – I meant to type “SEGS I through IX” (not XI). These 9 solar CSP facilities are relatively old – built from 1985 through 1991.
Also, in checking the web, I found a April 2006 article which provided the claim that the Saguaro parabolic trough CSP solar plant (1 MW; located in AZ) is expected to generate “2,000 MWh of electricity annually” (see: http://www.chiefengineer.org/content/content_display.cfm/seqnumber_content/2594.htm ) – which means it would operate at only a 22.8% annual capacity factor (i.e., 2000 MWh/ 1 MW x 8760 hrs/yr).
A press release put out by APS, the builder of the Saguaro solar plant, indicates that this 1 MW facility will be “enough to provide for the energy needs of approximately 200 average-size homes” – see: http://www.solargenix.com/pdf/APS%20Press%20release.pdf . Applying this same ratio for homes served by the 64 MW Solar One CSP facility in NV would yield indicate that less than 13,000 homes would be served by the Solar One power plant in NV.
Note that APS, Solargenix Energy and SHOTT were involved in the design and/or construction of both the Saguaro, AZ and Solar One, NV solar plants.
Following is a weblink to an NREL webpage which describes 11 parabolic trough solar power plants so far installed in the US – http://www.nrel.gov/csp/troughnet/power_plant_data.html#segs_ix .
Expectations are much higher for the capacity factor of 2 soon-to-be-built 50 MW solar plants in Spain (AndaSol-1 and -2). With electricity outputs projected at 179,000 MWh per year for each, these projects would achieve – if the generation expectations are actually realized – an annual capacity factor of over 40% (179,000/50 x 8760); which equals or exceeds the performance of the best wind energy facilities so far built in the US (or elsewhere).
Wow George, great research. I got this information from various press releases and websites of companies involved with the construction. I would say based on your research that one of two things happened.
Someone ran some numbers with “very optimal” conditions and came up with those numbers, I would assume to make the project look good.
Or
These collectors and this location combine to make this technology highly efficient.
I would guess its a little more of the first and maybe just a dash of the second. But even if you are right and this facility will only provide enough energy to power 10,000 homes, that’s still 10,000 homes that will not need to be burning coal, oil, or natural gas to power.
This plant along with the others all provide a net good. You make the excellent point that filling peoples heads with over inflated numbers is only going to hurt the industry in the long run.
While I am not completely convinced that is what happened in this case, it might be good for companies like this in the future to even under-estimate numbers just a bit, making the resulting production look even better.
I am a big fan of CSP and think it will provide an excellent power source going forward.
Thanks so much for your very thoughtful input.
There are bozos, ie coal industry shills, all over the internet crying about the unfeasibility of these solar plants. Once they’re built, they don’t burn anything….they just generate electricity. How much energy is saved from not having to transport the raw material to be burned? It doesnt take a scientist to be aware of how much open space there is in the US West that could accomodate these plants…try the entire SE of Oregon, or most of Nevada, much of AZ etc etc etc. So tedious listening to these naysayers barking only in their own self-interest.
No one was “crying about the unfeasibility of these solar plants”, and my comments were directed to correcting and expanding upon the information which was posted on this blog. I’m not a supporter or a “shill” of the coal industry, so don’t have any “self-interest” in making comments other than to improve public debate.
Mr. Wallace’s posting is evidence that he is not nterested in hearing opinions or facts which run counter to his beliefs. And the tone and tenor of his comment shows he is not interested in civil dialogue. I’d much rather be a naysayer than a “true believer”, who espouses much more tedious and untenable positions.
Civil dialogue has not been the domain of fossil fuel maniacs for decades. I dont think invasions or support for oil dictators is ezactly civil either. Now we have a collapsing currency precisely because of that mania to chase fossil fuel resources across the globe. How much better it would have been to spend that money at home, and yes, if clean coal was only part of the equation, then fine. The problem is that fossil fuel is always the first choice of the burners, instead of delegating it to where it should be, an old technology used as a stopgap until we can bring solar, tidal, and geothermal online. We can continue to watch us drive our economy into the ground chasing these resources or we can go where these new technologies will lead us. It is as much about saving capital as being a true believer now. The right-wing dirty burners still wont see the light.
And it is apparent that Mr. Wallace is not interested in logical or ethical debate either… Conspiracy theories, ad hominem attacks and ever-shifting and spurious debate points are symptomatic of weak argument.
The right-wing burners originated the ad hominem attack, so get off the high horse. I didnt mention any conspiracies, so you’re misrepresenting my arguments there, another classic strategy of the right-wing.
If you think an oil war that is happening before our eyes is a conspiracy, then you are well-deserving of questions about your intelligence. The huge drop in the value of the dollar is also
a fact, and it relates directly to our aquisition of astronomical
debt in the pursuit of securing the oil of Iraq. Do some reading
before you call these facts a conspiracy.
I still didnt hear you say that you arent a patsy of the fossil fuel lobby which pays people large salaries to patrol the media and create these false arguments. Your hyper-sensitivity to me pointing out this fact speaks volumes about your hidden agenda.
I’m not in the business so you dont need to debate with me. You can keep foisting your old technology in the interest of your dinosaur shareholders as long as you please. I could not care less if this country drives itself further into the ground at the hands of fossil fuel morons, except that I didnt anticipate living in a country of ever-declinging stature. The innovators will leave your industry behind as they have left every other one behind when the market and other needs, ie gobal warming, dictated it. Your fossil fuel burning will probably only add to the viability of solar by making more of the US a drought-stricken desert.
I actually gave you some ground in my last statement, and you respond like the cookie-cutter right-wing dinosaur – uncompromisingly on the attack. Typical.
You’re right. The tone of my comments exceeded the tone you set in your in-depth analysis of this plant. I was merely responding to the fact that there are paid shills in the fossil fuel industry whose only goal is to discredit global warming science, as well as alternative fuel technologies. They make very reasoned, in-depth arguments as well, but its still rigged to suit the interests of their employer.
Regardless of whether this plant lives up to its claims, its still a step in the right direction, and you cant judge a technology when it isnt being pursued on the industrial scale it requires to be properly judged.
Plus, I consider it bad science to question this plant’s output when it doesnt require the upfront energy investment in the acquisition of materials to be burned. That should be factored into its net energy savings and then compare it to other coal, oil and nuclear power plants. I’m sure that’s not a study any of the multi-national energy companies preaching their greenness over the airwaves will be offering us anytime soon. Plus the accusation of it not being online at night is a canard long ago addressed.
By the way, millions of people have died in oil wars. That’s a fact, and far more offensive than any ad hominem attack you’ve had to endure.
George, from your calculations, it looks like this plant would serve the electrical needs of 10,000 homes, rather than the 40,000 homes that it was originally advertised to serve. Would this mean that the cost of that electricity is actually four times greater than what was originally estimated? I am assuming that the cost is linear, which may not be a correct assumption.
Janice, it’s important to understand how the grid works – both from an electricity distribution standpoint and from an economic view. For the latter perspective, I presume your question about “cost” refers to the amount paid for electricity by residential customers and other ratepayers.
It’s my understanding that whenever a solar facility supplies the grid with a kWh of electricity, the solarplant’s owners will receive payment for their power equivalent to the lowest bid price submitted by other powerplant owners to the grid manager for the “auctioned” amount of electricity projected to be needed during that time period in the “market” that has been established for the grid. So, in all likelihood there would not be a noticeable effect of the cost of electricity borne by residential customers if this solarplant generated only 1/4 as much electricity as they predicted.
However, to the extent that a solarplant can or does become a participant in the electricity “market”, they may be able to affect the accepted bid price – but most likely they would drive up cost since their bid probably would be higher than other powerplants due to the very high capital cost of building their facility relative to other powerplants (even if you include fuel costs).
Of course, ratepayers also get charged again for “renewables” – given that the utilities in CA and many other states are required under state law (aka RPS law) to purchase Renewable Energy Credits (REC) from solar facilities or “wind farms”. These RPS laws mandate that a fixed percentage of all electricity sold in the state must be produced from qualifying sources of renewable energy.
The solarplant operator is able to sell the “green attributes” of its electricity to the utilities of a state (e.g., a 1,000 kWh = 1 REC), and the utilities submit documentation of their REC purchases to substantiate that they have purchased enough RECs to equal the law’s mandated percentage of their electricity sales. This additional “operating cost” is likely passed along to the utilities’ customers in the form of higher charges.
It’s possible, however, if enough solar facilities were built, they actually could help reduce the operating cost of a utility since their power output would likely coincide with peak demand periods – and thus reduce the need to procure power during the highest cost periods. However, it is more probable that true “savings” for ratepayers would only come about due to solar facilities if their combined output sufficiently met or outstripped the rate of growth in demand for electricity during peak periods – which would mean they could help prevent the necessity to build other (probably conventional) powerplants.
This is an advantage that solar power has over wind turbines – since wind turbines typically don’t produce much electricity during the seasons or periods of peak demand. Nationally, wind turbine output is highest at night and in the winter – whereas for most grid regions the demand for electricity is highest in the afternoons and especially in the summer.
George, wind and solar plants don’t bid based on how much the plant cost to make, they most often bid 0 dollars, I know this sounds silly, but the fact is they can’t control when the wind blows, or when the sun shines, so when they are making power they “have” to sell it. The way ISO New England works (the people who run the grid where I live) do it is that there is a bidding process and the lowest so many sources get put into the grid, so having a wind or solar plant in the bidding process brings down the cost to the consumer because they are bidding 0 dollars they always “get in” to the queue.
The rest of the companies (oil, coal, nuclear) then have to fight with each other to get the remaining slots, so they tend to lower their prices. They then do some math (I think it involves the average price of all the bids or something) and come up with a price they are going to pay the wind or solar plant.
The net result is that having wind and solar plants on the grid lowers the price that consumers have to pay. The price that the energy coming from the wind or solar plant has absolutely nothing to do with how much it cost to make the wind farm or solar plant. This can be bad for the wind farm or solar plant because if they spent a lot of money it can take a long time to make a profit.
Hi, I am familiar with NE ISO and am reasonably sure it uses an economic dispatch method similar to what I described. I’m also fairly certain it does not operate the way you suggest in regards to wind or solar.
Under FERC rules, renewables such as wind turbines are considered “must take” by grid managers. The owner of a windplant does not participate in the “market” bidding process – which is designed to ensure that adequate “generating capacity” will be available and operating in order to keep pace (i.e., match) demand. If they did participate, windplant owners would be subject to financial penalties if they couldn’t produce the amount of electricity they said they could for the time period covered by the auction.
The price the windplant owner receives for their electricity is based on the amount and time it was produced AND the amount of the lowest accepted bid from conventional generator for some or all of generating capacity targeted during that time period.
Typically, most windplant owners have sold off the “rights” to their electricity via a long-term Power Purchase Agreement which they have negotiated with a wholeseller of electricity – such as Exelon, usually this deal is struck before the turbines are erected. You can confirm this info via the FERC EQR database.
The capacity market for electricity requires that bids be tendered long before the identified time period arrives, so there is no way that other powerplant owners (i.e., what you call oil, coal and nuclear companies) could “lower their prices” in response to the generation of the wind turbines (remember, they don’t even bid – i.e., they’re “rate takers”).
I’m not aware of any evidence which credibly substantiates the idea that utility-scale wind and solar plants will “lower the price that consumers have to pay” for electricity. I would appreciate some documentation to support your contention that solar and wind energy development will lower the cost of electricity, especially for New England or PJM. This seems highly improbable if you factor in the huge cost of strenghtening and expanding the transmission line infrastructure that is likely to be needed in order to accomodate and enable 10% or more of generating capacity being supplied by wind turbines (since wind resource areas are on average located a long distance from demand centers).
It’s certainly true that the construction cost of the windplant or solarplant doesn’t effect the price they get for electricity. However, that is because they don’t have to compete “head on” with conventional generators in the bidding market. It’s also because owners of certain renewable energy facilites are able to use federal tax credits and shelters, as well as additional revenue from the sale of RECs (i.e., the “green” attibutes of the electricity they generate), to compensate for the huge amount of capital cost involved with building the windplant or solar facility (the cost of construction of a windplant is now close to $2-million per MW of nameplate capacity).
It’s important to understand that at least 2/3 of the capital cost of a windplant can be recovered by the owners and investors due to federal tax provisions – which allow them to escape payment of massive amounts of otherwise-owed federal income taxes. The federal treasury likely will loose over $1-million for each MW of wind turbine installed.
What is the point of all these rebuttals about the viability of these plants, posted on the site of this plant in particular? Do you contend that our future lies in clean coal, (possible), or nuclear (10k plants needed to replace fossil fuels, with uranium running out in 20 years), or to keep chasing the dinosaur juice called oil that has already mostly run out in the US, going to run out in the North Sea in 2020, and probably already having peaked in Saudi Arabia (we don’t know, beause of the friendly little Bush-Saudi-oil company cabal)?
I’d like to know what the actual point and agenda of all this naysaying about solar power is really about George. If its so futile, then why are most of the countries of Europe, China, and Japan chasing it at full-throttle? Those terrible little federal tax breaks, aren’t they such a socialist scourge?
I don’t suppose expendable soldiers figure into the cost analysis associated with continuing to blindly march down our current energy path. You still havent used your powerful calculating skills to figure the cost savings of NOT having to drill the oil, NOT having to transport it thousands of miles, and NOT having to fight wars to secure it. Imagine if we had spent a trillion dollars on solar, wind, tidal and geothermal. The dollar would be the premier currency in the world, oil would be cheap as dirt to still use for polymers, and the world would think we’re geniuses. Instead we waste precious time with secret agendas calculated by aging WASPs, shredding our constitution in the process. Might want to figure that into the cost analysis.
It’s delusional to believe that subsidizing the ENRON’s and GE’s of the world will be good for democracy and the commonweal. I mention ENRON and GE in the same breath since GE bought out ENRON’s wind energy division after its bankrupcy – and is now the leading manufacturer of wind turbines in the US. ENRON was formerly a leader of the wind industry, and helped get then Gov. Bush to approve one of the first RPS laws in the nation. They also convinced Congress to approve the tax subsidy scheme which is now bankrolling industrial wind energy development.
Confusing facts about reality with “naysaying” is a further example of psychosis. We don’t need to produce more and cheaper electricity by building utility-scale generators (renewable or otherwise) in order to continue feeding the insatiable energy apetite of our society. Instead, we need to first halt our growth in demand for energy – which, for electricity, is projected to expand by nearly 2% per year. But that will require us to do some hard things – such as controlling population growth, which is at the root of many problems.
All the huge wind turbines and the token number of solar plants that are likely to be built over the next few decades won’t be able to produce enough power to keep pace with the net growth in demand for electricity. So our addiction to oil and its accompanying perils are not going to be appreciably avoided or mitigated by the desperately wishful thinking about wind and solar – which have absolutely nothing to do with oil since less than 3% of our nation’s annual consumption is burned to generate electricity (and of that amount nearly 5/6 is comprised of tarry residues left over from refining which have virtually no other uses).
Sadly, very little money and effort is going towards incentives and policies which will actually zero-out our rate of growth in demand for energy. Whereas public subsidies are lavished on multinational corporations to produce and erect wind turbines which are incapable of dispatching electricity when needed and primarily generate power at times of low demand – thus essentially requiring our society to pay for twice as much generating capacity as otherwise needed.
Excuse me, but I believe it is more rationale to instead collect the income taxes owed by large corporation and investors and target this revenue to support small-scale energy projects and initiatives which foster real conservation and energy efficiency.
George: I would say that proposing that we only use 3% of our oil for electricity production misses the obvious point that we use most of it for transportation. And don’t forget that the vast majority of our energy comes from coal. The problem with both facts is that even with a halting of growth the current level of co2 release from these two sources is going to destroy the planet through global warming.
Halting growth does no good unless you replace production with renewable energy. Since 1970 efficiency measures have grown by about 1% a year, so we don’t really need to halt growth, we just need to make it stay under the level of our increase in efficiency, but like I said this still doesn’t do any good unless we figure out a way to make energy that doesn’t release co2.
I would be interested in hearing how you think we could do that without renewable energy.
Unfortunately, since 1970 our rate of growth in demand for electricity was a couple of times greater than the 1% a year rate of growth in “efficiency measures”.
By 2020, the net growth in CO2 emissions in the US coming from powerplants is projected to increase by several hundred million tons annually – despite increases in efficiency and renewables (see Figure 2-8 in the recently released National Research Council report entitled Environmental Impact of Wind Energy Development). Powerplants are responsible for only 39% of CO2 emissions due to anthropogenic causes.
Sorry, I don’t buy the doomsday belief that the planet will be destroyed by global warming. Life on Earth will be significantly changed, no doubt. But with ever-escalating population growth, it likely will be irrevocably altered even without global climate change.
I’m perplexed that folks concerned about global warming cannot grasp the necessity of first halting the rate of growth in demand for energy – or if you prefer, halting the rate of growth in release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
In 2004, Pacala and Socolow published a seminal paper in Science, which Al Gore refers to in his Inconvenient Truth presentation – see: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/305/5686/968?ijkey=Y58LIjdWjMPsw&keytype=ref&siteid=sci . They suggested that any 7 of the 15 “wedges” discussed in their paper could be employed around the world to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentration at about 450 PPM by 2050. Only 4 of the 15 “stabilization wedges” they identified were associated with renewable fuels, so it seems clear that significant progress in curtailing the worst impacts of global warming does not require a massive shift to renewables.
In addition to implementing efforts to capture and store carbon – which appears where the “energy industry” is headed, my favorite “wedge” actions are halting tropical deforestation, improved farming practices and nuclear power.
George:
It would seem to me that if only solar and wind plants were made from now on, then that would in essence halt the growth of co2 based energy production, and at the same time achieve your goal of halting growth (people could only use as much energy as they could gather from renewable sources) two birds one stone.
I have disagree with you on the “global warming will not destroy the world” and so does the IPCC (see here) in my opinion having a couple billion people die from climate change is the same as “destroying” the world.
If you are against subsides for wind and solar, then you should also be for removing them from oil gas and coal, yes? Which would have the effect of making coal oil and gas power much much more expensive, and would thus make renewable energy that much more competitive. Because that is not likely to happen, people push for subsidies for renewabls. Not saying its the right way to go, but it is the most likely to happen.
And if you don’t believe their is a linear relationship between amount of co2 in the air, and climate change I have to wonder why? The science is strong, and I am not alone in my assertion that there is such a relationship. In fact the vast majority of the worlds scientists agree with me. I am sorry you seem like a really informed person, but starting from that point of view leads me to believe that you are cherry picking anything you can find to support your view, instead of looking at the big picture..
Naib, I’ve never disputed that global warming is occurring or that it is not a problem. Obviously, there is a relationship between CO2 concentration level in the atmosphere and climate change. My point was that you cannot tie the legitimate PROBLEMS you believe are associated with dependence on fossil fuels to any specific CO2 concentration. In fact, you can’t credibly argue that the problems will not occur even if we totally stopped using fossil fuels after this year to generate electricity. Again, over 60% of the total annual CO2 emissions due to human actions is not associated with generating electricity. For instance, over 500 million tons of CO2 are being released annually due to deforestation in the Amazon basin.
I’m not clear why you repeatedly call for me to “look at the big picture”. It seems to me that you are the one whose perspective is in need of improvement.
George: anything that is responsible for 40% of a problem is a huge part of the big picture.
So yes I think we should build renewable energy projects, increase efficiency, and protect our forests and other carbon sinks. I personally think we should be actively supporting things that are in our best interest, so I am in favor of removing all subsidies for fossil fuels, and taking all that money and increasing further the subsides for renewable energy. I don’t care about how much it costs, if we ruin our earth, saving a bunch of money will do little to make me feel better.
Naib, you seem to rely on an “ends justify the means” rationale in support of renewables. Turning a blind-eye to the economic, social, and ecological impacts of industrial wind energy development is hardly enlightened thinking or good public policy.
Your support for renewable energy (which is overwhelmingly going to be supplied by huge wind turbines) seems to be predicated on a religious-like conviction that its benefits will trump all other impacts/concerns associated with its development. Yet, you haven’t provided any evidence that the likely future level of wind energy development will make one whit of difference in forestalling the pending callamities that you see looming on the horizon.
Do you support the siting of industrial “wind farms” on National Forests? Are there any limits to your support for this renewable energy technology?
I am not Naib, but I do wonder about several things…to start with the original post was on Solar Thermal Power…now you are attacking Naib for supporting wind farms? Yes, I can connect the dots but it makes a very convoluted line.
George Marsh says “Turning a blind-eye to the economic, social, and ecological impacts of industrial wind energy development is hardly enlightened thinking or good public policy.”
I’m just not seeing the (presumably negative) economic impact of industrial wind energy development.
Are you talking about the whopping ~$3 each US tax payer covered in tax credits for wind power nationwide from Jan-July of 2007? That would mean just over $5 per for the full year. [I calculate that the $19/MWh PTC for ~18 million MWh –> ~$340 Million in wind power subsidy.] Data from EIA.
If those MWhs of wind power were not available, they would have come from fossil fuel plants, which means even more CO2 would have been spewed out by the US.
As for the social and ecological impacts, what exactly are you talking about?
George Marsh says “Yet, you haven’t provided any evidence that the likely future level of wind energy development will make one whit of difference in forestalling the pending callamities that you see looming on the horizon.”
Excuse me, but is it necessary to provide evidence that generating energy from low(er) carbon sources produces less carbon?
Err…what evidence exactly would you accept? I am tempted to offer an english sentence diagram, but I doubt this is what you have in mind.
Naib said “if only solar and wind plants were made from now on, then that would in essence halt the growth of co2 based energy production” and later Naib also says “I think we should build renewable energy projects, increase efficiency, and protect our forests and other carbon sinks”
What Naib says seems fairly clear to me.
George Marsh says “My point was that you cannot tie the legitimate PROBLEMS you believe are associated with dependence on fossil fuels to any specific CO2 concentration. In fact, you can’t credibly argue that the problems will not occur even if we totally stopped using fossil fuels after this year to generate electricity.”
George since you have not defined the PROBLEM it is hard to know what you are referring to. Is it “having a couple billion people die from climate change is the same as “destroying†the world” that Naib pointed to in the prior post? Until you state the problem, it is indeed very hard to credibly argue that the unstated problem will not occur anyway. On the other hand if a certain concentration of CO2 is the problem, we would be 40% (or more) of the way there if we totally stopped using fossil fuels (I presume you mean globally).
In any event I certainly agree with you about doing our best to pursue ALL 15 of S&P’s stabilazation wedges. I like to start with the existing technologies and policies that are within our control….which is way I personally favor more renewables.
George Marsh said “Only 4 of the 15 “stabilization wedges†they identified were associated with renewable fuels, so it seems clear that significant progress in curtailing the worst impacts of global warming does not require a massive shift to renewables.”
AMEN! Absolutely! Greater EFFICIENCY is the cheapest fastest route. But as an aside what exactly do you have against renewables?
In addition to implementing efforts to capture and store carbon – which appears where the “energy industry†is headed, my favorite “wedge†actions are halting tropical deforestation, improved farming practices and nuclear power.”
I’m glad you have favorites…and I hope you pursue them with half the vigour that you spend against renewables. My problem with your “favorite wedge actions” is that 1) carbon capture and sequestration is currently vaporware, 2) halting tropical deforestation is not in our control (but it is clearly a laudable goal that we could influence with direct payments to countries in the tropics to “bribe” them to do what is in both of our long term interests, 3) no problem with improved farming practices, 4) nuclear power–big problem that at best (i.e. waste) lasts about 100 times longer than CO2 in the atmosphere or at worst (meltdown/nuclear terrorism) increases with nuclear power plant growth and could instantly make substantial areas of the planet unliveable (for us humans).
Daniel, Not sure if you realize that somehow a comment stream about this article have been split into 2 sections (see above and at end of this webpage).
I focused on “wind farms” because, as I explained, they are poised to capture over 90% of the renewables market created by all the state RPS laws. This can easily be verified by investigating the renewable energy projects which currently have applications pending with the managers of all the electricity grid regions in order to request a study of interconnection feasibility – over 90% involve utility-scale wind turbines. Solar power doesn’t even come close to 1% of the generating capacity of all the renewable energy projects which are in-line for linkage to our nation’s electricity grid regions. Obviously, solar power is still not competitive with wind or biomass projects.
Your numbers regarding wind energy are a bit outdated. In 2006 there were nearly 26-million MWh’s generated by wind turbines in the US (a growth rate of 45% between 2005 & 2006) – see: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/prelim_trends/table3.pdf . Assuming wind energy development grows by only half this rate, in the 10-year period ending in 2020 the federal treasury would stand to lose over $40-billion due if the current 2-cent per kWh tax shelter (PTC) was continued. At that rate of growth in the wind industry, the nation would be supplied with only about 8% of its electricity from wind turbines by 2020 (e.g., ~400-million MWh). I still believe that $40-billion is a substantial sum of money.
As I just noted the Production Tax Credit is now $20 per MWh – not $19 as you indicated; plus, the PTC subsidy for renewable technology projects that generate electricity will extend for 10 years. However, this isn’t the only tax subsidy for the wind industry. You didn’t mention the Accelerated Depreciation allowance for renewable energy projects, a federal income tax shelter provision which enables “wind farm” owners and investors to fully depreciate their enormous capital costs in only about 5 years – much more rapidly that is allowed for most other businesses. Using depreciation, the owners and wealthy investors of wind energy projects can avoid paying otherwise owed income taxes that amount equivalent to about 35% of the depreciation deduction (i.e., the maximum income tax rate). Given that a 2-MW wind turbine has a capital cost of over $3-million, the federal treasury could lose tax payments to the tune of about $1-million per turbine (just due to Accelerated Depreciation).
Not sure why you label carbon sequestration technology as “vaporware”? There are demonstration projects ongoing around the world in which CO2 is being pumped into long-term storage sites, and they show promising results – see: http://www.energy.gov/news/5597.htm . This webpage also indicates that considerable US Government funding is now flowing to support this relatively new and highly promising technology. A test of this technology was performed in the US during 2004; the injection of about 1,600 tons of CO2 into a deep saline aquifer beneath TX in 2004 may have been successful – see: http://www.fossil.energy.gov/news/techlines/2006/06057-Frio_CO2_Injection.html .
Furthermore, the independent American Assocation for the Advancement of Science also does not seem to support your “vaporware” assessment of carbon capture and storage technology – see: http://www.aaas.org/spp/cstc/briefs/carboncapture .
I didn’t define the “problem” and merely was responding to what NAIB defined as the “problems” associated with climate change – i.e., “having a couple billion people die from climate change” and “pollution, wars for oil, rising oceans, failing crops, and more severe weather” (see Posts #21 above and #1 below).
Can you tell me what tangible and credible improvement would result in regards to climate change “problems” IF the US powerplants released 733-million tons of CO2 by 2020 instead of 790-million tons? These CO2 quantities represent the expected future difference in CO2 emission from powerplants in comparing a business as usual scenario with a 20% RPS scenario – as forecast by EIA (see bottom of Table 7 in: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/service/sroiaf(2002)03.pdf ). Given that this EIA evaluation noted that US powerplants emitted only 560-million tons in 1999, substantially more tons of CO2 are projected to be emitted in 2030 in comparison to present emissions levels.
I agree that renewable energy projects will indeed produce an offset in use of fossil fuels. However, it appears that – even with unrealistically high levels of construction of wind turbines and implementation of other renewable energy technology – this effort will not result in a real reduction in the tons of CO2 annually emitted by the US electricity industry.
Again, how much benefit will wind and solar technologies provide in terms of climate change impacts given that these renewables are expected to only slightly slow the rate of growth in the emissions of CO2 resulting from the generation of electricity within the US?
Regarding social and ecological impacts of wind energy development, I am referring to the wildlife impacts (bird and bat mortality due to collision with wind turbines), habitat fragmentation due to clearings for placement of wind turbines and for the huge road network and powerline corridors which accompany this development, aethetic degradation due to viewshed impacts, noise pollution, property value decrease, divisiveness which wind energy projects wreak upon communities, etc.
George: I think you might be letting perfect destroy the good. You are right in many things you say, but to me 40 billion is a drop in the bucket (look at what we spend in Iraq, explain how that is making the world better), and if we can supply 8% of energy from wind, combined with efficiency, sustainable growth, and future advances in solar (which I think will take off soon) will provide much larger gains. You seem to be saying that we should just stop growing, which I am sorry to say just isn’t going to happen. And the amount of money you are talking is nearly nothing compared to what we spend on other things in this country. It is less than 1% of what we spend on the military.
So in answer to your question, we have to start with these movements at some point, we have to start moving towards renewable, we have to stop burning fossil fuels, and we have to move towards sustainable living.
My perfect world would be on in which we ramp up the time scale on these projects exponentially. The recent IPCC report basically says act now, act fast, stop emitting co2 now. I suspect that after we get a new president you will see these piddly goals evaporate under the weight of much more aggressive goals. I am willing to throw money at this problem, lots of money, hundreds of billions of dollars, because I think that if we don’t we could be facing the collapse of civilization, something that would cost a whole lot more.
don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
as for the two comment things, seems we have broke the comments due to over posting, hmm have to look into that :)
George,
Sorry I was unaware that the thread had split.
First of all “Your numbers regarding wind energy are a bit outdated.”
Ha. They are for wind power from Jan-July of ’07 (yes that is only 7/12 of the year–but puhlease don’t try the dated card on me!). Not sure how much less dated you want…especially since you go on to cite ’06 numbers.
I just want to be clear you think that $40 billion from the PTC over 10 years (your projection) is a significant economic impact. That represents approximately 0.016% of our GDP over that time frame (grow $21 trillion by 3% for 10 years and sum to get ~$250 trillion).
Oddly enough 0.016% is almost exactly the current share of us electricity production from solar power. Yeah neither here nor there just a numerical coincidence.
Secondly “Using depreciation, the owners and wealthy investors of wind energy projects can avoid paying otherwise owed income taxes that amount equivalent to about 35% of the depreciation deduction”
Oh so now we are distinguishing between wealthy and ordinary investors? If the poor investors could get the tax break, would that make it a better deal?
But more to the point what part of “Accelerated” do you misunderstand? Any “wealthy” investor can (and usually does) avoid paying “otherwise owed income taxes that amount equivalent to about 35% of the depreciation deduction” on capital investments regardless of investment type (store, factory, website, coal power plant); the wind power investor simply gets the deduction a little faster.
While it may be technically true to “say the federal treasury could lose tax payments to the tune of about $1-million per turbine” any loses are completely notional (i.e. not real) unless it can be shown/proved that this $3 million would otherwise not be invested in some other depreciable capital asset. Any actual loss would be some interest rate arbitrage of the time value of that $1 million between the 5 yr accelerated rate and the prevailing (or next best) depreciation time frame.
As for vaporware: the first line of your DOE site press release
“In a major step forward for demonstrating the promise of clean energy technology,” and “DOE plans to invest $197 million over ten years”
The first line from the fossil energy news:
“When scientists recently pumped 700 metric tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) a mile underground as a follow-up to a 2004 effort, they initiated a series of tests to determine the feasibility of storing the CO2 in brine formations, a major step forward in the U.S. Department of Energy’s carbon sequestration program.”
Fourth paragraph of the AAAS website (the first 3 explain what coal is, how CO2 is released and that some view this as a problem):
“Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is currently possible, but not on a scale to significantly contribute to climate change mitigation. A number of research and small-scale implementation projects are developing and testing various types of capture and sequestration in an attempt to make CCS an economically-viable technology. Key considerations for evaluating types of sequestration and their efficacy include ecological impact, cost, timescale, and amount of carbon sequestered. Further research and development is necessary, particularly large-scale tests of sequestration, to address these issues.”
CCS is vaporware in the sense that the technology has not been demonstrated. I don’t mean that no-one has ever deposited CO2 underground, but that the efficacy has not yet been shown on a meaningful scale. I think the above quotes support my assertion. These are the websites you sent me to remember.
“However, it appears that – even with unrealistically high levels of construction of wind turbines and implementation of other renewable energy technology – this effort will not result in a real reduction in the tons of CO2 annually emitted by the US electricity industry.”
What is unrealistically high? 20%, 30%, 40%? and what do you mean by real reduction? 5%, 15%, 25%?
Until you supply either a number or a range (and a timeframe), there is really nothing one can say on the topic either way.
“Regarding social and ecological impacts of wind energy development, I am referring to the wildlife impacts (bird and bat mortality due to collision with wind turbines), habitat fragmentation due to clearings for placement of wind turbines and for the huge road network and powerline corridors which accompany this development, aethetic degradation due to viewshed impacts, noise pollution, property value decrease, divisiveness which wind energy projects wreak upon communities, etc.”
Compared to what? no development at all, BAU? wildfires? urban sprawl? mountaintop removal? I do not argue that there are no costs (in social or ecological terms), simply that the costs up to this point (and for the forseeable future) are relatively low compared to throwing up more coal and nuke plants (which will undoubtedly be built anyway). Furthermore, the costs of renewables are trending down while the costs of fossil fuels are trending up (those few costs we actually count) as these newer technologies are scaled up. Yet you are apparently rather upset that some people think wind is worth subsidizing until it makes up a few percent of our power mix carbon free.
PS the bird thing…and you complain about me using outdated info–even the audubon society strongly endorses wind turbines.
Daniel, given that you didn’t adequately cite the source for your estimate that ~18-million MWh were produced by wind turbines in the US, it seems disingenuous for you to feign offense at my assuming that your quoted figure was actually based on 2005 data instead of 2007. I suspect that you didn’t check out the weblink I provided which shows that wind turbines generated ~18-million MWh in 2005, the very same number you quoted for the first 7 months of 2007.
By the way, the EIA’s 906 database summary as provided in their July 2007 spreadsheet do not include data for most windplants under 25 MW in size, and none of the reported data has been verified by edit checks performed by EIA staff (a process which takes at least a year). Plus, if you really wanted to present a fair comparison, you should have doubled the EIA’s first 6 months of generation for wind turbines in 2007 in order obtain an annual total – which would have exceeded 32-million MWh (a far cry from the 18-million MWh you used).
To infer that the Limited Liability Company (LLC), which typically is formed to purchase “wind farms”, would likely have participating partners who are “ordinary” investors is ludicrous. The big driver of wind energy projects is their tax shelter value – which only benefits investors who have huge tax liability.
As I pointed out, the $40-billion estimate for PTC is only a piece of the tax-shelter “pie” involving wind energy projects. Accelerated Depreciation for renewable energy projects allows the LLC’s partners to recover their investment via a 5-year depreciation schedule vs. the standard 20-year term (for similar investments). In the hypothetical scenario I posed – where industrial wind turbines supply 8% of US electricity generation by 2020 – the Accelerated Depreciation will cost the federal treasury at least $100-billion assuming the projects don’t change ownership. However, because wind projects can and are repeatedly “flipped” – the Accelerated Depreciation schedule is likely to successively employed by the new owners of the same “wind farm”. Thus during the expected 25-year operational lifetime of the turbines in a “wind farm” it is possible for there to be 5 owners – each using Accelerated Depreciation to recover a huge portion of their investment.
However, by your view, allowing multinational corporations to escape otherwise-owed federal income tax payments of $200- to $300-billion between now and 2020 is no big deal – even though they will only generate about 8% of US electricity total, which represents only about half of the net gain in US consumption of electricity between 2006 and 2020. In other words, hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue foregone and we still are likely to be using much more electricity in 2020 that comes from conventional power generation sources (fossil fuels and nuclear) than we currently use. Check out the graph prepared by the National Renewable Energy Lab which shows their projection of GigaWatts of electricity generating capacity by generator type and fuel source between now and 2050 – http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/winds/images/fig_1.jpg , which is explained in: http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/winds/qualitative.html (note the small share of future generating capacity which they expect renewables to supply) .
Regarding “vaporware” – which was your inadequately defined term – I readily concede that large-scale Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is in the testing/evaluation phase of development. However, your claim that CCS is tantamount to “vaporware” isn’t supported by the excerpts you extracted from the sources I provided. CCS technology is available and has been demonstrated to sequester carbon. These facts invalidate your characterization of it as “vaporware” (check out M-W definition – http://m-w.com/dictionary/vaporware ).
“Unrealistically high” – as my post implied – would be 8% of US generation to come from wind turbines by 2020. The National Research Council report (Environmental Impacts of Wind Energy Projects), which was just published, indicated that 4.5% was the high-end estimate that wind turbines are expected to provide of the total electricity generation in the nation by 2020 (see Table 2-4 in Chapter 2).
However, there are real limits to the penetration of intermittent generation sources within our nation’s grid regions, and the cost of integrating a large number of “wind farms” into a grid region will exponentially rise as their penetration exceeds about 10% of the grid’s online generating capacity. It appears that “wind farms” have few knowledgeable supporters who believe they can be expected to represent more than 20% of a grid region’s electricity demand. The oft-cited example of successful integration of a large number of wind turbines in Denmark always omits mention that the approximately 20% penetration by wind turbines is meeting this small country’s demand for electricity is due to Denmark’s ability to export unneeded electricity produced by wind turbines to neighboring countries (Nordic grid) – where it often displaces the generation by another renewable source of electricity – hydropower (see: http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/dk-analysis-wind.pdf ). No other country has wind turbines supplying more than 10% of their electricity – and most are below 2%.
As for the social and ecological impacts of wind energy development, I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. In my last post I tried to explain what I meant by these impacts in response to your rather vague request for clarification, but unfortunately your follow-up reaction is to make wild claims (e.g., wind farms have low costs compared to nuke plants – which is not remotely credible).
Since wind energy development will not prevent or significantly offset the mining or burning of coal, will not appreciably lessen the emissions of air pollutants such as NOx or SO2, will not result in the US becoming less dependent on oil, and will only provide a relatively minor offset of CO2 emissions, I’d be pleased to discuss/evaluate wind energy development’s impacts in a comparative framework with other sources of electricity. Are you still interested in pursuing such a discussion and evaluation?
Just for the record, I support the development of solar, geothermal and some biomass fuels for generating electricity. These power sources have the distinct advantage over wind turbines in that they can produce electricity during the periods when demand is highest. Thus, their development can actually prevent the need to build additional, expensive sources of conventional generation – which will be constructed if the growth in demand for electricity continues to rise during the periods of high demand (e.g., summer afternoons). Unfortunately, their development potential is slated to be virtually ignored in the rush to build “wind farms†– which represent over 90% of the renewable energy projects now awaiting interconnection with the various grid regions of the US.
Following this conversation, it seems to me that George is committed to making the best possible use of money w/r to energy resources and that’s actually a very good thing. Money isn’t infinite. Using it poorly in one place often makes less of it available in another.
It’s also true that some people are going to avoid paying taxes through renewable energy generation in general and wind farms in particular — but that’s a legitimate way to encourage a behavior we want.
However, the reason that I’m willing to spend that money whereas it seems George is not is because I’m operating inside of the following context:
* climate change is already causing significant impacts around the world, especially from drought and loss of food production, that will only increase. A great deal of those impacts are coming from GHG emissions. (And no, I’m not going to provide references because at this point it’s a little like providing references to a creationist that evolution is happening. If one doubts the current and future impacts of climate change, there truly is no room for a conversation to take place here.)
* fossil fuels are at the verge of peaking or may have already peaked
For the last point, I have lots of references neatly laid out on this page:
http://www.inspiringgreenleadership.com/blog/aangel/peak-oil-and-climate-change-q
Looking at coal in particular, most modern estimates put a coal peak at 2030 (Rutledge, Energy Watch Group, National Academy of Sciences). The “we have 150 years of coal left” is simply old data.
At the same time, peak conventional oil production, despite two years of high prices, is still May 2005 (note the “conventional”). Even the IEA has finally agreed to stop using the completely faulty United States Geological Survey numbers for next year’s Annual Energy Assessment 2008. This was after Sadad Al-Husseini, former executive Vice President of Exploration for Aramco, declared that 300 billion barrels supposedly in the Middle East simply don’t exist. Further, the IEA is predicting an “oil crunch” starting 2012.
““There is a need for an electroshock,”” said Fatih Birol, the lead author of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook. “”We have to act immediately and boldly.”” (New York Times, Nov. 9, 2007)
Natural gas has already peaked in North America. If you have any doubt of that, look at the over twenty+ Liquid Natural Gas plants that have already been approved and the additional fifteen+ proposals that have been submitted to bring in LNG from outside NA.
http://www.ferc.gov/industries/lng/indus-act/terminals/exist-prop-lng.pdf
In other words, given that
a) we’re cooking the planet in part with carbon dioxide and
b) fossil fuels are approaching the point at which their availability is about to decline rapidly
my sense is that we need to find alternative energy sources pronto if we’d like to keep the planet’s economy going even a little bit. According to the Hirsch Report (www.inspiringgreenleadership.com/downloads/Hirsch-PeakingOfWorldOilProduction.pdf), we need twenty years to do a credible job of moving off of fossil fuels before they peak and it looks like we will not have any time at all.
Inside this context, building more coal to electricity plants probably doesn’t make sense — we should be using that coal to make gasoline until we can move the transportation fleet onto electricity from renewables.
And we should create incentives to build as much new renewable energy as can humanly occur in the shortest amount of time.
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André Angelantoni
Inspiring Green Leadership
Preparing for a Carbon-Constrained World, Free Weekly Executive Briefing
http://www.InspiringGreenLeadership.com/preparing-carbon-constrained-world
I am a CSP proponent and I appreciate George actually calculating numbers himself. It turns out that Acciona indeed claims that Nevada Solar One produces energy for 14,000 homes not 40,000.
While I am involved in the “green revolution”, renewable technology is not ideal nor necessarily glorious. Is it better? Of course. Does it have practical and economical limitations? Of course.
There are people who are excited about R.E. and profess change but do not get dirty and sacrifice some of themselves in order to further the cause. I encourage all those “optimists” to find practical ways to contribute and then too, you will confront limitations.
I am an optimist but rely on calculations and not my imagination to advance the issues.