Our Energy Path - Learning From Others
Let's check in on others who are further down the path we're headed
I’m at "THE BASICS" Practical Regulatory Training Courses all this week. Six months ago I wasn’t even interested in the grid and now — week long classes.
Blackouts
The most recent lesson we should learn from is from Spain. They now have times where 100% of their electrical generation is solar & wind. There are (expensive) steps that can be taken to provide inertia to a solar/wind grid. Without those steps, blackouts.
An important issue to keep in mind, we don’t know how to structure a grid that is primarily solar & wind. We think we know what we need to add to create pseudo-inertia. We don’t know if that will work or be sufficient. Almost certainly there’s going to be a long painful learning curve for this.
Keep in mind this is a very different issue from needing battery backup. The Spain blackout occurred when they were generating a ton of solar energy. There was no shortage. They had even dialed their nuclear plants down (which probably added to their grid’s fragility.
Increased Costs
Next let’s look at what happens to individuals when they embrace this wonderous new all electric approach to our homes.
From the Washington Post we have I made my home fossil-fuel-free. Why did my utility bills nearly double?
We expected a bunch of benefits, healthier indoor temperatures and air quality. A reduced carbon footprint. Lower energy bills. The results have been more complicated.”
Even after taking advantage of about $13,400 in local and federal rebates and figuring in $3,200 in federal tax credits until 2032, we still needed a (subsidized) loan.
…
I couldn’t wait to see our next utility bill, but to my dismay, the now all-electric bill was nearly double the total of what we’d paid a year earlier for both gas and electricity. This is, I’m sorry, a dirty little secret of switching your home to electric.”
And what happens to industry? Here’s an example from Michigan:
I am all in favor of our all-electric future. We both need to get there (global warming) and want to get there(electricity is more configurable than gas). But I don’t think we should do it where all homeowners in the state face doubled utility bills on top of the cost of purchasing new heat pumps, etc. And I don’t think we should do it where we force some companies1 out of business.
Corruption
This should not be surprising. Lots of government money (all those subsidies) pretty much invites corruption. And so we have:
Clientelism is evident in the hiring of friends or colleagues on solar energy projects, and it is closely linked to favoritism, which refers to inefficiently allocating contracts, permits or licenses, at times in exchange for sex. Rent-seeking occurs in the diversion or capturing of public spending into private hands, and it can include land grabbing, or dispossessing groups of people of their communal or public land. Service diversion encompasses the avoidance of the distribution of local benefits. Theft includes the coercive removal of somebody else's equipment, property or cultural artifacts. Greenwashing refers to flawed impact assessments, as well as the overriding of environmental objectives or misleading the public about the environmental benefits of a project. Tax evasion refers to nonpayment or underpayment of taxes, or avoiding strategically the payment of local taxes.
Yes you have corruption and cheating no matter what. But the subsidies are an accelerant because there’s so many ways to game them.
Nuclear
I’ll end our status with this from the World Nuclear Association:
About 65 reactors are under construction across the world. About 90 further reactors are planned.
Today there are about 440 nuclear power reactors operating in 31 countries plus Taiwan, with a combined capacity of about 400 GWe. In 2023 these provided 2602 TWh, about 9% of the world's electricity.
Poland is getting new nuclear reactors with some help from the US
The countries doing this are not stupid. They have weighed out the plusses and minuses of each power source and are choosing Nuclear. China & India are taking the lead of course, but it includes countries from the UK to Japan to Brazil.
And tons of farmers