DISTANT GLOW AND SMOKE: WHY RENEWABLES DO NOT PRODUCE ELECTRICITY

 

DISTANT GLOW AND SMOKE

My take on “Why #European countries are going for Coal over #Nuclear? “

DISCLAIMER: I am not an engineer, nuclear or otherwise, I shun titles of any sort if I possibly can, but my job in finance involves analysing and assessing the economic prospect of.. things. I have been doing that for a living for over 30 years and I am still here.

Countries and areas of the world at the tip of the spear of the “Green” movement, Germany being the most shining example, have been frantically turning to COAL instead of Nuclear in their plan for their future electricity provision. My lack of surprise at that has been duly noted, coupled with some of my most outrageous interjections.

But first, my usual “materials and methods” preamble: I do not claim to be right. I simply look at alternative explanations of the reality I live in, provided that nothing material disproves them, and order them in order of descending likelihood according to my taste, until and unless new facts intervene to make some of them untenable and others more likely. It's a process in which “truth” has much less space than thought at first glance, so not only feel free not to think alike, but honest critique is welcome. If you think in terms of “us against them” or football fan culture, I am afraid I won't provide enough fun. To me my opinions are like clothes, to be changed according to season and taste.

Ready? Let's go then.

Let me acquaint you with my information lens, “Wind and Solar do NOT produce energy”. That thought came to me during an exchange with one of the supporters of those two industries, testament again that engaging with the people one disagrees with is the best way to hone one's thought. And the more I developed that reasoning the better I could understand its significance.

All technological change in society is basically due either to imposition (and those usually do not last long), or because the new product /technology fills the need occupied by a previous one, but in a better way, mainly through enhanced productivity/utility, like the car superseded the horse drawn carriage. Not even the most radical supporters of Wind and Solar deny that “imposition” is a big part of the equation (otherwise THEY would fight against subsidies and distortions in market structure now in place, in order to free more resources for deployment). Besides, Wind and solar are addition to the generating capacity, they aren't a substitution of anything... except Nuclear. Why?

Now, at a superficial level, the renewable model is this:

1. Electricity generation pollutes;

2. we don't;

3. price pollution via government taxation (emission permits, CO2 etc);

4. transfer the money from polluters to renewable producers;

5. ?

6. Profit !

Now, if one doesn't define the concept of “tolerable” or is unaware or uninterested about unwanted and often unforeseen consequences, let's charitably accept under advisement that 1 through 3 are “true”.

The magic trick happens in part before no. 1., and in part from 4. to 6.

Let's limit ourselves to CO2, which has been politically classified as “bad”. The following rough quadrant does NOT take into account any CO2 produced during building or disposing of electricity sources and it's thus a bit too “Black or white”, but it roughly reflects two indispensable considerations:

Now, let's add this postulate: Energy storage in sufficient scale and capacity to complement renewables will not reach economic viability at grid level for the foreseeable future, if ever.

Ok so far? Now, let's examine the implications of the table above.

Houston, we have a problem

What are the implications? The first and foremost, is that, since the grid must balance supply and demand real time at all times, not only the Grid must operate with enough despatcheable power sources to cover peak foreseeable need at all times, but also the “non despatcheable” attribute of wind and solar adds variability (read: “costs”) to the design of that generating capacity.... because there are extended periods of time when it doesn't produce ANY energy at all. To name an example out of many, the fastest generating capacity in terms of time from “idle” to “full power” are gas turbines, where “gas” is a bit of a misnomer since many are in a sense “multifuel”, i.e. can accept diesel or aircraft fuel (some are converted aircraft used engines). The trouble is, these in order to achieve quick response the turbine must be kept at idle, the kind of engine power you experience when you fly and the aircraft is standing still with engines running. And at THAT setting, turbine engines consume about 25% of the fuel they use at full continuous power.

So why not stop the engine completely? Well, for what I can ascertain there are two reasons: one, response time goes up and the network cannot withstand that. Also, turbines are sturdier than normal people imagine... provided they are sheltered from the thermal and mechanical stress of stop/start. Many old engines are converted to use as generators / pumps for pipelines, especially gas pipelines not routed underwater (#Nordstream, wink wink) and they stay at full continuous power for incredibly long stretches of time.

That, on top of its “clean” burn, makes natural gas one of the most attractive energy sources, both for energy generation and for domestic use. And while the turbine has a mediocre efficiency in electricity generation, there are ways to optimise fuel use: the city I live in, Torino, is powered by combined cycle turbine plants, where the hot exhausts of the turbines are used to flash steam that powers a conventional steam turbine, which brings efficiency near or slightly over 50%. Couple that with the use for district heating of the residual heat, and the gas our city consumes is wrung out of the highest possible use. While that ensures VERY high efficiency, it is also a “single point of failure.... a consideration that recent events in Ukraine have brought out of the deep slumber EU's lack of strategic forethought had consigned it to.

But the output of a gas turbine generator can be controlled, wind speed and cloud cover.... cannot. Hence, any time you see a wind turbine or solar park, remember: that is a bug, not a feature. By that I mean that the reason wind and solar are heavily pushed is NOT to generate electricity at all: it is to displace, at irregular and uncontrollable intervals, dependable generating capacity which produces something that wind and solar don't namely CO2.

From that comes the title of my chapter. As in “Apollo 13”, we have a problem.... with the CO2 scrubbers, because THAT's what Wind and solar are. But while it is self evident that a small space capsule was not a “closed” CO2 system, Earth is to a greater extent, because you know, plants. Many farmers grow vegetables in closed plants where CO2 levels are INCREASED artificially in order to make them grow faster.

So if you accept to look at wind and solar plants as “(Expensive) CO2 scrubbers” instead of electricity generators, most of the politics associated with the Green lobby makes eminent sense, in terms that Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller would understand perfectly: you want to shape your end markets to maximise your profits in a monopolistic situation, preferably via governments. And in order to do so, you want to have MORE CO2 production inherent in the system, not less, because THAT's what they pay you for. If by doing so you destroy vast swathes of German forest to reach the lignite, the better: trees are a competitor for your main business, CO2 capture. That will teach the buggers.

One other corollary, alas, is that Nuclear activists who try to find a living ALONGSIDE the renewable military-industrial complex have completely misread the grand scheme of things: there is NO way to coexist, and I will tell you why.

As the young Paul Atreides said in “Dune”:

“Most educated people know that the worst potential competition for any young organism can come from its own kind.” He deliberately forked a bite of food from his companion's plate, ate it. “They are eating from the same bowl. They have the same basic requirements."

So there is no peace ,now or ever, between Wind and solar and the Nuclear industry, as seen during the debate about the EU Taxonomy. Supporters of Nuclear omitted to point out that in a system that priced emission permits, Taxonomy is one of two things. It's either redundant (if you price emissions, let markets work) or deliberately put in place to produce a “preferred outcome”, i.e. keeping Nuclear from not only scooping up most if not all the pot, worse still to make the whole game redundant. It is indeed ironic that only the Ukraine war saved a lingering trace of Nuclear in Germany and kept France from going after their goal of REDUCING nuclear production to 50% of the total.

So, as much as I like Nuclear power at the technology level, I am not inclined to fight too hard... because that disgraceful policy has something in common with many problems we've had in the past five years, a bumbling and unready political class.