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The Forum > Article Comments > Why the world can't rely on renewable energy if we want to remain affluent > Comments

Why the world can't rely on renewable energy if we want to remain affluent : Comments

By Ted Trainer, published 20/5/2011

Do you think the world can all live affluently on renewables? Can sun and wind provide base-load power?

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For those that are into Climate Denial and Baseload Renewable Energy Denial. The plant Gemasolar built by Spanish Engineering giant runs 75% capacity factor. That's compared to the feeble NSW coal plants which are averaging 63% annual capacity factor.

SENER as lead company in the European Space program puts rockets and satellites up in orbit and they built much of the Spanish Nuclear plants. These guys know how to do serious industrial facilities.

In the USA Solar Reserve which uses UTC/Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (half of the world's commercial Jets run on Pratt & Whitney engines)technology is building Solar 110MW and Solar 150MW units which are under construction backed by US DoE loan guarantees.

This is baseload Solar power, 24x7 Solar, 365 days a year solar. Solar Power around the clock. Solar Power all through the night.

It's time for the renewable energy deniers to get a science lesson.
Posted by MattWright, Saturday, 21 May 2011 11:31:48 AM
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MattWright,

>> Because they're only doing that for the first 10 or 20Gigawatts and then the price comes down towards parity with conventional coal and gas CCGT

The beauty of it is the fuel cost is fixed for ever. Whereas with coal, gas an uranium the fuel price is going up and up in the short-mid term <<

Which is precisely why the fossil fuel industries are spending so much on feeding the public misinformation and propaganda. Just like Tobacco did.
Posted by Ammonite, Saturday, 21 May 2011 12:40:20 PM
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Matt the issue isn’t with the science. It’s with the economics.

ABARE data (http://www.abare.gov.au/publications_html/energy/energy_10/energy_proj.pdf) suggests that 2015 costs per MWh for solar thermal with storage will be 2 to 3 times the cost per MWh of a nuclear plant. It’s not clear whether the storage cost is for 24 hours so the solar cost may even be higher. Solar thermal costs rang from $240/MWh to $700/MWh depending on the technology. New CCGT ranges from $60-$120/MWh so we need a carbon price of at least $375 (0.4 tonnes/MWh) to justify building solar thermal plants rather than CCGT with a wholesale electricity cost at least 4 times higher.

Based on ABARE costings, new nuclear costs $150-200/MWh. So we need a carbon price of $150 to justify building nuclear rather than CCGT.

Before you tell me that the cost of solar thermal will drop dramatically by 2020, new nuclear plants are being built for between $60-$100/MWh according to IEA (about the cost of CCGT) so the ABARE numbers look on the high side already.

How are you going to persuade an informed populace that they should pay so much more for their electricity when we have viable much cheaper alternatives already? Oh and BTW, these costs do not include transmission lines to the new solar thermal plants.
Posted by Martin N, Saturday, 21 May 2011 1:22:00 PM
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The renewables have banks lining up to fund them, as the governments are contracted to pay nearly 10x the cost of fossil fuel generated power.

The new large intrinsically safe reactors are likely to cost only about 2x the cost of fossil fuels.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Saturday, 21 May 2011 3:26:17 PM
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MattWright,

It's encouraging that there's so much potential for renewable energy, but the burden of the article is that no innovation alters the central fact that Western consumerism is unsustainable, even in its current elitist dispensation, and that the planet cannot possibly support it in the long term, or in the expansion paradigm.
Also, you say that "The beauty of it [renewables] is the fuel cost is fixed for ever".
This clearly fails to take economics into account. In the current system--the best of all possible worlds--fuel costs are and will be decided by the market and demand, and demand is set to grow--ad infinitum so far the cheery liberal-rationalists are concerned. And since unless we find a way to tap the sun's energy direct, or something of the sort, renewable energy will never be able to be taken for granted, and energy costs will continue to rise.
Until we adapt to the biological conditions in a sustainable way--that is as long as we remain bent on endless growth--the cost of energy will go up and the quality and diversity of life on planet Earth will go down.
Posted by Squeers, Saturday, 21 May 2011 4:53:04 PM
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ABARE costs are completely discredited.

For better cost curves and a chart showing just how bad EPRI (Industry Lobby) derived cost curved used by RET / ABARE and AEMO - try Garnaut Review Commissioned work by the University of Melbourne Energy Research institute here.

http://www.garnautreview.org.au/update-2011/commissioned-work/renewable-energy-technology-cost-review.pdf
Posted by MattWright, Saturday, 21 May 2011 4:55:51 PM
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