Reply To: Okay, Let's Stop The BAKE SALE mentality and get SERIOUS

[Warwick]

Rezwan wrote: Apologies, this came out sounding negative:

2) There’s lots of support for solar and wind, but ultimately, these are too diffuse (and require a lot of space) so if we ever want to get to a fully electric vehicle world, we need to get some real power online – we need to make fusion happen.

A better way to put this is that solar and wind are great but only cover x% of the ideal world wide demand for electric vehicles, so here’s what we need to go totally electric – here’s how much fusion we need.

Info graphics available at David MacKay’s “Without the Hot air” (although this is all UK data)

Auto demand: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c3/page_29.shtml

Demand vs. Supply: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c18/page_103.shtml

The red stack in figure 18.1 adds up to 195 kWh per day per person. The
green stack adds up to about 180 kWh/d/p. A close race! But please
remember: in calculating our production stack we threw all economic,
social, and environmental constraints to the wind. Also, some of our green
contributors are probably incompatible with each other: our photovoltaic
panels and hot-water panels would clash with each other on roofs; and our
solar photovoltaic farms using 5% of the country might compete with the
energy crops with which we covered 75% of the country. If we were to lose
just one of our bigger green contributors – for example, if we decided that
deep offshore wind is not an option, or that panelling 5% of the country
with photovoltaics at a cost of £200 000 per person is not on – then the
production stack would no longer match the consumption stack.

Isn’t this a terribly complicated argument? Surely it’s much simpler to say “there is no definite reason to believe that the economic costs of solar or wind will ever be lower than coal, in many areas”. I think people can grasp that since most grid electricity is presently not solar or wind, it’s not likely that everyone driving EVs would be using solar/wind.

The UK is a special case, where offshore wind could probably, on sufficient scale, be competitive with fossil. Similarly if you live in North Africa then solar (probably CSP with big fields of parabolas, given the amount of space) is going to be more cost-effective than elsewhere. If you live in a wet mountainous place full of rivers, hydro power maybe. I get energy from a hydro company and it is like 10% more than the market rate, unsubsidised as far as I’m aware. But whatever the exceptions that are making inroads at the boundaries, in general, renewables haven’t yet proven themselves economically competitive. Solar PV cells are getting cheaper, apparently with changes to the silicon refining market, but unsubsidised they are still miles off the competition. Yes governments are still giving handouts to fossil fuel giants, and yes they could have done more to instead promote green energy of all sorts. But the bottom line remains that at this point, a cheaper clean tech would make the most difference.

Green aficionados aren’t going to readily accept that there are physical limitations to renewables, or that if there are, that man’s consumption shouldn’t be kept within them. But there’s no question it’s economics that has so far made it hard for solar/wind to gain market share. I think that is commonly accepted.