Since I’ve been incautious enough to mention the N-word in the previous post, I’ll open another sandpit specifically devoted to discussions of the merits, and otherwise, of nuclear power. Any mention of this topic on other threads will be deleted and will risk bans or restrictions on the offender
Update Since it’s still going, I’ve moved it up, which should reopen comments
John Quiggin 
I’ve just finished viewing a couple of “Slow TV” videos by an engineer and entrepreneur called Saul Griffith.
Mr Griffith is described in the following terms at the site these videos appear:
Saul Griffith has multiple degrees in materials science and mechanical engineering and completed his PhD in Programmable Assembly and Self Replicating machines at MIT. He is the co-founder of several companies including Low Cost Eyeglasses, Squid Labs, Potenco, Instructables.com, HowToons and Makani Power.
I would encourage regular visitors to this site to view these videos not because I unreservedly endorse them but because they offer an enrormous amont of accessible data expressed in everyday terms. Those who advocate renewables as the key answer to confronting the post-industrial climate anomaly should especially look at thse clips (and particularly the second).
Mr Griffiths appears to be a man of intelligence, intellectual rigour, ethical compass and above all honesty. He is also involved in the business of renewables and favours wind — so he is certainly not any kind of advocate of nuclear power — though significantly, his most negative observations about nuclear power are that it probably wouldn’t last much beyond 1000 years in extremis and that many concerned about climate change aren’t that keen on it.
Yet Mr Griffiths throughout his talk in the second of the links does not hide the scale of the challenge (though finally I think he understates its magnitude as he assumes, for ease of inference, that the current energy usage of the world stays as it is, which by implication condemns the world’s poor to about what they have now). Yet even on this scale he makes plain that the kind of building program we would need to construct these facilities and the footprint of that effort is almost unthinkable, unless, he notes obliquely towards the end the second part of the talk, we want to look at nuclear power.
Unlike many who are sympathetic to renewables then, he works through the calculations as an engineer. One suspects he’s close to Trainer in denying the capacity of renewables to do the job we’d need them to do, when we’d need them to do it.
http://tinyurl.com/saulG1 (approx 30mins)
http://tinyurl.com/saulG2 (approx 34mins)
Fran, you’re making a stretched argument to say on the strength of one man’s, albeit one very clever man’s, imaginings that renewables cannot deliver. For starters Saul’s approach to wind energy is a little blinkered. This is a problem with many high energy performers. That aside he is innovative in many fields. The assumption that you are making is that one high energy innovative person can be considered as a fair arbiter of all things energy. False.
GenIIPV was conceived after my business partner had studied at length domestic scale wind power, finally coming to the conclusion that there was totally insufficient energy available in wind near ground level collectable by architechturally and aesthetically acceptable devices. It was only at that point that he started considering other possibilities. And within minutes of two of us working together the GenIIPV system was conceived. That is how innovation all too often works.
We, my partner and I, had a free thinking examination of the main part of our, now, shared product on Friday and again within a short time we had completely redifined the construction of the working end of the product to make it easier to build and with an increased customer base.
Applaud Saul Griffith for his energy and achievements, but do not use him as a lever argument for universal nuclear power, despite his own feelings on the matter (to date), because if that is what he is leading to he is completely wrong. The path to fossil fuel energy was not a rapid one. The path to comprehensive renewable energy will also not be an instantaneous event, but it will not take anywhere near as long as it took innovators to efficiently extract the full potential of fossil fuels.
@BilB
My response to Bilb is over at LP.
Videos. I recall the time when videos promoting derivative securities to corporate managers to ‘manage risk’ were made freely available to university lecturers in business and management – well ‘instructors’ might be a better word. They say: ‘A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.’ They are sometimes right.
For the past 40 years green groups globally, have successfully campaigned against the use of nuclear power as a source of non carbon power, promoting renewables instead. During this time the CO2 concentration have risen from 325ppm to 390ppm because no country has succeeded in replacing fossil fuel power generation with renewable energy. The only non carbon technology that is capable of replacing fossil fuel power generation is nuclear power, as demonstrated by France. France constructed 58 nuclear generators in just 20 years and now has the lowest per capita GHG emissions of all the large developed countries. Search IEA CO2 Emissions per capita. Worldwide 440 nuclear reactors SAVE 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions annually, while 1200 (22 in Oz) large coal burning power stations EMIT 8.5 billion tonnes of CO2 annually. The global task is to replace all thermal coal generation with nuclear power over the next 40 years.
The European Commission’s ExternE research project, shows nuclear power generation to have a documented safety record similar to wind and solar and much superior to any fossil fuel power generation.
Nuclear “waste” in volume is miniscule compared to the volume of CO2 continually emitted by fossil fuel energy generation every day.
The current global stockpile of nuclear “waste” is a $30 trillion energy resource which when used in fast breeder reactors later this century will potentially power the global economy for hundreds of years leaving even less waste to manage for the much reduced timeframe of 300 years.
The Hadley Centre’s document, “Avoiding dangerous climate change” has warned that a continuation of BAU for another 40 years will increase the average global temperature from the current 13.5 to about 20 degrees C. Most climate scientists agree that this will be a catastrophic scenario for human civilisation and will result in the extinction of much of life on earth.
Another 40 years of successful campaigning against nuclear power by green groups globally will ensure BAU and that this catastrophic scenario is realised.
“During this time the CO2 concentration have risen from 325ppm to 390ppm because no country has succeeded in replacing fossil fuel power generation with renewable energy.”
No country has tried. It’s all been fiddling at the margins.
“The only non carbon technology that is capable of replacing fossil fuel power generation is nuclear power”
This is debatable.
“The Hadley Centre’s document, “Avoiding dangerous climate change” has warned that a continuation of BAU for another 40 years will increase the average global temperature from the current 13.5 to about 20 degrees C.”
Why should we believe that estimate? Because it’s far in excess of even the most pessimistic of IPCC estimates.
Tom said in part:
In a purely technical sense, extraction of chemical energy from biomass could replace fossil hydrocarbon combustion though not at the scale and in most places, there simply wouldn’t be enough feedstock locally to make the EROEI good enough.
Jarrah said:
I suspect Hadley is not closing the scoresheet at 2100. If the most pessimistic of IPCC estimates turns out to be right, then sooner or later, that scenario is plausible. The real question is — can we rule that out?
The fact of the matter is that the world will keep warming until either we return to about 290-300ppmv or we reach a new equilibrium in he Earth’s radiative energy balance, where incoming shortwave and escaping longwave radiation are even, or CO2 is saturated — whichever comes first.
The ocean is a huge heat sink and so as we have a lagging indicator, even then the land should warm for some time, we will experience continuing amplication from H20. Loss of glacial mass and associated albedo won’t help us early enough to prevent continued warming either. Finally if we lose significant terrestrial and marine vegetation and biota, these CO2 sinks will become less effective.
On our timeline, the integrity of the permafrost is a serious issue. The pulse from that could easily ensure the current worst case scenario becomes the median one.
@Tom Bond
You write as if you would know the future for certain. But you won’t be around to be held accountable – in 300 years! I won’t bother with your predictions. Instead I’ll focus on something that can be examined right now.
You write: “Nuclear “waste” in volume is miniscule compared to the volume of CO2.” While your statement is true, it is an extreme example of misleading conclusions derived from methods commonly referred to as comparing apples with oranges.
You refer to France and to fast breeder reactors. Instead of speculating on what might happen in x hundred years, I suggest you look at the experience gained from the Superphoenix in France. For example:
http://www.francenuc.org/en_sites/rhone_crey_e.htm
You refer to ‘green groups’. One does not have to be a member of a ‘green group’ to reject your fear mongering. One does not have to be a member of a ‘green group’ to say that the objective is to reduce ghg emissions (not only C02) to levels specified by scientists; the aim is not to replace one environmental problem with another one.
However, if you insist that contrary to people’s own statements, everbody who is not promoting nuclear energy (ie including those who have respect for nuclear science but do not promote nuclear power (electricity) generation using fear mongering) has to be a member of a ‘green group’, then I suggest ‘green group’ is a label given to people who face contemporary problems rather than ‘non-green groups’ who seem to be stuck in an ideological time warp.
He said “BAU for another 40 years”, Fran.
Well, obviously. But there is no zero-impact energy source. The question is, which combination of energy sources (because only the delusional think we can put all our eggs in one basket) has the smallest cost including environmental costs. A reasonable way of finding that out is to put a price on C02e, and see what turns out to be worthwhile, not excluding anything.
Jarrah,
“This is debatable”
Tom Bond’s claim is not just debatable, it is patently false. Tom is clearly under informed, possibly prefering to have team BNC do his thinking for him.
@Jarrah
I’ve had quite a few discussions with Ted Trainer, and I find it quite amusing to see him invoked by advocates of nuclear energy. I’d be very surprised if he didn’t have an anti-nuclear case just as strong (or not) as his anti-renewables case. So, if you find him convincing as an authority, and you argue (as nearly all nuclear advocates do) that we aren’t going to give up using lots of energy, it’s time to abandon hope.
In any case, stepping back in, I note that we seem to be going around in circles. When I was last discussing it, the anti-renewables side had backed down to the point that “sure, renewables are technically feasible, but the change in price structures they require such as peak-load pricing are politically impossible”. Now, it seems we are back to engineering proofs that “renewables can’t work”, which seems somewhat inconsistent with the facts on the ground.
PrQ said:
It may well be that someone put that view, but if so, I don’t recall it. Do you have a link?
If by renewables one means intermittents, then my view would be that they are not feasible in economic, environmental or schedule terms at all, most of the time.
As to Trainer, the point here is not that hope is gone, but that the magnitude of the challenge exceeds what renewables can possibly deliver. He’s not an advocate of nuclear of course but those of us who are hold onto hope. IMO, geoengineering will also be needed quite soon to buy us the time to implement an effective package of energy measures.
@Fran Barlow
What would be your “view”, Fran Barlow, if the word renewables means renewables (as I have defined it for your specific benefit an an earlier thread)?
Fran,
This
“but that the magnitude of the challenge exceeds what renewables can possibly deliver”
is, now incredibly repetitive, total nonsense.
In the battle against climate change the only thing that cannot be delivered is political commitment.
And more nonsense
“If by renewables one means intermittents”
sure Solar Renewables have a cyclical aspect to their operation and this is by no means a disadvantage. The most robust of all energy conversion devices are entirely intermittent in their operation and this in no way impedes their effectiveness. The most significant of these devices is the reciprocating engine. In fact the most intermittent of these engines, the four stroke engine as against the two stroke engine twice the intermitency), is the most effective. The other intermittent and most influential energy device of all time is the electric motor (and generator).
“intermittency” is only a problem in your head, and that is because team “Brave New Climate” aka “Nuclear Power Promotion Council” told you to think that way, and not being an engineer you do not have the knowledge to see through the fallacies. It is a bit sad.
@Ernestine Gross
I’m not interest in doing semantic dances. I made the distinction because geothermal counts as renewable but is not intermittent. Equally waste biomass is not an intermittent source but is renewable. One could argue that nuclear power was renewable, as seawater is constantly replenished with uranium which is then carried to the sea, but that would probably be misleading, given how most use the term.
.
@BilB
This is an excellent example of spin (pun intended). The term “cyclical” connotes the idea of something that not only recurs, but recurs on a predictable timetable. Thus, at my school we have 203 teaching days. The non-teaching days are described years in advance. Patterns of assessment, reporting, grading and the teaching day itself are cyclic and highluy structured. Our part-timers and ancillary cstaff operate on a predictable pattern and if anyone indispensible doesn’t show up they ring in advance so we can replace them.
That’s not intermittent or ad hoc. It’s a structured cycle much like …
which also operates (unless it malfunctions) in an exactly predictable cycle of chemical energy release, the movement of pistons, the intake of air and more fuel and aa spark (or in the case of some heat engines the application of heat to a medium).
Blurring the lines between unscheduled intermittency and cyclic operation is simply dishonest.
If supermarkets operated with the same kind of intermittency they would be open only at random times, and offer products in random quantities at random prices. Very few people would use them because the convenience would not be there. If you went to a restaurant, and found that it sometimes stopped operating or found itself without staff when there were 40 people awaiting service, would you patronise it or be happy to pay the same price?
Yet this is the system you think most apt for an industrial economy where certainty of supply underpins everything. You offer cover for what is an insufficiently predictable supply technology by describing it as “cyclic”. How embarrassing for you.
oops — cancel italics after “timetable”
Last time I looked
“If supermarkets operated with the same kind of intermittency”
which was yesterday, Fran, they do. The rising and the setting of the sun, the most predictable of all cycles. And the analogy goes deeper than you ever want it too, as commerce has all of the same “intermitencies” of performance that you are aluding to. The amazing thing is that it all averages out to smooth performance providing “certainty” in the process. And of course there are reserves and backup in any properly designed system. But then you do not want to know about that as it completely shatters your arguments.
Industry is highly cyclical. I go to my factory at all hours of the day and observe the degree of cyclical commercial activity on a daily basis. Where energy consumption has been “managed” to a semi smooth wavy level, this is entirely artificial as JQ is at pains to point out, and Renewable energy production systems will deliver a more natural supply demand cycle at, I would expect at a more uniform price.
As for
“unscheduled intermittency ”
This is a figment of the BNC collective imagination. A comprehensive backed up system has no such issues. You really do need to come up to speed on how all of this works, Fran, if you are to contribute to the discussion in any meaningful way.
@BilB
BilB says that:
This is your usual handwaving. It’s possible you know top put four elephants into a Barina. Just put two in the front and two in the back. Impress your friends by putting a fifth into the glove box.
“comprehensive backed up system” is not a specification. Real systems specify acceptable levels of unserved demand, unschdelued outages, redundancy etc. As has been noted many times, until you can say how much redundancy you are willing to have and for the system to pay for and include the footprint of that in the calculation, it’s impossible to assess environmental, economic, schedule and operational feasibility of any solution.
Your irony meter is operating as intermittently as your average wind turbine. Predictably, it has failed when it was critical that it should not.
What is also predictable is that you failed to recognise that schedule integrity (predictability) is a key metric. If one knew with 95% certainty that a wind/solar farm would always produce a given output at a given time tranche within a year, then the variability of the system is something one could work around. One could size the system and its context with minimal redundancy. The system would have something like the cyclic property of super markets and restaurants. But of course that is not the case and no amount of redundancy that one could plausibly or feasibly include in the system would suffice to raise the system operation to that standard.
Storage doesn’t get you out of the problem because in the end, you have both to provide enough storage for the longest persiod on non-availability conceivable, AND after it depletes to have the resources from the renewable to restore it almost immediately so that it can continue to serve its goal of assuring availability at the specified level. Fairly obviously, if the renewable system has drawn down most of a massive reserve, it will not be able to both serve demand and replenish the store on an adequate timeline. The operator will do the former because this is most profitable. One will require some other energy source that is capable of being scheduled to do this. That increases the footprint of the renewable.
One could deal with this problem by making the renewable system must bigger but rate it only to supply a fraction of its capacity. That would lower the marginal footprint at the cost of massive overbuild. A system rated at 500mW that had a capacity credit of only 50mW would be hugely wasteful. Yes it would have no trouble keeping its reserves fully available but it would cost about 9 times something equivalent that produced 50mW on demand at 90% availability because it could restore its reserves from the system. The cost of abatement would go way up and that in a constrained system must mean that there will be less abatement.
It’s amazing you don’t get this.
@Fran Barlow
You say you are not interested in “semantic dances”. I am happy to hear that and I do hope you will act according to your stated preference.
Fran,
It has nothing to do with what I assert. You were sent a description of the European full baseload CSP solution by Dr Franz Trieb, a system that has been research and developed at length by a highly competent European design and development team. This you have chosen to ignore or failed to understand. You are being quite hysterical about system variabilities choosing to exagerate beyond all reality while ignoring the mechanisms builtin to compensate for seasonal and weather fluctuations. What more can I say.
What I can speak with authority on is the GenIIPV system. My partner and I did a reality check on the system again over the weekend. This is a solid system. Distributed energy generation beyond most family needs for electricity, heating and cooling, and transport energy. Distributed investment eliminating government from the process of energy transition to renewables for this products share of the new renewables system. Fully capable of supplying half of all of Australia’s electricity and personal transport energy needs. System paid from offset energy savings during payment period, thereafter free energy for households. Long life. It does not get much better than that.
GenIIPV means that the sustainable grid infrastructure system can supply 40% less electricity than present. ie Smaller investment with more flexibility. It is a new reality which I can understand your not being able to comprehend as it is not officially public yet.
@Fran Barlow
You dashed my hopes, Fran. Your actions (words in your case) don’t correspond to your stated interests.
I don’t think the nuclear industry needs ‘green groups’ as enimies to make its case when it has supporters like you.
@BilB
Bilb
I think you are wasting your time with Fran. She has a religious faith in nuclear and therefore automatic tunnel vision. For Fran, your facts are heresy.
This thread is just an opportunity for those of her ilk, to yet again set out to impose their arbitrary dogmas as commandments for our energy future. In their view, other options not from their bible must be excommunicated.
For Fran, and fellow travellers, nuclear technology is god-given intelligent design.
@Chris Warren
I find it amusing that despite your differences with the goals of the anti-mitigation lobby, you borrow from heavily their tactical arsenal in your attacks on the potential contribution of nuclear power to industrial energy systems. viz. religious faith; arbitrary dogmas; commandments; their bible;
Michael Crichton would be impressed, if he were around to survey your work.
You are waging culture war quite as much as are the anti-mitigationists, so the othering of rival claims [their dogma … our energy future] and the appeal to the socially local is predictable.
It doesn’t mean anything of substance beyond you not liking nuclear for reasons that remain obscure.
@BilB
I read through Trieb and it was lacking in detail. Such detail as there was there had nothing to do with the demand curve of any specific country. If Trieb had specified how much provision for storage he allowed for based on specific locations, and likely demand patterns and had quoted the price of the system at scale from relaible sources along with connection fees, then we’d have had something. What it was amounted no more than the broad engineering details of a prototype system.
Has anyone actually built such a system at ther scale of a major fossil hydrocarbon plant anywhere? No. Why not? Surely not because it would be too expensive? Couldn’t do the job?
This is at best ambiguous. Are you saying that “GenIIPV” reduces demand by 40%?
If you read previous posts – you will find that nothing is obscure.
If you find it obscure – then this just shows you lack the tools to perceive the broad range of issues which need to be addressed.
In this case your fervor, skips reality, and must be based on faith.
Unfortunately the environment is not tractable to faith healing.
BILB and Chris Warren,
The way to read Fran Barlow and co is to count the money you save on going to movies. It is free entertainment – assuming our host doesn’t have to pay by the page.
$1.1bn wasted on solar power:
We could reduce CO2 emissions at a cost of $15/tonne CO2 at the flick of a switch (well a few switches anyway). Just switch off the electricity to the Aluminium smelters in Victoria and for every tonne of CO2 emission avoided, the reduction in revenue to the electricity generators is $15 (at 2c/kWh). And that doesn’t even consider the costs of the electricity generation. What a bargain.
You see, Fran, your’e not following what is going on. The consortium to build the Desertec system has been created and the process is under way for (I believe) 600 billion euros of CSP.
GenIIPV when installed on 6 million rooves will generate 50% of Australia’s electricity. It actually generates a lot more than that, but this is the rated capacity. Therefore the grid suppliers will be scaled back up to 40%. But more importantly they will need to have a very flexible delivery rate. The only systems that achieve the level of flexibility required are hydro and hybride thermal CSP. And that is the only reason why I aired this much information, to make the point that future electricity infrastructure must be very well thought out to be entirely renewables compatible. The economic logic of GenIIPV is a guarantee for rapid system uptake by small business and suitable domestic.
@Chris O’Neill
Switching off aluminium smelters doesn’t make sense, and your calculations are a jumble.
It is 1.1bn spent on solar power – whether it is wasted or not depends on your moral values. The actual loss is only the extra that society would have gained if the 1.1 billion had been spent on another jet fighter or feather-bedding some bank. The workers installing roof-top panels may not be as productive on their next best alternative – work-for-the-dole schemes.
Private individual rooftops are not the best way to go as most rooftops are at the wrong angle, and are not oriented East/West, and often are partially shaded.
The ANU’s argument:
is naive where that ‘energy grid’ is based on fossil fuel. Solar is not meant to compete with foul cheap energy based on price. It is intended to replace it. And the cost may well increase.
I would imagine that a better scheme would be for the government to fore go a couple of stupid planes and build a solar panel manufacturing plant (that BP Solar refuses to do) and issue free panels to all new houses that have suitable solar access.
If we can fund and build submarines in Adelaide – we can build solar panels elsewhere.
@BilB
Well that is fabulous news, if true. $AUD834bn or so of expenditure. I hope they are getting about at least 170gWe @ 90% availability for that.
This source {Morocco delays solar unit tender to Dec: minister} at Reuters descibes it as follows:
a 400 billion euro EU plan to use solar power from the Sahara desert to supply 15 percent of Europe’s power by 2050.
So on that basis, they need about 102gWwe …
Regrettably, using figures for 2007 about the capacity of Europe’s 20 largest energy producers (95.25gWe) and assuming 2% annual growth rates, by 2050 you need 218.82 gWe to meet 15%.
And what does one do about the other 85% especially assuming the growth in populairity of PEVs?
Still it will be fascinating to watch.
@Fran Barlow
@Chris Warren
Couldnt agree more with yours and Ernestines observations. Cant believe the half life of this push for nuclear in here by a paltry one or two verbatim verbose rehashers of Bravenewclimates website. If Professor Brook wanted another home away from home why didnt he just ask for a subblog here? All I can say is that I wonder if his disciples get as enthusiastic at BNC or do they, like missionaries, feel a burning desire to convert the unconverted to nuclear so we can all go on using up as much energy as we do now producing waste we can pour into landfill and rivers. No hint of being individually sustainable here – just consume wasteful crap, burn the nuclear glow lights all night and watch your standby buttons blink, and continue on your merry way.
IMHO the Prof has granted you extraordinary freedoms to come here and just post the same nonsense over and over again. Cant even see the risks let alone cost them.
@jquiggin
There’s an enormous political cost of nuclear and also an enormous cost, and thus political cost, of renewable electricity at peak time (6pm) April to October, even if solar cells were to become free. Obviously the lowest political cost will be to keep burning fossil carbon, just like it is now.
Chris Oneill,
With our brave new energy world we are learning just how horrendously wasteful we have been with energy in the abundant fossil fuel past. The 6 pm peak that you are so concerned about is the dinner time stove and airconditioning demand surge. GenIIPV solves the airconditioning part of that peak (and the stove part under most circumstances). The cooking part can be solved in various ways, the best of which is to cook with gas, but not fossil fuel gas, present day methane gas from sewage. This has the bonus of reducing atmospheric methane levels created by human activity
http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:82337
There is plenty of material on this but I thought that this study extract was nicely close to home. With a move to actively recover methane from waste this could very well revive the use of the sink-aerator meaning less vegetable rubbish going to the tip, instead heading down the pipes to a local treatment works hungry for material to digest for conversion to methane. This would have the added benefit of creating additional real income for municipal authorities from the sales of gas.
This is another example of the negative effect of believing that nuclear energy will save us. I believe that it would just prolong an inevitable decline to consolidated global warming as it would eliminate the incentives to learn how to achieve an optimally sustainable existence. Apart from the ever present risk of rising background radioactivity it is the “problem solved, go back to your BAU lives” expectation applied to Nuclear energy that is its intense danger.
Given that it’s common ground that energy is going to get more expensive using either renewables or nuclear (otherwise we wouldn’t need any sort of carbon price) why would you assume 2 per cent growth per year? This must about the 100th time I’ve asked this question or something like it.
@jquiggin
Isn’t it a simple consequence of the likely population growth in the EU over this time? If the world is going to have 9 billion people by 2050 then the EU has to have at least some of this new population.
I’m not sure about your reasoning between increasing costs of energy due to a carbon price and total demand. While there would be some elasticity in demand that would be affected by price, some demand is absolutely inevitable. A price signal might mean that demand grew less quickly than without one, so the question then is how much less quickly?.
Given that there is a consensus that new capacity should be “clean”, (i.e. relatively low carbon) a carbon price is intended to move demand away from CO2-intensive (dirty) in favour of “clean” without greatly affecting total demand.
As others have pointed out too, if more vehicles use electricity this too will lead to increased demand for electricity, presumably at the expense of diesel/petrol. One would hope for a shift from petrol to the grid that was very great in the early years of the projection.
Population policy may be the real need. If we cut per-capita carbon emissions, but increase the population, the benefit is lost.
As a bit of amusement, why not work out how many population doublings it will take before there is standing room only on the planet. Start at 7 billion pop and 150,000 billion square metres of land.
The world’s current population doubling time is 60 years.
So if we cannot control population now, what will life be like when nature will do it for us?
Current EU population growth rate is 0.1 per cent,
http://www.indexmundi.com/european_union/population_growth_rate.html
and income is growing at about 2.5 per cent trend, so this projection requires income elasticity near one and price elasticity near zero.
This needs more explanation….
How can you have price elasticity near zero, if capitalists increase quantity sold by debt ?(increase per capita debt)
Is the point being made here more that, population increase is needed, given an independent need for increased debt?
You will never get a income elasticity near 1 (across society), if people have to pay off previous debt.
@BilB
Airconditioning from April to October? Sure.
So GenIIPV generates electricity in the dark. Amazing.
I think there’s a bit more to electricity consumption at 6 pm than electric stoves.
@Chris Warren
to you, unsurprisingly,
Pretty simple to understand for most people. 1 MWh of electricity generated in Victoria causes 1.356 tonnes of CO2 to be emitted. Aluminium smelters pay $20 for 1 MWh, so the electricity supplier receives $20 for each 1.356 tonnes of CO2 it emits, i.e. $15 for each tonne of CO2 emitted. We could pay the electricity supplier $15 for every tonne of CO2 he now emits but pay it without him actually generating the electricity or the emissions. The electricity supplier gets the same revenue as he used to (which should make him happy, especially since he doesn’t have to generate as that electricity any more) and it only costs us $15 for every tonne of CO2 emissions avoided.
Yes, all you have to do is tell the government they’re stupid and they’ll do anything you want. I can tell you’re the master negotiator, Chris.
Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris..Oneill.
Reverse cycle airconditioners work both ways.
Stoves pull up to 6 kilowatts. So we’ll say 4 kilowatts together with heating or cooling, times a max of 7 million households would be a peak demand of 28 gigawatts if it all happened at the same time. This is where hybride thermal CSP is perfect. The storage is ideal for this type of surge demand.
An expert’s view of the role of baseload electricity generation. Baseload is not a myth.
Click to access 2010-09-01-BASELOAD.pdf
@BilB
OK, if you think the winter evening peak (and any form of electric house heating is pretty silly BTW) is going to be supplied by solar thermal then this type of electricity is extremely expensive and always will be. Good luck getting people to adapt to this quickly. I’d guess that burning coal and paying for carbon credits (oh dear, the Greens would never agree to that) would be cheaper.
@quokka
I regret to say that the term “off-peak” occurs nowhere in this document, and “price” occurs nowhere relevant. The writer may be the CEO of a utility, but shows no evidence of any expertise in (or even awareness of) economics, which is the relevant discipline when we are talking about demand.
Professor Q advances the thesis that generators suited to constant output have a lot of their capacity wasted during times of low demand and that solar cells suffer substantially less from this problem. I would argue that solar cells suffer at least as much from this problem because solar cells can’t supply when it is dark so other forms of capacity have to be available when it’s dark (or nearly dark such as from 4pm-8am in winter. These other forms of capacity are wasted when solar cells produce their output. That wastage occur for most of the day during summer. I think the capacity wastage argument against other forms of generation is pretty weak.
@Chris Warren
Sorry, I was replying to
@Dave Clarke
Chris you really ought to learn to smile more, your so angry..all the time. Quokka’s link is a very good general knowledge read, which points out shortcomings and strengths of renewables. Good one.
@jquiggin
But he is talking about the role of baseload in stabilizing the grid, supplying not just energy but reliability in terms of frequency and voltage especially in the context of failure of individual plants. Demand is not just for energy but importantly for reliable energy.
@quokka
Grid stabilization and baseload demand are unrelated concepts.
@Chris O’Neill
I’m happy to agree that the capacity wastage problem for solar is comparable to that for coal and nuclear and can be addressed in precisely the same way, through setting prices high when there would be excess demand at a constant price and low when there would be an excess supply. On that basis, a comparative evaluation based on cost/MW generated isn’t biased either way.