ENERGY WATCH #3 - August 14, 2018
Bottom-up, renewables are making more progress than many at the top think
by Karel Beckman
Although I have written elsewhere that “climate action has no leaders today”, and our political and business leaders are mostly thinking along business-as-usual lines, this does not necessarily mean that renewable energy is not making headway. It is. But it’s coming from the bottom up.
Emilie Prattico recently wrote on the website Climate Home that “the global business elite is underestimating clean energy”.
Prattico referred to a survey held by the Financial Times among business leaders from the UK, US and Europe, which showed that:
- Almost 60% of respondents think renewables without subsidies aren’t viable
- Almost 50% of respondents think fossil fuels will remain dominant in the energy mix for the next 50 years
- Almost 80% believe governments and consumers are the top two stakeholder groups in driving the energy transition
But Prattico, a philosophy professor at Paris University and involved in the We Mean Business initiative, says these ideas are far too pessimistic.
First of all, in Europe especially, “major renewable energy projects are underway with no government support whatsoever”, notes Prattico. For example, “The French electric utility Engie announced in May the development of nine subsidy-free wind farms across Spain totalling 300 megawatts of capacity, backed by €300 million ($350m). Earlier this year, Vattenfall announced plans to continue developing an offshore wind farm in the Netherlands of 700-750MW which could produce renewable electricity for 1 to 1.5 million homes – also with unsubsidized investment. And in the United States, Lazard has demonstrated the lower cost of unsubsidized energy across the board, too.”
Secondly, “countries are setting ambitious goals for their energy generation and consumption that steer us away from fossil fuels much fast than in the next fifty years – more like two decades: France, Ireland, Costa Rica, and the Netherlands are leading the way here.”
In addition, “natural gas is rapidly losing its edge as a bridge fuel – “meaning that will not remain an attractive option to reduce our emissions relative to coal while we work on scaling up renewables for as long as projected.”
Also, “the rise of renewable energy is unprecedented as it becomes the largest source of new power installation globally: renewables were responsible for almost 165 GW of new global power capacity in 2016 – nearly two-thirds of the global total. At this pace, renewables will help the shift from fossil fuels in less than 5 decades.”
Thirdly, with regard to the key role of governments and consumers, this leaves out “companies in the private sector and investors”, writes Prattico.
Prattico points out that “to date, 140 companies have made the commitment to go 100% renewable under the “RE100” initiative. These companies are now creating demand of up to 170 TWh of renewable electricity annually – more than Poland or Malaysia.”
“Investors are also a significant driver in accelerating the uptake of renewable energy and of less polluting alternatives: private sources provide the bulk of renewable energy investment globally – over 90% in 2016 and what is more, investors representing $26 trillion in assets under management, are exerting pressure on the world’s largest emitters to curb emissions via the “Climate Action 100+” platform for the first time in a very public way.”
In short, “there is much progress on the ground, driven by action at all domains of society – and these successes should be shared and celebrated. The future is advancing more rapidly than many people think, and in a direction that is beneficial to the climate and the planet. Greater awareness of this will help us all harness the effort and ambition necessary to outpace even current progress.”
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While I am less optimistic about the commitments of political leaders, certainly from major countries and at the EU level, I hope Prattico is right about the progress being made in the private sector. Let’s look at some positive recent news.
The specialized publication Energy Storage Report (ESR) reports that the cost of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) has suddenly declined strongly in recent times. That’s unexpected because the consensus among watchers was that CSP had all but lost the race against solar PV, in terms of costs.
CSP plants in Australia and Dubai have recently achieved “record-breaking” low costs, writes Jason Deign of ESR. Now “new research has unpicked” these results “and concluded they could be replicated elsewhere.”
“Researchers Johan Lilliestam of ETH Zürich, and Robert Pitz-Paal, of the German Aerospace Centre (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt or DLR) found the Aurora and DEWA IV plants benefited from unusual upsides”, writes Deign. “For the 150MW Aurora CSP plant in Australia, for example, developer SolarReserve was able to sign a 20-year power-purchase agreement (PPA) selling energy at just USD$60 per MWh thanks to a wrinkle in the contract.”
The 700MW Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) IV plant, the largest CSP project in the world, came in at price equivalent to $73 per MWh “thanks to an extraordinarily long PPA”. The contract with offtaker DEWA is set to last 35 years, writes Deign, “giving the plant’s consortium owners ACWA Power and Shanghai Power plenty of time to recoup their infrastructure investment.”
Despite these unusual circumstances, the authors said: “Both projects can probably be replicated, either in places with an increasing PV fleet and strong ‘duck curve’ problems or in places with low policy risks and cheap capital.”
The finding is good news for energy storage, notes Deign, “which is now seen as an essential addition to CSP.” Aurora and DEWA IV will be both be equipped with significant amounts of molten salt thermal energy storage (TES).
The ultra-low costs for these plants are helping revive flagging interest in CSP, writes Deign. “In Spain, for example, the industry body Protermosolar has put forward a plan to help the country achieve an 85% renewable energy system by 2030, using CSP with TES to provide energy overnight.”
“The proposal involves relying on PV to deliver up to around 15GW of generation capacity in daytime and an almost equal amount from TES in the evening, decreasing as energy demand falls in the small hours.”
“The aim of the study was to debunk the myth that renewables would always need to have a significant amount of conventional backup,” said Protermosolar’s president, Dr Luis Crespo Rodríguez. “Here in Spain, the myth says it is not viable to switch off nuclear plants in 2030 and also that we will need to maintain the entire fleet of combined-cycle [gas plants].”
“Protermosolar claims its plan could help cut emissions compared to that proposed by a Spanish government expert commission, while keeping electricity prices at a similar level to today”, writes Deign. “The industry body has sent its study to the Spanish government and is awaiting a response.”
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The BBC also has some positive renewables news to report. First, there is a “global boom” going on in hydropower, notes the BBC.
“Many thousands of hydropower dams are either planned or under construction – across South East Asia, South America, the Balkans and Africa.”
More than 3,500 hydropower dams are being planned or built around the world, according to a database maintained by Christiane Zarfl (and others) at the University of Tubingen, notes the BBC. This could double by 2030.
“Most of these dams are at the planning stage, and the data doesn’t include dams primarily designed for water supply, flood prevention, navigation and recreation – so the total number of dams being built could be much higher.”
According to Zarfl’s latest unpublished data, since 2015 almost 100 new dams have been proposed in Africa, with noticeable increases in Angola, Burundi, DRC and Mozambique. And more than 130 have been added in South America, especially Peru, Brazil and Ecuador.
Interestingly, while the World Bank has shied away from investing in hydropower projects, due to their effect on local populations, “China has filled the gap and now dominates the industry. Since the turn of the century, China has accounted for over half of worldwide hydropower growth, according to the IHA. It has capacity to produce twice as much as the US.”
“And China not only became the largest producer, it also started taking its business abroad. Chinese construction companies and financiers were encouraged to go global as part of the government’s attempt to do more business overseas. This is why many experts believe that Chinese companies now control at least half of the hydropower dam-building market worldwide.”
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More positive bottom-up renewables news: the BBC also reports that Chinese researchers have taken what they say is a major step forward for the development of a new generation of solar cells.
Researchers from Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and elsewhere, have developed new “organic” solar cells which use carbon-based materials rather than silicon. The advantage of these Organic photovoltaics (OPV) is that that they are made of compounds that are dissolved in ink so they can be printed on thin rolls of plastic, can bend or curve around structures or even be incorporated into clothing.
The problem with organic solar cells has always been that they have a much lower efficiency than silicon-based cells. “Commercial solar photovoltaics usually covert 15-22% of sunlight, with a world record for a silicon cell of 27.3% reached in this summer in the UK,” notes the BBC. “Organics have long lingered at around half this rate, but this year has seen some major leaps forward. In April researchers were able to reach 15% in tests. Now this new study pushes that beyond 17% with the authors saying that up to 25% is possible.”
This is important because according to estimates, “with a 15% efficiency and a 20 year lifetime, organic solar cells could produce electricity at a cost of less than 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. In 2017, the average cost of electricity in the US was 10.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to the US Energy Information Administration.”
So what have these researchers done differently, asks the BBC. “One of the things that has made OPV less efficient in the past is the fact that the organic materials have loosely bound molecules which can trap electrons and slow down the generation of electricity. So researchers have tried to get around this by putting different layers of material together in a what’s termed a tandem cell approach.”
“Tandem cell means you have two devices built together in the same structure,” said one of the authors, Dr Yongsheng Chen, from Nankai University. “We have two layers of active materials, each layer can absorb different wavelengths of light. That means you can use sunlight in the wider wavelengths or more efficiently and this can generate more current.”
According to the researchers, they are not that far away from commercial production. Yongsheng Chen compares the OPV to organic light-emitting diodes, or OLED. This technology has been introduced in the past few years and is widely used for high-end TVs. “These are already commercial, and they use a similar material to OPV,” he told BBC News.
“The physical principle is the same, just a different direction, one is from solar to electricity, the other from electricity to light, the device and structure are similar. I am very positive for OPV, and it may not need five years,” he added.
The BBC also asked some independent experts to comment. “This looks a remarkable result to me,” said Dr Artem Bakulin, from Imperial College London. “The development of such new materials with previously unthinkable properties allowed them to achieve the reported record efficiency and, in general, makes OPV technology much more promising.”
Dr Feng Gao from Linköping University in Sweden also believes the new paper is significant. “This work is a very important contribution to organic solar cells and will certainly inspire new developments in the field,” he said by email. “The tandem organic solar cells with record efficiencies in this work indicate great potential of organic solar cells for practical applications.”