Solar Is Now The Most Popular Form Of New Electricity Generation Worldwide

The Conversation - Andrew Blakers

Solar PV outstripped coal as the leading source of new electricity generation worldwide last year. AAP Image/Lukas Coch

Solar has become the world’s favourite new type of electricity generation, according to global data showing that more solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity is being installed than any other generation technology.
Worldwide, some 73 gigawatts of net new solar PV capacity was installed in 2016. Wind energy came in second place (55GW), with coal relegated to third (52GW), followed by gas (37GW) and hydro (28GW).

New energy build in 2016

Source: REN21/IRENA/WNA

Together, PV and wind represent 5.5% of current energy generation (as at the end of 2016), but crucially they constituted almost half of all net new generation capacity installed worldwide during last year.
It is probable that construction of new coal power stations will decline, possibly quite rapidly, because PV and wind are now cost-competitive almost everywhere.
Hydro is still important in developing countries that still have rivers to dam. Meanwhile, other low-emission technologies such as nuclear, bio-energy, solar thermal and geothermal have small market shares.
PV and wind now have such large advantages in terms of cost, production scale and supply chains that it is difficult to see any other low-emissions technology challenging them within the next decade or so.
That is certainly the case in Australia, where PV and wind comprise virtually all new generation capacity, and where solar PV capacity is set to reach 12GW by 2020. Wind and solar PV are being installed at a combined rate of about 3GW per year, driven largely by the federal government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET).
This is double to triple the rate of recent years, and a welcome return to growth after several years of subdued activity due to political uncertainty over the RET.
If this rate is maintained, then by 2030 more than half of Australian electricity will come from renewable energy and Australia will have met its pledge under the Paris climate agreement purely through emissions savings within the electricity industry.
To take the idea further, if Australia were to double the current combined PV and wind installation rate to 6GW per year, it would reach 100% renewable electricity in about 2033. Modelling by my research group suggests that this would not be difficult, given that these technologies are now cheaper than electricity from new-build coal and gas.

Renewable future in reach
The prescription for an affordable, stable and achievable 100% renewable electricity grid is relatively straightforward:

1. 

   Potential sites for pumped hydro storage in Queensland, alongside development sites for solar PV (yellow) and wind energy (green). Galilee Basin coal prospects are shown in black. Andrew Blakers/Margaret Blakers, Author provided

   Use mainly PV and wind. These technologies are cheaper than other low-emission technologies, and Australia has plenty of sunshine and wind, which is why these technologies have already been widely deployed. This means that, compared with other renewables, they have more reliable price projections, and avoid the need for heroic assumptions about the success of more speculative clean energy options.
2. Distribute generation over a very large area. Spreading wind and PV facilities over wide areas – say a million square kilometres from north Queensland to Tasmania – allows access to a wide range of different weather, and also helps to smooth out peaks in users’ demand.
3. Build interconnectors. Link up the wide-ranging network of PV and wind with high-voltage power lines of the type already used to move electricity between states.
4. Add storage. Storage can help match up energy generation with demand patterns. The cheapest option is pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), with support from batteries and demand management.

Australia currently has three PHES systems – Tumut 3, Kangaroo Valley, and Wivenhoe – all of which are on rivers. But there is a vast number of potential off-river sites.
In a project funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, we have identified about 5,000 sites in South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, the Canberra district, and the Alice Springs district that are potentially suitable for pumped hydro storage.
Each of these sites has between 7 and 1,000 times the storage potential of the Tesla battery currently being installed to support the South Australian grid. What’s more, pumped hydro has a lifetime of 50 years, compared with 8-15 years for batteries.
Importantly, most of the prospective PHES sites are located near where people live and where new PV and wind farms are being constructed.
Once the search for sites in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia is complete, we expect to uncover 70-100 times more PHES energy storage potential than required to support a 100% renewable electricity grid in Australia.

Potential PHES upper reservoir sites east of Port Augusta, South Australia. The lower reservoirs would be at the western foot of the hills (bottom of the image). Google Earth/ANU

Managing the grid
Fossil fuel generators currently provide another service to the grid, besides just generating electricity. They help to balance supply and demand, on timescales down to seconds, through the “inertial energy” stored in their heavy spinning generators.
But in the future this service can be performed by similar generators used in pumped hydro systems. And supply and demand can also be matched with the help of fast-response batteries, demand management, and “synthetic inertia” from PV and wind farms.
Wind and PV are delivering ever tougher competition for gas throughout the energy market. The price of large-scale wind and PV in 2016 was A$65-78 per megawatt hour. This is below the current wholesale price of electricity in the National Electricity Market.
Abundant anecdotal evidence suggests that wind and PV energy price has fallen to A$60-70 per MWh this year as the industry takes off. Prices are likely to dip below A$50 per MWh within a few years, to match current international benchmark prices. Thus, the net cost of moving to a 100% renewable electricity system over the next 15 years is zero compared with continuing to build and maintain facilities for the current fossil-fuelled system.
Gas can no longer compete with wind and PV for delivery of electricity. Electric heat pumps are driving gas out of water and space heating. Even for delivery of high-temperature heat for industry, gas must cost less than A$10 per gigajoule to compete with electric furnaces powered by wind and PV power costing A$50 per MWh.
Importantly, the more that low-cost PV and wind is deployed in the current high-cost electricity environment, the more they will reduce prices.
Then there is the issue of other types of energy use besides electricity – such as transport, heating, and industry. The cheapest way to make these energy sources green is to electrify virtually everything, and then plug them into an electricity grid powered by renewables.
A 55% reduction in Australian greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved by conversion of the electricity grid to renewables, together with mass adoption of electric vehicles for land transport and electric heat pumps for heating and cooling. Beyond this, we can develop renewable electric-driven pathways to manufacture hydrocarbon-based fuels and chemicals, primarily through electrolysis of water to obtain hydrogen and carbon capture from the atmosphere, to achieve an 83% reduction in emissions (with the residual 17% of emissions coming mainly from agriculture and land clearing).
Doing all of this would mean tripling the amount of electricity we produce, according to my research group’s preliminary estimate.
But there is no shortage of solar and wind energy to achieve this, and prices are rapidly falling. We can build a clean energy future at modest cost if we want to.

Links

• The electricity sector needs to cut carbon by 45% by 2030 to keep Australia on track
• Low-energy homes don’t just save money, they improve lives
• Britain’s £246m battery challenge won’t solve energy storage problem
• The National Electricity Market has served its purpose – it’s time to move on
• Energy wonks have a meltdown over the US going 100 percent renewable. Why?
• To slow climate change, India joins the renewable energy revolution
• Are solar and wind really killing coal, nuclear and grid reliability?
• Start-ups can help Africa meet its energy needs. But they need to be encouraged
• Five things the east coast can learn from WA about energy
• Deep sea mining could help develop mass solar energy – is it worth the risk?

Tibet's Fragile Ecosystem Is In Danger. China Must Change Its Flawed Environmental Policy

The Guardian - Lobsang Sangay*

Rising temperatures on the roof of the world make Tibet both a driver and amplifier of global warming. China’s unchecked mining and dam building has to be reigned in

‘In the age of climate change the future of Asia and by extension that of our planet Earth hinges on the developments in Tibet, the roof of the world.’ Photograph: Adrian Bradshaw/EPA

As Australia continues to battle a water crisis and the challenges facing the world’s driest inhabited continent, Tibet on the other hand is Asia’s water tower, its principal rainmaker and the largest source of fresh water, feeding over a billion lives in Asia including China.
At an average elevation of 4,000 meters above sea level and with an area of 2.5m sq km, Tibet is the world’s highest and largest plateau. It’s nearly two-third the size of the European continent. If Tibet were still a sovereign nation it would be the world’s tenth largest. It has the largest concentration of the world’s tallest mountains and is called the earth’s third pole because it has the largest reservoir of glacial ice after the two poles. Tibet is also a treasure trove of minerals, oil and natural gas reserves and a leading producer of lithium in China.
The Chinese scientists have over the years been proposing an increase in nature reserves across Tibet considering the fragile ecosystem on the plateau. In April this year China unveiled its grand plans on turning the entire stretch of Tibet into a national park.
The Chinese government has been declaring more and more national parks and nature reserves across Tibet in recent years, and this is a welcome gesture. The Chinese government must take into consideration the fragility and delicate nature of Tibet’s environment and reign in the factors that contribute to environmental crises in Tibet: rapid urbanisation, transfer of Chinese population into Tibet, unchecked mining on Tibet’s sacred mountains, and damming of Tibet’s rivers to facilitate hydro power projects.
In light of such robust projects, Tibetans are not only deprived of their traditional way of living, but are made peripheral beneficiaries of the projects.
The real beneficiaries are the Chinese officials who pocket their share of the gain, the Chinese companies and the Chinese employers benefitting from the economic opportunities.
We are not against Chinese developmental projects in Tibet per se, but we propose that the real beneficiaries of any development must be Tibetans in Tibet. Any projects that China undertake must be environmentally sustainable, culturally sensitive and economically beneficially to local Tibetans.
China’s rolling of its strategic and economic imperatives in Tibet has greater implications on the larger environmental consequences caused by climate change.
Today, the Chinese government’s flawed environmental and developmental policies have turned this resource-rich plateau and fragile ecosystem into a hub of its mining and dam building activities. This not only changes the water map of Asia for the worse but also contributes to an environmental crisis, which in turn contributes to climate change across Asia. The rising temperatures on the roof of the world make Tibet both a driver and amplifier of global warming.
2016 has been a year of natural disasters: a glacial avalanche in Aru in the Ngari region (Western Tibet), and mud floods and a landslide in Amdo (eastern Tibet). Between June and July 2017 alone, four distinct cases of floods were reported in Kham (south east region of Tibet). These are the cumulative effect of climate change.
More cases of natural disasters are imminent. The Chinese government must consider these impending threats and accordingly orient its urban development project towards mitigating the increasing threats posed by climate change.
China has escalated military control over Tibetan borders, expanded mining based on the rich resources of the Tibetan plateau in order to fuel China’s economic development and has dramatically expanded infrastructure with a strategic road and rail network. It seeks to raise the productivity of the industrial cities of Xi’an, Chongqing and Chengdu at the foot of the Tibetan plateau and to address the progressive scarcity of water resources in the North and North-East of China with water sourced in Tibet.
Tibet is facing two critical issues: Its political and environmental future. Of the two, the latter is a bigger issue given the implications for Asia and the rest of the world.
Tibet symbolises the three crises that confront Asia today; a natural resources crisis, an environmental and a climate crisis. These three are interlinked and potentially pose a threat to the ecological wellbeing and climate security not just of Asia but even of Europe, North America and Australia. According to leading scientists, the recent heat waves in Europe are linked to loss of ice on the Tibetan plateau. A team led by Hai Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Environment Canada in Quebec found that the greater snow-cover in Tibet, the warmer the winter in Canada.
Such formidable scenarios demand greater global attention and a forward-looking leadership to assuage the larger affects of an environmental crisis befalling Tibet. The world leaders must act prudently and not allow political constrains to dwarf redressal mechanism at institutional level to an impending global environmental crisis.
Veerabhadran Ramanathan from the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego has rightly said that “our understanding of global climate change would be incomplete without taking into consideration what’s happening to the Tibetan plateau.”
Tibet’s environment impinges on regional and global security. The global efforts to reign in China’s policies in Tibet underpinning an oversight of the importance of Tibet’s environment and sensitivity over its fragile ecosystem, must be robust. In the age of climate change the future of Asia and by extension that of our planet Earth hinges on the developments in Tibet, the roof of the world.

*Dr Lobsang Sangay is president of the Central Tibetan Administration

Links

• Tibet’s plea: fix the roof of the world before it’s too late
• Dalai Lama says strong action on climate change is a human responsibility
• Climate Change Is Melting 'The Roof Of The World'
• Climate change likely caused deadly avalanche in Tibet, researchers say
• See How This Giant Ice Avalanche Transformed a Valley

New York Times Guilty Of Large Screw-Up On Climate-Change Story

Washington Post - Erik Wemple

The New York Times building. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

The New York Times on Wednesday appended a correction to a story about a climate change study:

Correction: August 9, 2017
An article on Tuesday about a sweeping federal climate change report referred incorrectly to the availability of the report. While it was not widely publicized, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times.

That correction, which sits at the foot of the story, dutifully straightens out the record. Yet given the magnitude of the screw-up, it should sit atop the story, surrounded by red flashing lights and perhaps an audio track to instruct readers: Warning: This story once peddled a faulty and damaging premise.
That premise suggests that the Trump administration is stifling a damaging draft report — part of the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment — with dire warnings about climate change. "The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration," noted the lead of the article, which was written by Lisa Friedman.
As it detailed the conclusions of the draft report, the New York Times highlighted an equally scary prospect: That without the intervention of the New York Times, it might not have seen the light of day. Examples:

• "One government scientist who worked on the report, and who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity, said he and others are concerned it will be suppressed."
• "A copy of it was obtained by The New York Times."
• "The draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies, which has not yet been made public, concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now."

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in interviews broadcast on June 4 that the Paris climate agreement hampered the U.S. economy. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

As part of its corrective effort, the New York Times has pulled the language saying that "a copy of it was obtained by the New York Times," as well as the mistaken assertion that it has "not yet been made public." Even so, the article continues to carry this line: "Another scientist involved in the process, who spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity, said he and others were concerned that it would be suppressed." As well as this one: "Scientists say they fear that the Trump administration could change or suppress the report."
Though it may be the case that certain scientists maintain such fears, that's a pretty tough position in light of the fact that the report "was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January" and publicized by the New York Times in August.
It is unclear how such a mistake came about. Maybe reporter Lisa Friedman failed to consult one Bob Kopp, or others who cited the error on Twitter:

IMAGE

Any intimation that the Trump administration is blocking or somehow suppressing a dire climate-change study is explosive stuff, in large part because it would align with actual transparency problems. As Philip Rucker and Ed O'Keefe reported in June, Republicans in Congress have complained that federal agencies aren't sharing information; the White House began banishing live coverage of briefings; and it ended the Obama practice of releasing White House visitor logs.
So this whole climate-change report is another case-in-point, right? No, at least not yet:

IMAGE

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blasted away in a statement: "It's very disappointing, yet entirely predictable to learn The New York Times would write off a draft report without first verifying its contents with the White House or any of the federal agencies directly involved with climate and environmental policy. As others have pointed out – and The New York Times should have noticed – drafts of this report have been published and made widely available online months ago during the public comment period. The White House will withhold comment on any draft report before its scheduled release date."
Next up: A tweet about the "failing" New York Times from a certain fellow.
New York Times Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller says of the draft report's status: "We were just not aware that somebody involved in the report had put a draft on this nonprofit Internet site," she says. "It was not a well-known site to us and the point is that the people who shared the draft with us were not aware of it either. That doesn't change the larger point that scientists were worried that the government wouldn't approve the report or release it through normal channels." When pressed on Sanders's criticism, Bumiller said, "We spent a lot of time trying to sort out where it had appeared before," said Bumiller. "Again, we just didn't know. The reporter just didn't know and the editors didn't know and once it was brought to our attention, we sorted it out" and ran a correction.
At a June panel discussion hosted by the Washington Press Club Foundation, CNN senior congressional reporter Manu Raju spoke about the stakes involved with factual integrity these days. "You just cannot screw up in this environment because they'll use every small mistake to come after you and suggest that you have some nefarious motive in your reporting," he said.

Links

• Scientists Fear Trump Will Dismiss Blunt Climate Report
• Government Report Finds Drastic Impact Of Climate Change On U.S.
• U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report (CSSR)
• In Trump’s Washington, public business increasingly handled behind closed doors