IEA sees a world run on solar
The International Energy Agency has outlined, in detail, its vision of how solar energy technologies could form the backbone of the world’s electricity network, providing half its electricity needs by 2060.
The scenario, outlined in the IEA’s Solar Energy Perspectives, released last week, was first canvassed in late August. Essentially, it looks at the options available to the world if it took decisive, but belated action, on climate change, and alternative technologies such as nuclear and carbon capture and storage failed to deliver as promised.
And, for the first time, it also recognises a future where baseload power may no longer provide the bedrock of the world’s energy needs, as it has done for a century or more, but is replaced by a system of flexible and inflexible energy sources, where intermittent sources such as wind and solar PV are complemented by “dispatchable” and flexible sources such as solar thermal with storage, hydro, and gas.
The IEA has been canvassing a range of scenarios over how the energy systems of the future may look under various climate and energy policy responses. Under its 450 scenario, where the world holds true to its political target of limiting global warming to an average 2°C by capping greenhouse gas emissions at 450 parts per million, solar accounts for less than 20 per cent of total generation by 2050, rising to 25 per cent of generation in its “high renewable” scenario, where renewables need to account for 75 per cent of the world’s generation to make up for the lack of nuclear or CCS.
However, in its “Testing the Limits” scenario, the IEA considers what would happen if the world made a belated but sharper change in its energy policy – whether for security, economic or climate reasons, as seems increasingly likely given the nature of the international climate talks – and if many countries decided to abandon nuclear power and carbon capture and storage was found to be costlier, more limited or not as safe as hoped, which it concedes is quite possible.
In this scenario, the IEA says, solar energy could become the backbone of a largely renewable energy system worldwide. The make-up of energy sources varies from region to region, thanks to climate variations, but most of the estimated nine billion people will live in warmer climates, and areas with strong solar radiation (such as north Africa and the Middle East to Europe, and Australia to Indonesia), and become net exporters of solar energy. In colder climates such as Europe, wind and solar PV match the seasonal demand peaks.
Globally, the IEA scenario has solar thermal accounting for 28 per cent of total electricity generation by 2060, with some 6,000GW of capacity with storage (it has around 1GW now). Solar PV accounts for 20 per cent of generation, with 12,000GW of installed capacity (about 40GW now), and solar fuels add a further 2 per cent of generation.
Of the other technologies, wind power also makes up 28 per cent of generation, with 10,000GW of capacity, hydropower provides 10 per cent, and baseload – a mixture of geothermal, nuclear and biomass with CCS – provides 11 per cent of generation with around 1,200GW of capacity. Natural gas has capacity of around 3000GW, but is used sparingly as a balancing fuel and accounts for just 1 per cent of total generation.
The IEA does not break down the energy contributions in individual regions, but it should be noted that in its “high renewable” 450 scenario, the IEA says 40 per cent of the energy in regions such as Australia, central Asia, parts of India and south-western US, and the Middle East, could come from solar thermal alone.
As for costs, the IEA says, it is simply a matter of planning ahead. “Renewables in general, and solar energy in particular, may not always offer the lowest cost options to meet our energy needs, nor even the cheapest way of doing so while reducing global carbon emissions,” it notes. But because of the risk that other options may fall short, solar technologies offering “indigenous, inexhaustible resources”, are more secure, less likely to experience price volatility once the technologies are mature, are environmentally sustainable, and “the cheapest known antidote to catastrophic climate change, even if they are or appear to be higher-cost options in other ways.”
It says that by 2060, the world is four times richer, but only consuming 50 per cent more energy because of energy efficiency measures. “Even if the cost of one energy unit were twice as much as today, the total energy expenditure would be proportionally smaller than today. It is thus conceivable to prefer an energy future that provides security, economic stability and preserves the sustainability of ecosystems and the environment, even if it is not the least-cost option when such considerations are ignored.”
But it may not be that expensive. The IEA notes that solar PV is already competitive with “bulk power” in many areas, particularly islands, off-grid locations, and where PV is competing with oil. Solar thermal is also likely to fall substantially – a recent tender for a 50MW solar thermal plant in Mongolia was bid at $140/MWh. It says that solar thermal will be competitive with intermediate and peaking plant by 2020, and by 2030, solar costs will range from $50/MWh in the best solar regions, to $150/MWh in the worst. Other technologies will be grouped north or south of $100/MWh. It notes that, in the case of building integrated solar PV, where solar will be crucial to the value, “the cost of PV would almost vanish in the market segment where it currently costs the most.”
Even though solar electricity is already competitive in some markets, and will soon be in much larger ones, it will still require efficient policy support, whether feed-in tariffs or power purchase agreement rooted in renewable portfolio standards. “Only a small proportion should be considered subsidies or, rather, learning investments required to bring solar technologies to competitiveness,” it writes. “Their success would provide broad access to an inexhaustible source of energy and help give more than a billion people around the world greater opportunity and economic freedom. By contrast, fossil fuel subsidies only serve to perpetuate a system that is ultimately not sustainable and distributes energy production and its benefits by chance.”
The IEA says several enablers will need to occur, including a greater focus on energy efficiency, demand response and smart grids, as well as the electrification of transport, where one kW/h of electricity in electric vehicles and hybrids replaces the equivalent of 3kWh in liquid fuels. It notes that "contrary to common belief," intermittent renewables do not need ME for MW backup. Indeed, it says while significant current capacity of flexible gas will remain online in the coming decades, notably in industrialised countries, their capacity factor will decrease, and there will be no, or little, need to build greenfield fossil-fuelled plants for backup.
As mentioned earlier, the IEA also picks up on the principal of flexible and inlflexible generations, and how this might replace the concept of baseload energy, as foreshadowed by Australian solar expert David Mills, and more recently by a UNSW team. The IEA says solar thermal with storage are are expected to be able to deliver competitive electricity by about 2030, depending on the costs of fossil fuels and the price attributed to CO2 emissions, by 2030. It says the distinction between peak power and baseload would become less relevant, as flexible solar thermal electricity could, at all times, complement inflexible variable renewables.
Follow @gilesparkinson on Twitter
Comments on this article
Hello,I love reading through
Hello,I love reading through your blog, I wanted to leave a little comment to support you and wish you a good continuation. Wishing you the best of luck for all your blogging efforts.NS0-154 dumps// 1Y0-A09 dumps// 1D0-435 dumps// PW0-104 dumps// EC0-479 dumps// EC0-349 dumps// JN0-100 dumps// BCP-410 dumps//
louis vuitton mirror
you will like louis vuitton mirror for promotion code suprisely
louis vuitton mirror
you will like louis vuitton mirror for promotion code suprisely
louis vuitton mirror
you will like louis vuitton mirror for promotion code suprisely
louis vuitton mirror
you will like louis vuitton mirror for promotion code suprisely
Japan's 46th reactor just went off line REPLY Mark Duffett
The Japanese Nuclear economic disaster is getting deeper and deeper.
Another plant Kansai Electric's Mihama nuclear unit is being shutdown due to dangerous water leaks.
This leaves 8 plants operating with another 2 to go offline before the new year.
Starting 2012 with only 6 / 54 reactors shows us how, weak, feable and unreliable the dangerous nuclear energy source is.
You wouldn't bank on it (the banks never did) You wouldn't bet the health and well being of your population on it,either.
Unfortunately for the Japanese they've learnt the hard way.
We can learn from their mistakes, while helping them out by deploying renewables fast, doing research and development, to get renewables like solar, solar thermal w/storage and wind down the cost curve.
trying to avoid defaming Matthew Wright
That's dishonest re nuclear in Japan, Matthew Wright. You and I both know the reason why so many nuclear plants remain shut down there is purely political (i.e. caused by the likes of yourself and other anti-nukes), not technical. And the total cost of Fukushima is still dwarfed by the value of nuclear electricity that has been generated in Japan.
'Like being under attack from a military force', turn it up, you goose.
environmentalists have done more harm than ClimateChange deniers
Normal
0
false
false
false
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
From an article I just shared on the web.
"Conventional nuclear power uses just 0.6% of the energy contained in the uranium that fuels it. Integral fast reactors can use almost all the rest. There is already enough nuclear waste on earth to meet the world's energy needs for several hundred years, with scarcely any carbon emissions."
For more read this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-energy-solution
Mass production and size for cost reductions
Heliostats and central heat storage get closer to the thermodynamic limits of solar energy capture and storage. A central heat receiver captures a black body range of light frequency energy.
High molten salt temperatures give a more efficient process of steam heat and electricity generation. Big tanks retain the heat. This can make up a flexible stored energy pool, to top up less predictable wind power.
A far greater total area of panels, and some other form of storage, would be required for massive solar PV. The best Solar PV panels capture a smaller range of light frequency and energy. Two axis tracking heliostats get closer to the lowest total panel area necessary to intercept the total solar radiation flux we need.
This is a huge number of heliostats. More are needed for the solar winter minimum. In summer the capture will be in excess. The numbers required need dedicated mass production techniques, churning out the order of a thousand per day. The heliostats are simpler in materials and design than cars, so this should be possible. Cost falls with a bigger ratio of mirror field area to tower, storage and generator, so a total system design goal is to use a large field size, of the order of 200 MW if combined with generous storage capacity.
So a large scale transition requires thinking at large mass production scale.
taxation guides and guides technology
Beat Odermatt posts a comment with the heading "technology not taxes will provide solutions".
FYI, Beat, we already have most of the technology to provide the solution. What's missing is a taxation regime that guides and informs application of existing technology and such further development as may be required.
Not just possible but essential for security of supply
I agree with the "ifs"' "coulds" and "mays" but if we are going to have security of supply of electricity in 2060 we have to invest in renewables now. By 2060 there will be no oil to speak of, less gas and dwindling coal http://camwest.pps.com.au/renewable-energy/. All that is left is the renewable power we install between now and then.
Dan
IEA sees a world run on solar..............
Amazing conclusion that one Giles !
The IEA is an autonomous intergovernmental organisation established under the OECD ( & based in Paris , France ) to advise the OECD what to do about a future "oil-crisis" !!
It's MAIN DECISION SO FAR is to stock-pile MORE OIL !!
Wow ! Wouldn't THAT take the cake !
What a difficult decision that must have been !!
" IF " is a tiny word with quite a lot of implications.
If you RE-READ this article WITH AN OPEN MIND & note all the " if 's " , the "could's" & the "may's" you can soon conclude that this entire article is pure supposition and assumption & does NOT support the headline.
ummm....Beat?
Beat, While I agree with you on the need for better energy conservation and efficiency....Do you read the papers?
We DO have legislation that requires 20% of our energy to come from renewables by 2020. Exactly what you asked for. Surprisingly both sides of politics seem to agree on this one - perhaps that's why you forgot about it.
We also have a carbon price (admittedly fixed for the 1st 3 years) which will allow generators to choose what form of energy (hopefully the cheapest) they will use rather than have a bureaucrat tell them what to use.
No band-aid solutions there! All good, long-term structural reform. That should make you happy.
Now, if you want a band-aid solution one only needs to look at the policy from the coalition. I think they call it "direct action" and even the least critical review of that puts it in the flimsy elastoplast category. Even Malcolm Turnbull said the best thing about this policy is its easy to cancel - I think that makes it one of those pain free, easy peel band-aids!
technology not taxes will provide solutions
Most technologies come to an end at some stage. A stage coach and a steamship would have been on the forefront of modern transport just a few generations ago. Anybody speculating that these technologies would one day been gone would have been ridiculed. If we look at some of the electricity generation and distributions systems of today, they will become extinct and they will be replaced with newer and cleaner technologies. We can assume that solar, wave and wind power will provide a large proportion of power in the future. I assume that the largest “new” energy resource will be energy efficiency and energy conservation. When we see massive waste of electricity right across the world, then we know that power is still far too cheap to initiate real progress in efficiency improvement.
We have Government buildings in which the air-conditioning turned on so cool, that it would make a polar bear shiver. We see massive building lit up at night to make it into massive moth traps. Instead of having legislations which would make power generators to source more power from renewable sources and consumers to conserve energy, we have a silly band aid solution based on a carbon tax.
Fusion power collectors.
Here's an idea.
A giant fusion reactor suspended in space so you don't have to worry about containment fields. Beam the energy down to earth and collect it with "fusion collectors" near where the power is needed and connected to a grid. For the beams that miss, harness the energy of the wind and waves that are generated from the heating effect of the fusion energy beams.
Oh wait...
Or we could burn all our fossilised organic fusion collectors and send our atmosphere back to its primordial state when there was a lot more CO2 and Methane.
Storage is key
I read that 40% of our stationary energy is wasted. I think this is partly because the energy source is dependent on having a consumer somewhere (close by) able to consume it immediately, instantly, and the generators can't readily monitor demand accurately enough to 'adjust' generation. I respect coal because it has earned us a standard of living which has got us here, but it has been left behind when it comes to creating dispatchable energy grid efficiency. I wonder if unswitchable coal-firers could find investment value in emerging molten salt storage technology which was driven originally by solar ? There would still be efficiency losses, being conversion of coal heat to molten salt heat mass, conversion of molten salt heat mass to steam, and losses through steam turbines, but if it made storage possible and the overall loss was less than 40%, perhaps it would be worth doing, and allow coal generators a longer and dignified transition into other energies.
No 'promise' of solar thermal
Deleted - item submitted twice
No 'promise' of solar thermal
Mark,
'Solar thermal' is a simplistic name for an energy souce. It is inanimate and cannot do the sort of things that humans do, like make promises.
So its not 'Solar thermal' but people that have failed to make positive progress. And why is that? Because coal- and oil-based energy - without externalities factored into their economic models - have remained lower cost and more convenient. And of course, those who own those resources have been very effective in making sure that Governments do not factor in externalities and do not favour alternative sources.
However the cost - environmental, human, social and economic - of externalities is now becoming evident. So don't expect the status quo to last forever.
That's right Peter.
Peter Lang is right. We need a TRUE cost comparison of all technologies including their whole of life costs and externalities. You can't apply these cost's to one technology option and ignore them for the others.
Unfortunately when these things are included nuclear comes out looking very sad indeed. There is not a single nuclear power plant in the world that operates without subsidy and that subsidy will go on for thousands of years. Even after today's nuclear plants are shut down someone has to pay to secure and store the waste. Then there is the "insurance" factor for any possible disaster (don't say they can't happen) and the clean-up and remediation costs (Billions!!). And these are only part of it - there is opportunity cost of separation distances, weapons proliferation costs etc. etc. etc.
Hopefully someone will come up with viable solutions to all of these issues but, until they do, nuclear does not add up. Peter, on your own criteria nuclear is not a viable solution today.
I had a Dream
I had a 'vision' of a world run by Green Aliens with solar panel eyes and wind turbine arms.
You didn't mention the Cost REPLY: Peter Lang
The true cost of nuclear power to Japan (or any other country that is stupid enough to go down the same path) is the same as the cost of having to defend against an invading Military force)
Japan has 17.3% availability at the moment. 9 / 54 plants are available to generate.
That's one and a half Australia's worth of electricity not being generated.
IF that was AUstralia that would be no Aluminium smelters, no alumina smelters, no zinc smelters, no car manufacturing plants, no car component plants, no super markets, no traffic lights, no life support, no government.
It would be very ugly if we were to have that much electricity out in Australia.
Do you understand how much 350TWh of electricity per annum missing in action is?
And how huge the economy wide impacts would be? The cost to Japan is like being under attack from an invading military force. That is the true cost of Nuclear power.
Matthew Wright, you didn't mention the cost :)
What is the cost comparison of nuclear and solar thermal where the solar thermal has sufficent energy storage to have comparable availability to nuclear?
What's the comparison on the basis of materials required per unit of energy delivered?
Why do you sidetrack into irrelevant points like the temperature of the steam? What's the temperature of the steam in a geothermal plant?
The promise of solar thermal RE: Mark Duffett
1908 Solar Thermal was model T Ford stuff.
The plant was a direct steam trough system.
Today the leading technology that will repower the world (as predicted by the IEA) is molten salt power towers.
The first molten salt power tower put into pilot production was the CIEMAT tower in the French Pyrenees. CIEMAT does atomic research in France and the Molten Salt working fluid was inspired by the cooling systems of nuclear power plants.
Molten salt towers have the ability to run Molten Salt direclty and/or use molten salt as a storage media. The molten salt can be kept at high coal plant temperatures (565C later rising to 600C)
Not the pathetic low temperatures of nuclear power plants - most reactors run their steam system around 350C which is basically warm water because the nuclear industry is too scared to let their reactions get too warm for fear of a mega catastrophe.
Molten Salt Power Towers can be configured with enough storage for Baseload, Intermediate, Peaking or dispatchable configurations.
Nuclear power plants are so inflexible that France relies on interconnection to Italy and Germany to dump 28% of her production at night time. WIthout interconnection France would have to massively reduce its over capacity of nuclear.
The promise of solar thermal
Very big call. Solar thermal has been promising a lot and delivering not much for an awful long time now (much longer and much less than nuclear): http://t.co/K2jdINE8