Are you in the mood for some rare optimistic climate news? The Rocky Mountain Institute released a report today forecasting that solar and wind are growing so fast and getting so cheap that they're now on track to produce 30% of all electricity by 2030 and upwards of 70-85% by 2050:
If we can do this, we'd be at net zero emissions by 2050, and RMI thinks it's well within reason. That's still not enough to rein in global warming completely, since there's more to emissions than just electricity, but it would certainly be a helluva start.
Props where they are also due…
Reality check.
China's own pledge to net-zero is 2060. Last year, they permitted 90 gigawatts -- that's GIGAWATTS -- of new coal power plants. That was after they pledged net-zero by 2060.
By the end of last year, the US had less than 200 gigawatts of coal power capacity. In the last 4 1/2 years, China's permitted about as much new coal power as the US currently operates.
The world is not going to hit net zero by 2050, no matter how low solar prices hit.
Something has to power the plants making the solar panels.
The average person in China has a much lower green house gas footprint than the average person in the US. Exporting manufacturing also exported our emissions.
China needs to stop building coal plants--but at least some of that is replacing older coal plants with more efficient ones. The US is planning on adding 27.5 GW of natural gas fired plants in the next couple of years. Also absurd, but some of that is replacing old coal plants too.
Unfortunately the argument that China is building new coal plants so we should too is just a suicide pact, not an energy policy. You did not make that argument directly, but that is typically what people who point out how bad China is like to do.
And in which direction is that moving?
It's going up of course--because everyone wants to live like Americans.
Our energy efficiency programs and mandates have helped the world a bit. We create a large market for better things, they get made in bulk and cheaply, then when rest of world catches up, there are energy efficient toys available.
For the past two years I've been saying that the best means for the US to get to net-zero is solar b/c the LCOE of utility solar (scaled solar + 4 hr storage) reached a tipping point making it the cheapest option per megawatt out there.
That's not the case with China. Utility solar is (as of 2021) almost double the LCOE of coal.
China's own 2060 plan is one sprinkled with fairy dust. They're going to magically slash coal use in 2035.
Like the IPCC "overshoot" pathway, the world is supposed to magically find solutions and capacity to suddenly and rapidly slash carbon output and build massive green tech.
We're going to overshoot. By a lot. The US is going to miss the 2050 target. The Chinese are going to miss it by well over a decade.
Climate change is not just real, it's...
baked into the next century.
My point for over a year is that we need to start pouring hundreds of billions into mitigation.
Unfortunately, four hours of storage is not nearly enough to power through seasonal varations in energy use. Try, oh, about 300 TWh. Oddly enough -- and this anecdata -- the people who minimize storage requirements, well, True Believers. But also mostly Californians. Yes, the Sun is bright, the climate mild, and seasonal variations in energy use minimal. In California. What's that got to do with energy use patterns in Minnesota?
Better grid design and transmission lines would help.
I'm hitting the panic button and going with all-of-the-above strategy. We need to figure out how to drastically speed up permitting for everything -- solar, wind, nuclear.
Honestly their chart looks like a slight underestimate on the front end. Nevertheless, 30 years is a long time to forecast.
And they don't cost in the necessary storage/transmission requirements.
Really interesting. I wonder what kind of tipping points will be encountered on the way? If coal power starts to go away maybe the people that maintain coal power plants get hard to find. If coal mines go out of business maybe they raid the pension funds on the way out the door?
And all that CO2 in 2050 will still be there for decades. Even if we stopped producing greenhouse gases tomorrow, there's enough CO2 and methane to drive global warming well past 2050. Add to that the loss of surface albedo from glacial and snow loss and the melting of methane clathrates. The only way to avert global calamity is some combination of global carbon capture and/or geoengineering.
Yes, but we really have to stop emissions as fast as possible.
Sure. And conserve more. But at this point, it's too late to avoid calamity. The half-life of greenhouse gases is measured in decades, not weeks. The only way to avoid climate-driven resource wars that will destroy civilization before emissions abatement has any effect is some combination of global carbon capture and/or geoengineering.
Well, that's very nice, although we're still a long way down the S-curve.
Would be nicer still if a similar trend emerged in converting vehicles from fossil fuels.
Why world governments aren't absolutely dumping money into this is beyond me. Except, wait, at least half of OUR population are belligerent knuckle-draggers, and I'm sure we're not the only ones.
Meantime, I will continue to prepare my descendants for the worst.
"Would be nicer still if a similar trend emerged in converting vehicles from fossil fuels."
In 2023, nearly 1-in-5 new cars sold globally are electric (up from 1-in-20 in 2020). So the trend is there, and moving fast. It's just not so visible in the US, because we're lagging. But even with that, a lot of US automakers are forecasting that by the mid 2030s, they'll *only* sell EVs.
Grid upgrade
Grid upgrade
Grid upgrade.
Unless and until you are serious about permitting speed on massive extension of grid expansion and upgrades, the metrics will cap out or you will have Yellow Vests style revolts over energy pricing.
But with massive grid upgrade which can enable cross continental power wheeling, then USA can be quite well positioned in re combined wind and solar (although land access, connexions are your other key biinding constraints that is NIMBYism)
Further non-carbon emitting base and variable for grid frequency service as intermittants can not provide that, regardless of innumerate NGO green Left magical thinking.
I'm not that impressed because RMI has always sung this song: that renewables growth will overwhelm fossil fuels. The problem is that renewables growth is keeping up with demand growth but it can't dislodge fossil fuels until there is a concomitant market force to make fossil fuels uneconomic. That's why we have to have a carbon tax. Please don't tell me "but that's unpopular!" I know that. It's unpopular because it would work. The right hates that because they get so much campaign support from fossil interests. The left hates it because "elites" like scientists and economists want it.
An all-renewable energy future is unlikely, IMHO. The load shifting requirements, while technically possible, are not financially plausible. Sure, it'd nice. But nice and implausible means it ain't gonna happen.
Getting to 80-90% is easy. Getting from 95% to 100% is hard. But 90% is a game changer. Wringing our hands about getting above 95% 30+ years from now is kind of silly.
30 years ago few would have predicted the current state of renewable generation and auto electrification.
Well, yeah, because you just restated Pareto's 80-20 rule. Remember: none of this is plausible unless the entire (well, sans Texas) is massively upgraded. To name but one technical difficulty: There are twits who natter on endlessly about how you just run a charging cable from your garage, or at least driveway, plug your EV in, and it gets a full charge overnight. Easy peasy, nice and easy. They're oblivious to the fact that this simply isn't possible in urban areas, and how that word 'just' is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Unfortunately, this is still going to be too little, too late. We're already at the point where we need to be net negative, not net zero. We'll reach net zero 30+ years too late.