Are There Limits to Wind and Solar Adoption?

I found this piece from UK financiers Argonaut Capital pretty appalling in its implications for the adoption of wind and solar power. Here’s the gist of it:

The UK government has congratulated itself that between 1990 and 2019, carbon dioxide “emissions fell by 44% while GDP rose by 76%, with the UK decarbonising faster than any other G20 country since 2000.”6 What is not admitted is that this was mainly achieved by replacing coal with natural gas as the main source of reliable baseload7 power (with roughly half the emissions). The UK energy mix has changed substantially from the 1980’s when it was largely coal based with some nuclear and the only renewable power was hydro (see Fig 3. UK Power Generation since 1985). Scottish and UK governments decided to switch off fossil fuel investment before it was prudent to do so. With declining North Sea production, over half of UK natural gas is now imported either via pipeline or LNG ships, creating a now obvious energy security problem.8 Rather than wash its hands of fossil fuel production, the UK will now need to bring energy production back onto its own balance sheet.

Nuclear power generates reliable carbon-free baseload power. Enthusiasm for new projects has until recently10 been limited owing to misplaced safety fears, cost overruns on new builds and legacy technology (a lack of innovation caused by over-regulation). Solar was never going to work in the UK. The least difficult political option was wind. Energy policy then pivoted away from onshore wind when local opposition to eyesore developments resulted in Prime Minister Cameron promising to end all onshore wind subsidies in the Conservative election manifesto of 2015. Through offering the most generous government subsidies11 the UK ended up as the proud global leader in the previously nascent offshore wind industry.

Onshore wind power got scotched, so to speak, because it’s unsightly and takes up land valuable for other purposes. Offshore has some serious inefficiencies. This graph tells a pretty sad story:

especially the part I’ve circled.

The first thing that’s apparent is that a significant part of the UK’s reduction in emissions has been due to replacing coal-fired power generation with natural gas-fired. That’s much what we’ve done here. Additionally, as you can see a considerable part of the decrease in nuclear has been offset through the use of “biomass” which they explain like this:

“Biomass” – ironically highly carbon dioxide emitting wood pellets imported from the US, burned by power company Drax, but classified as “renewable” and oddly recipient of government subsidies3 – another 8%. Over the year, natural gas accounted for 44%, coal 2%, offshore wind 11%, onshore wind 10%, solar 2%, nuclear 18%, hydro 2%, and biomass 8%. In other words, over half of the UK’s power generation in 2021 came from fossil fuels and just a quarter from wind/water/solar renewables

That’s a complete misuse of burning wood. When someone living in a hut in Ghana burns wood for heat or cooking, it’s one thing. When someone in Germany does I begin to have a problem with it. But when wood is burned to generate electricity which in turn is used to heat or light a home or business or cook, it’s too inefficient.

Trees capture light from the sun. Burning wood releases a fraction of that power in the form of heat. Converting the heat to electricity wastes even more of the power and converting direct current to alternating current so it can be transported on power lines wastes an enormous amount of the power. Consequently, nearly all of the energy originally captured from the sun is wasted in the process.

Theoretically, wood is a renewable but wood derived from new growth which could reasonably be called renewable can’t be differentiated from wood from old growth forests—that can by no stretch be considered renewable. There’s a serious risk that old growth forests in the United States, Canada, and Brazil are being clearcut just so politicians and bureaucrats can claim they’re meeting goals that appear to be more arbitrary with each passing day.

Maybe a short way of saying all of this is

Electricity from burning switchgrass = Okay
Electricity from burning wood = A lot less okay

1 comment… add one
  • PD Shaw Link

    From some googling, I found this claim in the Guardian by Drax: “Drax claims that its plans to capture the carbon emissions from burning biomass have been proven at its North Yorkshire site to be ‘the most cost-effective negative emissions technology available now.'”

    The environmental opposition states that even if carbon emissions from stacks can be completely captured, this does not account for (i) biomass harvest in forests releases carbon from the soil, and (ii) replacing older trees with saplings after harvest reduces the amount of carbon stored in the re-growing forest.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/31/drax-to-double-wood-pellet-production-with-biomass-firm-purchase

    Interesting, and without more research seems to me like both claims could be true. Also, I don’t know if similar claims could be made about Germany.

Leave a Comment