Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed to Launch
Renewable energy will be increasingly important going forward but so far, the renewable rocket has failed to get off the launch pad.
Advocates of different energy sources usually base their promotional efforts on price. These days, we hear how the price of renewable energy is falling and may soon be cheaper than all competing forms of energy.
“Solar PV and onshore wind are now the cheapest sources of new-build generation for at least two-thirds of the global population.”
Bloomberg NEF
In 1954 we heard that nuclear power would soon be too cheap to meter. That did not work out well.
If renewable energy is so cheap, why does solar and wind account for a tiny fraction of energy use?
Renewable energy–solar and wind–accounts for only 4% of U.S. energy use today and is only expected to reach 12% by 2050 according to latest EIA forecasts (Figure 1). Like all forecasts, it is probably wrong but reflects current thinking based on price, availability and adoption rates by the public. Double renewables by 2050 and it still is hardly the success story its promoters claim.
Price ≠ Cost ≠ Value
Part of the disconnect is that most analysts incorrectly use price, cost and value interchangeably.
The price is what I pay as a consumer. The cost is what the provider pays to produce the product. The value is what the product creates for the consumer and society.
In the case of oil, the price is now about $24/barrel. The cost is about $65.
A barrel of oil contains ~4.5 years of human labor in megawatt hours, joules or whatever unit you prefer. The value is about $117,000 using a median U.S. income of $26,000/year. Oil has the greatest energy density of any of the available sources today.
And that is the problem for renewable energy. It has a much lower energy density so it can never provide the same value regardless of its price or its cost. The only way to meet current energy needs with renewables is to greatly expand the number of units—solar panels or wind turbines—that provide the energy. To provide more energy output requires more energy input–pretty basic physics. That in turn creates more emissions and confounds the purpose of cleaner energy.
Pedro Prieto is among the world’s top experts on renewable energy and is author of Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution. In a recent email discussion he wrote the following:
“If renewables have already reached grid parity and are now are so dirt cheap, why haven’t they taken over massively, not only in electric networks, but in all other functions of the world economy?
“It is time for unconditional pro-renewable promoters to make an act of contrition and start admitting that perhaps they grossly missed the elephant in the room (massive storage, intermittency, other related and sine qua non societal energy costs?) in their EROI and LCOE calculations.
“The renewables rocket has spent already many years in the launch pad, roaring and expelling lots of fumes through its nozzles, but it has not been able to take off, unable to lift. Perhaps it is because it had hanging from it that big elephant that many experts missed or ignored for such a long time.”
Pedro Prieto
The popular belief that the world can run 100% on renewable energy seems far in the future based on Figure 1. No matter how much we want to change from fossil to renewable energy, it is not feasible to go from 4% to even 50% in less than several decades, much less 100%.
A 100% Renewable Future Means a Poorer World
A 100% renewable economy is fine only if we are willing to accept a lower living standard and much smaller population than we have today.
Humans have never gone from a higher to a lower density energy source. A renewable energy world would have a smaller and less productive economy because of the lower energy density of its primary source.
I am an advocate for solar and wind, and I take climate change very seriously. It is, however, critical that people know the truth: the world will be much poorer when fossil energy is abandoned.
Many believe that the Coronavirus crisis will hasten the transition to renewable energy. I believe the opposite will occur. As I wrote last month, “A world in economic depression will default to the cheapest and most productive fuels. Oil will be cheap and abundant for a long time. There will be little money or appetite for the massive equipment changes that renewable sources require. Climate change will not be high in the consciousness of people struggling to survive.”
Humans will self-organize around energy as we have always done. It is impossible for humans to choose an energy source that violates the genetic imperative to expand as a species. When that happens, it will be imposed by circumstances that make survival a greater imperative than growth.
Coronavirus is a substantial step in that direction but is only a prelude. The economy is unlikely to fully recover from the economic damage done already. If premature opening of the economy results in another period of quarantine, the damage will be greater.
The effects of this virus will be recognized in time as a fundamental and painful shift in the course of human history. The result of the transition to a 100% renewable energy future will, by comparison, be traumatic.
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[…] [42] Art Berman, “Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed to Launch,” Art Berman (blog), May 8, 2020, https://www.artberman.com/2020/05/08/why-the-renewable-rocket-has-failed-to-launch/. […]
[…] [42] Art Berman, “Por qué el cohete renovable no se ha podido lanzar”, Art Berman (blog), 8 de mayo de 2020, https://www.artberman.com/2020/05/08/why-the-renewable- cohete-ha-fallado-al-lanzar/ . […]
[…] world to simply switch from fossil to renewable energy without sacrificing living standards. The physics of that simply don’t […]
I am a strong proponent of extreme efficiency plays, where they make sense. In particular, there is a lot of room for improvement in last mile distribution. I think your analysis of renewables and energy is well communicated and about as near to absolute truth as it gets. Also, your responses to comments are poised and correct. Looking forward to seeing more of your work. Found this via LinkedIn.
Robert,
Many thanks for your comments.
All the best,
Art
Art,
You probably wouldn’t deny that the total lifecycle costs for fossil fuels is massively higher than their nominal prices, essentially ignoring all the hidden and costly planet-destroying side effects…
So you’re proferring that this is simply beyond us as a species to figure out and adjust for? If so, it would be a death sentence – which arguably any species should want to avoid.
JBR,
You must understand the difference between price, cost and value of oil. A barrel contains 4.5 years of human manual labor. At a median U.S. salary of $26,000/year, that’s $117,000/barrel. Nothing competes. Period.
Best,
Art
[…] to maximize their gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch, this hasn’t been the case. Rather, “green energy” remains dependent on […]
[…] to maximize their gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch, this hasn’t been the case. Rather, “green energy” remains dependent on […]
[…] maximize their gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch, this hasn’t been the case. Rather, “green energy” remains dependent on […]
It´s all about politics. Those whom think that 100% renewables are needed and feasible are “usable” fools for political freaks.
No one would freely invest large sum´s on renewable, so you need grants to political allied companies, and when that doesn´t deliver you need the politicians to sieze power and guide the energy market (and by extension the economy). to 100% renewable.
“No matter how much we want to change from fossil to renewable energy, it is not feasible to go from 4% to even 50% in less than several decades, much less 100%”
Exactly just like the war on drugs and the war on poverty, but now it´s a war on climate change.
This is an unwinnable war and just like the examples given, once we use political power to try to acheive said goals, every time they fail to deliver, they will require more power and more money for themselves…
My hope is that the social and economic crisis brings this all back to reality just like what happened with the bans on plastics.
And also, i guess that if you take the whole spectrum off environmental impact related to the production of said “renewable energy ” (from the building of infrasctructre to the disposal of old plants), i´m not really sure if it is an easy win for renewables.
The fact that most ignore that just show´s that there´s more than just a will to save the planet at play here.
Thanks for this post Art, few people with your credentials would be willing to plainly state such obvious truths. I have long thought that if renewables were so great they would have taken over long ago. It would not be possible to stop the transition, the same way fossil fuels took over as our main source of energy 100+ years ago.
[…] to maximize their gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch, this hasn’t been the case. Rather, “green energy” remains dependent on […]
[…] maximize their gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch, this hasn’t been the case. Rather, “green energy” remains dependent on […]
[…] maximize their gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch, this hasn’t been the case. Rather, “green energy” remains dependent on […]
[…] to maximize their gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch, this hasn’t been the case. Rather, “green energy” remains dependent on […]
[…] maximize their gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch, this hasn’t been the case. Rather, “green energy” remains dependent on […]
Art, you have said (or at least inferred) more than once that EROI calculations often don’t take into account all relevant factors, and that they can be inaccurate or misleading. This journal article makes an attempt to make EROI ratings for renewable electricity a little more precise, and disambiguates the different kinds of ratings (straight energy payback, effects on the grid, embodied energy in materials and construction, energy cost of decomissioning). It also pays close attention to the potential of renewable infrastructure buildout becoming an energy sink for fossil fuels used to construct it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X19300926
What it does not do is delve into the matter of substitutablity of renewable energy (most electricity) for fossil or other combustible fuels for things like moving heavy freight, mining, or high temperature process heat. The world needs an honest, detailed assessment of that.
Jon,
You are correct. Those who focus on electric power seldom venture into the larger energy universe. The article you reference does a good job at establishing that green energy is too inefficient to substitute of more productive source for power generation.
Electric power accounts for ~ 60% of primary energy consumption in the U.S. but 70% of electric power is generated by natural gas and coal & only 9% is from wind and solar. Wind and solar account for only about 4% of total primary energy consumption.
However optimistic you want to be, it will be decades before wind and solar will provide a meaningful portion of our energy. Electric vehicles will probably never provide more than 25% of total transport use.
Those are my thoughts. I’m totally in favor of more renewables and more electric power reliance. I’m also very much in favor of honesty.
Best,
Art
Hi, Art
Looks like you are drawing conclusions way too far based on a single graph which estimates how future will be. Graph doesn’t tell anything about wind or solar being more expensive to create nor that there is no way to get enough energy from clean sources to be able to produce more than 12% of yearly consumption.
If that would be true, for example Germany would never have been able to raise their clean energy production from 10% -> 40% in just 15 years.
As you stated in the article, the biggest issue with solar and wind indeed is to figure out how to store the produced energy temporarily to balance the production. There is a lot of technology currently in development to resolve that problem and there is a huge market for company who is able to make the most scalable and cost efficient solution for it. I would be really surprised if that problem is not mostly solved during next 15 years (Tesla already has their own very well distributed storage concept… though I cannot say for sure if it can scale enough or if it could be cost efficient enough).
Also when cost of producing solar and wind becomes down it means that we could produce even more temporary overhead energy (with the same price that creating the energy with oil would have cost) and store it even in a less efficient storage than electrochemical batteries and cost of that stored energy would still be less than with coal or oil.
ps. Also a solar panel whose price is ~40$ has easily value of 4-5 years of human labor applying the same calculations you made and energy that is needed to build and maintain solar panels or wind turbines is diminishing small compared to their lifetime energy output.
Mike,
Thanks for your comments but I’ve heard them all before and reject them based on years of study.
I’m all in favor of renewables. They will account for 25% of primary energy consumption in a few decades at best if we are able to maintain anything similar to our present living standard. A world based primarily on renewable energy sources will are a very poor world. My main point to its advocates is, Be honest because people will be so pissed when they live in poverty after being promised no change in living standard.
The problem with renewables is energy density as I stated. That means low value for productivity or running a world of 7.5 billion people. Price is irrelevant if the product cannot deliver what is needed.
Technology is the hopium of the modern world. It is symptomatic of high energy systems near the end of usable energy. It is not a solution. It does not create energy and it is not free of cost or energy input.
All the best,
Art
Thank you for the answer,
> The problem with renewables is energy density as I stated. That means low value for productivity or running a world of 7.5 billion people. Price is irrelevant if the product cannot deliver what is needed.
It has been calculated that the amount of energy needed for US could be collected from solar panel array of 10000 – 20000 square miles, which is not at all impossible amount of land to allocate for energy production (https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-to-power-the-u-s/) So I’m not sure at all what do you mean by energy density being too low? Or are those all calculations (including Elon Musk’s statements about it) all wrong?
Or do you mean that world just cannot produce enough (in this case solar panels) to fill up an area like that? Of course it wouldn’t make sense to relay all energy production in a single solar array, but it was just for sake of an argument about the energy density.
That being said I agree that the change is not going to be fast and I have no idea how long for example 50% clean energy will happen in USA. Never the less it doesn’t seem impossible and it will happen eventually (though nuclear power might be helpful in this mix).
Thoroughly irrelevant. Do the calculation for total US energy not just electric power generation. Wind and solar account for 3% of US primary energy consumption. There is no amount of sleight-of-hand that can get that to anything approaching even 50% in less than decades.
I suggest you start learning about energy and stop indulging in sources that are designed to make the renewable true believers feel good and right about themselves.
All the best,
Art
Hi, thanks again for the answer.
> Do the calculation for total US energy not just electric power generation
Sure. I did my napkin math again and I can see more where are you coming from. That solar energy calculation was done for 4 peta watt hours and according to https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ the whole energy consumption for US is around 30 peta watt hours. Even if most of that energy would be used in 50% efficiency it would still require 4 times more solar/water/wind energy production compared to the calculations for plain electricity consumption.
Not impossible, but a lot harder. Unless there is a viable storage solution available I don’t see that revolution coming.
> I suggest you start learning about energy and stop indulging in sources that are designed to make the renewable true believers feel good and right about themselves.
Thanks for the tip. I really try, but I also have a bad habit of thinking that anything is possible (if math says it is not completely impossible).
Art,
I am curious as to how you see nuclear energy with developing technologies. I currently work as an operator at a Nuclear power plant and I try to keep informed on emerging technologies. I fully believe future technologies could afford the sector less governmental oversight and requirements due to an increase in safety features on next generation reactors. I would never believe the lie “too cheap to meter” in the future (fool me once). I am going to look into the value aspect of uranium though because you have my curiosity going. Overall, very informative! I am glad George Gammon introduced you to his viewers, you’re a true asset to realists around the world!
Joe
Joe,
For all of its positive aspects, future nuclear development is dead in my opinion. It lost public trust a long time ago and Fukushima killed it. Fukushima remains a serious threat with little hope for a solution. Trust us now will not work with the public especially in a time of cheap alternatives for power generation.
Best,
Art
Art,
Thanks for yet another thought provoking article.
A tax on oil use (or indirectly taxation of C02 and methane emissins) would certainly not kill any industries, and could along with other things be used to reinvest in cleaner energy sources and uses. Not to save money but to slow the ongoing antropogenic climate change.
What great gift to our children that would be.
An example :
We have driven an electric car as the only car in our family for 4 years now – and it works surprisingly smooth due to navigation systems and a charger network for longer travels. Despite my initial doubts on the purchase, we are hardly ever affected by range anxiety despite using the car for weekends and holidays. The car is normally topped overnight in the garage, this service was never available to our fossil fueled cars. The heat, exhaust and noise that came from my fossil driven cars are a luxury that has never been missed.
My point with this example is that rational production and use of energy makes it possible to reduce emissions, so perhaps a minor change in our habits are enough?
I hope EV adaption and reducing carbon intensity of the energy grid is one of them.
Folks, please take a look at this calculator and comment if the numbers does make somewhat sense ?
https://www.transportenvironment.org/what-we-do/electric-cars/how-clean-are-electric-cars
Per-Ingar,
I would like to agree that conservation and a shift to EVs will make a difference but I don’t and have stated my concerns as clearly as I can in the post that you responded to.
Best,
Art
I notice that in Figure 1, the bands for Petroleum and Natural Gas are about the same thickness on 2050 as they are now. This ignores the effects of depletion; I expect that in 2050 these will have narrowed to the thinness of the Coal or Nuclear bands.
Renewables may end up being considerably higher than 12% of the energy mix, but the total amount of available energy will be far less. Figure 1 fails to include any depletion in the fossil fuels and predicts approximately 115 Quadrillion BTU of energy available. I would expect that due to the depletion of the fossil fuels, the top of the chart will start descending and by 2050 end up at something like 35 of 40 Quads of BTU.
Antoinetta III
Antoinetta,
Depletion is offset by drilling and new production. The data in Figure 1 is from EIA AEO 2020 and the oil and gas volumes reflect their production forecasts which are wildly optimistic IMO.
Best,
Art
“Oil will be cheap and abundant for a long time” – depends on if a community is not under siege, due to armed conflicts erupting, similar to last week’s in Iraq, ongoing wars in Yemen, Syria and Libya, or being locked-down in a pandemic – where only fewer people would be able to enjoy that ‘cheap and abundant’ oil.
This Two-Tier configuration, when people find themselves either inundated with cheap oil or off-oil, is not something new, as billions today didn’t even have grid electricity ever – since Edison and still.
It is felt that Michael Moore has rushed in Planet of the Humans to a conclusion that if humans were fewer, Renewable would have taken off the launch pad like a breeze.
Moore has failed acknowledging that the root-cause problem is in the Physics of Renewable Energy being a fossil fuels sub product, in the first place.
Fossil fuels are incredibly energy-dense, versatile, highly portable and traded under the ‘supply-and-demand’ doctrine, rather than on the basis they are finite, – has made them even more hypnotic.
Hypnotic – has allowed the non-closed system of our Economics running decades-long experiments – like ‘The Nuclear Age‘, Renewable Energy, Nuclear Fusion, Biomass, Fracking, oil sand, a superpower-China, etc – without any complete Science thorough energy-auditing .
The Western Civilisation has burned too much of the finite, one-off, gold-grade fossil fuels in these childish experiments – no different from wasting a third of all the US oil reserves burning it in the course of WWII, alone – irresponsibly.
As a result, “Oil will be cheap and abundant for a long time” – might prove true only if one is among the few-privileged who will be able to enjoy oil peacefully – without being killed in crossfires of conflicts or taken to prison in a pandemic.
After this pandemic, the age of abundant, cheap fossil fuels – for billions – is already over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVfN169MKxc
I understand your comments and agree that the potential for chaos is higher-than-usual. That does not change the fact that oil is both relatively cheap and abundant and is likely to remain so for several years, which is the time horizon of my comments. Affordability is always a valid query but not only for oil.
Best,
Art
I just wish they would be honest enough to include the cost of a base load fossil fuel plant to sit and wait on them to go down in their cost analysis. Instead, they use that cost to increase the comparable kw-hr cost of fossil fuels, spreading the standby cost over a lower number of production units to operate the fossil fuel plant. They get priority access to the grid and the fossil fuel plant bares the cost. The cost of reliability should be born by the unreliable. In truth, the cost of all of it is born by the customer, the utility is just the cost plus handsomely rewarded middle man.
Jim,
Your observations are precisely why I included Pedro’s comment:
“It is time for unconditional pro-renewable promoters to make an act of contrition and start admitting that perhaps they grossly missed the elephant in the room (massive storage, intermittency, other related and sine qua non societal energy costs?) in their EROI and LCOE calculations.”
All the best,
Art
A very good analysis I would say. You are however dead wrong on one claim you make. Natural gas does not have the highest energy density of all available sources today. That price go to Uranium and by no less than a factor between 1 million and 80 million. Where the exact number depends on the reactor type it is used in, and Whether you do any form of reprocessing. In any case, the energy density of uranium is much much bigger than any you can achieve with burning.
Niels,
Natural gas was not mentioned in my post.
Best,
Art
Dear Art, as much as I value your analysis on oil and gas, what you say here on renewables is wide off the mark. How can you seriously use EIA forecasts for reference when discussing the future share of renewables. They have always been wrong with all their forecasts, especially those about renewables. And their counterpart in Europe, the IEA should stand for the “Idiots’ Energy Agency” as far as their track record is concerned. This statement missed completely the point: “To provide more energy output requires more energy input–pretty basic physics. That in turn creates more emissions and confounds the purpose of cleaner energy”. No, it doesn’t. Because you forget the energy-pay-back period. The energy that goes in the manufacture of a wind farm it will return in just a few months at a good location. For solar panels it’s a bit longer, between one to two years. So you get almost 20 years of emission free energy after that! And you simply dismiss that? That sounds like the nonsense Michael Moore proclaimed in Planet of the Humans documentary. Totally devoid of real analysis.
Chris,
You didn’t read what I wrote:
“Like all forecasts, it is probably wrong but reflects current thinking based on price, availability and adoption rates by the public. Double renewables by 2050 and it still is hardly the success story its promoters claim.”
Best,
Art
Art, in your view what fundamental and painful shift has been made in the course of human history?
Diederik,
The domestication of the horse. It unleashed unimaginable disruption, death and chaos on human subsistence society.
Best,
Art