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Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power

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Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power

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This article is a independent source and can not benefit anything they have said and multiple sources are agreeing with this. Also it is verified source because it is a very importuned site It also is
authoritative the only think I could not find is the name.

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Editor's Note: In this blog, Charles Frank answers five questions on low and no-carbon electricity technologies. For a more detailed look at alternative technologies for reducing emissions, read Frank's latest paper.

As the science on climate change and its impacts on the global economy become clearer and more urgent, governments are increasingly looking for ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The largest source of these emissions comes from the combustion of fossil fuels-including coal, oil and natural gas-to produce electricity, an effort that in 2012 made up about 40 percent of emissions globally and 32 percent in the United States. More and more, countries are seeking to lower emissions in the electricity sector by turning to low and no-carbon generation options. However, until now, there has been little thorough, empirical analysis of which of these technologies is most efficient, and which provides the best "bang for our buck" as we seek to reduce emissions.

My new Brookings working paper breaks down the comprehensive costs and benefits of five common low-carbon electricity technologies: wind, solar, hydroelectric, nuclear, and gas combined cycle (an advanced, highly energy efficient type of natural gas plant). Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the paper asks the question, "Which of the five low-carbon alternatives is most cost-effective in lowering emissions?" The results are highly policy-relevant, and offer enlightening answers to a number of questions that can help governments aiming for a low-carbon future.

1. What's it going to cost me?

This is an important question because energy costs are private and owed by everyday consumers, whereas the benefits of reducing carbon use are shared as a global public good. So, what would it cost you and I to move toward a world where we generate electricity through mostly low-carbon technologies? How would the cost per megawatt hour (MWH) and kilowatt hour (KWH) change?

One of the best scenarios for our proposed low-carbon alternatives would be for each of them to replace the use of coal-fired plants when electricity demand is moderate, which is most of the time, and gas simple cycle plants during shorter periods of peak energy use.

The table above compares the cost per kilowatt-hour (KWH) of each of the five low-carbon technologies compared to the cost per KWH of the high-carbon technologies that it replaces. All of the low carbon technologies save on energy costs compared to coal and simple cycle gas plants: wind, solar and hydro because the energy from wind, sun and water is free; nuclear because uranium is cheaper than coal or gas per unit of energy; and gas combined cycle because it is much more energy efficient than coal or gas simple cycle. Four of the five low-carbon technologies, excluding gas combined cycle, have a much higher net capacity cost-that is, the cost of building and maintaining the low-carbon power plants-because all four are much more costly to build and maintain than a new coal or gas simple cycle plant. A gas combined cycle plant saves on capacity costs mainly because it costs about two-thirds less to build than a coal-fired plant.

Adding up the net energy cost and the net capacity cost of the five low-carbon alternatives, far and away the most expensive is solar. It costs almost 19 cents more per KWH than power from the coal or gas plants that it displaces. Wind power is the second most expensive. It costs nearly 6 cents more per KWH. Gas combined cycle is the least expensive. It does not cost more than the cost of power from the coal or less efficient gas plants that it displaces. Indeed, it costs about 3 cents less per KWH.

To place these additional costs in context, the average cost of electricity to U.S. consumers in 2012 was 9.84 cents per KWH, including the cost of transmission and distribution of electricity. This means a new wind plant could at least cost 50 percent more per KWH to produce electricity, and a new solar plant at least 200 percent more per KWH, than using coal and gas technologies.

2. Are the additional costs of wind and solar justified by the benefits of reduced carbon dioxide emissions?

The additional costs of wind and solar could be worthwhile, provided that the value of the emissions they avoid is great enough. However, as the following table shows, if we value the reduced emissions at $50 per ton of carbon dioxide, the benefits of wind and solar, net of their costs, is less than the other three low-carbon alternatives.

The emission benefits of four of the five low-carbon alternatives per KWH are roughly the same, about five cents per KWH. The benefits of wind and solar, minus their additional costs, are negative. The net benefits of the other three alternatives are positive and substantially higher. Gas combined cycle ranks number one in terms of net benefits while hydro and nuclear rank two and three.

A carbon dioxide price of $50 per metric ton places quite a high value on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. For example, the price for carbon dioxide emissions in the European Trading System reached a high of about 30 euros in 2006 and was trading around 5 euros at the end of 2013. Recent prices in trading systems in California have been around $12 and in several eastern U.S. states around $2 per ton.

3. Why are the costs per KWH of wind and solar so much higher, and the benefits not much different, than the other three low-carbon alternatives?

Costs are much higher for three reasons. First, the cost per MW of capacity to build a wind or solar plant is quite high (and much greater than that of a gas-fired plant). The cost per MW of solar capacity is especially high. Reductions in the cost of solar-voltaic panels have reduced the cost of building a solar plant by 22 percent between 2010 and 2012, but further reductions are likely to have a lesser effect because the cost of solar panels is only a fraction of the total cost of a utility-scale solar plant.

Second, a wind or solar plant operates at full capacity only a fraction of the time, when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. For example, a typical solar plant in the United States operates at only about 15 percent of full capacity and a wind plant only about 25 percent of full capacity, while a coal plant can operate 90 percent of full capacity on a year-round basis. Thus it takes six solar plants and almost four wind plants to produce the same amount of electricity as a single coal-fired plant.

Third, the output of wind and solar plants is highly variable-year by year, month by month, day by day and hour by hour-compared to a coal-fired plant, which can operate at full capacity about 90 percent of the time. Thus more than six solar plants and four wind plants are required to produce the same output with the same degree of reliability as a coal-fired plant of the same capacity. In the paper we estimate that at least 7.3 solar plants and 4.3 wind plants are required to produce the same amount of power with the same reliability as a coal-fired plant.

By way of contrast, a new low-carbon gas combined cycle or nuclear plant can operate also at 90 percent of full capacity and can replace a coal-fired plant on a one-to-one basis. A hydro plant with storage can operate at 100 percent capacity during peak periods and more than 40 percent during non-peak periods. In dollar terms, it takes a $29 million investment in solar capacity, and $10 million in wind capacity, to produce the same amount of electricity with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle capacity.

The benefits of reduced emissions from wind and solar are limited because they operate at peak capacity only a fraction of the time. A nuclear or gas combined cycle plant avoids far more emissions per MW of capacity than wind or solar because it can operate at 90 percent of full capacity. Limited benefits and higher costs make wind and solar socially less valuable than nuclear, hydro, and combined cycle gas.

4. How can we be sure that a new low-carbon plant will replace a high-carbon coal plant rather than some other low-carbon plant?

We cannot be sure. If electricity producers do not have to pay a price for the carbon dioxide they emit, the likelihood is great than a new low-carbon plant will replace an existing, low-carbon gas combined cycle plant. The cost of running an existing coal plant is typically much less than running an existing combined cycle plant and the combined cycle plant will be shut down before the coal plant. The reduction in emissions will be far less than if the coal plant is shut down because a coal plant emits about three times as much carbon dioxide as a gas combined cycle plant.

However, if electricity producers have to pay a high enough price for the carbon dioxide they emit, then a coal plant will be shut down before a gas combined cycle plant. The price of carbon dioxide emissions required to tip the balance between shutting down coal and shutting down gas depends on the price of gas relative to that of coal. It also depends on whether we are talking about the short-term choice of running an existing gas plant rather than an existing coal plant or the longer term choice of investing in a new combined cycle gas plant rather than a new coal plant.

In the United States, where the price of natural gas is low compared to most other countries, the price for CO2 emissions had to be about $5 or more in 2013 in order to tip the short-term balance in favor of shutting down coal. At current U.S. gas prices, investment in new gas combined cycle is more profitable than an investment in a coal plant even without any price penalty attached to CO2 emissions.

In Europe, where the price of natural gas is much higher than in the United States, a CO2 emission price of $65 to $85 per metric ton is required to tip the short-term balance in favor of shutting down coal, far higher than the current price of CO2 emissions in the European Trading System. However, the price of CO2 emissions need only be about $12 to $22 per metric ton to tip the longer-term balance in favor of investing in a new gas combined cycle plant rather than a new coal plant.

5. What does this paper have for policymakers interested in reducing carbon dioxide emissions at a reasonable cost?

First, renewable incentives that are biased in favor of wind and solar and biased against large-scale hydro, nuclear and gas combined cycle are a very expensive and inefficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Second, renewable incentives in the absence of a suitably high carbon dioxide price are even less effective, because without a carbon price renewable energy will replace low-carbon gas plants rather than high-carbon coal plants.

Third, renewable incentives should be based not on output of renewable energy but on the reduction in CO2 emissions by renewable energy. They are not the same thing.

Fourth, a carbon price is far more effective in reducing carbon emissions precisely because it is not biased toward any one technology but rewards any technology that reduces emissions at a reasonable cost.

Fifth, the benefits of a natural gas combined cycle plant are not dependent on the natural gas fracking revolution in the United States. Combined cycle plants are highly beneficial even in Europe, where natural gas prices are higher and fracking more limited. The problem in Europe is that the price of CO2 emissions in the European Trading System is far too low to encourage production of electricity by gas rather than coal.

Sixth, even though the electricity sector accounts for only 40 percent of worldwide carbon emissions, cleaner electricity can reduce CO2 emissions in other sectors, for example by reducing the carbon footprint of electric vehicles and home heating.

Finally, the electricity sector offers one of the simplest and most cost effective ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Simply replacing all high-carbon U.S. coal plants with any of the five low-carbon alternatives can reduce U.S. CO2 emissions in the electricity sector by 50 to 70 percent. The potential reductions in other countries, such as China where coal is more important, are even greater.

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Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power

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Editor's Note: In this blog, Charles Frank answers five questions on low and no-carbon electricity technologies. For a more detailed look at alternative technologies for reducing emissions, read Frank's latest paper . As the science on climate change and its impacts on the global economy become clearer and more urgent, governments are increasingly looking for ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

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Environmental impacts of utility-scale solar energy

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Environmental impacts of utility-scale solar energy

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This article is a very independent and can not benefit anything and multiple sources are saying the same thing. Also it is verified because it is a very importuned school and funded by strafred.
It also is authoritative the only think I could not find is the name.

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Northern Lights: Large-Scale Solar Power Is Spreading Across the U.S. - Yale E360

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Northern Lights: Large-Scale Solar Power Is Spreading Across the U.S. - Yale E360

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This article is all checks for the imvain check list. This source is independent as has nothing to gain this source also has multiple sorces ageing with it. Further more its verified and authoritative
because it is a university with many people studying it and they state there name Cheryl Katz.

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Once largely confined to the sunny Southwest, utility-scale solar power plants are now being built everywhere from Minnesota to Alabama to Maine. Aided by plunging costs and improving technologies, these facilities are expected to provide a big boost to U.S. solar energy production.

Drive through the frosty stubble of central Minnesota soybean and cornfields this winter and you'd come upon a surprising sight - acres and acres of solar panels glinting under the northern sun. The 1,000-acre North Star Solar farm, which opened in December, is the largest, most northerly solar power plant in the United States, generating up to 100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 20,000 homes. Prone to smothering blizzards, subzero temperatures, and scant sunlight for much of the year, this boreal clime seems an unlikely spot for a major utility-scale solar installation. But the North Star facility will soon be joined by a 100-megawatt solar plant in neighboring Wisconsin set to break ground later this year.

Thanks to sharply falling prices for solar photovoltaic panels, rapid advances in harvesting the sun's energy, and support from tax breaks, incentives, subsidies, and state renewable energy mandates, a clean energy technology once largely confined to the desert Southwest is now quickly extending its reach. Idaho and Maine recently opened their first multi-megawatt plants. Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, and Nebraska are also making their first forays into utility-scale solar, while Florida and Georgia are in the process of super-sizing their existing capacity.

Throughout the United States, more than 10.5 gigawatts (10,500 megawatts) of utility-scale solar was added to the electric grid in 2016 - enough to power more than 2 million homes - and more than 8 gigawatts are scheduled to come online this year, according to a new industry report. Led by utility-sized projects (generally 10 megawatts or larger and producing electricity to sell), the total U.S. solar capacity - including photovoltaic panels on the roofs of homes and buildings - is expected to nearly triple over the next five years.

"Minnesota is not the first place you think of to build a big solar project, but there have recently been several projects in the 50 to 100 megawatt range built there," says Mark Bolinger, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who conducts an annual analysis of utility-scale solar costs and trends. Bolinger says wholesale power prices from the new Minnesota solar plants are around 6 cents per kilowatt hour - numbers formerly seen only in places like Arizona and New Mexico. "I think that's a good indication that solar is really starting to find its legs and is able to compete more broadly across the U.S.," says Bolinger.

Electricity produced by utility-scale solar facilities is now as cheap or cheaper as new coal-fired or natural gas-fired facilities.

Indeed, electricity produced by new utility-scale solar facilities these days can be as cheap or cheaper than electricity from new conventional coal-fired or natural gas-fired facilities. Government support has helped lead to this "price parity," but increasingly solar energy can compete without state or federal incentives.

The utility-scale solar boom is resounding globally. A just-completed 648-megawatt plant in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu, said to be the world's largest, will power up to 150,000 homes; it will soon be topped by a 750-megawatt solar plant under construction to the north in Madhya Pradesh. China has been building solar at a furious pace, accounting for nearly half of the 76-plus gigawatts added worldwide in 2016. Utility-scale solar is poised to take off in Australia this year, with 11 new facilities being built across four states, and large projects are in the works everywhere from a behemoth 1.18-gigawatt installation in the United Arab Emirates, to a 180-megawatt facility in Peru. Even Ukraine's radioactive wasteland at Chernobyl may soon be the site of a massive 2-gigawatt solar farm.

With more than $20 billion invested in the U.S., the solar pipeline is now at an all-time high, according to a new analysis by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). Nearly 18 gigawatts of upcoming utility-scale projects are currently under contract in the U.S., meaning plant operators have signed power-purchase agreements and the facilities are highly likely to be completed in the next two to three years. This surge of large solar energy installations will nearly double the roughly 5 million U.S. homes now powered by utility-scale solar. What's more, projects totaling an additional 36 gigawatts are now in the planning phase, according to statistics compiled by the SEIA.

Some of these projects are being developed by solar energy companies and sold to private investors, which then sell the electricity to public utilities or independent power producers. Other projects are built and owned by utilities or their affiliates. The new Minnesota installations are part of a state effort to meet its 25 percent renewable energy standard, set by the legislature in 2007 and signed by then- Governor Tim Pawlenty, a Republican. The $180 million North Star Solar plant, the largest, was commissioned by Xcel Energy, a utility holding company based in Minneapolis.

U.S. colleges are increasingly deploying solar arrays and other forms of renewable energy. Yet most institutions have a long way to go if they are to meet their goal of being carbon neutral in the coming decades. Read more.

Under the U.S. Department of Energy's SunShot Initiative, research and development projects aimed at making solar energy costs competitive with conventional sources of electricity worked so well that the program reached its price targets - 6 cents per kilowatt-hour for utility-scale systems - three years ahead of schedule. The target has now been reset to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2030.

The SunShot program gave a major boost to U.S. solar energy development. But its days, and those of other federal renewable energy programs, may be numbered. The Trump administration is now wholeheartedly embracing fossil fuels, dismantling Obama-era environmental initiatives, and cutting funding for clean-energy research and development. In his 2018 budget, President Trump pulled funds for the Clean Power Plan, a key Environmental Protection Agency regulation reducing carbon emissions from power plants, which would have given an additional boost to renewables.

Loan guarantees and other federal programs that have helped drive clean energy development are also on the Trump administration's hit list. The budget calls for reducing funding for renewable energy projects at the Department of Energy and its national laboratories by 18 percent. While the budget is preliminary and subject to revision by Congress, the climate of uncertainty is unsettling for the solar industry.

"Who knows what's going to happen?" said Daniel Kammen, an energy and resources professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "The situation has put a rush on projects that are in planning... and put a worry in investors in the long-term."

The most damaging impact for utility-scale solar in the U.S. would come if Congress rescinds the 30 percent Business Energy Investment Tax Credit, a key tool for solar energy development. The credit, initially set to expire at the end of last year, was extended another five years by a Republican-controlled Congress in 2015.

Georgia has become the third-largest utility-scale solar installer with no government subsidies or tax incentives.

Even without government backing, analysts say the costs of utility-scale solar are dropping so quickly that economic realities, rather than incentives and regulations, are now the industry's main driver.

Georgia Public Utilities Commissioner Lauren "Bubba" McDonald can attest to that. The conservative southern state went from having almost no utility-scale solar a few years ago to becoming the third-largest installer in 2016 - with no government subsidies, tax incentives, or renewable energy mandates. "Zero," McDonald says. "Free-market."

McDonald led the effort in 2013 when he noted steep drops in solar panel prices.
The state utility, Georgia Power, was about to issue a request for new generating facilities to meet rising electricity demand.

"They did not have one watt of solar power [included in their plan]," McDonald says. "I went to the power company and said, 'We can do this as partners or we can do it as adversaries - if we're partners, and it works, we both win.'"

The result: "We put in 525 megawatts of utility-scale solar." Georgia has since commissioned an additional 1,200 megawatts, and now has more than $1.9 billion invested in solar of all types, he says. Next-door neighbor Florida has followed suit, switching on three 74.5-megawatt solar plants last year, with four more to come in 2017. North Carolina and Texas also have big projects underway.

Utility-scale solar's progress is so striking that even some former skeptics have changed their minds about the industry. Robert McCullough, a long-time energy analyst, says he used to consider utility-scale solar's prospects as basically hype. "I'd been hearing that all of this is just around the corner, and then one day it was staring me in the face," says McCullough, principal of the Oregon-based industry consulting firm McCullough Research. In the past couple of years, he said, cost shifts have been so astonishing that "now we have really quite a revolution going on... The scary thing is you've now heard this from a cynic."

In the past seven years, the price tag for utility-scale solar in the U.S. dropped 85 percent, as equipment prices plunged, manufacturing techniques improved, and developers gained experience that enabled them to build projects more economically.

While Western states still dominate the industry - more than 77 percent of the solar power generated nationwide last year came from west of the Rockies, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration - solar is marching northward and eastward.

'No political party can deny how much progress has been made on prices for wind and solar in the last few years,' says one expert.

Increased photovoltaic panel efficiency and other technological improvements are leading the way. New designs allow photovoltaic modules to harvest the weak early morning and evening light, making short days longer. Trackers that follow the sun across the sky increase yield, enabling projects in cloudy places like Oregon. And in Minnesota, the "unique challenges of a colder climate," as North Star Solar developer Chase Whitney of Community Solar Energy put it, have been addressed with solutions like panels that can essentially shake off snow.

Obstacles do remain. The nation's outdated transmission system can't efficiently handle the renewable energy influx. Peak output from solar and wind farms is often wasted by an overloaded electric grid. More and better electricity storage is urgently needed. And in addition to federal efforts to thwart clean energy programs, numerous Republican-controlled state legislatures are considering legislation to reduce or eliminate funding for renewable energy incentives and initiatives.

But with falling costs and a jam-packed pipeline of projects ahead, analysts say big solar should be able to maintain its momentum without the government at its back. "It all ties back to economics," Kammen says. "No political party can deny how much progress has been made on prices for wind and solar - but in particular solar - in the last few years."

Georgia's McDonald agrees. "The sun's going to shine 60 years from now," he says, "and those electrons are free. They're free to me, they're free to utilities, they're free to everybody."

Correction, March 24, 2016: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the location of the Chernobyl radioactive site. It is in Ukraine, not Russia.

Cheryl Katz is an independent science writer covering climate change, energy, earth sciences, and environmental health. A former newspaper reporter, she has reported from Iceland to Africa on topics ranging from new geothermal technology to rapidly warming lakes. Her articles have appeared in Scientific American, National Geographic News and Hakai Magazine, among other publications. More →

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Northern Lights: Large-Scale Solar Power Is Spreading Across the U.S.

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Once largely confined to the sunny Southwest, utility-scale solar power plants are now being built everywhere from Minnesota to Alabama to Maine. Aided by plunging costs and improving technologies, these facilities are expected to provide a big boost to U.S. solar energy production.