Howard opined in early 2020 that a climate crisis is upon us. Human-caused global warming is already changing our planet’s climate in dramatic ways, and the effects are forecast to become far worse by the end of the century without rapid and radical changes to the global energy economy and the other forms of human activity that generate CO2 and other greenhouse gases, such as methane.
The ten hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998, with the past five years topping the list.See Reference 1 We already see the disappearance of the arctic ice pack, massive glacial melting in Greenland, sea-level rise, massive wildfires in northern Canada, the Amazonian rainforest, the western United States, Spain, France, and Siberia, ever more violent storms, and rapidly warming ocean temperatures. If we are to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change by 2100 by limiting the rise of global mean surface air temperature to 2.0° C, compared to the twentieth-century average, then we must aim for the complete decarbonization of the energy economy, which will then also include a more or less totally electrified, global transportation system, by no later than 2065.2 The question is, “How do we do that?”
There is, of course, widespread agreement that we must replace coal, oil, and natural gas with green energy sources, and that solar, wind, hydroelectric,
and geothermal power will be a vital part of that effort. But will those largely carbon-neutral energy sources suffice? Almost surely not. There
are several problems with reliance on solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal energy.
The first and less serious problem is that, for the most part, steady strong winds, abundant, year-round sunlight, and high-volume, "dammable" water sources are not found near the major population and industrial centers where electricity is most needed, and most regions of the world do not have the infrastructure for high-capacity, continent-wide, long-distance electricity transmission. Of course, we can build such infrastructure, but it would be expensive. A 2014 study carried out for the Western Electricity Coordinating Council estimated a cost of nearly $3 million per mile for a typical high-tension line, hence $3 billion for a 1,000 mile line.3 Moreover, transmission efficiency goes down linearly with distance and as the square of the current, losses for a typical high-tension line being between 5% and 10% per 1,000 miles.4
A second, and much more serious problem is that the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow all day long, every day of the year, whereas what is referred to as “baseload,” the average minimum demand for electricity by all users remains more or less constant. With coal or gas-fired generating stations or nuclear power plants, the output can be raised or lowered as needed, within limits. That cannot be done with solar or wind.
Hydropower does run 24/7, and flow rates can be adjusted to meet need, except in extreme low- or high-water conditions, but, again, abundant hydro is not usually found in areas with the greatest need. Solar and wind could meet the baseload problem if we achieved a near-term breakthrough in high-capacity storage battery technology. But, while research on new battery technologies is proceeding, there is little reason to expect a replacement for lithium-ion batteries any time soon.5 Moreover, current generation lithium-ion batteries are expensive, approximately $175 per kW⋅h, meaning that the cost of batteries that could store one day’s power output from a typical 2,500 MW power plant would be an astonishing $10.5 billion, hence many times more expensive than the cost to build the plant in the first place.6 On top of that, even the best batteries have a limited life-span, units like Tesla’s Powerwall system being expected to last only between seven and ten years.7 An additional problem with lithium-ion batteries is that lithium is a toxic substance, as is the cobalt widely used in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, combined with lithium as lithium cobalt oxide, LiCoO2, in the battery’s cathode.8 But there is no global infrastructure for the safe disposal or recycling of lithium and cobalt on the massive scale that would be required were battery storage to become a major part of our energy future.9 Finally, while lithium supplies are forecast to suffice if we scale up lithium-ion battery production, global supplies of cobalt could run out by mid-century.10
A third major obstacle to a massive expansion of solar and wind is that both require large areas of land. A 2013 study by the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL) reported that, depending on the specific design, photovoltaic solar farms require between 7.5 to 9.1 acres per MW, which
means that to replace a 2,500 MW power plant with solar would require roughly 20,000 acres or 31.5 square miles.11 Wind is even more land-hungry. A 2009 study by NREL estimated land use requirements of 64 acres per MW for typical wind farms.12 Replacing a 2,500 MW generating plant with
wind would, therefore, require a whopping 160,000 acres, which is to 250 square miles. By comparison, a typical 2,500 MW coal-fired or nuclear power plant takes up less than one square mile.
In more densely populated parts of the world, land is simply not available on the scale required for solar and wind farms equal in capacity to typical power plants. Germany, for example, which has aggressively developed both its wind and solar power generating capacity, had a wind power capacity of 56.3 GW by the end of 2017 and a solar capacity of 43 GW. Wind represented 18.8% of total power production in Germany in 2017 and solar contributed 7%.13 Further expansion of both is planned, but as giant wind turbines dominate more and more of the German landscape, opposition grows among people who do not want giant turbines, averaging more than 800 feet in height near their homes.14 That, combined with high costs and declining public subsidies, has dramatically slowed the growth of wind power in Germany in the last year or so.15 In less densely populated areas such as the western United States and Canada, much of Africa, Siberia, western China, Australia, and parts of South America, there is abundant land for large wind and solar farms, but one again encounters the lack and expense of and the inefficiencies in continent-wide transmission.
Put the land use needed for solar and wind in perspective. How much land would be required to replace all current fossil fuels generating capacity in the United States with solar and wind? Our total fossil fuel generating capacity in 2018 was 842,529 MW.16 If we replaced that with solar and wind in the same ratio that now exists between the two, 22% solar and 78% wind, then we would need just over 68,000 square miles of land, which is roughly equivalent to the area of Missouri, Oklahoma, or North Dakota. That is a lot of land.
What would it cost to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar? In 2018, a total of 2,651BkW⋅h of electricity was generated in the United States by fossil fuels.17 Assuming the same 22% to 78% mix of solar and wind used above, and costs of $0.05 per kW⋅h for solar and $0.125 per kW⋅h for wind, the total annual cost to replace fossil fuels by solar and wind would be $289B.18 But remember that the total decarbonization of our energy economy means also the total electrification of transportation as well as all residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural energy use. A 2018 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that this will lead to an increase in the demand for electricity of between 17% and 38%.19 So add that much more to the estimates given here for land use and cost.
In summary, there are many, serious obstacles to the decarbonization of our energy system by means of solar and wind, the biggest of them being the seeming impossibility of solving the base-load problem without a miraculous and unlikely, near-term breakthrough in storage battery technology. A combination of solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal simply cannot decarbonize our energy production by 2065.
There is only one, currently available technology that can get us to the goal of a totally carbon free energy economy by 2065, and that is nuclear power. Let me repeat that. Nuclear power is the only option for preventing a climate catastrophe. But public misunderstanding of the risks associated with nuclear power and regulatory impediments partly driven by public fears make it almost impossible, at present, for utilities in the United States to invest in expanding our nuclear power capacity, even while most of the rest of the world is doing just that. So, let us briefly examine the prospects for expanded nuclear power, the risks, and the costs.
Read on .... interesting editorial.
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