First-ever Terawatt-Hours Tally of Renewable Energy Released

[kristopher]

First-ever Terawatt-Hours Tally of Renewable Energy Released
JANUARY 18, 2012 BY SUSAN KRAEMER


Renewable energy generated between 665 and 673 terawatt-hours of electricity in the EU in 2010. With total energy consumption of between 3,115 and 3,175 terawatt-hours, this means that clean energy supplied about 21% of all the EU electricity used in 2010.

<snip>

The report extrapolated that if renewable electricity production in the EU continued to grow at the same rate as it did from 2005 to 2010 it would account for over 36% of electricity produced in 2020 and over 50% in 2030.

(With this data on hand, it is no wonder the EU approached the Durban climate talks at the end of last year with the offer to raise their target to 30% by 2020. They are easily on track to exceed that, even with wriggle room for any growth-slowing recessions.)

The tally shows that if the whole world followed its example, we could beat dangerous climate change. Simply reducing emissions 2% a year gets us to the 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 that underpins climate legislation. And building renewable energy at the pace of the EU will do it – increasing renewable energy reduces carbon emissions.

...

More at source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/15idx)

[DCKit]

1. Excellent news!

But I've been missing the deniers lately... they're so fun to watch. Where have they gone?

If this post doesn't draw them out of their mother's basement, nothing will.

[GliderGuider]

2. What if we don't have until 2050?

Last edited Thu Jul 12, 2012, 02:22 PM - Edit history (1)

What if 350 ppm is too high?

And what about China?

Until I see emissions begin to decline for some reason other than recession/depression I'll retain my skepticism, thanks.

On edit:

And then there's this bit...

The report extrapolated that if renewable electricity production in the EU continued to grow at the same rate as it did from 2005 to 2010 it would account for over 36% of electricity produced in 2020 and over 50% in 2030.

So my extrapolations are misinformation, but theirs are just fine? Why, because you prefer their conclusions to mine? That's called a double standard where I come from.

Oh, and this:

if the whole world followed its example...

[GliderGuider]

4. Actually, this time I'll walk back some of my griping

The EU has been doing pretty well, especially recently:


Data from BP Statistical Review as usual

The above counts hydro, other renewables and nuclear power as "GHG-free", and compares their sum (in mtoe) to the EU's total primary energy consumption (for both electricity and transportation). Their CO2 emissions still show the "recession effect", but at least they're trending down.

My other comments about China, global atmospheric CO2, "if only the whole world" and the double standard for extrapolations stand as written.

[kristopher]

5. So, if you can rationalize it as including nuclear it's OK?

The article specified "renewables" and that does not include nuclear.

As to the comparison of this to the misinformation you produce - there is none. This looks at politically established goals in a specified region and the progress made in meeting those goals and then extrapolates the future based on the new goals being discussed.

You take excel and play with it until it produces a trend line that suits your mood (or agenda).

The first follows the data, the second steers the data.

[GliderGuider]

6. First off, they cherry-picked their baseline dates.

The report extrapolated that if renewable electricity production in the EU continued to grow at the same rate as it did from 2005 to 2010

You're willing to let them get away with a plain extrapolation out 20 years, based on 5 years of actual data? Srsly? That's cherry-picking, and it's blatant misinformation.

And they ignored the question of transportation fuel entirely...

The real issue is CO2 emissions. They acknowledge that in this line:

Simply reducing emissions 2% a year gets us to the 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 that underpins climate legislation.

In order to clarify the picture from a CO2 perspective I included all energy sources. That seems more fair. Including nuclear power balances out the addition of CO2 from transportation fuels, so they still end up with 21% GHG-free energy, which seems like a good thing to me - wouldn't you agree?

[kristopher]

8. Having an informed basis for your assumptions is something you lack

That doesn't mean everyone lacks such a basis. There is a very sound basis for using numbers from 2005 on since that really marks the beginning of wide scale deployment of renewables and the firm establishment of a supply chain and manufacturing base.

A good analogy for the way you work vs the way an actual analysis is done can be found in in looking at the way climate deniers will run several hundred years of historical temp data and then, with no other inputs or considerations, extrapolate from that line the next 100 years. They will "prove" that climate change doesn't exist in exactly the same way that your plots "prove" that we aren't making any progress with renewables.

Both the climate denier and the renewable denier cases are suffering from the same lack, a refusal to recognize that external inputs (CO2 for climate and manufacturing base/govt policies for renewables) are acting to change the curve in a way that cannot be captured with their/your simplistic approach.

[GliderGuider]

7. Actually, since 2003 the EU has reduced it's nuclear power consumption by 10%

Even with that, they're still at 21% of primary energy being GHG-free. That speaks very well for the penetration of renewables, I'd say.

It doesn't help the world that much yet, but they are setting a great example.

[FBaggins]

3. *Renewable* energy was 21%.

Clean energy was much higher than that.

[bananas]

9. Faster than expected!

"Originally, the target had been set for 20%
by 2020, but in 2004, the date was moved
closer because it was being so speedily
accomplished ahead of time, once begun.
Indeed, by 2005, the EU already had 13%
renewable energy production."

[NNadir]

10. Meanwhile, on planet Earth, in 2012, it was 48C - 118F - in Norton Kansas in June.

In general, the "renewables will save us" squad is remarkable for defining its tremendous and expensive failures as "victories."

Still, when the planetary atmosphere is clearly - for anyone who's looking -

Hundreds of billions of euros, dollars, yen and yuan have been thrown down the so called "renewable energy" rabbit hole. Nations that invested heavily in this rich folks scam include basket cases like Spain. which, after a 50 billion euro investment - much of it financed by its basket case banks - produced the solar industry Ponzi scheme in Spain produced just 6.3 billion kwh. This gives the figure for the solar Ponzi scheme energy production on the entire planet, listing every country, including the nation of Spain, which will now not be able to support things like education, the arts, the sciences and a plentitude of other government responsibilities so anti-nukes can lie to themselves and to the rest of humanity.

Now one of the remarkable things about the anti-nuke cults is their hatred of math and science.

For those who do know math, it's easy to see what a spectacular failure this "investment" was.

A billion kwh is equal to 3600 sec/hour * 1000 W/kW * 1,000,000,000 * 1 J/Watt-sec = 3.6 X 10¹⁵ joules.

There are 31,557,600 seconds in a sideral year (3600 sec/hr * 24 hr/day * 365.25 day/year).

It's easily shown from these numbers that 6.3 billion kwh produced just 718,685,831 MW of average continuous power or, with a MW being equivalent to 1,000,000 W, the equivalent of a 718 MW gas plant, except the gas plant - which despite the fact that the gas plant is allowed to dump its waste directly into the atmosphere - is required to back the unreliable 50 billion euro plant up.

This is less energy than the smallest nuclear power plant produces in Spain in a single building.

Now let's do the numbers for the "cheery" news that the entire continent of Europe produces according to the oblivious OP of this absurd thread, which typical of the anti-nuke mentality wants to engage in happy soothsaying when the planetary atmosphere is collapsing right fucking NOW

673 Terawatt hours * 1 GWh * 1000 TWh/GWh * 3600 sec/hour * 1000 W/kW * 1,000,000,000 * 1 J/Watt-sec * 1 exajoule/J = 2.4 EJ of energy.

The Energy Information Agency reports that as of 2010, the entire continent of Europe consumed 44.652 Quadrillion BTU of energy.]

1 BTU = 1055 J. It follows - if one isn't as mathematically ignorant as the shitheads at Greenpeace and other ignorance fostering organizations - that Europe consumed 44.652 Quadrillion BTU * 1055 J/BTU * 10¹⁸ J/EJ = 47.1 EJ.

Last year the Germans, egged by the ignorant, the fearful and the superstitious who kept hoping, that someone, anyone might die from a 9.0 earthquake and 15 tsunami striking and destroying three nuclear plants in Japan, shut it's largest single source of climate change gas free energy.

The assholes in that hysterical country didn't give a fuck that 70,000 people died from HEAT in EUROPE in 2003.

Couldn't even break a sweat about it.

Nor could they give a rat's ass that 3.3 million people are killed each year by air pollution, much of it from their friends in the dangerous fossil fuel and renewable industries.

When I go outside my door, I see trees that are 10, 20, 50, hundreds of years old dying from the heat, not in some fucking paradise that no one will be able to afford in 2030 or whatever other fucking year that anti-nukes keep soothsaying about after 50 years of stupid, expensive cheering for no meaningful result.

As these trees die and the carbon in them escapes as "renewable" firewood or just as rot, I personally feel inclined to "thank" an anti-nuke for hating, out of fear, ignorance, superstition coupled with mysticism and soothsaying for the fact that in the last 10 years that I have been writing here and hearing the same bull day after day, week after week, year after year, the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere 55.2 ppm as of this writing.

Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory

Heckuva job, anti-nuke. You must be very proud.

[kristopher]

11. Good review of where the coal/nuclear (centralized thermal system) has left us.

First a couple of basic facts of life: Whether you like it or not, coal and nuclear are two sides of the same economic coin and since we live in a world of market systems this means that promoting nuclear is exactly the wrong thing to do if you want to shut down coal plants. The economics of nuclear plants drive consumption rather than promoting efficiency and conservation - which means they expand energy markets and that keeps coal plants operating.


Renewables, on the other hand, change the economic rewards of the energy delivery system in a way that works to shut down large scale thermal.

It is good to remember that it was Dick Cheney and that pushed for an extremely active public relations effort from the nuclear industry about climate change. (And we all know how worried he and Shrub were about the problem.) Any time climate change is brought up and renewables are shown to be the answer for cost, safety, and sustainability reasons, the nuclear acolytes show up with their fangs dripping falsehoods and misinformation just like the pack of starving attack dogs Dick Cheney designed them to be.

We'd be much further along in response to climate change if the nuclear pushers would end their economically rationalized alliance with coal.