Years ago, people said renewables wouldn't ever amount to much. Sure, it's growing exponentially, but look at how small it is! And yes, costs keep going down but it will take forever before it's competitive with coal and nuclear.
Now some critics and skeptics will go around saying no one could have predicted how quickly wind and solar took over. They'll say it was due to the rapid increase in oil prices (no one saw that coming either) or subsidies (German feed-in tariffs were very generous, though not as much as tax breaks for oil co's).
So the lesson: humans are really bad at forecasting the results exponential growth. If you can find one that people are ignoring and time it well, you can entrench yourself in a market before most people even realize it exists.
As someone else said here a while back "The current alternative energies are linear solutions to an exponential problem."
I have another lesson.
15 years ago before anyone knew it existed. Denmark invested heavily in wind. It created one of the biggest windmill companies in the world.
It did all the right things. Took it to the stock market allowed normal people to invest in it, created lots of new jobs and the stock surged in the early zeros.
Today stock is struggling and most of the jobs have been outsourced to other countries much less expensive to produce in.
The windmill technology in itself is not hi-tech but "low-tech" so there isn't even som IP that the Danes benefit from.
The only customers worth talking about is countries and there is no revolution in efficiency happening.
My guess is that wind will be surpassed by other more beneficial technologies.
So the lesson: Alternative energy as we know it right now is far from being a solution to the problems we have. The politicians should not pick the winners but instead set goals that can be won.
Alternative energy is not 25% of German production because it is competitive. They are forcing it through, in spite of the fact that it is not competitive.
In terms of renewables, i think Norway and Brazil are higher up there, with 85% and 95% of their energy coming from renewable sources such as hydroelectic plants.
It is interesting to note that Brazil uses renewable energy sources in the majority of the cars/trucks. So it is not only because of being luck of having hydroelectric power, it was a society/government decision/strategy to use bi-fuel cars.
This article describes the power Germany produced, but doesn't mention the power Germany consumed. Does Germany import a lot of power? If so, that would be a good way to tweak the numbers, just import more non-renewables, and produce less non-renewables at home.
Germany has been a consistent net exporter of electrical energy since 2003.
The circumstances have changed, though: In addition to two nuclear plants which were dormant since 2007 and 2009, six plants were shut down in mid-May 2011, and all of them are now gone for good.
The balance was still positive in 2011, and I suspect it will be this year as well, but it might be a close thing.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Germany consumed 545 billion kWh of electrical energy in 2008. 67.9 billion kWh is only 12.5% of that. I suppose they import a lot of their electrical energy? Also, electrical energy consumption is only a small fraction of total energy consumption (about 4 trillion kWh for Germany in 2007 according to Wikipedia.).
I heard at a power conference last week that Germany halted installation of new solar panels on homes recently due to the problems integrating solar onto the grid.
As the lecturer put it: We've spent the last hundred years building systems to safely and reliably send power on a one-way trip from the utilities to businesses and homes. Modifying the electrical distribution system to be multi-directional is not an easy problem to solve.
That would be new to me - people here have been able to feed in excess energy to the grid for more than two decades. The real problem however is that the traditional power suppliers are forced to pay users that _feed in_ a very lucrative amount per kWh they produce in excess and recently started to rebel against that policy. So I wouldn't be surprised if the "technical problems" are somewhat politically/economically motivated.
I was surprised the energy they get from wind is more than twice what they get from solar. Isn't Germany like a good country for solar?
Also, this is the first time I see that they want to get only 35% of the energy from renewables by 2035. So they want to improve it only by 10% in the next 23 years? That's sounds like a very small improvement in a lot of time. I thought their original goal was 40% as renewable energy by 2020.
I think this is related to statistics regarding how fast the power grid can be expanded in relation to how fast it has to expand. Can't find any news items on this, though.
There are not enough land lines to transport the energy that is created in wind farms to the parts of Germany that need it, for example. Seems Germany is missing about 4500 power grid kilometers to supply every household.
I'm not completely sure if that is in anyway related to the big players in nuclear energy who won't allow the use of their networks. Could be it's just the basic infrastructure missing. However, it's probably crucial to hook up big wind parks first.
Try searching for Energiewende on the matter, maybe.
That sounds very impressive. But I wonder at what cost overall.
For instance there is a great deal of talk about windenergy, but the primary customers are states and these windmills seems to require quite a lot of maintenance.
So the questions of course is. Even if the energy is sustainable, is the economic model?
If you drive through Bavaria, especially the area between Munich and the Alps, it's very hard to find 4 houses/farms in a row that do not have photovoltaic cells on their roofs.
For the same reason burning wood is green- as long as you are regrowing it.
So - if you're burning timber from a forest which is sustainably managed (so you're renewing wood at the same rate you're using it), then there is no net carbon released.
Putting long-accumulated carbon back into the atmosphere does not look green to me (unless reaching the very-high levels of CO2 that were present several hundreds of millions of years ago can be defined as 'green')
Biomass is green because it does not change the percent of CO2 in the atmosphere: it fixes it into wood first, to put it back later. The net effect is zero over the human timescale.
Burning coal has also a net effect of zero, but over the Earth lifespan timescale, which is not very good for the current ecosystem (including us).
I still can't get Carter's speech from 1978 out of my head about getting off of oil and expanding renewable resources. I can only imagine how far along we'd be if the US started investing and developing these resources then.
Also, keep in mind, most of the countries being referenced are smaller Scandinavian countries. Getting proper delivery of resources is a major hurdle for US companies and their customers.
Renewables accounted for 25% of their electricity production, not their total energy production, and certainly not their total consumption: Germany imports about twice as much primary energy as it produces, almost all in the form of fossil fuels. Source: IEA.
[+] [-] danielharan|13 years ago|reply
Years ago, people said renewables wouldn't ever amount to much. Sure, it's growing exponentially, but look at how small it is! And yes, costs keep going down but it will take forever before it's competitive with coal and nuclear.
Forever's come and gone. Oil and gas went up in price. Exponential growth generated a nice experience curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects
Now some critics and skeptics will go around saying no one could have predicted how quickly wind and solar took over. They'll say it was due to the rapid increase in oil prices (no one saw that coming either) or subsidies (German feed-in tariffs were very generous, though not as much as tax breaks for oil co's).
So the lesson: humans are really bad at forecasting the results exponential growth. If you can find one that people are ignoring and time it well, you can entrench yourself in a market before most people even realize it exists.
[+] [-] ThomPete|13 years ago|reply
I have another lesson.
15 years ago before anyone knew it existed. Denmark invested heavily in wind. It created one of the biggest windmill companies in the world.
It did all the right things. Took it to the stock market allowed normal people to invest in it, created lots of new jobs and the stock surged in the early zeros.
Today stock is struggling and most of the jobs have been outsourced to other countries much less expensive to produce in.
The windmill technology in itself is not hi-tech but "low-tech" so there isn't even som IP that the Danes benefit from.
The only customers worth talking about is countries and there is no revolution in efficiency happening.
My guess is that wind will be surpassed by other more beneficial technologies.
So the lesson: Alternative energy as we know it right now is far from being a solution to the problems we have. The politicians should not pick the winners but instead set goals that can be won.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerostar07|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Brazil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Norway
[+] [-] nattofriends|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZoFreX|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjoff|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Norway
[+] [-] d99kris|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joseflavio|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbellis|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Global_elec...
[+] [-] rayiner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lispm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papaf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|13 years ago|reply
Make renewable energy by burning regular energy. Mark it up a bit and sell it for 300% of what you paid for the regular energy.
That's basically how biomass energy works anyway. Wind and photovoltaic energy also have a huge amount of regular energy usage hidden in them.
If the electricity really costs so much I'm not really impressed. However any chance that number is taxes?
[+] [-] rmc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cygx|13 years ago|reply
The circumstances have changed, though: In addition to two nuclear plants which were dormant since 2007 and 2009, six plants were shut down in mid-May 2011, and all of them are now gone for good.
The balance was still positive in 2011, and I suspect it will be this year as well, but it might be a close thing.
[+] [-] lispm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mxfh|13 years ago|reply
http://www.bdew.de/internet.nsf/id/20120726-pi-erneuerbare-e... [pdf, german]
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js... [english translation]
[+] [-] zenon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lispm|13 years ago|reply
Germany is a net exporter of electricity.
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
As the lecturer put it: We've spent the last hundred years building systems to safely and reliably send power on a one-way trip from the utilities to businesses and homes. Modifying the electrical distribution system to be multi-directional is not an easy problem to solve.
Anyone know more?
[+] [-] maebert|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
Also, this is the first time I see that they want to get only 35% of the energy from renewables by 2035. So they want to improve it only by 10% in the next 23 years? That's sounds like a very small improvement in a lot of time. I thought their original goal was 40% as renewable energy by 2020.
[+] [-] geogra4|13 years ago|reply
[0]http://www.siemens.com/press/en/pressrelease/?press=/en/pres...
[+] [-] hendrik-xdest|13 years ago|reply
There are not enough land lines to transport the energy that is created in wind farms to the parts of Germany that need it, for example. Seems Germany is missing about 4500 power grid kilometers to supply every household.
I'm not completely sure if that is in anyway related to the big players in nuclear energy who won't allow the use of their networks. Could be it's just the basic infrastructure missing. However, it's probably crucial to hook up big wind parks first.
Try searching for Energiewende on the matter, maybe.
[+] [-] euroclydon|13 years ago|reply
https://solarhighpen.energy.gov/topics
[+] [-] iamgopal|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ThomPete|13 years ago|reply
For instance there is a great deal of talk about windenergy, but the primary customers are states and these windmills seems to require quite a lot of maintenance.
So the questions of course is. Even if the energy is sustainable, is the economic model?
[+] [-] rmoriz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chm|13 years ago|reply
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/a-skeptic-looks-a...
Interesting read.
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|13 years ago|reply
Of course, existing coal plants are dirty, but for that kind of money you could make like really nice coal plants.
[+] [-] tomgallard|13 years ago|reply
So - if you're burning timber from a forest which is sustainably managed (so you're renewing wood at the same rate you're using it), then there is no net carbon released.
[+] [-] plehoux|13 years ago|reply
On the other hand, when you are burning coal, you released CO2 that was previously sequestered.
[+] [-] rmc|13 years ago|reply
Depending on one's definition of 'green' it may or may not be green. However it is renewable (in a sensible time frame).
[+] [-] gonvaled|13 years ago|reply
Biomass is green because it does not change the percent of CO2 in the atmosphere: it fixes it into wood first, to put it back later. The net effect is zero over the human timescale.
Burning coal has also a net effect of zero, but over the Earth lifespan timescale, which is not very good for the current ecosystem (including us).
[+] [-] Avshalom|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldarchon|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|13 years ago|reply
Also, keep in mind, most of the countries being referenced are smaller Scandinavian countries. Getting proper delivery of resources is a major hurdle for US companies and their customers.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ralfd|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cygx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ta12121|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beefman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] te_chris|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeromegn|13 years ago|reply
Also, Quebec relies on hydroelectricity for 97% of its energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec (need to search for "97%" on that page)
[+] [-] rayiner|13 years ago|reply