Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production • Hacker News Board

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#91

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 5:41 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #84

danielharan wrote: post #72

There's a lesson here for startup folks. 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_c…

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.

I haven't seen a credible economic analysis showing alternative energy isn't competitive that doesn't hand-wave away externalized costs or use ridiculous temporal discounting of future environmental harms.

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#92

Post by rprasad » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #49

nosse wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norwegian hydroelectric plants usually don't destroy a ecosystem, just some nice looking waterfall. They have so long and steep falls that ecosystem would be naturally separated by it anyway.

That's not the only damage hydroelectric does. The damns normalize naturally occurring floods with a view to maximizing electricity production, and material that would have been carried to sea gets trapped behind the dam.

In a traditional hydroelectric generator, yes. Norway has the advantage of numerous, steep cliffs and waterfalls. It is my understanding that the Norwegian HEG's are placed in the middle of the waterfalls, so that no dam is necessary...

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#93

Post by ThomPete » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 5:44 PM UTC

danielharan wrote: post #89

ThomPete wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

linear solution? Please explain. Wind and solar are growing double digits per year... how is that not exponential? If you're taking about Vestas, it's still worth $5 Billion, going up or down depending on the results of big sales. That share price was worth 20X more is a disappointment to investors, but it does not prove that no one can make it in that sector .

That's only because the investment are going up in the same curve.

Exponential means you get much more out of it than you invest.

I.e. Nuclear, Thorium etc.

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#94

Post by Tuna-Fish » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 5:47 PM UTC

cygx wrote: post #61

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's inexhaustible within the next few millennia, which is the same criteria by which geothermal is considered renewable. Nuclear really should be considered renewable, the only reason it's not is politics.

> it's inexhaustible within the next few millennia In case of uranium, you're off by an order of magnitude...

No, I'm not. The low number that gets thrown about is for commercially available deposits at the present market price. The price of the raw uranium is a very small portion of the price of running a nuclear plant -- it could increase by two orders of magnitude and not have a material impact on the plant bottom line. At that point, it would be economically feasible to extract it from seawater, where there is enough of it for effectively forever.

Extracting it from seawater is, however, not necessary. Even small increases in the market price make a lot of new deposits available -- uranium is quite abundant in earth's crust.

The reason uranium and nuclear fuel is so cheap is that it was consistently overproduced during the cold war. Before the 2007 speculative bubble there was effectively no new activity since the last government-funded uranium boom.

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#95

Post by cygx » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 5:50 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #86

danielharan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, all the things you mentioned, plus building the actual plant. As far as new breeder designs, it's a bit too late. Nuclear promised us "energy too cheap to meter" and construction and maintenance costs have kept going down. Meanwhile solar and wind have been regularly going down in price with each doubling of production. The case against nuclear isn't environmental; it's economic.

The case against nuclear isn't environmental; it's economic. No, it's mostly just fear.

Just because some of the popular resistance to nuclear energy production is based on fear doesn't mean there aren't rational arguments against it.

Personally, I consider the current generation of fission reactors technologically unsound: Neither the problem of radiactive waste nor shutdown in case of catastrophic failures are adequately solved.

Research in Thorium reactors is worthwhile considering the growing energy needs of China and India, but smarter transnational grids with more efficient load balancing can probably make renewable energy production viable in Europe.

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#96

Post by anewguy » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 5:55 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #90

anewguy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States has an abundance of cheap natural gas and the will to drill it. Incidentally, substituting gas for coal has allowed the US to lead the world in reducing CO2 emissions[1]. Yes, that's right, the US has reduced its emissions more than any other country in the last five years, thanks to technical innovations that have lowered the price of natural gas. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/…

It's not gas, it's coal. Coal accounts for half of US electric production, versus a negligible amount of French production. Coal, however, is only seemingly cheap. Most of the actual costs of coal are externalized, and not seen at the meter. Rather, they show up at the doctor's office: http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resources_files/epstein_ful... http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/12/hiding-the-costs-of-c... The P…

Read the link. The fracking revolution has led to a substitution of gas for coal in the US. Meanwhile, pressure from green activists in Europe has led to obstacles to fracking and nuclear power and an increasing reliance on coal imports. Renewables still suck as an energy source.

The biggest piece of good news for the environment in Years is being driven by a "brown" industry in cowboy America, who woul have predicted it?

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#97

Post by anewguy » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 5:57 PM UTC

danielharan wrote: post #87

sliverstorm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The tax breaks were set to go down on a schedule. It would be nice if the same were true for oil and gas. Right now, those subsidies for renewables are only creating a more even playing field.

Could you quantify that? I don't believe the subsidy per megawatt for fossil fuels is anything like what it is for renewables.

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#98

Post by CapitalistCartr » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #90

anewguy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States has an abundance of cheap natural gas and the will to drill it. Incidentally, substituting gas for coal has allowed the US to lead the world in reducing CO2 emissions[1]. Yes, that's right, the US has reduced its emissions more than any other country in the last five years, thanks to technical innovations that have lowered the price of natural gas. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/…

It's not gas, it's coal. Coal accounts for half of US electric production, versus a negligible amount of French production. Coal, however, is only seemingly cheap. Most of the actual costs of coal are externalized, and not seen at the meter. Rather, they show up at the doctor's office: http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resources_files/epstein_ful... http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/12/hiding-the-costs-of-c... The P…

Coal did account for half until about four years ago. Due to the explosion (no pun intended) in natural gas development and the increase in environmental regulation, its down to about a third now.

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#99

Post by noselasd » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 6:38 PM UTC

rprasad wrote: post #92

avar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the only damage hydroelectric does. The damns normalize naturally occurring floods with a view to maximizing electricity production, and material that would have been carried to sea gets trapped behind the dam.

In a traditional hydroelectric generator, yes. Norway has the advantage of numerous, steep cliffs and waterfalls. It is my understanding that the Norwegian HEG's are placed in the middle of the waterfalls, so that no dam is necessary...

That's hardly ever the case, and would be quite inefficient unless the waterfall provides the same amount of water all year.

Most hydroelectric power in Norway are generated with the help of a reservoir, usually a natural lake that's been regulated with the help of a relatively small dam, but there are some wholly artificial ones as well, the biggest one being 84 square km.

That said, yes - the environmental impact is small. It also helps that the Norwegian population is very small.

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#100

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Jul 30, 2012, 6:43 PM UTC

danielharan wrote: post #70

dredmorbius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not renewable, but it is essentially zero-impact as far as atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are concerned. I'm hedging only because someone will come along and cite fossil-fuel based ancillary activities related to nuclear fuel mining, processing, transport, and disposal if I say "zero". But for all intents, zero. There are breeder reactor designs which convert far more abundant non-fissile isotopes to fuel-…

Yes, all the things you mentioned, plus building the actual plant. As far as new breeder designs, it's a bit too late. Nuclear promised us "energy too cheap to meter" and construction and maintenance costs have kept going down. Meanwhile solar and wind have been regularly going down in price with each doubling of production. The case against nuclear isn't environmental; it's economic.

There are a number of arguments against nuclear. I'm not an uncritical fan, but I'm not a absolute opponent either.

Nuclear represents high risks at multiple areas of operation:

- The fuel, waste, and plants are all radioactive, in some cases for geological time periods, presenting unprecedented disposal issues. Perhaps not insurmountable, but very, very significant.

- Scale of operations of nuclear plants means that the plants themselves, their operations, and their revenues are immense. A large nuclear plant generates over $2 billion worth of electricity (retail) annually. As we've learned with other large financial systems, profit maximization can skew risk management objectives.

- Risks of scale include management, financial, terrorist, natural disaster, labor action, and other factors. Any of these could put, at the least, power reliability at risk, and at worst, health and safety for millions of people. One consequence of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan was TEPCO's loss of 27% of its generating capacity (http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/379610/japan_facing_ma...). Exacerbated by Japan's dual-cycle grids (eastern and western Japan operate on 50 and 60 Hz respectively: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/tech-legacy-tokyo/).

- The timescale and emergent phenomena associated with nuclear power mean that risks aren't known, appreciated, and/or understood at construction time. Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima all exhibited fundamental engineering and/or operational flaws. Siting of the Fukushima plant turned out to be problematic. Several California plants are now known to be on or near active seismic zones. We still don't have a permanent waste disposal solution in the US (and much of the rest of the world).

Most alternate forms of renewable / sustainable power are much more diverse and distributed. Though this means higher capital and maintenance costs per MWh of generation, it also means vastly smaller risks of any individual plant failure, and far lower likelihood of cascade failures.

Interesting times.