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Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

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Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#91

Post by greedo »

aqme28 wrote: post #61
Consultant32452 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbines-ever-be-safe... Hundreds of thousands, apparently

For comparison, cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds a year ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo... )

Cats tend to kill small birds that aren't considered very valuable. House sparrows for example are a dime a dozen, and are an invasive species.

Turbine blades tend to kill larger birds, usually raptors that have populations that regenerate slowly.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#92

Post by wjnc »

cbmuser wrote: post #87
aqme28 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.

How are wind and solar cost-competitive when they can exist in Germany only with extreme high subsidies? Look at the new windfarm called "Wikinger" that Germany built near the island of Ruegen: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger Cost: 1.4 billion Euros Lifetime: 20 years Power: 350 MW Max. capacity: 0.4 (40%) Price at the electricity stock exchange Leipzig: 36 Euro/MWh Thus: 350 0.4 24 365 20*36…

Interest in Germany: ~0-1%, expected inflation: 1-2%, terminal value: X unknown (but not 0). Just adding these parameters would change the conclusion of your valuation model significantly. Secondly losses are not subsidies. Subsidies are what governments dole out, losses are for investors and companies.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#93

Post by Gravityloss »

cbmuser wrote: post #87
aqme28 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.

How are wind and solar cost-competitive when they can exist in Germany only with extreme high subsidies? Look at the new windfarm called "Wikinger" that Germany built near the island of Ruegen: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger Cost: 1.4 billion Euros Lifetime: 20 years Power: 350 MW Max. capacity: 0.4 (40%) Price at the electricity stock exchange Leipzig: 36 Euro/MWh Thus: 350 0.4 24 365 20*36…

The turbines have grown and a lot of recent wind park bids are at a pretty competitive price without subsidies. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/23/uk-offshore-wind-prices...

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#94

Post by pathseeker »

aqme28 wrote: post #60
m0zg wrote: post #58

This is nuts. I wonder what the effect of spending $1T on nuclear would be in comparison. I bet it's enough money to get to practical nuclear fusion in a decade, which would largely obviate the need in most other energy generation methods.

It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.

> It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.

Wind and solar don't even compete in the same category as nuclear until you include storage. Cheap, bursty energy is useless for base-load.

Wind/solar are still far more expensive than fossil and nuclear when you take into account the over-provisioning and energy storage requirements to provide reliable base-load.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#96

Post by throwaway5752 »

mikepurvis wrote: post #74
throwaway5752 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to be incredibly concerned about feral domesticated cats and window collisions, which kill 1,000-10,000 times more birds annually (on the upper end between the two orders of magnitude) between them.

A common argument; Michael Schellenberger addresses it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_renewabl... Basically, cats kills sparrows and other small and extremely prolific urban birds. Those birds aren't what wind turbines threaten. Wind turbines threaten larger prey birds like owls, eagles, falcons, etc.

Rather than trying to poke holes in my response you could look at all cause mortality tables for birds. You can compare wind turbines with the many other sources - heavy metal poising, car and plane collisions, habitat loss - and you can compare it to estimated turbine collisions. Cornell Ornithology Lab is a great resource.

This isn't an ideal situation, but you can't talk about this sensibly without the background that we are in a planetary climate emergency and this is one route to try to fix a bigger problem. All current life on Earth is headed somewhere bad unless human beings can alter the course of atmospheric CO2. That would be a worse outcome for large birds than more wind farms.

If someone wants to concurrently pursue nuclear or solar, by all means they should do so. Shellenberger is a controversial figure, and there is a reason for it.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#97

Post by hobofan »

wjnc wrote: post #92
cbmuser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are wind and solar cost-competitive when they can exist in Germany only with extreme high subsidies? Look at the new windfarm called "Wikinger" that Germany built near the island of Ruegen: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger Cost: 1.4 billion Euros Lifetime: 20 years Power: 350 MW Max. capacity: 0.4 (40%) Price at the electricity stock exchange Leipzig: 36 Euro/MWh Thus: 350 0.4 24 365 20*36…

Interest in Germany: ~0-1%, expected inflation: 1-2%, terminal value: X unknown (but not 0). Just adding these parameters would change the conclusion of your valuation model significantly. Secondly losses are not subsidies. Subsidies are what governments dole out, losses are for investors and companies.

I don't know the specifics, but there are subsidies in place through the EEG[0] to prevent such losses.

In general energy also seems to be a low-risk business, where if the energy companies would ever loose money, they are either already covered by the government or can sue the government for losses due to changed regulations with a good chance of winning.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#98

Post by WA »

pathseeker wrote: post #94
aqme28 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.

> It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar. Wind and solar don't even compete in the same category as nuclear until you include storage. Cheap, bursty energy is useless for base-load. Wind/solar are still far more expensive than fossil and nuclear when you take into account the over-provisioning and energy storage requirements to provide reliable base-l…

Or a lot cheaper if you continue to ignore the nuclear waste lying around for the next 100,000 years from a price perspective.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#99

Post by ocschwar »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #78
tda wrote: post #15

By far the most wind turbines have been built on land and for good reason: it's much cheaper. As long as there is space/not too many people complaining it makes more sense to build on land. Not sure exactly but on land installed wind is probably ~10x the installed capacity offshore. However on land turbines are pretty much maxed out at about 7,5MW, due to logistical difficulties of getting larger blades, towers and n…

Transmission!!! A huge appeal of offshore for densely populated areas is you can put the huge turbines far off the coast of a dense area and then have very effective transmission, something which onshore is vastly limited by due to NIMBYism and lobbying and regulation.

And offshore winds are steady, reliable, and really conveniently timed: early evening is the peak, right after solar is done.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#100

Post by aurelwu »

cbmuser wrote: post #87
aqme28 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.

How are wind and solar cost-competitive when they can exist in Germany only with extreme high subsidies? Look at the new windfarm called "Wikinger" that Germany built near the island of Ruegen: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger Cost: 1.4 billion Euros Lifetime: 20 years Power: 350 MW Max. capacity: 0.4 (40%) Price at the electricity stock exchange Leipzig: 36 Euro/MWh Thus: 350 0.4 24 365 20*36…

Why do you set a fixed price of 36 Euro / MWh for the next 20 years. At least take the phelix Futures to get a somewhat reasonable picture: https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/power/futures/phelix-de-f... (45€ Base / 53€ Peak). With the EU-ETS Certs getting more an more sparse and expensive over time, coal will be phased out more and more which will increase the price.
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