Why should we be surprised at all the gas capacity being built. Even if we do build a lot of wind and solar, we need gas for firming to replace retiring coal, and to provide firming for new demand.
Something on the order of ~100 hrs is about the minimum needed to call storage firm, and that is with quite significant wind and solar overbuilds to fill it. We are nowhere close to that, other than by gas currently…
100 hours… that’s a far cry from the four hours Lazards uses. But then again just 4 hours of solar firmed is enough to make Vogtle look reasonable also.
Global CO2 emissions will never go down, they'll only get bigger. Any strategy to deal with climate change that isn't "let's figure out how to adapt to it" is truly ridiculous. And paying multiple times more for electricity that is derived from intermittent sources is literally the dumbest strategy possible because it can't possibly work and just makes everything more expensive.
China is building a new coal plant every two weeks, India is building a large number as well. Emissions are not going to go down.
We pay multiple times more when you account for the necessary backup power plants (fossil fuel powered) that are running in standby mode to kick in when the sun doesn't shine or there is no wind... which is a lot of the time.
I get a huge laugh when people talk to me about "capacity" of wind and solar as if it's meaningful when those things on average supply about 25% of their capacity and a lot of the time they're supplying power when demand is low. Wind and solar are stupid.
And Germany's prize for dropping emissions is to have the highest electricity prices in Europe, which is crushing industry and simply exporting CO2 emissions to China.
At some point you guys are going to have to understand that there is more benefit to CO2 emissions than any possible detriments (if there are any). If you think CO2-induced climate change is an actual thing then we shouldn't be dumping money into wind and solar, we should be spending money on adapting to a hotter climate.
Sadly (for you) YouTube videos are not a scientific rebuttal to climate change.
Please read AR6: The physical science basis to get a real scientific understanding of climate change.
It is over 2,500 pages summering what we know and how well we know it and the limits to what we know. I think that all in all it represents the collected work of over 10,000 researchers.
1) You appear to assume that offshore wind is the only energy source that has gone up significantly in price since the bars were charted. This is doubtful.
2) Your definition of “’true’ PPA price” is idiosyncratic, to say the least. For the actual buyers of this or any project, who are the only people signing a PPA, the subsidized price is the true price and determines the rationality of the purchase. The margin between the subsidized and unsubsidized costs is of course covered by federal dollars, but whether a given subsidy is rational is a matter of energy policy (nukes, fossil fuels, and renewables are all subsidized); it’s not a factor for making decisions in the market as-is.
"I’ve often heard it said that solar have gotten so inexpensive it makes nonsense of building nuclear energy. Many of the same people who make that statement will then often turn around to support another source of energy that is just as expensive and uncertain . . ." This rhetorical inconsistency may exist, but if so, it does not show that the original claim -- that "solar has gotten so inexpensive it makes nonsense of building nuclear energy" -- is false. And if nuclear is a dead technology walking because of solar (and onshore wind), whether offshore wind could kill it is moot. The Lazard chart you reproduce shows the LCOE of utility-scale solar plus storage as only a little higher than utility-scale solar itself, and far below the cost of nuclear. If even battery-firmed solar --- with storage and panels both getting cheaper rapidly -- beats newbuild nuclear today so handily, only pretzel-shaped arguments that evade nuclear's stubbornly high LCOE can preserve a case for it. Not to mention its agonizingly slow deployment time, an order of magnitude larger than for wind or solar . .
So you just think the subsidy falls out of the sky? You realize that someone will have to pay for the subsidy cost through taxes, borrowing, higher bond rates, etc.
Also: only $150/mWh? That is a crazy high wholesale cost. Double that for T&D and you have German prices and then nobody can afford to run a heat pump.
Correct but the nuclear industry has huge subsidies that have been buried.
Right now we do not have a working repository for high level nuclear waste.
AND there is no sane cost model for the waste repository.
I have looked for a cost model that covers the necessary resources to protect a repository basically forever. At best human civilization is 10,000 years old and no part has remained intact for more than about 1,000 years. However the nuclear waste needs to be protected for probably 200,000 years at least and maybe much longer (the half life of Pu-239 is 24,000 years where it decays into fissile U-235 which is also a problem)
Right now the nuclear power industry is paying a relative pittance into a fund and even then has no actual working repository.
Why should we be surprised at all the gas capacity being built. Even if we do build a lot of wind and solar, we need gas for firming to replace retiring coal, and to provide firming for new demand.
Something on the order of ~100 hrs is about the minimum needed to call storage firm, and that is with quite significant wind and solar overbuilds to fill it. We are nowhere close to that, other than by gas currently…
100 hours… that’s a far cry from the four hours Lazards uses. But then again just 4 hours of solar firmed is enough to make Vogtle look reasonable also.
Global CO2 emissions will never go down, they'll only get bigger. Any strategy to deal with climate change that isn't "let's figure out how to adapt to it" is truly ridiculous. And paying multiple times more for electricity that is derived from intermittent sources is literally the dumbest strategy possible because it can't possibly work and just makes everything more expensive.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/weather/topstories/global-energy-related-co2-emissions-hit-record-high-in-2023-iea/ar-BB1j9n1G
Re. "CO2 emissions will never go down" -- Emissions should, can, and might decrease; the IPCC lays out several pathways in detail ( https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15_Chapter2_Low_Res.pdf ).
Re. "paying multiple times more" -- True perhaps if we compare offshore wind for the first-of-kind (in US) project discussed in this post to combined-cycle gas, onshore wind, or utility-scale solar, per the Lazard chart -- but not true for onshore wind or utility-scale solar, which are not "multiple times more" than anything, but on the contrary are best in show and continue to get cheaper along well-studied learning curves ( https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(22)00649-6?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2589004222006496%3Fshowall%3Dtrue ).
Re. "can't possibly work" -- If true, it is strange that, per International Energy Agency, "renewables [mostly wind and solar] are set to account for over 90% of global electricity capacity expansion" through 2027 ( https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2022/executive-summary ). Also very weird that "Germany’s power sector emissions dropped to their lowest level in 70 years in 2023 and passed the 50% threshold for renewable electricity production for the first time" ( https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/2023-a-bumper-year-for-germanys-renewable-electricity-sector/ ). And with higher reliability than US grids. The illusion that renewables work is indeed powerful.
China is building a new coal plant every two weeks, India is building a large number as well. Emissions are not going to go down.
We pay multiple times more when you account for the necessary backup power plants (fossil fuel powered) that are running in standby mode to kick in when the sun doesn't shine or there is no wind... which is a lot of the time.
I get a huge laugh when people talk to me about "capacity" of wind and solar as if it's meaningful when those things on average supply about 25% of their capacity and a lot of the time they're supplying power when demand is low. Wind and solar are stupid.
And Germany's prize for dropping emissions is to have the highest electricity prices in Europe, which is crushing industry and simply exporting CO2 emissions to China.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-3-12-germanys-coming-green-energy-economic-miracle?rq=Germany
At some point you guys are going to have to understand that there is more benefit to CO2 emissions than any possible detriments (if there are any). If you think CO2-induced climate change is an actual thing then we shouldn't be dumping money into wind and solar, we should be spending money on adapting to a hotter climate.
1. Earth is cooler w the atmos/WV/30% albedo not warmer.
YouTube: Greenhouse Effect Theory Goes Kerbluey
2. Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics use bad math and badder physics.
YouTube: Atmospheric Heat Balances That Don't
3. Kinetic heat transfer modes of contiguous atmos molecules render a BB surface model impossible.
Search: “Bruges group kerbluey”
GHE & CAGW climate “science” are indefensible rubbish so alarmists must resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship and violence.
Sadly (for you) YouTube videos are not a scientific rebuttal to climate change.
Please read AR6: The physical science basis to get a real scientific understanding of climate change.
It is over 2,500 pages summering what we know and how well we know it and the limits to what we know. I think that all in all it represents the collected work of over 10,000 researchers.
Followup:
1) You appear to assume that offshore wind is the only energy source that has gone up significantly in price since the bars were charted. This is doubtful.
2) Your definition of “’true’ PPA price” is idiosyncratic, to say the least. For the actual buyers of this or any project, who are the only people signing a PPA, the subsidized price is the true price and determines the rationality of the purchase. The margin between the subsidized and unsubsidized costs is of course covered by federal dollars, but whether a given subsidy is rational is a matter of energy policy (nukes, fossil fuels, and renewables are all subsidized); it’s not a factor for making decisions in the market as-is.
Respectfully,
Larry
"I’ve often heard it said that solar have gotten so inexpensive it makes nonsense of building nuclear energy. Many of the same people who make that statement will then often turn around to support another source of energy that is just as expensive and uncertain . . ." This rhetorical inconsistency may exist, but if so, it does not show that the original claim -- that "solar has gotten so inexpensive it makes nonsense of building nuclear energy" -- is false. And if nuclear is a dead technology walking because of solar (and onshore wind), whether offshore wind could kill it is moot. The Lazard chart you reproduce shows the LCOE of utility-scale solar plus storage as only a little higher than utility-scale solar itself, and far below the cost of nuclear. If even battery-firmed solar --- with storage and panels both getting cheaper rapidly -- beats newbuild nuclear today so handily, only pretzel-shaped arguments that evade nuclear's stubbornly high LCOE can preserve a case for it. Not to mention its agonizingly slow deployment time, an order of magnitude larger than for wind or solar . .
200$/mWh! Sheesh, at those prices diesel generators are almost on par. Why bother attaching to a grid at all if it is going to be that expensive…
It's not that expensive. $200/MWh is the author's estimate of the unsubsidized cost, not the cost to the buyer, which is $150/MWh.
So you just think the subsidy falls out of the sky? You realize that someone will have to pay for the subsidy cost through taxes, borrowing, higher bond rates, etc.
Also: only $150/mWh? That is a crazy high wholesale cost. Double that for T&D and you have German prices and then nobody can afford to run a heat pump.
Also it’s important to include the subsidy so that we can compare prices on an apples to apples basis between different countries.
Correct but the nuclear industry has huge subsidies that have been buried.
Right now we do not have a working repository for high level nuclear waste.
AND there is no sane cost model for the waste repository.
I have looked for a cost model that covers the necessary resources to protect a repository basically forever. At best human civilization is 10,000 years old and no part has remained intact for more than about 1,000 years. However the nuclear waste needs to be protected for probably 200,000 years at least and maybe much longer (the half life of Pu-239 is 24,000 years where it decays into fissile U-235 which is also a problem)
Right now the nuclear power industry is paying a relative pittance into a fund and even then has no actual working repository.