- 14 May 2019 01:42
#15004570
Drlee never tires of embarrassing himself
Solar and Wind Power Won't Work Without Natural Gas as a Back-Up, Says New Study
The researchers also point out that projections of falling renewable technologies costs fail to take into account the costs of constructing and maintaining fast reacting fossil fuel (chiefly natural gas) back-up power. From the study …
… the estimated indirect costs of renewables are at least an order of magnitude greater than those associated with dispatchable fossil-fuel technologies. For the latter, system costs are relatively modest, generally estimated below USD 3 per MWh (megawatt-hour) in OECD countries. For the formers, such costs are as high as USD 40 per MWh for onshore wind, USD 45 per MWh for offshore wind and USD 80 per MWh for solar. These high estimates are the direct results of the need for additional system reserves and back-up generation to ensure system reliability. Renewable energy system costs will also increase over-proportionally with the amount of variable electricity in the system, with far-fetching [reaching] implications for the energy markets and security of supply. Ignoring them can thus lead to a severe underestimation of the social and private costs of any energy transition.
In the Washington Post, one of the researchers, Elena Verdolini from the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, observes:
"If you have an electric car, you don't need a diesel car in your garage sitting there. But in the case of renewables, it's different, because if you have renewable electricity and that fails, then you need the fast acting gas sitting in your garage, so to speak."
Basically, the study makes the point that evironmental activists had better come to grips with the fact that natural gas is indeed a "bridge fuel" to any renewable energy technology future. In addition, they should recognize that deploying renewable energy technologies will cost a lot more than many of their rosy projections of falling wind and solar power technology prices suggest that it will.
Socialism without freedom is fascism.