Joe Romm and the Price of Sunshine

Joe Romm is a tireless critic of nuclear power, and the most vocal advocate of solar thermal power on the Internet. Romm pounds nuclear for what he views its high costs. But one thing you will not find Romm doing is offering a complarison between the cost of his much vaunted Solar Thermal base power, and conventional nuclear power. The reason why this is the case is as Ed Ring demonstrates, is because ST is hugely more expensive than nuclear.

The solar power sector would have to grow by 684 times before it would offset the CO2 emissions attributable to coal, more specifically, to offset 15.0 billion tons of CO2 emissions annually based on 1.0 ton of CO2 per 1.0 megawatt-hour of coal-fired electricity. Given the miniscule accomplishments of solar energy so far in the global power equation, and given that global energy output has to double as soon as possible, if the price keeps coming down solar energy as a sector has the potential to experience 50%+ annual growth for a very long time. How much would it cost today to install enough solar energy to offset 15 billion tons of CO2 emissions?

An all-in installed price of $5.00 per watt is still low by today’s standards, but probably represents the high end of eventual costs as technology and productivity improves in the solar sector. Increasing the 10 gigawatts of installed solar power worldwide by 684 times means installing a 6.8 terawatt distributed array producing 15 million gigawatt-hours of power per year, which at $5.00 per watt would cost 34 trillion dollars. For the perhaps 1.0 billion lucky residents of the fully developed, industrialized world to pay for this via offset fees and taxes and the like over 20 years, zero interest, would amount to $1,700 per household per year. Adding the grid and storage infrastructure should easily raise that price to $2,000 each - something like $7,500 per average household per year. And this sort of accomplishment is a vital pillar of Gore’s pledge. No more coal - twenty years. Shave a few more points on future cost and call it twenty years, twenty trillion, a trillion per year. Using these same assumptions, it would cost America $6.8 trillion to replace 100% of coal fired electricity with solar power, or about $23,000 for every person in the country.

Shaving costs any further on the future price of solar is a dangerous assumption, however. Even at a cost of $34 trillion to replace coal worldwide with solar, our calculations are based on a collection of very optimistic givens; $5.00 per watt installed including storage and distribution upgrades, a 25% yield, and 20 year zero-interest financing; resulting in $2.3 billion per gigawatt-hour or 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for future solar. We are nowhere near this, yet to precipitously phase out coal or to participate in a doubling of global energy production, or both, this is probably what the solar sector is going to have to do.

Unlike Romm, who is constitutionally adverse to any real world discussion of the cost of coal replacement, Ring is willing to set down the numbers, and the numbers Ring give us are breath taking. During the last election cycle in California, voters were offered Proposition 7, an initive that would have increased the California renewables generated electricity goals to 50% of all electricity generated in California by 2025. Ring made clear both the implication of Proposition 7 and its cost:

since Californians by 2025 are going to be consuming about 1,000 gigawatt-hours per day, if proposition 7 is enacted, 500 gWh per day will have to come from wind and solar power.

Solar power, installed - not including transmission or storage infrastructure - costs about $7.0 million per megawatt of output; this equates to $7.0 billion per gigawatt. If this sounds expensive, it is, but to get a truly accurate price you have to also take into account yield. Even in sunny California, solar energy (in terms of full-sun-equivalent hours), can only be harvested on average for 4.5 hours per day, which means to get 500 gWh of solar generated electricity each day in California, you would need to install 111 gigawatts of solar arrays (500/4.5), which would cost $777 billion dollars.

Ring is not an enemy of renewables, far from it. Ring also wrote:

It is inspiring to hope California can eventually reach a 50% renewables standard, or more.

Now Joe Romm who has a PhD in Physics surely possess the math skills to preform the same sort of simple calculations Ring employs. If Romm disagreed with Ring's numbers, he has kept awful quiet about it. Ring is not nearly as fashionable a figure as Romm, and therefore his numbers do not get nearly as much attention as Romm's pretentious boasts. Romm knows that people, including politicians do not like to hear words like, "the numbers don't add up." Joe Romm is never going to say about solar thermal that "the numbers don't add up," even if there is overwelming evidence that this is the case. The question then is why does Joe Romm not tell the truth about the cost of solar thermal power?

Solar costs, and the future of electrical generation.

There is a considerable gap between the actual cost of solar thermal power generation systems and what we have been told to expect. When renewables advocates talk about ST costs, they talk about cost projects made several years ago that did not survive testing by recent cost realities. This gap between expectations and experience has been apparent in actual cost data for existing and projected solar thermal projects. I have pointed to the evidence on ST costs in a number of posts as data has become available. Solar thermal lags far behind nuclear in its ability to produce power on demand. In short, solar thermal ceases to be a bargain as soon as you want to switch the lights on.

The renewables crowd keeps telling us that this is about to be fixed. That the day of cheap solar thermal generated electricity on a 24 hour a day basis is said to be at hand. We know this must be so, because Joe Romm keeps telling us that solar thermal power is now base power. Unfortunately, many of us noticed some time ago that just because Joe Romm states something the proposition does not become fact.

Last year the sun shown on the solar thermal industry in California. PP&E handed out contracts to Solar Thermal manufacturers as fast as the applications flew though the door. This was occurring despite evidence of truly atrocious cost-to-capacity-factor ratios. The best I was able to determine facilities that generated on average 20% of their nameplate capacity were costing $4.00 a name-plate watt to construct. It is evidence of exactly how screwed up thinking about energy is in California is that there is not a ratepayers revolt against the solar thermal scam.

Last fall I called attention to Ausra, an ST business that had its origins in Australia. Ausra claims to be able to lower ST costs, including heat storage costs, through a series of low cost technological innovations. Ausra was the apparant darling of some California venture capital firms that were moving to become players in the the California renewables generating market. Ausra told the VC people that it could provide round-the-clock ST electricity at a cost that was too low to meter. That was the story, but my review of published cost data for Ausra's Barstow project was inconclusive, but suggested that matters might not be nearly as happy as Ausra claimed. Furthermore, a careful analysis of Ausra performance claims yield a remarkable amount of wiggle room, if those claims were ever brought up in court. Thus Ausra's low cost claims could be marked down as unconfirmed, pending further investigation. This judgment suggested that it would not be a good idea to invest the widows and orphans funds in Ausra just yet.

It is not surprising then that Ausra is retrenching. Ausra's chairman, president and CEO, Robert Fishman now acknowledges that Ausra cannot raise the finances for a large project on the basis of his companies performance on its 5 MW pilot project. "That's simply not reality. The finance market will not support it." Fishman has not acknowledged Ausra's cost data from its Barstow pilot project, but clearly Ausra expectations are being trimmed, as is corporate staff.

It should be quite clear by now that California's most excellent renewables adventure is not going as well. Producing low cost renewable electricity in California is going to prove a tremendous bust. California is running out of good land-based wind resources and offshore wind resources will be quite expensive to exploit. The cost of Solar Thermal is quite outrageous given its truly modest capacity factor. Constructing a renewables system with adequate energy storage would carry a price tag that would be considerably higher that constructing a nuclear power generating system of similar capacity. Now conventional nuclear generating systems are hardly cheap, and conventional nuclear might not be the best long run fossil fuel replacement. A better solution is needed.

My readers by now know where this is headed. California's renewables subsidies could be better spent on LFTR technology. For what California will spend subsidizing overpriced pathetically inadequate renewables technology, California rate payers could have low cost electricity from safe, non-wasteful, sustainable generation-IV nuclear technology.

It will not happen of course. First, the renewables myth serves the interest of the fossil fuel producers. As long as there are the notion persists that renewables are the answer to peak fossil fuels and global anthropogenic global warming, the fossil fuel interests will continue see their products being burned to generate electricty. The renewbles crowd, Amory Lovins, Joe Romm, and David Roberts, may not be taking money under the table for the coal barons, but they are certainly serving the interest of coal by propounding their anti-nuclear ideology.

We are not yet ready to turn to advanced nuclear technology to do what renewables and conventional nuclear technology cannot do, that is take the world economy off its carbon habit. But the ability to do so, the ability to actually control carbon emissions while generating massive amounts of electricity, is about to be taken seriously. By 2012 low carbon power will be a matter of the most serious global concern. Athough our day has not yet arrived, it is coming. It is coming soon. The Sun probably is not going to shine on Ausra this year or the next.

The Flawed Renewables Paradigm

When I first began thinking about renewable generation of electricity, the first question I asked was "how are you going to provide electricity when the sun is not shining, or the wind is not blowing?"  I got two different answers in response,  The first answer was that we will use the existing generating resources of the grid to bridge any gap when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.   The existing resources being "nuclear", a word that causes most renewable advocates to foam at the mouth whenever it is mentioned.  Almost all of  the grid resources that renewables advocates would depend on bun fossil fuels.  Coal, which every renewables advocate professes to hate, even though some of them take coal money to advocate something called carbon capture and sequestration, is marked by renewables advocates for replacement by renewables. Natural gas, which is after all a carbon based fuel, is almost always treated in the thinking of renewables advocates as an honorary renewables and carbon free resource.   Thus we have renewables advocates, in effect, arguing emitting CO2 is OK as long is prevents the use of new reactors in the generation of electricity.  

When I looked at the entire energy economy, I saw that there were areas where it would be very difficult to replace fossil fuel.  For example some cement manufacture require 1500 degrees C heat.  Advanced high temperature reactors produce 1000 C.  The theoretical maximum for LFTR's with carbon-carbon parts is somewhere around 1200 C.   Thus heat for cement manufacture, and other industrial processes, may have to come from natural gas.  Land transportation can be electrified.  Unless small reactor power plants for ships become a practical reality ocean going transportation may remain dominated by fossil fuel power for a long time.  Air transportation is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and if the air transport industry is to continue to exist, it may remain dependent on fossil fuels for a long time to come. Fossil fuel consumption may continue to be required for agricultural use.  Fossil fuels may continue to have a variety of military uses.  Thus if our goal is an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050, it is unlikely that much of the remaining 20% will be devoted to the generation of electricity.   Thus we will have to assume that the 2050 electrical system will have to do without any fossil fuel backup.  

In 2007 I looked at these facts and came to the startling conclusion that neither a renewable dominated electrical generation systems, nor a conventional nuclear dominated system was likely to be affordable as a replacement for the fossil fuel electrical generation.  In addition energy had to be found to power surface transportation.  Other energy gaps included a new technology for lower temperature industrial process heat, were not well filled.  

I found Robert Hargraves' Pebble Bed Reactor site.  I was impressed with the argument for factory production of  of Pebble Bed Reactors, but I knew of a radical reactor design that could be mass produced, and which in a number of ways was superior to the PBR, and which was amenable to mass production.  

But natural gas is not renewable, it is expensive, and when it is burned carbon dioxide gas is produced. There is something else about natural gas that renewables advocates will not tell you. When natural gas is burned radioactive gases such as radon get released. Now the big rap against nuclear power is the argument that the danger of releasing radioactive materials like radon is two great and thus nuclear power is toxic and dangerous. When renewable advocates tell you about how clean natural gas is they ignore the release of the very radioactive and toxic gas radon from natural gas powered plants, and the ignore the emissions of CO2 from the same natural gas fired generating facilities.

When it is pointed out to renewables advocates that their plan to use grid resources when mother nature fails to cooperate in the production of renewable generated electricity, they fall back on energy storage. Three schemes get mentioned: Battery storage, pump storage, and Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES). In addition solar thermal electrical schemes may rely on energy storage in such media as molten salt, or pressurized water. All energy storage schemes are expensive, in fact so expensive that when the cost of the storage system and redundant generating capacity required to produce the energy to be stored, the cost of carbon free renewable systems almost invariably turns out to be higher than the cost of nuclear power. In addition the CAES solution requires the burning of natural gas.

Thus the renewables paradigm is either requires that we continue burning natural gas or turn to a storage solution that makes renewables produced electricity more expensive than nuclear power.  Thus renewable generated electricity either will not completely displace the use of carbon based fuels, or it displace them at a cost that is higher than new conventional nuclear power. It would be very damming if the cost of a carbon-free renewable system were to be higher than the cost of a conventional nuclear power system.  

The renewable paradigm yields the following operational hypothesis: "Renewable electrical sources can replace replace carbon emitting fossil fuel burning electrical generating systems at a lower cost than nuclear power."

The Null hypothesis would be: "Renewables can only replace carbon emitting fossil fuel burning electrical generating systems at a cost that is higher than nuclear power."

I have repeatedly tested the Null hypothesis on Nuclear Green using actual cost information from the renewables industry, and data on capacity from reliable sources.  When I had to make assumptions, I was if anything generous to the renewables industry, but it would have been unreasonable to assume that nuclear costs would be subject to inflation while renewables  costs would not be, unless it could be shown that renewables costs would not be subject to the same inflationary pressures  that nuclear costs would be.  That evidence has yet to emerge. Repeatedly. I have tested the null hypothesis in Nuclear Green case studies of renewables costs.   The null hypothesis tests have  shown that renewables cost data supports rather than falsifies the null hypothesis.  That is it has not been possible, using cost data and capacity factor data, to show that it would cost less to replace the fossil fuels electrical generating system with a renewable based system, than it would cost to replace it with a nuclear based generating system.  Thus the renewables paradigm fails the falsification tests.   Admittedly it is has not been possible to explore every possible renewables system, because in some cases there is not enough empirical data to construct a test, so while the range of possible renewable options has been shown to be very limited - for example wind, PV and most forms of ST have been shown to fail the falsification test - it has not yet been possible to run the falsification test on every form of  ST.  

I have performed falsification test on both state wide and national renewables plans.  The state plans were for wind generation in Texas, and the plan to produce 33% of California's electricity from renewable by 2025.   I also tested the Picken's energy plan, and the google energy plan. Both plans had nation wide scope, both plans contained significant flaws in addition to failing the falsification test for their renewables components.  It is clear then claims that the claim that a renewables based electrical generating system will cost less than a nuclear based electrical system is not not derived from facts.  

Thus renewables, at a cost that is lower than the cost of nuclear power, cannot fully displace the use of fossil fuels.   It would appear that the cost of fully replacing the use of fossil fuels in electrical generation would drive the cost of an all renewable electrical generating system  to a cost level that is higher than the cost of a nuclear based system.

A comment on solar prices for Nick and the meaning of life and everything else

"Briefly, solar will fall in price much more quickly than that estimation, . . ." - Nick

Nick, PV prices most certainly are not dropping. According to Solarbuzz, "the PV industry has been in a period of steady retail pricing." In fact, Solarbuzz reports a price increase for uninstalled solar modules, In June 2004 retail solar modules sold for $4.32 per watt. This month retail PV modules sell in the United States for $4.81 per watt. I have no doubt that installation costs have risen since June 2004. Solar buzz quotes the price of industrial PV electrical generation to have had an averaged cost of 21.50 cents per KWh. in July 2000, the price in February 2007 was 21.32 cents per KWh.

The following note is most illuminating:
"The Index is based upon a climate with 5.5 hours of sunshine average over the year. This is typical of locations like US Sunbelt States, much of Latin America, most of Africa, the Middle East, India and Australia. Mediterranean Countries, followed by Japan and then Northern Europe have progressively lower average hours. Saharan and southern Africa, and the areas centered on Saudi Arabia, central Australia, Peru and Bolivia are higher."

Solar thermal prices have recently taken a turn for the worse. Between 1997 and 2003 price of ST collectors slowly drifted down from $3.60 per square foot to $3.40. There was a significant price fall in 2004 to $2.40 per square foot, but in 2005 the price kicked back up, and in 2006 the price sky rocked to nearly $6.00 per square foot. Meanwhile the cost of materials need to build PV and ST installations has gone through dramatic inflation. The solar industry has not announced any dramatic efficiency increase in their use of labor to build solar installations, thus labor costs cannot be assumed to be falling. Nor can the long term cost of capitol be assumed to be lower than it is now. Thus none of the economic fundamentals suggest a dramatic drop in the price of ST power. The same factors effecting installation costs for ST also effect installation costs for PV. Thus the contention that solar prices can reasonably expected to fall conflicts with significantly evidence supporting the contrary.

Afterword:  "There really is a convergence of issues, peak everything." - davebygolly

Hardly peak everything. Certainly not peak uranium, not peak thorium, not peak iron, or aluminum. Not peak silicon. Not peak many other minerals, Not peak energy generation. Not peak population or food production. Peak bullshit? Ya!

Years ago, I explored a catalogue of Master's theses titles in the University of Tennessee at Knoxville Library.  One title struck me as apt, because it summarized the catalogue as a whole. The title was, "The Precipitation of Solid Particles in a Tank of Liquid Manure."  The current energy discussion certainly approaches being a tank of liquid manure.    I say this because the discussion is largely free of relevant facts, that would make the issues clear.   Although the Greens are far from being the only offenders, they are most assuredly offenders of the first order.  Greens tend to live in a largely fact free world, in which if real facts don't fit, lies can always be made up.  Green ideology is post-modern in that it has no regard for truth.    The greens live in a counter-reality which is constructed by constant and willful recourse to counter-knowledge which is derived from counter-truths.  Information that fails to fit the green world view is disallowed as fact.  Thus the Green world view is in fact a world of illusion, protected my rationalizations from confrontation with hard realities.   The sole constituant of the green world is manure.

In considering the green method of constructing their counter world, the words of Walter Brueggemann are a propos:  "In fact they articulate, as artist must, against the data at hand.  They refuse to curb their imagination, buoyantly moving in their imaginative anticipation beyond the data of their circumstance.  And so, taken in large, these materials are to be understood as acts of unrestrained grief, as a counter-act of defiant hope, which refuses to give in to circumstance."  

" . . . this material is an enterprise of counter-reality.   It refuses given imperial realities, and summons its hearers to an alternative reality." 

In the case of the Green world view, the alternative reality of the Greens conflicts not only with the facts of history,  but also with the evidence brought by careful attention to the details of preferred data, as well as the identification of trends brought by careful analysis.  The Green world is the world of an eschatology, quasi-religious cult.  Greens believe themselves living in the last days of an old moral order, and that they are seeking the advent of an era of universal peace and happiness.  They take refuge from their present unhappiness by propounding doctrines that lodge the causes of their unhappiness not in themselves, or their own situation, but in an world order which they view as profoundly corrupt.  In this regard their attitude is Gnostic, and their hopes are eschatological. Green's see the source of their unhappiness to be not in their person, or in their personal situation, but the material basis of society  In doing so Greens evade responsibility for solving their personal problems. In doing so the greens have substituted the recitation of bumper sticker slogans for serious thinking, that could lead them to the discovery of the mysteries that lie beyond science.

Can we build a real and viable world on counter-factual dreams that buoyantly move in imaginative anticipation beyond the data of our circumstance? The answer is no, and attempts to do so will inevitably end in disaster. At the head of my blog, I quote a Eugene Wigner, a wise man who I once had the honor of meeting. "The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery."

To see the meaning a life as a mystery, but to not seek the answer to the mystery in things that are not really there, that is the true meaning of science. Richard Feynman noted, "Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there." Those who articulate against the data at hand can never comprehend the things that are there, or truly confront the mysteries that lie at the heart of the matter.