Scientists Sharply Rebut Influential Renewable Energy Plan

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608126/in-sharp-rebuttal-scientists-squash-hopes-for-100-percent-renewables/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Scientists Sharply Rebut Influential Renewable Energy Plan[/font]

[font size=4]Nearly two dozen researchers critique a proposal for wind, solar, and water power gaining traction in policy circles.[/font]

by James Temple | June 19, 2017

[font size=3]On Monday, a team of prominent researchers sharply critiqued an influential paper arguing that wind, solar, and hydroelectric power could affordably meet most of the nation’s energy needs by 2055, saying it contained modeling errors and implausible assumptions that could distort public policy and spending decisions (see “Fifty-States Plan Charts a Path Away from Fossil Fuels”).

The rebuttal appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the same journal that ran the original 2015 paper. Several of the nearly two dozen researchers say they were driven to act because the original authors declined to publish what they viewed as necessary corrections, and the findings were influencing state and federal policy proposals.

The fear is that legislation will mandate goals that can’t be achieved with available technologies at reasonable prices, leading to “wildly unrealistic expectations” and “massive misallocation of resources,” says David Victor, an energy policy researcher at the University of California, San Diego, and coauthor of the critique. “That is both harmful to the economy, and creates the seeds of a backlash.”

The authors of the earlier paper published an accompanying response that disputed the piece point by point. In an interview with MIT Technology Review, lead author Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, said the rebuttal doesn’t accurately portray their research. He says the authors were motivated by allegiance to energy technologies that the 2015 paper excluded.

…[/font][/font]

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/fighting_global_warming_and_climate_change_requires_a_broad_portfolio

[font face=Serif]June 19, 2017

[font size=5]Fighting Global Warming and Climate Change Requires a Broad Energy Portfolio[/font]

[font size=3]Can the continental United States make a rapid, reliable and low-cost transition to an energy system that relies almost exclusively on wind, solar and hydroelectric power? While there is growing excitement for this vision, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by 21 of the nation’s leading energy experts, including David G. Victor and George R. Tynan from the University of California San Diego, describes a more complicated reality.

These researchers argue that achieving net-zero carbon emissions requires the incorporation of a much broader suite of energy sources and approaches.

The paper published by PNAS the week of June 19, 2017, with Christopher Clack as first author, provides a rigorous analysis that corrects a 2015 research roadmap indicating that the continental U.S. could be reliably powered at low cost, in as little as 35 to 40 years, relying on just solar, wind, and hydroelectric power. The researchers write that the conclusions in the 2015 paper are not supported by adequate and realistic analysis and do not provide a reliable guide to whether and at what cost such a transition might be achieved.

“Wind, solar and hydroelectric power can, and will, be important parts of any moves to decarbonize our energy system and therefore combat climate change, but given today’s technical challenges and infrastructure realities, renewables won’t be the only solution,” said Victor, an energy expert at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy.

…[/font][/font]

https://carnegiescience.edu/node/2191

[font face=Serif][font size=5]“Full toolbox” needed to solve the climate change problem[/font]

Monday, June 19, 2017

[font size=3]Washington, DC—Solving the climate change problem means transitioning to an energy system that emits little or no greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. According to new work from a team of experts including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira, achieving a near-zero-emissions energy system will depend on being able to draw on a diverse portfolio of near-zero-emissions energy technologies.

The study, from a group of 21 top researchers led by Christopher Clack of Vibrant Clean Energy, was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The group says that solving the climate problem will depend on making use of energy technologies such as bioenergy, nuclear energy, and carbon capture technology, correcting a misleading 2015 research roadmap that indicated the entire United States could be powered by just solar, wind, and hydroelectric energy.

“While wind, solar, and hydroelectric should play a central role in future American energy systems, we concluded that a much broader array of energy technologies is necessary to transition to a zero-emissions future as quickly and seamlessly as possible,” said lead author Clack.

The team is particularly concerned about having backup energy sources to deal with variability in solar and wind, because current energy storage technology is not sufficient to cover gaps in production on a national scale.

…[/font][/font]

[FBaggins]

1. "Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar"

Significance -

Previous analyses have found that the most feasible route to a low-carbon energy future is one that adopts a diverse portfolio of technologies. In contrast, Jacobson et al. (2015) consider whether the future primary energy sources for the United States could be narrowed to almost exclusively wind, solar, and hydroelectric power and suggest that this can be done at “low-cost” in a way that supplies all power with a probability of loss of load “that exceeds electric-utility-industry standards for reliability”. *** We find that their analysis involves errors, inappropriate methods, and implausible assumptions. *** Their study does not provide credible evidence for rejecting the conclusions of previous analyses that point to the benefits of considering a broad portfolio of energy system options. A policy prescription that overpromises on the benefits of relying on a narrower portfolio of technologies options could be counterproductive, seriously impeding the move to a cost effective decarbonized energy system.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/06/16/1610381114.full

Partial exerpt from their damning conclusion:

The scenarios of ref. 11 can, at best, be described as a poorly executed exploration of an interesting hypothesis. The study’s numerous shortcomings and errors render it unreliable as a guide about the likely cost, technical reliability, or feasibility of a 100% wind, solar, and hydroelectric power system. It is one thing to explore the potential use of technologies in a clearly caveated hypothetical analysis; it is quite another to claim that a model using these technologies at an unprecedented scale conclusively shows the feasibility and reliability of the modeled energy system implemented by midcentury.

From the information given by ref. 11, it is clear that both hydroelectric power and flexible load have been modeled in erroneous ways and that these errors alone invalidate the study and its results. The study of 100% wind, solar, and hydroelectric power systems (11) extrapolates from a few small-scale installations of relatively immature energy storage technologies to assume ubiquitous adoption of high-temperature PCMs for storage at concentrating solar power plants; UTES for heating, cooling, and refrigeration for almost every building in the United States; and widespread use of hydrogen to fuel airplanes, rail, shipping, and most energy-intensive industrial processes. For the critical variable characteristics of wind and solar resources, the study in ref. 11 relies on a climate model that has not been independently scrutinized.

The authors of ref. 11 claim to have shown that their proposed system would be low cost and that there are no economic barriers to the implementation of their vision (12). However, the modeling errors described above, the speculative nature of the terawatt-scale storage technologies envisioned, the theoretical nature of the solutions proposed to handle critical stability aspects of the system, and a number of unsupported assumptions, including a cost of capital that is one-third to one-half lower than that used in practice in the real world, undermine that claim. Their LOADMATCH model does not consider aspects of transmission power flow, operating reserves, or frequency regulation that would typically be represented in a grid model aimed at assessing reliability. Furthermore, as detailed above and in SI Appendix, a large number of costs and barriers have not been considered in ref. 11.

[hedda_foil]

2. Why do they ignore geothermal?

[kristopher]

4. They've apparently tailored to study to promote nuclear and CCS

From Jacobson etal's rebuttal, the fifth point addresses your question:

Clack et al.’s (1) premise that deep decarbonization studies conclude that using nuclear, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and bioenergy reduces costs rel- ative to “other pathways,” such as Jacobson et al.’s (2) 100% pathway, is false.

First Clack et al. (1) imply that Jacobson et al.’s (2) report is an outlier for excluding nuclear and CCS. To the contrary, Jacobson et al. are in the mainstream, as grid stability studies finding low-cost up-to-100% clean, renewable solutions without nuclear or CCS are the majority (3–16).

Second, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (17) contradicts Clack et al.’s (1) claim that including nuclear or CCS reduces costs (7.6.1.1): “. . .high shares of variable RE [renewable energy] power. . .may not be ideally complemented by nuclear, CCS,...” and (7.8.2) “Without support from governments, investments in new nuclear power plants are currently generally not economically attractive within liberalized markets,. . .” Similarly, Freed et al. (18) state, “. . .there is virtually no history of nuclear construction under the economic and institutional circumstances that prevail throughout much of Europe and the United States,” and Cooper (19), who compared decarbonization scenarios, concluded, “Neither fossil fuels with CCS or nuclear power enters the least-cost, low-carbon portfolio.”

<snip>

Fifth, Clack et al. (1) contend that Jacobson et al. (2) place “constraints” on technology options. In contrast, Jacobson et al. include many technologies and processes not in Clack et al.’s (1) models. For example, Jacobson et al. (2) include, but MacDonald et al. (20) exclude, concentrated solar power (CSP), tidal, wave, geothermal, solar heat, any storage (CSP, pumped-hydro, hydro- power, water, ice, rocks, hydrogen), demand-response, competition among wind turbines for kinetic energy, electrification of all energy sectors, calculations of load decrease upon electrification, and so forth. Model time steps in MacDonald et al. (20) are also 120-times longer than in Jacobson et al. (2).

http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CombiningRenew/PNASReplyClack.pdf

[FBaggins]

6. That's certainly Jacobson's bizarre spin

"Lead author Christopher Clack, chief executive of Vibrant Clean Energy and a former NOAA researcher, described Jacobson’s accusation that the authors were acting out of allegiance to fossil fuels or nuclear power as “bizarre.” The 21 authors of the rebuttal, which features a conflict-of-interest statement, include energy, policy, storage, and climate researchers affiliated with prominent institutions like Carnegie Mellon, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Brookings Institution, and Jacobson’s own Stanford."

...snip...

“They do bizarre things,” says Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and coauthor of the rebuttal. “They treat U.S. hydropower as an entirely fungible resource. Like the amount [of power] coming from a river in Washington state is available in Georgia, instantaneously.”

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608126/in-sharp-rebuttal-scientists-squash-hopes-for-100-percent-renewables/?utm_campaign=add_this&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post

[kristopher]

8. Jacobson's point is spot on.

His list of problems with their critique is clear and damning. The 21 authors are operating from the mindset behind analysis by the dominant establishment paradigm in this graph. It compares the actual performance of solar with the growth predicted using the same sort of assumptions employed by Jacobson's critics.
They (and you Nuclear-Baggins) have consistently been shown to be wrong. That wrongness is rooted in a PREFERENCE for the existing centralized generating system.

[FBaggins]

9. You clearly haven't even read the report or reviewed the authors

You're making yourself look foolish.

His response is childish and off-base. The flaws in his nonsensical "report" were clear from the beginning.

[kristopher]

10. It's a product of the same paradigm as exists in agencies like the IEA and EIA

This graph provides a fine example of the way the two views prove out:

[FBaggins]

11. Laughable

That "paradigm" being "anything other than 100% wind/solar/hydro by next week"

[kristopher]

12. Explain the graph.

Not only are the horrible IEA predictions consistent with the US Energy Information Agency's (EIA) prediction performance, they have both delivered the same flawed analysis on the growth of installed wind energy.

While we're at it we can add another to the list - absolutely horrible prognostication on the costs and deliverability for both "clean coal" and nuclear power plants.

There is a viewpoint associated with all of those past predictions that is at odds with reality.

You promote that viewpoint on behalf of nuclear power so it isn't surprising that you are once again here trying to use more BS to tear down that which you and nuclear can't legitimately out-compete.

[FBaggins]

13. Laughable that you think it's relevant to the conversation

The debunking of Jacobsen's nonsense isn't "we can't build that many solar panels" (though the graph shows that they aren't being built nearly fast enough to hit his model). It's that even IF we built that many, his mix wouldn't work, let alone at the cost he claims.

[kristopher]

16. Sure Baggy, whatever you say.

:ROFL:

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. "Poisoning the well"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

Implying that an opponent has some sort of ulterior motive (e.g. "They've apparently tailored to (sic) study to promote nuclear and CCS&quot does not make their argument any less valid. It’s simply another form of ad hominem attack.

[kristopher]

15. People, even researchers, bring bias to the table.

If such a situation were not relevant to this case, then the IEA and EIA forecasts wouldn't be so consistently and horribly inaccurate. The institutional bias (produced by the human element) is a significant part of the picture or else the IEA and EIA would have corrected their obviously flawed methodology long ago.

I'm very familiar with the work of several of the 21 authors and have a great deal of respect for them. That doesn't mean that they are writing without bias. For example, why would they look to Jacobson's work as problematic when the much more influential and completely, provably wrong, forecasts by the IEA and EIA continue to go unchallenged by most mainstream academics. For example, Jacobson has almost no influence on who obtains funding, but the IEA is a key source for analysis by investment groups around the world.

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. I like to say, "There's no such thing as objective reporting."

Yes, researchers have opinions and beliefs, and their opinions and beliefs tend to guide their research, and they are most receptive to results which support their opinions and beliefs (i.e. “confirmation bias”) and their reporting will tend to reflect their biases.

By the same token we may safely assume that “Jacobson et al.” are biased.

For all that it is worth, PNAS reviewers accepted both the 2015 report and the 2017 rebuttal. So, I feel it is reasonable to say that overt bias was minimal.

[kristopher]

18. Totally agree

I see the operational agent in this type of bias as being related to trust.

We all have a certain set of values. Those values are largely determined by what we believe to be true/false, which in turn feeds back into the ongoing maintenance and reformation of values. Collectively these are elements of how social norms form.

The authors on that list that I familiar with, and others like Hansen are embracing the same essential set of norms, values and beliefs that you and I hold. But the matrix they are placed within is variable according to the individual, with differing formative causes leading to the present state of mind.

One key element in our discussion is trust; especially, in this case, what people, groups, processes and institutions do we believe will protect our well being. Our general life path - parents/family, schools, peers, successes/failures etc - shapes who and what we have faith in and how we prioritize that trust.

One bias at work is degree of trust in both institutional authority and the wider established established order.

In this energy debate I think that manifests in an individualized willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to those institutions that we've each always relied on for accuracy in rendering to us life's rewards.

The EIA/IEA is predominantly staffed with people who believe in the SYSTEM that now provides the energy in our lives.

Generally, they probably believe that incremental change is preferable to revolutionary change unless absolutely necessary. Assuming the application of normal (not idealized) academic and professional ethical standards, as with the rest of us those staffing the EIA/IEA are able to continue with their world view for a considerable time before letting go and changing the parameters of their modeling.

Now, remember that this institutional bias which has led to poor results in their modeling of renewable energy's progress has been going on since at least 1992 - which is as far back as I've traced it. I believe that goes to show the strength of this VBN matrix on the decision-making of good, well intentioned people.

More immediately the authors of the Jacobson critique (and Hansen) have a psychology that leads them more than most to trust institutional authority. I say they trust to enough to cause them to misinterpret and/or ignore work that threatens the structure of the system they are immersed in.

The economic inertia of a system of distributed energy is (I believe) now so strong that it can't be halted. We are out of the fundamental R&D phase of a revolutionary technological change and we've entered the deployment phase. That almost always goes faster and further than those inclined to preserve the old technological paradigm are willing to accept.

[FBaggins]

19. Does that include Jacobson?

So... for instance... if he says that "100% renewables" is the only moral choice - you can assume that any "study" that he produces will necessarily say that it's feasible and affordable, regardless of what the science actually says?

Yeah. You got that right.

"why would they look to Jacobson's work as problematic when the much more influential and completely, provably wrong, forecasts by the IEA and EIA"

You really can't tell the difference between an economic forecast and an evaluation of the feasibility of a particular system?

Once again - nobody is saying that it's impossible to build a bunch of windmills and solar panels. What they doubt (correctly) is whether you could reliably and affordably power the country with that mix of generation and imagined storage/transmission/etc.

[FBaggins]

20. They demolish Jacobson's "rebuttal" here

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8oxg2xykc8j3dx/ReplyResponse.pdf?dl=0

#s 5&6 are particularly damning (pun intended). Did you realize that his "model" assumed 1300 GWs of hydro capacity available instantaneously throughout the grid at no cost or transmission loss?

As I said... laughable.

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. From the OP

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608126/in-sharp-rebuttal-scientists-squash-hopes-for-100-percent-renewables/
…

“They do bizarre things,” says Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and coauthor of the rebuttal. “They treat U.S. hydropower as an entirely fungible resource. Like the amount (of power) coming from a river in Washington state is available in Georgia, instantaneously.”

…

[FBaggins]

22. Exactly. "Bizarre"

But it isn't just the transmission issues (ironic that a "study" purporting solve a grid reliability problem would ignore that... but why pick at nits?). He assumes that we'll just add turbines to existing dams until nameplate capacity is over ten times what exists currently.

He neither accounts for that extreme expense (in most cases it wouldn't even be possible), nor for the huge implied impact of releasing that much water in that short timeframe. WooHoo! You met a load! Who cares about all the people you just killed?

[FBaggins]

5. They don't

Jacobson actually proposes a number of combinations. One version has up to 4% geothermal (which is actually a substantial increase when you consider how little it currently provides and that he proposes replacing not just current electricity generation, but transportation fuels, home heating fuels, etc.

In the version evaluated by this piece, Jacobson includes 1.5% from wave/tidal/geothermal. The authors don't drop it from their analysis rubbishing the fantasy... they merely drop it from the label they use to refer to the plan.

From the paper:

does include 1.5% generation from geothermal, tidal, and wave energy. Throughout the remainder of the paper, we denote the scenarios in ref. 11 as 100% wind, solar, and hydroelectric power for simplicity. Such a scenario may be a useful way to explore the hypothesis that it is possible to meet the challenges associated with reliably supplying energy across all sectors almost exclusively with large quantities of a narrow range of variable energy resources. However, there is a difference between presenting such visions as thought experiments and asserting, as the authors do, that rapid and complete conversion to an almost 100% wind, solar, and hydroelectric power system is feasible with little downside (12). It is important to understand the distinction between physical possibility and feasibility in the real world. To be clear, the specific aim of the work by Jacobson et al. (11) is to provide “low-cost solutions to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of WWS [wind, water and solar power] across all energy sectors in the continental United States between 2050 and 2055.”

[hedda_foil]

7. Thanks, Frodo!

[hunter]

3. Jacobson was exceptionally annoying on Bill Nye's already awkward multi-episode Netflix rant.

No, I don't have anything nice to say about Jacobson. He reminds me too much of greenwashing Amory Lovins.

Yes, climate change is real. Yes, it will probably be the end of the world as we know it. And no, solar power, wind power, even nuclear power, are not going to magically save us.

A sustainable society looks nothing like the affluent high energy industrial society so many of us at the higher end of the economic spectrum now enjoy.