Tales of Reliability, Climate, Water, and Energy on the Spanish Peninsula.

[NNadir]

I'm not going to write very much about this paper, Sustainable Energy Transition Considering the Water–Energy Nexus: A Multiobjective Optimization Framework, (Javier Tovar-Facio, Lidia S. Guerras, José M. Ponce-Ortega, and Mariano Martín ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 2021 9 (10), 3768-3780) in this post; other things are constraining my time.

It is about energy on the Iberian peninsula, specifically in Spain.

Nevertheless, in a sensible world, a graphic from the paper and a table from it would mean something fairly obvious, but unsurprisingly we don't live in a sensible world.

The graphic, figure 2 from the paper:



The key:

CA set of existing carbon power stations
CC set of existing combined cycle
CG set of existing cogeneration power plants
CS set of existing concentrated solar power
EO set of existing onshore wind power plants
HY set of existing hydroelectric power station
PV set of existing photovoltaic power plants
NU set of existing nuclear power plants

A table, table 1 from the paper:



Electricity is translating into a basic human right, in my view, since an indicator of poverty is the absence of electricity. However, for a sustainable world, we must produce electricity with the lowest reliable carbon impact.

There is one, and only one, system on the Spanish peninsula which is both reliable and low carbon.

It should be obvious, but it's not. And the fact that it's not as obvious as it should be is a reason we are now skirting 418 ppm of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, about 25 ppm higher than it was just 10 years ago.

Have a nice evening.

[EarnestPutz]

1. You have, as usual, made the good case for nuclear power. Photovoltaic fluctuating between....

....15 and 25 % capacity, in sunny Spain no less, is the most telling.