You will have to rebuild/replace the renewable generation infrastructure (wind and solar) every quarter of a century at a minimum- that is the one item that gets left out of all of the cost calculations. Windmills and solar panels are not built to last and can't be built to last. Siemens is already finding this out about the very large windmills they manufacture that are needed to bring wind to even close to a breakeven point on cost- the mechanical stresses on such equipment can't be engineered around- they wear out very quickly and must be replaced on a time-line that is actually well short of a quarter century.
Add in the need to either have a massive storage capacity that will cost trillions of dollars to build out for just the first time (it would also need to be replaced on a quarter century or less timeline) or we keep the present fossil fuel generation on stand-by 100% of the time, and there is literally no doubt about the outcome- it will be a financial black hole unless we change direction.
If you want to do away with fossil fuel electrical generation, it will have to be nuclear fission generation plants- it is the only technically and financially feasible solution, and that will be the case today and 50 years from now.
Your words remind me of those from the proponents for the end of fossil fuels. Some facts intermingled with extremist conjecture
There is not a need for 100% fossil fuels backup and hasn't been for a long time. We have ~8% hydro which is a combination of base load, intermittent, and peaking capacity. Nuclear is about 20% base load and most of that isn't going away soon.
Our system prior to wind/solar had quite a bit of fossil backup via gas peaking plants. Current levels of solar/wind don't much change that. Yes, that will change as more renewables go online but the system doesn't fail if there aren't enough batteries. Gas peaking plants are a second best alternative.
Ignoring storage that is currently a minor issue but will become larger as renewals increase, wind is cost competitive including the life cycle costs. Note that nuclear estimates don't always account for waste disposal nor decommissioning.
Nuclear suffers from a similar problem to solar and wind. It can't easily be ADJUSTED UP OR DOWN to meet daily and hourly demand. PEAKING is mostly done with gas. In the absence of fossil fuels, batteries actually complement nuclear too.
"It (nuclear) can't easily be the increased to meet daily and hourly demand."
The nuclear reactions themselves aren't easy to ramp up/down, but the actual ability adjust the electrical output is no harder than for a gas/steam turbine since it is such turbines that generate the actual electrical power.
1 - I edited that slightly, "It can't easily be ADJUSTED UP OR DOWN to meet daily and hourly demand.
2 - Gas turbines are used for peaking because they can be more easily turned on and off than coal and nuclear plants. Note that coal and nuclear often continue to generate even when electric rates go negative. If "the actual ability adjust the electrical output is no harder than for a gas/steam turbine" then they would stop generating when rates go negative. But they almost never do.
You are a fool, Stu. You need the back up/storage at night for all solar output, and you need the back up/storage for the times when the wind isn't blowing enough (or is blowing too hard) over large areas of the country. Not having the ability to fully 100% support the grid requirements with near-local generation for power guarantees massive blackouts. But, I guess we will just have to learn this lesson the hard way.
You don't need night time backup for ALL solar at night because demand is less. With rare exceptions in limited locations (mainly areas with lots of electric heat), peak power needs are always during the day. Even then, those night time peaks are nearly always or always seasonal peaks.
"wind is cost competitive including the life cycle costs"
Life cycle costs for wind and solar are not accounted for-full stop. The only capital costs accounted for are the installation costs up front, which already runs into the trillion dollar ranges for the US. You will have to replace every single wind turbine and solar panel on an ongoing basis that runs anywhere from 10 to 25 years. These future costs are being ignored because they are inconvenient to the proponents of these systems. Show me a single report that includes the replacement cycle for these power generation systems. Just one.
I agree the decommissioning cost is a problem if the owner can't be made to pay for it but I fail to see it as a make or break issue in life cycle cost.
Have you compared cost to build to cost to decommission?
On top of that, have you considered the salvage value?
What's most odd about the industrial policy design is that it has nothing to do with how the industrial policies of the Asian tigers worked. They are trying to do basically the opposite of what they did under opposite circumstances. With the Asian tigers, they started with low-value manufacture of obsolete products in a circumstance in which they devalued their currencies aggressively for a long period of time against the dollar, which the US was generally happy with. They moved up the value chain from low on the value chain. They also benefitted from a lot of special circumstances related to the Vietnam War in the early days if you include Japan in the analysis.
With the current fad, they want to start at the tippy top of the value chain with an overvalued currency, no real plan for export-lead growth, no educational policy behind it, and goofy demographics. I don't think the plan is for it to work; the plan is just to steal as much public money as possible and to blame it on someone else when it fails. It doesn't make sense to analyze a criminal-operation-under-cover-of-law as a policy.
I get ads for the State Senator in my upcoming election every time I watch a YouTube video. What struck me is that the ad basically amounted to: "Subsidize Demand, Restrict Supply."
Of course the ad didn't say that. It just said that the state senator would make everything "affordable" (subsidize demand) while raising wages (restrict supply).
And that was it. There was no plan to accomplish this. Just a very fast montage showing a women working at an Amazon warehouse and doing laundry looking unhappy (VoiceOver, "so you can do less of this") and then a slightly slower shot her her smiling with her baby (Voiceover, "and more of this").
Alright, maybe it's just the nature of a quick Youtube ad. What does her website have to say. She has an "on the issues" page which seems to be a single paragraph on each issue usually without any proposed legislation. Let's try:
----
"MAKING VIRGINIA MORE AFFORDABLE"
From the shelves to the pump, higher prices have made it difficult for Virginians to make ends meet. *Candidate* will fight for Virginian families by pushing to bring down costs for things like health care and child care and fighting to lower taxes on middle class Virginians, while increasing wages for Virginia's working families. Every family in Virginia deserves the opportunity to thrive and that is why *Candidate* will work to expand economic opportunity, invest in our small businesses, and fight for working families.
----
So she's going to subsidize healthcare and childcare while lowering taxes and increasing wages. Sounds like...Subsidize Demand, Restrict Supply! Ok, so the long form of the ad is basically the same.
Child Tax Credits properly reward people for having children, thus internalizing the external benefits of raising a child from society to the parent. They take subsidies AWAY from the childless free riders who don't pay their fair share.
Child Care subsidies favor one arrangement of child rearing over others (a low TFR arrangement at that), and are often dysgenic (usually they subsidize lower income households only). They are also a very inefficient way of increasing TFR, the same $ spent on child tax credits are much more effective.
"If building an EV is so much more costly than building a standard or hybrid car..."
But it's not. A Nissan Leaf starts at $28k with a 40 kWh battery and $36k for the 60 kWh. A new base Tesla Model 3 with a 57 kWh battery is $40k and the long range option with a 82 kWh battery is $47k. These prices are before the $7500 federal tax credit. Even without that tax credit those prices are mass market friendly for the new car market.
A base gas-only new Honda Accord starts at $27k without any options. And the loaded Touring Hybrid model is $37k which is almost the same as a Tesla Model 3 without the tax rebate.
I completely agree with letting the free market decide and support ending government subsidies and such. But EVs are fully price competitive on the market as-is.
Great question. That's the type of question we should be asking.
As a consumer, EVs are great options in the present. One simple way to see that is that people are choosing to buy them, even without government rebates.
I'm sure the big picture of how EVs impact environmental goals is complicated. I suspect the current models are slightly better than gas/ICE cars, but maybe not.
Also, EVs will clearly get a lot better in the next 5-10 years. EV batteries will get better + cheaper, which will make both the consumer and environmental stories much better.
At a consumer level, buy what you want. Lots of people love EVs and would never want to buy an ICE vehicle. Conversely, lots of people love ICE vehicles and don't want to buy EVs. Both groups of consumers should buy what they want. The market should try to cater to as many consumers as possible.
Why should you care about refilling at a gas pump vs recharging at a charging station? That's a consumer choice. Why should you care about the differences between any consumer products. Buy the products you want.
Also, a lot of the amazing features of Tesla vehicles that set them apart from other cars, have nothing to do with the drive train. For example, the auto pilot software, the integrated dash cam, the software that runs on the Tesla is all super innovative and could be done on a ICE engine car if Tesla wanted to.
At a macro level, what's the advantage of switching to EV? Honestly, I don't know enough to say. If I was an environmental engineer, I'd study the issue more deeply but I'm not.
The California heavy truck EV mandates are of particular interest to me, as they seem to be a proxy for how the feds want to go. But these regulatory moves are ill-planned, ignoring real-world constraints and challenges. There are few in the trucking industry who aren’t in favor of making progress towards tackling climate problems, but only if there are legitimate, thoughtful steps planned. Not bureaucratic parades
On your initial question, I'd say the probabilities are monotone increasing in your list: most likely is Black Hole, while least likely is Total Success. I think it is possible that the average cost per electron for solar panels or windmills may someday be lower than the average cost per electron of a natural gas plant, but the additional infrastructure to allow an electric generating system heavily dependent on renewables (especially energy storage) will mean that solar and wind will never make economic sense at large scale.
Loss Leading for Economic Transformation: Subsidized companies are inefficient and go out of business when the subsidies get removed, but the business practices they pioneer get emulated by others and endure.
I like to see the pushback on industrial policy, but I think people underestimate how suboptimal the "free market" is in creating innovation, which is fraught with free rider problems. Industrial policy can help with that.
A useful metric is weight vs power output. A modern gas turbine can generate 40 mW and weighs about 8.5 tons. A very large windmill can generate about 4 mW and it weighs 90 tons (and this doesn't include the tower, either)
You can't manufacture this equipment in the US at anywhere near a competitive cost without tariffs. You can't even mine the minerals in the US today even if you could manufacture the equipment here competitively. The entire policy structure is utter madness.
We built the grid around gas oil generation of electrons....we can do the same with green produced electrons. No biggie. You folks that hate change....bug me.
* adapt or die....build a grid that must deal with our new reality*
Do you have a little more description of how your green grid would work? Without storage, it would involve a lot of dark at night and in the winter. The only demonstrated storage options (pumped water storage and batteries) are very expensive.
How much extra are you willing to pay for your green grid with frequent blackouts?
You will have to rebuild/replace the renewable generation infrastructure (wind and solar) every quarter of a century at a minimum- that is the one item that gets left out of all of the cost calculations. Windmills and solar panels are not built to last and can't be built to last. Siemens is already finding this out about the very large windmills they manufacture that are needed to bring wind to even close to a breakeven point on cost- the mechanical stresses on such equipment can't be engineered around- they wear out very quickly and must be replaced on a time-line that is actually well short of a quarter century.
Add in the need to either have a massive storage capacity that will cost trillions of dollars to build out for just the first time (it would also need to be replaced on a quarter century or less timeline) or we keep the present fossil fuel generation on stand-by 100% of the time, and there is literally no doubt about the outcome- it will be a financial black hole unless we change direction.
If you want to do away with fossil fuel electrical generation, it will have to be nuclear fission generation plants- it is the only technically and financially feasible solution, and that will be the case today and 50 years from now.
Your words remind me of those from the proponents for the end of fossil fuels. Some facts intermingled with extremist conjecture
There is not a need for 100% fossil fuels backup and hasn't been for a long time. We have ~8% hydro which is a combination of base load, intermittent, and peaking capacity. Nuclear is about 20% base load and most of that isn't going away soon.
Our system prior to wind/solar had quite a bit of fossil backup via gas peaking plants. Current levels of solar/wind don't much change that. Yes, that will change as more renewables go online but the system doesn't fail if there aren't enough batteries. Gas peaking plants are a second best alternative.
Ignoring storage that is currently a minor issue but will become larger as renewals increase, wind is cost competitive including the life cycle costs. Note that nuclear estimates don't always account for waste disposal nor decommissioning.
Nuclear suffers from a similar problem to solar and wind. It can't easily be ADJUSTED UP OR DOWN to meet daily and hourly demand. PEAKING is mostly done with gas. In the absence of fossil fuels, batteries actually complement nuclear too.
And this is just stupid:
"It (nuclear) can't easily be the increased to meet daily and hourly demand."
The nuclear reactions themselves aren't easy to ramp up/down, but the actual ability adjust the electrical output is no harder than for a gas/steam turbine since it is such turbines that generate the actual electrical power.
two things:
1 - I edited that slightly, "It can't easily be ADJUSTED UP OR DOWN to meet daily and hourly demand.
2 - Gas turbines are used for peaking because they can be more easily turned on and off than coal and nuclear plants. Note that coal and nuclear often continue to generate even when electric rates go negative. If "the actual ability adjust the electrical output is no harder than for a gas/steam turbine" then they would stop generating when rates go negative. But they almost never do.
You are a fool, Stu. You need the back up/storage at night for all solar output, and you need the back up/storage for the times when the wind isn't blowing enough (or is blowing too hard) over large areas of the country. Not having the ability to fully 100% support the grid requirements with near-local generation for power guarantees massive blackouts. But, I guess we will just have to learn this lesson the hard way.
Please keep your personal comments to yourself.
You don't need night time backup for ALL solar at night because demand is less. With rare exceptions in limited locations (mainly areas with lots of electric heat), peak power needs are always during the day. Even then, those night time peaks are nearly always or always seasonal peaks.
And this is even more ignorant:
"wind is cost competitive including the life cycle costs"
Life cycle costs for wind and solar are not accounted for-full stop. The only capital costs accounted for are the installation costs up front, which already runs into the trillion dollar ranges for the US. You will have to replace every single wind turbine and solar panel on an ongoing basis that runs anywhere from 10 to 25 years. These future costs are being ignored because they are inconvenient to the proponents of these systems. Show me a single report that includes the replacement cycle for these power generation systems. Just one.
I agree the decommissioning cost is a problem if the owner can't be made to pay for it but I fail to see it as a make or break issue in life cycle cost.
Have you compared cost to build to cost to decommission?
On top of that, have you considered the salvage value?
What's most odd about the industrial policy design is that it has nothing to do with how the industrial policies of the Asian tigers worked. They are trying to do basically the opposite of what they did under opposite circumstances. With the Asian tigers, they started with low-value manufacture of obsolete products in a circumstance in which they devalued their currencies aggressively for a long period of time against the dollar, which the US was generally happy with. They moved up the value chain from low on the value chain. They also benefitted from a lot of special circumstances related to the Vietnam War in the early days if you include Japan in the analysis.
With the current fad, they want to start at the tippy top of the value chain with an overvalued currency, no real plan for export-lead growth, no educational policy behind it, and goofy demographics. I don't think the plan is for it to work; the plan is just to steal as much public money as possible and to blame it on someone else when it fails. It doesn't make sense to analyze a criminal-operation-under-cover-of-law as a policy.
Two cases in point: ethanol fuel requirements and Tesla, Inc. Neither would have survived as long as they have or to this day without subsidies.
I agree with your points Dr. Kling, but can you address the case for tariffs when they prevent regulatory arbitrage?
I get ads for the State Senator in my upcoming election every time I watch a YouTube video. What struck me is that the ad basically amounted to: "Subsidize Demand, Restrict Supply."
Of course the ad didn't say that. It just said that the state senator would make everything "affordable" (subsidize demand) while raising wages (restrict supply).
And that was it. There was no plan to accomplish this. Just a very fast montage showing a women working at an Amazon warehouse and doing laundry looking unhappy (VoiceOver, "so you can do less of this") and then a slightly slower shot her her smiling with her baby (Voiceover, "and more of this").
Alright, maybe it's just the nature of a quick Youtube ad. What does her website have to say. She has an "on the issues" page which seems to be a single paragraph on each issue usually without any proposed legislation. Let's try:
----
"MAKING VIRGINIA MORE AFFORDABLE"
From the shelves to the pump, higher prices have made it difficult for Virginians to make ends meet. *Candidate* will fight for Virginian families by pushing to bring down costs for things like health care and child care and fighting to lower taxes on middle class Virginians, while increasing wages for Virginia's working families. Every family in Virginia deserves the opportunity to thrive and that is why *Candidate* will work to expand economic opportunity, invest in our small businesses, and fight for working families.
----
So she's going to subsidize healthcare and childcare while lowering taxes and increasing wages. Sounds like...Subsidize Demand, Restrict Supply! Ok, so the long form of the ad is basically the same.
Child Tax Credits properly reward people for having children, thus internalizing the external benefits of raising a child from society to the parent. They take subsidies AWAY from the childless free riders who don't pay their fair share.
Child Care subsidies favor one arrangement of child rearing over others (a low TFR arrangement at that), and are often dysgenic (usually they subsidize lower income households only). They are also a very inefficient way of increasing TFR, the same $ spent on child tax credits are much more effective.
"If building an EV is so much more costly than building a standard or hybrid car..."
But it's not. A Nissan Leaf starts at $28k with a 40 kWh battery and $36k for the 60 kWh. A new base Tesla Model 3 with a 57 kWh battery is $40k and the long range option with a 82 kWh battery is $47k. These prices are before the $7500 federal tax credit. Even without that tax credit those prices are mass market friendly for the new car market.
A base gas-only new Honda Accord starts at $27k without any options. And the loaded Touring Hybrid model is $37k which is almost the same as a Tesla Model 3 without the tax rebate.
I completely agree with letting the free market decide and support ending government subsidies and such. But EVs are fully price competitive on the market as-is.
Great question. That's the type of question we should be asking.
As a consumer, EVs are great options in the present. One simple way to see that is that people are choosing to buy them, even without government rebates.
I'm sure the big picture of how EVs impact environmental goals is complicated. I suspect the current models are slightly better than gas/ICE cars, but maybe not.
Also, EVs will clearly get a lot better in the next 5-10 years. EV batteries will get better + cheaper, which will make both the consumer and environmental stories much better.
At a consumer level, buy what you want. Lots of people love EVs and would never want to buy an ICE vehicle. Conversely, lots of people love ICE vehicles and don't want to buy EVs. Both groups of consumers should buy what they want. The market should try to cater to as many consumers as possible.
Why should you care about refilling at a gas pump vs recharging at a charging station? That's a consumer choice. Why should you care about the differences between any consumer products. Buy the products you want.
Also, a lot of the amazing features of Tesla vehicles that set them apart from other cars, have nothing to do with the drive train. For example, the auto pilot software, the integrated dash cam, the software that runs on the Tesla is all super innovative and could be done on a ICE engine car if Tesla wanted to.
At a macro level, what's the advantage of switching to EV? Honestly, I don't know enough to say. If I was an environmental engineer, I'd study the issue more deeply but I'm not.
The California heavy truck EV mandates are of particular interest to me, as they seem to be a proxy for how the feds want to go. But these regulatory moves are ill-planned, ignoring real-world constraints and challenges. There are few in the trucking industry who aren’t in favor of making progress towards tackling climate problems, but only if there are legitimate, thoughtful steps planned. Not bureaucratic parades
On your initial question, I'd say the probabilities are monotone increasing in your list: most likely is Black Hole, while least likely is Total Success. I think it is possible that the average cost per electron for solar panels or windmills may someday be lower than the average cost per electron of a natural gas plant, but the additional infrastructure to allow an electric generating system heavily dependent on renewables (especially energy storage) will mean that solar and wind will never make economic sense at large scale.
There's a fifth possibility:
Loss Leading for Economic Transformation: Subsidized companies are inefficient and go out of business when the subsidies get removed, but the business practices they pioneer get emulated by others and endure.
I like to see the pushback on industrial policy, but I think people underestimate how suboptimal the "free market" is in creating innovation, which is fraught with free rider problems. Industrial policy can help with that.
Energy conservation used to be part of the mix, at least it had a place at the discussion table. Quaint!
Am I to understand that you feel we were robbed of the true number of pickup trucks, that we deserve on the road with us? I can scarcely imagine more.
On a more positive note:
https://www.talkingclimate.ca/p/green-energy-saves-the-day?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
A useful metric is weight vs power output. A modern gas turbine can generate 40 mW and weighs about 8.5 tons. A very large windmill can generate about 4 mW and it weighs 90 tons (and this doesn't include the tower, either)
You can't manufacture this equipment in the US at anywhere near a competitive cost without tariffs. You can't even mine the minerals in the US today even if you could manufacture the equipment here competitively. The entire policy structure is utter madness.
We built the grid around gas oil generation of electrons....we can do the same with green produced electrons. No biggie. You folks that hate change....bug me.
* adapt or die....build a grid that must deal with our new reality*
Cheers
Do you have a little more description of how your green grid would work? Without storage, it would involve a lot of dark at night and in the winter. The only demonstrated storage options (pumped water storage and batteries) are very expensive.
How much extra are you willing to pay for your green grid with frequent blackouts?
They will store the energy in the furious waving on Dennis' hands.