In almost every way you cut it, China is already taking a much more aggressive approach toward climate change than the United States is.

This is a rather bold claim seems perfectly fitted to Carl Sagan’s statement “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Naam’s evidence is extraordinary, unfortunately it is also more than a bit inaccurate. He puts forward a bunch of evidence to support his claim. But let’s just consider this one:  ”China loves wind more than coal.”

An extraordinary claim indeed. What’s his evidence?

For all this investment in solar power, the energy source most commonly associated with China is coal—dirty, dirty coal, the most CO₂-intensive of all the fossil fuels. And yes, China does burn almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined. But in 2012, China actually deployed more new wind power than new coal power. In fact, wind power growth was more than double that of coal power growth in China—26 terawatt-hours of new wind generation in 2012 versus only 12 terawatt-hours of added coal generation in the same year.

Now, the inexorable growth of coal in China in the last decade is often news even to people who make some kind of living writing about energy, but could it possibly be slowing down? And could wind be growing faster than coal?

Consider how much coal capacity China has been installing in the last decade:

(source)

In 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 China added at least 50 GW of new coal plants each year. The average is slightly over 60 GW per year. In simple terms: since 2005 China has added the equivalent of more than five United Kingdom’s worth of electricity capacity, all in the form of coal. You will also note that the above projections (from the US government laboratory) are not exactly projecting a rapid decline in new coal plants.

So, what did happen in 2012?

Here is the basic arithmetic. China opened 50 GW of new coal plants in 2012 (according to the article Naam himself cites). In contrast China only added 15.9 GW of wind capacity. Capacity of course does not tell the whole story, a point often missed by people. Bloomberg New Energy Finance says that China’s wind farms had a capacity factor of 21.6% last year (though I must point out that where claims by BNEF are concerned you should consider investing in a bucket full of salt), which is roughly in line with most statistics I have seen. So, in real terms growth of coal plants is at least eight times greater than in wind farms. Compare this basic reality with Naam’s claim that wind is growing twice as fast as coal.

I’ll conclude by pointing out that I am repeating myself with this post. However, this now appears to a zombie fact, and I expect it to be repeated quite in the too often fact free debate around energy.

In this vain, here is Kevin Bullis in today’s MIT Technology Review:

Siemens says it would make sense to build solar power plants in sunny countries in Europe rather than in cloudy ones. And wind turbines should be built in windy places.

These blindingly obvious suggestions run contrary to what’s actually happening. For example, a solar panel in Spain generates about twice as much electricity as the same-size solar panel in Germany

This graph makes it rather clear that some European countries simply aren’t well suited to solar, while some are:

This idea, that you build wind farms where it is windy and solar panels where it is sunny is a curiously controversial one. Some would even lobby accusations of you being “anti-renewables” if you put it forward. However it seems a rather obvious and hard to argue you with point of view. The “success” of solar power in Germany however has succeeded in convincing many that we can simply ignore these fundamental issues. And this is a serious problem.

One of the traits of a great writer is that he will reveal the extent of your ignorance. Vaclav Smil has this and more, in particular the rare coupling of an inability to write a dull book and an ability to produce them at a prodigious rate. And this month’s Intelligent Life has a piece by Oliver Morton which does a nice job of summarizing Smil’s style.

A quote:

A professor at the University of Manitoba, Dr Smil writes compendious books that make lovely use of his relentlessly questioning mind, thorough knowledge of the relevant literature, unshakable self-confidence, slightly austere manner and unflagging willingness to deploy his pocket calculator. He ranges widely, but his recurrent theme is the way that energy flows through—and between—natural and artificial systems on both the grandest scales and the most intimate ones. The result is numerate niftiness galore.

And this rather surprising fact:

The world’s cattle weigh 16 times as much as all the wild mammals on the planet put together.

For what it’s worth my favourite Smil book is Energy at the Crossroads, which will do a much greater job of informing you about the realities of energy than any number of op-eds. Unfortunately, most of his books aren’t particularly cheap (blame the silliness of Academic publishers), but don’t let that put you off. Many of the essays on his website are must reads, in particular his piece on the coal dependence of large scale steel production.

And anyone who thinks carbon capture and storage can solve climate change should consider his remarkably trenchant counter argument during this conversation with Andy Revkin:

A quote:

At 2013 prices, solar PV in mid-latitude countries is now cheaper than new nuclear. Put in the UK context, the proposed EdF power station at Hinkley is now more expensive per unit of electricity generated than solar farms in the south of England.  The implications of this need a great deal more consideration than they are getting.

By itself, the cost crossover  doesn’t mean that countries shouldn’t invest in nuclear power. Nuclear delivers electricity reliably throughout the year. This baseload power is more valuable than PV’s high levels of output at midday in summer when demand levels are low in most of Europe.

The final sentence here makes it clear that Goodall’s headline “Solar is now cheaper than nuclear. Even in the UK.” is somewhat misleading. If one thing costs slightly less than the other thing, but is less valuable how can you say it is cheaper. This is rather like saying an iPad is cheaper than a MacBook Pro. It doesn’t really tell you a great deal. If someone wants to do some actual work, then they may find the iPad’s lower price is not so enticing. This is even more pronounced with solar power, which reliably delivers zero electricity when the UK’s electricity demand is at its highest, around six pm in Winter. This is a problem too many ignore.

Another analogy. Consider someone who regularly commutes between London and Edinburgh, and normally takes the East Coast train. If he books his ticket a month in advance he can get it for £39.50, which is about 8p per kilometre. Now, imagine someone came along and said they could offer this man a ticket that won’t get him all the way there, it may go to York, it may go to Peterborough, but it works out “cheaper” at 7p per kilometre. You can be sure that he will immediately look at how much it would cost to finish his journey. Things appear rather similar for claims that solar is cheaper.

We also have to consider that we can build as much solar power as we like in the UK and still be able to yank it out and have a functioning electricity grid. Solar power is completely unable to displace conventional power plants, we need the juice most precisely when there is no solar. If we had some storage in place you could displace a little, but not much (note that last year Germany solar power in December was 10% of what it was in May.) So, for large scale solar you need to ask how much it will cost to build the gas plants to run when there’s no solar, and to keep them running. Another bad omen from Germany: last year it got a bit under 5% of its electricity from solar, yet got over 50% one afternoon. A simple projection from this is that going above 10% overall will see days when total solar output exceeds electricity demand. This will force one of two things to happen: the excess electricity is stored (expensive) or simply curtailed (again, expensive). Either way it is clear that getting much above 10% solar will require a significant reduction in solar power’s capacity factor or the need to store a significant amount of it.

Unless these realities are factored into cost estimates I’ll remain skeptical of any claim that solar power is cheaper than nuclear or any other technique for generating electricity.

Consider fracking. Last year The Guardian told us that “more than two-thirds of people would rather have a wind turbine than a shale gas well near their home.” This sounds like pretty bad news for those hoping to get fracking off the ground. Yet, consider another poll carried out by the UK government. This one asked a remarkably simple question: “Before today, how much, if anything did you know about hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, otherwise known as ‘fracking’?” Based on the results half of the people living in the UK have never heard of shale gas or fracking, and a total of roughly two thirds have either not heard of it or don’t really know what it is. A simple consequence is that opinion polls about fracking are little more than white noise, yet we will continue to see them being used by advocates and commentators of all stripes.

What about wind farms? Well, take your pick. A month ago the UK government released a poll apparently showing that only 11% of people oppose onshore wind farms, something many renewables advocates and lobbyists talked up. However, shortly after this the UK’s chief renewable lobby group RenewableUK released a separate poll indicating opposition is likely to be a lot higher. Instead of finding that 11% of people oppose onshore wind farms they found that in a general election there would be “27% who would be more likely to vote for a candidate who backed ending policies supporting more wind farm development.” Not exactly overwhelming support.

Which is it? Is opposition to onshore wind barely 10% of people in the UK, or over a quarter? Consideration of another poll by Yougov seems to indicate it is much more likely to be the latter. What question is more likely to give you an accurate feel for the level of opposition to onshore windfarms: “Do you support or oppose onshore wind?” or “Do you support or oppose wind farms on the land?” It’s almost certain that everyone knows what the latter means, yet the phrase “onshore wind” may be something a lot of people aren’t aware of. With this in mind I am a lot more inclined to view Yougov’s poll as more reliable, which found that opposition to “wind farms on the land” has been above 11% every year since 2008, with it reaching an all time high in 2012 at 21%. This poll also indicates that opposition to wind power is increasing consistently year on year.

So, the renewable lobby appears to have a choice. It can either recognise that opposition to wind farms is a real and growing problem, or it can commission more opinion polls that attempt, but fail to show that opposition to wind farms is not something to worry about.

“Here is a book to go look at. It just came out as a ninety-nine cent Kindle Single. It’s by a guy named Osha Davidson, it’s called Clean Break, and it’s about what’s going on in Germany, which is un-fucking-believable. Munich’s north of Montreal, and there were days this month when they got half their energy from solar panels. It has nothing to do with technology or location—it’s all political will, and they have it.”

Now, I have my own problems with Clean Break, but let’s focus in on what McKibben says here. Munich getting half of its energy from solar panels is quite simply impossible, for the simple reason that the majority of energy consumption is not in the form of electricity. Mixing these things up is a mistake climate communicator should not be making (Think about those “100% renewable energy by 2030 possible” headlines you read that really should say 100% renewable electricity.) The statement is even more bizarre when you realize the interview was conducted in December ,when Germany’s solar panels are not exactly going full tilt. Perhaps McKibben had May in mind, when for a couple of hours one Saturday Germany got half of its electricity from solar. Germany however is not blessed with tremendous Sun in December, having just gone through the darkest winter in 43 years. To put some numbers on this, Germany produced ten times less electricity from solar last December than in May.

Consideration of the above graph should also give to pause to McKibben or anyone else who suggests these things have nothing to do with location. Germany is in fundamental ways not very suited for solar power. Demand peaks in winter, yet solar is at rock bottom right when you need it. What you want with solar, and can get in places such as Arizona, is much flatter monthly variation in supply and not too much day to day change. Old fashioned engineering concerns however do not seem to apply in our race to a distributed energy future, where presumably an electricity grid can run on wishful thinking.

Here’s the timetable of future reactor shutdowns:

2015: 1 reactor closes

Reactor: Grafenrheinfeld, (1.3 GW)

Average load factor: 85.8%

Original shut down date: 2028

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.8 GW

2017: 1 reactor closes

Reactor: Gundremmingen-B (1.3 GW)

Average load factor: 83.6%

Original shut down date: 2030

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.8 GW

2019: 1 reactor closes

Reactor: Phillipsburg-2 (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 88.3%

Original shut down date: 2032

Solar required to replace lost production: 7.3 GW

2021: 3 reactors close

Reactor: Gundremmingen-C (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 88.3%

Original shut down date: 2030

Solar required to replace lost production: 5 GW

Reactor: Brokdorf (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 88.2%

Original shut down date: 2033

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.7 GW

Reactor: Grohnde (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 90.4%

Original shut down date: 2031

Solar required to replace lost production: 5.6 GW

2022: 3 reactors close

Reactor: Isar-2 (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 89.5%

Original shut down date: 2034

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.7 GW

Reactor: Emsland (1.3 GW)

Average load factor: 93.5%

Original shut down date: 2035

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.8 GW

Reactor: Neckarwestheim-2 (1.3 GW)

Average load factor: 92.3%

Original shut down date: 2036

Solar required to replace lost production: 7.3 GW

Looking Ahead

In total Germany would need to build an additional 59 GW of solar power to replace the lost production of the shuttered nukes. This of course is a rather simplified view. The sun does not shine at 6 pm in Winter when Germany’s electricity demand peaks. And the wind does not always blow either. In fact Germany can probably rely on just a bit above zero wind power, so this lost nuclear production could be made up by building a large number of wind turbines and solar panels. However the lost capacity cannot be, a distinction many fail to recognise. Fossil fuelled (or biomass) power plants will need to be built. To see this consider that Germany has over 30 GW of wind turbines, yet at 6pm on January 14th 2013 barely 0.5 GW, or 1.5% of capacity, was feeding into the grid.

Things can be even worse, as can be seen on October 24th 2012 when wind power was a mere 134 MW, 0.5% of total capacity:

So, to replace its 12 GW of nuclear with renewables Germany will have to build enough renewable capacity to replace lost production and enough fossil fuel capacity to keep the lights on when it is not windy. It would appear that the dreams of Angela Merkel to put a stop to rising electricity prices will remain just that.

Do the math: simply repeating 2011’s renewable installations for three additional years, through 2014, would thus displace Germany’s entire pre-Fukushima nuclear output.

Or so claims Amory Lovins in a new piece about renewable energy in Germany. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the level of nuclear power in Germany will recognise this claim is utter nonsense within about two seconds. However, since Lovins appears incapable or unwilling to do the basic arithmetic, let’s do it here. A couple of minutes on Google can find a summary of German solar and wind installations in 2011:

To make it terse: 7.5 GW of solar and 1.9 GW of wind was installed in 2011. The figures in Lovins piece show that nuclear power generated 130 TWh of juice in 2010, and this is in line with what the IEA says. How would the annual production of 2011′s new renewables installations compare?

7.5 GW of solar in one year (assuming a capacity factor of 10%, which is roughly the German average) would give us 6.6 TWh.

1.9 GW of wind in one year (assuming a capacity factor of 40%, the average is currently below 30% but I will be generous) would also give us another 6.6 TWh.

Added together we have a total of just over 13 TWh each year from Germany’s new renewables installations in 2011. So, it will take Germany at least 10 years at 2011′s build rate to displace their pre-Fukushima nuclear output with renewables. (note: 10 years of solar additions at 7.5 GW is probably Easter Bunny territory. This will result in over 100 GW of solar on the grid, and will result in Germany having more solar (and wind) than it knows what to do with on a sunny day.)

So, the basic math on Germany’s nuclear phaseout is very clear, yet I suspect that Lovins will not be the last person to try to deny it.

[Update: Amory Lovins has "corrected" my errors in a comment over at Renewables International. Now, I have no problem admitting when I make mistakes and the above post includes one. I forgot to include the likes of new biomass plants in my analysis. This is correctly pointed out by Craig Morris in the article, so you should knock a couple of years off my conclusion.

On the other hand Lovins' remark once again shows that he is not very good at arithmetic. He claims that Germany lost 41% of its nuclear production in 2011, whereas this is actually the lost capacity. This is the basis for his claim that Germany can replace its pre Fukushima nuclear output simply by repeating its 2011 renewables additions for 3 years. Here are the actual changes in nuclear output, from Lovins' own piece:

This is a decline from about 130 to 100 TWh. So, the actual lost production is almost half of what Lovins' imagines it to be. Also, if Lovins' had paid a little attention to the statistics in his own posts he would recognise his error. He points out that renewables grew from 20 to 23% of German electricity supply in 2011. Adding three percent per year for four years only adds up to twelve percent, a good bit short of the twenty three percent nuclear was providing.

Lovins also inaccurately states in his comment at Renewables International "Since the calculation resulting in TWh / y is not GW, capacity factors are irrelevant to this hypothetical case's outcome". Given that his calculation for lost nuclear production was based purely on their capacities he perhaps should have paid a little attention to  capacity factors. All of the remaining nuclear plants in Germany have high capacity factors, almost always coming in above 80% for the year. The same cannot be said for the plants shut in 2011. These were mostly old plants running at very low capacity factors. For example the Bruensbuttal and Kruemel plants had not produced any electricity in the two years before Fukushima. This is why the percentage decline in nuclear production is about half of the decline in capacity.

I could go on, but I suspect the reader has got my point long ago.]

Exactly how tight this crunch will be is open to debate, and I am not going to going to discuss that here. However let’s consider an option that has been put forward: re-opening mothballed gas plants. This apparently is being considered by the government. Naturally media reports on this don’t care to mention just how much mothballed capacity is available. These figures aren’t easily available, however a report by Credit-Suisse from mid-2012 indicates that there are 4 plants mothballed, with a total capacity at just over 4.1 GW, that is roughly 7% of the total UK capacity.

Let’s say we restart all of this stuff right now, how does the capacity situation change? To see this consider another graph from Ofgem that shows how they project capacity to change in the next few years, and its relationship with the capacity margin. (Note: the large drop in coal power is mostly due to an EU directive, and these losses are pretty much guaranteed.)

So, restarting these plants could push the capacity margin from about 5% to above 10%. What are the prospects of re-opening these plants?

Keadby, Medway at 1.4 GW appears to be likely to be re-opened if the incentives are high enough. However SSE is currently reluctant to re-open it due to the weak financial situation for gas plants.

The position of Teeside (1.8 GW) is unclear. However the bosses of the plant claim to be keeping the option of un-mothballing it open in case of improved conditions. The situation for the other two power plants appears to be similar. So if the government is willing to toss these power plants enough money, quite possibly in the form of capacity payments, the UK’s capacity crunch may be a lot less tight.