In this topsy-turvy world, everything is in flux. Sense becomes nonsense, and vice versa. Facts become denialist talking points, and the hysterical fever dreams of alarmists becomes fact. Eventually, somebody had to realise that a bicycle is, indeed, a viable transportation method for a gurnard.
Thus we reach the stage in the slow collapse of civilisation when we realise, after all, that renewable generators produce more useful energy than fossil fuels.
Struggling to come up with advantages for renewables, I find two, which are in effect two sides of the same coin: they use no fuel, and emit no carbon dioxide when in use. That’s it.
Their disadvantages, as we know, are legion. They are intermittent and unpredictable. They use a lot of materials. They take up large amounts of space. They have to be tied into the grid on long cables from the middle of nowhere. They don’t contribute to stabilising grid frequency, but can only follow. Adding them to a grid requires the addition of frequency stabilisers plus dispatchable backup. They are an ecological menace.
To grok the usefulness or otherwise of renewables, imagine a flow of energy. The renewables derive their “fuel” through natural supplies of power that vary on a variety of timescales. When those natural sources provide power, renewables generate electricity: but it must be used at once. If there is nothing for the electricity to be used for, it is useless. If the natural power source is not flowing, then the renewables are useless.
Compare this to a fossil-fuelled generator where the incoming power can be controlled by storage of the energy source (a heap of coal, for example). The input is always available, and the output can be varied according to need.
To make an analogy with domestic water: in one scenario, we turn the tap on when we want water, and water flows out. In the other, we leave the tap on all the time, and the water flows, or does not flow. To make an analogy with international shipping: a sailing ship may make progress when the wind blows, but goes nowhere in a calm. If it is windy, but the ship does not wish to move, the wind is useless. A diesel transport, however, forges ahead indomitably.
But in our topsy turvy world, such logic avails us naught.
How does Ars Technica feel able to argue that up is down? Well, their opening paragraph is a rounded summary of the obvious issues:
It doesn’t take a lot of energy to dig up coal or pump oil from the ground. By contrast, most renewable sources of energy involve obtaining and refining resources, sophisticated manufacturing, and installation. So, at first glance, when it comes to the energy used to get more energy—the energy return on investment—fossil fuels seem like a clear winner. That has led some to argue that transitioning to renewables will create an overall drop in net energy production, which nobody is interested in seeing.
With you so far, Ars.
A new study by researchers at the UK’s University of Leeds, however, suggests that this isn’t a concern at all—in most countries, renewables already produce more net energy than the fossil fuels they’re displacing. The key to understanding why is that it’s much easier to do useful things with electricity than it is with a hunk of coal or a glob of crude oil.
Here we begin to sense that our friends at Leeds set out to prove that renewables are better, come what may. For an obvious retort to this sentence is that fossil fuels can be burnt to produce electricity at the time we require it. Its delivery of electricity therefore trumps that of renewables – it has more value per watt supplied. And there is another obvious problem: fossil fuels are very good at generating heat. And Ars Technica’s mention of crude oil is rather unfortunate for their case, since we all know how many uses crude oil is put to.
It’s now long enough since W. Stanley Jevons said…
The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to he exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.
The Coal Question
… that we should all be aware of it by now.
On what basis is the claim of the victory of renewables made? On Leeds’ invention of a new version of EROI – not just how much energy you get out of the energy you invest, but how much “useful-stage” energy you get. So much energy is wasted in transporting fuels, etc (and one presumes the energy wasted as heat in internal combustion engines is a major contributor to this metric). So to take the vehicle propulsion example: electricity is more efficient at driving the wheels than petrol, so the “useful-stage” EROI of oil has to be reduced accordingly. Meanwhile, for home heating, gas is great, but the efficiency of heat pumps trumps that.
The researchers gathered a lot of final EROIs from the literature, and they’re quite striking. The absolute worst for wind power is over 10, and the highest values are in the area of 25. So, wind power is already ahead of fossil fuels when it comes to giving us more useful energy back than is needed to produce, install, and maintain wind turbines.
The literature means nothing when you have data. The data shows manufacturing relocating away from places where renewables penetration is highest (still far below 50% of electricity) to where it is lowest.
Of course, the EROI of 25 does not include the problems with renewables. But don’t worry.
Even when intermittency, curtailment, and storage are considered, wind comes out well ahead of fossil alternatives.
This story smells of the farmyard. Will the “useful-stage energy” from any energy system’s renewables ever power the prospecting, mining, refining, and manufacturing of 25 times their number? Will this inevitably lead to an exponential increase in available energy, the collapse of energy costs, and to climate denialists slinking off to the pub, where they can finally afford to buy a pint of beer again, since their energy bills are so cheap?
There is no mention of nuclear in Leeds’ work. I do wonder at what the “useful-stage” energy of a kilogram of uranium is.
The paper, which I have only skimmed. I fear it would take a month to unravel its mysteries by the time its supplementary information and source data is considered.
Apologies for “recycling” the pun in the title, which I used in my book Ares Upwards. Modesty forbids me from linking to it here, but it has probably been enjoyed by the several people who have read it.
Climate Scepticism 
Jit,
I would be the first to admit that I lack the understanding of the economic and technical issues to be able to confidently discern the vice from the versa on this subject. I’ve got an awful lot of reading to do before I could get close to that point. But in the meantime can anyone explain to me the following?
If it is so bloody obvious that renewables are technically superior in terms of energy generation, then why did we have to wait for the climate change motivation to justify the transition? Surely, those in the know would have been proposing such a transition long before now because of the obvious commercial opportunities. And why did we ever transition away from renewables in the first place if they always had such enormous potential? I get the argument that a sub-optimal solution to energy generation may be necessary to save the planet but these claims that the solution is actually technically superior to the status quo sounds like an overplayed hand. Am I just being thick? You can tell me the truth. I can take it.
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Euan Mearns produced an informative primer on ERoEI
http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/
On some issues, Technica have it Ars-about-face.
“If the natural power source is not flowing, then the renewables are useless.” In relation to wind, if it’s blowing too strongly, then turbines must have their blades feathered with the same outcome.
On the subject of energy storage, an electricity grid stores sweet FA. Britain’s natural gas transmission system alone stores ~4,000GWh, which is approx 3,970GWh more than our entire electricity grid-storage capacity.
Britain’s real-time Linepack storage stock (1mcm is approx 11GWh) is shown by clicking the ‘Linepack’ tab:
https://data.nationalgas.com/gas-system-status
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P.S. I understand about getting locked into suboptimal solutions because of the need to protect assets and investments. And I understand about barriers to transition because of upfront costs for research, development and deployment. But I am still not willing to go down the Big Oil tobacco playbook rabbit hole here. If it had always been the case that renewables offered a more cost-effective and lucrative solution to the problem of energy generation, then I would have expected there to be a well-advertised recognition of that point long before climate change came along. There would surely have been an open debate as to how society could go about benefitting from a reversal of the mistake it had made by choosing the supposedly suboptimal fossil fuel solution — if that had indeed been the error made. But it seems to me that it was never an error but rather the best solution for the day. And it would remain so if it were not for the risks posed by climate change and the brute fact that we can’t rely upon it forever. At the end of the day, dispatchability is a key part of any energy generation solution and that problem remains to be solved for any full transition to take place.
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Your opening paragraph nailed it. We now live in a post-enlightenment age where the high priests of the new religion seek to browbeat the doubting Thomases into simply believing, despite the evidence of their own eyes.
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Just on the Ars Technica of history I used to really appreciate it, especially as I made the move back to the Mac from Windows as a developer from around 2006. One of my favourite tech journalists John Siracusa explained Metadata at length in August 2001 – and note that the article from 23 years ago looks good as new. They care about their permalinks!
They could also be balanced on climate, saying Ancient global warming shows the limits of our knowledge in July 2009. The same author did Climate change: cloudy, with a chance of competing realities in 2011 with a focus on Roy Spencer. But by 2022 there’s the execrable How Scientists Respond to Science Deniers.
How the mighty have fallen. And it’s true in so many places.
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Here’s the real problem:
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Re. renewables using no fuel…
Energy consumption in wind facilities
Large wind turbines require a large amount of energy to operate. Other electricity plants generally use their own electricity, and the difference between the amount they generate and the amount delivered to the grid is readily determined. Wind plants, however, use electricity from the grid, which does not appear to be accounted for in their output figures.
https://www.aweo.org/windconsumption.html
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Hello John R, thank you for posing these questions as they have been bothering me, an electrical machines engineer, for several years. I think the (long) answer is at least two pronged, one prong being technical, the other being political/governance in nature. I will try to give a short(ish) reply.
Thus before the 1970s there was not, even in principle, a low (maintenance) cost means of generating reliable, fixed frequency AC electricity from the vagaries of wind power. Similar arguments apply to the conversion of DC electricity from solar panels to fixed frequency AC.
b. On the governance side, interest in ecological issues became increasingly important in political discourse following World War Two; Rachel Carson published her iconic “Silent Spring” in 1962. A major concern, both at national and international levels, was the environmental damage caused by the extractive industries, particularly those for fossil fuels. It was immediately apparent that extractive damage could be greatly reduced by switching electrical generation technology from fossil fuels to the apparently free fuels of wind and sun.
Little thought was given by politicians and civil servants (in the West) to the many unseen (or exogenous) costs that the so-called “renewable” energy sources throw onto the rest of society, these deriving largely from their very poor power density [Ref. 1], grid unsuitability, non-despatchability, and remoteness from load centres. For example, while coal, gas, and nuclear have an electrical power density footprint of about 1,000 MW/km2, this falls a hundredfold to only 5 or 10 MW/km2 for solar PV, and to just 2 MW/km2 for on-shore wind.
Because of their very poor power density, renewables – in contrast to fossil fuel generators – require very large quantities of energy-intensive materials such as steel and concrete to capture significant amounts of renewable energy. However, this major disadvantage was not quantified until about ten years ago [Ref. 2] when Weissbach et al. calculated the EROEI (or EROI), the energy return on (energy) invested, of renewables; their EROI is very low, too low for modern societies when the necessary back-up generation is included .
Thus, if the history of humanity is in part the story of making more efficient use of Nature’s energy resources (i.e. higher EROI) then it was not until a decade ago that it was realised a huge error had been made with the current generation of renewables technologies -while their fuel is free at the point where they generate electricity, the huge quantity of energy consumed in creating the materials used in the construction of the “renewables” means that they are less effective than the fossil fuel systems they are supposed to replace! This has huge wealth-destructive consequences for any society that is in the process of an energy transition away from fossil fuels and towards these current “renewables”. [Of course, human inventiveness will ensure that future generations of renewables will have higher EROI than current renewables.]
While the aforementioned ‘huge error’ was apparent to those who were alert in the scientific community some 10 years ago, (Western) politicians had already thrown huge subsidies at the “renewables” technologies in order to create “renewables” industries and supply chains. There is now, therefore, absolutely huge political capital invested in “renewables” and also a huge lobbying industry promoting their further adoption despite their current inherent disadvantages, notably EROI. Much political face will be lost by a retreat back towards the reliable fossil fuel-based generation systems.
There is much to be written about how the political cart has been put well before the scientific, engineering and economic horses … but that is an important (although very long) story for another day.
References
Regards, John C.
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“ Wind plants, however, use electricity from the grid, which does not appear to be accounted for in their output figures.”
Likewise, owners can be coy about the amount of diesel used to prevent a turbine’s bearings from brinelling during lulls.
E.g. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/dozens-scottish-power-wind-turbines-29135763?fbclid=IwAR0u-no_At9-jbV754Se-5tAvnXQ6N2D0e8bI-GGksMR8W3lsOmhsygIolo
Many offshore wind farms also have dedicated diesel gensets for the same reasons. Their refuelling costs are a not-insignificant operating cost.
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John C,
Thank you for that. I think the point I was trying to make is that historically there have been a number of impediments to using renewables as the sole source of energy generation and it is disingenuous of pundits to ignore the extent to which they still apply when they make their comparisons. They talk as if it were always the case that renewables represent a technologically superior energy generation solution. This has not been the case in the past and only seems so now if one ignores critical issues such as dispatchability, EROI and exogenous costs. Supporters are keen to factor in ‘externalities’ such as climate change damages when analysing the economics but I’m not sure that the externalities game is being played equal-handedly. But, as I say, I am a million miles from having the depth of understanding I need to make confident statements.
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Whatever the details maybe, we seem to be heading for the day when electricity demand runs ahead of supply on a regular, if not daily basis. The only question then is – how soon?
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You’re absolutely right! Offshore wind farms often rely on diesel generators to provide auxiliary power in certain situations. Let’s dive into the details:
In summary, while offshore wind farms harness clean energy from the sea, they still rely on diesel generators for essential functions. As the industry evolves, finding sustainable and efficient solutions remains a priority.
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DF Hunter,
Offshore wind also requires a lot of diesel fuel for regular maintenance.
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Oops, looks like you included that.
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Mike – To be honest that comment by me was a cut & paste from somewhere else, which I should have added a ref to – but can’t find the ref !!!!
The link within that comment link goes to – Trident Energy releases White Paper on auxiliary power for offshore wind farms – Trident Energy
Diesel / renewable hybrid solutions – the future of offshore auxiliary power?
So what does a solution look like? The developers of offshore wind farms are creating amazing projects in a challenging environment and are understandably risk adverse. Diesel generators are proven technology. It is inevitable that diesel generators will continue to be deployed to provide auxiliary power. Rather, solutions should focus on reducing the costs and risks associated with refuelling and maintaining the diesels. In particular, the adoption of hybrid diesel / renewable solutions provides increased diversity and autonomy to the provision of auxiliary power. The renewable technology minimises the cost and risks of refuelling logistics, whilst the diesel remains to back-up the renewable technology and ease adoption amongst project developers.
Trident Energy’s linear generator technology
Trident Energy is developing such an auxiliary power solution, using its proven direct drive linear generator technology. This coverts the up-down motion of waves directly into electricity without the need for intermediate systems such as gearboxes or hydraulics. This makes it simple and reliable. Results from Trident Energy’s recent test programme have also demonstrated the capability to control the generator in real-time, opening the way for energy extraction to be optimised for each individual wave. This low cost, high performance generator enables cost effective autonomous offshore power solutions, reducing the risks and costs of the next decade of offshore wind farm development.
As John Cullen notes in his comment above “[Of course, human inventiveness will ensure that future generations of renewables will have higher EROI than current renewables.]”.
This seems a step/trial in the right direction, but note “It is inevitable that diesel generators will continue to be deployed to provide auxiliary power”.
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Hello dfhunter,
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I’m a volunteer warden at a local, ancient (pre-1650) windmill. One of the facts I like to point out to visitors is that you only find windmills where there’s no flowing water. Operating a windmill is entirely dependent on the wind – if it’s too calm, you can’t work; and if it’s too windy, you can’t work (just like modern wind turbines). OTOH if you have even a small stream of water, you can dam it and then you can simply turn it on and off with a sluice to produce power when you need it. The advantages of dispatchable power have been obvious to humans for centuries (if not millennia) – how have we suddenly forgotten them?
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Chris, what you conclude about an absence of windMILLS along water courses may be true, but in my part of the world (Norfolk) “ancient” windPUMPs (which are nearly indistinguishable from windmills) were very common in such settings.
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