The book tells us we can run everything on renewable energy and get rich exporting it. Unsurprisingly it has been met with much fanfare and enthusiasm. But on the crucial issues it either provides flimsy and unconvincing analyses or fails to deal with them at all.
Whether or not everything can be run on renewable energy is hotly debated among experts in the field, and far from settled. Most people assert that it is possible, and indeed easily done, if only the politicians were not so stupid. Many studies and institutions also conclude this. But many heavy academic analyses conclude that it cannot be done at an acceptable cost in plant and dollars. I have published about 15 such papers explaining in numerical detail why I don’t think it can be done. (E.g., Trainer, 2017). I might be dead wrong, but at this stage no one has much justification for making confident assertions one way or the other.
The issue is complicated and technically difficult to clarify. Above all, the findings depend greatly on assumptions made, and in several areas we do not know what the correct assumptions are. Much, if not most, literature even in the academic arena is discursive, speculative, impressionistic, about what “could” be, and not capable of arriving at sound conclusions. There is only one approach that can eventually settle the issue, and unfortunately, there are few studies of this kind.
That approach takes the form of “simulation” studies using detailed, hourly solar and wind patterns for all locations in a region over a year, and attempting to work out what combination of renewable generating technologies and storage options will minimise the cost of energy delivered at a particular level of reliability. Conclusions can only apply to that region and can’t be generalised as a global finding. Maybe only two teams have tackled this in sufficient detail in Australia.
Because of the intermittency of sun and wind, these kinds of studies have found that the amount of generating plants needed to meet demand all the time, as there is no sun here today but there is wind over there, and neither in either place the day before, is several times the amount of plant needed in the form of fossil-fuelled generators. Some studies find that for a particular region it is three times as much plant as would be needed if all PV panels and turbines and so on were in ideal conditions all the time, and some find that it is up to 10 times. Lenzen et al. (2016) found that it would be six to seven times as much plant as could meet the Australian 23 GW demand via coal-fired generation, and they found that the production cost would be about seven times that of coal-fired electricity at the time. Again, these findings depend greatly on the assumptions made in the study.
What we need are many studies of this kind, making differing sets of assumptions, and only when consensus began to emerge on what the best combination could achieve could we move towards confidence about the answer.
Garnaut’s book makes no mention of this field and offers no derivations from such studies. It simply asserts claims and might-be’s, and enthuses about such things as falling costs and what carbon sequestration might do, without any effort to show that a particular combination of these technologies is collectively capable of doing the job at an acceptable cost. No technical case is given, no numerical analysis based on quantities for demand, generating capacities, energy conversion losses, transmission plant and losses, storage needed in what form, or costs for these factors, or the embodied energy costs of plant. Especially significant is the absence of a satisfactory discussion of the vexed EROI issue, the energy cost of producing various forms of energy.
He enthuses about biomass energy but does not worry about the fact that its EROI is very low, with some studies finding that biomass energy takes more energy to produce than it yields. EROI values for renewables are much lower than for fossil fuels, and recent studies of whole systems combining various renewable sources and storage provision indicate that the overall system EROI value might be in the region of six or, indeed, well under this. (My 2018 study of a hydrogen path estimated it at about six.) Some analysts think that an EROI under 10 cannot sustain an industrial society.
The book’s basic claim is that greatly increased quantities of electricity can be provided solely by renewables, reliably and at a reasonable cost. Most other sectors depend on this, notably transport. Here is Garnaut’s entire case in support of his electricity claim:
“After a dozen years of close acquaintance with the Australian and global energy transitions, I now have no doubt that intermittent renewables could meet 100 per cent of Australia’s electricity requirements by the 2030s, with high degrees of security and reliability, and at wholesale prices much lower than experienced in Australia over the past half dozen years.” (P. 71.)
In other words, Garnaut deals with none of the technical difficulties noted above and fails to indicate their magnitude. Consider, for example, the scale of the storage problem. Lenzen et al. (2016) found that to maintain Australian electricity supply through the worst week in 2010, we would have needed about half of the week’s demand in storage at the start of it. That means we would have needed to draw .5 x23 GW x 24 hours x 7 days = 1,932 GWh of electricity via stored hydrogen, and at the approximate hydrogen-to-electricity conversion efficiency of fuel cells we would have needed 4,830 GWh equivalent in the form of hydrogen stored in tanks, just to deal with electricity demand over that week. Snowy 2.0 will only store 350 GWh (and deliver less given its distance from most users.)
The biggest storage problem is set by inter-seasonal variation. For example, in Australia there is about twice as much solar energy in summer. To illustrate, if we had enough PV to meet average demand then we would have to store about one-quarter of summer generation to top up winter supply, which would be at least 4 months x 30 days x 24 hours x 0.25 x 23 GW = 16,560 GWh, meaning 48,900 GWh would have to be stored in the form of hydrogen to convert back to electricity. For electricity alone, 140 Snowy 2.0s? (Wind is somewhat better in winter than summer so a wind + solar system would reduce this figure.)
As for getting rich exporting hydrogen, consider the difficulties moving very light hydrogen gas. Even short distances within Australia would involve significant energy costs. According to Bossel and Eliason, a large, for example, 40 tonne, truck carrying a tank full of hydrogen at 200 bar pressure could deliver only about 400kg of hydrogen. These authors calculate that to move a unit of hydrogen energy this way would require about 32 times more truck fuel than moving energy in the form of petrol. Delivery to Asia by pipeline over thousands of kilometres might not be feasible because Bossel and Eliason say piping from North Africa to the UK would cost 30-40% of the energy delivered. “Too much energy is lost in the process to justify the scheme.” Note that the small hydrogen atom leaks easily and makes metals brittle, meaning that the pipelines would have to be lined. Again, add the costs for pumps, tanks and other infrastructures and subtract their embodied energy costs.
But all that is only for electricity, the easier problem, and 80% of energy demand is not for electricity. When you go on to the task of fuelling transport etc. via hydrogen the difficulty numbers escalate. If half of that presently non-electrical demand could be converted to electricity, and the rest could be met via hydrogen, the total electrical generation task would multiply by about 10, and the storage etc task would increase accordingly. Before you enthuse about running everything on sun and wind and getting rich on exporting the surplus, make sure my arithmetic is way out.
You had better hope that they don’t work out how to provide abundant cheap renewable or nuclear energy because if they do they will use it to accelerate consumer-capitalist society and hunt down the last shrimp in the sea.
There are many savage limits to growth, and energy is only one of them. The more energy they get the faster they will go through most of the other “planetary boundaries”. For 50 years the now vast “limits to growth” literature has made it clear that the range of global problems now threatening our very existence can only be solved by dramatically cutting resource use and environmental destruction and therefore consumption. As the DE-growth movement recognises, this means scrapping consumer-capitalism and accepting shifting down to a small fraction of present GDP and embracing very frugal and self-sufficient lifestyles and systems. (See thesimplerway.info/, and simplicityinstitute.org.) Garnaut’s Superpower reinforces the faith that there is no need to think about any of that.
Lenzen, M., B. McBain, T. Trainer, S. Jutte, O. Rey-Lescure, and J. Huang, (2016), Simulating low-carbon electricity supply for Australia, Applied Energy, 179, Oct., 553 – 564.
Trainer, T., (2017), “Can renewables meet total Australian energy demand: A “disaggregated” approach”, Energy Policy,109, 539-544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.07.040
Trainer, T., (2018), “Estimating the EROI of whole systems for 100% renewable electricity supply capable of dealing with intermittency,” Energy Policy, vol. 119(C), 648-653.
Ted Trainer is a retired lecturer from the School of Social Work, University of New South Wales. He is developing Pigface Point, a sustainability educational site near Sydney, and a website for use by critical global educators.
Comments
10 responses to “Ross Garnaut’s ‘Superpower’ case … is not impressive”
Having scanned this article it also took me through all the comments to date to actually discover reference to the actual planning for future electrical energy supply for all except Western Australia Northern Territory by the engineers at AEMO that manage the current supply has already been published.
As I understand the System Plan has already been designed and, barring political attempts at screwing it up is in process of being installed.
I think this article is now obsolete..
Ted Trainer has no qualifications in energy systems. He’s a social scientist with an amateur’s interest.
For real-world analyses by qualified professionals, see Lazard:
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019
For real-world planning from an Australian perspective, see the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan (ISP):
https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp
Interesting article. I haven’t read Garnaut’s book nor Trainer’s work on estimating EROI. It’s right that we scrutinise the feasibility of depending entirely on renewable energy.
This leaves me wondering about the relevant time frame. Perhaps it isn’t feasible under today’s technology and in the immediate time frame. But might it become feasible over longer time if we create the right incentives to innovate in the direction of reducing the cost of renewable energy?
Very good to see a critical eye cast on the assumptions made about the capability of wind and solar to supply Australia’s energy at anything like current per capita demand. The “100% renewables” target is a national experiment with very uncertain probability of success. Terrific if it does, potentially dire consequences if not.
On the much despised nuclear alternative I note that the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency’s 2015 detailed assessment of all generating technologies found nuclear to about equal ‘cheapest’ [Levelised Cost at plant, not considering external grid connection etc] with wind when the cost of money is low ( https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2015/7057-proj-costs-electricity-2015.pdf Pp 14 -17), and that:
(a) the IAEA lists 56 power reactors as currently under construction, and
(b) much research on a multitude of reactor types continues, with Australia being one one of the 14 partners in the Gen IV International Forum (https://www.gen-4.org/gif/) along with China ( the latter being the leading place of research in this area – wise of our leaders not to ‘decouple’ !)
The term “energy superpower” sounds impressive but climate change projections during the period of Rudd and Garnaut have proven to be gross underestimates of what we are looking at now (see: “The unthinkable consequences of global warming” (https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/search/label/Andrew%20Glikson). The focus on economics diverts from the urgent existential risk of the climate calamity”.
““Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes” and “this equates to 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year” James Hansen et al. 2012.
Andrew Glikson, Earth and climate scientist.
Reminds me of when the American biologist Paul Ehrlich was in Australia in the early 70’s. Some economists in a mixed audience he addressed were well and truly outraged by what he had to say. One of them asked: ‘but what if the second law of thermodynamics is wrong?’ There is no way to address such wilful ignorance I should think. Ted Trainer in this article is highlighting that law. Remember, the first law says the best you can do is break even. The second law says, no you can’t even do that. Otherwise we can have perpetual motion machines that require no energy input.
I think there is some misunderstanding around here. Since I am (or was) also an engineer I agree with Ted regarding the technicalities of such schemes.
Ross Garnaut is not an engineer, nor pretends to be one. He is an economist and a visionary. In my view the importance of the book is its vision. It will take politicians, scientists and engineers to turn it into a valuable thing.
There is no doubt that the earth is in dire straights. No amount of scepticism could hide this.
The question that is not asked nearly enough is: can we afford to do nothing, as some still propose.
With a myopic government only focussed on fossil fuels we are rushing straight for the cliff. For reasons that continue to baffle me it seems that the LNP is simply unable to consider the long term future. Even some in the ALP are having trouble.
Every possible method of carbon (and methane) reduction should be considered on its merits, technically and economically. Lowest cost alone won’t do it. It must be total cost over a long time. And that is often very hard to assess. Some technical solutions will never make it. So be it, but it should be not for not having been investigated.
So, the bottom line of my comment is that we need politicians with vision and courage to travel the unknown roads. With a society (rather uneducated and self-interested) which only looks at tomorrow’s profits, this will be very difficult to achieve. Where, these days do you find politicians with courage and vision? Sadly, I don’t know the answer. But I do know if we don’t start soon, it may well be too late.
Thanks Ted. Yours is one of the most interesting views I have encountered on this subject.
Well said Ted.
It seems Garnaut, and many others, seem to have missed the obvious.
Our civilisation runs on many millions of years of highly concentrated solar energy – fossil fuels. For scale, a barrel of oil, 159 litres, has the equivalent energy of around 10 years worth of human labour.
Most of the alternatives are very diffuse forms of energy (solar, wind, biofuels) which we try to concentrate. It takes a lot of energy to concentrate this energy, and relative to fossil fuels, the net energy is far less.
The solution is to adapt to a far lower energy base, which renewables could power, rather than attempt to replace oil/coal/natural gas with alternatives.
Go ahead, make my day Ted. About time somebody shot Bambi. It never ceases to amaze me that Garnaut is taken at face value by the “woke”. News flash: he’s a global market economist. The most superficial perusal of his life works reveals his main agenda as growth not the environment.
Problematically, Labor seems to imagine the Garnaut net-zero romance as a big asset for 2022. No doubt that’s correct, if they can restrict the franchise to inner Sydney and inner Melbourne.