US cities are going to struggle to green up their act by 2050
- Reference: 1705692045
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/01/19/us_cities_renewables_research/
- Source link:
The study, conducted by researchers from Baylor University in Texas and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, examined a subset of 31 of the 250 US localities selected from the 198 that have yet to reach their goals, including San Diego, Boston, Washington DC, Louisville KY, and others.
"Across the 31 cities present in this study, none are expected to meet their goal of 100 percent renewable based on existing or planned infrastructure development," the team [1]found . "Even in the four best case scenarios developed, cities appear to cap off renewable energy penetration between 35 percent and 65 percent in the next two decades."
[2]
While 52 cities have met their electrification goals, for example, 198 cities and localities failed to meet targets set in the early 2000s, the report notes. In other words, they've been working on this for a long time and don't have a whole lot to show for it. yet
[3]
[4]
None of the 31 cities selected for the study are even halfway toward meeting all their goals despite being nearly halfway through their time frames for doing so, the researchers found. To further hammer home the severity of the issue, the 31 cities chosen for the study represent 84 percent of the population, meaning most of the shortcomings are in heavily populated areas where energy needs have risen in recent years, putting these lefty goals further at risk of not being met as electrification drives additional energy consumption.
The findings looked at the localities with a relatively new method of considering power distribution known as an " [5]energyshed ." Akin to a [6]watershed , energysheds are regions served by networks of power plants and transmission infrastructure that, while often overlapping, can nonetheless be divided into distinct energy footprints.
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Based on that, said Baylor postdoctoral environmental science fellow and study author Dr Kayla Garrett, the researchers hope their work can posit a way through the "analysis paralysis" that has paused many renewable projects.
"Many areas are faced with conflicting sustainability goals such as changes to infrastructure, energy storage, land and resource use, biodiversity, economic development, and more," Garrett [8]said .
The team notes that renewable energy transitions aren't just straining the grid, which they [9]most definitely are , but also put pressure on environmental resources and could lead to "irreversible and significant harm to ecosystems, biodiversity and water availability." Haphazard, regional energy transitions are likely to only make these effects worse, the report notes.
[10]Shame about those wildfires. We'll just let the fossil fuel giants off the hook, then?
[11]Renewables are cheaper than coal in all but one US location
[12]Energy being expensive and trickier to source is good news ... for renewables
[13]Tenfold electric vehicles on 2030 roads could be a shock to the system
Energysheds can show communities how they can work together to advance renewable energy transitions, Garrett added, describing the results as able to "foster cooperation for funding, land acquisition, infrastructure, distribution, and storage for renewable energy."
What can be done, you ask? Garrett and her team have some suggestions, but even then the road out of the renewable transition quagmire seems rough.
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"Successful energy transitions require reframing the issue as not one that is purely technical, economic, social or political but that is interdisciplinary and requires collaboration and communication across multiple sectors," the team concluded.
"Conversations are needed between those who apply the market approach to supply and demand versus those with sociopolitical approaches," Garrett added. ®
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[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2634-4505/ad0fef#erisad0fefs5
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zar-HU-sXZ8HhC9tuKBY4gAAAYY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zar-HU-sXZ8HhC9tuKBY4gAAAYY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zar-HU-sXZ8HhC9tuKBY4gAAAYY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.energy.gov/eere/what-energyshed
[6] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/watershed.html
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zar-HU-sXZ8HhC9tuKBY4gAAAYY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1031374
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/18/electrical_grid_investment_is_the/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/16/fossil_fuels_wildfires/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/30/renewables_cheaper_than_coal/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/07/renewables_will_become_largest_energy/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/27/electric_vehicles_2030/
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zar-HU-sXZ8HhC9tuKBY4gAAAYY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: An "easy" fix
Depends on where you live. I'm in the northeastern U.S. Where I live, the sun has been (partially) visible on only two days in the last two weeks. And at the moment, my roof is covered in snow. Solar would be completely pointless here between from November through February, and it isn't that great in late fall or early spring either.
Meanwhile in California...
..where they have spent $100's billions directly or indirectly on "renewables" over the last six decades the most reliable "renewable", solar, produces high cost electricity when demand is lowest and the spot rate is low and produces no power when demand is highest and the spot rate is high. And no matter how pretty those windmill might be in the Altamont Pass winds output is so irregular and unpredictable (and very expensive) as to be not just useless but a menace to the stability of the grid.
The one reliable "renewable" hydro is being shutdown by the CalEPA etc and environmentalists because - the usual made up reasons. They want to rip out all the dams to return the state to its Primal Purity. Ignoring the fact the native population had been geoengineering the states ecosystems quite extensively for almost 9K year before the first Europeans turned up.
So peak power is mostly natural gas power gens and very large out of state imports. The imports mostly from the coal power gens in Utah. So most nights during peak consumption hours 90% / 95% of all power in the state is generated by "non renewables". After spending $100's billions over the decades.
Just remember boys and girls the "science" the Green Lysenkoism is based on, the Energy Balance model, assumes there is no such thing as geophysics and the surface of the earth has no temperature. Zero Kelvin. Try reading the Sellers, Budkyo etc papers carefully and you will see the huge problem in their models. Simplified to meaninglessness. Even better read Budkyo's book "Climate Changes" from 1977 where its all laid out. And it quickly become very obvious that any Forcing Constant is not just a simple 289K - 256K subtraction. Far from it.
Even by the historical standards of previous Cargo Cult Sciences (and there have been quiet a few ) the Green Cult is particularly stupid. On the same level as Eugenics and Phrenology. At least in the case of California the long term damage of this massive misallocation of economic resources will be negated by the fact that sooner or later they will just start pumping again the massive state on-shore and off-shore oil and gas reserves. Bigger oil reserves than Iraq, bigger gas reserves than Qatar. But a lot of other places are going to be long term screwed. Like the UK. Unless it starts building the next gen fast breeder reactors that were all abandoned back in the 1980's
An "easy" fix
There are a lot of local regulations that define the buildings ... so maybe just start requiring that all the town's roofs to be covered with solar panels.