EU energy transition: concerns emerging from ongoing research activities (MAGIC project) - Europa EU
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EU energy transition: concerns emerging from
ongoing research activities (MAGIC project)
Mario GIAMPIETRO
Workshop: Extreme Events and Energy Transitions
Tackling the Challenges of Climate Change by
Integrating Social and Complex Systems Science
September 26th, 2019 - JRC Makers Space, ISPRA
1. How did we miss the most extreme event experienced so far by humankind? 2. The problems with intermittent sources of electricity 3. The problems with biofuels 4. Do our governments understand what they want to govern?
The existing situation
The reasonable scenarios . . .
> 3% per year forever
EXPECTED DIRECTION OF
ECONOMIC GROWTH
The narrative about the future used by mainstream economists
THE PUN
Anyone who believes that exponential growth can
go forever in a finite world is either a madman or
an economist
Kennet Boulding
The elephant in the room – the ultimate extreme event in human history . . .
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Thousands years!
Fossil energy
Quantitative Story-Telling in action: renewable sources of electricity
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/strategies/2050_en
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-germany-emissions/ https://www.politico.eu/article/report-german-parties-agree-to-drop-2020-climate-goa
The Budget Committee of the German Parliament
The problem is not about generating a given quantity of electricity over a year, but it is about matching “demand and supply” defined at a smaller scale minutes, hours, days, months . . .
Peakers e.g. gas turbines or hydro – high flexibility in supply
Requirement
=
Supply
Base load e.g. nuclear or coal fired plants – high utilization factors
Time scaleAcknowledging the existence of two types of power capacity used so far to
produce electricity – loaders and peakers – with different characteristics
EU28 Power Electricity Capacity
capacity Produced Factor
Power Plant type MW GWh GWh/MW
Nuclear 108,700 947,000 8.7
Brown Coal 30,800 240,000 7.8 Base
loaders
Coal 60,600 280,300 6.4
Natural Gas 134,500 499,600 3.7
Peakers
Fuels 29,550 98,200 3.3
Hydro 63,900 240,600 3.8
Data source: Enipedia - 2015Case A - Intermittents with no priority in the supply to the grid
Requirement
and Supply
Peakers
Electricity produced Intermittents
but not used . . .
Base load nuclear or coal fired plants – high utilization factors
Time scaleCase B - Intermittents with priority in the supply to the grid
Peakers
Requirement
and Supply
A back-up is required
to avoid blackouts
Back-up of
conventional Back-up of
plants conventional
plants
All electricity Time scale
produced is used . . . Intermittents
#euforiebcnRenner A. and Giampietro M. (in press) Discourses of European electricity decarbonization: Contesting narrative credibility and legitimacy with quantitative story-telling - Energy Research & Social Science
The same information was available in a Table of a book of 1979 . . . Strauss, L. & Reeh, P. 1979 Electrical Load-curve Coverage, in R. Maxwell (Ed.) Electrical Load-Curve Cover., Pergamon Press, Oxford, England, UK: pp. 193–202.
The need of taming the intermittent sources . . .
Requirement Intermittents Peakers
and supply
Time scaleFunctional elements of modern electric sectors
cannot be cheap and unreliable (intermittent)
we have to back-up intermittents!
+ +Vaclav Smil Tokyo at 25 GW for just one day under typhoon will require 600 GWh By 2021 the largest announced storage system (more than 18,000 Li-ion batteries) will be in Long Beach for Southern California Edison: it will be capable of running at 100 MW for 4 hours. But 400MWh is still three orders of magnitude lower than what a large Asian city would need in just one day if it were deprived of its intermittent supply 600 GWh/400 MWh = 1,500
The world's largest battery storage substation 100MW/129MWh, the Hornsdale Power Reserve (TESLA)
165 GWh
24,000 GWh? 2 million cars
In EU we have about
290 million cars
105 GWh
?!
20 GWh
Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Avicenne
#euforiebcn
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-04/tesla-flips-the-switch-on-the-gigafactoryQuantitative Story-Telling in action: the biofuel solution
Marie Antoinettehttps://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/the-netherlands-mulls-end-to-used-cooking-oil-double-counting/
1 kg of UCO p.c./year 0.75 kg of gross biodiesel p.c./year 0.6 kg of net biodiesel p.c./year https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/Greenea%20Report%20Household%20UCO%20Collection%20in%20the%20EU_ICCT_20160629.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/intelligent/projects/en/projects/recoil = 7 kg of biodiesel from UCO p.c./year. This require more than 12 kg of UCO collected p.c./year
Corn Stove when looking for alternative fuels,
does everything go?
What about refined biodiesel from human fat after liposuction?
after all this
is a win-win
solution . . .“There’s an interesting business model: link a biodiesel plant with the cosmetic
surgeons,” says Mr. Bethune. “In Auckland we produce about 330 pounds of fat
per week from liposuction, which would make about 40 gallons of fuel.
If it is going to be chucked out, why not?”
Peter Buthune is the founder of Earthrace, a project to promote the use of
biofuel trying to break the round-the-world powerboat speed record
in a boat powered by biodiesel fuel partly manufactured from human fat.
“A large liposuction operation involves
Peter Bethune removing 10 pounds of fat, which would
drive a car about 50 miles once converted”
The lean Mr. Bethune had about three ounces of fat extracted from
his body in a liposuction procedure, and he is seeking volunteers
to donate more.
From: http://calorielab.com/news/2005/11/11/costs for the
environment
land water labor capital GROSS
NET
SUPPLY
SUPPLY
Biofuel
Production
energy used by the
economy to produce
and consume goods
and services
internal consumption
of the energy system First Generation Biofuels
costs for the economynutrients nutrients
W/m2
nutrients
W/m2 W/m2
Useful Energy
nutrients FUND
W/m2
W/m2
nutrients
W/m2
nutrients nutrients nutrients
W/m2 W/m2 W/m2nutrients
FARMS ENVIRONMENTAL
SERVICES
Useful Energy
FLOW (fossil energy)
W/m2
leakage
CITIES
W/m2
W/m2
nutrients
nutrients
W/m2 W/m2
leakage leakage
FARMS
FARMSEnergy supply Energy requirement
105 105
104 104
power density (W/m2) oil fields
103 coal fields 103
supermarket
102 102
industry
101 101 houses cities
100 100
phytomass
10-1 Biofuel 10-1
10-2 100 102 104 106 108 1010 10-2 100 102 104 106 108 1010
area (m2) area (m2)
power density gaps
after Vaclav Smil 2003 Energy at the Crossroads, The MIT press
(Fig. 5.2 and Fig. 5.3)modern technical progress = using oil to save land and labor biofuel idea = using land and labor to save oil!
Too much stress
fossil energy implies the
on the sink side!
same problem generated
by disposable diapers !different forms of recyclable diapers have been used since the dawn of humankind . . .
“When moss was used for diapers the baby seldom became chafed,
and when it was unwrapped you could smell only sweet moss”
Statement gathered by the ethnologist Imez Hilger
A Tikanagan used in the 1930s from an elder Native American British Museum
by native Americans
So why did humans stop to use recyclable diapers in the first place?The delusion of domestic biogas plants in China . . .
“The vast majority of the 6 million domestic biogas
plants in rural China have been abandoned as soon
as fossil energy has become accessible . . .”
Vaclav Smil
So, what is wrong with domestic biogas plants?ask the operator! 1 2 3 4 5 6
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Commerce/China-factory-scenes.html
WHAT IS GOING ON? The neglected knowledge
of energetics . . .
my old book
Energetics is no longer a of energetics
basic course in University
programs . . .Do our governments understand the functioning of the systems they want to govern?
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/strategies/2050_en
1971 2019
800 years
The economy
is an entropic 240 BC 550 AD The economy
can be circular
process
Eratosthenes Cosmas Indicopleustes
Calculation of Earth’s circumference Topographia Cristiana
He calculated the circumference of the A flat Earth supporting the heavens with
Earth from the distance from Alexandria high walls on its borders
and Syene“socially constructed ignorance”
“To make sense of the complexity of the world so that they can act,
individuals and institutions need to develop simplified, self-
consistent versions of that world. The process of doing so means
that much of what is known about the world needs to be excluded
from those versions, and in particular that knowledge which is in
tension or outright contradiction with those versions must be
expunged . . .”
dysfunctional cases of uncomfortable knowledge
have to be ignored in the official story-telling
Rayner, S., 2012. “Uncomfortable knowledge:
the social construction of ignorance in science
and environmental policy discourses”
Economy and Society, 41(1): 107-125.You can also read
