Concentrating on solar

Joseph Romm wrote a good basic overview of concentrated solar power (CSP) at Salon under the grandiose title “The technology that will save humanity.” For the aspiring engineer, Romm also links to a far more technical website at NREL.

H/T: MyDD.

Update: The NYT also ran a nice piece. Key quote:

Heat, unlike electric current, is something that industry knows how to store cost-effectively. For example, a coffee thermos and a laptop computer’s battery store about the same amount of energy, said John S. O’Donnell, executive vice president of a company in the solar thermal business, Ausra. The thermos costs about $5 and the laptop battery $150, he said, and “that’s why solar thermal is going to be the dominant form.”

Update #2:  Icantbeliveiliveintexas, an engineer, explains why the above quote is misleading.

ze Germans

This week’s Economist has a good article on the German solar experiment. The story is both good and bad. In one sense, the results have been impressive. Using feed-in-tariffs, which are essentially long-term price floors for renewables, Germany (hardly a sunny place), has outpaced the rest of the world in solar installations. However, as many economists would have predicted, this experiment has also been markedly inefficient. By guaranteeing solar a price that’s around 7x the average wholesale price, the tariff has raised consumer electricity bills by around 5%.

While you should definitely check out the article for yourself, I did want to point out one section which highlights the limitations of such programs aimed at “jump starting” clean energy.

The problem is not just the expense of the existing law. Cheerleaders for solar had hoped that the increased demand for panels would help manufacturers reduce unit costs, and thus make solar more competitive in the long run. Instead, the rush into solar has led to a shortage of the high-grade silicon used to make the cells, which has soared in price from $25 per kilogram in 2003 to around $400 today.

Like a lot of things, economies of scale are more complex than the renewables lobby would have you believe (Joseph Romm makes the scale argument a lot, and recently Daniel Weiss made a similar claim). Government can’t always induce cost reductions by just simply promoting scale (I think Stalin made a similar miscalculation). Especially when one of the production inputs is scarce, as silicon is (at least in the short run).

Diseconomies of scale are actually even more of an issue for wind, as I’ve been meaning to post for some time. The technology itself, ie wind turbines, have been around for awhile and could probably be best characterized as mature (at least for high-speed winds). So the potential for cost reduction is probably relatively limited on the capital side. The other main input, however, is finite - wind. Moreover, not all winds (?) are created equal, with some sites being much harder to get to and further away from the grid. So for wind energy, there’s a real possibility of decreasing returns to scale, depending where you are on the supply curve.

None of this is to say that wind or solar aren’t viable technologies. They are. I’m just sick of hearing people matter-of-factly say that government mandated scale will drive down average cost. Supply curves are still upward sloping; and in the case of some renewables, they’re often very steep at scale.

Comment of the day

In response to my previous posts on the health effects of coal, DK wrote following:

I’m just commenting on yout last note. You shouldn’t be so dismissive of the health effects from eliminating coal. Asthma is only one small health effect of PM, SOx, and NOx. The National Association of Clean Air Agencies note that Electrical Generating Units (EGU’s) emit 2/3s of the nation’s SO2 and a quarter of the nation’s NOx. Over 70 percent of them are more than 25-50 years old and 50 times worse than modern coal-fired technology. For example, EPA estimated that its top 12 FY 2007 civil air enforcement cases will result in $3.8 billion in health benefits annually from the consent decrees requiring plants to install new technology. Of those top 12 air cases, half of them (78 percent by emissions) were New Source Review cases against coal fired power plants. That’s 500 fewer premature deaths, 1000 emergency room visits, 1500 cases of bronchitis, 1000 non-fatal heart attacks, 8000 cases of aggravated asthma, and 50,000 days of missed school avoided each year from 2007 cases alone. That 250,000 tons (507 million pounds) of pollution reduced, is < 1.5% of the 17.5 million tons of EGU emissions in 2001. Those estimates are based on lots of research on the health effects of PM, and are probably on the low side. Other mortality estimates would yield nearly twice those results. As a national average, each ton of PM reduced is up to $300,000 in health benefits and each ton of SOx is up to $45,000. When you’re talking about 17.5 million tons of emissions from EGUs, that’s a lot of health benefits to consider. Let alone the effects of CO2 (EGUs account for 40 percent of US emissions), mercury (EGUs account for approximately 33 percent of US emissions), and other air toxics (at least 67 different pollutants). Sometimes it pays to look beyond the world of CO2 and climate change. However, as you noted before, the Clean Air Interstate Rule, Clean Air Act New Source Review, and mercury regulations are in place to address some of the emissions.

Where to begin? In addition to making a point (always a plus), DK backed his statements up with a string of great facts/ sources.

Just to clarify, I’m by no means pro-coal. Nor do I disagree that there are negative health effects from burning coal. However the point I was trying to make in the comments on the original post was that we need to at least attempt to quantify the positives and negatives involved if we are to make a rational policy decision. Fortunately DK has made it a lot easier to do this.

*** For the record (although my co-bloggers definitely won’t give me a break on this point), apparently I didn’t make it clear that the last two points in the post DK commented on were FROM THE INBOX. Evan already yelled at me for being so anti-Obama (who does, btw, really love coal). Anyways, next time I’m forcing my friends to post their own comments instead of blogging vicariously through me