Why Net Zero Will be Harder Than You Think - The Five Horsemen of the Transition
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- Опубликовано: 5 мар 2024
- Michael is solo this week on Cleaning Up, outlining the "5 horsemen" of the net-zero transition - the five greatest obstacles to the net zero transition. These 5 horsemen are: the economics of energy solutions, the electrical grid, the demand for critical mineral, political and social inertia, predatory delay by the powerful incumbents. This audioblog is based on Michael's Bloomberg New Energy Finance opinion piece of the same title.
Links
Read the original essay here: about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich...
Read Michael's 2022 essay, 'The Quest for Resilience - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?' here: about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich...
Read Michael's 2023 essay, 'The Next Half-Trillion-Dollar Market - Electrification of Heat': about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich...
Read Bloomberg NEF's 2022 New Energy Outlook: about.bnef.com/new-energy-out...
Read the IEA's report on the role of critical minerals in the transition: www.iea.org/reports/the-role-...
Read the IPSOS report study - 'What Worries the World'?: www.ipsos.com/sites/default/f...
Read Simon Michaux's report on the required quantity of critical minerals for net zero: www.gtk.fi/en/current/gtk-res...
Read Part 2 of this two-parter, on the "5 superheroes" of the transition: about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich...
Related Episodes
Review Ep141 with Naomi Oreskes - Lifting the Curtain on Climate Change Denial: www.cleaningup.live/lifting-t... 
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I love the way you provide so much accessible information succinctly - thank you! 👏🙏
A thoughtful yet clear statement of the challenges in the energy transition 👏👏
I think the biggest current challenge is the incumbent industries delaying tactics, which is all too evident in the uk press with disinformation articles about heat pumps and evs, and obsession with (where does the electricity and minerals come from, but never where does the gas and oil come from). However, when peak fossil fuels hits, their political power will decline in line with their economic power.
However, I think the biggest challenge for renewable energy in the long term is a Mount Tambora event (1815 - Volcanic Winter) which created a year without summer and drastically reduced the amount of sunlight received across the world. There seems to be a lot of focus on Dunkelflaute but no focus as far as I can tell on a volcanic winter event. An energy system dominated by solar would be particularly vulnerable to this. Reduced solar energy for a year would make the Dunkelflaute of a few weeks seem trivial in comparison.
I think the only solution to this would be to overbuild renewables to 300-400% of demand and ensure that non solar renewables are at least 100% of demand to ensure coverage regardless of solar output. However, I think the market may end of overdelivering solar relative to wind and other renewables due to their steeper experience curve, as we can see in some of the recent BNEF data where solar is on track for net zero but wind is not.
Looking forward to part 2.
The first of a pair of episodes on whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about Net Zero.
First the bad news - the Five Horsemen of the Transition.
Next week, the good news - the Five Superheroes!
Great listen, looking forward to part 2
For the sake of RUclips why not include a video feed to we can see you while you’re talking?
I TOTALLY agree with you that the biggest POLITICAL hurdle is the super-grid infrastructure we need for a renewables grid. But you totally lost me by quoting Michaux as somehow a credible witness - as I've been researching that guy for a year now and it's the biggest cherry-picked cherry-pie strawman I've ever seen. Reading Simon Michaux’s 1000 page PDF is like listening to someone argue that it is impossible to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge because:
A: You just HAVE to build it across the widest part of Sydney Harbour,
B: You just HAVE to build it out of GOLD, so therefore:-
C: There isn’t enough gold in the world! Therefore the Sydney Harbour Bridge is impossible!
When you start from THE WRONG PLACE and assume the THE WRONG MATERIALS you can prove almost anything impossible!
Michaux multiplies the errors by each other to the point of absurdity. He engages in some not-so-clever cherry-picking that is so bad, even someone that’s not very technical (like myself with a Social Sciences background) that is even partially familiar with the peer-reviewed work can cough in disbelief and ask, “What did he just say?”
A: THE WRONG PLACE
Michaux cherry-picked studies about an isolated German grid to maximise the “problem” of getting through winter. I have heard him assert “No one thought about winter!” countless times across many RUclips channels. But that is just not true!
There are many studies into German winters going back many years. Yet it’s not really even an issue for most people, as 3/4 of the human race live in the “Sunshine Belt” which stretches from the equator north and south to the 35th parallels. Only a quarter of us live as far north as Germany and beyond. Michaux takes German winters as “normative” when most of us live where winter's impact is minimal or non-existent!
Then he forgot about super-grids. Modern HVDC powerlines only lose 1.6% of their power per 1000 km. We could hypothetically run a base at the North Pole from solar power on the equator and only lose 16% of the electricity.
That means NO major trading nation lives outside the reach of the “Sunshine Belt”.
Now that wind and solar are 1/4 the cost of nuclear (LCOE) we can afford to Overbuild their capacity across vast areas. Back in 2015, Scientific American showed how super-grids radically reduce storage requirements. This is not just in rare peer-reviewed papers - Scientific American puts it in popular culture! Michaux writing about energy SHOULD have known about super-grids. blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/renewable-energy-intermittency-explained-challenges-solutions-and-opportunities/
Professor Andrew Blakers is an Australian solar cell designer who won the Queen Elizabeth Prize for inventing the PERC solar cell (now in 90% of all solar panels). Blakers developed plans for Australia, and warns that if each State tried to build their own grid they would REQUIRE 5 TIMES MORE STORAGE than if we linked the whole continent in the one super-grid. But a connected Australia only needs 2 days storage for each city! reneweconomy.com.au/solars-stunning-journey-from-lab-curiosity-to-global-juggernaut-wiping-out-fossil-fuels/
Professor Blakers summary youtube: 25 minutes. ruclips.net/video/BIcwaXRN1Hs/видео.html
Australia is in the Sunshine Belt - and if WE need a super-grid - how much more does cold dark GERMANY? Germany is also 21 TIMES smaller than Australia! Michaux could not have picked a more ridiculous paper to analyse than an isolated German grid trying to get through winter on their own!
It gets worse. In REALITY (somewhere Michaux PRETENDS he owns) Germany and the whole EU is actually in the ENTSO-E super-grid! This monster grid spread across 35 countries and 532 million people. www.entsoe.eu/ The area is a THIRD LARGER than Australia!
This means they can trade abundant northern wind with abundant southern solar. This means they can almost forget winter! Northern wind and southern solar complement each other providing VERY high penetrations of LIVE renewable power - radically reducing storage.
I have to ask - did Simon even read THE WIKI on super-grids? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_grid
Michaux’s demand for a MONTH of storage for Germany to get through winter on their own is utterly ridiculous. It's starting in the wrong place with the wrong assumptions, like building the Sydney Harbour Bridge across “The Gap” instead of starting at Milson’s Point.
B: THE WRONG MATERIALS
Asking us to believe we must do GRID STORAGE with top-of the line EV batteries is like asking us to believe we must build the Harbour Bridge out of gold.
NMC have the highest performance - but also use the most Critical Minerals and are the most expensive and also the most likely to explode into flames! Which is why the market is moving away from them. The EV market is moving to LFP - and is already 30% there. LFP are cheaper and thermally stable. They use NO Critical Minerals other than lithium itself - and the USGS says we have 22 million tons of reserves - twice what we need for 1.4 billion EV’s! eclipsenow.wordpress.com/michaux/
But the grid doesn’t even need these! GRID batteries don’t have to be compact, but can be big and clunky. But they do have to be cheap - and sodium batteries are 30% cheaper than lithium grid battery packs. They don’t use ANY Critical Minerals - even copper - and can be made from sea-salt and agri-waste. AND we only use them for an hour or so because then other storage will take over - probably off-river pumped hydro.
Andrew Blaker’s Atlas famously debunked Michaux’s claims that there were not enough sites for pumped hydro - simply by looking OFF-river. His satellite maps show the world has over 100 TIMES the potential sites it needs! Look how many are ocean pumped hydro - and do not even use fresh water! re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/
C: NOT ENOUGH GOLD IN THE WORLD?
Here’s the punchline. Michaux’s own paper shows that if we just swap out his NMC batteries for sodium and pumped hydro - we DO have enough minerals and enough time to mine all the stuff we need. I did the math here. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/michaux-sans-batteries/
Also, every bulk technology in the Energy Transition has alternative brands that do not need critical minerals. Almost every car company on earth is developing EV’s that do not rely on them, electric motors and generators and magnets are being built without them, and that includes the generators in wind turbines. The bulk energy and storage will come from silicon, aluminium, iron, fibreglass and resins - all stuff that is super-abundant and super-recyclable. eclipsenow.wordpress.com/materials/
The mining for all this will NOT destroy the planet - where climate change definitely would! Sure - mining increases local environmental concerns, and we must hold mining companies to the highest environmental standards and demand the best in landscape rehabilitation after it is all complete. But the good news is this will end up being LESS mining than the 14 billion tonnes of fossil fuels we mine and transport around the world each year.
I don't know how many times I've heard Simon assert that the Energy Transition is "Just not going to happen!" and then push his extreme peak oil manifesto - much of which I empathise with (as a New Urbanist myself who actually HATES cars.) But misinforming the public like this and spreading anti-renewables lies to alt-right news channels like Sky News is just not acceptable behaviour in a time of climate crisis and biosphere loss. It's time to admit the truth. Renewables can and will do the job - better and cheaper than fossil fuels - on vastly LESS energy!