Energy Revolution blueprint - wind energy practicalities

Greenpeace has issued their Energy Revolution blueprint to provide a basis for reducing mankind's CO2 emissions. 

There's some great stuff in their blueprint, too much to go into in any detail here, however a key part of their energy strategy involves wind energy. In fact, they recommend increasing fromcurrent levels of around 100GW of installed capacity, to 2733 GW in 2050! This will require a massive increase in: identification and development of sites, local government approval of projects, production of wind turbines, and development of grid infrastructure. A great challenge for our industry indeed!

I've done some rough calculations based on the supplied data, and some of my ideas are:

• We will need to significantly ramp up the wind industry in the next few years to meet this target of 2733 GW - more than tripling our current rate of installation to around 60 GW per year. That would involve installing around 30,000 2MW-turbines every year, being around a thousand projects commissioned every year - that's alot of sites that need development.
• Onshore wind will definitely be key, however offshore wind will need to grow significantly to around 20% of the total by 2050 - 547 GW of offshore wind energy, that's thousands of large individual offshore projects. Significant development in site acquisition studies, and energy estimation will be a key element of this.
• This will transform the wind turbine-manufacturing  industry from around US$30b/year today to over $100b/year! Plenty of room for new manufacturers, and novel design concepts. Reducing the capital cost will be the key driver, with smart developers looking at the realistic and accurate costs for generated energy over the projcet's life ($/MW.hr) 
• Operational and Maintenance (O&M) will become a serious industry, from current levels of around US$4b/year to US$100b/year in 2050.  This will be a serious industry, surpassing the turbine-manufacturing industry, and resulting in some interesting market and industry movements. Maybe the wind industry will go the way the aircraft industry went, with more money in operations, and leasing being the predominant business model?

Ambitious targets, and exciting times for the wind industry.  Our future energy needs will require a portfolio approach, with the renewable-energy industry being increasingly important with all its different technologies healthily competing to displace the old-world technologies. 

The true cost of coal

"Coal burning contributes more to climate change than any other

fossil fuel. Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2

into the atmosphere each year, 11 billion tonnes to be precise.

This amounts to 72% of CO2 emissions from power generation

and 41% of total global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels."

Greenpeace has released a great report: 'the true cost of coal'  looking at the true cost of using coal for electricity generation.  It takes  a good look at coal use throughout the world, and some of its current and future affects to the environment. Some of the key points I took out of the report were:

• Coal use is our single biggest emitter of CO2
• Coal is used for 40% of the word's energy supply - and expected to rise
• The true annual cost of coal use has been estimated at EUR360 billion in 2007 - with an estimated 150,000 deaths! That would pay for 3 times our total current level of wind energy - in a single year.
• Australia has a dirty history with coal, being the world's largest exporter, and relying on coal-fired power stations for 80% of its energy supply. 
• Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a false promise from the coal industry, with more of a focus on diverting public attention away from coal's current and future impact. CCS is not expected to be commercially available until at least 2030, and even this is technically unproven, will drastically increase the cost of coal-fired power generation, and it is still unsure how all this CO2 will actually be stored safely underground... for ever. The sooner we drop this red herring the better.   

My next article will focus on both the: Greeenpeace Energy Revolution blueprint to radically reduce CO2 emissions; and the IPCC assumptions for energy supply for the various scenarios. And what this means for wind energy.

The best of 2008

"I'm not one to attribute every man - activity of man to the changes of the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes to our planet."

-Sarah Pallin, 2008

Hmm... thanks for that Sarah