Wind and Solar Were EU's Top Electricity Source In 2022 For First Time Ever (carbonbrief.org) 57
AmiMoJo writes: Wind and solar supplied more of the EU's electricity than any other power source for the first time ever in 2022, new analysis finds. They together provided a record one-fifth of the EU's electricity in 2022 -- a larger share than gas or nuclear, according to a report by the climate thinktank Ember. Record additions of new wind and solar in 2022 helped Europe survive a 'triple crisis' created by restrictions on Russian gas supplies, a dip in hydro caused by drought and unexpected nuclear outages, the analysis says.
Around 83% of the dip in hydro and nuclear power was met by wind and solar -- and falling electricity demand. The rest was met by coal, which grew at a slower pace than some had expected amid a drop in fossil fuel supplies from Russia. Solar generation across the EU rose by a record 24% in 2022, helping to avoid --10bn Euro in gas costs, according to the findings. Some 20 EU nations sourced a record share of their power from solar, including the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. Wind and solar growth is expected to continue this year, while hydro and nuclear generation is likely to recover. As a result, fossil fuel power generation could drop by an unprecedented 20% in 2023 -- double the previous record observed in 2020, the analysis projects.
Around 83% of the dip in hydro and nuclear power was met by wind and solar -- and falling electricity demand. The rest was met by coal, which grew at a slower pace than some had expected amid a drop in fossil fuel supplies from Russia. Solar generation across the EU rose by a record 24% in 2022, helping to avoid --10bn Euro in gas costs, according to the findings. Some 20 EU nations sourced a record share of their power from solar, including the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. Wind and solar growth is expected to continue this year, while hydro and nuclear generation is likely to recover. As a result, fossil fuel power generation could drop by an unprecedented 20% in 2023 -- double the previous record observed in 2020, the analysis projects.
wait a minute here. (Score:1)
Why do they group wind and solar? Can we group Coal and Gas to say it produced the most power? How about Hydro + BioEnergy? Nuclear plus anything else on that list is still number one.
Makes no sense that they get to group two different sources of power and call it a winner against a collection of single sources.
Re:wait a minute here. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because they are complementary renewable sources that are somewhat intermittent, and thus deemed unsuitable by some doubters.
Generally speaking the plan is large wind farms and domestic solar. They tend to produce the most energy at different times, so are seen as supporting each other. One trick fossil fuel companies use is to consider them individually, to make their availability look worse.
That said, you make a reasonable point that it makes sense to lump fossil fuels together in some sense. Gas is a little different as some of it is biogas, although not much. In any case, the use of both is decreasing, both for environmental reasons and for economic/geo-political ones.
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No [google.com] and no. [google.com]
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Speaking for France here. Solar panels, as of the late Chinese panels France bought in the previous years, require a LOT of electricity to be built. Given that Chinese electricity is mostly coal based, the total emissions required to build a solar panel in China, and bring it to France, is quite high.
Now, once installed, it doesn't emit any CO2 anymore. But, it replaces electricity, in France, that is 80% nuclear, about 15% hydro and 5% fossil fuel based.
Over its lifetime (~30 years), it will have contribut
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"No" everywhere. "No" by 1 1/2 orders of magnitude, give or take half an order of magnitude by location and solar panel type. It's not even remotely close.
This myth has to die. Solar, everywhere, produces vastly more power than goes into its production.
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If you read once more the comment you're replaying to, you will notice I didn't talk about power but CO2 emissions. So... Off topic much ?
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That is untrue, solar and wind produce vastly more energy than they require to manufacture.
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It costs more energy to produce solar panels and wind turbines
It costs more per kWh of nameplate production to produce solar panels or wind turbines, but they don't pollute when in operation and they last a long time without little or no maintenance. (Wind farms require more maintenance than solar, obviously — but still much less than fossil fuel plants.)
Re:wait a minute here. (Score:4, Informative)
It costs more energy to produce solar panels
That may have been true fifty years ago when solar cells were so inefficient they were only practical for things like spacecraft. But as efficiencies and economies of production scale increase that picture gradually changed, so as of 2010 the solar industry was effectively producing more energy than it consumed [source [acs.org]].
Solar cell prices have come down over 100-fold over that period. A watt of solar cell capacity costs about $0.75; at an electricity price of $0.29 / kwh it takes just under three hours for an installed cell to recoup all its fabrication costs, including the cost of the electricity used to make it.
wind turbines (which are impractical to service or repair
Again that's a function of industry scale. If you owned the only internal combustion engine car in your state, it would be impractical to service and repair. But there are millions of ICE cars in your state and thousands of businesses servicing them. Those businesses have all the specialized equipment, parts inventory and expertise needed to keep your car on the road. Likewise twenty years ago when there were maybe 2000-3000 wind turbines in the US, you were on your own for maintenance, but now there's well over seventy thousand and the number continues to grow rapidly. There are big companies in the business of turbine maintenance that have all the equipment, parts and expertise. There's an entire industry producing products to make wind turbine maintenance more convenient.
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Are we not in danger of them having us by the short and curlies if we get dependent on solar....much like we are now with them having far too much control over microchips and other manufacturing.
Perhaps we need to look VERY seriously into producing solar, wind and battery hardware domestically before we jump headlong into it and become dependent upon China for another set if items critical to national security and quality of life.
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Ok, I"m all for it, if we start production now and not be dependent upon china once we are so far down that path we cannot come back from it if china changes their mind, yo
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You have a CAPITALISM LOOKING FOR LOWEST WAGE problem
Get that through your head. NO amount of government intervention will cut labor to zero, and that's the only acceptable price to the Capitalist who exported American jobs looking for cheap labor.
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Would there not be a problem that most oil for the Us comes out of Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations? Are we not in dangers of the Saudis having us by the short and curlies like they did in the 70s? Maybe we can build a big pipeline from Canada, so that they can ship their oil.. to... China?? Never mind, we'll figure out a way to keep a dying industry alive instead of relying on American ingenuity.
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China sells solar panels, not sunshine. ... not yet.
At least
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A watt of solar cell capacity costs about $0.75; at an electricity price of $0.29 / kwh it takes just under three hours...
Methinks you dropped the "k" in kilowatt-hour, there. It will be years, not hours.
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They probably meant to say years, because that's how long it actually takes. Three years. Even in the 1970s it only took seven years to repay the energy investment of the construction and installation of solar panels, and most of the panels produced in the 1970s would still be functioning, and producing over 50% output today if they hadn't been replaced with newer panels by now.
Thin film panels take even less time to repay, but they don't last very long so I prefer to ignore them.
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> A watt of solar cell capacity costs about $0.75; at an electricity price of $0.29 / kwh it takes just under three hours for an installed cell to recoup all its fabrication costs, including the cost of the electricity used to make it.
Make that 2586 hours of daylight operation not "just under three".
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The "but what if"s are funny. I mean, what's the cost to service or repair a hydro electric dam? Very high, as some have noticed recently with some failing dams a couple years back. What's the cost to service or repair a coal fired plant? Or the cost to service or repair coal miners themselves?
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What do you are willing to pay the liberal? What is the gage for the marines? Do they get permission from their combat unit to appear on your show? What if they get injured? Does your production company cover the medical bills? Which insurance companies will cover the associated risks for your show? What are their ins
Nothing like a war... (Score:2)
Nothing like a war to motivate people.
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Shortages motivate people. In the US, when gas prices go up the sales of economy cars and cars with great gas mileage go up. A year later prices are back down to normal low prices and sales of SUVs and commuter trucks goes up. And even then, the "high" gas price that motivated this was still much less than EU prices, or the prices in much of the world.
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The shitty part (Score:1)
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The only good side-effect of that stupid war.
Re:Russia (Score:4, Informative)
It's in the first sentence of the summary FFS.
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Record additions of new wind and solar in 2022 helped Europe survive a 'triple crisis' created by restrictions on Russian gas supplies, a dip in hydro caused by drought and unexpected nuclear outages, the analysis says.
The timescale just don't match. New solar/wind farms that started to be built (or started to get permits delivered) in 2022 play no role in how Europe "survived" a triple crisis. The truth is that in France for instance, most of November/December had temperatures of 20-25 C. The day after christmas, people were actually talking a walk in t-shirts... This is how we "survived" whatever crisis you are talking about, without relying more on coal/gas (gas stocks were full at the time).
And in January/February (
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I don't think anybody claimed that solar and wind that started to be build in 2022 played a role.
The increase in solar and wind generation in 2022 played a role, which was from capacity becoming online (started to build before) and probably also good weather conditions.
The mild winter certainly also helped.
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I don't think anybody claimed that solar and wind that started to be build in 2022 played a role.
You are right, that was me reading the summary a bit too hastily. Sorry for that.
The increase in solar and wind generation in 2022 played a role, which was from capacity becoming online (started to build before) and probably also good weather conditions. The mild winter certainly also helped.
I agree again. Which is why I don't believe solar/wind alone can be the answer for future years where we either won't have such good weather conditions, or such mild winter (or both). Our society needs baseload energy generation. That can be hydro for countries which have the topology for that. For others, the lesser evil seem to be nuclear energy.
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That analysis is bollocks.
Even a rooftop solar for a one family house takes more than a year to plan and build.
The installs most likely were planned before the war started and just conducted during 2022.
Let's see how 2023 goes - because I guess instead of investing into solar, many people who could have done so, stopped investing and 2023 will see a dip. But who knows.
Re: Russia (Score:2)
Re:What happens when the Globe starts Unwarming? (Score:4, Interesting)
>>Will solar and windfarms be able to keep up when temperatures start dropping?
Short answer: yes. Climate change is not caused by raw solar output (which is fairly constant), it's caused by greenhouse gases trapping the heat from the sun in the earth's atmosphere (solar panels generate electricity from light, not heat). As for wind, there might be a small drop if global temperatures decrease quickly and a lot (unlikely even under the most optimistic projections) but I doubt it would be significant to windfarm electrical output. In fact, though there would probably be lower peak wind speeds, there would likely be more consistent average speeds due to a decrease in extreme weather events.
Re:What happens when the Globe starts Unwarming? (Score:4, Informative)
In fact solar panels work better in cooler weather.
But I'm not sure what the phrase "when the Globe starts Unwarming" is intended to mean. There's quite good evidence that the current warming is due to human-induced carbon dioxide emissions, and the lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is somewhere between 50 and 200 years. [ref [edf.org]]. The globe is not about to "start unwarming" any time soon.
(and if you are trying to imply that the current warming is due to something else, say, changes in solar constant, no, it's not. We measure solar constant. The solar input to the Earth is not changing.)
Gas... (Score:2)
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I assume the renewables had been planned and started construction long ago.
The pro-gas argument I think is that it can easily replace coal, either with a relatively cheap new plant or even converting existing ones. Natural gas emits about half the CO2 and generally burns cleaner.
I'm not one of the "pro-gas" people, but that seems to make sense as long as it's not used to derail other plans. Which of course is quite likely with the oil&gas lobby being what it is.