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Adam Rosencwajg on the dark side of renewables.

Green investment room for those with a green conscience or following environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles
88V8
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Adam Rosencwajg on the dark side of renewables.

#500729

Postby 88V8 » May 16th, 2022, 11:02 am

Interesting podcast discussion on sources of energy and the role its efficiency in terms of EROI* has played in societal development.
https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/podcast/adam-rozencwajg-global-macro-series-may-11th-2022/

The inefficiency of renewables in terms of energy utilisation due to intermittency and redundancy ... from 25 mins... and the handicap it may impose on future development.

He favours nuclear power although he glosses over the waste issue. Uranium producers as an investment.
And US natural gas.
And resources.

Seems to know his stuff. Energy and agriculture specialist. But, he is a fund manager, and it has to be said that their funds have not performed especially well. When investing, it can be hard to translate knowledge into money.

*EROI = Energy Return on Investment, is the amount of energy expended to produce a certain amount of net energy.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/energy-return-on-investment.asp

V8

UncleEbenezer
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Re: Adam Rosencwajg on the dark side of renewables.

#500775

Postby UncleEbenezer » May 16th, 2022, 12:48 pm

Seen similar arguments a few times. It's basically a valid critique of a narrow view on certain power sources, mainly wind and solar, that we know to be locally intermittent, and for values of "locally" that can occasionally span a country the size of Blighty and more.

I favour tidal energy. That is, for the UK, where it is for geographical reasons by far our biggest and best resource. Other countries of course differ - which is why tidal power is so far behind wind and solar on the development/maturity curve. But I also agree about nuclear power: an industry whose waste can - unlike fossil fuels - at least be managed without serious global damage.

BTW, his name spikes my curiosity. What's it transcribed from? I'm guessing "cwajg" is the same as would more usually be transcribed "zweig" - and maybe he or an ancestor didn't want to be called Red Dwarf?

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Re: Adam Rosencwajg on the dark side of renewables.

#500801

Postby Hallucigenia » May 16th, 2022, 3:09 pm

88V8 wrote:The inefficiency of renewables in terms of energy utilisation due to intermittency and redundancy ... from 25 mins... and the handicap it may impose on future development.

He favours nuclear power although he glosses over the waste issue.


Without listening to the podcast, that is a pretty conventional view in the US, they are comfortable with nucelar but just aren't really feeling the implications of recent cost reductions in solar and offshore wind in particular.

To give an example - Europe added 24.6GW of new wind in 2021 at a cost of $41bn, the Vogtle nuclear plant near Augusta, Georgia (as in the golf Masters) is costing $34bn for 2.5GW. Even if you adjust for intermittency and say 35% capacity for wind and 89% for nuclear, that looks like $34bn buys you 7.1GW of wind versus 2.2GW of nuke. Vogtle is a notoriously expensive example, but take Hinckley Point C closer to home - 3.2GW for currently £23bn ($28.2bn) so 3.9GW for $34bn, but a revised budget is due in the next few weeks.

And energy economicsts are getting beyond the handwaving stage of what intermittency actually means for costs - Ruhnau & Qvist looked in detail at 35 years of German weather records etc to see what intermittency would actually look like in a 100% renewable system and their conclusion was that the potential outages are rather longer than some in the industry would admit, their worst case was a 27 TWh (18 days of average load) deficit accumulated over a period of nearly 9 weeks around Christmas 1996.

They see the solution being 36TWh deliverable from 56 TWh of storage, of which 97.9% would be hydrogen storage (despite 50% round-trip efficiency), 2% from existing pumped-hydro and batteries just a rounding error at 0.1% (0.059 TWh). They assume €50/MWh for renewables and €30/MWh for storage in the timeframe we're talking about.

So if you say storage increases the cost of renewables by 60%, potentially you're looking in the order of $34bn buying 4.5GW (wind + storage) versus 3.9GW of Hinckley Point C (less under the new budget) or 2.2GW for Vogtle.

The problem with nuclear in the West is that it just costs so much.

[ironically, this post was disrupted by a brief power cut....]

UncleEbenezer
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Re: Adam Rosencwajg on the dark side of renewables.

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Postby UncleEbenezer » May 16th, 2022, 4:10 pm

Germany is a far worse-case intermittency study than the UK, as it doesn't have our tidal resource.

It's also, I'd imagine, a worse-case study than Germany in reality. Because Germany is itself part of a transnational grid and market, that gives them access to resources from other countries. An event that reduces Germany's own production over a sustained period is much more likely than one that hits simultaneously on all its trading partners.

Though having said that, their energy policy does leave something to be desired. Every country now reducing its reliance on Russia will presumably be considering its future direction.

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Re: Adam Rosencwajg on the dark side of renewables.

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Postby Dod101 » May 16th, 2022, 5:05 pm

I would have thought that nuclear is a more reliable source of energy and it can be built close to where it is needed without the long transmission cables etc required to take say windpower from its site of generation to the point of use. Furthermore, a nuclear power station looks like, well, a power station, unlike the acres of windmills that can now be seen in many parts of Scotland both on and off shore. Then these turbines have a lifespan of around 25 years or so I think we are told. I have no idea about nuclear power.

I had a 300 mile trip to North Scotland last week and there can be little argument that these turbines are an eyesore both on and off shore. Not even for our benefit as most of it is exported to England. (Surprising that I have not heard Nicola talk about that)

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Re: Adam Rosencwajg on the dark side of renewables.

#500853

Postby Hallucigenia » May 16th, 2022, 9:11 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:Germany is a far worse-case intermittency study than the UK, as it doesn't have our tidal resource.


Tidal at one site is still intermittent, just predictably so. And although it can become baseload if you have sites out of sync with one another, the concentration of UK tidal resource in the Pentland Firth will make it difficult to balance with out-of-sync sites. The real problem is always cost though - OREC suggested in November 2018 :
Tidal stream has potential to reach LCOE of £150 per MWh by 100MW installed, reducing to £90 per MWh by 1GW and £80 per MWh by 2GW.

but we're a long way even from the first of those figures at present, and last year Coles et alwere a bit sceptical of those numbers whilst giving a good review of where we were now.

UncleEbenezer wrote:It's also, I'd imagine, a worse-case study than Germany in reality. Because Germany is itself part of a transnational grid and market, that gives them access to resources from other countries. An event that reduces Germany's own production over a sustained period is much more likely than one that hits simultaneously on all its trading partners.


Although interconnectors definitely help, Ruhnau & Qvist suggest that for Germany they're less helpful than they might seem, neighbouring countries often have low output at the same time as Germany.


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