There a lot of his lies you missed. In Europe they placed solar panels over farms and found a 20% increase in production due to the shading at noon and moisture retention. While farmers made extra money from the panels above their crops. In India they placed solar panels over large irrigation canals which decreased evaporation, meaning solar panels DO NOT diminish land use. In fact its a benefit if properly installed. It's just a matter of installing them correctly. Why did those turtles have to be removed? There is no reason to move animals. In fact solar panels provide shade and shelter during the hot noon sun. Southern Spain, and large parts of the Netherlands, are covered in plastic greenhouses. A perfect location for solar panels instead of plastic. A kill two birds with one stone benefit. Less plastic more clean power. Small vertical windmills have been placed on the center divider on large roads. The wind generated by cars passing by generates massive amounts of current. Lots of freeways have sound walls, sometimes of glass. They could be vertical solar panels which are more productive than horizontal ones. Let me be blunt. This guy is full of shit. A corrupt propagandist being paid by the oil industry to subvert renewables. People like this need to be called out for the crooks they are and not handled with kid gloves. He is corrupt, and corruption is crime.
You don't even mention the Aerosol Masking Effect being twice as bad as previously thought as Daniel Rosenfeld's research group proved. James E. Hanson now emphasizes the Aerosol masking Effect as the main cause of temperature increase globally. That means a 40% reduction of burning coal actually heats up Earth another 1 degree Celsius global average! You're fixating on "the economy" while ignoring the actual science on the causes of our ecological crisis. Coal and oil are both from algae. Algae can sequester 100 gigatons of CO2 per year. Yes algae is not some "sexy" part of the dollar economy but algae is the future of life on Earth one way or another. Both Sir David King and double Ph.D. marine biologist Raffael Jovine promote algae as the only real means of sequestering the 100 times rate of CO2 emissions we've put out in the last 200 years. oops.
This heater turns electrical energy intro thermal energy and can by principle never be more efficient than 1:1 - in winter. In Summer it can't really cool because it has no way to transport energy outdoors. Get a heat pump! That can reach 4 times higher effiency in heating and it can really cool.
1 problem for new nuclear reactors compared to solar/wind is that it is VERY expensive to build a new reactor and it takes a very long time before it can generate revenue. Solar and wind can be built in phases and some revenue can be generated almost immediately.
Nuclear can use the same solution to deal with demand variations that solar generation uses to deal with generation intermittency.... grid-scale storage. People forget that grid-scale storage is not something that is only useful with renewables. It fixes both transmission line congestion issues AND both demand and generation variability. California figured that out a few years ago and Texas figured that out last year. Now both states are really piling on the grid-scale storage. Texas even faster than California due to its far higher electricity consumption.
He talks about sun being a "dilute energy source" So here's some facts: I live in Scotland, which is 57 degrees north - widely considered to be "far north" in North American terms. I have a 9kW Solar Array, generating 7MWH electricity annually - entirely located on the roof of my bungalow, and I'm subjected to partial shading conditions. That electricity is abundant for 6 months of the year March to September for charging my car, running my heatpump and my 10kWh battery will keep keep that apparatus going through the night Now it comes up short during Autumn and Winter, but it's contribution is still significant. All told I still need the grid, but the UK grid is now dominated by supplies of wind power in the winter time. Without subsidies, I've now returned half of my £11k original investment back into my bank account within four years. Now if I can make that happen, then everyone else south of my latitude has no excuse. Not a bad result for a "dilute energy source"!
This. I live in Canada and had family in the States begging me not to get solar because "you don't get enough sun." In July and August alone we produced what we use in 6 months. Yeah it drops off in the winter, but we're on track to pay it off in 5 years and have miniscule to negative electric bills
And I will point out that solar panels have gotten very, very cheap. If you have the surface area to deploy the panels, high latitudes are not an impediment. Your 7MWh with 9kW is roughly the same amount of annual generation that I get here in the Bay Area (Mid-California) with 5kW worth of solar. At high latitudes the local micro-climates become the limiting factor for solar rather than the sun cycle. Living on the wrong side of the mountain, or in a deep valley, or surrounded by large trees, or on rain faces, etc. (And obviously we are talking about general habitable land where most people live, not the poles). -Matt
@ I’m recently saw £47+VAT for a JA Solar 430W bi facial solar panel (ITS Technologies store). Price per sq metre was approaching that of fencing or concrete roof tiles. At that point, Solar becomes the default material of choice. The electricity is then essentially free (especially if your electrical contractor is already hired for other jobs, or you do it yourself).
It's funny when you consider that the sun is our ONLY energy source except nuclear (which is miniscule and will stay miniscule, it's just too expensive and laden with problems) and geothermal. Everything else either derives from the sun directly (rays, wind movement, hydropower, ...) or from fossil fuels that were once created by the influence of the sun.
"Everyone else"? Really? A full one third (depending on the country) live in rented accommodation and they can't do shit about it. I would love to have solar on my roof, but there is zero incentive for my landlord to put it there (unless he thought about the impact of climate change on his kids). Regulation will stop you just throwing your own 2nd hand panels on the roof and wiring it up yourself, so it remains out of reach for the poorest people who need it the most to offset their power bills.
Cars? Try housing instead! The second most detrimental to these birds is HABITAT LOSS, which is us building buildings where they were living. Buildings of all kinds, houses, stadiums, energy plants, all other kinds of product making plants. We really don't have a clue about OUR footprint on this Earth. We've literally pushed everything else to the margins.
Can you demonstrate why eagles and owls would be less likely to be killed by electric cars rather than efficient cars? I'll wait. Actually, I won't. Because you didn't think before you typed your smug, stupid comment.
There is a reason I picked on cars, because electric trains and buses being fewer on the road will kill far fewer, never mind that bicycles do not kill any.
I still don't understand the idea of solar farms when the southern US urban centers are rife with giant parking malls that heat the cars and cities. Everyone gets into their hot car and then turns on the AC. Couldn't covering these areas be advantageous in that cars would be cooler under the shade of these solar panels (using less AC and less energy), there is less black asphalt heating the surrounding air and lastly eliminating the need to make solar farms that supposedly harm wildlife.
I had a similar reaction. When in Lyon France last year we traveled past a vast parking area - outdoor, covered with metal roofing. This was for new cars stored in-land until distributing to retailers. I couldn't understand why that metal roofing - angled towards the sun - wasn't covered in solar panels. Many houses and almost all barns and warehouses in the near countryside did specifically have solar panels.
@cyrusf.4039 Many countries are pushing for this. Also there are many huge factories and wasteland areas that would be better locations for solar. Motorways can also be covered to reduce heat and help prevent snow and ice. Two problems are getting politicians to want it and managing the energy peak. Where I live most people now have solar but moat don't have batteries. Starting to cause problems because the batteries are still expensive.
The age of that Ted talk really puts the speaker at a disadvantage with respect to today’s criticism. Price and availability of solar PV in particular, and more importantly, stationary energy storage have improved significantly and look to be continuing to improve.
That is certainly true, but I remember when this Ted talk came out way back then and it was just as wrong as it is now. Just more apparent to regular viewers now. It didn't age well because the guy was so focused on cherry-picking his facts rather than actually examining the whole scene, that he ignored both the facts of the day and the clear trends that were in progress.
@@junkerzn7312 Shellenberger is famous for cherry picking data to absurd levels. He also got radicalized and now it's pretty much on the Jordan Peterson's climate change denial kind of flavor.
Ben, not all wind turbines affect birds the same. The large slow turbines now being installed allows birds to just fly around the blades like many other obstacles they encounter daily.
His point about solar panels on houses is not correct: even in the cloudy UK modern solar panels can power homes and businesses. In the USA, it will be much more economical to install solar. And there is no need for new grid connections with domestic solar. Plus your EV can be charged up from solar, so there's not even a grid connection required for that either!
Australia will be entirely green energy, most of that PV and battery in just a few very short years. VERY short time. The whole planet can be powered by SWB. Places like Denmark need more PV panels and batteries. Places like Texas and Australia require fewer but almost everywhere humans have settled can be powered by SWB.
I charge my electric cars daily directly from my solar panels. I also have battery backup with is capturing any excess solar so I can store it and use it at night. Very little need for grid connection and a efficient way of getting my power.
Rooftop solar electricity is twice as expensive? Huh. That's news to me. But in truth my array completely paid for itself years ago, and now is pure "gravy." As for solar farms and their land use… has he not heard of agrevoltaics? They are a win-win for both energy and food production.
Yup. That’s how ultra cheap solar power is. The only true drawback (where fossil fuels don’t have a worse version of the same drawback) is that the sun doesn’t always shine. And advances in energy storage tech (large batteries) is extremely rapid. It’ll surprise me if electricity generation isn’t mostly solar by the time I’m old.
@Yanquetino thank you, I came to say exactly this! Europe is starting to see quite an expansion in agrivoltaics, it maximizes the benefits available from a given area of land. And what I have seen reported so far is that many crops actually benefit greatly from the additional shade that is provided by the panels, *actually increasing the yield per acre* for some (likely not all) crops.
Rooftop solar is indeed twice as expensive as commercial and industrial solar, but that has nothing to do with whether one can break-even on it or not as a homeowner. Particularly for the more entrepreneurial DIYers.
@junkerzn7312 yes, to me this is a non sequitur also, it’s pretty irrelevant how much rooftop solar costs. It permits homeowners to be more energy independent and possibly have energy resiliency in an emergency, and if they’re willing to pay, who cares what the price might be. Each of those people are allowed to make their own economic decisions, even if there’s never any chance of breaking even with the purchase. It’d really only matter if humanity was incredibly short of the resources needed to manufacture them and they needed to benefit the maximum number of people possible. More inane and spurious arguments from the petroleum and nuclear industries.
Used EVs can be purchased for less than $5k around here. They can be plugged into a regular wall outlet if u only drive 40 or 50 miles a day. The economics alone will clean up the air.
@@fuzzymonkey777 I keep hearing that 10 year old EVs still have 80% battery capacity, which would indicate about 200+ miles of range for many EV's. Yeah, just like most amazing EV facts, NOT TRUE but ARE TRUE in 1% of cases. Scamming.
As a homeowner with a very small farm, renewables are fun to work with not only for reducing our energy use, but also to sustain our business during power outages, especially around fire season. Our main goal is to reduce our net energy use to near 0, but if our local utility became more flexible, and gave us wholesale prices that we deserve, we could really help the grid during peak and low demand periods. We have an EV which makes the trip to town inexpensive and we have some solar panels on our roof. We are putting heat pumps in our new meadery. We can put more panels on that structure and well as more on our home. We have fairly hot summers so having panels does provide some welcome shade for the roof. I keep bee boxes in a container and I need to shade it. Why not use solar panels? We will need a covered sitting area. Should we use solar panels for that as well? I might be able to be a net exporter of electricity if the right regulatory setup was in place. There are so many use cases for roof top solar for the home and landowner. This talk by Shellenburger is hardly an example of debunking renewables. If my example of regular investing in renewables (and energy efficiency) can be scaled up where does this lead us. There is a much harder case to make against renewables and I believe its around long term storage of electricity, longer than a few days. This is not so important in the south, but where I live, where nights are long in the winter and it gets cold, its more of an issue. The last few days around here, not so much wind and its cloudy. I would like to hear talks about this subject by creative solution oriented people. I dislike "can't do" arguments.
Agrivoltaics is also an excellent dual use of farming land, where the shading effect of the panels actually improves the productivity of the farmland! It has been found that crop outputs actually increase, despite the increase in shade. Less water loss due to evaporation reduces irrigation needs, and animals can use the shade under the panels on hot days. It also provides stable extra income for the farmers! Farmers love them!
Funny how people never stand behind their 'One' car while it is running an consider exactly how much exhaust is being released in the environment and to realize what is in it, a half dozen poisonous gasses Then consider how many cars are spewing pollution and then think that it isn't a big deal
I remember years ago seeing someone trying to get that message across by 'colouring' car exhaust emissions. (same sort of thing as a car with a bad engine oil leak) The car drove down the road and left a cloud for miles behind it...all fossil fuel vehicles are doing exactly the same except that you can't 'see' it and so don't think about it.
@@ScrappyDoodad There are UA-cam channels that point out having more people friendly cities ( better public transport, more pedestrian walking areas which also help mobility access and better cycling infustrcturer) would go along way to reducing both noise and air pollution while also reducing the amount of resources needed! I think renewable energy needs these methods to further reduce our energy needs which would in turn means less energy is needed in the first place!
Like it or not, EVERY one in westernized countries uses fossil fuels one way or another. How do you think food gets to your supermarket, from the factory and from the farm, from overseas. 99% fossil fueled. EVs, a very small drop in an ocean.
I know this. 1) The price of roof top solar in the U.S. is ridiculously expensive and 2) I own a house with a 200 sq metre roof. If that roof was flat, slightly tilted towards the winter sun and was completely covered in solar panels it would generate enough power to keep 13 EVs charged each doing 20,000 klms per year for 20 years. All for a cost of $16,000 U.S ( $24,000 Australian).
Propellers spin fast enough that contrasting paint will appear pretty solid even to a bird. (And especially to a human). Wind turbines don't turn fast enough. That said, higher contrast coatings on the blades might well be a good idea.
Probably because if you want to prevent bird deaths, turbines are way way down the priority list. Number one threat to birds is domestic cats. Billions of birds killed every year by cats. Sort that. Turbines are negligible.
@16:30, citing a recent LA Times article, " Solar power glut in California is a bane here, but a boon elsewhere," one of the reasons for higher electricity costs in California has been that we have had to pay to send excess solar energy to other states. Why? because the grid operators don't have mass storage.
We are in a similar position here in Australia. The solar output from 11 - 3 sends prices negative. There is 7.2 gigawatts of storage in the pipeline for this year alone
The problem I have with Renewables is the production of Renewables isn't actually renewable, solar panels the kind you espouse require rare earth materials which if you knew how they were dug up tells you the environmental impact of them is actually quite damaging and so is the large scale batteries we are currently using. Just because it isn't happening in your own backyard does not discount the impact that it requires to source those materials. Imo, I think we need a better mix of power generation, "Renewables" of course do need to be a option but we also need other options as well to diversify the grid, because as it is heading right now, it seems we'll be going all in on renewable and battery storage. And that is honestly going to be a problem going forward in the future as it stands if we only use the current battery storage solutions, there has been multitude of instances of the grid being unstable during peak use times, and in some regions they have had to load shed to keep it stable. Talk to any Electrical engineer or Grid technician/manager and they will tell you their not happy about the current situation. We need to embrace all solutions if they can help, not just a few choice ones. For example there has been a few engineers who have suggested Hydrogen gas generators as a on Demand solution to offset the intermittent power that renewables generate, and honestly I have no idea why no one is pursuing this as you can convert current Gas power plants to hyrdogen.
Installing solar panels with a battery to store excess electricity on your home or business just makes economical sense. Even in Seattle (my location) where it’s cloudy 200+ days a year. Drastically reduces my energy bill and helps out during power outages.
Even wind farms like Tehachapi in California only use a small part of the desert and leave the rest to be a desert, just like the wind farm in Texas that uses a small percentage of the farm land.
When people have little to no concern about fossil fuels, but supposedly have hearts bleeding for animals affected by solar and wind, that is a whole procession of red flags.
With solar, if you go to agrivoltaics, where the land underneath the (bifacial) solar panels, actually benefit the land use underneath. Studies show better biodiversity, better crop yield, reduced evaporation, better animal shielding (from the elements) etc. etc. In other words, with agrivoltaics, the land can still mostly be used as before, while generating electricity. That is why agrivoltaics are becoming more popular. As for windfarms, we (I work for a renewable energy developer) do everything we can to minimise, offset, compensate for environmental impact. This means that the impact on birds and other wildlife is minimized and with compensation and offset, it sometimes results in better than before conditions for wildlife. The biggest impact on wildlife comes from climate change, period. By reducing climate change, we are making the biggest positive impact on wildlife and the environment in general.
2:30 '...rooftop solar is more expensive' - most of the 'electricity bill' is grid maintenence - with rooftop solar/battery I avoid this whole catastrophy and consume no additional land.
An additional benefit from having wind turbines integrated in the farmland, is that the zones closest to the foundations of the turbine towers will remain without tilling and become "sanctuaries" for wild flowers and insects.
My problems with Nuclear is the economics and timeframes. Hinkley Point C in the UK announced in 2007 to be finished by 2017 for £9B - now 2031 and £35B with cost and time estimates rising every year. Sellafield also in the UK estimated to be finish decommissioning by 2125 yes I did mean 2125 at an estimated cost of £121 billion not including long term storage costs of waste for thousands of years.
Solar farms can use the existing lines that are already used by the network. Replacing coal and NG generators with solar farms requires MINIMAL new transmission and distribution infrastructure. Also...end the use of electrical power to refine petroleum and you reduce the stress on the grid by 10-12 percent. But we often forget about that little piece of the equation.
Exactly. Decentralized power will have to be the future. Australians, as leaders in solar and wind, are already experiencing a 5-fold increase in power bills because the cost of building so many new transmission lines to all these remote wind turbines is so high. There's an amazing video about just this and how the wholesale power cost went from $40 per mega-watt-hour to $235 per mega-watt-hour, driving many into poverty. 35% of this cost is building new transmission lines and there's an extra charge for losses. They also go through outages when there is no solar/wind to harvest and the batteries are drained.
Not every hydro electric system involves a lake, some are like a modern alternative to a water wheel on a river. If you look at Zurich the city has a lake but the hydro electric system is on the river and not part of the lake. Also what about geothermal?
Yes plenty of river based hydro and systems using mountain rain water run off in the UK as well as community wind turbines. Localised power generation and storage including roof top solar have got to be much cheaper from an infrastructure and transmission perspective.I’ve also seen some pioneering tidal schemes off the coast of Scotland where under water turbines attached to moored pontoons generate constant power, with tidal flow in both directions, without huge civil engineering works being required.
The comment about Australia considering nuclear power needs clarification. It is not the government who are committed to renewables. It is a kite being floated by the opposition with no details as to cost, timetable or storage of waste.
Also it is not the first nuclear power plant in 12 years. It is the first nuclear power plant in Australia. The only nuclear we currently have is for medical purposes, kemo etc. The 12 years was the timeframe a biased expert thought it could happen in. First a new government would need to come to power, next it would need to go through numerous government committees then some how get enough support to pass into law, in general needing support of non-government members of parliament. Then maybe if you are lucky 20 years before deployment.
And the opposition will never get it through. Actual experts in energy all say solar, wind and hydro.... there are only a handful of noisy pro-nuclear voices in Australia. Dutton is unlikely to get in anyway. He has no credible policies.
With nuclear it’s also a question of scale. China is currently probably the largest constructor of nuclear - they have about 20 GW under construction. At about 6 year construction time that gives about 3 to 4 GW per year. LAST YEAR (2023) China installed nearly 300 GW of wind and solar power combined. OK solar and wind is only worth about a third of nuclear due to intermittency so the “nuclear equivalent” is around 90 to 100 GW. In ONE YEAR! That rate is 20 to 25 times as much as the nuclear being installed. It will be impossible to ramp nuclear as quickly. It is quick and easy to install solar and wind, but nuclear builds are big projects and need highly skilled people and take time to plan and implement. Not to mention that they need a lot of cooling so have limited places to site them. Also big projects are subject to problems and time and cost overruns. To that I add that the decommissioning costs are always ignored. Decommissioning costs are difficult to pin down and are MASSIVE numbers. Planned timelines for some plants last 50 years! The UK is budgeting 10 billion pounds per nuclear reactor (see “UK Has £10 Billion Per Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning Bottomless Pit”). Koeberg has 2 reactors so we are looking at about R400 billion. Lets be optimistic and take half that number - R200 billion. IN South Africa We have spent billions extending the life of Koeberg by 20 years. Koeberg’s capacity is 1860 MW. Running for 20 years at a 90% capacity factor it can be expected to generate around 293 million MWh. Dividing the R200 billion by the 293 million MWh gives R680 per MWh or 68 C/kWh (SA money). This is a massive oncost we are ignoring! I
Good, evenhanded discussion. About windmills vs birds - I think the U.S. wind power industry learned (in '80s or '90s), that building wind farms in avian "flyways" (migratory routes), does involve a lot of dead birds ... and so we now avoid siting wind farms in flyways. One study found that using a herd of sheep to mow the hay growing beneath wind farms (in concentrated arrays like Tehachapi) dramatically decreased kills of raptors, by decreasing the rodent population (which had attracted the raptors) because the sheep ate the grass which the rodents had depended upon. About nuclear: (1) Small modular reactors can use controlled fabrication in factories for most of critical construction (good) ; their electricity output is More expensive than from traditional, larger nuclear power plants (which were built to 1GW or 1.5GW scale precisely to limit the price of the electric power they made/make) ; deployment of these SMRs would complicate the problem of disposal of the radioactive waste stream. I think that the design of the nuclear plant 'burning' its specified nuclear fuel needs to be integrated with the specified plans to sequester/remedy that fuel remnant for 1000 years to 600,000 years (depending on constituents of the waste stream.
coal sites.. plants & mines Hydro & lakes floating solar Ag farms Nuclear exclusion zones & evacuated areas Car parks Sun facing Sides & roofs of commercial buildings Roads
A couple things missing from the PV discussion: 1) crops can be grown under the panels 2) studies of vertically mounted panels show good output, so crops can be grown in rows between double-sided PV. This is being tested in the US.
The problem with wind and solar is it's variable so you need some backup for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. My solar works great in the summer but does little in the winter. Even commercial solar does much better in the summer than in the winter. Cost of the backup for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine makes it extremely expensive.
@@skuggeboy I recommend doing some research. #1 is being done with crops that like shade. #2 has been tested or used in other countries and is being tested in the US. I don’t need to farm to read.
Solar farms can be very beneficial to abandoned farming communities too. There’s a lot of old farm land that hasn’t been used for years just sitting around because it’s not economically viable to do anything with it. Solar farms can help the often underserved communities put the land to good use
The impact of wind turbines on land use is far higher than depicted here. The turbines need to have roads built to access them for maintenance. So too, large-scale solar farms. Here in Australia there is massive push back now form people living in rural areas because of the destruction of forests and visual pollution from towers and transmission lines.
‘Massive pushback’ in Australia is only from those who don’t have the turbines on their farms. The farmers are very happy with the annual compensation for the decades of the towers.
Consider adding the great news about Agrivoltaics/Ecovoltaics to your examples. These dual use practices are and continue to show great benefits to the energy transition, farmers & the environment. A significant benefit is providing steady base income to farmers that literally can save the family farm & keep it in operations. In 2024, the Agrivoltaics World Conference was held in Denver & co-hosted by DoE's NREL office. Also, the 2024 Solar Farm Summit, which focuses on connecting farmers, solar developers & researchers around Agrivoltaics/Ecovoltaics in the USA, was hosted in part by the American Farmland Trust and held in Chicago. Agrivoltaics/Ecovoltaics address positively the Food/Energy/Water nexus, the key interconnected nature between Food, Energy & Water areas and security of all three. Policy choices in one area invariably affects the others.
I believe this talk was given some years ago, but even then there were many examples, including here in the UK, of solar panels being installed in fields where sheep and other livestock were still able to graze and where crops could still be cultivated, so the land would not be solely used for solar power collection.
What happened in Germany is, after Fukushima they shut down all their nuclear power plants and went back to coal. Therefore, the price hike. Their building renewables in order to fix that
@@NedyalkoVasilev That's not entirely the story. Germany declared the phase out of nuclear back in 2011. I think in 2017 the final decision was made to not order new Uranium rods from Russia no more. Therefore, in 2023 the last two nuclear power plants had to shut down, because there was no "fuel" no more. Back in 2011, it was expected to level out the gap of those remaining nuclear plants by renewable energy plants. Which they did, looking at the installed power compared from 2011 up to 2023.
@@markushonninger7981Not true either. They built Nordstream 1 and 2 to replace coal with piped Russian gas. After Fukushima the wanted to replace the Nuclear with renewable. The problem now is they follow through the closing of nuclear while Nordstream 1 and 2 are down and didn’t really build enough to replace the reactors. They import gas through the Baltic line from Norway and LNG but not on the scale so they need to import renewable energy from Sweden making prices hike both in Germany and Sweden, ask me how I know. Uranium is actually not rare and readily available many many times what they need for the reactors.
My energy bill is way cheaper than a solar panel system would cost me. Especially when you consider costs from the equipment, installation and the interest rates on the loan. I'm may of been a different story if I was a person in my 20's and never moved but when I'm a few yrs away from retirement no way
It's not just wind turbines you can work around... but agrovoltaics and vertical bifocal PVs are two way, especially in combination, where you can dual use your land too.
The #1 problem with wind and solar is that it is intermittent; therefore, you must have a baseload capability. That means you must have wind/solar infrastructure, AND a reliable power plant large enough to power the area when it's dark/raining/snowing/no wind. Assuming you build a nuclear plant to be that base load, why not just make it 50% bigger and not need wind/solar at all? And NO, you will never have enough battery capability to store enough power for a city for days.
@@waynecartwright-js8tw Nuclear is more than capable of being flexible. Sure most plant designs aren't particularly responsive, but they can vary output about as well as large coal plants. The reason why it isn't throttled is that it's much more economical to have the reactors run full tilt all the time. Even with a large amount of renewables and storage to work with, having lots of reliable power from a nuke available opens up a number of potential use cases that more than justifies their continued use and investment. For example, you could use excess energy for industrial processes that are currently done using fossil fuels like making fertilizer, you could synthesize fuels allowing for legacy equipment to at least be carbon neutral, and/or you could treat/desalinate water. There's no silver bullet to our energy future here and all low to zero emission energy sources have their use case and should be used accordingly.
@@travisbeagle5691remember it is never zero over days. With good inter connectivity and over capacity the problem is manageable. We may have to live with some local very infrequent major power reductions, just as we have with other extreme weather events.
@@ellenroehl6022 Tesla megapacks are primarily used for frequency modulation and stabilizing the grid. They are NOT used to fully power a city/town for any length of time.
so I've been a big advocate for solar since the 1970's, and even that far back we understood the existential threat represented by overpopulation. tbh, we should take a long look at REDUCING (conserving) how much electricity we need, and insulating buildings as a big energy conservation step. we are already building enough renewables, or at least we are engaging the renewable construction industry to its limit. its a good plan and we need to continue, and fossil fuels will be conserved for the next generations to do with them what they will. the next gen kids are for financial reasons already curtailing getting married, having kids, and buying a house. the climate is to a degree fucked up, and the distribution of food will be critical. the graying of the world's populations, and how capitalism will adjust to elder care vs providing "jobs" or "productive" activities for the less able will be a fun problem for us to solve. my 2 cents.
Solar doesn’t always damage land - can be used in line with agriculture / animals and improve yields, reduce water use, and improve welfare by giving animals shade.
There was a time when energy creation for home use was all localized. Then, we moved to centralized energy creation, partly for convenience and partly for greed. We need to go back to localized energy.
You need to look at Battery technology to store solar energy. There have been many positive changes that might compete with Nuclear. The problem with Nuclear is the cost overruns. This is a common problem and needs to be addressed. Do not build nuclear plants until cost overruns and nuclear waste are fixed.
Well done Ben. I saw this guy's talk some time ago and was a little troubled about some of the things he said. I picked up on some of the misleading points but missed many that you have cleared up.
About land use, wouldn't it be nice to have the land use for coal and gas sourcing as a reference as well? I mean the fuel that has to be burned is also taken somewhere and will have to be continuously as long as you use it.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time building commercial rooftop and also solar farms. Costs are about the same. Solar farm racking costs a bit more but scale and access is easier. Its pretty much a wash. In Australia at least.
Bird strikes are overstated and based upon the thousands of small, high-spinning turbines whose blades were invisible to raptors. Those turbines are being replaced by larger, taller and comparatively lethargic models with always visible blades. The larger turbines also reduce the amount of infrastructure required when it comes to wiring, pads and site intrusion.
The tips of large wind turbines are moving a LOT faster than small turbine blades. They look lethargic when you look at the whole turbine, but the tips are moving about 200 MPH.
Digressing a little here but there is a missed opportunity with solar on rentals. The landlord doesn't have to pay the power bill, so no incentive there, the tenant does not own the building so also no incentive or choice to install solar.
At 13:10 talks about concentrated solar. Additional fact concentrated solar is mostly dead anyway! As most projects were cancelled / switched due to solar panels becoming cheaper AND more efficient and batteries working better than storing molten salt created by concentrated solar . e.g. For construction of the third phase of the huge africa project (Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex) they switched from concentrated solar to solar panels
What a concept dual usage of land not single usage and covering all those roofs they have nothing on them anyway. And don't forget about Solar farming where the solar panels shade the plants which is actually beneficial for the plants.
Just a note from Germany, mentioned at 16:10 .... Yes, electricity costs in Germany have been very high, partly down to renewables. But Germany went in early and hard on renewables, perhaps before the technology was ready (and of course it did so to push the technology to readiness). Subsidies for solar PV on roofs started about 2000, with 20 year feed in tariffs at very generous rates. Many of these systems are now coming off the tariff, and being replaced by cheaper, much bigger systems. Around 2019, we got the first subsidy offshore wind farms agreed, but of course we are still paying for the 2010 wind farms. So overall, electricity prices are coming down as renewables get cheaper. They are also coming down when renewables are prevalent - we regularly have negative wholesale prices when its sunny.
Did you notice how he mentioned: solar on roof is twice as expensive as solar farms. Solar farms are remote and require infrastructure nobody wants. He did not include the cost of the infrastructure in the cost comparison. Solar on roof is very smart: small energy losses as generation and consumption are close to each other. And therefore less thick cables to actually transport energy. It is a key element in the energy mix of the future, a great way to make it achievable and keep it affordable. Additional benefit: land can be used for homes, nature or farming including renewable energy
I still remember the Chris Clack vs. Mark Jacobson a few years back. Let's get as much renewables + storage that we can get. (Probably about 70-80% max. The last leg will be really hard.) Somewhere in the portfolio we will need 24/7 "clean firm power" (as the saying now goes). This is already showing up with the data center issue.
As far as California energy prices massive increases in the past few years, consider that the major providers are raking in record profits due to a utility friendly public utilities board. Those price increases have nothing to do with the fact that the utilities were held responsible for their actions or inactions running their companies. They only have to do with profits. Assuming that the Perovskite based solar panels can overcome their issues short lifetime within the next few years, and then they are combined with silicon based panels then solar panels will become 40 to 60% efficient. That cuts the land use by half and the material use by a similar amount. There are of course many other "facts" that the speaker left out of his presentation but it appears to me that he just isn't able to project far enough into the future to understand how much further solar can be improved.
Also was a video of someone farming under spaced solar panels which provided some shade in a very hot climate. FYI Sumerians 6000 years ago planted date trees to provide shade for other crops... so not a new idea. Nuclear 'space' requirements usually under-reported vs solar as the numbers usually don't take into account 2 things... most nuclear plants likes to be next of an ocean for cooling (prime land) secondly there is a "safe space" around a nuclear plant where nobody can live that usually ISN'T included in the space requirement numbers.
There was a recent study released in Australia. It showed that a sheep farm with solar panels was more productive than one with nothing. I presume because the sheep had more shelter.
I want to put solar panels on my roof. It was going to cost me $40,000 I’m not gonna use $40,000 worth of electricity in the rest of my life so explain how this helps me.
I did put solar panels and a battery on my UK house I figured at the time the money was in the bank earning 1.5% interest and the savings on my electric bill would give me a better return than the bank interest as it was a tax free return. Plus I was offered a 36 month 0% interest loan to pay for the system and I also bought an EV car and the Power Company allowed me to charge the car at 0.07£ per kWh as well as charging the battery at night so it could be used to offset the higher daytime electricity rates. The life if the units is estimated to be 25 years so I'm ok for future electricity increased charges. All in all it has made my fixed income go a bit further and increased the value of my property.
We made that investment in solar, benefitted from the 30% tax credit, then included first one then a 2nd EV in the mix. With the lowered cost of electricity to the household and the savings from not buying gasoline, our payback time was 8 years, maybe less. Moving forward, we don't 'rent' our electricity every month, instead it is free. That said every rooftop must be evaluated individually & what works for one will not work for another. All factors must be considered including tax advantages and savings from avoiding paying for fossil fuels.
I spent AUD$36,000 to install 10kw of overdriven micro inverters and 2 X Tesla Powerwall 2 with 27 kWh of usable storage. Our annual energy bill was $3K per year. We cover our energy usage, and export sufficient to charge an EV (will happen in 2025), even in winter. Blackouts are a reality in our regional area, being at the end of the line, and when the 2020 fires went through, we were without power for 12 days. Previously we had a quote to hardwire a generator at $6000, instead, our solar charges our battery and runs our home while the grid is down. From a pure cost/earnings, the time to a positive ROI is 10 years. That assumes that energy prices do not increase in the next decade, if they do, the time to positive ROI reduces further. I am on a fixed income, so avoiding expense is a big driver for us. Every dollar the system saves me is the equivalent of $1.50 because it is tax free. There are other benefits too. We recently experienced a heatwave, so we turned on the air conditioning (4 X mini splits) at 9am, kept the house at 22C at an opportunity cost of approximately 15 cents per hour (2.5kwh consumption) for which we didn't get 6 cents feed in tariff Since fitting, our energy use has increased because we have no reason to scrimp on heating, cooling or any other reason, as there is no real cost involved, improving quality of life. This includes using a 3.5kw patio heater on brisk winter evenings. Our most recent power outage lasted 9 hours, from 5AM to 2pm. There was 50% battery at 5am, and it had increased to 75% by the time the grid returned. It is worth noting that only 1/3 of our panels produce when off grid due to how enphase manages a 3 phase supply. For the month of December (it is summer here) we generated 1.5 MWh and exported 60% of that Note that the estimated ROI doesn't factor in the income from exported energy which is currently around $900 per year, but I expect this to reduce as prices for daylight power decreases. We see negative prices on the National Energy Market most days. We are at -36⁰ latitude, panels are north facing with a ten degree angle I am 61, the system will outlast me. I hope this helps you rationalise your thoughts
I read an article in "Spiegel" (german newspaper) that currently 160GWh of Battery Buffers are in planning or currently build...this is the quiet revolution no one really thinks about. Regardless what haters are telling...this change happens and very fast...simply because it is cheap, regardless the CO2 Discussion. The money rules not the climate discussion. In 2024 also 7GW Peak of Solar was build in Germany additionally...we are now at about 57% renewable Energie...the goal of 80% was planned in 2040, but will be reached in 2030 already. Together with Battey Buffer, the gas powered Energy is needed only for less days...and in long term this could happen using H2...since the new stations are must to be H2 ready. AND...china builds more wind and solar power than the rest of the world in sum.
There is not enough copper extraction to address your solar and wind deployment fantasies :) Query "Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil?" The total metals required for one generation of technology to phase out fossil fuels is listed by Required Production followed by Known Reserves for all metals based upon tonnes, as follows: Copper 4,575,523,674 vs. 880,000,000 - a serious shortfall -reserves only cover 20% of requirements. Prior to 2020- the global system mined 700 million tons of copper throughout all history. Looking forward, the same 700 million tons will need to be mined over the next 22 years, which is based upon current economic growth rates without giving consideration to what’s needed for one generation of renewables. Current reserves of copper are 880 million tons. But 4.5 billion tons of copper are required just to manufacture one generation of renewable technology.
The tower heater is a resistance heater produces 3413 BTU/ hr/kw. This is good for spot heating of a room, maybe 5 degrees, not for supplying the 60,000 BTU to 100,000 BTU it takes to heat a home on a cold New England winter day. Central heat from gas, oil, propane is much more economical to heat the whole house.
Nuclear power plants generate high level spent fuel (HLSF) which is neither transportable nor disposable. It just sits in the back yards of the 92 nuclear power plants in the US waiting for a solution that hasn't come since the start up of the first US nuclear power plant, Shipping Port, in 1957. These are dirty bombs waiting for a mortar shell. Do you have a High Level Spent Storage facility in your neighbourhood? Do you want one? This for a nuclear plant that will generate power for just 50 years and require storage of HLSF 10,000 years or more. It makes no sense. The real reason all these countries want to build nuclear power plants is that they want fissile materials to build nuclear bombs not to address climate change.
HLW waste can be recycled through advanced reactors or disposed of now in the new Onkalo repo in Finland. A similar facility is being built in Sweden. HLW waste disposal is an engineering problem that has been solved. Nuclear power plants have never been built specifically to make weapons grade plutonium. It is a waste of a valuable electricity generating asset to divert it for weapons. Any country wishing to do this builds a small purpose-built facility.
Both wave reactors, and molten salt reactors can use nuclear waste to produce energy. In the U.S. they were killed off because traditional reactors make material for nuclear bombs, but China and others have already built small scale thorium reactors, which are also far safer to operate, quicker and cheaper to build than traditional nuclear reactors.
Solar in farms or on roofs. Completely disagree with the TED Speaker. The initial cost of rooftop solar is personally high, through installation. However, rooftop solar is utilising space that would otherwise go to waste. Often solar farms utilise land that could otherwise be used for something else. He doesn't seem to cost out versatility of utility. Where there is a discrepency is where higher mounted solar PVs on farms can allow crops to grow below them or animals to graze. Not many people seem to realise this. Honestly, this appears to be manipulating examples to suit his case. Concentrated Solar IS something I personally have a problem with because of its problems with wildlife. It's not like Wind Turbine blades, which can be painted to be seen by birds - and birds learn anyway. Nuclear plants - how about the CO2 produced from the enormous tonnage of cement required? He's forgetting that compared to Solar and Wind Turbine construction. And you can recycle Renewables. Good luck doing that with Nuclear, although the fuel rods can be re-used, but don't generally. China has just commissioned a Thorium Nuclear reactor. Now that is interesting. One thing. For the base cost [which tends to spiral over the years in construction] of Nuclear, you can build more Solar PV and Wind Turbines which produce more and virtually minimal cost power. And that last sentence of Renewables destroying the Planet had me guffawing into my tea. Good job that was his last sentence because that was the ragged limit, for me. 😂
My question is this; How much mineral required step up wind and solar at global scale . Some people are saying 20 critical mineral .- Now actually we have nearly 10% in known reserves . So first is necessary to discover new deposit in a huge quantity , then mining at a huge and fast ever time . Then smelt them assembly and after 15 year re build solar and wind facilities .- For the intermittency is necessary to build a plenty buffer facilities .- I think there is not a frame time to accomplished all this transition
As for concentrated solar, they typically don’t boil water rather melt salt. This salt, in turn, does the boiling and thus the turbine spinning, but this has significance in that those produce power 24 hrs a day due to the melted salt’s thermal storage. But they have also been dismantling as these are more maintenance and more risk concern having molten salt and all while batteries have improved.
49% being in favor doesn't necessarily mean that the rest were not in favor. Those kind of surveys sometimes include an option for "not sure" or "no opinion".
Of course some can be reserved or have no opinion, but the results show that only 49% would offer their support. Not in favor doesn't strictly mean against - just not a "yes".
I agree. It's been a "dirty" topic for quite a while, mostly because we haven't found good ways to reuse the waste. It's always easy to say _"not in my backyard"_ but once we can put it all to good use, there will no longer be a discussion about where to store it.
For large birds wind turbines also have the option to install image recognition AI which will visually see the bird and turn off the turbine when it is around. That is very expensive in terms of lost productivity since a single wind turbine may produce $4,000 in electricity per day. In general most developers choose to instead avoid areas where eagles hang out.
Simulator solutions are available for bats, modules can listen for the bat sonar and shut down accordingly. And shadow flicker which is when the shadow of a passing turbine blade reaches neighboring property causing a strobe light effect on windows. Modules will calculate when the shadows reach critical locations and sense the solar situation to determine if the turbine needs to be turned off.
The RSPBB said not only do wind farms kill trivial amounts of birds in the UK compared to house cats, not only are they sited well away from any migratory path, not only do birds not fly into mountains and sky scrapers that much when you think about it, but the habitat destruction from pollution is enormous. Bird lungs are tiny and they don't like pollution, but flooding wetlands doesn't do their nesting grounds much good either.
I recall reading about how some research had shown that painting one of the wind turbine blades red (Or black? It was something other than white is all I recall) led to about a 70% drop in bird deaths because it vastly improved their ability to see the turbine blades. Or wouldn't a reflective coating also do that, the way people hang tinsel and CDs in fruit trees to keep birds away? Anyway, I thought that was going to be the go-to solution from there on out... and then it just seemed to evaporate. Was it found that it actually wasn't effective after all, or what happened with that?
Good Video, but i disagree on nuclear energy being a necessary and low CO2 energy. If you take the mining of Uranium ore, refining, transport and taking care of the waste for the next 20000 years into your calcilation, or think about the coolingproblem in the rising summerheat (rivers are to warm for proper cooling) you should agree that this can not be the form of energy we want for longer periods. Also the known resouces of Uranium is pretty low and mostly owned by Russia. I live in an area of eastern germany, where huge amounts of uranium where mined in times of cold war by the „Wismut“. The Scars are visible till today and Wismut is working since the reunion of Germany to repair the damage they made. Since 30 years they are only existing to repair the broken environment and will be doing so for many years. That also should be named, when talking about climate friendly energy. I hope you think about that, inform yourself and maybe do a video about what you found out. Or maybe i am wrong and you can prove it.
Two points - Australia is not planning to build a nuclear plant in 12 years. The party not in government is proposing this but first they have to be elected, get approval from state and local governments, then start building (that would be 3+ years) and there is no way we are building our first nuclear plant ever in 12 years from that date. We will have to do it with renewables and batteries. The other is cats mainly eat bird eggs rather than fully grown birds so even Bald Eagle numbers could be reduced by cats. I don't know if that is true but is utterly possible.
Hi Ben. I did a simplistic calculation. Saudi Arabia is the second biggest oil exporter in the world. Most of Saudi Arabia is desert. What if we turned that into a massive solar farm? Amazingly, Saudi Arabia could be exporting as much electric energy as it currently exports as oil energy. Saudi is not even on the equator, and is nowhere near the biggest nation in Asia (Africa?) Just imagine if Chad, Niger, Sudan, and Mali decided to go solar in a big way? That's massively more energy than the world needs.
Well, there's also the Sahara Desert of Africa, and of course the Mojave Desert in California, Nevada, and Arizona. But the problem with many of these locations is that you still need to string massive power lines from the generation source to all the consumers and this is both very expensive and very fragile with regards to war, strife, sabotage, etc. So... most of these sites are unlikely to be a serious option in today's world. The Mojave is being actively developed now. A pilot project in the Sahara failed I believe. And the Saudis have to compete with their own oil resources so it is a slow-slog in the middle-east.
@AndyInTheUK Unfortunately, Solar and Wind Turbines don't do well in sandy environments. Solar panels suffer from grit blasting, which dramatically reduces the incident light reaching the silicon cells. Wind Turbines suffer premature oil seal failures as sand gets past the seals and into the gearboxes which increases operational costs with all the unscheduled gearbox replacements.
Ever heard of transmission loss? No way a power plant in Africa can power my house in North America. If everything were free, as in zero cost, it still would make no sense to even try.
That video is quite dated. And it excludes a few factors. Dunkelflaute will always be a challenge. But when a large percentage of vehicles on the road are electric . They could end up be being a large part of grid storage. Also if perovskites can be further improved. We could have solar efficiency at 37%
"Dunkelflaute will always be a challenge. " True, BUT I suspect not as much as some people claim. Yes, all parts of Europe have dunkelflaute but do they all have it in the exact same span of time? From Norway to Portugal and Ireland to Turkey? All at once? I doubt it. So overbuild solar and wind everywhere to let places with temporary excesses provide power for places with temporary shortages. Same with North America. Is it really going to ever be cloudy & windless all for the exact same days from Atlantic to Pacific and from northern Manitoba to Honduras? Is there any historical record of this ever happening in the past?
16:28 same in Australia. The Royal Commission enquiry into exploding grid costs concluded 'gold plating' of the grid because governments guaranteed profits on all expenditures. More spending was more investment with government Garrentees on profits.
Concentrated solar does not generally heat up water directly to drive a turbine. It heats up a thermal storage system like molten salt which is then used to heat up water to drive a turbine. The advantage of concentrated solar like this is that it can store energy during the day and release it at night.
One thing for sure is home builders can construct homes with solar friendly roofs and a roof surface that is directed toward the sun. My home roof is broken up with angles and direction changes that really limits solar panel installation, and the direction is not ideal.
To clarify the position in Australia. The proposal for nuclear comes from the federal opposition. Nuclear power is currently banned by law in Australia. Even if the opposition wins government, they won't get the numbers in the senate to overturn that law.
Ground based solar can also be used in a farming scenario, with crops between the rows, or shade plants beneath them. I read somewhere that it also helps with animal diversity as well.
As Ben S. points out, this guy is less then forthright in his facts. At first I was critical or hostile to Ben S., but he cites his sources. I looked up his sources.
I think he's working for the nuclear industry. No nuclear is poison. They say it is very safe, however we have proof that they are not along with the disposal of those waste. Not in my back yard.
I live in a rural location in california and over the 15 years the area has been blanketed by solar and wind . It has been an industrialization of the desert . My sons place has been completely surrounded . Now he has rooftop solar and a lightning . I dont think the panels affect the ground critters and actually provide shade . I think the fencing surrounding the farms are restrictive for animal life .
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Agrovoltaics!!
"Big selling point"
Could you please clarify (*) how this heater achieves 50% energy over similar models?
There a lot of his lies you missed. In Europe they placed solar panels over farms and found a 20% increase in production due to the shading at noon and moisture retention. While farmers made extra money from the panels above their crops.
In India they placed solar panels over large irrigation canals which decreased evaporation, meaning solar panels DO NOT diminish land use. In fact its a benefit if properly installed. It's just a matter of installing them correctly.
Why did those turtles have to be removed? There is no reason to move animals. In fact solar panels provide shade and shelter during the hot noon sun.
Southern Spain, and large parts of the Netherlands, are covered in plastic greenhouses. A perfect location for solar panels instead of plastic. A kill two birds with one stone benefit. Less plastic more clean power.
Small vertical windmills have been placed on the center divider on large roads. The wind generated by cars passing by generates massive amounts of current. Lots of freeways have sound walls, sometimes of glass. They could be vertical solar panels which are more productive than horizontal ones.
Let me be blunt. This guy is full of shit. A corrupt propagandist being paid by the oil industry to subvert renewables. People like this need to be called out for the crooks they are and not handled with kid gloves. He is corrupt, and corruption is crime.
You don't even mention the Aerosol Masking Effect being twice as bad as previously thought as Daniel Rosenfeld's research group proved. James E. Hanson now emphasizes the Aerosol masking Effect as the main cause of temperature increase globally. That means a 40% reduction of burning coal actually heats up Earth another 1 degree Celsius global average! You're fixating on "the economy" while ignoring the actual science on the causes of our ecological crisis. Coal and oil are both from algae. Algae can sequester 100 gigatons of CO2 per year. Yes algae is not some "sexy" part of the dollar economy but algae is the future of life on Earth one way or another. Both Sir David King and double Ph.D. marine biologist Raffael Jovine promote algae as the only real means of sequestering the 100 times rate of CO2 emissions we've put out in the last 200 years. oops.
This heater turns electrical energy intro thermal energy and can by principle never be more efficient than 1:1 - in winter. In Summer it can't really cool because it has no way to transport energy outdoors. Get a heat pump! That can reach 4 times higher effiency in heating and it can really cool.
1 problem for new nuclear reactors compared to solar/wind is that it is VERY expensive to build a new reactor and it takes a very long time before it can generate revenue.
Solar and wind can be built in phases and some revenue can be generated almost immediately.
It is also based load generation, and would still require additional sources to cover peak loads.
@@angusbartlett9270 And over powered during low demand/high renewable generation. There are work arounds, but that increases cost and complexity.
Nuclear can use the same solution to deal with demand variations that solar generation uses to deal with generation intermittency.... grid-scale storage.
People forget that grid-scale storage is not something that is only useful with renewables. It fixes both transmission line congestion issues AND both demand and generation variability. California figured that out a few years ago and Texas figured that out last year. Now both states are really piling on the grid-scale storage. Texas even faster than California due to its far higher electricity consumption.
@@junkerzn7312 Yes, storage makes everything work better, even nuclear.
@@durwoodmaccool890 yes it does, but batteries and pumped hydro is mind-numbingly expensive. That's the whole problem.
He talks about sun being a "dilute energy source"
So here's some facts:
I live in Scotland, which is 57 degrees north - widely considered to be "far north" in North American terms.
I have a 9kW Solar Array, generating 7MWH electricity annually - entirely located on the roof of my bungalow, and I'm subjected to partial shading conditions.
That electricity is abundant for 6 months of the year March to September for charging my car, running my heatpump and my 10kWh battery will keep keep that apparatus going through the night
Now it comes up short during Autumn and Winter, but it's contribution is still significant. All told I still need the grid, but the UK grid is now dominated by supplies of wind power in the winter time.
Without subsidies, I've now returned half of my £11k original investment back into my bank account within four years.
Now if I can make that happen, then everyone else south of my latitude has no excuse.
Not a bad result for a "dilute energy source"!
This. I live in Canada and had family in the States begging me not to get solar because "you don't get enough sun." In July and August alone we produced what we use in 6 months. Yeah it drops off in the winter, but we're on track to pay it off in 5 years and have miniscule to negative electric bills
And I will point out that solar panels have gotten very, very cheap. If you have the surface area to deploy the panels, high latitudes are not an impediment. Your 7MWh with 9kW is roughly the same amount of annual generation that I get here in the Bay Area (Mid-California) with 5kW worth of solar.
At high latitudes the local micro-climates become the limiting factor for solar rather than the sun cycle. Living on the wrong side of the mountain, or in a deep valley, or surrounded by large trees, or on rain faces, etc. (And obviously we are talking about general habitable land where most people live, not the poles).
-Matt
@ I’m recently saw £47+VAT for a JA Solar 430W bi facial solar panel (ITS Technologies store). Price per sq metre was approaching that of fencing or concrete roof tiles. At that point, Solar becomes the default material of choice. The electricity is then essentially free (especially if your electrical contractor is already hired for other jobs, or you do it yourself).
It's funny when you consider that the sun is our ONLY energy source except nuclear (which is miniscule and will stay miniscule, it's just too expensive and laden with problems) and geothermal. Everything else either derives from the sun directly (rays, wind movement, hydropower, ...) or from fossil fuels that were once created by the influence of the sun.
"Everyone else"? Really? A full one third (depending on the country) live in rented accommodation and they can't do shit about it. I would love to have solar on my roof, but there is zero incentive for my landlord to put it there (unless he thought about the impact of climate change on his kids). Regulation will stop you just throwing your own 2nd hand panels on the roof and wiring it up yourself, so it remains out of reach for the poorest people who need it the most to offset their power bills.
Noted, no one wanted to know how many Eagles and Owls are killed by cars.
Or home windows. Or cats.
Cars?
Try housing instead!
The second most detrimental to these birds is HABITAT LOSS, which is us building buildings where they were living.
Buildings of all kinds, houses, stadiums, energy plants, all other kinds of product making plants.
We really don't have a clue about OUR footprint on this Earth.
We've literally pushed everything else to the margins.
Or people. But birds definitely more important... absolutely 👍
Can you demonstrate why eagles and owls would be less likely to be killed by electric cars rather than efficient cars? I'll wait.
Actually, I won't. Because you didn't think before you typed your smug, stupid comment.
There is a reason I picked on cars, because electric trains and buses being fewer on the road will kill far fewer, never mind that bicycles do not kill any.
I still don't understand the idea of solar farms when the southern US urban centers are rife with giant parking malls that heat the cars and cities. Everyone gets into their hot car and then turns on the AC. Couldn't covering these areas be advantageous in that cars would be cooler under the shade of these solar panels (using less AC and less energy), there is less black asphalt heating the surrounding air and lastly eliminating the need to make solar farms that supposedly harm wildlife.
I had a similar reaction. When in Lyon France last year we traveled past a vast parking area - outdoor, covered with metal roofing. This was for new cars stored in-land until distributing to retailers. I couldn't understand why that metal roofing - angled towards the sun - wasn't covered in solar panels. Many houses and almost all barns and warehouses in the near countryside did specifically have solar panels.
In France they mandated supermarkets cover their car parks with solar. It’s genius, In the summer the cars stay cools, in the winter you stay dry.
Too expensive during construction
It would be better if we didn't have those parking lots in the first place, but yeah.
@cyrusf.4039 Many countries are pushing for this. Also there are many huge factories and wasteland areas that would be better locations for solar. Motorways can also be covered to reduce heat and help prevent snow and ice. Two problems are getting politicians to want it and managing the energy peak. Where I live most people now have solar but moat don't have batteries. Starting to cause problems because the batteries are still expensive.
Painting 1 blade black on a Wind Turbine reduces significantly the number of birds killed.
Also outside/ stray cats kill about a billion birds per year. Way more than wind turbines. Buildings also kill more than turbines.
Coal kills more than turbines too, just isn’t easy to attribute
Really, did not know that. Thanks.
Seems like a black and white issue.
It's not necessarily that easy; Engineering with Rosie has a great video on this.
The age of that Ted talk really puts the speaker at a disadvantage with respect to today’s criticism. Price and availability of solar PV in particular, and more importantly, stationary energy storage have improved significantly and look to be continuing to improve.
That is certainly true, but I remember when this Ted talk came out way back then and it was just as wrong as it is now. Just more apparent to regular viewers now. It didn't age well because the guy was so focused on cherry-picking his facts rather than actually examining the whole scene, that he ignored both the facts of the day and the clear trends that were in progress.
@@junkerzn7312 Shellenberger is famous for cherry picking data to absurd levels. He also got radicalized and now it's pretty much on the Jordan Peterson's climate change denial kind of flavor.
Ben, not all wind turbines affect birds the same. The large slow turbines now being installed allows birds to just fly around the blades like many other obstacles they encounter daily.
Good point, I’ve noticed they are slow
Painting one blade a dark color makes birds see it
Are they slow though? They look slow because they are gigantic, but the velocity at the tip of the blade is high.
@@itekani Good point on velocity at the tip, but I think the sweep time is probably more important for a bird.
@@itekani The real big turbines max out at 12-14 RPM. Yes they really are slow that birds can avoid them.
His point about solar panels on houses is not correct: even in the cloudy UK modern solar panels can power homes and businesses. In the USA, it will be much more economical to install solar. And there is no need for new grid connections with domestic solar. Plus your EV can be charged up from solar, so there's not even a grid connection required for that either!
Australia will be entirely green energy, most of that PV and battery in just a few very short years. VERY short time. The whole planet can be powered by SWB. Places like Denmark need more PV panels and batteries. Places like Texas and Australia require fewer but almost everywhere humans have settled can be powered by SWB.
@@DanielWillis-q2gjust have enough gas production for firming. No problem
I charge my electric cars daily directly from my solar panels. I also have battery backup with is capturing any excess solar so I can store it and use it at night. Very little need for grid connection and a efficient way of getting my power.
Have you checked how much home owners are paying for Solar in the U.S?
@@bordersw1239 They are getting ripped off big time
Rooftop solar electricity is twice as expensive? Huh. That's news to me. But in truth my array completely paid for itself years ago, and now is pure "gravy." As for solar farms and their land use… has he not heard of agrevoltaics? They are a win-win for both energy and food production.
Yup. That’s how ultra cheap solar power is.
The only true drawback (where fossil fuels don’t have a worse version of the same drawback) is that the sun doesn’t always shine.
And advances in energy storage tech (large batteries) is extremely rapid. It’ll surprise me if electricity generation isn’t mostly solar by the time I’m old.
@Yanquetino thank you, I came to say exactly this! Europe is starting to see quite an expansion in agrivoltaics, it maximizes the benefits available from a given area of land. And what I have seen reported so far is that many crops actually benefit greatly from the additional shade that is provided by the panels, *actually increasing the yield per acre* for some (likely not all) crops.
Rooftop solar is indeed twice as expensive as commercial and industrial solar, but that has nothing to do with whether one can break-even on it or not as a homeowner. Particularly for the more entrepreneurial DIYers.
@@SigFigNewton wow the sun stops shinning does it... why hasnt fox let us know ffs......
@junkerzn7312 yes, to me this is a non sequitur also, it’s pretty irrelevant how much rooftop solar costs. It permits homeowners to be more energy independent and possibly have energy resiliency in an emergency, and if they’re willing to pay, who cares what the price might be. Each of those people are allowed to make their own economic decisions, even if there’s never any chance of breaking even with the purchase. It’d really only matter if humanity was incredibly short of the resources needed to manufacture them and they needed to benefit the maximum number of people possible. More inane and spurious arguments from the petroleum and nuclear industries.
I hate breathing pollution.
Used EVs can be purchased for less than $5k around here. They can be plugged into a regular wall outlet if u only drive 40 or 50 miles a day. The economics alone will clean up the air.
@@fuzzymonkey777 I keep hearing that 10 year old EVs still have 80% battery capacity, which would indicate about 200+ miles of range for many EV's. Yeah, just like most amazing EV facts, NOT TRUE but ARE TRUE in 1% of cases. Scamming.
@@mddell24 Ev's come with 8 year 100K mile battery warranties. Some come with 10 year warranties these days.
As a homeowner with a very small farm, renewables are fun to work with not only for reducing our energy use, but also to sustain our business during power outages, especially around fire season. Our main goal is to reduce our net energy use to near 0, but if our local utility became more flexible, and gave us wholesale prices that we deserve, we could really help the grid during peak and low demand periods.
We have an EV which makes the trip to town inexpensive and we have some solar panels on our roof. We are putting heat pumps in our new meadery. We can put more panels on that structure and well as more on our home. We have fairly hot summers so having panels does provide some welcome shade for the roof. I keep bee boxes in a container and I need to shade it. Why not use solar panels? We will need a covered sitting area. Should we use solar panels for that as well? I might be able to be a net exporter of electricity if the right regulatory setup was in place.
There are so many use cases for roof top solar for the home and landowner. This talk by Shellenburger is hardly an example of debunking renewables. If my example of regular investing in renewables (and energy efficiency) can be scaled up where does this lead us.
There is a much harder case to make against renewables and I believe its around long term storage of electricity, longer than a few days. This is not so important in the south, but where I live, where nights are long in the winter and it gets cold, its more of an issue. The last few days around here, not so much wind and its cloudy. I would like to hear talks about this subject by creative solution oriented people. I dislike "can't do" arguments.
Agrivoltaics is also an excellent dual use of farming land, where the shading effect of the panels actually improves the productivity of the farmland! It has been found that crop outputs actually increase, despite the increase in shade. Less water loss due to evaporation reduces irrigation needs, and animals can use the shade under the panels on hot days. It also provides stable extra income for the farmers!
Farmers love them!
Funny how people never stand behind their 'One' car while it is running an consider exactly how much exhaust is being released in the environment and to realize what is in it, a half dozen poisonous gasses
Then consider how many cars are spewing pollution and then think that it isn't a big deal
I remember years ago seeing someone trying to get that message across by 'colouring' car exhaust emissions. (same sort of thing as a car with a bad engine oil leak) The car drove down the road and left a cloud for miles behind it...all fossil fuel vehicles are doing exactly the same except that you can't 'see' it and so don't think about it.
@@ScrappyDoodad There are UA-cam channels that point out having more people friendly cities ( better public transport, more pedestrian walking areas which also help mobility access and better cycling infustrcturer) would go along way to reducing both noise and air pollution while also reducing the amount of resources needed!
I think renewable energy needs these methods to further reduce our energy needs which would in turn means less energy is needed in the first place!
Like it or not, EVERY one in westernized countries uses fossil fuels one way or another. How do you think food gets to your supermarket, from the factory and from the farm, from overseas. 99% fossil fueled. EVs, a very small drop in an ocean.
I know this. 1) The price of roof top solar in the U.S. is ridiculously expensive and 2) I own a house with a 200 sq metre roof. If that roof was flat, slightly tilted towards the winter sun and was completely covered in solar panels it would generate enough power to keep 13 EVs charged each doing 20,000 klms per year for 20 years. All for a cost of $16,000 U.S ( $24,000 Australian).
We painted stripes on airplane propellers 40 years ago to prevent bird strikes. Haven't seen any stripes on wind turbines, why not?
@@52gulfpapa I’m m not sure props are painted to protect against bird strikes more a bout human strikes on the ground.
I've seen one idea of painting one of the blades black, which has been shown to reduce bird deaths by 70%.
Propellers spin fast enough that contrasting paint will appear pretty solid even to a bird. (And especially to a human). Wind turbines don't turn fast enough.
That said, higher contrast coatings on the blades might well be a good idea.
Because painting them to see if they actually work goes against their imaginary belief that they don’t. The narrative is more important than reality.
Probably because if you want to prevent bird deaths, turbines are way way down the priority list.
Number one threat to birds is domestic cats. Billions of birds killed every year by cats. Sort that. Turbines are negligible.
@16:30, citing a recent LA Times article, " Solar power glut in California is a bane here, but a boon elsewhere," one of the reasons for higher electricity costs in California has been that we have had to pay to send excess solar energy to other states. Why? because the grid operators don't have mass storage.
We are in a similar position here in Australia. The solar output from 11 - 3 sends prices negative. There is 7.2 gigawatts of storage in the pipeline for this year alone
The problem I have with Renewables is the production of Renewables isn't actually renewable, solar panels the kind you espouse require rare earth materials which if you knew how they were dug up tells you the environmental impact of them is actually quite damaging and so is the large scale batteries we are currently using. Just because it isn't happening in your own backyard does not discount the impact that it requires to source those materials. Imo, I think we need a better mix of power generation, "Renewables" of course do need to be a option but we also need other options as well to diversify the grid, because as it is heading right now, it seems we'll be going all in on renewable and battery storage.
And that is honestly going to be a problem going forward in the future as it stands if we only use the current battery storage solutions, there has been multitude of instances of the grid being unstable during peak use times, and in some regions they have had to load shed to keep it stable. Talk to any Electrical engineer or Grid technician/manager and they will tell you their not happy about the current situation.
We need to embrace all solutions if they can help, not just a few choice ones.
For example there has been a few engineers who have suggested Hydrogen gas generators as a on Demand solution to offset the intermittent power that renewables generate, and honestly I have no idea why no one is pursuing this as you can convert current Gas power plants to hyrdogen.
Installing solar panels with a battery to store excess electricity on your home or business just makes economical sense. Even in Seattle (my location) where it’s cloudy 200+ days a year. Drastically reduces my energy bill and helps out during power outages.
Even wind farms like Tehachapi in California only use a small part of the desert and leave the rest to be a desert, just like the wind farm in Texas that uses a small percentage of the farm land.
When people have little to no concern about fossil fuels, but supposedly have hearts bleeding for animals affected by solar and wind, that is a whole procession of red flags.
With solar, if you go to agrivoltaics, where the land underneath the (bifacial) solar panels, actually benefit the land use underneath. Studies show better biodiversity, better crop yield, reduced evaporation, better animal shielding (from the elements) etc. etc. In other words, with agrivoltaics, the land can still mostly be used as before, while generating electricity. That is why agrivoltaics are becoming more popular.
As for windfarms, we (I work for a renewable energy developer) do everything we can to minimise, offset, compensate for environmental impact. This means that the impact on birds and other wildlife is minimized and with compensation and offset, it sometimes results in better than before conditions for wildlife.
The biggest impact on wildlife comes from climate change, period. By reducing climate change, we are making the biggest positive impact on wildlife and the environment in general.
2:30 '...rooftop solar is more expensive' - most of the 'electricity bill' is grid maintenence - with rooftop solar/battery I avoid this whole catastrophy and consume no additional land.
An additional benefit from having wind turbines integrated in the farmland, is that the zones closest to the foundations of the turbine towers will remain without tilling and become "sanctuaries" for wild flowers and insects.
Electricity prices in Germany at that time was somewhat priced at what it cost to produce electricity with gas.
My problems with Nuclear is the economics and timeframes. Hinkley Point C in the UK announced in 2007 to be finished by 2017 for £9B - now 2031 and £35B with cost and time estimates rising every year. Sellafield also in the UK estimated to be finish decommissioning by 2125 yes I did mean 2125 at an estimated cost of £121 billion not including long term storage costs of waste for thousands of years.
Thanks Ben, I love this series. Data driven facts should triumph in the end, too bad emotions and lies get in the way.
Solar farm costs always omit the cost of transmission and distribution. In the case of rooftop those costs are near zero.
Solar farms can use the existing lines that are already used by the network. Replacing coal and NG generators with solar farms requires MINIMAL new transmission and distribution infrastructure. Also...end the use of electrical power to refine petroleum and you reduce the stress on the grid by 10-12 percent. But we often forget about that little piece of the equation.
Exactly. Decentralized power will have to be the future. Australians, as leaders in solar and wind, are already experiencing a 5-fold increase in power bills because the cost of building so many new transmission lines to all these remote wind turbines is so high. There's an amazing video about just this and how the wholesale power cost went from $40 per mega-watt-hour to $235 per mega-watt-hour, driving many into poverty. 35% of this cost is building new transmission lines and there's an extra charge for losses. They also go through outages when there is no solar/wind to harvest and the batteries are drained.
RE: the cost of solar going down at the same time as electricity prices going up.
Correlation Causation.
that is due to nothing else other than GREED
Yep
Not every hydro electric system involves a lake, some are like a modern alternative to a water wheel on a river. If you look at Zurich the city has a lake but the hydro electric system is on the river and not part of the lake.
Also what about geothermal?
Yes plenty of river based hydro and systems using mountain rain water run off in the UK as well as community wind turbines. Localised power generation and storage including roof top solar have got to be much cheaper from an infrastructure and transmission perspective.I’ve also seen some pioneering tidal schemes off the coast of Scotland where under water turbines attached to moored pontoons generate constant power, with tidal flow in both directions, without huge civil engineering works being required.
The comment about Australia considering nuclear power needs clarification.
It is not the government who are committed to renewables. It is a kite being floated by the opposition with no details as to cost, timetable or storage of waste.
Also it is not the first nuclear power plant in 12 years. It is the first nuclear power plant in Australia. The only nuclear we currently have is for medical purposes, kemo etc. The 12 years was the timeframe a biased expert thought it could happen in. First a new government would need to come to power, next it would need to go through numerous government committees then some how get enough support to pass into law, in general needing support of non-government members of parliament. Then maybe if you are lucky 20 years before deployment.
And the opposition will never get it through. Actual experts in energy all say solar, wind and hydro.... there are only a handful of noisy pro-nuclear voices in Australia.
Dutton is unlikely to get in anyway. He has no credible policies.
With nuclear it’s also a question of scale. China is currently probably the largest constructor of nuclear - they have about 20 GW under construction. At about 6 year construction time that gives about 3 to 4 GW per year. LAST YEAR (2023) China installed nearly 300 GW of wind and solar power combined. OK solar and wind is only worth about a third of nuclear due to intermittency so the “nuclear equivalent” is around 90 to 100 GW. In ONE YEAR! That rate is 20 to 25 times as much as the nuclear being installed. It will be impossible to ramp nuclear as quickly. It is quick and easy to install solar and wind, but nuclear builds are big projects and need highly skilled people and take time to plan and implement. Not to mention that they need a lot of cooling so have limited places to site them. Also big projects are subject to problems and time and cost overruns.
To that I add that the decommissioning costs are always ignored. Decommissioning costs are difficult to pin down and are MASSIVE numbers. Planned timelines for some plants last 50 years! The UK is budgeting 10 billion pounds per nuclear reactor (see “UK Has £10 Billion Per Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning Bottomless Pit”). Koeberg has 2 reactors so we are looking at about R400 billion. Lets be optimistic and take half that number - R200 billion. IN South Africa We have spent billions extending the life of Koeberg by 20 years. Koeberg’s capacity is 1860 MW. Running for 20 years at a 90% capacity factor it can be expected to generate around 293 million MWh. Dividing the R200 billion by the 293 million MWh gives R680 per MWh or 68 C/kWh (SA money). This is a massive oncost we are ignoring! I
Good, evenhanded discussion. About windmills vs birds - I think the U.S. wind power industry learned (in '80s or '90s), that building wind farms in avian "flyways" (migratory routes), does
involve a lot of dead birds ... and so we now avoid siting wind farms in flyways. One study found that using a herd of sheep to mow the hay growing beneath wind farms (in concentrated
arrays like Tehachapi) dramatically decreased kills of raptors, by decreasing the rodent population (which had attracted the raptors) because the sheep ate the grass which the rodents had
depended upon.
About nuclear: (1) Small modular reactors can use controlled fabrication in factories for most of critical construction (good) ; their electricity output is More expensive than from traditional,
larger nuclear power plants (which were built to 1GW or 1.5GW scale precisely to limit the price of the electric power they made/make) ; deployment of these SMRs would complicate the
problem of disposal of the radioactive waste stream. I think that the design of the nuclear plant 'burning' its specified nuclear fuel needs to be integrated with the specified plans to
sequester/remedy that fuel remnant for 1000 years to 600,000 years (depending on constituents of the waste stream.
Here's a big solve for land usage for solar farms. Airports, look at how much already open land that can be used all over the country.
coal sites.. plants & mines
Hydro & lakes floating solar
Ag farms
Nuclear exclusion zones & evacuated areas
Car parks
Sun facing Sides & roofs of commercial buildings
Roads
And there are lot of abandoned airpots too.
A couple things missing from the PV discussion:
1) crops can be grown under the panels
2) studies of vertically mounted panels show good output, so crops can be grown in rows between double-sided PV. This is being tested in the US.
I recommend doing some farming before making those comments.
The problem with wind and solar is it's variable so you need some backup for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. My solar works great in the summer but does little in the winter. Even commercial solar does much better in the summer than in the winter. Cost of the backup for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine makes it extremely expensive.
@@skuggeboy I recommend doing some research. #1 is being done with crops that like shade. #2 has been tested or used in other countries and is being tested in the US. I don’t need to farm to read.
Great video, and much needed response to that other ted talk. There was once or twice I felt like your facts needed sources, but pretty good overall.
Solar farms can be very beneficial to abandoned farming communities too. There’s a lot of old farm land that hasn’t been used for years just sitting around because it’s not economically viable to do anything with it. Solar farms can help the often underserved communities put the land to good use
The impact of wind turbines on land use is far higher than depicted here. The turbines need to have roads built to access them for maintenance. So too, large-scale solar farms. Here in Australia there is massive push back now form people living in rural areas because of the destruction of forests and visual pollution from towers and transmission lines.
‘Massive pushback’ in Australia is only from those who don’t have the turbines on their farms. The farmers are very happy with the annual compensation for the decades of the towers.
@@colinfleming2541 sure, but then the high tension transmission power lines started to appear, and attitudes have changed.
Consider adding the great news about Agrivoltaics/Ecovoltaics to your examples. These dual use practices are and continue to show great benefits to the energy transition, farmers & the environment. A significant benefit is providing steady base income to farmers that literally can save the family farm & keep it in operations. In 2024, the Agrivoltaics World Conference was held in Denver & co-hosted by DoE's NREL office. Also, the 2024 Solar Farm Summit, which focuses on connecting farmers, solar developers & researchers around Agrivoltaics/Ecovoltaics in the USA, was hosted in part by the American Farmland Trust and held in Chicago. Agrivoltaics/Ecovoltaics address positively the Food/Energy/Water nexus, the key interconnected nature between Food, Energy & Water areas and security of all three. Policy choices in one area invariably affects the others.
I believe this talk was given some years ago, but even then there were many examples, including here in the UK, of solar panels being installed in fields where sheep and other livestock were still able to graze and where crops could still be cultivated, so the land would not be solely used for solar power collection.
Thanks, Ben. I detest Bullshitters who build careers on spreading misinformation.
What happened in Germany is, after Fukushima they shut down all their nuclear power plants and went back to coal. Therefore, the price hike. Their building renewables in order to fix that
@@NedyalkoVasilev That's not entirely the story. Germany declared the phase out of nuclear back in 2011. I think in 2017 the final decision was made to not order new Uranium rods from Russia no more. Therefore, in 2023 the last two nuclear power plants had to shut down, because there was no "fuel" no more. Back in 2011, it was expected to level out the gap of those remaining nuclear plants by renewable energy plants. Which they did, looking at the installed power compared from 2011 up to 2023.
@@markushonninger7981Not true either. They built Nordstream 1 and 2 to replace coal with piped Russian gas.
After Fukushima the wanted to replace the Nuclear with renewable. The problem now is they follow through the closing of nuclear while Nordstream 1 and 2 are down and didn’t really build enough to replace the reactors. They import gas through the Baltic line from Norway and LNG but not on the scale so they need to import renewable energy from Sweden making prices hike both in Germany and Sweden, ask me how I know.
Uranium is actually not rare and readily available many many times what they need for the reactors.
My energy bill is way cheaper than a solar panel system would cost me. Especially when you consider costs from the equipment, installation and the interest rates on the loan. I'm may of been a different story if I was a person in my 20's and never moved but when I'm a few yrs away from retirement no way
It's not just wind turbines you can work around... but agrovoltaics and vertical bifocal PVs are two way, especially in combination, where you can dual use your land too.
The #1 problem with wind and solar is that it is intermittent; therefore, you must have a baseload capability. That means you must have wind/solar infrastructure, AND a reliable power plant large enough to power the area when it's dark/raining/snowing/no wind. Assuming you build a nuclear plant to be that base load, why not just make it 50% bigger and not need wind/solar at all? And NO, you will never have enough battery capability to store enough power for a city for days.
Nuclear is not flexible in output have you seen grid demand?
@@waynecartwright-js8tw Nuclear is more than capable of being flexible. Sure most plant designs aren't particularly responsive, but they can vary output about as well as large coal plants. The reason why it isn't throttled is that it's much more economical to have the reactors run full tilt all the time. Even with a large amount of renewables and storage to work with, having lots of reliable power from a nuke available opens up a number of potential use cases that more than justifies their continued use and investment. For example, you could use excess energy for industrial processes that are currently done using fossil fuels like making fertilizer, you could synthesize fuels allowing for legacy equipment to at least be carbon neutral, and/or you could treat/desalinate water. There's no silver bullet to our energy future here and all low to zero emission energy sources have their use case and should be used accordingly.
Untrue. Tesla is churning out Megapacks as fast as they can. AI software can balance the grid now when in the past it was a major problem.
@@travisbeagle5691remember it is never zero over days. With good inter connectivity and over capacity the problem is manageable.
We may have to live with some local very infrequent major power reductions, just as we have with other extreme weather events.
@@ellenroehl6022 Tesla megapacks are primarily used for frequency modulation and stabilizing the grid. They are NOT used to fully power a city/town for any length of time.
so I've been a big advocate for solar since the 1970's, and even that far back we understood the existential threat represented by overpopulation. tbh, we should take a long look at REDUCING (conserving) how much electricity we need, and insulating buildings as a big energy conservation step. we are already building enough renewables, or at least we are engaging the renewable construction industry to its limit. its a good plan and we need to continue, and fossil fuels will be conserved for the next generations to do with them what they will. the next gen kids are for financial reasons already curtailing getting married, having kids, and buying a house. the climate is to a degree fucked up, and the distribution of food will be critical. the graying of the world's populations, and how capitalism will adjust to elder care vs providing "jobs" or "productive" activities for the less able will be a fun problem for us to solve. my 2 cents.
Anything that ISN'T renewable will, by definition, run out. I hold that postponing or eliminating the exhaustion of a resource IS "saving the planet".
Solar doesn’t always damage land - can be used in line with agriculture / animals and improve yields, reduce water use, and improve welfare by giving animals shade.
Building it for mixed uses costs much more per mw which is why it relies on heavy subsidy and is rarely done even if it makes sense
There was a time when energy creation for home use was all localized. Then, we moved to centralized energy creation, partly for convenience and partly for greed. We need to go back to localized energy.
You need to look at Battery technology to store solar energy. There have been many positive changes that might compete with Nuclear. The problem with Nuclear is the cost overruns. This is a common problem and needs to be addressed. Do not build nuclear plants until cost overruns and nuclear waste are fixed.
Well done Ben. I saw this guy's talk some time ago and was a little troubled about some of the things he said. I picked up on some of the misleading points but missed many that you have cleared up.
About land use, wouldn't it be nice to have the land use for coal and gas sourcing as a reference as well? I mean the fuel that has to be burned is also taken somewhere and will have to be continuously as long as you use it.
Solar panels on every house and 5 day battery back would fix everything
Residential solar is so popular its displacing investment in solar farms.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time building commercial rooftop and also solar farms. Costs are about the same. Solar farm racking costs a bit more but scale and access is easier. Its pretty much a wash. In Australia at least.
Bird strikes are overstated and based upon the thousands of small, high-spinning turbines whose blades were invisible to raptors. Those turbines are being replaced by larger, taller and comparatively lethargic models with always visible blades. The larger turbines also reduce the amount of infrastructure required when it comes to wiring, pads and site intrusion.
The tips of large wind turbines are moving a LOT faster than small turbine blades. They look lethargic when you look at the whole turbine, but the tips are moving about 200 MPH.
Digressing a little here but there is a missed opportunity with solar on rentals. The landlord doesn't have to pay the power bill, so no incentive there, the tenant does not own the building so also no incentive or choice to install solar.
OTOH if the landlord installs solar on the roof, s/he can charge more rent because the tenant isn't paying much (or any) power bill.
At 13:10 talks about concentrated solar. Additional fact concentrated solar is mostly dead anyway! As most projects were cancelled / switched due to solar panels becoming cheaper AND more efficient and batteries working better than storing molten salt created by concentrated solar . e.g. For construction of the third phase of the huge africa project (Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex) they switched from concentrated solar to solar panels
FUD parrots are on the wrong side of history.
Another great show Ben. It's bizarre how brainwashed haters will continue to research on hater channels.
What a concept dual usage of land not single usage and covering all those roofs they have nothing on them anyway.
And don't forget about Solar farming where the solar panels shade the plants which is actually beneficial for the plants.
To a hammer everything looks like a nail! I’ve been going to Fission meetups to learn about it and they all hate solar. They hate the new competition
Solar IS fission! It's just happening 93 million miles away.
Just a note from Germany, mentioned at 16:10 .... Yes, electricity costs in Germany have been very high, partly down to renewables. But Germany went in early and hard on renewables, perhaps before the technology was ready (and of course it did so to push the technology to readiness). Subsidies for solar PV on roofs started about 2000, with 20 year feed in tariffs at very generous rates. Many of these systems are now coming off the tariff, and being replaced by cheaper, much bigger systems. Around 2019, we got the first subsidy offshore wind farms agreed, but of course we are still paying for the 2010 wind farms.
So overall, electricity prices are coming down as renewables get cheaper. They are also coming down when renewables are prevalent - we regularly have negative wholesale prices when its sunny.
Did you notice how he mentioned: solar on roof is twice as expensive as solar farms. Solar farms are remote and require infrastructure nobody wants.
He did not include the cost of the infrastructure in the cost comparison. Solar on roof is very smart: small energy losses as generation and consumption are close to each other. And therefore less thick cables to actually transport energy. It is a key element in the energy mix of the future, a great way to make it achievable and keep it affordable. Additional benefit: land can be used for homes, nature or farming including renewable energy
I still remember the Chris Clack vs. Mark Jacobson a few years back. Let's get as much renewables + storage that we can get. (Probably about 70-80% max. The last leg will be really hard.) Somewhere in the portfolio we will need 24/7 "clean firm power" (as the saying now goes). This is already showing up with the data center issue.
As far as California energy prices massive increases in the past few years, consider that the major providers are raking in record profits due to a utility friendly public utilities board. Those price increases have nothing to do with the fact that the utilities were held responsible for their actions or inactions running their companies. They only have to do with profits.
Assuming that the Perovskite based solar panels can overcome their issues short lifetime within the next few years, and then they are combined with silicon based panels then solar panels will become 40 to 60% efficient. That cuts the land use by half and the material use by a similar amount.
There are of course many other "facts" that the speaker left out of his presentation but it appears to me that he just isn't able to project far enough into the future to understand how much further solar can be improved.
Also was a video of someone farming under spaced solar panels which provided some shade in a very hot climate. FYI Sumerians 6000 years ago planted date trees to provide shade for other crops... so not a new idea. Nuclear 'space' requirements usually under-reported vs solar as the numbers usually don't take into account 2 things... most nuclear plants likes to be next of an ocean for cooling (prime land) secondly there is a "safe space" around a nuclear plant where nobody can live that usually ISN'T included in the space requirement numbers.
Solar on my roof? No way! The cost of repairing damage by a leaky roof is too expensive.
There was a recent study released in Australia.
It showed that a sheep farm with solar panels was more productive than one with nothing.
I presume because the sheep had more shelter.
I want to put solar panels on my roof. It was going to cost me $40,000 I’m not gonna use $40,000 worth of electricity in the rest of my life so explain how this helps me.
I did put solar panels and a battery on my UK house I figured at the time the money was in the bank earning 1.5% interest and the savings on my electric bill would give me a better return than the bank interest as it was a tax free return. Plus I was offered a 36 month 0% interest loan to pay for the system and I also bought an EV car and the Power Company allowed me to charge the car at 0.07£ per kWh as well as charging the battery at night so it could be used to offset the higher daytime electricity rates. The life if the units is estimated to be 25 years so I'm ok for future electricity increased charges. All in all it has made my fixed income go a bit further and increased the value of my property.
We made that investment in solar, benefitted from the 30% tax credit, then included first one then a 2nd EV in the mix. With the lowered cost of electricity to the household and the savings from not buying gasoline, our payback time was 8 years, maybe less. Moving forward, we don't 'rent' our electricity every month, instead it is free. That said every rooftop must be evaluated individually & what works for one will not work for another. All factors must be considered including tax advantages and savings from avoiding paying for fossil fuels.
I spent AUD$36,000 to install 10kw of overdriven micro inverters and 2 X Tesla Powerwall 2 with 27 kWh of usable storage. Our annual energy bill was $3K per year. We cover our energy usage, and export sufficient to charge an EV (will happen in 2025), even in winter.
Blackouts are a reality in our regional area, being at the end of the line, and when the 2020 fires went through, we were without power for 12 days. Previously we had a quote to hardwire a generator at $6000, instead, our solar charges our battery and runs our home while the grid is down.
From a pure cost/earnings, the time to a positive ROI is 10 years. That assumes that energy prices do not increase in the next decade, if they do, the time to positive ROI reduces further.
I am on a fixed income, so avoiding expense is a big driver for us. Every dollar the system saves me is the equivalent of $1.50 because it is tax free.
There are other benefits too. We recently experienced a heatwave, so we turned on the air conditioning (4 X mini splits) at 9am, kept the house at 22C at an opportunity cost of approximately 15 cents per hour (2.5kwh consumption) for which we didn't get 6 cents feed in tariff
Since fitting, our energy use has increased because we have no reason to scrimp on heating, cooling or any other reason, as there is no real cost involved, improving quality of life. This includes using a 3.5kw patio heater on brisk winter evenings.
Our most recent power outage lasted 9 hours, from 5AM to 2pm. There was 50% battery at 5am, and it had increased to 75% by the time the grid returned. It is worth noting that only 1/3 of our panels produce when off grid due to how enphase manages a 3 phase supply.
For the month of December (it is summer here) we generated 1.5 MWh and exported 60% of that
Note that the estimated ROI doesn't factor in the income from exported energy which is currently around $900 per year, but I expect this to reduce as prices for daylight power decreases. We see negative prices on the National Energy Market most days.
We are at -36⁰ latitude, panels are north facing with a ten degree angle
I am 61, the system will outlast me.
I hope this helps you rationalise your thoughts
Solar IS actually going to dominate 2030s etc particularly if battery price reductions continue plus vehicle to grid yeah thanks for this episode!
Metallurgical even cement type things etc powered by solar energy yeah wild future time will tell
On a weird somewhat different topic Transport Evolved hasn’t been invited to Nebula yeah maybe considered “too vloggy” or!?
I read an article in "Spiegel" (german newspaper) that currently 160GWh of Battery Buffers are in planning or currently build...this is the quiet revolution no one really thinks about.
Regardless what haters are telling...this change happens and very fast...simply because it is cheap, regardless the CO2 Discussion. The money rules not the climate discussion.
In 2024 also 7GW Peak of Solar was build in Germany additionally...we are now at about 57% renewable Energie...the goal of 80% was planned in 2040, but will be reached in 2030 already. Together with Battey Buffer, the gas powered Energy is needed only for less days...and in long term this could happen using H2...since the new stations are must to be H2 ready.
AND...china builds more wind and solar power than the rest of the world in sum.
Excellent Video on why Renewables. Keep up the great work!!!
You lost me with the sponsor. A COP 1 heater is exactly what we need to avoid using if we want to solve climate change.
There is not enough copper extraction to address your solar and wind deployment fantasies :) Query "Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil?" The total metals required for one generation of technology to phase out fossil fuels is listed by Required Production followed by Known Reserves for all metals based upon tonnes, as follows: Copper 4,575,523,674 vs. 880,000,000 - a serious shortfall -reserves only cover 20% of requirements. Prior to 2020- the global system mined 700 million tons of copper throughout all history. Looking forward, the same 700 million tons will need to be mined over the next 22 years, which is based upon current economic growth rates without giving consideration to what’s needed for one generation of renewables.
Current reserves of copper are 880 million tons. But 4.5 billion tons of copper are required just to manufacture one generation of renewable technology.
Oil etc reserves are not infinite but are a finite resource just like metals but unlike metals oil cannot be recycled once used or burnt they're gone!
The tower heater is a resistance heater produces 3413 BTU/ hr/kw. This is good for spot heating of a room, maybe 5 degrees, not for supplying the 60,000 BTU to 100,000 BTU it takes to heat a home on a cold New England winter day. Central heat from gas, oil, propane is much more economical to heat the whole house.
Nuclear power plants generate high level spent fuel (HLSF) which is neither transportable nor disposable. It just sits in the back yards of the 92 nuclear power plants in the US waiting for a solution that hasn't come since the start up of the first US nuclear power plant, Shipping Port, in 1957. These are dirty bombs waiting for a mortar shell. Do you have a High Level Spent Storage facility in your neighbourhood? Do you want one? This for a nuclear plant that will generate power for just 50 years and require storage of HLSF 10,000 years or more. It makes no sense. The real reason all these countries want to build nuclear power plants is that they want fissile materials to build nuclear bombs not to address climate change.
@@Peaceforall1892-x5z Don't wave reactors burn that fuel?
@@Peaceforall1892-x5z most countries have no interest in making fissile material for bombs... Since the nuclear non proliferation treaty.
HLW waste can be recycled through advanced reactors or disposed of now in the new Onkalo repo in Finland. A similar facility is being built in Sweden. HLW waste disposal is an engineering problem that has been solved. Nuclear power plants have never been built specifically to make weapons grade plutonium. It is a waste of a valuable electricity generating asset to divert it for weapons. Any country wishing to do this builds a small purpose-built facility.
Both wave reactors, and molten salt reactors can use nuclear waste to produce energy. In the U.S. they were killed off because traditional reactors make material for nuclear bombs, but China and others have already built small scale thorium reactors, which are also far safer to operate, quicker and cheaper to build than traditional nuclear reactors.
@@HoboGardenerBen Can you point at a source for an actually working wave reactor?
Solar in farms or on roofs. Completely disagree with the TED Speaker. The initial cost of rooftop solar is personally high, through installation. However, rooftop solar is utilising space that would otherwise go to waste. Often solar farms utilise land that could otherwise be used for something else. He doesn't seem to cost out versatility of utility. Where there is a discrepency is where higher mounted solar PVs on farms can allow crops to grow below them or animals to graze. Not many people seem to realise this. Honestly, this appears to be manipulating examples to suit his case. Concentrated Solar IS something I personally have a problem with because of its problems with wildlife. It's not like Wind Turbine blades, which can be painted to be seen by birds - and birds learn anyway. Nuclear plants - how about the CO2 produced from the enormous tonnage of cement required? He's forgetting that compared to Solar and Wind Turbine construction. And you can recycle Renewables. Good luck doing that with Nuclear, although the fuel rods can be re-used, but don't generally. China has just commissioned a Thorium Nuclear reactor. Now that is interesting. One thing. For the base cost [which tends to spiral over the years in construction] of Nuclear, you can build more Solar PV and Wind Turbines which produce more and virtually minimal cost power.
And that last sentence of Renewables destroying the Planet had me guffawing into my tea. Good job that was his last sentence because that was the ragged limit, for me. 😂
My question is this;
How much mineral required step up wind and solar at global scale . Some people are saying 20 critical mineral .-
Now actually we have nearly 10% in known reserves .
So first is necessary to discover new deposit in a huge quantity , then mining at a huge and fast ever time . Then smelt them assembly and after 15 year re build solar and wind facilities .- For the intermittency is necessary to build a plenty buffer facilities .- I think there is not a frame time to accomplished all this transition
As for concentrated solar, they typically don’t boil water rather melt salt. This salt, in turn, does the boiling and thus the turbine spinning, but this has significance in that those produce power 24 hrs a day due to the melted salt’s thermal storage. But they have also been dismantling as these are more maintenance and more risk concern having molten salt and all while batteries have improved.
22:14 What?! 51% were not in favor of expanding nuclear energy in the US? Why?
49% being in favor doesn't necessarily mean that the rest were not in favor. Those kind of surveys sometimes include an option for "not sure" or "no opinion".
Of course some can be reserved or have no opinion, but the results show that only 49% would offer their support. Not in favor doesn't strictly mean against - just not a "yes".
@kneekoo fair enough. I would wager that a large portion of those not in favor are mostly ignorant on the topic. Because nuclear=scary to many.
I agree. It's been a "dirty" topic for quite a while, mostly because we haven't found good ways to reuse the waste. It's always easy to say _"not in my backyard"_ but once we can put it all to good use, there will no longer be a discussion about where to store it.
For large birds wind turbines also have the option to install image recognition AI which will visually see the bird and turn off the turbine when it is around. That is very expensive in terms of lost productivity since a single wind turbine may produce $4,000 in electricity per day. In general most developers choose to instead avoid areas where eagles hang out.
Simulator solutions are available for bats, modules can listen for the bat sonar and shut down accordingly. And shadow flicker which is when the shadow of a passing turbine blade reaches neighboring property causing a strobe light effect on windows. Modules will calculate when the shadows reach critical locations and sense the solar situation to determine if the turbine needs to be turned off.
The RSPBB said not only do wind farms kill trivial amounts of birds in the UK compared to house cats, not only are they sited well away from any migratory path, not only do birds not fly into mountains and sky scrapers that much when you think about it, but the habitat destruction from pollution is enormous. Bird lungs are tiny and they don't like pollution, but flooding wetlands doesn't do their nesting grounds much good either.
I recall reading about how some research had shown that painting one of the wind turbine blades red (Or black? It was something other than white is all I recall) led to about a 70% drop in bird deaths because it vastly improved their ability to see the turbine blades. Or wouldn't a reflective coating also do that, the way people hang tinsel and CDs in fruit trees to keep birds away? Anyway, I thought that was going to be the go-to solution from there on out... and then it just seemed to evaporate. Was it found that it actually wasn't effective after all, or what happened with that?
Good Video, but i disagree on nuclear energy being a necessary and low CO2 energy.
If you take the mining of Uranium ore, refining, transport and taking care of the waste for the next 20000 years into your calcilation, or think about the coolingproblem in the rising summerheat (rivers are to warm for proper cooling) you should agree that this can not be the form of energy we want for longer periods. Also the known resouces of Uranium is pretty low and mostly owned by Russia.
I live in an area of eastern germany, where huge amounts of uranium where mined in times of cold war by the „Wismut“. The Scars are visible till today and Wismut is working since the reunion of Germany to repair the damage they made. Since 30 years they are only existing to repair the broken environment and will be doing so for many years. That also should be named, when talking about climate friendly energy.
I hope you think about that, inform yourself and maybe do a video about what you found out. Or maybe i am wrong and you can prove it.
Two points - Australia is not planning to build a nuclear plant in 12 years. The party not in government is proposing this but first they have to be elected, get approval from state and local governments, then start building (that would be 3+ years) and there is no way we are building our first nuclear plant ever in 12 years from that date. We will have to do it with renewables and batteries.
The other is cats mainly eat bird eggs rather than fully grown birds so even Bald Eagle numbers could be reduced by cats. I don't know if that is true but is utterly possible.
Hi Ben. I did a simplistic calculation. Saudi Arabia is the second biggest oil exporter in the world. Most of Saudi Arabia is desert. What if we turned that into a massive solar farm? Amazingly, Saudi Arabia could be exporting as much electric energy as it currently exports as oil energy. Saudi is not even on the equator, and is nowhere near the biggest nation in Asia (Africa?) Just imagine if Chad, Niger, Sudan, and Mali decided to go solar in a big way? That's massively more energy than the world needs.
Well, there's also the Sahara Desert of Africa, and of course the Mojave Desert in California, Nevada, and Arizona. But the problem with many of these locations is that you still need to string massive power lines from the generation source to all the consumers and this is both very expensive and very fragile with regards to war, strife, sabotage, etc. So... most of these sites are unlikely to be a serious option in today's world.
The Mojave is being actively developed now. A pilot project in the Sahara failed I believe. And the Saudis have to compete with their own oil resources so it is a slow-slog in the middle-east.
@AndyInTheUK Unfortunately, Solar and Wind Turbines don't do well in sandy environments. Solar panels suffer from grit blasting, which dramatically reduces the incident light reaching the silicon cells.
Wind Turbines suffer premature oil seal failures as sand gets past the seals and into the gearboxes which increases operational costs with all the unscheduled gearbox replacements.
Ever heard of transmission loss? No way a power plant in Africa can power my house in North America. If everything were free, as in zero cost, it still would make no sense to even try.
That video is quite dated. And it excludes a few factors. Dunkelflaute will always be a challenge. But when a large percentage of vehicles on the road are electric . They could end up be being a large part of grid storage. Also if perovskites can be further improved. We could have solar efficiency at 37%
"Dunkelflaute will always be a challenge. "
True, BUT I suspect not as much as some people claim. Yes, all parts of Europe have dunkelflaute but do they all have it in the exact same span of time? From Norway to Portugal and Ireland to Turkey? All at once? I doubt it. So overbuild solar and wind everywhere to let places with temporary excesses provide power for places with temporary shortages.
Same with North America. Is it really going to ever be cloudy & windless all for the exact same days from Atlantic to Pacific and from northern Manitoba to Honduras? Is there any historical record of this ever happening in the past?
16:28 same in Australia.
The Royal Commission enquiry into exploding grid costs concluded 'gold plating' of the grid because governments guaranteed profits on all expenditures.
More spending was more investment with government Garrentees on profits.
Thanks Ben. You are becoming my new favorite channel. Thanks for the truth.
Concentrated solar does not generally heat up water directly to drive a turbine. It heats up a thermal storage system like molten salt which is then used to heat up water to drive a turbine. The advantage of concentrated solar like this is that it can store energy during the day and release it at night.
One thing for sure is home builders can construct homes with solar friendly roofs and a roof surface that is directed toward the sun. My home roof is broken up with angles and direction changes that really limits solar panel installation, and the direction is not ideal.
Agriculture to feed overpopulation is the biggest killer of wildlife. That is the main reason you don't see any Bison on the plains anymore.
17 million tones of ice are sliding into the ocean every hour at the south pole.
To clarify the position in Australia.
The proposal for nuclear comes from the federal opposition.
Nuclear power is currently banned by law in Australia.
Even if the opposition wins government, they won't get the numbers in the senate to overturn that law.
Ground based solar can also be used in a farming scenario, with crops between the rows, or shade plants beneath them. I read somewhere that it also helps with animal diversity as well.
I love your videos. I really look forward to watching them.
Did I read where some Nordic country uses one black blade and two white blades to protect birds
As Ben S. points out, this guy is less then forthright in his facts. At first I was critical or hostile to Ben S., but he cites his sources. I looked up his sources.
I think he's working for the nuclear industry. No nuclear is poison. They say it is very safe, however we have proof that they are not along with the disposal of those waste. Not in my back yard.
Three mile island, Chermobil, Fukyshima etc.
I live in a rural location in california and over the 15 years the area has been blanketed by solar and wind . It has been an industrialization of the desert . My sons place has been completely surrounded . Now he has rooftop solar and a lightning . I dont think the panels affect the ground critters and actually provide shade . I think the fencing surrounding the farms are restrictive for animal life .