"Biting the handthat feeds you" etc

[oneoff]

I think I know that biting the hand that feeds you is not productive and does not lead to a good long term relationships.

Similarly; jumping on the popular bandwagons propelled by opinions of sectors that could only currently produce maybe 1% of present needs is not wise and is premature to say the least. In a bind; everyone will come to see that utopian theories don't perform in real world circumstances.

And finally; those who think they have all the answers; and are quick to permanently shut down tried and true energy sources are the most dangerous potential destroyers of countries. Some positive evidence that solar panels and wind can handle base loads at peak demand periods is kinda important...one would think. We'll find that answer when all that freely available hydro power and promised cheap solar energy is needed by way more buyers than there are available supplies.


When things get tough (such as they will in a city like Estevan) then I hope those responsible will someday be held to account.

[chuckChuck]

China is world’s largest investor in renewable energy
By:
Emma Rumney
31 Mar 16

China blazed ahead of the rest of the world in terms of investment in renewable energy last year, spending a total of $103bn, or 36% of the world total.
Solar-panels,-India-©UK-Aid-DfID.jpg
Solar panels in India

The country, notorious for its dangerous levels of pollution, invested more than the US ($44.1bn), the UK ($22.2bn) and Japan ($36.2bn), put together, the United Nations Environment Programme’s annual report on global trends in renewable energy found.

In total, countries around the world invested $286bn in renewable energy capacity, early-stage technology and research and development in 2015 – more than six times higher than investments in 2004 and setting a new global record, adding $13bn to 2014’s investments.

As also revealed by Climatescope 2015 in November, developing countries outpaced their developed counterparts for the first time last year. The UNEP found emerging economies invested $156bn last year, a 19% increase on 2014, surpassing the developed world’s $130bn, which marked an 8% decrease.

Also for the first time, coal and gas-fired electricity generation attracted less than half the investments made in solar, wind and other renewables capacity, which stood at $130bn and $266bn respectively.

UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said last year’s record-setting investments are further proof that renewables are becoming ever more central to low-carbon lifestyles, and proving especially valuable in societies where reliable energy can offer “profound” improvements in quality of life, economic development and environmental sustainability.

UNEP also noted earlier this week that Latin America could save up to 10% in energy consumption by switching to cleaner technologies, saving $350bn in energy bills annually and reducing global COâ‚‚ emissions by 1.25bn tonnes per year.

The report said this fast-rising demand in emerging economies, particularly China’s dash for wind and solar, are among the factors driving this shift in investment towards developing nations and away from advanced economies.

While countries like India, South Africa, Mexico and Chile all saw significant increases in investment, with the latter three seeing 329%, 105% and 151% spikes respectively, investment in Europe was down 21% at $48.8bn, the continent’s lowest figure for nine years despite record investments in offshore wind projects.

Subsidy cutbacks in Europe and sluggish economic growth in advanced economies could also be contributing to this trend, the report said.

The falling cost of renewables is also a factor in their rise across the globe. Worldwide, clean energy sources added 134 gigawatts of capacity last year, compared to 106GW in 2014 and 87GW in 2013.

Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which launched the report along with the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance, noted that this was true despite the tumbling oil, gas and coal prices.

Increases were lead by wind and solar power, which dominated the renewables market in 2015 as in previous years.

The UNEP said that were it not for renewables, not including large hydro projects, annual global CO₂ emissions would have been significantly higher – 1.5 gigatonnes – in 2015.

Steiner said continued and increased investments like those seen last year is not only good for the people and planet, but will be a key element in achieving international targets on climate change and sustainable development.

“By adopting the Sustainable Development Goals last year, the world pledged to end poverty, promote sustainable development and to ensure healthier lives and access to affordable, sustainable and clean energy for all.

“Continued and increased investment in renewables will be a significant part of delivering on that promise.”

Emma Rumney

Emma is a reporter at Public Finance International. She also writes for Public Finance in the UK.

[chuckChuck]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/07/08/if-china-is-so-committed-to-renewable-energy-why-are-so-many-new-coal-plants-being-built/#1bb6fff565f7

If China Is So Committed To Renewable Energy, Why Are So Many New Coal Plants Being Built?
Wade Shepard ,

Contributor

I travel to emerging markets around Asia and report on what I find.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

It seems like a contradiction: a country claiming that they are committed to improving its air quality, who has put up more windmills, solar panels, and hydropower dams than anywhere else in the world, as well as issuing piles of forward-thinking environmental policies, that is still building large amounts of brand new coal-fired power plants.

So how do we account for this apparent contradiction? Is China’s position on renewable energy little more than political doublespeak? Does the country want its coal and clean skies too?

China, a country known for its smoggy skies and hazardous environmental conditions has rapidly become the global leader in developing and implementing renewable energy technologies on a mass scale. The country’s central government understands that there is a problem that needs to be fixed as fast as possible. In the words of Energy Innovation’s Hal Harvey, who has been instrumental in advising China on energy issues, “They get it.”

In this Dec. 3, 2009 file photo smoke billows from a chimney of the cooling towers of a coal-fired power plant in Dadong, Shanxi province, China. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

Responding to the air pollution crisis, China’s central government has made some monumental strides. It is estimated that by 2020, over 15 percent of China’s energy capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources, and the country is the clear global leader when it comes to renewable energy.

The most wind energy capacity in the world is in China.

The most solar energy capacity in the world is in China.

The most hydropower capacity in the world is in China.

However, the most coal-fired energy capacity in the world is also in China.

Even as China adds mountains of renewable energy capacity and develops progressive government policies to improve air quality, the old incumbent coal is still maintaining its leading position — and its looking to do so for a long time yet.

China’s National Action Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control’s mid-term review, which was released on July 5th, shows that the eight provinces which make up their ‘key regions,’ added on a massive 50.8 GW of new coal-fired energy capacity between the years of 2013-15. For scale, the country’s total installed energy capacity in 1980 was 66 GW. On top of this, the report showed that 42 GW of additional coal-fired capacity is currently under construction, with 11 GW more being approved just last year. Meanwhile, just 10.8 GW of coal-fired capacity in these provinces was taken offline during this same period. Considering that each coal-fired power plant has a lifetime of thirty to fifty years, it seems as if China has hedged its biggest energy bet on coal for the foreseeable future.

But as the National Action Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control, a mandate from China’s State Council, has already banned the increase of coal-burning energy capacity, how can these numbers be explained?

First of all, not all coal is equal and neither is every coal-fired power plant. At the same time that China is transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables the country is also transitioning from high-polluting, cheap coal to premium, ultra-supercritical coal, which is burned at a very high temperature and at a very high rate of efficiency. Some of these new coal plants in China are better than anything seen yet in the US, and in the words of Harvey, China is “backing out really crappy old coal with better coal.”

“New power plants certainly have much more aggressive emission control technologies than older plants, although many older plants are being fitted with these control technologies as well,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a researcher at Greenpeace. “China has managed to reduce SO2 and NOx emissions from the power sector very rapidly in the past few years, above all due to retrofitting and due to stagnating power generation from coal, which has allowed emission controls to catch up. Where the logic falls apart is that very little capacity is being retired.”
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China’s central government, regardless of how it appears, is not an omnipotent, monolithic organization. Provincial level governments still maintain massive amounts of decision making autonomy, as well as the power to occasionally enact initiatives which run against the grain of Beijing. As most energy planning is carried out at the provincial level, the end results sometimes don’t run flush with national policy.

“The major error the central government seems to have made is to devolve energy planning to provincial authorities, who are clearly not paying any attention to market demand for power generation from coal – any kind of investment will boost GDP numbers,” Myllyvirta said.

According to Myllyvirta, there are some very clear drivers behind China’s local governments’ hesitancy to sever ties from coal.

1) Coal power is an easy way to generate economic activity at a time of reduced growth, not only via the construction of coal plants but through supporting local miners, who are struggling;

2) The profit margins for coal-fired power plants are currently over-inflated, as the cost for coal is market driven, and has dropped significantly, but cost of electricity, which is government regulated, has remained unchanged;

3) Expectations of future energy demand have not yet been adjusted to take into account the vast amount of renewable energy coming online and slowing economic growth.

So while the contradiction of attempting to reduce carbon emissions on one hand while increasing coal-fired energy capacity on the other can be contextualized, it cannot be completely explained away. Increasing coal energy capacity so dramatically at the height of a national air-quality crisis mitigates some of the gains made in renewable energy.

However, just because just because China has X-amount of new coal-fired energy capacity doesn’t necessarily mean that all of this capacity is being utilized — not at all. By the numbers, China has upwards of 200 GW of redundant coal-fired power capacity and, ultimately, has little use for many of the new coal plants that are currently being built.
Recommended by Forbes

“The entire coal power overcapacity situation has been caused by the fact that power generation from coal has hardly increased since 2011 and has been falling since 2013. This is the biggest climate story in the world – China’s coal demand is actually likely to have peaked in 2013, almost a decade ahead of targets,” Myllyvirta said.

“In other words, they’ve overshot, they’ve overshot their capacity requirements by a significant amount already,” Harvey concurred. “In my opinion, coal usage has already peaked in China, I would foresee the breaks being put down on coal construction and a lot of those plans for plants not being completed or built at all.”

Last year, China’s coal consumption dropped 3.7% while coal imports plunged 30.4%.

“The massive over-investment in coal-fired power is a wasted opportunity to deploy clean energy even faster, and overcapacity is exacerbating the problem of ‘wasted’ wind and solar power, as grid operators fail to prioritize renewable energy sources over coal,” Myllyvirta opined.

Basically, China’s unnecessary clinging to coal seems to be a temporary, transitional phenomenon that will gradually wan as the country continues its complicated, jarring transition away from sluggish, dirty state-owned industries towards leaner, more sustainable models of business and energy production.

[chuckChuck]

Without SaskPower's numbers on what it costs to maintain or retrofit electrical generation for coal with or without carbon capture and storage vs all the other options including buying hydro from Manitoba you are making a lot of assumptions on what is the best investment for all residents of Saskatchewan, not just what will keep jobs in Estevan and Coronach.

I keep going back to the question why is Brad Wall investing in 50% renewables by 2030?

Untill we have the numbers none of us can make very little headway on this issue. Take the politics for and against any option out of it, and get to facts. That is the responsible thing to do!

Otherwise we just waste a lot of time.

[blackpowder]

Foremost for them is their economic needs. Not so much for us.

[chuckChuck]

5 Questions with Guy Bruce on SaskPower’s Renewable Energy Target

November 23, 2015
Have questions about our plan to have up to 50% renewable power by 2030? We sat down with Guy Bruce, Vice-President, Planning, Environment and Sustainable Development at SaskPower, to learn more.



Will pushing for an ambitious target on renewable power impact my bill?

The cost for adding more renewables will depend on a number of factors, including the cost of technologies, emissions regulations, future natural gas prices and system integration costs. Based on existing technology, we estimate that achieving our renewable energy target will be less than $1.00/month in the first year. The cost will be spread out over a period of 15 years, as the new renewable options are constructed and put into service.

We understand that nobody likes to see rate increases. The fact is that over the next few years, a large number of our generating facilities will reach the end of their lifespans. In addition to that, we need to come up with new ways to generate power for our growing province. We see the opportunity in this challenge to increase our use of renewables as we build new generating facilities and replace some existing ones. This will come at a cost, but we need to ensure we are all doing our part to reduce C02 emissions and combat climate change. The numbers are based on today’s costs and as technology evolves, SaskPower will work to reduce the rate impact as we move towards 2030.
What will the impact be on emissions reductions?

The impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions is expected to be approximately 40% below 2005 levels by 2030. This will be achieved through more renewables, and the replacement of conventional coal with lower emitting forms of generation, such as CCS or natural gas. It’s also important to note that this is our current, attainable target, but it will also lay the ground work for deeper emissions reductions past 2030.
Will you continue to pursue Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology?

Yes. We’ll continue to evaluate CCS at Boundary Dam, testing and fine-tuning the system for full-scale operation. We expect to have a decision on whether to go forward with retrofitting Boundary Dam Units 4 & 5 with CCS sometime in 2017.
What are the future plans for wind?

Our renewables target includes a push to develop up to 30% wind power capacity in Saskatchewan by 2030. Currently, private sector producers have projects in development at Chaplin (177 MW), Grenfell (20 MW) and Riverhurst (10 MW). These projects are expected to be complete by 2020, bringing our total wind capacity to about 430 MW or 9% of total capacity.

We will also add three 100 MW wind projects by 2024. We’ll initiate a competitive bidding process for the first of these projects in mid-2016. Combined, these new projects, along with our existing capacity, will bring our total wind power generating capacity to approximately 730 MW – or 15%. Although firm plans are not yet in place, we will work hard to reach our target up to 30 % wind power capacity, knowing that wind is important part of future mix of generation options.
Other places like North Dakota have significantly more wind than we do. Why has Saskatchewan been so slow to embrace wind power?

We understand there are many who think we’ve haven’t moved fast enough on wind power, but there is more to consider. We talk often about replacing and adding new generation sources for our growing province. We also have to keep in mind our significant transmission challenges as well—adding and replacing power lines, poles and substations in our geographically large, low population-base province.

Though we use about the same amount of renewables overall, North Dakota uses much more coal than we do and does not rely on natural gas. That’s not to diminish their achievement. The point we are making is that every situation is different and there is no such thing as a one-size-fits all approach to power. We are proud, however, to be making this announcement today and to accelerating our push to be a part of the solution to the challenge of climate change.

[chuckChuck]

https://www.saskwind.ca/wind-cost-comparison

[oneoff]

The points I refer to are:

How much of Sask Energy does anyone make and/or use that comes from wind or solar that is touted as 50%-100% of future requirements. Same might be asked as to what percentage of Sask food is produced from so called "organic production".

Would the answer be close to 1%????

And whilst some appear **** sure they will have everything under control even with near immediate switch over to wind and solar; I invite them to become sure that wind farms will be successful even where surface winds are not strong enough nor consistent enough to turn the generators they are attached too.

As for previous claims about substantial energy losses through grid power lines; I inform you that the EIA (those interested can look up the abbreviation); estimated about 5% transmission losses on average in the USA. or a 100 mile long 700 something kv line carrying a 1000 MW of power is about a 0.5 to 1.1% loss.

Anyone think just because energy comes from solar panels and wind farms on escarpment and natural wind tunnels won't need an electrical grid as well.

And solar energy ain't free; in fact it never will be....but it can be made competitive with incentives and better be available when the traditional prime movers running on coal fired steam or fossil fuels. It also will never be 4 cents a kwh; maybe put another digit or two; and then pay spot rate for hydro if it can be bought for a few more times the wind/solar that can't keep up during peak demand on this continent.

And nuclear electrical is a non starter I imagine...is it not??

And the misinformation about natural gas being widely available, and cheap and "clean"...still doesn't make it an option as a coal-fossil fuel replacement in the eyesof an environmentalist...or so I understand it is believed to be in the dirty coal-heavy oil class of horrible products.

The truth about natural gas treating is that the processing to take out the associated H2S (which can easily be 2.5% up to even 25%) takes hundreds of thousand of cubic feet of addition natural gas to burn the sulfur and get SO2 literally up into the stratosphere to circle the globe and produce some acid rain that acidifies some soils and even kills every tree. In other climes it neutralizes high ph soils and heaven forbid probablly is nothing but good for that soil.

Anyway...lost chuck a long ways back; and I doubt very much that any chuckies will ever produce any significant power and will soon tire of that LED light illuminating this message displayed on some device that would never have been invented if environmentalists had their way during the industrial revolution.
We'd be still in the stone age; and human numbers would have been kept under control by other forces and this topic would have remained the least of anyone's concern.

[burnt]

Now the people of Ontario have the dubious distinction of both paying for "green energy" production, and for NOT producing "green energy".

Seems like our government saw the writing on the wall a while ago and cancelled a bunch of turbine installations promised to an American investment firm. Now we have the pleasure of paying them millions of dollars for terminating those contracts. With MORE waiting in the wings to do the same thing to us!

Man you can't make this sh!t up. Thanks to the Liberals and other like-minded left-wingers who got us into this fiasco. Alberta, now you know what you've got coming down the pipe.

[URL="http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/why-canadian-taxpayers-have-to-pay-wall-street-bankers-28-million-for-an-ontario-wind-farm-that-never-got-built#__lsa=76f7-efdc"]http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/why-canadian-taxpayers-have-to-pay-wall-street-bankers-28-million-for-an-ontario-wind-farm-that-never-got-built#__lsa=76f7-efdc[/URL]

[oneoff]

OH WOW

By 2020....with all the new projected wind generation at Chaplin, Grenfell and Riverhurst (and also all previous projects included) we'll up to a whopping 9% of total capacity in the province.

Putting that into perspective; it probably is about twice the transmission losses for the Sask grid system.

Maybe less considering the comment that Sask is sparsely populated and we're spread over such a large area.

Also worth noting the total lack of reporting any solar panel output. And come to think of it I've only noticed one installation of significance in the whole province. Well actually there are quite a few little dead batteries in those buck a piece garden walkway ones; and I guess there are some solar powered cattle waterers; but if AC power was available I'm sure they would be quickly disconnected.

[oneoff]

The CBSA’s provisional duties, set in March, ranged from 9 per cent to 286 per cent, depending on the specific Chinese manufacturer. The final tariff levels have not yet been revealed.

The CBSA was responsible for deciding whether subsidization and dumping actually took place, while the CITT looked at whether there was damage to Canadian manufacturers.

The Canadian solar industry has been divided about the imposition of import duties. The panel manufacturers that complained about dumping are happy that action has been taken to protect them, but some industry participants say that import duties will boost the price of solar products and depress demand. That could dent enthusiasm for solar power and slow the shift to renewable energy in Canada.

UNQUOTE Globe and Mail from last July

Just because another country can out compete with cheaper costs???? Maybe that equals hypocrisy and is reason Trump type logic resonates so well with self interests apparently so easily sold to an electorate.

[burnt]

It seems that there is conflicting evidence about China's commitment to "green energy".

Is this story about the 70 workers killed in a scaffolding collapse or is it about the last paragraphs stating that China is going full steam (if you'll pardon the pun) ahead with building coal-fired plants, and in the long term?

[URL="https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/11/24/scaffolding-collapse-at-china-power-plant-kills-at-least-67.html"]https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/11/24/scaffolding-collapse-at-china-power-plant-kills-at-least-67.html[/URL]

[seabass]

I think your right on burnt. U can't get truthful production numbers out of there country. U think there gonna tell the truth about there energy plans. They have a shit ton of mouths to feed over there so they are gonna use the cheapest products they can to keep the masses quiet and happy.