Renewables Are Leaving Natural Gas In The Dust This Year

[EdEarl]

 

Thinkprogress.org

 

In the first three months of 2016, the U.S. grid added 18 megawatts of new natural gas generating capacity. It added a whopping 1,291 megawatts (MW) of new renewables.

Only 1MW or larger installations were counted. Some installations were under 4 cents per kw-hour without subsidies.

 

Only 18MW of natural gas power plants were added in this quarter, and no oil, coal or nuclear.

 

Similar future quarters are expected.

 

This is good news. I hope the dark forces don't counterattack.

[StringJunky]

Only 1MW or larger installations were counted. Some installations were under 4 cents per kw-hour without subsidies.

 

Only 18MW of natural gas power plants were added in this quarter, and no oil, coal or nuclear.

 

Similar future quarters are expected.

 

This is good news. I hope the dark forces don't counterattack.

The proponents of nuclear are not dark forces.

[EdEarl]

OK, but additional nuclear is, in general, expensive and no longer needed, except perhaps to clean up the tons of nuclear waste.

[Ken Fabian]

The proponents of nuclear are not dark forces.

Not dark forces, just inconveniently allied to them; as long as that Conservative Right overlapping and incompatible ownership of climate action obstruction and support for nuclear - with avoiding climate responsibility and delaying effective action being every-day-every-way high priority and support for nuclear for climate being low priority - then nuclear will be deprived of real effective political backing from the part of politics where most of the support for it resides.

 

Climate never came with a 'green only' tag - it was a politically expedient choice by the climate responsibility avoiders to frame it that way and associate it with extreme and irrational 'green politics'. Expecting "Environmentalists" to provide agreeable and acceptable options for saving commerce and industry from the costs of climate responsibility has always seemed overly optimistic. Nuclear will not have the backing it needs as long as Conservative politics puts such avoidance far ahead of promoting nuclear for the purpose; it's leading voices continue to show a willingness to support misinformation and lies to prevent climate action but will not use the truth about climate to promote nuclear as it's solution.

 

Ed, I think we will see this trend continue; batteries and other storage systems are making up ground fast even as renewables, solar especially, continues to get cheaper. I think renewable intermittency combined with being periodically least cost will be a greater problem for fixed 'baseload' generation than for the renewables and will act, like it or not, as a kind of market force based 'natural' carbon price. In an open electricity market those intermittent renewables will increasingly own the sunny days and windy periods and fixed generation will be forced into intermittency in response. That will raise their costs for supplying outside those periods, but raising costs outside those periods adds a big incentive for storage - and the true value of storage is not reflected well by any average electricity price, it is better reflected by peak prices. Hydro operators may find it more profitable in the presence of large amounts of solar or wind power to forego continuous operation in favour of concentrating on supply outside those high renewables periods; it doesn't have to be purpose made pumped storage to fit into that role. Unfortunately (depending on POV) for nuclear it will get caught by this market 'force' much as fossil fuel plant will.

 

My own view is that existing fixed plant should be used where possible as interim backup to renewables in a planned manner, one which builds in incentives to spend more time shut down; ironic that gas or coal plants should end up requiring subsidies to continue in a reserve (non-)operation role but it may come to that.