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Workshop: Extreme Events and Energy Transitions
Tackling the Challenges of Climate Change by
Integrating Social and Complex Systems Science
EU energy transition: concerns emerging from
ongoing research activities (MAGIC project)
September 25th, 2019 - JRC Visitor Center, ISPRA
Mario GIAMPIETRO
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 689669.
The present work reflects only the author's view and the Funding Agency can not be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
1. How did we miss the most extreme event experienced so far by humankind?
2. The problems with intermittent sources of electricity
3. The problems with biofuels
4. Do our governments understand what they want to govern?
The existing situation
The reasonable scenarios . . .
The narrative about the future used by mainstream economists
EXPECTED DIRECTION OF
ECONOMIC GROWTH
> 3% per year forever
Anyone who believes that exponential growth can
go forever in a finite world is either a madman or
an economist
THE PUN
Kennet Boulding
The elephant in the room – the ultimate extreme event in human history . . .
Thousands years!
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Fossil energy
Quantitative Story-Telling in action: renewable sources of electricity
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/strategies/2050_en
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-germany-emissions/ https://www.politico.eu/article/report-german-parties-agree-to-drop-2020-climate-goal/
The Budget Committee of the German Parliament
The problem is not about generating a given quantity of electricity over
a year, but it is about matching “demand and supply” defined at a smaller
scale minutes, hours, days, months . . .
Requirement
=
Supply
Time scale
e.g. nuclear or coal fired plants – high utilization factorsBase load
Peakers e.g. gas turbines or hydro – high flexibility in supply
EU28
Power Plant type
Power capacityMW
ElectricityProducedGWh
CapacityFactorGWh/MW
Nuclear 108,700 947,000 8.7
Brown Coal 30,800 240,000 7.8
Coal 60,600 280,300 6.4
Natural Gas 134,500 499,600 3.7
Fuels 29,550 98,200 3.3
Hydro 63,900 240,600 3.8
Base
loaders
Peakers
Data source: Enipedia - 2015
Acknowledging the existence of two types of power capacity used so far to
produce electricity – loaders and peakers – with different characteristics
IntermittentsPeakers
Case A - Intermittents with no priority in the supply to the grid
nuclear or coal fired plants – high utilization factors
Requirement
and Supply
Time scale
Electricity producedbut not used . . .
Base load
Intermittents
Requirement
and Supply
Time scale
Case B - Intermittents with priority in the supply to the grid
Peakers
All electricityproduced is used . . .
#euforiebcn
Back-up of
conventional
plants
Back-up of
conventional
plants
A back-up is required
to avoid blackouts
Renner A. and Giampietro M. (in press) Discourses of European electricity decarbonization: Contesting narrative credibility and legitimacy with quantitative story-telling - Energy Research & Social Science
Strauss, L. & Reeh, P. 1979 Electrical Load-curve Coverage, in R. Maxwell (Ed.)Electrical Load-Curve Cover., Pergamon Press, Oxford, England, UK: pp. 193–202.
The same information was available in a Table of a book of 1979 . . .
PeakersRequirement
and supply
Time scale
Intermittents
The need of taming the intermittent sources . . .
Functional elements of modern electric sectors
cannot be cheap and unreliable (intermittent)
we have to back-up intermittents!
+ +
By 2021 the largest announced storage system (more than 18,000 Li-ion batteries) will be in Long Beach for Southern California Edison: it will be capable of running at 100 MW for 4 hours. But 400MWh is still three orders of magnitude lower than what a large Asian city would need in just one day if it were deprived of its intermittent supply 600 GWh/400 MWh = 1,500
Vaclav Smil
Tokyo at 25 GW for just one day under typhoon will require 600 GWh
100MW/129MWh, the Hornsdale Power Reserve (TESLA)
The world's largest battery storage substation
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-04/tesla-flips-the-switch-on-the-gigafactory
Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Avicenne
2 million cars
165 GWh
20 GWh
#euforiebcn
In EU we have about290 million cars
24,000 GWh?
?!
105 GWh
Marie Antoinette
Quantitative Story-Telling in action: the biofuel solution
https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/the-netherlands-mulls-end-to-used-cooking-oil-double-counting/
https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/Greenea%20Report%20Household%20UCO%20Collection%20in%20the%20EU_ICCT_20160629.pdf
1 kg of UCO p.c./year 0.75 kg of gross biodiesel p.c./year 0.6 kg of net biodiesel p.c./year
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/intelligent/projects/en/projects/recoil
= 7 kg of biodiesel from UCO p.c./year. This require more than 12 kg of UCO collected p.c./year
Corn Stove when looking for alternative fuels,does everything go?
What about refined biodiesel from human fat after liposuction?
after all thisis a win-winsolution . . .
“There’s an interesting business model: link a biodiesel plant with the cosmetic
surgeons,” says Mr. Bethune. “In Auckland we produce about 330 pounds of fat
per week from liposuction, which would make about 40 gallons of fuel.
If it is going to be chucked out, why not?”
“A large liposuction operation involves
removing 10 pounds of fat, which would
drive a car about 50 miles once converted”
The lean Mr. Bethune had about three ounces of fat extracted from
his body in a liposuction procedure, and he is seeking volunteers
to donate more.
From: http://calorielab.com/news/2005/11/11/
Peter Bethune
Peter Buthune is the founder of Earthrace, a project to promote the use of
biofuel trying to break the round-the-world powerboat speed record
in a boat powered by biodiesel fuel partly manufactured from human fat.
BiofuelProduction
GROSSSUPPLY
NETSUPPLY
internal consumptionof the energy system
costs for the economy
land water labor capital
energy used by theeconomy to produceand consume goodsand services
First Generation Biofuels
costs for the environment
W/m2
W/m2
W/m2W/m2 W/m2
W/m2
W/m2
W/m2
W/m2
Useful Energy
FUND
nutrients
nutrients
nutrients nutrients
nutrients
nutrients
nutrients
nutrients
W/m2
W/m2
W/m2
W/m2W/m2
Useful Energy
FLOW (fossil energy)
CITIES
FARMSFARMS
FARMS ENVIRONMENTAL
SERVICES
nutrients
nutrientsnutrients
leakage leakage
leakage
10-2 100 102 104 106 108 1010
10-1
100
101
102
103
104
105
po
wer
den
sity
(W
/m2)
area (m2)
10-2 100 102 104 106 108 1010
10-1
100
101
102
103
104
105
area (m2)
Energy supply Energy requirement
after Vaclav Smil 2003 Energy at the Crossroads, The MIT press
(Fig. 5.2 and Fig. 5.3)
oil fields
coal fields
phytomass
cities
industry
houses
supermarket
power density gaps
Biofuel
modern technical progress =
using oil to save land and labor
biofuel idea =
using land and labor to save oil!
fossil energy implies the
same problem generated
by disposable diapers !
Too much stress
on the sink side!
different forms of recyclable diapers have been used since the dawn of humankind . . .
So why did humans stop to use recyclable diapers in the first place?
“When moss was used for diapers the baby seldom became chafed,
and when it was unwrapped you could smell only sweet moss”
A Tikanagan used
by native Americans
Statement gathered by the ethnologist Imez Hilger
in the 1930s from an elder Native American British Museum
“The vast majority of the 6 million domestic biogas
plants in rural China have been abandoned as soon
as fossil energy has become accessible . . .”
Vaclav Smil
The delusion of domestic biogas plants in China . . .
So, what is wrong with domestic biogas plants?
1
3
5
2
4
6
ask the operator!
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Commerce/China-factory-scenes.html
Energetics is no longer abasic course in Universityprograms . . .
my old book
of energetics
The neglected knowledgeof energetics . . .
WHAT IS GOING ON?
Do our governments understand the functioning of the systems they want to govern?
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/strategies/2050_en
Cosmas IndicopleustesTopographia Cristiana
A flat Earth supporting the heavens with high walls on its borders
550 AD240 BC
EratosthenesCalculation of Earth’s circumference
He calculated the circumference of the Earth from the distance from Alexandriaand Syene
800 years1971
The economyis an entropic
process
2019The economy can be circular
“To make sense of the complexity of the world so that they can act, individuals and institutions need to develop simplified, self-consistent versions of that world. The process of doing so means that much of what is known about the world needs to be excluded from those versions, and in particular that knowledge which is in tension or outright contradiction with those versions must be expunged . . .”
dysfunctional cases of uncomfortable knowledge have to be ignored in the official story-telling
“socially constructed ignorance”
Rayner, S., 2012. “Uncomfortable knowledge: the social construction of ignorance in science and environmental policy discourses” Economy and Society, 41(1): 107-125.
Thank you for your attention!
The present work reflects only the author's view and the Funding Agency can not be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
http://magic-nexus.eu
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme - grant agreement No. 689669.
https://www.facebook.com/MagicNexusEu/
#MAGIC_NEXUS @MAGIC_NEXUS
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