Archives de catégorie : renewable energy

Les métaux sales de l’énergie propre ou la face cachée de transition énergétique …

par Professeur Alain Préat, 9 juin 2008, in ScienceClimatEnergie


Trois révolutions énergétiques depuis à peine plus d’un siècle. Nous sommes entrés dans la troisième révolution énergétique. La première vit le jour avec la machine à vapeur et participa à l’essor du charbon, avec la seconde le moteur thermique dérôna le charbon au profit des hydrocarbures, et la troisième révolution industrielle, en cours, est technologique et basée sur les énergies ‘vertes’ ou énergies intermittentes et l’informatique ou le numérique. Cette problématique vient d’être abordée dans un excellent ouvrage paru en 2018 .

Peut-on dire que cette progression récente suivant ces trois phases majeures de la technologie s’est effectuée dans le sens d’un meilleur respect de l‘état de la Planète. Bien que cela soit le discours officiel, rien n’en est moins sûr. Pourquoi ? Tout simplement par le méconnaissance de tout un chacun à comprendre ou savoir ce qui est réellement utilisé dans les énergies vertes et numériques. L’actuelle ‘transition énergétique’ a bon dos et elle a toutes les vertus, elle est propre, quant aux les hydrocarbures, le charbon, l’uranium et CO(ennemi n° 1) ils ont tous les maux, et sont tous sales. Il n’est pas un jour où cette opposition nous est rappelée…

(…)

A question that gives pause: If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?

by M. Shellenberger, President, Env. Progr., May 16, 2018  in WUWT


Over the last year, the media have published story after story after story about the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines.

People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become.

And yet that’s not what’s happening. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Between 2009 and 2017, the price of solar panels per watt declined by 75 percent while the price of wind turbines per watt declined by 50 percent.

And yet — during the same period — the price of electricity in places that deployed significant quantities of renewables increased dramatically.

Electricity prices increased by:

Green Failure: German Solar Industry Crashes And Burns…Solar Jobs See Blood Bath!

by Michael Kruger, April 21, 2018 in P Gosselin NoTricksZone


Michael Kruger at German skeptic site Science Skeptical here writes about how solar energy indutry in Germany has disintegrated spectacularly.

What follows are 4 charts that show us some shocking trends, and how in reality the German solar industry has seen a bloodbath that can be rated as one of the worst in a long time. The reality is that Germany’s green revolution is far from being a model for the world.

MIT report: it will take 400 years to transform to ‘clean’ energy

by James Temple, March 15, 2018 in A. Watts, WUWT


Fifteen years ago, Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution, calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear power plant’s worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Recently, he did a quick calculation to see how we’re doing.

Not well. Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 ˚C, as the 2003 Science paper by Caldeira and his colleagues found, we are adding around 151 megawatts. That’s only enough to power roughly 125,000 homes.

At that rate, substantially transforming the energy system would take, not the next three decades, but nearly the next four centuries. In the meantime, temperatures would soar, melting ice caps, sinking cities, and unleashing devastating heat waves around the globe (see “The year climate change began to spin out of control”).

Qu’est-ce que l’Alliance solaire internationale ?

by Connaissance des Energies, 12 mars 2018


L’ Alliance solaire internationale est une initiative lancée par l’Inde et la France lors de la COP21 qui vise à « augmenter de manière significative la production d’électricité solaire » dans les 121 pays situés en totalité ou en partie entre les tropiques du Cancer et du Capricorne (des pays en voie de développement pour la grande majorité).

(…)

En juin 2017, l’Alliance solaire internationale indiquait que 33 pays avaient signé son accord-cadre et que 6 l’avait ratifié : l’Inde, la France et 4 territoires insulaires (Fidji, Maurice, Nauru, Tuvalu)(5). Il est nécessaire que 15 pays ratifient cet accord-cadre pour qu’il entre en vigueur. En mars 2018, l’Alliance solaire internationale a été officiellement lancée à New Delhi, en présence d’Emmanuel Macron et d’une vingtaine de dirigeants d’Asie, d’Afrique et d’Océanie.

Le gouvernement indien s’est engagé à abriter le secrétariat de l’Alliance solaire internationale pour une durée de 5 ans (jusqu’en 2021).

Wind Industry Faces Billions In Early Repair Costs

by Benny Peiser, February 23, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch


Ørsted must repair up to 2,000 wind turbine blades because the leading edge of the blades has become worn down after just a few years at sea.

Siemens Gamesa also does not want to comment on the costs, but the company’s Danish subsidiary has just provided 4.5 billion Danish Krone ($750 million) or 16% of its revenue to guarantee its commitments (…)

MUGGED BY REALITY, GERMANY’S CLIMATE CONSENSUS IS COLLAPSING

by Benny Peiser, November 11, 2017, in GWPF


Germany’s utopian dream of transforming itself into the world’s green powerhouse is collapsing as its political and media establishment is mugged by reality. The country’s climate obsession has turned into one of the country’s biggest political and economic handicaps, making Germany almost ungovernable.

See also here

Un livre révèle “la plus fantastique opération de greenwashing de l’histoire”

by Mathieu Dejean, 6 janvier 2017 in LesInrockuptibles


Dans un essai édifiant, le journaliste Guillaume Pitron dévoile “la face cachée de la transition énergétique et numérique”. Selon lui, le recours aux éoliennes, panneaux solaires et autres véhicules électriques n’a fait que déplacer l’impact de l’activité humaine sur les écosystèmes.

BENNY PEISER: MUGGED BY REALITY, GERMANY’S CLIMATE CONSENSUS IS COLLAPSING

by Benny Peiser, November 11, 2017 in GWPF


Germany’s utopian dream of transforming itself into the world’s green powerhouse is collapsing as its political and media establishment is mugged by reality. The country’s climate obsession has turned into one of the country’s biggest political and economic handicaps, making Germany almost ungovernable.

See also here

Hidden consequences of intermittent electricity production

by Jozef Ongena et al., 2017 in Arguments


The hidden consequences of a massive use of intermittent renewable energy systems for electricity production are highlighted, using existing electricity production data from Germany from the last 5 years, where presently a system is in operation with an installed capacity of about 50 GW in wind turbines (sum of onshore and offshore wind) and 40GW in photovoltaic panels.This fleet of intermittent renewable systems produces more than half of the yearly renewable electrical energy of Germany, the rest being produced by hydro, so-called ‘biomass’ and a very small fraction of geothermal sources

New York Times: World’s nations building huge numbers of new coal plants despite emissions growth

by  NY Times, July 13, 2017 in WUWT


The level of renewable use is now so high in Germany that serious electric grid reliability and stability issues now exist which require both fossil power plant emergency backup for failed renewable production and dictate rejecting renewable energy to ensure operation of fossil plants required for electric grid reliability and stability.

L’Utopie du tout renouvelable

by J.P. Schaeken, Académie Roy Belgique, 18 juin 2017


Par Drieu Godefridi 
Je recommande vivement la lecture de ce tout petit (80 pages) ouvrage de synthèse sur l’électricité européenne.
 
Après la sortie américaine de l’Accord de Paris, il se confirme que l’Europe s’engagera, seule, dans la voie d’une électricité tout intégralement générée par de l’énergie renouvelable (soleil, vent).
Egalement ici

Hydroelectric dams may jeopardize the Amazon’s future

by University of Texas at Austin, June 14, 2017 in Science Daily


Hundreds of built and proposed hydroelectric dams may significantly harm life in and around the Amazon by trapping the flow of rich nutrients and modifying the climate from Central America to the Gulf of Mexico. These findings, published in Nature, emerge from a multidisciplinary, international collaboration of researchers from 10 universities, led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.

To meet energy needs, economic developers in South America have proposed 428 hydroelectric dams, with 140 currently built or under construction, in the Amazon basin — the largest and most complex network of river channels in the world, which sustains the highest biodiversity on Earth.

RENEWABLES 2017 GLOBAL STATUS REPORT

by RENEWABLES 2017 GLOBAL STATUS REPORT, June 2017


The 2017 Edition of the REN21 Renewables Global Status Report reveals a global energy transition well underway, with record new additions of installed renewable energy capacity, rapidly falling costs, and the decoupling of economic growth and energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This year’s report continues REN21’s long-standing tradition of providing the most up-to-date data and informative infographics to detail renewable energy’s contribution to the energy transition.

See also here for comments

Denmark Is Killing Tesla (and Other Electric Cars)

by Peter Levring, June 2, 2017 in Bloomberg


The electric car has dropped out of favor in the country that pioneered renewable energy.

Sales in Denmark of Electrically Chargeable Vehicles (ECV), which include plug-in hybrids, plunged 60.5 percent in the first quarter of the year, compared with the first three months of 2016, according to latest data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). That contrasts with an increase of nearly 80 percent in neighboring Sweden and an average rise of 30 percent in the European Union.

Claim: Dams are major driver of global environmental change

by University of Waterloo, May 17, 2017


Water reservoirs created by damming rivers could have significant impacts on the world’s carbon cycle and climate system that aren’t being accounted for, a new study concludes.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Waterloo and the Université libre de Bruxelles, appears in Nature Communications. It found that man-made dam reservoirs trap nearly one-fifth of the organic carbon moving from land to ocean via the world’s rivers.

La route solaire : une idée lumineuse ou une gabegie sans avenir ?

by Olivier Appert, Président du Conseil Français de l’Energie, Avril 2017  in Connaissance des Energies


Il faut se rappeler qu’une innovation est une invention qui a trouvé son marché. Il est vrai que la technologie peut tout ou presque à condition de ne pas aller à l’encontre des lois scientifiques. Mais baser le déploiement d’une technologie sur des subventions publiques durables n’est assurément pas durable!