Is the rise of wind and solar good for natural gas?
Howdy! We’re back for another round of Bright Ideas: The Debate Series. I’m clean energy reporter Julian Spector, and for the next several weeks I’m engaging in a series of debates with myself on crucial tensions and challenges within the world of zero-carbon energy.
Here’s the agenda for today:
First, reader verdicts on last week’s debate. Some of them challenged my antagonistic duality.
This week’s debate: Are renewables actually good for natural gas? Arguments, rebuttals, etc.
To escape quarantine, I turned my home into a tiki bar. You can too.
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The verdict is in…
Last time we debated whether large-scale solar or rooftop solar offered the better path to reducing carbon emissions. You, The Readers, responded. Here are some highlights, several of which rejected the dichotomy I posed.
We need to do both!
~Richard H.
There’s a 3rd option: both.
~Jane P.
Both, depending on climate and cost of real estate, e.g. in the densely populated UK, large area solar farms compete directly with food production.
~Rob W.
Repower big solar projects every 5-10 years and sell the second hand panels (and maybe a community solar subscription) to hundreds of little solar + storage arrays.
~Larry Wood, residential solar professional, East Providence, RI
Author’s note: repowering refers to outfitting old power plants with newer, upgraded technology. In this case, it’s feasible that solar panels will be so much cheaper and more efficient in the future that it makes economic sense to swap out old panels for new. But the still totally functional panels could then find a home elsewhere.
Distributed wins for one reason: resilience. Solar mini-grids that are interoperable with the main grid is the way to go, particularly in areas with poor grid reliability.
~Daniel Ketyer, Ann Arbor MI
I vote: BOTH big and little solar. Resilience is enhanced by not relying too much on only one choice.
~Jessica L., natural resources professional, Washington, DC
Thanks to you all for weighing in! Ultimately, we don’t have to choose, but there are ways to structure policy and markets that allow both to flourish, rather than pitting one against the other.
Also, I was glad to see that Rooftop Solar Cat made its way into the discourse:
Now, onto this week’s debate.
Renewables are a gift to gas
I’ll dispense with rhetoric and make an argument from empirical fact. California in many ways models the future of a carbon-free electricity system, and in California right now, the rise of renewables has made gas all the more vital.
There’s so much solar power that electricity supply no longer falls short during daylight hours. Instead, the shortfall comes when the sun sets. The crunch time, and blackouts, during the August heat wave came between 6 and 8 p.m. And what resource saved the day, to the extent a day was saved? Those dirty gas-fired power plants.
Savvy energy writer Julian Spector covered this phenomenon for Bright Ideas under the title “We’re all fossil fuel lovers in a foxhole.” Like the adage about soldiers losing their atheism in the heat of battle, even climate champions set aside their concerns and burn more fossil fuel when they really need it.
Clean energy loving California doubled down on this point after the heat wave: regulators extended the lives of several beachfront gas plants that were supposed to shut down due to a decade-old environmental rule. Now, they’ll burn fossil fuel for several more years.
This dynamic follows from the physical attributes of the power plants. Wind and solar cost very little to run, and produce very cheap electrons when the wind blows or the sun shines. They do not produce power when the weather fails to cooperate. The volatility there means that the grid has to have fast-responding power plants that can jump in with very little notice when the sun sets or a gust of wind peters out.
Older plants can’t accelerate fast enough. It takes time to get the heavy machinery moving at full speed. Coal plants and nuclear plants aren’t up to the task. Hydropower is ill suited for this role—imagine the fluctuations in river flow. But modern gas plants can boot up in a matter of minutes, so they get to play this backup role. California’s clean energy miracle couldn’t have happened without them.
Gas: a great thing to have if you use a lot of wind and solar power. (Photo credit: Blake Thornberry/Flickr)
Renewables are a natural enemy to gas
Yes, renewables have certain constraints on when they operate, but that’s part of the package. You don’t buy bowling shoes to walk down the aisle at a wedding. The fact that gas pairs well with wind and solar right now is a function not of renewables, but of the other options available for on-demand power production.
This is a snapshot in time, a transition in progress. California’s years of groundbreaking battery development yielded just a few hundred megawatts of battery capacity—not enough to make a dent in the grid shortage in August. But the state’s battery capacity is expected to sextuple over the course of 2020, with a flurry of even bigger projects coming in the next two years. It’s a myopic fallacy to look at the present moment and say whatever is happening now is some permanent law of nature.
But you know what else we can learn from the present moment? California isn’t building any more gas plants. Part of that is due to an unfavorable policy environment, and determined resistance from environmental justice organizers in places like Oxnard. But there’s also a market fundamentals problem. Renewables push down average power prices, because they’re cheaper to operate. Over time, that erodes the earnings of gas plants.
They have to earn their keep during the extreme demand peaks that shoot prices skyward. But it’s harder to build a business plan around occasional paydays. And the system is going through such rapid change that a plan that works now may be irrelevant in three years.
In places where utilities run the show, they’re still pushing for new gas construction. In places where businesses have to invest their own money to build plants, the surge in renewables is leading to a wait-and-see approach for gas, not to a building boom.
But seriously folks, wind and solar need that gas
One debater’s myopia is just another debater’s living in the present.
Renewables may not need gas as their flexible counterpart always and forever, but they do now, and the next couple decades are absolutely crucial to staving off intolerable global temperature rise from climate change.
Wind and solar undeniably have a role to play as the workhorses of the clean energy transition, but their physical limitations mean they cannot offer a full solution. Still, when Americans think of clean energy, they picture wind turbines and solar panels, and not much else.
Focusing on wind and solar exclusively is an unforced error. You could imagine a clean energy policy that elevated all the on-demand carbon-free sources at the same time we boosted wind and solar: R&D for breakthroughs in cheap geothermal, for instance, or a policy response to prevent premature or arbitrary closure of nuclear plants, which are the largest carbon-free generators.
A discourse that treats wind and solar as the entire solution to climate change leaves crucial gaps. Gas-burning plants are happy to step into the vacuum. And even utilities promising to reach net-zero emissions plan to crank out new gas plants in the process.
Nope, the end is near for gas
Humans have a hard time predicting the pace of change, so my interlocutor can be forgiven for missing the point here.
The disruption to the power sector that renewables triggered has inspired investment in a pantheon of non-gas alternatives for power whenever we need it. Batteries are the most prominent example, but plenty of other technologies are coming to market to hold onto electrons and disperse them as needed. All of these have plenty of innovation and cost reduction ahead of them, whereas gas turbines have been refined for decades and don’t have much breakthrough potential left.
Even with ridiculously cheap gas prices, batteries and solar are beating gas plants on price. Batteries and solar are only getting cheaper. We just need longer lasting storage plants to ensure power through prolonged heat waves and the like. If you want to stop prolonging fossil fuel investment, take aim at outdated market structure or planning techniques that prop up the incumbent technology. Level the playing field and the clean stuff will eventually settle this argument in the marketplace.
That’s it, that’s the debate. Now it’s your turn. Reply to this email or tweet me @JulianSpector with a one-sentence verdict. Feel free to include identifiers like full name, location and any affiliation with clean energy; otherwise I’ll default to first name + last initial.
The Siboney, left, and the Staycation, right, from Easy Tiki, will help you forget it’s Monday night.
Make your beach
Here in Los Angeles, our compensation for enduring traffic, fire and earthquake is free and untrammeled access to California’s beaches. Neither nuclear power plant nor Malibu billionaires can block the public from the sandy sanctuary.
But here on the East side, we can’t have a beach IN our house, and sometimes you just need to escape after a hard days’ work. For that, I have turned to tiki drinks.
I always enjoyed these potent rum and citrus concoctions, and the escapist decor that the bars use to transport you from a dark room in Oakland or San Diego to another place entirely. But those spaces are especially ill-suited for a time of quarantine.
The gorgeously rendered book Easy Tiki helps you bring the fun home. Author Chloe Frechette guides you through the history of this cocktail niche, invented in 1930s Los Angeles to inject some fun and color into the drinking experience—a dialectical antithesis to the darkness and secrecy of Prohibition drinking. Inventor Don the Beachcomber used fresh local citrus, blended it with several rums, sweeteners, dilution and spice, and a mysterious new category of drink was born.
The challenge to the erstwhile Home Beachcomber is that traditional tiki drinks require you to sail around the world collecting obscure ingredients and spices to whip up in 10- or 12-part combinations. Easy Tiki instead challenges leading bartenders to capture the original essence in six ingredients or fewer.
Fair warning: you’ll still need to make a supply run in order to unlock this bounty. My advice on core, must-haves to get you started:
A bottle of orgeat, the delectable almond syrup used to sweeten
A bottle of passion fruit syrup, both sweet and tart
A blended, un-aged rum
An aged rum, Jamaican or otherwise
Lots of lemons, limes and grapefruit
Canned coconut cream
I also made my own cinnamon syrup (water, sugar, crushed cinnamon stick). Then, on your music streaming service, find the tiki jazz of Arthur Lyman or Martin Denny to complete the ambience. With these building blocks, which can be assembled in an afternoon of errands, huge swaths of the book suddenly beckoned like fair seas.
A home tiki praxis can turn an average isolated movie night into a Fun Isolated Movie Night. Or you can mix a big batch of Scorpions, but instead of sharing a volcano bowl with many straws, pour individually for a socially distanced garden soirée. Just watch out for the Wednesday night hump day celebration—there’s work on Thursday, and no bartender to cut you off after two Zombies, like they do in real life.