A recent study commissioned by Agora Energiewende comes to the conclusion that the German Energiewende does not need new electricity storage within the next 20 years. Instead, flexible fossil-fueled power plants and other intermediate options can deliver the needed power and grid stability at a lower price. Matthias Lang sums up the finding of the report.
Up to a share of 60% of renewable energy sources in the energy mix, i.e. for the next 15 to 20 years, the German energy transformation can do without new electricity storage facilities, as there are cheaper options to provide the flexible electricity input needed in view of the intermittent nature of renewables. However, new storage technologies like batteries, power-to-heat or power-to-gas will presumably grow dynamically nonetheless, due to rising demand from the transport, heat and chemicals, a new study presented by the energy think tank, Agora Energiewende, says.
For the time being, back-up power for renewables can be provided at lower cost by flexible input from fossil-fueled power plants, load-management and power trading with neighboring countries, the study commissioned by Agora Energiewende claims. Yet the electricity system will benefit from the growth of storage technologies in other sectors, e.g. batteries in electric cars, the authors say.
Besides, Patrick Graichen, Director of Agora Energiewende, pointed out that while electricity storage was still comparatively expensive, this could change quickly. Therefore he demanded that electricity storage get equal access to the markets, i.e. the markets for flexible energy input like the market for operating reserve and (in the future) a possible capacity market (that remunerates operators for providing flexible capacity) as well as to the distribution grids.
The study that was conducted by four university research institutes distinguishes between long-term and short-term storage and models electricity storage growth in three different scenarios that depict the projected electricity systems in 2023 respectively 2030 and an electricity system with a 90% share of renewables. The study also looked into the use of electricity storage options for system services besides analysing the possibilities for balancing electricity generation and demand. In doing so, the study also analysed the electricity distribution system, finding certain applications for battery storage that are already cost-efficient today. However, the authors believe that they will only reach a limited market share.
Agora Energiewende is sponsored by Mercator Foundation, a private foundation, and the European Climate Foundation. Its first director was Rainer Baake, a long-time Green party member and state secretary in the Federal Environment Ministry from 1998 to 2005. Since January 2014 Mr Baake is state secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy under Minister Sigmar Gabriel. He has been involved in the latest revision of the EEG, which the federal government recently adopted.
Source: Energy Transition. Reproduced with permission.
This is where the perversion of economics will stall progress toward a more robust renewables-based grid. Dropping prices (deflation) send a counter-productive signal, and then those lower prices result in decreased fossil fuel extraction. The time will come when the fossil fuel industry won’t be able to extract at any price due to too-low net energy returns, and that time is probably much less than 20 years away.
Totally. Low fuel prices keep consumers dependent on fossil fuels too, as there’s little incentive to switch if alternatives cost no less.
The “net energy return” argument is heavily overrated, however. Everything we do with energy *except* extraction of more energy involves a net energy loss. Most mined commodities have no energy return whatsoever.
There is absolutely no reason why industry won’t keep extracting/producing high-value commodities, whether they are fuels or not, if sufficient energy is available from low-cost sources. We pay several multiples more for energy in the form of electricity or liquid fuel products than we do for the same amount of energy in the form of coal.
Perhaps the most obvious example is electricity, which is always generated at a net energy loss, but we pay enough for it that the waste energy usually goes unnoticed. Liquid fuels manufactured from cheap coal at a large net energy loss have been viably produced for over a century, first in Germany but continually in South Africa since 1954 and now also in China.
For an example involving actual fuel resource *extraction*, the Canadian bitumen sands industry uses low-price energy from natural gas in the extraction and upgrading of higher-price heavy petroleum to make liquid fuel products. These heavy oil companies have investigated the use of nuclear energy for the same purpose as well. For now, gas remains the cheaper option by far, but nuclear power is a viable alternative if that should change. Renewable energy could also be used.
While bitumen extraction operations are still net-energy-positive, the energy return is not very high. It’s easy to imagine that they (and other petroleum extraction operations) would remain commercially viable at a net energy loss, providing the price differential between the energy used and the fuel produced was sufficient. It’s Peak Oil we’re experiencing, after all, not yet Peak Coal or Peak Uranium or (heaven forfend) Peak Wind.
Peak oil means peak coal as well as peak uranium simply because it’s the fuel that enables extraction of the others.
Your mixing of economic costs (prices) and energy costs probably makes it harder to see that net energy won’t possibly go negative for bitumen sands and such. The reason it’s been “heavily overrated” is because EROEI has been above 10. When it gets down below 5 that will change. Below 3 will probably be the end, in part because the financial aspects will muck things up such that going lower won’t be possible economically.
Petroleum is *not* required to enable exploitation of other energy resources. It’s the fuel of choice because it’s convenient and because it used to be cheap, that’s all.
Not only are synthetic liquid fuels and lubricants manufactured in industrial quantities directly from coal (and gas), in locations as diverse as western China, South Africa, Malaysia and the Middle East, but a lot of heavy mining equipment is electrically powered, either directly from the grid (in the case of the gigantic bucket-wheel excavators which supply domestic brown coal in Germany, for instance, and catenary-powered mining trucks in Zambia and South Africa) or by onboard generators as diesel-electric equipment. Much heavy rail haulage is also diesel-electric powered; conversion to catenary power is a simple matter.
Liquid fuels (and lubricants, and essentially anything produced from petroleum) can also in principle be manufactured using nuclear or renewable electric energy, as in the US Navy’s seawater-to-fuel research programme or the work of Doty Energy in the USA or of Carbon Recycling International in Iceland.
The more I hear about “minimal societal EROEI” and related studies like Prieto & Hall’s survey of Spanish solar power, the more dismissive I become. Pessimistic analysts draw in (deliberately as far as I can tell) as much of society’s energy use as they possibly can and call it part of the cost of production (eg. by counting monetary costs for non-energy inputs like land acquisition, administration and interest on fincance, then converting to an energy equivalent), while comparing against traditional fossil fuel net energy analyses which look strictly at energy inputs to the tasks of fuel extraction and processing. The EROEI of society as a whole is, and always will be, 1:1; this is of course supported by energy sources which have much higher EROEI figures, ranging from marginal oil (10:1) to wind, nuclear and coal (all on the order of 50:1) to large-scale hydro (100:1) and older oil (still 100:1, though well on the path of inevitable production decline).
Well, you knocked that straw man down good and hard. I didn’t say it was “required”.
There’s quality and there’s quantity, and if you don’t consider both, it’s easy to think in circles and use phrases like “a simple matter” that are irrelevant. Sure the societal EROEI is 1:1. Again, that’s irrelevant unless you don’t think it matters that the “I” could drop 80%.
It seems to be a common misconception, that petroleum and/or petroleum products are a necessity for energy technology of any sort to work at all. I am pleased to learn that you do not share this misconception, but then I’m very confused as to your point about quality.
It could be that you’re re-stating what I said in my first post above. High quality forms of energy such as diesel and electricity are more highly valued than low quality forms of energy like peat.
If you’re not talking about energy forms valued for their direct utility but rather about high-EROEI energy *sources*, why then, of course marginal petroleum production such as US “tight oil” is no longer a high quality energy source on account of its poor EROEI, but we still have plenty of non-petroleum energy sources (and a lot of older oil fields) which still have high EROEI.