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.
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EU energy transition: concerns emerging from ongoing ...€¦ · EU28 Power Plant type Power capacity MW Electricity Produced GWh Capacity Factor GWh/MW Nuclear 108,700 947,000 8.7
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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
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
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.