“Lines! More lines!”, by IRINA SLAV
In their own words, “greater capacity does not automatically mean that more renewable electricity will clean up the world’s power systems, lower costs for consumers and slash fossil fuel use.”
Lines! More lines!
SEP 30
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PAID
“The goals set by nearly 200 countries at COP28 can be transformative for the global energy sector, putting it on a fast track towards a more secure, affordable and sustainable future. To ensure the world doesn’t miss this huge opportunity, the focus must shift rapidly to implementation.”
The above comes from the latest hit release by DJ F Tih, featuring The Angry Activitettes to mark the occasion of New York Climate Week and the latest UN General Assembly. It is an excerpt from a new report that the IEA claims is “the first comprehensive global analysis of what putting the targets into practice would achieve – and how it can be done.”
The goal of tripling solar and doubling wind by 2030 is within reach, the IEA said, no doubt with an accelerated collective heart rate with all this excitement. Then that heart rate must have accelerated further because bad news had to be served as a side to the main implementation course. Well, I say news but…
In their own words, “greater capacity does not automatically mean that more renewable electricity will clean up the world’s power systems, lower costs for consumers and slash fossil fuel use.” Quite unfortunate for an organisation that has been assuring us for years that near total windo-solarisation of global grids was perfectly doable given the right amount of emotional, intellectual and, not to put too fine a point on it, financial support.
Alas, this is not the whole story. The whole story also features transmission lines. A lot of transmission lines. You could even say, guardedly, that transmission lines are the new battery storage in the transition canon — a Holy Grail that needs to be built before we declare success. With battery storage still very much in the game, we now must strive for not one, but two Holy Grails. And some trillions, but let’s not focus on petty technicalities.
“To unlock the full benefits of the tripling goal, countries need to make a concerted push to build and modernise 25 million kilometres of electricity grids by 2030, according to the report. The world would also need 1 500 gigawatts (GW) of energy storage capacity by 2030, of which 1 200 GW needs to come from battery storage, a 15-fold increase on today’s level,” the hit single goes.
The scale of this undertaking, as detailed by Robert Bryce here, is massive. And it’s not happening, or at least it’s not happening fast enough, even in the (presumably) wealthiest of the wealthy economies, as reported last week by the Wall Street Journal.
The report focuses on data centres because that’s the new hot topic, but it actually covers the overall outlook on electricity demand and supply — because thanks to electrification efforts, demand for the magic juice is set to soar. As usual, the climate crusaders have failed to anticipate the consequences of their actions, so these actions are going to stall. In fact, they’re already stalling.
“Tech companies scouring the country for electricity to power artificial intelligence are increasingly finding there is a waiting list,” the WSJ reported this Saturday.
“In many places the nation’s high-voltage electric wires are running out of room, their connection points locked up by data centers for AI, new factories or charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.” If only someone could have seen this coming, it would have been great. But, of course, none of us saw it coming and none of us or anyone else warned about it, such as, you know, grid regulators and suchlike.
Making strain on the grid greater, shale oil companies are trying to electrify their operations — but only a minority are succeeding, according to the latest Dallas Fed Energy Survey. According to it, only 18% of respondents from the exploration and production sector have already fully electrified. A sizable 45% have neither electrified nor do they have plans to do so. The reasons given feature “uncertainty about future access to the grid” and the price of electrification.
It’s a real mystery: fast-rising demand for a thing is pushing its cost higher because this fast-rising demand seems to be rising considerably faster than supply — and distribution. It has never happened before in the history of the world, so it’s no wonder everyone has been taken by surprise. It is also no wonder that the chosen course of action is — you’ve already guessed it — doubling down on what’s not working.
Per the IEA, “Yet getting there [to triple solar and double wind] requires that governments around the world make energy efficiency a much greater policy priority and focus relentlessly on key actions. For advanced economies, this means homing in on electrification, given that doubling efficiency requires pushing electricity’s share of global energy consumption towards 30% by 2030.”
Well, that makes perfect sense, of course, amid struggling power utilities that have to disappoint their tech clients by delaying their supply or supplying less than expected. And those are struggling utilities in the United States, let’s not forget. In poorer countries, data centres are not an issue, at least yet, but governments still need to solve the electricity supply problem with, yes, more lines — and more generation capacity. Which brings us to another awkward point for DJ F-Teh and company.
This from Reuters, last Wednesday: “A G7-backed push to close coal power plants in emerging markets is facing further delays after a July deadline passed without a deal on the early closure of an Indonesian power plant that would be the first to shut under the initiative.”
The power plant in question is Cirebon-1, a 600 MW generator that Indonesia apparently promised to close if Western governments shower it with riches in the form of grants and loans so it can build lots and lots of windosolar. Now, it’s having second thoughts because, per the report, “costs for replacing it with renewable energy could reach $1.3 billion, mostly in subsidies to cover more expensive renewable power generation, according to the finance ministry.”
Now, wait a minute. Windosolar was supposed to be cheaper. Indeed, climate NGOs have been assuring us how much cheaper it has been getting by the hour, basically, and how it is now the cheapest form of energy “in many parts of the world”. And here’s Reuters, breaking rank and talking about “more expensive renewable power generation.” Sure, it’s a quote but even so, it sounds a bit awkward in the context of the cheap-renewables tune.
Indonesia may be getting cold feet ahead of its planned green wedding but the UK soldiers on. Today, the country is closing its last coal power plant. “The era of coal might be ending, but a new age of good energy jobs for our country is just beginning,” energy minister Michael Shanks told Reuters, quite possibly with tears of happiness in his eyes.
Meanwhile, electricity prices in the UK this year have been 60% higher than those in the EU, at an average of 40 eurocents versus 25 eurocents in the EU. Over the last three years, those electricity costs have gone up by 66% in the UK, versus 35% for the EU. Of course, the transition, the phase-out of coal and the war on gas have absolutely nothing to do with it and neither has the stranglehold of UK governments on the country’s oil and gas industry. It’s all Putin and climate change that pushed gas prices in the UK up by 129% between 2021 and 2024.
One scrumptious piece of advice in the above-linked report, from a website called Green Match, goes as follows: “It's worth exploring the cost of solar panels or heat pump costs and the potential savings they can offer. This would help cover a significant portion of your electricity demand and contribute to substantial annual savings on your electricity bills with the help of solar panels or an air source heat pump in the UK.”
Those won’t need any new transmission lines, I’m sure. And I am, of course, wrong, as declared by The Economist in January this year, with the headline Britain needs an unprecedented expansion of the electricity grid. Oh. So that’s happened. In fact, it’s happening all over the world with warning after warning that we need more lines, followed by little in the way of how exactly we are going to build them, except to admit it’s going to be one rather tough job. The warnings are happening and will continue to happen. Unlike the transition
