Peak Oil and wind turbines

[GliderGuider]

When people think about wind turbines, they usually think about reducing CO2 from energy production to combat global warming.

My biggest concern isn't global warming though, but rather the impact of Peak Oil on an energy-dependent civilization. I wondered last night how well wind power would cope with plugging the global energy shortfall left by declining oil supplies. I decided to run the numbers and find out.

I started by choosing a realistic oil decline rate. I settled on 4% per annum, as this is where I expect (on my good days) the decline rate to settle once it gets going.

We use 84 million barrels a day right now, so we'll need to replace 4% of that, or 3.4 million barrels per day.

A barrel of oil contains 1700 kWh of thermal energy, so we'd need to replace 5.8 billion kWh per day. That requires a generating capacity requirement of about 240,000 MW.

Using electricity is about three times as efficient as using thermal energy, so we'd need 80,000 MW of new generation each year.

However, we're looking at wind turbines with a capacity factor of around 30%, so we'd need to install about 250,000 MW of nameplate capacity each year to replace the lost oil.

And that doesn't even address the global growth in electricity demand, which is currently running at 700 TWh per annum. Satisfying that with wind would take another 250,000 MW, for a total of about 500,000 MW of new wind capacity every year.

According to WWEA we're currently installing only 20,000 MW per year, though this is expected to rise to a whole 30,000 MW/yr in 2010 - about when the oil decline will begin.

Now, I love the sight of a ridge line full of Enercons as much as the next greenie, but it any wonder I feel disconnected from the jubilation surrounding wind power?

[Double T]

1. We need to start building NEW nuclear power plants to support..........

the ever increasing demand for electricity and to replace fossil fuel power generation facilities. Wind turbines will continue to be an important green source of power generation combined with hydro, geothermal and nuclear.

[GliderGuider]

5. It may be what we need. It won't be what we'll get:

This is what we'll get:

[Double T]

8. Increased use of THAT will only hasten severe global warming..........

and our inevitable demise. Nuclear must be put back on the table as it will keep up with our increasing demand.

[wordpix]

30. no thanks, I don't want more Chernobyls and 3-Mile Islands, & what's the cost of protecting nuke

plants from theft of nuclear material and terrorist threats? Have you added those types of safety issues into your calculations?

You SHOULD!

[GliderGuider]

31. And I don't want any more Nanticokes

What do you mean, you've never hear of it? Well, here you go:

And the Biggest Producer of Greenhouse Gases Is...

If you want to know the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in Canada, Elliott can say for sure: "That would be the Nanticoke Power Generation Facility, which is an electricity plant that's here in the province of Ontario."

I drove down to see it. When you're standing right next to it, it doesn't look all that impressive. There are some big power lines, but otherwise it looks just like any factory by a lake. The smokestacks don't seem to be emitting anything. But in reality, the equivalent of around 17 million tons of greenhouse gases comes out of them every year.

So - no nukes for you, no coal for me. What else ya got?

[phantom power]

2. That is the issue. I think wind might be better for manufacturing fuels.

The nice thing about manufacturing fuels is, it's a good use for intermittent sources, since the fuel reserve itself can be used as the energy buffer. Much easier than trying to run an electric grid with them. Of course, you would have to arrange the fuel production industry around an intermittent source, but at least it would be localized to certain processes.

[razzleberry]

3. oil not used to make electricity in US/Canada

OK, really , the amount used is very small.
lots of oil is used to make electricity in the third world.

any windpower in the US/Canada, would likely
be used as a replacement for natural gas.

...........
I have been argueing for a long time,
that the best place for wind-electricity
is where it replaces diesel generators.

[GliderGuider]

4. But electricity will be used to replace oil

That's what electric cars are supposed to be about.

This analysis is about giving people some idea of the scale of the energy problem that Peak Oil will pose. It's why I think oil is the single point of failure for civilization.

[razzleberry]

6. look at post #5

the non-oil response is obvious

[TreasonousBastard]

7. There's plenty of coal, although...

that's the dirtiest of all fuels.

Many, if not most, major powerplants are dual-fuel, and use natural gas or coal, depending on price and availability. So, coal will be the interim fuel for electrical generation. It will also be used more for heating and other things, much as it's used in Europe. Clean coal technology will, hopefully, be expanded.

Liquid fuels and lubricants and oils as feedstocks for plastic and chemical production will always be needed, but after we get over the initial hump we'll find ways.

We always do find ways.

[GliderGuider]

9. "We always do find ways."

I do not share your optimism.

"Clean coal" is a chimera, a will-'o-the-wisp, a marketing tool used to keep us quiet as the plants get built. We will never see "clean coal" technology deployed widely enough to do any good.

What will keep us from using enough coal to kill us all is a global economic crash triggered by oil depletion that reduces the demand for energy by 80% over the next 75 years. At least that will only kill some of us.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. And your crystal ball is so accurate? I am well aware of...

our species' ability to fuck itself and everything around it for short-term gain, but historically we have managed to come up with solutions to crises.

The crises this time being the reduction of a common fuel supply and global warming, among others. The warming we will adapt to one way or another, and we will find new fuels.

No one knows exactly how, at this point, or what suffereing and other damage will be caused, but we will deal with it and future generations will most likely think it's just fine.

As always in the past.

[GliderGuider]

11. I started off four years ago with exactly your attitude.

I was born and raised an optimistic technocrat. Human ingenuity would triumph over any adversity just like it always has.

Then I started to investigate the whole question of oil - what it is, how it's used, how much of it we use, what the prospects for depletion are, and what the prospects for replacement are. That led me to consider issues of complex system behaviour and resilience.

The conclusion I have reluctantly come to over the last three years is that we are facing a situation utterly unlike any in human history. The best description I can give is that it looks like a singularity to me, an abrupt, non-linear change in the system dynamics of our civilization.

You know how investment prospectuses always print the cautionary note: "Past performance does not guarantee future results"? This is one of those times.

[phantom power]

12. "adaptation" encompasses a lot of scenarios.

For instance, if 99.9% of all humans die off over the next century, that would still leave over 6 million humans. Not really so bad, from a breeding population perspective. Genetic studies indicate that we've been down to a few thousand at various points in our history.

I suspect that a 99.9% die-off is not especially probable, but a 50% die-off is firmly on the table, and something like 90% is on the "plausible" list too.

[One_Life_To_Give]

16. Die off likely sooner than later

Potentially very soon. With food prices spiking and the majority of people living on next to nothing already. I wouldn't be surprised to see Billions die from disease in the next decade or so.

[4dsc]

13. Why the confusion??

Peak oil is a liquid fuel problem and I have failed to see why people jump around to other energy sources like wind or solar as if they will somehow reduce the impact of lower oil production.. Perhaps you can help me ponder why we seem to want to confuse the issue here..

Simply put, our society is one based upon oil and the need for oil period!! And evern if you build these wind farms and solar farms, sooner or later you have replace them. And how you are going to replace them in 20-30 or 40 years with little or no oil left???

[GliderGuider]

14. I agree, but others don't.

The issue with Peak Oil is of course transportation fuel. There simply is no substitute for oil in that role. However, many magic thinkers like to imagine that we'll just switch to electric cars run from nice clean energy we get from windmills, and keep on motoring. These calculations are intended as a logical counter to that magical thinking. I hope to induce enough cognitive dissonance that their cortexes will unravel enough to let in some rational insights.

[One_Life_To_Give]

15. Thats only about $2 Trillion per year

At $4/watt installed.

Or 4 times the US Defense budget, 15-20% of US GNP.
As this would have 1 in 5 US workers employed designing/installing wind installations this could be a good thing.

Now we just need to get China to buy this many bonds a year.

[GliderGuider]

17. Here's one more quick calculation to chew on

Using your figure of $4/watt installed, the cost to replace the energy from oil depletion using wind turbines would be about $1 trillion per year. The 3.4 million barrels per day we are replacing cost us, at $70/bbl, less than $90 billion per year. The replacement energy is over ten times as expensive as the energy it is replacing.

[One_Life_To_Give]

19. Only if Depreciate Wind Equip over 1 year

Depreciation over longer time periods makes it more favorable. But I can't compute an actual Return on Investment without knowing the annual maintenance costs of wind installations.

[Bread and Circus]

18. Meh...your assumptions rest on the notion we will still be driving gas based cars

exclusively.

I have a weird feeling we'll be driving mostly electric cars in the next 10 to 15 years.

[GliderGuider]

20. I have a feeling a lot of us will be walking in 15 years....

[Bread and Circus]

21. It would be nice if that were true. Generally, we need the exercise.

[NNadir]

23. You have over looked the invention of the bicycle.

It's an extremely important device, much under rated, I think.

I don't think I'll miss cars. Their disappearance will make better things safer and more popular.

[skids]

22. "No one technology"

Just repeat that until it sinks in.

[GliderGuider]

24. No combination of technologies

Just repeat that until you understand why.

[skids]

25. "including nuclear"

Yes, we are pretty much screwn.

[NNadir]

26. Try it "excluding nuclear."

The fact is that nuclear is and probably always will be the largest climate change free form of energy there is.

By far.

By way far.

If nuclear can't do it, nothing can.

Nuclear energy went to a ten exajoule scale while there was a huge irrational mystical cult opposing it. That cult, in fact, still exists.

While Amory Lovins was reporting that nuclear was dying (in a 1980 report in the social science journal Foreign Affairs, nuclear energy was beginning an expansion that would see it increase by a factor of almost 4 without building many new plants.

I think it's pretty clear that nuclear energy could easily get to 100 exajoules per year in a rational world within 15 years. The investment and effort would be massive but it would provide for three or more generations. That's about 3.2 trillion watts of average power. That's about 450 watts a person, or, with a population of 7 billion, the per capita power of about 450 watts. Note that in this circumstance, waste heat would need to be captured. World primary energy demand is per capita about 2300 watts.

But we're always hearing from the conservation and solar crowd that they can do <em>something</em>. Hydro will still give ten. Let's go crazy and imagine 20 from renewables, 10 from hydroelectric seperate from renewabiles. We'd have 140 exajoules all together or about 630 watts on average.

[skids]

28. "Nothing can"

[TheWraith]

27. It's not quite that bad, but we do need a very dense energy source.

Oil isn't used at anywhere close to 100% energy efficiency. For instance, a gallon of gas has 60 kilowatt-hours of chemical energy in it, and feeding it to a car that gets 25 miles per gallon results in 2.4 KWH per mile. However, an electric car gets about ten times that efficiency. So realistically, we don't need to replace even close to the chemical energy potential of all the oil that we need.

It's true, though, that we require energy sources much more dense than wind. Nuclear and hydro now, fusion later.

[GliderGuider]

29. I have yet to hear a believable explanation

of how electricity is going to replace the transport capability represented by oil. I believe the proposals for rail electrification, but the impacts on trucking, air travel and passenger cars have yet to be addressed by anything more than hand-waving IMO.

Can (not to mention "will") we electrify 25% of all global transportation within 15 years? According to people who are in a position to know (e.g. Samsam Bakhtiari) we could easily lose 30% of our oil in that time.

And "fusion later"? How much later? 50 years? Will we be able to weather the storms and maintain the research labs for that long in the face of the loss of 40% or more of the world's current primary energy (after all, natural gas is going to peak just after oil)?

[TheWraith]

32. It's really quite simple.

"I have yet to hear a believable explanation of how electricity is going to replace the transport capability represented by oil."

Electric vehicles are easily buildable right now. See the Tesla Roadster, the Volt, and other designs, plus the forthcoming Tesla Whitestar.

Air travel is more difficult, but jet fuel is basically kerosene, which can be created from any kind of waste oil--fossil, animal, vegetable, anything.

"According to people who are in a position to know (e.g. Samsam Bakhtiari) we could easily lose 30% of our oil in that time."

Never heard of him. Frankly, I tend to disbelieve the most pessimistic projections because they're consistently proven wrong. There were a lot of people who were saying that we'd have used up every drop of oil by 2000.

"And "fusion later"? How much later? 50 years?"

More like five to ten, if somebody funds Bussard's plan for a production-scale Polywell reactor. It's already been designed.

[phantom power]

33. Most people are going to be driving bicycles, not tesla roadsters.

[TheWraith]

35. The Roadster is only an example of the practicality of electric vehicles.

Yes, it's insanely expensive, but that's because it's profitable. They've already reserved 550 of the things: that's $55 million dollars in guaranteed sales, with which they're planning their next model, a $50k sport sedan along the lines of the BMWs, to be debuted in 2009, and an economy model after that.

[phantom power]

36. Maybe. Let's just say I'm not selling my bicycle.

[tahoevalleylinesorg]

34. Railways Are Highest & Best Transport Use For Renewable Energy Units

In (peakoil.net) see article 374. USA transport model circa 1900- 1960 is suggested Oil Interregnum fallback era or period. Working cities, rural communities and even suburbs flourished with railway network links. To refresh you under 60 types: Railway mains (as seen now) were more numerous, with extensive network of branch & feeder lines. Electric Interurban railways, usually operated by regional power companies, shadowed the big railways, reaching into the suburbs and smaller towns with daytime passenger and night time freight.

The modern approach will race the Peaking Oil diesel constrictions- rehab of still visible rail branch-lines are obvious first steps, advisably under way while energy for rebuilding effort can be obtained without special allocation. Delay only compounds difficulty in maintaining victuals & necessities of life distribution. Reworking delivery and distribution patterns should be practiced on paper if not perfected, prior to 2010. The activist in this arena will assure personal and local planning agency awareness of historic and mid-twentieth century railway footprint and layout of local warehousing & rail-served produce markets. New era practice of container handling and truck trailer ramps, etc. are part of the new rail distribution menu. Trucks are requisite pick-up & delivery partners with railways, just not long-haul competitors as allowed with cheap oil.

Part of the implementation stage must include participation of all the National Guard Departments of the respective states, so as to bring cadre of rail ops & maintenance people into labor pool as the demand for RR skills grows. The Guard Railway Units are redundancy in event of homeland attack as well. The example not used is Katrina- witness the miles of branch line railway not utilized for the debris removal. Even now, railway could assist comeback efforts in the gulf states. Obviously, Post 911DAY reality makes the railway mode crucial.

The mental fix on automobiles is hampering our preparedness for Peaking Oil. If we enter the Oil Interregnum knowing the inevitable- we have to let go of the car, at least some of the time- then we can re-orient ourselves to alternative transport with more ease, mentally and financially. "The Politics of Energy", by Barry Commoner in 1979, is still a useful read. Importantly, Commoner uses the occasion to state categorically the need to rebuild the railway network, calling for vast expansion and extension of electrified railways, linked to renewable solar and wind source.

There are candidates who are reluctant (I won't say ignorant) to unequivocally call for railway in the Peaking Oil solution set. But then, most of them are not really hep on Peaking Oil... Here is a project for someone to think about: A modern, renewable energy based TranSierra Railway on the US 50 Corridor running from the Sacramento Calley, via Placerville & the Carson Valley. This will have many benefits for Northern California, to be sure. But which of the candidates fathoms the coming necessity to assure perishables movement when aviation salad becomes problematic because of energy constrictions? In today's efforts to rebuild passenger train service on the Sacramento to Bay Area, freight movement hampers schedules. This is a typical reason for new rail main corridors across America, as well as existing mains upgrades and rehabs of local access branches.

Adopt a local planner or County Supervisor or Chamber of Commerce President and give them a Peaking Oil Primer, printouts from "postcarbon.org"; "lifeaftertheoilcrash" "theoildrum.com" and (not for the fainthearted) Jay Hanson's "Olduvai Gorge" presentation to the Nevada School of Mines...