Final call to save the world

SUBHEAD: We will need rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of human society.

By Matt McGrath on 8 October 2018 for the BBC -
(https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45775309)


Image above: View of Earth showing the "10,000 Mile Desert" spanning all of North Africa, across the Middle East and across much of Asia. Will all the planet look like Mars in the following decades? From the original article.

It's the final call, say scientists, the most extensive warning yet on the risks of rising global temperatures.

Their dramatic report on keeping that rise under 1.5 degrees C says the world is now completely off track, heading instead towards 3C.

Keeping to the preferred target of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will mean "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".

It will be hugely expensive - but the window of opportunity remains open.

After three years of research and a week of haggling between scientists and government officials at a meeting in South Korea, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a special report on the impact of global warming of 1.5C.

The critical 33-page Summary for Policymakers certainly bears the hallmarks of difficult negotiations between climate researchers determined to stick to what their studies have shown and political representatives more concerned with economies and living standards.

Despite the inevitable compromises, there are some key messages that come through loud and clear.

"The first is that limiting warming to 1.5C brings a lot of benefits compared with limiting it to two degrees. It really reduces the impacts of climate change in very important ways," said Prof Jim Skea, who co-chairs the IPCC.

"The second is the unprecedented nature of the changes that are required if we are to limit warming to 1.5C - changes to energy systems, changes to the way we manage land, changes to the way we move around with transportation."

What's the one big takeaway?
"Scientists might want to write in capital letters, 'ACT NOW, IDIOTS,' but they need to say that with facts and numbers," said Kaisa Kosonen, of Greenpeace, who was an observer at the negotiations. "And they have."

The researchers have used these facts and numbers to paint a picture of the world with a dangerous fever, caused by humans. We used to think if we could keep warming below two degrees this century, then the changes we would experience would be manageable.

Not any more. This new study says that going past 1.5C is dicing with the planet's liveability. And the 1.5C temperature "guard rail" could be exceeded in just 12 years, in 2030.

We can stay below it - but it will require urgent, large-scale changes from governments and individuals and we will have to invest a massive pile of cash every year, about 2.5% of global gross domestic product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced, for two decades.

Even then, we will still need machines, trees and plants to capture carbon from the air that we can then store deep underground - forever.

What can I do?
The report says there must be rapid and significant changes in four big global systems:

• energy • land use • cities • industry

But it adds that the world cannot meet its target without changes by individuals, urging people to:

• buy less meat, milk, cheese and butter 
• buy more locally sourced seasonal food
• throw away less of the food you buy
• drive electric cars but walk or cycle short distances
• take trains and buses instead of planes 
• use videoconferencing instead of business travel
• use a washing line instead of a tumble dryer
• insulate homes and businesses
• demand low carbon footprint in every consumer product

Lifestyle changes can make a big difference, said Dr Debra Roberts, the IPCC's other co-chair.

"That's a very empowering message for the individual," she said. "This is not about remote science; it is about where we live and work, and it gives us a cue on how we might be able to contribute to that massive change, because everyone is going to have to be involved."

"You might say you don't have control over land use, but you do have control over what you eat and that determines land use.

"We can choose the way we move in cities and if we don't have access to public transport - make sure you are electing politicians who provide options around public transport."

Five steps to 1.5ºC

1. Global emissions of CO2 need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030
2. Renewables are estimated to provide up to 85% of global electricity by 2050
3. Coal is expected to reduce to close to zero
4. Up to seven million sq km of land will be needed for energy crops (about the size of Australia)
5. Global net zero emissions by 2050

How much will all this cost?
It won't come cheap. The report says to limit warming to 1.5C, will involve "annual average investment needs in the energy system of around $2.4 trillion" between 2016 and 2035.

Experts believe this number needs to be put in context.

"There are costs and benefits you have to weigh up," said Dr Stephen Cornelius, a former UK IPCC negotiator now with WWF. He says making big emissions cuts in the short term will cost money but be cheaper than paying for carbon dioxide removal later this century.

"The report also talks about the benefits as there is higher economic growth at 1.5 degrees than there is at 2C and you don't have the higher risk of catastrophic impacts at 1.5 that you do at two."

What happens if we don't act?
The researchers say that if we fail to keep temperature rises below 1.5C, we are in for some significant and dangerous changes to our world.

You can kiss coral reefs goodbye, as the report says they would be essentially 100% wiped out at two degrees of warming.

Global sea-level will rise about 10cm (4in) more if we let warming go to 2C. That may not sound like much but keeping to 1.5C means that 10 million fewer people would be exposed to the risks of flooding.

There are also significant impacts on ocean temperatures and acidity, and the ability to grow crops such as rice, maize and wheat.

"We are already in the danger zone at one degree of warming," said Kaisa Kosonen, from Greenpeace. "Both poles are melting at an accelerated rate; ancient trees that have been there for hundreds of years are suddenly dying; and the summer we've just experienced - basically, the whole world was on fire."

---

Is this plan at all feasible?
Analysis by David Shukman, BBC science editor

The countdown to the worst of global warming seems to have accelerated. Seriously damaging impacts are no longer on a distant horizon later this century but within a timeframe that appears uncomfortably close.

By the same token, the report's "pathways" for keeping a lid on temperatures all mean that hard decisions cannot be delayed:

• a shift away from fossil fuels by mid-century
• coal phased out far sooner than previously suggested
• vast tracts of land given over to forests

It's mind-bending stuff and some will say it's hopelessly unrealistic, a climate scientists' fantasy. So is any of it plausible? On the one hand, the global economy relies on carbon and key activities depend on it. On the other, wind turbines and solar panels have tumbled in price and more and more countries and states such as California are setting ambitious green targets.

Ultimately, politicians will face a difficult choice: persuade their voters that the revolutionary change outlined in the report is urgently needed or ignore it and say the scientists have got it wrong.

Is all this about saving small island states?The idea of keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5 is something very close to the hearts and minds of small island and low-lying states, which fear being inundated with flooding if temperatures go to two degrees.

But over the three years that the report was in preparation, more and more scientific evidence has been published showing the benefits of staying close to 1.5C are not just for island nations in the Pacific.

"If you save a small island country, then you save the world," said Dr Amjad Abdulla, an IPCC author, from the Maldives. "Because the report clearly states that no-one is going to be immune. It's about morality - it's about humanity."

How long have we got?
Not long at all. But that issue is now in the hands of political leaders. The report says hard decisions can no longer be kicked down the road. If the nations of the world don't act soon, they will have to rely even more on unproven technologies to take carbon out of the air - an expensive and uncertain road.

"They really need to start work immediately. The report is clear that if governments just fulfil the pledges they made in the Paris agreement for 2030, it is not good enough. It will make it very difficult to consider global warming of 1.5C," said Prof Jim Skea.

"If they read the report and decide to increase their ambitions and act more immediately, then 1.5C stays within reach - that's the nature of the choice they face."

Campaigners and environmentalists, who have welcomed the report, say there is simply no time left for debate.

"This is the moment where we need to decide" said Kaisa Kosonen. "We want to move to clean energy, sustainable lifestyles. We want to protect our forests and species. This is the moment that we will remember; this is the year when the turning point happened."

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Scientists outline paths to survival 10/4/18
Ea O Ka Aina: Mushroom at the End of the World 7/28/17
Ea O Ka Aina: The End of Growth  12/28/14

Ea O Ka Aina: The Beginning of the World 12/30/12
Ea O Ka Aina: We Were Warned 12/21/12
Ea O Ka Aina: End of the Industrial Revolution 8/24/12
Ea O Ka Aina: The Ends of the Earth 3/23/11
Island Breath: Lovelock says we're toast 5/11/07
Island Breath: No More Mr. Nice Guy 2/11/06
Island Breath: The Dead Zone 2/7/06
Island Breath: 20 Years to Fix Climate Change 1/20/06
Island Breath: Clinton on Global Warming 12/15/04
Island Breath: God Must Hate Florida 10/6/04
Island Breath: Gore on Global Warming 1/16/04
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Our troubled energy transition

SUBHEAD: Too little, too late. No longer are we faced with prevention so much as mitigation and management.

By Kurt Cob  on 18 March 2018 in Resilience -
(http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-03-18/troubling-realities-original article.


Image above: In original article. Cartoon by Gerhard Mester (2013)  showing a race between renewable energy and fossil fuels. Speach bubble translation from German says "You are cheating by using an energy storage device". As if coal were not just a dirtier battery. From (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiewende-Rallye-Stromspeicher-Gerhard-Mester.gif).

I recently asked a group gathered to hear me speak what percentage of the world’s energy is provided by these six renewable sources: solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tidal, and ocean energy.

Then came the guesses: To my left, 25 percent; straight ahead, 30 percent; on my right, 20 percent and 15 percent; a pessimist sitting to the far right, 7 percent.

The group was astonished when I related the actual figure: 1.5 percent. The figure comes from the Paris-based International Energy Agency, a consortium of 30 countries that monitors energy developments worldwide.

The audience that evening had been under the gravely mistaken impression that human society was much further along in its transition to renewable energy. Even the pessimist in the audience was off by more than a factor of four.

I hadn’t included hydroelectricity in my list, I told the group, which would add another 2.5 percent to the renewable energy category. But hydro, I explained, would be growing only very slowly since most of the world’s best dam sites have been taken.

The category “Biofuels and waste,” which makes up 9.7 percent of the world total, includes small slivers of what we Americans call biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel), I said, but mostly represents the deforestation of the planet through the use of wood for daily fuel in many poor countries, hardly a sustainable practice that warrants vast expansion.

This percentage has been roughly the same since 1973 though the absolute consumption has more than doubled as population has climbed sharply.

The burden for renewable energy expansion, I concluded, would therefore remain on the six categories I mentioned at the outset of my presentation.

As if to underline this worrisome state of affairs, the MIT Technology Review just days later published a piece with a rather longish title: “At this rate, it’s going to take nearly 400 years to transform the energy system.”

In my presentation I had explained to my listeners that renewable energy is not currently displacing fossil fuel capacity, but rather supplementing it.

In fact, I related, the U.S. government’s own Department of Energy with no sense of alarm whatsoever projects that world fossil fuel consumption will actually rise through 2050. This would represent a climate catastrophe, I told my audience, and cannot be allowed to happen.

And yet, the MIT piece affirms that this is our destination on our current trajectory. The author writes that “even after decades of warnings, policy debates, and clean-energy campaigns—the world has barely even begun to confront the problem.”

All this merely serves to elicit the question: What would it take to do what scientists think we need to do to reduce greenhouse gases?

The MIT piece suggests that a total mobilization of society akin to what happened in World War II would have to occur and be maintained for decades to accomplish the energy transition we need to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Few people alive today were alive back then.

A somewhat larger group has parents who lived through World War II and so have some inkling of what such a mobilization would involve.

It’s hard enough to imagine this group agreeing that their household consumption should be curtailed significantly for decades (through taxes, higher prices and perhaps even rationing) to make way for huge societal investments in vast new wind and solar deployments; electricity storage for all that renewable electricity; mass transit; deep energy retrofits for buildings; energy-efficient vehicles; and even revised diets that are less meat-intensive and thereby less energy-intensive.

Even harder to image is the much larger group with a more tenuous or nonexistent connection to the World War II experience embracing such a path.

The trouble with waiting, of course, is that climate change does not wait for us, and also that it shows up with multi-decadal lags. The effects of greenhouse gases emitted decades ago are only now registering on the world’s thermometers.

That means that when climate conditions finally become so destructive as to move the public and the politicians to do something big enough to make a difference, it will likely be too late to avoid catastrophic climate change.

One scientist cited by the MIT piece believes that a rise of more than 2 degrees C in global temperature is all but inevitable and that human society would be “lucky” to avoid a rise of 4 degrees by 2100.

But since each increment of temperature rise will inflict more damage, the scientist says, we would be wise to seek to limit temperature rise as much as we are able (even though the odds are now overwhelmingly against staying below a 2 degree rise).

No longer are we faced with prevention so much as mitigation and management. That’s still something, and it provides a way forward that doesn’t rely on an increasingly unrealistic goal.

Image: Cartoon showing a race between renewable energy and fossil fuels. Text is in German. Gerhard Mester (2013). “Karikatur von Gerhard Mester zum Thema Energiespeicher und Konkurrenzbedingungen Erneuerbarer Energien.”  Via Wikimedia Commons.

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How (not) to run on renewables

SUBHEAD: How will we be able to rely on renewable solar and wind power to run our society.

By Kris De Decker on 15 September 2017 for Low Tech Magazine -
(http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-modern-society-on-solar-and-wind-powe.html)

[IB Publisher's note: There are graphs and other images in the original article that are not reproduced in this posting]


Image above: Windmill in Moulbaix, Belgium, 17th/18th century. Photo by Jean-Pol GrandMont. From original article.

While the potential of wind and solar energy is more than sufficient to supply the electricity demand of industrial societies, these resources are only available intermittently.

To ensure that supply always meets demand, a renewable power grid needs an oversized power generation and transmission capacity of up to ten times the peak demand. It also requires a balancing capacity of fossil fuel power plants, or its equivalent in energy storage.

Consequently, matching supply to demand at all times makes renewable power production a complex, slow, expensive and unsustainable undertaking.

Yet, if we would adjust energy demand to the variable supply of solar and wind energy, a renewable power grid could be much more advantageous. Using wind and solar energy only when they're available is a traditional concept that modern technology can improve upon significantly.

100% Renewable Energy
It is widely believed that in the future, renewable energy production will allow modern societies to become independent from fossil fuels, with wind and solar energy having the largest potential.

An oft-stated fact is that there's enough wind and solar power available to meet the energy needs of modern civilisation many times over.

For instance, in Europe, the practical wind energy potential for electricity production on- and off-shore is estimated to be at least 30,000 TWh per year, or ten times the annual electricity demand. [1] In the USA, the technical solar power potential is estimated to be 400,000 TWh, or 100 times the annual electricity demand. [2]

Such statements, although theoretically correct, are highly problematic in practice. This is because they are based on annual averages of renewable energy production, and do not address the highly variable and uncertain character of wind and solar energy.

Annual averages of renewable energy production do not address the highly variable and uncertain character of wind and solar energy

Demand and supply of electricity need to be matched at all times, which is relatively easy to achieve with power plants that can be turned on and off at will. However, the output of wind turbines and solar panels is totally dependent on the whims of the weather.

Therefore, to find out if and how we can run a modern society on solar and wind power alone, we need to compare time-synchronised electricity demand with time-synchronised solar or wind power availability. [3][4] [5] In doing so, it becomes clear that supply correlates poorly with demand.

The Intermittency of Solar Energy
Solar power is characterised by both predictable and unpredictable variations. There is a predictable diurnal and seasonal pattern, where peak output occurs in the middle of the day and in the summer, depending on the apparent motion of the sun in the sky. [6] [7]

When the sun is lower in the sky, its rays have to travel through a larger air mass, which reduces their strength because they are absorbed by particles in the atmosphere. The sun's rays are also spread out over a larger horizontal surface, decreasing the energy transfer per unit of horizontal surface area.

When the sun is 60° above the horizon, the sun's intensity is still 87% of its maximum when it reaches a horizontal surface. However, at lower angles, the sun's intensity quickly decreases. At a solar angle of 15°, the radiation that strikes a horizontal surface is only 25% of its maximum.

On a seasonal scale, the solar elevation angle also correlates with the number of daylight hours, which reduces the amount of solar energy received over the course of a day at times of the year when the sun is already lower in the sky. And, last but not least, there's no solar energy available at night.

Likewise, the presence of clouds adds unpredictable variations to the solar energy supply. Clouds scatter and absorb solar radiation, reducing the amount of insolation that reaches the ground below. Solar output is roughly 80% of its maximum with a light cloud cover, but only 15% of its maximum on a heavy overcast day. [8][9][10]

Due to a lack of thermal or mechanical inertia in solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, the changes due to clouds can be dramatic.

For example, under fluctuating cloud cover, the output of multi-megawatt PV power plants in the Southwest USA was reported to have variations of roughly 50% in a 30 to 90 second timeframe and around 70% in a timeframe of 5 to 10 minutes. [6]

In London, a solar panel produces 65 times less energy on a heavy overcast day in December at 10 am than on a sunny day in June at noon.

The combination of these predictable and unpredictable variations in solar power makes it clear that the output of a solar power plant can vary enormously throughout time.

In Phoenix, Arizona, the sunniest place in the USA, a solar panel produces on average 2.7 times less energy in December than in June. Comparing a sunny day at midday in June with a heavy overcast day at 10 am in December, the difference in solar output is almost twentyfold. [11]

In London, UK, which is a moderately suitable location for solar power, a solar panel produces on average 10 times less energy in December than in June. Comparing a sunny day in June at noon with a heavy overcast day in December at 10 am, the solar output differs by a factor of 65. [8][9]

The Intermittency of Wind Energy
Compared to solar energy, the variability of the wind is even more volatile. On the one hand, wind energy can be harvested both day and night, while on the other hand, it's less predictable and less reliable than solar energy.

During daylight hours, there's always a minimum amount of solar power available, but this is not the case for wind, which can be absent or too weak for days or even weeks at a time. There can also be too much wind, and wind turbines then have to be shut down in order to avoid damage.

On average throughout the year, and depending on location, modern wind farms produce 10-45% of their rated maximum power capacity, roughly double the annual capacity factor of the average solar PV installation (5-30%). [6] [12][13][14] In practice, however, wind turbines can operate between 0 and 100% of their maximum power at any moment.

For many locations, only average wind speed data is available. However, the chart above shows the daily and hourly wind power output on 29 different days at a wind farm in California.

At any given hour of the day and any given day of the month, wind power production can vary between zero and 600 megawatt, which is the maximum power production of the wind farm. [6]

Even relatively small changes in wind speed have a large effect on wind power production: if the wind speed decreases by half, power production decreases by a factor of eight. [15] Wind resources also vary throughout the years. Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark show a wind speed inter-annual variability of up to 30%. [1] Yearly differences in solar power can also be significant. [16] [17]

How to Match Supply with Demand?
To some extent, wind and solar energy can compensate for each other. For example, wind is usually twice as strong during the winter months, when there is less sun. [18] However, this concerns average values again.

At any particular moment of the year, wind and solar energy may be weak or absent simultaneously, leaving us with little or no electricity at all.

Electricity demand also varies throughout the day and the seasons, but these changes are more predictable and much less extreme. Demand peaks in the morning and in the evening, and is at its lowest during the night. However, even at night, electricity use is still close to 60% of the maximum.

At any particular moment of the year, wind and solar energy may be weak or absent simultaneously, leaving us with little or no electricity at all.

Consequently, if renewable power capacity is calculated based on the annual averages of solar and wind energy production and in tune with the average power demand, there would be huge electricity shortages for most of the time. To ensure that electricity supply always meets electricity demand, additional measures need to be taken.

First, we could count on a backup infrastructure of dispatchable fossil fuel power plants to supply electricity when there's not enough renewable energy available.

Second, we could oversize the renewable generation capacity, adjusting it to the worst case scenario.

Third, we could connect geographically dispersed renewable energy sources to smooth out variations in power production. Fourth, we could store surplus electricity for use in times when solar and/or wind resources are low or absent.

As we shall see, all of these strategies are self-defeating on a large enough scale, even when they're combined. If the energy used for building and maintaining the extra infrastructure is accounted for in a life cycle analysis of a renewable power grid, it would be just as CO2-intensive as the present-day power grid. ]

Strategy 1: Backup Power Plants
Up to now, the relatively small share of renewable power sources added to the grid has been balanced by dispatchable forms of electricity, mainly rapidly deployable gas power plants.

Although this approach completely "solves" the problem of intermittency, it results in a paradox because the whole point of switching to renewable energy is to become independent of fossil fuels, including gas. [19]

Most scientific research focuses on Europe, which has the most ambitious plans for renewable power.

For a power grid based on 100% solar and wind power, with no energy storage and assuming interconnection at the national European level only, the balancing capacity of fossil fuel power plants needs to be just as large as peak electricity demand. [12] In other words, there would be just as many non-renewable power plants as there are today.

Such a hybrid infrastructure would lower the use of carbon fuels for the generation of electricity, because renewable energy can replace them if there is sufficient sun or wind available.

However, lots of energy and materials need to be invested into what is essentially a double infrastructure. The energy that's saved on fuel is spent on the manufacturing, installation and interconnection of millions of solar panels and wind turbines.

Although the balancing of renewable power sources with fossil fuels is widely regarded as a temporary fix that's not suited for larger shares of renewable energy, most other technological strategies (described below) can only partially reduce the need for balancing capacity.

Strategy 2: Oversizing Renewable Power ProductionAnother way to avoid energy shortages is to install more solar panels and wind turbines. If solar power capacity is tailored to match demand during even the shortest and darkest winter days, and wind power capacity is matched to the lowest wind speeds, the risk of electricity shortages could be reduced significantly.

However, the obvious disadvantage of this approach is an oversupply of renewable energy for most of the year.

During periods of oversupply, the energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines is curtailed in order to avoid grid overloading.

Problematically, curtailment has a detrimental effect on the sustainability of a renewable power grid. It reduces the electricity that a solar panel or wind turbine produces over its lifetime, while the energy required to manufacture, install, connect and maintain it remains the same.

Consequently, the capacity factor and the energy returned for the energy invested in wind turbines and solar panels decrease. [20]

Installing more solar panels and wind turbines reduces the risk of shortages, but it produces an oversupply of electricity for most of the year.

Curtailment rates increase spectacularly as wind and solar comprise a larger fraction of the generation mix, because the overproduction's dependence on the share of renewables is exponential.

Scientists calculated that a European grid comprised of 60% solar and wind power would require a generation capacity that's double the peak load, resulting in 300 TWh of excess electricity every year (roughly 10% of the current annual electricity consumption in Europe).

In the case of a grid with 80% renewables, the generation capacity needs to be six times larger than the peak load, while the excess electricity would be equal to 60% of the EU's current annual electricity consumption. Lastly, in a grid with 100% renewable power production, the generation capacity would need to be ten times larger than the peak load, and excess electricity would surpass the EU annual electricity consumption. [21] [22] [23]

This means that up to ten times more solar panels and wind turbines need to be manufactured. The energy that's needed to create this infrastructure would make the switch to renewable energy self-defeating, because the energy payback times of solar panels and wind turbines would increase six- or ten-fold.

For solar panels, the energy payback would only occur in 12-24 years in a power grid with 80% renewables, and in 20-40 years in a power grid with 100% renewables.

Because the life expectancy of a solar panel is roughly 30 years, a solar panel may never produce the energy that was needed to manufacture it. Wind turbines would remain net energy producers because they have shorter energy payback times, but their advantage compared to fossil fuels would decrease. [24]

Strategy 3: Connect Grids with Supergrids
The variability of solar and wind power can also be reduced by interconnecting renewable power plants over a wider geographical region. For example, electricity can be overproduced where the wind is blowing but transmitted to meet demand in becalmed locations. [19]

Interconnection also allows the combination of technologies that utilise different variable power resources, such as wave and tidal energy. [3] Furthermore, connecting power grids over large geographical areas allows a wider sharing of backup fossil fuel power plants.

Although today's power systems in Europe and the USA stretch out over a large enough area, these grids are currently not strong enough to allow interconnection of renewable energy sources.

This can be solved with a powerful overlay high-voltage DC transmission grid. Such "supergrids" form the core of many ambitious plans for 100% renewable power production, especially in Europe. [25]

The problem with this strategy is that transmission capacity needs to be overbuilt, over very long distances. [19]

For a European grid with a share of 60% renewable power (an optimal mix of wind and solar), grid capacity would need to be increased at least sevenfold.

If individual European countries would disregard national concerns about security of supply, and backup balancing capacity would be optimally distributed throughout the continent, the necessary grid capacity extensions can be limited to about triple the existing European high-voltage grid.

For a European power grid with a share of 100% renewables, grid capacity would need to be up to twelve times larger than it is today. [21] [26][27]

Even in the UK, which has one of the best renewable energy sources in the world, combining wind, sun, wave and tidal power would still generate electricity shortages for 65 days per year.

The problems with such grid extensions are threefold. Firstly, building infrastructure such as transmission towers and their foundations, power lines, substations, and so on, requires a significant amount of energy and other resources.

This will need to be taken into account when making a life cycle analysis of a renewable power grid. As with oversizing renewable power generation, most of the oversized transmission infrastructure will not be used for most of the time, driving down the transmission capacity factor substantially.

Secondly, a supergrid involves transmission losses, which means that more wind turbines and solar panels will need to be installed to compensate for this loss.

Thirdly, the acceptance of and building process for new transmission lines can take up to ten years. [20][25]

This is not just bureaucratic hassle: transmission lines have a high impact on the land and often face local opposition, which makes them one of the main obstacles for the growth of renewable power production.

Even with a supergrid, low power days remain a possibility over areas as large as Europe. With a share of 100% renewable energy sources and 12 times the current grid capacity, the balancing capacity of fossil fuel power plants can be reduced to 15% of the total annual electricity consumption, which represents the maximum possible benefit of transmission for Europe. [28]

Even in the UK, which has one of the best renewable energy sources in the world, interconnecting wind, sun, wave and tidal power would still generate electricity shortages for 18% of the time (roughly 65 days per year). [29] [30][31]


Image above: One hundred year old brig "Eye of the Wind" is still sailing commercially. From original article.

Strategy 4: Energy Storage
A final strategy to match supply to demand is to store an oversupply of electricity for use when there is not enough renewable energy available. Energy storage avoids curtailment and it's the only supply-side strategy that can make a balancing capacity of fossil fuel plants redundant, at least in theory. In practice, the storage of renewable energy runs into several problems.

First of all, while there's no need to build and maintain a backup infrastructure of fossil fuel power plants, this advantage is negated by the need to build and maintain an energy storage infrastructure.

Second, all storage technologies have charging and discharging losses, which results in the need for extra solar panels and wind turbines to compensate for this loss.

The energy required to build and maintain the storage infrastructure and the extra renewable power plants need to be taken into account when conducting a life cycle analysis of a renewable power grid.

In fact, research has shown that it can be more energy efficient to curtail renewable power from wind turbines than to store it, because the energy needed to manufacture storage and operate it (which involves charge-discharge losses) surpasses the energy that is lost through curtailment. [23]

If we count on electric cars to store the surplus of renewable electricity, their batteries would need to be 60 times larger than they are today

It has been calculated that for a European power grid with 100% renewable power plants (670 GW wind power capacity and 810 GW solar power capacity) and no balancing capacity, the energy storage capacity needs to be 1.5 times the average monthly load and amounts to 400 TWh, not including charging and discharging losses. [32] [33] [34]

To give an idea of what this means: the most optimistic estimation of Europe's total potential for pumped hydro-power energy storage is 80 TWh [35], while converting all 250 million passenger cars in Europe to electric drives with a 30 kWh battery would result in a total energy storage of 7.5 TWh.

In other words, if we count on electric cars to store the surplus of renewable electricity, their batteries would need to be 60 times larger than they are today (and that's without allowing for the fact that electric cars will substantially increase power consumption).

Taking into account a charging/discharging efficiency of 85%, manufacturing 460 TWh of lithium-ion batteries would require 644 million Terajoule of primary energy, which is equal to 15 times the annual primary energy use in Europe. [36]

This energy investment would be required at minimum every twenty years, which is the most optimistic life expectancy of lithium-ion batteries. There are many other technologies for storing excess electricity from renewable power plants, but all have unique disadvantages that make them unattractive on a large scale. [37] [38]

Matching Supply to Demand Overbuilds the Infrastructure
In conclusion, calculating only the energy payback times of individual solar panels or wind turbines greatly overestimates the sustainability of a renewable power grid.

If we want to match supply to demand at all times, we also need to factor in the energy use for overbuilding the power generation and transmission capacity, and the energy use for building the backup generation capacity and/or the energy storage.

The need to overbuild the system also increases the costs and the time required to switch to renewable energy.

Calculating only the energy payback times of individual solar panels or wind turbines greatly overestimates the sustainability of a renewable power grid.

Combining different strategies is a more synergistic approach which improves the sustainability of a renewable power grid, but these advantages are not large enough to provide a fundamental solution. [33] [39] [40]

Building solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines, balancing capacity and energy storage using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels doesn't solve the problem either, because it also assumes an overbuilding of the infrastructure: we would need to build an extra renewable energy infrastructure to build the renewable energy infrastructure.

Strategy 5: Adjusting Demand to Supply
However, this doesn't mean that a sustainable renewable power grid is impossible. There's a fifth strategy, which does not try to match supply to demand, but instead aims to match demand to supply. In this scenario, renewable energy would ideally be used only when it's available.

If we could manage to adjust all energy demand to variable solar and wind resources, there would be no need for grid extensions, balancing capacity or overbuilding renewable power plants.

Likewise, all the energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines would be utilised, with no transmission losses and no need for curtailment or energy storage.

Of course, adjusting energy demand to energy supply at all times is impossible, because not all energy using activities can be postponed. However, the adjustment of energy demand to supply should take priority, while the other strategies should play a supportive role.

If we let go of the need to match energy demand for 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, a renewable power grid could be built much faster and at a lower cost, making it more sustainable overall.

If we could manage to adjust all energy demand to variable solar and wind resources, there would no need for energy storage, grid extensions, balancing capacity or overbuilding renewable power plants.

With regards to this adjustment, even small compromises yield very beneficial results. For example, if the UK would accept electricity shortages for 65 days a year, it could be powered by a 100% renewable power grid (solar, wind, wave & tidal power) without the need for energy storage, a backup capacity of fossil fuel power plants, or a large overcapacity of power generators. [29]

If demand management is discussed at all these days, it's usually limited to so-called 'smart' household devices, like washing machines or dishwashers that automatically turn on when renewable energy supply is plentiful. However, these ideas are only scratching the surface of what's possible.

Before the Industrial Revolution, both industry and transportation were largely dependent on intermittent renewable energy sources. The variability in the supply was almost entirely solved by adjusting energy demand.

For example, windmills and sailing boats only operated when the wind was blowing. In the next article, I will explain how this historical approach could be successfully applied to modern industry and cargo transportation.

Sources:
[1] Swart, R. J., et al. Europe's onshore and offshore wind energy potential, an assessment of environmental and economic constraints. No. 6/2009. European Environment Agency, 2009.

[2] Lopez, Anthony, et al. US renewable energy technical potentials: a GIS-based analysis. NREL, 2012. See also Here's how much of the world would need to be covered in solar panels to power Earth, Business Insider, October 2015.

[3] Hart, Elaine K., Eric D. Stoutenburg, and Mark Z. Jacobson. "The potential of intermittent renewables to meet electric power demand: current methods and emerging analytical techniques." Proceedings of the IEEE 100.2 (2012): 322-334.

[4] Ambec, Stefan, and Claude Crampes. Electricity production with intermittent sources of energy. No. 10.07. 313. LERNA, University of Toulouse, 2010.

[5] Mulder, F. M. "Implications of diurnal and seasonal variations in renewable energy generation for large scale energy storage." Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy 6.3 (2014): 033105.

[6] INITIATIVE, MIT ENERGY. "Managing large-scale penetration of intermittent renewables." (2012).

[7] Richard Perez, Mathieu David, Thomas E. Hoff, Mohammad Jamaly, Sergey Kivalov, Jan Kleissl, Philippe Lauret and Marc Perez (2016), "Spatial and temporal variability of solar energy", Foundations and Trends in Renewable Energy: Vol. 1: No. 1, pp 1-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/2700000006

[8] Sun Angle and Insolation. FTExploring.

[9] Sun position calculator, Sun Earth Tools.

[10] Burgess, Paul. " Variation in light intensity at different latitudes and seasons effects of cloud cover, and the amounts of direct and diffused light." Forres, UK: Continuous Cover Forestry Group. Available online at http://www. ccfg. org. uk/conferences/downloads/P_Burgess. pdf. 2009.

[11] Solar output can be increased, especially in winter, by tilting solar panels so that they make a 90 degree angle with the sun's rays. However, this only addresses the spreading out of solar irradiation and has no effect on the energy lost because of the greater air mass, nor on the amount of daylight hours. Furthermore, tilting the panels is always a compromise. A panel that's ideally tilted for the winter sun will be less efficient in the summer sun, and the other way around.

[12] Schaber, Katrin, Florian Steinke, and Thomas Hamacher. "Transmission grid extensions for the integration of variable renewable energies in europe: who benefits where?." Energy Policy 43 (2012): 123-135.

[13] German offshore wind capacity factors, Energy Numbers, July 2017

[14] What are the capacity factors of America's wind farms? Carbon Counter, 24 July 2015.

[15] Sorensen, Bent. Renewable Energy: physics, engineering, environmental impacts, economics & planning; Fourth Edition. Elsevier Ltd, 2010.

[16] Jerez, S., et al. "The Impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation on Renewable Energy Resources in Southwestern Europe." Journal of applied meteorology and climatology 52.10 (2013): 2204-2225.

[17] Eerme, Kalju. "Interannual and intraseasonal variations of the available solar radiation." Solar Radiation. InTech, 2012.

[18] Archer, Cristina L., and Mark Z. Jacobson. "Geographical and seasonal variability of the global practical wind resources." Applied Geography 45 (2013): 119-130.

[19] Rugolo, Jason, and Michael J. Aziz. "Electricity storage for intermittent renewable sources." Energy & Environmental Science 5.5 (2012): 7151-7160.

[20] Even at today's relatively low shares of renewables, curtailment is already happening, caused by either transmission congestion, insufficient transmission availability, or minimal operating levels on thermal generators (coal and atomic power plants are designed to operate continuously). See: “Wind and solar curtailment”, Debra Lew et al., National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2013. For example, in China, now the world's top wind power producer, nearly one-fifth of total wind power is curtailed. See: Chinese wind earnings under pressure with fifth of farms idle, Sue-Lin Wong & Charlie Zhu, Reuters, May 17, 2015.

[21] Barnhart, Charles J., et al. "The energetic implications of curtailing versus storing solar- and wind-generated electricity." Energy & Environmental Science 6.10 (2013): 2804-2810.

[22] Schaber, Katrin, et al. "Parametric study of variable renewable energy integration in europe: advantages and costs of transmission grid extensions." Energy Policy 42 (2012): 498-508.

[23] Schaber, Katrin, Florian Steinke, and Thomas Hamacher. "Managing temporary oversupply from renewables efficiently: electricity storage versus energy sector coupling in Germany." International Energy Workshop, Paris. 2013.

[24] Underground cables can partly overcome this problem, but they are about 6 times more expensive than overhead lines.

[25] Szarka, Joseph, et al., eds. Learning from wind power: governance, societal and policy perspectives on sustainable energy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

[26] Rodriguez, Rolando A., et al. "Transmission needs across a fully renewable european storage system." Renewable Energy 63 (2014): 467-476.

[27] Furthermore, new transmission capacity is often required to connect renewable power plants to the rest of the grid in the first place -- solar and wind farms must be co-located with the resource itself, and often these locations are far from the place where the power will be used.

[28] Becker, Sarah, et al. "Transmission grid extensions during the build-up of a fully renewable pan-European electricity supply." Energy 64 (2014): 404-418.

[29] Zero Carbon britain: Rethinking the Future, Paul Allen et al., Centre for Alternative Technology, 2013

[30] Wave energy often correlates with wind power: if there's no wind, there's usually no waves.

[31] Building even larger supergrids to take advantage of even wider geographical regions, or even the whole planet, could make the need for balancing capacity largely redundant. However, this could only be done at very high costs and increased transmission losses. The transmission costs increase faster than linear with distance traveled since also the amount of peak power to be transported will grow with the surface area that is connected. [5] Practical obstacles also abound. For example, supergrids assume peace and good understanding between and within countries, as well as equal interests, while in reality some benefit much more from interconnection than others. [22]

[32] Heide, Dominik, et al. "Seasonal optimal mix of wind and solar power in a future, highly renewable Europe." Renewable Energy 35.11 (2010): 2483-2489.

[33] Rasmussen, Morten Grud, Gorm Bruun Andresen, and Martin Greiner. "Storage and balancing synergies in a fully or highly renewable pan-european system." Energy Policy 51 (2012): 642-651.

[34] Weitemeyer, Stefan, et al. "Integration of renewable energy sources in future power systems: the role of storage." Renewable Energy 75 (2015): 14-20.

[35] Assessment of the European potential for pumped hydropower energy storage, Marcos Gimeno-Gutiérrez et al., European Commission, 2013

[36] The calculation is based on the data in this article: How sustainable is stored sunlight? Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine, 2015.

[37] Evans, Annette, Vladimir Strezov, and Tim J. Evans. "Assessment of utility energy storage options for increased renewable energy penetration." Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 16.6 (2012): 4141-4147.

[38] Zakeri, Behnam, and Sanna Syri. "Electrical energy storage systems: A comparative life cycle cost analysis." Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 42 (2015): 569-596.

[39] Steinke, Florian, Philipp Wolfrum, and Clemens Hoffmann. "Grid vs. storage in a 100% renewable Europe." Renewable Energy 50 (2013): 826-832.

[40] Heide, Dominik, et al. "Reduced storage and balancing needs in a fully renewable European power system with excess wind and solar power generation." Renewable Energy 36.9 (2011): 2515-2523.

.

No more half-measures!

SUBHEAD: McKibbon says only solution is 100% renewables 'As fast as humanly possible'.

By Jake Johnson on 22 August 2017 for Common Dreams -
(https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/08/22/only-solution-says-mckibben-100-renewables-fast-humanly-possible#)


Image above: Abandoned section of "Will Rogers Turnpike" now known as Interstate 44. In a future in which we save the Earth we'll be seeing much more of this. From (http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tags/willrogersturnpike/).

"Given the state of the planet," writes 350.org founder Bill McKibben in his new feature piece for In These Times, it would have been ideal for the world to have fully transitioned its energy systems away from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable sources "25 years ago." But we can still push for the "second best" option, McKibben concludes. To do so, we must move toward wind, solar, and water "as fast as humanly possible."

The transition to 100 percent renewable energy is a goal that has gained significant appeal over the past decade—and particularly over the past several months, as President Donald Trump has moved rapidly at the behest of Big Oil to dismantle even the limited environmental protections put in place by the Obama administration. Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, a move McKibben denounced as "stupid and reckless."

"Environmental groups from the Climate Mobilization to Greenpeace to Food and Water Watch are backing the 100 percent target," McKibben writes, as are many lawmakers, U.S. states, and countries throughout the world.

Given the climate stance of both the dominant party in Congress and the current occupant of the Oval Office, McKibben notes that we shouldn't be looking toward either for leadership.

Rather, we should look to states like California and countries like China, both of which have made significant commitments to aggressively alter their energy systems in recent months.

The newest addition to the push for renewables is Maryland, which is set to announce on Thursday an "urgent" and "historic" bill that, if passed, would transition the state's energy system to 100 percent renewables by 2035.

McKibben also points to individual senators like Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who in April introduced legislation that would transition the U.S. to 100 percent clean and renewable energy by 2050. The bill will not pass the current Congress, "but as a standard to shape the Democratic Party agenda in 2018 and 2020, it's critically important," McKibben argues.

"What Medicare for All is to the healthcare debate, or Fight for $15 is to the battle against inequality, 100 percent renewable is to the struggle for the planet's future," McKibben writes. "It's how progressives will think about energy going forward."

Previously a fringe idea, the call for 100 percent renewables is "gaining traction outside the obvious green enclaves," McKibben adds. This is in large part because technology is such that a move toward 100 percent renewable energy "would make economic sense...even if fossil fuels weren't wrecking the Earth."

"That's why the appeal of 100% Renewable goes beyond the left," McKibben writes. "If you pay a power bill, it's the common-sense path forward."

Writing for Vox last week, David Roberts noted that "wind and solar power are saving Americans an astounding amount of money" already.

"Wind and solar produce, to use the economic term of art, 'positive externalities'—benefits to society that are not captured in their market price," Roberts writes. "Specifically, wind and solar power reduce pollution, which reduces sickness, missed work days, and early deaths."

For these reasons, and for the familiar environmental ones, 100 percent renewables is no longer merely an "aspirational goal," McKibben argues. It is "the obvious solution."

"No more half-measures... Many scientists tell us that within a decade, at current rates, we'll likely have put enough carbon in the atmosphere to warm the Earth past the Paris climate targets," McKibben concludes. 

"Renewables—even the most rapid transition—won't stop climate change, but getting off fossil fuel now might (there are no longer any guarantees) keep us from the level of damage that would shake civilization."

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Renewable Revolution

SUBHEAD: Renewables to capture 3/4 of the $10 trillion world spends on new generation through 2040.

By Joe Romm on 15 June 2017 for Think Progress -
(https://thinkprogress.org/renewables-projected-to-crush-fossil-fuels-f6670e3792df)


Image above: Last year, solar in Chile saw lowest global price for unsubsidized electricity by any technology. Source Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Credit BNEF New Energy Outlook 2017. From original article.

The staggering drop in the cost of clean energy has already upended the global power market over the past two decades — and that trend will only continue for the next two decades, according to new analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

As a result, renewables will capture the lion’s share of the $10.2 trillion the world will invest in new power generation by 2040, BNEF projects in its annual New Energy Outlook 2017 report.


Image above: Charts of Investment by Technology 2017-2040. Source: Bllomberg New energy Finance. Credit: BNEF New Energy Outlook 2017 From original article. Click to enlarge.


Despite years of plummeting prices for renewables, BNEF projects that over the next two decades, the cost of solar power will still drop another two-thirds, onshore wind costs will be cut nearly in half, and offshore wind costs will drop a stunning 71 percent.

Here’s how this will profoundly transform power markets in the years ahead:

• By 2023, solar and onshore wind will be competitive with new U.S. gas plants.
• By 2028, solar will beat existing gas generation.
• Solar and wind will make up nearly a half of installed capacity and over a third of global power generation by 2040. That’s a four-fold jump in wind capacity and a 14-fold jump in solar from today.

Image above: Charts of global cumulative installed capacity 2016 and 2040. Source: Bloomberg New energy Finance. Credit: BNEF New Energy Outlook 2017 From original article.


Deep penetration of renewables will be assisted by continued price drops in lithium-ion batteries and explosive growth in electric cars: “This will help renewable energy reach 74 percent penetration in Germany, 38 percent in the U.S., 55 percent in China, and 49 percent in India by 2040.”

BNEF concludes that despite President Donald Trump’s vocal support for the coal industry, “economic realities over the next two decades” work against it, and U.S. coal power generation is “forecast to see a 51 percent reduction in generation by 2040.”

Here’s another key conclusion: “Gas is a transition fuel, but not in the way most people think.” Other than in the Americas, where cheap gas is plentiful, gas plants won’t act as a replacement for “baseload coal,” but will “increasingly act as one of the flexible technologies needed to help meet peaks and provide system stability in an age of rising renewable generation,” BNEF predicts.

With total renewable investment over the next two decades projected to be $7.2 trillion versus $1.5 trillion for fossil fuel power, it’s clear where the biggest high wage job growth will come from.

.

New sail power in Mediterranean

SUBHEAD: In Europe cargo sail ships are making inroads replacing bunker fuel burning dinosaurs.

By Jan Lundborg on 15 June 2017 for Sail Transport Network -
(http://www.sailtransportnetwork.org/node/963)


Image above: Painting of sailship Perama over map of Mediterranean  by Chryssa Dellapporta. From original artical.

In a fast changing world, it is no longer possible to automatically assume that what one is used to will endure. People want stability and predictability, but, as they say, good luck with that.

We are witnessing out-of-control evolution of a rapid, uncertain sort. Fortunately, there are pro-active initiatives that have seized the imagination of thinking people who think of the Earth as a community to share.

They look ahead in terms of decades and even centuries instead of mere days or quarterly periods.

As an environmental activist looking for answers to pollution and disastrous land use, after 1988 when I left the service of the oil industry and government, I eventually came upon the revival of sail transport as a most promising potential sector.

That was in 1999. Fast forward to 2017, and much progress has been made by the sail transport movement, especially since 2008.

The outstanding success that has endured since then has been that of the Fairtransport organization in the Netherlands. Their first ship was the Tres Hombres, a 32-meter brigantine, built by volunteers. It has now completed ten transatlantic voyages carrying cargo from the Caribbean back to northern Europe, without an engine.

Among several other sail transport projects, Timbercoast’s Avontuur cargo schooner, at 44 meters long with a cargo capacity of 70 tons, is the other standout. Since last year it is operating from Germany to the Caribbean and back.

This year is now seeing — as I write these lines — another step forward: like Fairtransport and Timbercoast, it marks a noteworthy and practical embrace of sail power for moving cargo via clean, renewable energy known as the wind.

In the eastern Mediterranean, Aegean Cargo Sailing is a demonstration project now underway (June 2017) to highlight high quality island products for a broadened market that caters to the ecologically sensitive. This niche market for food and beverage items, like in northern Europe, is growing and worth pursuing.

Furthermore, with an eye to the future, when climate change and the energy mix will be sure to challenge today’s unconscious shopping within the corporate consumer economy, solutions must also promise local economic health and meaningful work for the new generation.


Image above: Sailship Sailship Pelago off town of Karystos on island of Euboea beginning of Aegean Cargo Sailing voyage. From original article.

Aegean Cargo Sailing visits six islands as well as the Greek mainland province of Attica, spreading the word and the tastes of a sustainable future. (See the voyage blog).

The current vessel the for project, the sloop Pelago, only carries one tonne [one metric ton, or 2,204.6 pounds] of cargo. But it serves as sufficient “proof of concept” for motivating people from various walks of life who have become, or may become, involved as supporters or self-starters of similar efforts.

Defenders of the status quo, however, resigned to the immense trade volumes (and pollution) of the 90,000 oil-burning cargo ships operating today, are correct that sail transport trade amounts to just a drop in the bucket.

Yes, for now. However, an historic trend starts with one small step. Think of many sailboats eventually commencing cargo transport, whether small sloops originally designed for recreation of living aboard, or larger vessels approaching clipper ships of 150 years ago that sailed faster than today’s modern cargo vessels. The drop in the bucket is no longer a drop in the bucket.

The island stops on the current route starting from the port of Lavrio, are Kea, Andros, Tinos, Mykonos, Ikaria, and Samos. The end of this voyage is a marina near Athens, enabling us to get the products to a cooperating health food store to display sail transport’s potential for bringing goods to customers without oil and its inherent pollution.

Organic and fair trade are wonderful developments, but what good are they if the transport is filthy and unsustainable?

On land, pedal power and animal power, combined with proximity, are the way to go, and we are intensifying of efforts in this regard. But the need for long-distance transport has been a fixture of human society, and this need will only grow as local ecosystems are discovered to inadequately provide for huge populations.

By now most of us have learned that unending oil dependence and its attendant harms is no answer, if long-term survival is to be planned rationally and honestly.


Image above: Valia Stefanoudaki, products coordinator Aegean Cargo Sailing with customer. From original article.

Valia Stefanoudaki, coordinator of Aegean Cargo Sailing products, is shown here with owner of the many traditional local-product shops on the Aegean island of Andros This shop is called “Biologos” ("organic"), and was one of the first collaborative shops visited in the debut voyage.

Valia wears the SAIL MED t-shirt of the Aegean Cargo Sailing crew. She and her mates report that shops and suppliers are reacting enthusiastically over clean, attractive sail transport for their goods, perceiving enhanced value generated.

Since oil-burning cargo ships kill around 60,000 people a year with sooty emissions, and the total annual global CO2 emissions from 90,000 motorized ships constitute what would be the sixth largest-ranking nation in the world, it is high time to adopt means of low-cost, clean, renewable energy that are here and now.

Considerations include food security, local development, the idea of a Blue Economy, and healthy seas (each of which is examined below). Addressing the issues raised can help counter the global, haphazard practices and systems threatening life as we know it.

Unfortunately, faith in government and industry has meant unending, unchecked emissions that the United Nations and its International Maritime Organization have done next to nothing about in the 20 years since the Kyoto Protocol. The slow pace along with greenwashing aids only entrenched industry.

But can we all just keep shopping, and assume that Mother Nature will keep providing, keep forgiving, and allow us to just wait until modern society is good and ready to make more intelligent innovations that secure a livable future?

A recent news item: "Cargo Shipping Market to Witness an Annual Growth Rate of 3.45% from 2017 to 2023".

This projection is possible only if there are no major events in the world oil market to significantly curtail supplies. Additionally, as oil products are hugely subsidized — with "externalities" of pollution, etc., paid for by the rest of society, such as those buying food — this state of affairs would need to remain unchanged. Never mind the impossibility of endless growth on a finite planet.

Food security

Local food production for food security and for avoiding long-distance oil consumption for transport is a crucial foundation for our common future. How can this be achieved under the corporate economy that rewards large economies-of-scale trade and distribution via dwindling fossil fuels?

Sail transport has potential as a vast, low-tech, albeit lower-volume means of bioregional and trans-ocean sharing of surpluses. A given ecosystem diminished by harmful development and loss of arable land can rarely provide all the food or kinds of food that a population needs for survival.

Indeed, the secure exchange of surpluses via sailing between coastal and island communities enhances the quality of nutrition for populations who have become distanced from local self-sufficiency.

One Greek island is known, for example, for potato production, while another is known for split peas — both enjoyed by most of the whole nation. It makes sense for any surpluses to be exchanged — in a sustainable fashion that won’t be affected by the next geopolitical oil supply shock.

For those of a mind to consider coffee and chocolate part of food security, they are welcome to this charming mindset as long as there is sailing from the tropics to the high-populated temperate regions that cannot grow those addictive, sensual crops.

Local development
Local development for a sustainable economy closely depends of food security. However, employment and the vital use and revival of skills for a community’s general resiliency are related requirements, and are addressed by sail transport and the cargo sailing sector’s future.

Also, a resilient economic system, sometimes called the Blue Economy, must be local-based instead of a U.N.- or E.U.-driven system out of reach of the average citizen.

Jobs today are primarily in the service of the corporate consumer economy. While this serves many workers, and especially benefits the few who profit greatly on the fossil-fuel based system of energy, transport, and agriculture, the fact remains that unemployment and a poor outlook shared by millions of citizens of developed economies are preventing uncounted working-class people from thriving or getting by with dignity.

Fortunately, the history and legacy of traditional sailing networks and shipbuilding have not disappeared from memory. Examples through successful, small-scale project have been reviving the sailing of cargo, primarily in northern Europe.

SAIL MED is tapping into young persons’ desires to work at meaningful positions that are not limited to serving drinks to tourists or vending souvlakis to increasingly cash-poor consumers.

While the older generation’s strengths and knowledge for community-based trades and services are still present — but being inexorably lost day by day — young people in search of work and convivial, meaningful activity can anticipate finding or creating jobs or small businesses.

Additionally, growing numbers of people find air travel to be unjustifiable due to inefficient, wasteful, toxic fuel consumption. Some of these folk wonder about sailing as the long-term answer for travel across oceans. But, for now, it is the moving of cargo and building local self-reliance that emerge as the priority.

The prospect for greater local development depends on nurturing today’s established home-production, for example of wines, olive oil, olives, and produce — typified by much of Greece.

These highly prized but common items are primarily traded or gifted on a person-to-person basis. This can be enhanced and expanded in order to encourage greater local food sources’ availability through interdependency and cooperation, rather than everyone's waiting for a job-opening involving impersonal, distant employment and the unlikely return of debt-related economic growth.

Additional benefits of local development include more feasible protection of the environment than from top-down policies and regulations that only serve out-of-touch, distant corporations and government technocrats who seldom have any role in enhancing sustainable, non-fossil fuel, local development.

The Blue Economy
Thus far, the Blue Economy is mostly limited to an NGO-oriented and government-agency initiative, promoted via conferences and technical papers.

Many of the “Blue” principles of cleaner seas and appropriate industry are within reach, but limiting and overriding the vision are entrenched business interests; they stand for the status quo of unsustainable development, emitting regulated but massive pollution, and unending industrial growth on a finite planet.

Clean, renewable energy has yet to include sail power for a Blue Economy, so today’s small sail transport movement needs to pursue on all levels the kind of growth that helps people and the environment. Solar panels have a place, but few people look at the issues of questionable net-energy-yield and the limitation of generating only electric power. Two approaches are complementary:

• establishing local or regional, small scale cargo and passenger trade utilizing sail power;
  
• following through with the “Ecoliner” approach for higher-volume cargos, to utilize modern ports currently given over to massive ships and high-tech dock complexes for recently constructed, modern harbors. Such facilities are no longer part of historically established cities or real communities.

The chief reasons for modifying the present fossil-fuel dominated economy, as to transport, are long-term oil supply and climate-protection considerations:

• Conventional crude oil reserves have been on a depletion trajectory worldwide since 2005. Supplies of oil for ships, planes and trucks, agriculture, etc., have had to rely on increased subsidies. As higher-cost, lower net-energy-yield oil is counted on to stretch supply indefinitely, via fracking and deep water, frozen-environment extraction, the domination of oil and its refined fuels for transport makes less and less sense. To address this requires sound planning, innovative policies, and better technology, to be understood and pursued by the citizenry instead of technocrats and corporate-bottom-line careerists. A sudden oil supply crisis can threaten today’s commerce and consumers’ tenuous security. The 90,000 “oil boats” moving cargo will someday be lamented as non-renewable-energy dinosaurs.
  
• CO2 emissions from shipping have been growing out-of-control, and are set to continue doing so. Up to 250% greater emissions have been forecast to occur by 2050. This state of affairs is due to the lack of regulations and pro-industry allegiance by the International Maritime Organization, which has not followed UNFCCC guidelines for protecting the climate. As extreme weather continues to worsen and exact exponential costs, and climate-change related migration accelerates, people will look to clean-energy transport that sail power offers.

Healthy Seas
In addition to species impacted directly by oil spills, the related crises of the plastic plague, poison runoff, and improper disposal of toxics call us to take action.

Some 20% of sea pollution comes from the deliberate dumping of oil and other wastes from ships, from accidental spills and offshore oil drilling.

But of all the sources of marine pollution, the discharge of oily engine wastes and bilge from day-to-day shipping operations may be the worst, because it is steady and occurs everywhere.

Instead of trying to solve the ongoing oil pollution crisis long-term, by reducing oil demand (see WorldOilReduction.org), the Obama administration mainly promised to fine the perpetrators and achieve a “clean energy economy” (some day).

Petroleum refineries keep producing toxic, non-biodegradable plastics, as part of the facilities’ requirement of high utilization of refining capacity. The oil and natural gas industries rely mainly on gasoline and diesel for profits, but to maximize those products, the manufacture and distribution of other products such as plastics, pesticides, dyes, asphalt, and more, must be maintained at all costs.

One result is that plastic particles are increasingly supplanting plankton in terms of volume. This was discovered almost 20 years ago by Capt. Charles Moore, author of Plastic Ocean. He is an active supporter and promoter of Sail Transport Network (SAIL MED’s parent organization).

Since conventional cargo shipping is guilty of more oil spillage on a daily basis, from emptying bilges, than all the high-profile wrecks of tankers and other ships, the poor performance needs a remedy such as sail power and a reduction in much consuming of unessential products. Unreported “accidents” not only harm sea life, but are destroying tourism potential. This recurring disaster is what the public is usually aware of.

However; the use of engines and propellers must be questioned, from both an animal-rights perspective and looking ahead to inevitable changes in technology in a post-peak oil world threatened by accelerated global warming.

Engine noise is extremely damaging to sea creatures, such as whales that depend on quiet seas for their communications that stretch for thousands of kilometers under water. This crisis is akin to land birds’ inability to find mates when motor vehicle noise and other disturbances are prevalent.

Propellers chop up sea creatures, particularly when oil-burning cargo ships travel at high rates of speed (e.g., 18 knots per hour). Slower species such as manatees are often bloodied and killed by propellers.

Additionally, collisions with ships — likely not the case with sailing ships that go slower — kill whales and many other species on a regular basis. The carnage is not quantified, nor banned in any way. This is akin to roadkill by motor vehicles. Species extinction cannot be allowed to continue to rage in our oceans and other bodies of water, and must be made as well-known as land-based species extinction.

The sail transport movement, while not exclusively engine-free and propeller-free, promises much healthier seas. Expansion of our sector as well as general education will help our fellow creatures and the species that they coexist with and rely on for food.

Conclusion:
The crew and management of Aegean Cargo Sailing, part of SAIL MED and the Sail Transport Network, welcome questions, participation, support, and publicity.

One project at a time, building into an ever stronger, growing movement, means sail transport will prevail not just as an interesting, romantic initiative; it is here to stay. A change in thinking is underway, that of placing sail power among the pantheon of (truly) renewable, (truly) clean forms of energy.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: New Sail Power in Mediterranean 6/15/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Larry Ellison - Oracle 6/21/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Our Brave Experiment 6/13/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Hokulea sister ship Hikianalia 10/10/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Moving local goods by boat 3/7/12 
Ea O Ka Aina: Polyneisans again tour the Pacific 8/15/11
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KIUC aims at 100% renewables

SUBHEAD: The islands of Ta‘ū and Kauai are part of a bold solar plus battery experiment.

By Henry Curtis on 10 June 2017 for Ililani Media -
(http://www.ililani.media/2017/06/kiuc-moving-rapidly-towards-100.html)


Image above: A solar array partnership between KIUC, Solr City and Tesla. From (https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/8/14854858/tesla-solar-hawaii-kauai-kiuc-powerpack-battery-generator).

Ta‘ū is the easternmost volcanic island of the Samoan Islands and has a population of 600. The island switched from one hundred percent reliance on diesel generators to one hundred percent reliance on solar panels and batteries.

The system consists of 5,328 solar panels with 1.4 megawatts of solar generation capacity, and 60 Tesla Powerpacks. The battery storage system can be recharged in seven hours, and can power the island for three days.

Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) generated more than 90 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels in 2011. Kauai’s two main fossil fuel power plants are the 96.5 MW Port Allen Generation Station and the 27.5 MW Kapaia Power Station.

Kauai currently has sufficient solar to provide almost all of its electricity demand during peak solar periods. Additional solar requires energy storage in order to be able to use the solar in the evening and at night.

Tesla built a 13-megawatt solar energy system consisting of 54,978 photovoltaic panels, combined with a 52 megawatt-hours (MWh) energy storage system consisting of 272 Powerpacks.

The system is located on 50 acres owned by Grove Farm, near Lihue. Tesla will sell electricity to KIUC at 13.9 cents per kilowatt-hour (KWh) for 20 years. The system went on-line in March, 2017.

KIUC adopted a Strategic Plan Update 2016-2030 on January 31, 2017.

“Renewables have increased from six percent of sales in 2007 to 37 percent in 2016. KIUC is rapidly closing in on reaching the 70 percent renewable level by 2030.”

There are 3,500 rooftop solar systems with a capacity of 21 megawatts.

“KIUC has either built or collaborated with third parties on three industrial scale solar projects, including Anahola (12 megawatts), Koloa (12 megawatts), and Port Allen (6 megawatts).

Three smaller privately owned solar arrays in Waimea, Omao and Kapaa contribute 1.6 megawatts total.

Currently under construction is a 13-megawatt solar array with battery storage capability adjacent to the Kapaia Power Station. This project – a partnership with Solar City and Tesla - is the first of its size in the nation.”

“KIUC’s renewable portfolio also includes hydroelectric systems at Wainiha, Waiahi, Kalāheo, Olokele and Waimea/Kekaha, generating a combined total of 10 megawatts to the grid.

A 6-megawatt system is under construction on Gay and Robinson land, and under consideration is an additional project that would combine solar and hydro in a pumped storage system, which could produce 25 megawatts at full capacity.”

“In 2016, Green Energy began operating its 7-megawatt biomass plant just outside Lihue. The plant provides 12 percent of Kauai’s power, and is one of the first plants of its kind in this country: burning wood chips from invasive species and from locally grown trees.”

“In 2016, on some individual days, KIUC derives 97 percent of its energy from renewable sources, including 77 percent from solar. On the average clear day, with solar at or close to full potential, all but one of KIUC’s diesel generators can shut down.”

KIUC plans to develop the 8.3-MW Puu Opae pumped-storage hydro project. A five-mile underground pipeline will connect two ponds on Kauai’s west side. The project recently advanced, with the settlement of a water dispute.

Earthjustice, on behalf of Poai Wai Ola: the West Kaua'i Watershed Alliance, filed a petition with the Commission on Water Resource Management (Water Commission; CWRM) in 2013, seeking to revise the minimum flow in the Waimea River and its tributaries. The complaint also stated that some of the diverted water was being wasted.

The parties involved in the proceedings were the Hawaii Agribusiness Development Corporation, Kekaha Agriculture Association, Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, the Department of Hawaiian Homelands and Po’ai Wai Ola.

The Water Commission approved a mediated agreement on April 18.

Waimea River water flow will increase from 16 million gallons per day to around 25 million gallons per day. The Department of Hawaiian Homelands will receive 6.903 million gallons a day from the Kokee Streams for homesteading purposes.

“All streams will be allowed to run from the mountain to the sea and no diversion will ever be a total diversion again.”

“The ditch systems owned by the State of Hawaii's Agribusiness Development Corporation (ADC), and currently operated by the Kekaha Agricultural Association (KAA), will continue to be maintained to allow for both present and future uses.”

“Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) will be allowed to complete due diligence on a set of energy projects supported by the Kokee Ditch System, and, if the energy projects are built, will receive from the Kokee ditch system a rolling average of 11 mgd to support both (1) the Puu Opae project and (2) DHHL's water needs under any water reservation the Commission may grant to DHHL.”

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Solar power one island at a time 11/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Renewables - the new Fracking? 2/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Failing to live off the grid 1/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How sustainable is Solar PV? 4/26/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Our Renewable Future 1/21/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Kicking tie KIUC habit 5/1/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Caron Crash - Solar Dawn 3/19/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Go Nuclear or Go Native 10/20/14
Ea O Ka Aina: CIUK > KIUC 5/8/12
Ea O Ka Aina: The Alternative Energy Matrix 2/8/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Chinese say PV to beat coal 8/17/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Off-Grid Night Lighting 8/14/09
Island Breath: Dealing With Chaos 10/7/08
.